A seagull overlooks
By Knut-Johan Farestveit
“There is no alternative”
Looking over from the waters of Fjǫrn, at first people forget to notice Mongstad. Much of the area has on first viewing not been visibly damaged by the Anthropocene. Plants and fungi here connect together in underground connections: an organ here, an organ there. Moss, bilberries, oaks, mushrooms, and the unspeakable magnitude hidden in an “etc” all make up Fjǫrn's historical facade. To the north-east, hills lure on the horizon; from this distance they seem deceptively small. The lowlands surrounding the immediate waters are at once both open, yet inviting. Even the name of "Fensfjord" invites for speculation, as the “Fen” part of it is reconstructed in the old tongue of insular North-Germanic as "Fjǫrn" (or "Fjarn"), with its pre-germanic origin unknown. There's a high chance it's not from a known language, harkening to a neolithic culture beyond that which is known in written historical records; away from the certainties that modern industry demands. Such unknown names, even though they are made by the same species that can produce texts about Fjǫrn, point to prior visions which the written word – and thus contemporary sapiens – cannot access. In the same vein, going to the lived and thus easily forgotten history of Fjǫrn, formerly the air would’ve been crisp and clean, like a familiar greeting that has been stripped of all its obligations to partake in inauthentic social pleasantries. Then there are the birds. Seagulls can be annoying at times, over the fjord of Fjǫrn they cry and cry and cry and cry, each repetition a little different. How easy it is to get annoyed at a bird, to advocate for your local government to destroy its nesting grounds, to believe there is such a thing as a "right" of imposition on nature. There is no mistaking Mongstad.
Across Mongstad’s barren desert of asphalted surface large metallic structures are visible. There is a constant whirring in the compound, non-organic components move in and out as necessary. Wounds upon the flesh of the earth flow out of the facility to the surrounding area functioning similar to veins being patrolled by anti-body-vehicles. Pipes nearing the height of low towers dot the horizon, some breathe smoke and fire into the air. Moving in and out of Fjǫrn, water-vessels act out predetermined functions primarily within the transportation of raw-material. Each building, each vehicle, each machine, is clearly meticulously made. This place wasn’t conceived of as social-bildung. Blueprints with meticulous standards that don’t care for the humanities were the ideal of those who made this place. The creators imposed their vision upon both the building-material they could get a hold of and their historicity. Even in the organic that may be found in the facility, such as the bodies of flesh that intermittently become visible, are obscured through specialised clothing and an organised “work”-day. The bodies of Mongstad are manufactured, made, something that didn’t come of their own.
One of these bodies – a worker – lights a cigarette. Looking at his surroundings, he notes to himself how he could've had his break inside. He wanted to feel fresh air even if the rancid quality Mongstad's air is well known to him. “It's better than nothing”, he thinks. He’s on the evening shift today, he’s been trying to avoid his turn in the barrel for as long as possible but his friend got sick and he’s covering for him. He’s trying to enjoy the air but the summer heat makes it difficult. He remembers looking at the news earlier: the state-weather-forecaster has predicted that there’s going to be intense rainfall with a short duration in about 2 hours. The worker decides to believe this as even though the air is saturated by summer-heat and a chemical smell, a hint of petrichor is noticeable. It’s unbearable, like having to go into a sauna and knowing you’re going to be stuck there for hours. In the sauna you wouldn't risk dying, here you only get the feeling of risking your life without any of the thrill. Pain without adrenaline, a break without respite. He looks ahead from the railing over to in front of one of the warehouses; there he sees some weeds growing by the stairwell. It's not technically against company regulations, still the worker thinks to himself "someone should do something about that”. Earlier in the day, one of the worker’s bosses was making an inspection of the facility and noticed the same weeds. The minister is visiting later that month and so the boss arranged for the weeds to be removed. It’s not as if the boss’ masters ever take a break, even if their mortal bodies do. Their bodies are everywhere and always active, always on the move, always producing, always reducing friction, always fighting friction, always hating friction, always evangelising against friction, always prepared even in the middle of the night for the potentiality that their human mask must come off. Just for one second. To do the deed.
Smoke churns out from Mongstad tonight.
“There is no alternative”
Inside the compound, a black ooze is refined. A quarter of a continent away, in the middle of Morimaru – that "Dead Sea" which has been known to the Germanic tribes who migrated to Mongstad as "Nordsjøen" – a scene plays out. Any sapien-sailor that encountered Morimaru in previous eras would be frequented with her wrath as she hides many secrets under her waters. She’s feeling pent-up today, her waves don’t give up because the storms built from the environmental ingredients of the Mexican Gulf hit Morimaru first before they encounter Fennoscandia. Between the edge of the sky and the surface of Morimaru, a seagull meets with her. As of writing, no seagull has reached the edges of the sky, and none have reached the bottom of her abyss. Seagulls share a world together with Morimaru. It’s as if they’ve always known each other, both the deepest and unspeakable parts of one another. The seagull sees a structure, an intruder on her. Towers the size of low-skyscrapers do the horizon, spewing smoke and illegal fire. Some of them even reach lengths higher than skyscrapers – if their subaquatic properties are to be included within analysis. Cables the length of mountains penetrate down into Morimaru.
Plankton, algae, and other sets of organisms were entrapped in the darkness of her ancestors. In most circumstances where life perishes, it can be used as the seeds for new organisms to grow, yet in the abyss of the continental crust something else happened. With a lack of oxygen and buried beneath layers of dead skin and sand, the abyss robbed them off their promised decomposition and made them into something else. Previous organs the creatures might have had before were compressed together, liquefied in a sense. Life alive cannot be said to be unified or whole, from the most complex of being to the lowest of life-forms there will always be uncooperative parts that might even cause what you could say is “harm” to the whole. Wherever it will go, its fate will follow. She had tried her very best to protect her world from this prisoner, she didn’t want her seagulls to encounter the viscous tar that death had made. But Morimaru is no more, only the Nordsjø remains. A tower penetrated into her, and that which remains is the Nordsjø. A manager on the platform receives an order from Mongstad.
Back at Mongstad the worker sighs, he’s on his shift and he’s still thinking of the air. He looks forward to the respite the evening will provide away from the oriental weather. He thinks to his home in Austrheim and how he’ll enjoy the smell of home-smoked salmon. He always loved making a small Strilian Koldtbord for his wife and daughter, though his daughter has stopped eating fish recently. As he daydreams they sit by their veranda looking over the fjord, he’ll think to himself how wonderful the breeze is. It washes over them, yet the air has changed in their lifetime. Not fast enough that they would notice by themselves, but such information is not unreachable either. They just know they like the air by their veranda, and the worker knows he doesn’t enjoy the air which Mongstad provides. He finds a spot of down-time and takes a break from his orders to pulls up his phone. His feed oscillates chaotically: at one moment it will bring him pictures of puppies, at other times it will bring him an unhinged rant about immigrants who receive hunting and weapons-training in Oppland. It will show him his Niece’s wedding and images of Gaza next. A heartfelt thanks to all the support his cancer-stricken uncle has gotten will appear next to an article from the state broadcaster about teenagers learning rocket-science at the high school in Andøya. One post catches his fancy: a rant against seagulls. He clicks on it.
It’s a declaration, an unstated manifesto. “Seagull are creatures of evil intent” it states, “they wish destruction upon you” it states. It fantasises about government-officials being bullied by environmental activists into limiting human activity around seagulls. The seagulls steal your food, it says. “The seagulls resent you” it says. They eat, they heat, they shit and fuck. They cry and cry and cry and cry. What a mistake to have ever said the enemy. Everywhere they are enemies that can be everywhere and nowhere; that can couple themselves to anything and everything. The seagull that the post talks about is an idea-of-seagull has appeared in similar feeds before.
In a close past, a member of the petty bourgeoisie had a bad experience with seagulls, one of them even stealing a fry. He constantly chases them out, but thinks they keep coming to him. They won’t stop crying. A fact: he doesn’t own the land which his restaurant is on. Another fact: he’s late on the rent. His wife cried last night, she doesn’t know how they'll manage to pay down their loans even if the planned expansion goes well. Right before that conversation he remembered a seagull that flew in his face. Earlier that month he had to go out of his office at the premises after much prodding from the staff, one of the servers had been shouted and catcalled at. It’s worth noting is that the customer in question had bought a bottle of wine; an expensive one. The server was unnerved, she was hesitant after facing the scorn of this master. The owner came, got her out, and served his fellow member of the petty bourgeoisie to perfection. He wanted to scream down at his servant, but an argument with the union isn’t worth it when he knows deep down he’s in the wrong.
He went outside for a smoke and a seagull was sitting there right on the pavement. Attacking it wasn’t an option, throwing a chair wasn’t on the table. The seagull was something he couldn’t touch, out of his grasp, it would fly if provoked. The seagull was something beyond him, something he couldn’t force his will upon, something external which engaged with the process of friction in his sensory-experience and reminded him that not everything was his. “If only the father was here” his subconscious thought. It was direct evidence of his powerlessness, the previous essence here reveals itself as resentment. In this context it becomes a starting-point for a charged emotion coupled with the idea-of-seagull. With his one belief that seagulls can be harmful, coupled with a negative-orientation to them when consulting with his belief-network, it allows for the production of several different combined beliefs to surface. In meeting with social media, the owner was faced with all the other things that seagulls could possibly be responsible for, and that there was a “they” in the “other” that was responsible for it. The seagull could combine with the government, with the political left, with pesky environmentalists; the constructions effortlessly combined with oh so many enemies. The constructed seagull – or the simulacra of a seagull – had all of these characteristics, yet a seagull that's alive wouldn't be available for comment as it can't fight for its own footing in the rules governing the belief-networks that encompass it. For the owner the seagulls are at once an enemy that has to be fought with the utmost religious zealotry and something that is beneath them. If it were only removed, no problems would be there he’d think. His daughter showed him an image of a seagull drenched in the Nordsjø’s deep sea fluid poison, air was pushed through his nose instantly and a small, involuntary, smile crept on his face before he realised his company-issued mask should stay on. The idea-of-seagull is an idea-of-evil.
A seagull overlooks Mongstad.