We Have a Choice

20 January 2026

The plane tree on the little square grows crooked.

I suddenly noticed it as if I were a child again.

Children notice things — details that adults often overlook.

When I was a child, we had a plane tree at the back of our garden.

It had once been cut down during the Hunger Winter of 1944, during the war.

But it grew back.

You could still see the old stump beside it, covered with fungi.

Here and now, the municipality cuts down trees after thirty years.

New ones in, old ones out.

Neat. Manageable.

But they are really trees of a kind of bio-industry:

without relationships with one another.

Like stray cats in a house —

They tolerate each other, but remain solitaries in a street.

At the pharmacy, I was offered a discount on the Household Fair.

For what: to Buy more.

No one wants to sell less.

While that is exactly what I want.

But there is little market for that.

At the supermarket, I met a woman standing by the bookcase.

She was checking whether the books she had added a few days earlier

were already gone.

They were.

“A book only needs to be read once,” she said.

and smiled.

Before going shopping and leaving my house, I turned off the light.

Usually, I don’t pay much attention to that.

One lamp more or less.

And I turned off the radio too.

Actually, it’s that simple.

Not everything needs to stay on when you’re not there.

The very first thing I did that morning

was to pick up the keys from the gallery.

In a narrow street, we ended up behind a garbage truck.

We had to wait.

We had the time.

The men walked calmly alongside the truck,

setting out the bins,

one by one.

We wondered:

Do they do this every day?

for all the surrounding municipalities?

Or only here,

Once a week?

Eventually, the truck pulled aside.

We could pass.

We thanked the men.

We arrived later than planned.

My husband thought of picking up the keys and the ending exhibition,

might be an emotional moment.

But no.

It brought a sense of calm.

My keys are not sandwiches.

They are not answers either.

They belong with the tree that grows crooked,

and books that are passed on and books that have to wait,

they live in lights that may be turned off,

They hang where work cycles quietly repeat.

They do not ask for a quick transaction, nor do they have any return on investment (R.O.I.) records

They wait for a different attitude:

How do we want to live in our world?

It is not a grand gesture.

It is a choice we have, a small opening.

Toward an alternative way of being.

art collecting, slow living, care, attention, consuming less, material ethics, contemporary art, living with art