Listening with Saulkrasti: An Ecotone of Self

Dear Source, 

I feel like fragmented messages in a bottle, scribbled drunkenly after dancing under the full Buck moon. After drifting in the Baltic sea for what seems like many moons, I’ve finally arrived and settled on the shore.  

Ecotones & The Edge Effect:

Ecotones was the theme of our Circle’s summer session in Saulkrasti, Latvia at the Nordic Summer University (NSU), and as I wandered through the woods, tying and reading panels with exercises which made up the sensory playground session created by Evelyn from our circle, I discovered what makes Ecotones unique: the Edge effect.

Ecotones often allow for higher biodiversity and a greater density of organisms than either neighboring ecosystem as they house species from both of these ecosystems, as well as unique species unique species that only thrive at the intersection, the transitional zone: 

Image from deep green permaculture

Over the next few days, we had our sessions mostly outdoors and continued to return to the ecotone of land and the Baltic sea, as well as other ecotones, including a neighbouring swamp, a natural transition zone between dry terrestrial land and deep aquatic water system, where, with the guidance of Wendy, our circle facilitator, I met and wrote poetry with the sphagnum moss the first time. 

Meeting moss 

And as each day melted into night in Saulkrasti, I started to see and sense ecotones everywhere, not just in the landscapes that housed us, but in our community, my room, and even myself: 

Diversity and Tension

The 145 people-strong community of NSU itself seemed to be a great big thriving ecosystem, an ecotone in itself, housing 10 diverse study circles with themes as different as day and night. Participants from some circles felt like neighbouring species; conversation came easily and there was much in common; with others, I knew virtually nothing, and had much to discover and learn from.

Funnily, our room itself felt like a transitional zone in our ecotone, housing a nocturnal and diurnal: leading the morning embodied movement and meditation, each day I rose early just after sunrise while my roommate M. was still asleep; M. on the other hand slept in and wouldn’t return till around midnight or later when I was already in bed. 

Understandably, when different species share the same home, there can be tension, even conflict: The roots of Ecotone come from the Greek root oikos (meaning “house” or “home”) combined with tonos (meaning “tension”).

One afternoon, crossing paths with a participant from another circle, asking her how her day went, her face fell as she replied that within her circle’s presentation and in the general assembly there was ‘a lot of conflict’. 

When she asked me the same, reflecting on the interactions I had within our circle, I remember feeling seen, understood, acknowledged, and at the same time inspired, curious and eager to learn. Without anyone ever articulating it, I realised we shared the same values: generosity, kindness, care and reciprocity. But this was not necessarily the same in other circles, which upheld other values, and prioritized other aspects. 

Our Species: Circle 5 (Image by Magda)

Within our circle’s closing session, the possibility for our Circle to break away and continue independently from the larger ecosystem was brought up. I realised it would be easy for us to continue amongst ourselves. Yet I couldn’t articulate logically why I felt it was essential to learn to coexist, to be in community with other diverse human and more-than-human species. 

Learning to coexist 

The last piece came through the evening when I attended the multilingual poetry reading session, inspired by a participant’s project, Baltic Sea Library, a virtual archive of multilingual poetry about the Baltic Sea.

As I listened to poems about the sea in Swedish, Russian, Lithuanian, Latvian, and other languages, we were told by the facilitator Helena with a gentle smile, ‘you are welcome to share poems in your native language’. 

Her calm words were met with fierce turmoil within me: As a second-generation Singaporean, what poem could I choose to ‘represent’ the home I was born and spent most of my life in? A land with no seasons, with four official languages; a ‘smooth’ city in perpetual evolution, shaped by logics of efficiency, branding, surveillance, and consumption; a land I had left eight years ago in search of another land where I could feel more like myself? 

And which of my two native tongues would I choose to speak in? English, I had learnt all my life: through school, friends, work and the public sphere. Mandarin, the language of home, family, race, ancestry. Yet neither of these alone were sufficient to convey who I was. And what about Italian – the language of the land and waters that have allowed me to dream and express myself in new ways, and to finally become the person I wanted to be?  

I had no answer. My heart swirling with conflict, I got up quietly and left. As I went up the stairs, I was stopped by another participant who recognized me from a passing encounter on the way to the supermarket earlier that day. Recognising my Chinese name from the newsletter about the morning embodied movement, she shared excitedly that she completed her phD in Beijing and chose to study Chinese for her research, as she wanted to find a language as distinct as possible from German to study the differences and effects on speakers’ perception of time. 

Ecotone of Self 

As we spoke, it struck me that differences are vital and within me was an ecotone itself. Each and every one of these were unique and crucial to the ecosystem of myself. Even better, I remembered something I had fallen in love with just as I left Singapore, which held the key to what I could share during the poetry reading. 

I ran as fast as I could to my room, took out my laptop, pulled out the page online and returned to the reading session. Some familiar faces remained, while other seats were now filled with new faces I didn’t recognise from before, and the chatter was dispersed in clusters. Undeterred, I asked if I might share a poem, a unique Singaporean poetry form, and was met with generous smiles and gentle nods.

The poem I chose, Sea Levels, by Jonathan Chan, was a twin cinema poem, first created by Singaporean Yeow Kai Chai, consisting of two columns, two separate poems in their own right, and also the possibility to read across both poems, side-by-side, forming a third, unique poem. Smiling, I invited the participant to the left of me to read the left column on her own, then I read the right column, and then together, reading across left and right, we read the ‘third’ poem. 

Poem by Jonathan Chan (KITAAB)

As our voices, hers bright and mine resonant, rang in unsion reading the last word together, I realised I had nothing to reconcile; all that was needed was to allow all that is, to accompany, to coexist alongside. 

All of me within the ecotone of my Self is necessary, essential. 

All of me is welcome. 

As I continue piecing together these fragments in a bottle, You remind me that I am not alone in this work.

Like every ecotone, I, too, belong to a larger living ecology.

Loving you always,

Wenlin

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Context and Author

Wenlin Tan is an interdisciplinary artist and independent researcher and facilitator exploring the intersections of listening, ecology, and relational awareness. This reflection forms part of Listening with Water, her ongoing inquiry into listening as a relational practice between people, nature, and ecosystems, and was created as part of a contribution towards Nordic Summer University’s Circle 5: Ecology of Transformative Learning Practices With/In A More-than-human World. Listening with Water emerged through accompaniment with the Po River in Turin and continues to evolve through encounters with different waters, places, and communities.

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