Strynefjellet

 
In Strynefjellet, one feels the vulnerability our ancestors must have resented then, when skin on skin did little to shelter them from the fierceness of their gods.

One cannot hide from the frost among the congealed peaks.

There seemed fitting to depose a memory, nestled in a crag where it froze upon touch. Soon it was sealed in ice and snow, never to be found again.

The sense of abandonment is strong.
There is a feeling of loss and uncertainty.
It is a place beyond danger, beyond peace.

Words have no weight here, and names no longer bear any meaning, even its own disperses, windswept.

There are two forms of life: trees, and snow, and they cannot be told apart, are one and the same, having no bearing within our sphere, the experience of them only affecting our senses.

It is a desolate rift in every direction, where no one should have to go unless a memory needs be cradled in its lap.

When I drove away Strynefjellet closed behind me, deepest night curtaining all light, the snow a mirror to that night, the blizzard raging indiscriminately.
 

Stone to stone

Graves half buried in snow

— their greyness like exposed rocks

on streaked mountainside —

resolute mourners shovelling

the white compact down

to the hard ground

to place photophoroi

— however diaphanous 

and dim the lanterns be —

to show the living

the place where

they chose to

remember

and pray

 

The sleeping giants of Nærøyfjord

 

On thin ice

 

The Sámi told me
to pay attention
to the bear and the elk
— also to the wolf
he had tracked an old one
prowling for a last kill —
but above all to
pay attention to
snow-covered ponds
their surface ice too thin
yield under the weight
— the Sámi said to be quick
with the puukko, wedge it
deep into the ground
before the pond swallows
and snowfall covers it all
— he said to be weary
of clearings and circles of trees
follow the tracks, if any
— even that of the bear
for they knew where to tread

but the moon had bewitched me
draped in faint clouds and auroras
pearl white pupil pulsing
in the benthic blue dome
clouds an extension
of the mountains
snow lining the rifts
pine trees like raised down
on bare, pure white skin
the blanket of rime
groaning underfoot
much like
cracking ice —

 

Islands in the mist

 

Birth and death of an aurora borealis

 

The gloaming

 

The street lamps downtown
drowning the gloaming
hardly fend the night off
come sudden lightfall
and the rise of auroras

 

An old kind of blue

 

something in the wind

 
something grows
on the gale-made dune
sand-covered crows
watch the esplanade
stale rampart against
the rampaging seas
and that force that plows

something flows
borne by the howling
that constantly oppose
and hollow out the guts
courage storm-tossed like
food for careening gulls
with deadened squawks

something froze
in the mammoth clouds
casting immense shadows
and dull implacable fury
bent on stopping the day
by toppling down
all the clock towers

something glows
in this willed squall
diablerie like claws
human in other climes
now monstrous, blind
hostile beyond nature
frivolous beyond rage

 

Morally unethical

 

"In its original literal sense, "moral relativism" is simply moral complexity. That is, anyone who agrees that stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's children is not the moral equivalent of, say, shoplifting a dress for the fun of it, is a relativist of sorts. But in recent years, conservatives bent on reinstating an essentially religious vocabulary of absolute good and evil as the only legitimate framework for discussing social values have redefined "relative" as "arbitrary"."

Ellen Jane Willis, writer (1941-2006)


Very interesting read (source)