On the west coast of Greenland, the ice has begun to melt once again. 
It’s a slow, relentless process.. 
Tag Archives: Greenland
Christmas in the Room*
No travel bags, no shopping malls, no candy canes, no Santa Claus
No traffic jams, no ice and storm, far in the house the fire is warm
Oh, I can’t see the day when we’ll die but I don’t care to think of silence
For now I hear you laughing, the greatest joy is like the sunrise
I’ll come to you, I’ll sing to you like it’s Christmas in the room
I’ll dance with you, I’ll laugh with you like it’s Christmas in the room.
(Christmas in the Room, Sufjan Stevens)
My Holiday Malaise
A certain malaise descends on me at this time of year. 
It is not so much the growing dark – although I am sure that plays a part – so much as the descent into the ‘holiday’ season, a time of year synonymous not for giving and family but for greed and accumulation. 
Human nature does not have a positive connotation for a reason; it just isn’t good. We take and hoard until we can almost forget what we really are, even if is for just the briefest of moments. 
We say things and make promises, actually believing some of the profundities we claim…. but there is nothing of substance, just the shell of something half-built, the world always the same as before. 
The slogans and liquor wear off and we are as we started, creatures who want more.
Aeschylus, Shakespeare and Saramago have had a few things to write about this, but in the end they’re just words, like these, read and discarded on the road to the next thing, the next electronic gadget.
Solar-bikini-powered ipod
And so, yeah, I can feel a little low – as Black Friday et. al. approach – and dream about the darkness in Greenland, being alone with the aurora borealis and nobody else.
Little Living Things
Hey, don’t get me wrong! I prefer it when the little things are alive.
Toad in Sag Harbor
Tortoises in GalapagosÂ
Sand Piper in Florida
Arctic Hare in Greenland
BJ Birdie in Toronto
It’s just that they can be harder to catch.
The Being That Exists is Man Alone
We alone exist.
Nothing else is. 
Not rocks.
Not trees. 
Not hares. 
These things are just ideas in our heads.
We is it.
(A loose translation of Martin Heidegger’s Man Alone Exists.)
Airplane Window
I was on a long flight, the in-flight movie about hapless criminals, depressing. 
I stared out of the window, the drone of the plane’s engines coming through the fabric walls, and tried to imagine the ocean below. 
I pictured the ice bobbing in the swells but had the smell of the plane in me, antiseptic, and nothing of that smell was in the ice, and opened my eyes, the interior lights off, and it came to me, that pristine crystalline moment of a thought, something from nothing, the genesis of a book – prostitutes driving across the United States in an 18-wheeler. 
That was it, prostitutes in an 18-wheeler. And west; they were going west. I knew that too. I had my book just like that, in the thin light, timeless, constant, an arctic summer, my hand down the plastic handle, on the plane over the stark Greenland mountains.*
*Extract from Buzz
Travels of an Arctic Hare, Part Five: Dling Feigns
Dling stayed still, making himself as small as he could.
“Little bunny?”
Dling dashed from his oil barrel trap, straight through Maggie’s wobbly legs.
“There he goes!” 
Abraham charged after him, his breath coming out in burps and phlegm. Dling darted through the Arctic Willow and Bearberry, spun through the boulders along a long ridge and to another great beach. 
He leaped between ice chunks, his paws slipping and skidding, and caught the edge of a small iceberg and climbed to its tiny shoulder. Abraham steamed into the water, old and stumbling, and pulled himself onto the iceberg; he had a gun. “Rabbit!” 
Dling knew that he was in trouble and that shrinking himself down wouldn’t be enough. He sprang onto the open ice, exposed to the vastness, and seeing Abraham barreling after him, collapsed and feigned death. 
“Careful out there, Abraham!” Maggie screeched. “That ice is no good.”
“I know what I’m doing!” Abraham slid his feet out, creeping along the edge, wheezing and burping, and was right there.
“Watch that bunny! He’s a sneaky little bastard!”
“I know it.” Abraham reached out to grab Dling, the hairy crooked fingers just touching his paw, when the ice broke. 
Abraham was in the water, thrashing and gasping. Dling jumped away and clicked his teeth in excitement; that was his hare laugh.
“You little bastard! You little rotten bunny!” Maggie waved her white wobbly arms. “I’ll get you!”
The water stayed dark. Abraham never came up. And Maggie cried after him. “Abraham! Don’t leave me here!”
Dling hopped along the open ice, balanced himself across the gaps and climbed to the next iceberg to consider his happiness once again.
Travels of an Arctic Hare, Part Four: Dling Goes Off
Dling, the Arctic Hare, drifted on his iceberg for days and days. It was always light.
He was happy tucked alone into his icy alcove, watching the world drift past, but thought too much about what happiness really was and that made him less happy than when he had started thinking about it. The iceberg became caught on the rocky bottom and so Dling got off. The beach was long and rocky. Pieces of ice lined the sand. 
He sat in the sun, thinking, and the whole issue of happiness came up again, and so he ran up the steep sandy slopes to get his head to shut up. He scurried up through the  Arctic Willow and Bearberry. 
He climbed and ran around the boulders and darted through a long line of oil barrels that went and found himself face to face with a wobbly looking old woman. “Hello, little bunny.” 
Dling shrunk himself down.
“You’re a funny bunny. A funny bunny! Don’t be scared, funny bunny. I’m your friend.. My name’s Maggie. What’s yours?”
“What you got there?” A scratchy squeaky voice asked behind her.
“It’s a bunny! A funny bunny.”
“Get him in here.”
“He’s scared.” She turned back to Dling. “Aren’t you?” 
“It’s okay, funny bunny. You can come join us when you like. You can have some nice warm willow soup.”
Dling didn’t move. He didn’t even like willow soup. Maggie’s big face vanished. But Dling could still hear her whisper. “He’s scared.”
“Of course he’s scared, Margaret. He’s a rabbit. He knows we’re going to eat him.”
“Shh. You have to be quiet, Abraham.”
“I am being quiet.”
Dling backed straight slowly away and then realized he was trapped. 
The oil barrels were everywhere.
Travels of an Arctic Hare, Part Three: Dling Makes Haste
Dling wanted to stretch out his legs, but he didn’t. He held himself tight. He was going to stay just as he was until he sorted everything out in his head. 
He remembered his search for Gigo. He had climbed up to Gigo’s special place for watching the ice fall but he wasn’t there. Dling climbed higher and sideways and then down again. That was when he saw the gray-tinged paw sticking out from the ice. 
Gigo had been crushed. Dling rushed down to tell the others and was shocked to see an eagle towering over Piff. Dling was about to kick rocks at it when he saw that Piff was feeding the bird with the red berries and sticky branches. And then Stub was behind him, kicking him down. This was where it became very difficult to remember. Dling jumped up the rocks. Stub punched his paws at him and Kijo was there too, her eyes red and crazy. The bird whirled up, swinging its great wings around and tore straight at Dling. 
Dling’s paws barely touched the rocks and ice as the claws caught his ears and shoulder and spun him upside down and down in fluffy, bumpy ball. He went around and around until he crashed into this place and stayed still, hunched and quiet. The shadows swirled over his head and the thumping of feet thundered all around, and then it was quiet. And he waited. 
He finally stretched out his legs and stood up on his hind legs. There was no one. No bird or hare to be seen. And the Great Water was just down below, an iceberg too. 
He went down to that and waited for the water to carry him off to a better place.
Greenland State of Mind
The wide expanse of Greenland offers perspective. Cold and stark, vast and relentless, the ice and rocks render the observer smaller than small, the tiniest thing, nothing at all. 
The land couldn’t care less about politics, philosophy, rights or beliefs, nor even global warming or nuclear annihilation. It does not listen nor offer thoughtful looks. It gives no comfort nor acknowledgement. 
It will be here long after humanity has run its fretful cycle, long after the next bacteria has had its day. Everything means nothing, nothing everything. And as much vertigo and agoraphobia as this might inspire, it is a wonder to behold. 
It doesn’t matter what is thought, what is screamed; it will remain, silent, deaf and indifferent. And there’s peace to be found in that.