Soon we will fly north and see a glacier: proof that poignancy can be planned.
Before the needle (poignard) goes in, we must ride in an airplane, but airplanes also
are poignant. Liftoff: the moment that flying stops being a metaphor.
Quiet, with you. Said Flaubert: Live your life quietly so you can be savage in your work.
Flaubert called his study, where he wrote, his shouting room (gueuloir). While he
wrote, it is said, he made a lot of noise.
I trust you to watch over me in my study, and I will watch over you.
In the eleventh century, a French priest met the devil, disguised as a seal, who
offered to carry him to Iceland. When they were within sight of land, the priest
brained the devil with a psalter and swam safely to shore.
In Iceland we will eat seal meat as if to save the family of man. We will pick up from
the street the hands of the tower clocks that blow down in the wind.
We will observe the near-black despair of summer.
At this particular moment in the historical cycle, it’s hard to find despair that
contributes in a valuable way to a genre that’s seen a lot of derivative despair.
And yours is mysterious even to you. It’s a discovery I may never make.
Yet when it’s all over with no artifact with a hunk of reindeer cheese in the bottom of the suitcase.
The thermal pool will hide a mystery that will draw people to it and fill them with a
horror they will find beautiful, even if the word does not occur to them.
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