The Inuit word for it is perlerorneq. It means to sense the weight of life. It is generally associated with the long, cold and dark winters of the Arctic. And so into a screen, I fill up yet another moment with something to be doing, to be thinking about. I guess to be thinking is to be living? I should have shared this months ago, but there is no meaning in it, there is no power in it to change anything.
One night, to the chagrin of some of my acquaintances I made there, I shuffled out alone onto the ice of the Arctic Sea. It was vacant, vast, dark, frozen....so very cold. It looked as if I were on the moon. I had felt as if I had left this planet, and this visual landscape was evidence of it. On the darkest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, 350 miles above the Arctic Circle, just 1200 miles from the north pole, I was all alone, really all alone. More so than I had ever been in all my life. The horizon was a line created by the canopy of a sky intermittently scintillating with starlight and the soft undulating glow of a green aurora. A low hanging blanket of sea fog lined the horizon. Perhaps a lead of water was still open there? Below this cloudy wall of arctic smoke was a plain of frozen dunes, billows of sea water frozen in time. This white ice reflected the street lamps from along the coastline in an eerie yellow ocher. I could smell salt in the air as I precariously traversed the jumbled surface of snow and ice. There is an Inuit word for what I was feeling, ilira, it means to sense awesome fear. It is the kind of fear you feel when you look up into the sky and see the vastness of it all; when the aurora is so active and close that, it's as if you could reach out your arms and touch it. It is how I feel now, as I take my first steps on the "moon".
22 December 2006
Although the air is calm, a balmy eighteen
below, and the landscape coldly silent...the night is not completely without
sound. In the distance the weird oscillating whistle of
the arctic fox pronounces his presence and perhaps the presence
of polar bear since these two live symbiotically. Symbiotic,
is there such a word in 2006? I had earlier seen a beautiful
little white Arctic fox. But the animals I was hearing now
were far off in the distance, so I was safe. Ilira.
There is a bear close by. I had never seen him looking
down on me from such a high vantage point. On the edge of that
icy vast darkness, I find the guide stars to Ursa Major and
as best I can I point my face toward the north pole. It
is an intense moment and in that moment, like the giving away
of a pressure ridge on an ice flow, an understanding of myself
breaks with a loud crack in my mind. As I look out into
this vast cold wall of nothingness I see my life had split into
a paradox; a deep desire to be loved and to love.....and at the
same time a deep desire to be alone. And my mind, my heart naturally
turns toward you, I knew no one else to turn to...on both accounts....
amazing?
It was here that I discover that warm tears do not freeze in the arctic. They simply evaporate. Tears leave no tracks on the face here, I can hide my soul here very well. I contribute much to the humidity of that air this night as I sit alone considering how really little it seemed I have done to further your happiness. It seemed all the moments that mattered most, had simply drifted past me like Arctic smoke. Tonight I relive them with regret because they were now only dreams. I remembered your eyes, your face, when you left, and the loneliness that overtook me. And then I realized what I was feeling was another kind of fear. This is the fear the Inuit call kappia, the fear you feel when a polar bear is right on your back. And on the horizon another regret emerges. For the first time I realize that I am fearful of you. Kappia.
From my position at 71 degrees north latitude and an hour time zone earlier than yours in the Pacific, I have no idea where you are at this moment but I think about it. And from one of the loneliest places on earth, and out of one of the loneliest souls on earth, I call your name, scream out your name in the Arctic blackness. But what does it matter anyway? It's simply something for myself, that in fact is meaningless in terms of the central issue, the central problem, the same old question. Blessing the road kill...same craziness? Once again just my esoteric stupidity eh?
Maybe the arctic fox, the polar bears, the snowy owls hear me. Perhaps a lost seal coming up for air hears my sobs. No doubt they were all familiar with the sounds of yet another animal dying in the darkness. No doubt they might of been able to smell the scent of my tears. But they could never have known how humanly honest they were. They could never have known how alone I feel. Perhaps God knows that, even in the midst of these frozen billows, but he also knows...it is not well with my soul. Nothing is well with my soul, alone or otherwise, with or without you..... nothing is well and for the first time in my life, you gave me something to really ponder, "why should "well" matter anyway." Why should I care?
Love, is now as allusive as the arctic fox, as blurred as a horizon filled with Arctic smoke. "Don't trust a polar bear with a cub", they say. What is there to trust:? God? He's a given, but what about man, the entity who is supposed to be there to pull you out of the cold icy sea if you by chance happen to fall in? Even the musk ox circle collectively to defend their young from the grizzly. Even the caribou find safety in numbers underneath their self-generated fog bank.
It startles me at first, this kappia, then
I realize it was nothing to be afraid of. It is simply the rhythmic
flapping of a low flying snowy owl. In its talons hang what's
left of a life. Why be sad? "This is life! Life is too short
to be sad!" Silently it disappears with it's prey, because
that's the way things go, life is full of change. Oh we must go
on and survive! Tell that to the Arctic hare hanging limp in the
talons of the owl. He was only being a white bunny rabbit...perhaps
the shine of life, the twinkle in his eyes gave him away? It doesn't
matter, tonight the owl and it's family will celebrate a kill.
In this darkness, I assume that any light that might shine will
shine well beyond its own real intensity. But there is no inward
light. There is no healing power. The forests no longer
speak and intellect is nothing more than clouded illusions. Perhaps
your faith was right, destroy the mind, and find karma. Are dreams
the real world and this one just an illusion? Pray, but not on
my behalf. I am already dead. Don't waste your breath, not in
this cold Arctic air. It only clouds the mind. I will not understand.
I will not respond. You have a latent map hidden in your heart...that
will lead you to your paradise here on this icy earth. Be happy
you are free to pursue the myth of love. So.....farewell? No!
"There are no farewells, no greetings, no names.... not in
this land." Celebrate, with the Owl! You will go far I know!
© M. Mustoe
1954 - 2006
12 March 2007