"Upside Down Arctic"
Images taken while participating in the 2019 Summer Arctic Circle Residency Program
Svalbard, Norway
*1*
we have forgotten
so,
every last one of us should have to kneel before these giants.
and every place we worship and obsess over “things”
should disappear.
should disintegrate.
could become something else.
could become a new kind of church.
a church of water.
a church where Time is the minister –
and the slow procession of heat
guides the giants down the valley isle.
a church where instead of bells
we would have to hear the light tinkling
of gas bubbles popping in the ice,
or the swirling mix of voices
from the Arctic Terns who arrive for the summer.
a church where rows
and rows
of pews
would stretch for miles,
all facing these incredible behemoths of time.
a church where we
homo sapiens
“wise ones”
would know our place.
a place that is small
insignificant...
precious.
and we
would sit quietly,
reverently…
waiting for nothing.
wanting for nothing.
just watching the slow icy sermon before us
awareness that only comes
from the lack of wanting
and the gain
of truly seeing.
*2*
here
you must have a different kind of compass
because a different kind of navigation is needed.
it cannot be held in the hand, swiped left to right, locking onto some unseen satellite.
words will fail you.
descriptions of the beauty and vastness sound like bumbling nonsense
uttered by a child who has yet learned to speak.
scale is futile
because the magnificence of towering ice leviathans cannot be quantified.
the enormity of Their bodies somehow surpass the very land They slowly crush,
skidding to an unstoppable end in the sea.
direction cannot be found from humble human instruments,
and to attempt to navigate the Arctic in this way is
antiquated
and
desperate.
orientation, if it comes at all,
wells up suddenly from deep inside the caverns of your heart,
trapped in bubbles of a breath you did not know you were holding,
tightly pressed into a history of which you did not know you were a part.
and
the history is
shining cerulean blue,
revealed slowly…
backlit from an ancient
and ever-present sun.
these churches of water are the steadied hands of God
gently rested on cold, dark soil;
with eyes closed and palms down,
They slowly feel the texture of the earth as They move past…
reading the collective story like braille…
urgently committing the story to memory
for once They reach the sea,
Their bodies give way –
and the memories
are forgotten.
*3*
I do not blame Them for wanting revenge.
out beyond the distance of this icy heaven
is a world that is winding to a feverous pitch.
the orgiastic, sultry writhing of humanity’s consumption
has left its
sweaty
stains
on everything it touches.
in slow rotation, bright lights are kept on as darkness falls.
colors bleed into one another, and because of one another.
our purpose is to forget,
to feel less than,
to desire more.
our unvocalized and agreed-upon pursuit
is to constantly empty ourselves,
and yet loathe the emptiness.
attention does not exist.
it is constantly severed into pieces
by alerts,
desires,
shiny bright packaging
and carefully worded promises.
if there is a slight pause
that could be pregnant with a noble purpose,
it is quickly aborted
and swept away
in a rogue wave of distraction.
Mania.
if there is a memory of one’s ancestry
– the Earthian birthright that holds one’s place in a cacophony of evolved co-existence –
it is sutured shut
quickly
by the sticky paste of consumer culture.
do not allow the void to be there;
the next moment holds a solution,
wrapped in plastic for your protection.
borderless water hides the influence of madness that lurks in towering cities of mania.
the noise is deafening.
they are growls of hunger that cannot
– and will not –
be satiated.
as plastics drift to the basement of the coldest water world,
so too the Giants slide into the water beside them.
and as They slowly sink,
Their collective bodies will rise,
drowning the world
in
glorious
unfrozen
yet unchosen
retribution.
Arctic Circle