There is something elemental about it.
At once, mechanical and transcendent;
Habitual and mystical.
It starts simply enough:
The sun emerges, light is shed and warmth is distributed.
Wherever they are, Norwegians feel its presence.
In the throes of the call, everything else is suspended.
They move to open spaces, remove clothing and find their way to the earth.
This must be as I was; as it should be.
Nevertheless, I sit inside pondering the disjuncture – ever uncomfortable is the high-strung, new yorker
How could we occupy the same space but be in such different places?
They look at me and feel pity: “he does not share the sun with us,” they likely think.
I look at them and feel derision: “how do they ever get anything done with all the sun-
worshipping,” I definitely think.
We gaze at each other, through glass and several thousand miles of cultural differences, but we do not see each other.
I envision other sunny days, after I am done/after my deadline.
Then I will enjoy it – content with my completion and movement.
They see no other day;
Remembering dark days and darker nights
They run to celebrate it, now.
I seek to erect, chisel, carve a legacy one word at a time.
They seek to disassemble, curl, extend into the grass, one limb at a time.
Don’t ask them about it.
The answers make no sense for the questions are senseless, baseless.
How could one not commune with brother sun, sister moon is coming and she is a lukewarm and tempestuous being?
“Tomorrow will come,” they tell you, “but there is no guarantee of lightness.”
“Winter will also come,” they tell you, “and it is without question going to be no light then.”
Just a dark gray, a cold that wraps around your spine and a slowness that rivals tree
growth.
I have not completely transformed but after several months, I now take my papers and read them outside when beckoned by the sun.
I now walk along a river when I take in the afternoon breeze and midday reflection.
And, I gaze at the sunbathers at 8:30pm to recall the feeling of grass underfoot.
I never thought of Norwegians as funky (i.e., into the music of Parliament/Funkadelic) but they seem to get it: Everybody’s Got a Little Light Under the Sun!
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