32
Mourning
Looking back at the way I have come Who I have met with Tree or rock, beings stick or stone, bone.
E’yah, as Axel once said: I can take a stove alone on my back up a mountain. And Bjartur, who needed nothing least of all “a milk cow,” only his sheep, independent man! Both of them Self standing folk! Independence? What a lie! A place to lay stones, and old stories on.
Last night I was here I slept in the woods at the coming together of two roads avoiding walking home. My wool hat on spruce roots beside me to cover my face. I watched cars pass, moonrise. The roots held me, kept me still, laying on moss and duff soft, and warm.
Morning turf hut, stone cairn deep forest and leaving this place, like Chihiro crossing a dry stream which was – is a river, and not looking back. The next mountains rise float above fog “What can you challenge me with?” I have no dream of independence. though I will try and climb.
Bjartur & Axel are two men striving for independence who appear, respectively, in Sjálfstætt fólk (Self Standing Folk, Laxness) & Markens Grøde (Growth of the Soil, Hamsun).
Chihiro is a young girl becoming an adult, striving to help others, the main character in Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away, Miyazaki)