In
front of me lay a world so beautiful and so cruel that it numbed my
senses. The vast expanse of the ice, the dark blue ocean beyond, beneath
the pale blue sky, the islands in the distance, sheer cliffs rearing up
from the water, and then the strip of land that could be glimpsed to
the north, which had to be Labrador.
front of me lay a world so beautiful and so cruel that it numbed my
senses. The vast expanse of the ice, the dark blue ocean beyond, beneath
the pale blue sky, the islands in the distance, sheer cliffs rearing up
from the water, and then the strip of land that could be glimpsed to
the north, which had to be Labrador.
It was completely silent.
I
stood there without moving for a long time, looking out to sea. The
silence did something with the landscape. Usually, something is making a
sound. The wind sweeping across the land, whistling past every ridge or
rise it encounters. Birds squawking or chirping. And the sea, the
constant soughing, night and day, that sometimes in a storm turns into
roaring and hissing.
stood there without moving for a long time, looking out to sea. The
silence did something with the landscape. Usually, something is making a
sound. The wind sweeping across the land, whistling past every ridge or
rise it encounters. Birds squawking or chirping. And the sea, the
constant soughing, night and day, that sometimes in a storm turns into
roaring and hissing.
But here everything was still.
All
sounds belong to the moment, they are part of the present, the world of
change, while the soundless belongs to the unchanging. In silence lies
age.
sounds belong to the moment, they are part of the present, the world of
change, while the soundless belongs to the unchanging. In silence lies
age.
A thousand years is no time at all, I thought.