Trafika Europe 1 - Northern Idyll

about a horse trailer, about kittens and about Jupiter, which is a very big planet yet is still just a tiny speck of light in the sky. I also think about rain in China, I’m sure you’re familiar with it. Helga bristles when he returns; what’s the meaning of disappearing like that?, there are things needing doing here, the boy replies with an indecipherable mutter, so pale and muddleheaded that Helga says, well then, and sends him to the café. It’s as if she knows how he feels, as if she understands his sensitivity. Sensitivity is my truest dream, says an old poem, a line that shines through time, and it’s true, the essence of man is sensitivity, we feel it so desperately in the spring when existence is at the needlepoint of life and death. The song of the plover, that poignant sound, reminds us of it and now and then we’re startled to hear it, it’s why Ólafur sat down up on the mountainside, in sleet, and wept; he had to weep, he sensed man’s truest dream while realizing how much distance there is between his dream and the world that he’s created. And then it’s evening. It’s evening, and the weather is bad, those who are able to be at home are at home, listening to the wind, reading The Will of the People ; Icelanders, it says, appear to have stepped up and sworn a solemn vow to live beyond their means, under the control of merchants, and then die in debt. Merchants rule our days, because we allow them to. People believe that it’s an unconquerable law.

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