RAW

I’m riding high waves in the Arctic. In between talks on literary and cultural theory seen through tarot methodology – I am, after all, officially starting an esoteric wave at my university – I go dog-sledding, drumming with the shamans of the Bålfolket, and rescuing a few souls from the honorable state of zombiness. People ask, where the hell are you? Are we losing you to the ice – like that one hasn’t happened already. My friend, the genius mathematician, also wants to tell me: “you must come back and help me, I’m reasoning with Cantor so much these days that it frightens me.” Another one is looking for a musher-partner to go dog-sledding with in Pasvikdalen, Kirkenes, in March. “It’s just for the weekend,” she says, and I have to say yes. This one will be: each with her sleigh and pack of dogs. Yep. Here we go flying again.

I write a few words on my computer, tie a few lose ends, close projects, make new pledges – they call this work. But up here, everything I do is sanctified. I think of the Arctic as one big natural cathedral inundated in light. When the aurora borealis is here, I bow to it. When the sun rises, I bow to it. When the snow squeaks under my feet, I bow to it. When the huskies kiss me, I bow to them. When the trees whisper, I bow to them. It occurs to me that I need no yoga. All this bowing stretches my body and my alpha senses. And it goes to show, as soon as I write the alpha word, the aleph is here. The mathematician sends me word that, just in case, if I should hesitate to come back, there are all these men "aligned, singing their ode to nothingness” and yet waiting for my touch: “gødel, cantor, banach, tarski,” and “plus Bach,” he says, trumping everything. I’m beginning to feel like a dragon-lady in that silly fantasy series, The Game of Thrones, turning everything into raw essentials. It may be cold here, but the hot-blooded ones, the ones with bleeding hearts, recognize this space as the space that gives us back our redemptions. Here we love with an infinite love on the real numbers line.