Today we saw a glacier. We see glaciers everyday, white rivers with windows into their depths, windows you could fall into, or out of. They rise like towers and tumble like twins into a salt sea – they will never be seen again. Those cliffs are solid time: frozen and woven stories from days before my own, we see in blue and bold. The years bend lines like memories bend years – folding in, and back, crowding, rolling, and thinning, in a blue vocabulary, like jazz. Hard like memory can be, and falling to pieces. We have seen glaciers like walls, stranding strong in front of our small ship.
What we saw today was different, because we didn’t see it. We saw the space where a glacier should have been, where it was. It looked like a construction site – everything overturned and messy, bulldozed but unfinished. It was muddy, not frozen, and the dirt got everywhere. An arctic fox followed us for a time, glowing white on the brown rocks.
We have been sharing our photos of what is here, of the majesty of ice, of perfectly crafted animals, of white. We have been showing you what we see. What is more important is what we don’t see. You do not see what we do not see. The vast silences left behind the place where a nest should have been, the pristine white that paws should have trampled, the mirror ocean that should have been broken by a bold fin. The tragedies we have not seen because they are not there. The great disappearance.
In the blue bay, we watch the ice. It is a cross-section of the calendar of centuries. You can hear it collapse, the roar and echoes of a great nation of water, falling into the sea. But you don’t see anything, nothing changes, not even a ripple. Unseen destruction. Water flat as a mirror, reflecting the invisible air.
The gap created through disappearance – isn’t it like the silence that Deborah Warner wrote of? It is framed by something, yet it may speak more loudly even than its frame. Here, the frame is not “sound, that silence is made of” but it is the remains of what used to be, the echo of that which has disappeared. An apt metaphor.
an eloquent entry. so full of sadness.
what is the significance of 350 i wonder…?
350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide—measured in “Parts Per Million” in our atmosphere. 350 PPM—it’s the number humanity needs to get back to as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change. We are currently around 385 parts per million. 350.org is an important international environmental group.
Here is Kevin Buckland (wearing different clothes in a much hotter climate) explaining the significance of the number 350: http://www.vimeo.com/14006371
Gail
Thanks- Now we know why this number is critical. A beautiful and energetic piece.