Heaven and Hell

by Jón Kalman Stefánsson

Words still seem able to move people, it is unbelievable, and perhaps the light is thus not completely extinguished within them, perhaps some hope yet remains, despite everything.

Hell is having arms but no-one to embrace. The air quivered as if something great had been torn, then a crashing sound was heard when the sun fell and landed on the Earth. People are alive, have their moments, their kisses, laughter, their embraces, words of endearment, their joys and sorrows, each life is a universe that then collapses and leaves nothing behind but a few objects that acquire attractive power through the deaths of their owners, become important, sometimes sacred, as if pieces of the life that has left us have been transferred to the coffee cup, the saw, the hairbrush, the scarf.

But everything fades in the end, memories are wiped out after a time and everything dies. Where once was life and light are darkness and oblivion.

We can of course all learn to swim like Jónas, but Lord, would we not then be expressing our lack of faith in you, as if we thought ourselves capable of correcting something in creation?

Besides, the sea is very cold, no man swims long in it, no, we trust no-one but you, Lord, and your son, Jesus, who could swim no more than we, nor had any need to, he simply walked on the water.

Some words can conceivably change the world, they can comfort us and dry our tears. Some words are bullets, others are notes of a violin. Some can melt the ice around one’s heart, and it is even possible to send words out like rescue teams when the days are difficult and we are perhaps neither living nor dead. However, words are not enough and we become lost and die out on the heaths of life if we have nothing to hold but a dip pen.

Life also has an advantage over death in the way you have some idea of what you’re dealing with, death on the other hand is the great uncertainty, and there is little more antipathetic to human beings than uncertainty; it is the worst of all.

I am losing her, he thinks, no, doesn’t think it, feels it, senses it, because between people lie invisible threads and we feel it when they break.

Could it be that a woman’s feelings lie higher and thus closer to the skin than a man’s? That because a woman can bear life she is in some way more sensitive to it, and to the pain that is only possible to measure in tears, regret, sorrow?

Those who live in this valley see only a piece of the sky. Their horizon is mountains and dreams.

Some need to live a long time to have the place that releases these big words, at home, from the fetters of language, and more and more die without having found it.

Some poems take us places where no words reach, no thought, they take you up to the core itself, life stops for one moment and becomes beautiful, it becomes clear with regret and happiness. Some poems change the day, the night, your life. Some poems make you forget, forget the sadness, the hopelessness, you forget your waterproof, the frost comes to you, says, got you, and you’re dead.

Hell is not knowing whether we are alive or dead.

Hell is to be dead and to realize that you did not care for life while you had the chance to do so. A person, by the way, is a remarkable creation, living as well as dead.

it is so unbelievably good to have a friend in this world, then you aren’t quite as defenceless, you can talk to someone and listen without needing to guard your heart at the same time.

It’s easy to deceive oneself in solitude, one can almost create a personality, become wise, reflective, have an answer to everything, but it’s a different story in the company of others, you’re put to the test, there you’re not as reflective, not nearly as wise, you’re sometimes a damned fool and say all sorts of stupid things.

Man is a peculiar creature. Has harnessed the powers of nature, conquered difficulties that seem unconquerable, he is lord of the Earth but has so little control over his thoughts and the depths beneath them, what dwells in this deep, how does it come into being, and whence does it come, does it bow down to any laws or does man travel through life with dangerous disorder within him?

Words can have the might of giants and they can kill a god, they can save lives and destroy them.

Words are arrows, bullets, mythological birds that chase down gods, words are fish many thousands of years old that discover something horrible in the deep, they are nets vast enough to trap the world and the sky as well, but sometimes words are nothing, torn garments that the frost penetrates, a run-down battlement that death and misfortune step lightly over.

We should care for those who matter to us and who have goodness in them.