Status Updates From D'ailleurs, les poissons n'...

The sea makes us men-the longest day in human history

Remember this with us: the sea is bigger than daily life.

You can find rest at sea. There you find vastness, incomprehensible dimensions that soothe, comfort and diminish life's difficulties. People's troubles on land, friction, frustration, interactions with others, obligations, you gaze into the waves and sense how existence is calmed within your chest.

It's February and the heart of Tito, the dictator of Yugoslavia, seems to be failing, Ari reads about it on the front page of the Morgunblaðið; the top story is a fragile heart. Yugoslavia is a large country on the Balkan peninsula with about ten million inhabit-ants, but their fate is hanging by a fragile heart. Does that mean that the world cares after all, that life matters? Ari eats porridge.

I took my suitcase to my and Aris cousin-once-removed, who lives in a small, two-storey wooden house in Keflavik's oldest hamster but the cats ate it, and then got himself a cheerful para neighbourhood, alone with his two cats he'd tried keeping a keet but the cats did it in, frightened it to death.

Do I really want to see Sandgerði again, he thinks, surprised by his decision, or am I simply putting off going to my hotel room, being alone there, having to ring Dad, having to open the folder with the letters, the fragments of poems, photos, clippings?, know. ing that he'll do so, knowing that he must do so, and read the letter from Elin;