Kevin Acott

Poetry, blog, photos, music, art, sketches, stories and other stuff. 

Greenland. Day 18: Words.

A day in which I woke to silence, to weird, tense mists over the lake, realised yet again how lucky I am to be a father, enjoyed (brutally) killing off a character in one of my stories, and read about magical Inuit formulas to bring the ice back (no ice=no hunting=no food), formulas which involved words - some meaningless, some with meaning - words taken from people's dreams, words passed down from generation to generation. (These serratit must only be used in the early morning. The hood of the shaman's anorak has to be up. He has to put his fourth finger in his mouth until he gags, forcing the magic words to come out...)

I went for a walk. I thought about religion and my/our constant search for certainty, for control, for something to replace God (if I'm going to find whatever-it-is here, it'll be down by the sea). I listened to the Velvet Underground. And then I stumbled across this. The misty magic of words.