In polar regions, there is silence. Things appear motionless and everlasting. The contours are sharp and distinct. Stable. But they are not. Everything holds together only due to a temporary, local temperature anomaly. It holds together barely. When you look closely, it moves slowly. It shifts, grinds, crumbles, melts slightly, and solidifies for a moment in different configurations. When you listen closely, it creaks. It softly groans. And beneath it all lies a vast, deep, cold, and dark water that will eventually, not too long from now, swallow everything.

These are not conditions in which a person lives well. It is neither pleasant nor comfortable to sit here. One might say you could go mad. But it’s actually not so easy to go mad here. It’s rather difficult not to be completely, absolutely sober and aware. You can once and for all taste the full, undistracted consciousness, may it be damned.