Compassion Compass

I.
Dodda Maggý, Magnus Annus — what do you mean by that? That we should connect ourselves to a larger context, a calendar beyond the so-called reality that ends in a New Year's firework? What explosion occurs at the turning of these tremendous years, and how do we prepare for that threshold? Must we return to parallell playing in pre-school, to the local laboratory, to challenge the polarization of thought and aesthetics to a duel — just before the pole-shift occurs and the equinoxes are delayed, the magnetic field skewing our bearings? Is polarization then at its fiercest, its most despairing, in the death-throes: a failed attempt to cling to north or south, black or white, friend or foe?

Truth is somewhere else entirely, appearing in the most unlikely places: colorful spirals, echoes of giggling, an X-ray of laughter, dolphins leaping at those surprising poles, surfacing at strange coordinates. The equinox is delayed, epiphanies confused — too large a context, astronomical, or too small a context, an illusion. What then becomes of our morality? Are we just answering at random meanwhile, postponing decisions of life and death? Where do we begin reconnecting to the earth and its crazy cycles?

II.
Poetry and science, the link between them is spiraling. Let's imagine that scientific guidebooks to the territories beyond the system are written in a language only migratory birds in formation understand, huge sea creatures, bees. They are written by dancing, in symbol, in verse, not devoid of reason. Bees tell one another of flowers through dance and find their way home through symbol-marked openings. Where did we lose the ability to read between the lines, to read the symbolism older than clay tablets?
Golden tablets in the grass after Ragnarök — who can read their engraved letters? What is it to have good judgment, perspective, compassion, intuition — to polish the mirror-cells in one's forehead? Since when have we stood on this electromagnetic field like clowns? Spin the top again — see the colors swirl in serenity.

III.
Dodda, this is Odda, until we ourselves find that we cannot find our way home — because some system fails within us or around us, the sixth sense stops working, and our most advanced, most scientific instruments crash. Until then we can gladly claim that great sea mammals sometimes commit mass suicide among friends, forgetting the sun entirely in their melancholy. Really, is that so?
Is there an X-ray of laughter, a true report on compassion, a final map for whales and migratory birds, for wailing rain and bone-dry magnetic storms? It is absurd to explain tragic fates by ocean and statistics-office suicide waves alone. Nothing is ever "just" one thing — it is everything at once: we must research, clear paths, find words, new meanings — on a large scale, but also in personal attempts to speak, to tell what happened, to break free of bonds, bound to none — except bonds of friendship. The pathway of communication: colors. The history of that pathway is not a straight line, and it is always challenged by something wishing to erase the story, leading us black and white straight to hell.

IV.
A report came out -and behold: friendship is what re-connects us in this in-between time of the earth. Equinoxes may be delayed and the discrepancy may drive us mad, but the zero-point is certain — in friendship, in reconciliation, in the spark. While the compass recalibrates itself to the magnetic field, while we live in magnetic deviation and moral uncertainty, we must work so that fine golden needles turn toward love. The path of Venus is as calculable as it is beautiful — when science, conscience, and aesthetics converge at the same point, it is best to let go. Reckoning or harvest festival? Zero-point. Relief.

Oddný Eir.