Summer Light, and Then Comes the Night

But life runs in every direction and then ends mid-sentence; sometimes there’s nothing better than waking up early in the morning just to gaze at the surface of the sea, and let time pass by.

Ci sentiamo in colpa perchè non leggiamo abbastanza, perchè parliamo troppo poco con gli amici, perchè trascorriamo troppo poco tempo con i figli, con i vecchi. Siamo sempre in movimento invece di fermarci ad ascoltare la pioggia, bere una tazza di caffè, scaldare un petto. E non scriviamo mai lettere.

The world is full of dreams that never come true. They evaporate and settle like dew in the sky where they transform into the stars in the night.

A man thinks about many things in a forest, especially if a big river runs through it.

But one day we come across old letters and something strange stirs inside us, we sense a thread that reaches from us back into the dimness of the past, and we think this is the thread that holds time together.

He listens sometimes to the sound of the winter darkness pressing up against the windows of the houses.

The days rose in the east, they disappeared into the west.

In any case, replies Áki, as he fixes the button of his shirtsleeve, everything is a shambles, and then he adds, reflexively, I couldn’t count the fish. Guðmundur sits up with his guest and the night passes, they drink, Áki a lot more, they speak little but play chess, what’s a shambles, asks Guðmundur, if I only knew, the other answers, and when Sólrún comes down around six that morning, Áki is sleeping on the sofa, Guðmundur in the armchair, the chess pieces lie here and there on the table between them, the bottle of whiskey, two glasses, the moon hangs low in the half-dark western sky, yellow yet not yellow, and appearing almost on the verge of falling, only the frost holding it up. Sólrún spreads a blanket over Áki, wakes Guðmundur, they go back to their bedroom, still have an hour before they have to wake the children, you can do a lot of things in an entire hour in bed, and she says: Let’s hold hands until the moon falls.

And Kjartan sold the land, every single blade of grass, every tussock and hill above the house and the hiding places of his childhood and the view over the broad fjord with all its islands, all its rocky islets, he sold the animals, the machinery, the buildings, and then they left, moved away, but how does one bid farewell to a mountain, how does one bid farewell to a tussock and blades of grass and the rocks in the farmyard?

There is so much that we want, so little that we are able to do.

There are wounds that lie so deep, so close to the heart / that even the rain against the windowpane can prove fatal.

She took a sip, very carefully, Kiddi smiled, and then the film started. She took another sip during the interval, they chatted, Kiddi began staring at her knees, marked 6 and 8. What? she asked, a bit uncertain when she saw how he was staring down at her. Then he looked up, straight into her eyes, and asked, can I be number 7? Such a question is either life or death, a slap on the cheek or a kiss. They missed the second half of the film, you’ve got a mirror over your bed, she said, you don’t like it? No, I’d like it if it were all around the bed.

There’s room for everything in the breadth of the sky.

settle like dew in the sky, where they transform into

En de vogels op de muren zijn zo levendig geschilderd dat de kat uit de buurt, een geel rotbeest dat ons al van nodeloos veel vogels heeft beroofd, de eerste weken herhaaldelijk tegen het gebouw op sprong, je kon het duidelijk aan zijn kop zien en sindsdien is hij op zijn strooptochten nooit meer in vorm gekomen en beweer dan nog maar eens dat kunst geen invloed op het leven heeft.

Erano i tardi anni Ottanta, a breve sarebbe crollato il muro di Berlino e i pezzi sarebbero stati venduti come souvenir, l'essere umano ha la capacità straordinaria di convertire le minacce, la morte e la disperazione in denaro sonante.