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All across the country, people felt it was the wrong thing. All across the country, people felt it was the right thing. All across the country, people felt they'd really lost. All across the country, people felt they'd really won. All across the country, people felt they'd done the right thing and other people had done the wrong thing. All across the country, people looked up Google: what is EU? All across the country, people looked up Google: move to Scotland. All across the country, people looked up Google: Irish Passport Applications. All across the country, people called each other cunts. All across the country, people felt unsafe. All across the country, people were laughing their heads off. All across the country, people felt legitimized. All across the country, people felt bereaved and shocked. All across the country, people felt righteous. All across the country, people felt sick. All across the country, people felt history at their shoulder. All across the country, people felt history meant nothing. All across the country, people felt like they counted for nothing. All across the country, people had pinned their hopes on it. All across the country, people waved flags in the rain. All across the country, people drew swastika graffiti. All across the country, people threatened other people. All across the country, people told people to leave. All across the country, the media was insane. All across the country, politicians lied. All across the country, politicians fell apart. All across the country, politicians vanished. All across the country, promises vanished. All across the country, social media did the job. All across the country, things got nasty. All across the country, nobody spoke about it. All across the country, nobody spoke about anything else. All across the country, racist bile was general. All across the country, people said it wasn't that they didn't like immigrants. All across the country, people said it was about control. All across the country, everything changed overnight. All across the country, the haves and the have nots stayed the same. All across the country, the usual tiny per cent of the people made their money out of the usual huge per cent of the people. All across the country, money money money money. All across the country, no money no money no money no money.

The pauses are a precise language, more a language than actual language is, Elisabeth thinks.

Krø er pakket inn i en grå og tung tåke som begynner bare noen meter fra husveggen. Ingenting beveger seg. Ingen biler passerer, ingen fugler kvitrer. Jeg har skrudd av mobilen og går fra rom til rom i det gamle huset. For første gang på flere uker føler jeg meg trygg. Alt er så oversiktlig og ryddig her ute. Ingenting forandrer seg. Ingen bygger en ny bydel ut i havet. Ingen sprenger en bombe foran en viktig bygning. Alt er det samme og det samme gjentar seg. En ørn på himmelen. En storm om høsten. Flo og fjære.

Asfalten blir til grus og grusen blir til en sti. Det er ingen hus eller brygger her ute. Bare hav, svaberg og vind. Jeg gnir svette ut av øynene. Prøver å holde rytmen i pusten. Ser ned på de blå joggeskoene jeg har fått av Ylva. Ipoden piper og går tom for strøm. Jeg stopper. Drar hodetelefonene ned rundt nakken. Det er da jeg ser den. Ørnen kommer fra havet. Fort og sakte på samme tid. Den slår ikke med vingene. Den bare glir. Uanstrengt, firkantet og større enn noen annen fugl jeg har sett. Den vokser og vokser. Til slutt er den rett over meg. Jeg har aldri opplevd at en fugl har skygget for sola.

Mennesker dør og blir født hele tida,
jeg bare lever og lever.

Jeg blir snart nødt til å ta en pause
fra denne pausen jeg holder på med.

Jeg forandrer meg i morgen, tenkte jeg,
og hver kveld tenker jeg det samme.

jeg liker mennesker som har hatt uorden i seg,
de som kommer fra Angstland, og de som har
vært i hundre års ensomhet, de som fortsatt
holder ut, virker som innaformenneske,
men som egentlig er et utaformenneske

og kanskje
gjemmer seg
litt bort
på fest

å, jeg er en sucker for sånne

For every inch of skin, there is memory. Devils are so made. Saints, too, if you believe in them. His humanity has been broken as an old walking stick that once held up a crippled man named Thomas. He realizes the stick and the man are one thing and he can fall. He has violated the laws beneath the laws of men and countries, something deeper, the earth and the sea, the explosions of trees. He has to care again. He has to be water again, rock, earth with its new spring wildflowers and its beautiful, complex mosses.

Now ocean and tears become one. It is the same element.

Remembering, in Spanish, means to pass something through the heart again, and now all the years are going through his heart again as he tries to turn away from the ocean. But he hears it and he knows it is out there. Some sleepless nights he goes out. But this night in his sleep he says, "Oh, look at all those beautiful life rafts."

I am earth, he thinks now. That's why I lived. I became the earth. This became his way of surviving.

All the stories live in our bodies, he thinks. Every last one.

When men decide in their secretly dark or hungry hearts to work their own will, there is little that can stop them. They have inner weather, sometimes unpredictable.

There were times when the light of the moon had gone out and she felt a great loneliness. It wasn't for herself. It was for what had happened to the grasses of their land, their waters, not just the massacre there, the slavery, but the killing of the ocean.

Happiness was not always a fleeting thing, but a state of mind, of being, having lived, loved, even after being poor, alone, having survived. Even with the pain in her hands she had happiness.

Oblivion, she thought. That was the world she lived in. It was what they should name some countries, towns, and places.

The war was like an ocean, an ocean where everyone burned or drowned, and only a few could swim it.

Thomas didn't call. He was a lie. His cells were all lies and his being was made up of lies. Lies couldn't call out the way truth does. They feared discovery. They were constantly confused and had soft edges that overlapped. Thomas was walking, thinking, My body is made of lies. There are lies on my tongue. He no longer knew the truth.

All their stories clung like barnacles to the great whale, the whale they loved enough to watch pass by. They were people of the whale. They worshiped the whales. Whalebones had once been the homes of their ancestors who covered the giant ribs with skins and slept inside the shelters. The whales were their lives, their comfort. The swordfish, their friends, sometimes wounded a whale and it would come to shore to die, or arrive already dead. It was an offering to the hungry people by their mother sea and friend, the swordfish.

There are circles inside the mind of a man, circles a man can't escape because each time he comes to a conclusion, it is the same place and it begins over again. It courses hard.