People perish during transitional phases. In Scoresbysund they would shoot each other in the head with shotguns when the winter started to kill off summer. It's not difficult to coast along when things are going well, when a balance has been established. What's difficult is the new. The new ice. The new light. The new feelings.

I'm not perfect.  I think more highly of snow and ice than love.  It's easier for me to be interested in mathematics than to have affection for my fellow human beings.  But I am anchored to something in life that is constant.  You can call it a sense of orientation; you can call it woman's intuition; you can call it whatever you like.  I'm standing on a foundation and have no farther to fall.  It could be that I haven't managed to organize my life very well.  But I always have a grip - with at least one finger at a time - on Absolute Space.

Any grading system is meaningless.  Every attempt to compare cultures with the intention of determining which is the most developed will never be anything other than one more bullshit projection of Western culture's hatred of its own shadows.  There is one way to understand another culture.  Living it.  Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language.  At some point understanding may come.  It will always be wordless.  The moment you grasp what is foreign, you will lose the urge to explain it.  To explain a phenomenon is to distance yourself from it.

When I was five years old, the world was incomprehensible.  When I was thirteen, it seemed to me much smaller, much dirtier, and depressingly predictable.  Today it still seems muddled, but once again - although in a different way - as complex as when I was a child.  With age I have voluntarily chosen certain limitations.  I don't have the energy to start over again.  To learn new skills or fight my own personality or figure out diesel engines.

I don't like being watched. I hate punch cards and flex time.  I'm allergic to cross-referenced lists.  I detest passport control and birth certificates.  Obligatory school attendance, mandatory disclosure of information, legally required financial support, legal liability, oaths of confidentiality - the whole rotten monstrosity of government controls and demands that fall on your head when you come to Denmark.