Cold Heart
It‘s cold out there. Even when the rays of the sun so diligently shine and dance and skip through the blond strands of hair bobbing along the beach with their children owners, it is constantly and perpetually cold out there.
Compassion is a commodity now. I‘ll trade you compassion for your ability to get the hell out of my way on the streets. I‘ll give you help in exchange for your service. I‘ll scratch your back if you will scratch mine, massage it and wrap it in cotton wool.
Maybe it is because we live so far up north. Cold country, cold heart.
Regardless, it‘s cold out there.
This morning, while trudging through 40 cm of snow, I looked around at the soft landscape and blurred borders created by tiny, frosted crystals, and wondered whether this softness I could see would somehow be transferred to human contact. To my great pleasure, I was not wrong to hope. After having tried – and failed – to reverse my car out of its space in the parking lot, I received help from my other half and our neighbour, whom we have never even seen before. My heart warmed a little – you might even say it was toasty warm. Until I got out onto the main road, that is. There, the rules of the wilderness apply. There, speed limit is not something you stay within, it is something you reach, and woe be brought on those who dare stay well within it. Driving my three-year-old to day care, I tried my very best to be extra safe out there in the wild west, because ice and snow are treacherous travel partners. Needless to say, within five minutes I had a queue of impatient cowboys lining up behind me, sounding their horns; their war-cries. You might think I was just slow. I‘d prefer that you‘d think I was just being safe.
Cold country, cold heart.
In the pale and pastel sun, the children keep dancing on the beach. Their little toes are dipped into cold waves breaking on cold sand, while their cold parents lick cold ice-cream and look out to the cold horizon with ice-blue eyes.
Will we ever be warm?
