Ljósið

A girl walked in this morning looking like spring. I looked down at my own knotted wool sweater about four lifetimes past its wearability and smiled. The juxtaposition launched a thousand images. I thought about what my mother would say. She teased, "You'll never get married if you keep that sweater." I thought about my unkempt hair. Very Highbrow was shaking her own neatly kept locks all the way from Japan. The computer screen said something about security interests. My End of the Bargain laughed from Samoa. I knew she'd say, "Friction, there's too much friction between the annals of property and human rights law."

And then quiet among the voices was a breath. "Be rooted."

I have wandered through a dozen cities and an entire decade en route to this gallery, into a chair I last sat in as a child; and today, though I had long been afraid of it-- of domesticating my rebellion and flight-- I have found an odd freedom in sitting still. Ask me again tomorrow and I might feel differently, but for now there is a light in doing the thing I had not wanted to do because I had been afraid of becoming tethered; but I am afraid no longer.


Light, by Ólafur Arnalds