Johan Harstad by Buzz Aldrin What Happened to You in All the Confusion?

Author:Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion? [Buzz Aldrin, What Happened to You in All the Confusion?]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-60980-333-9
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2011-06-07T05:00:00+00:00

3

There are two things I really can’t quite explain. The first is why gravity is not constant on the moon, but variable between poles, causing worried expressions on the faces of NASA’s engineers in the sixties who sat hunched over their calculations trying to find safe places to land. And the second is the night a person came to us from across the sea.

He seemed to come from nowhere, just as I had six months earlier. He, too, came in from the cold, and this is perhaps the night I remember best, as we entered the millennium. Elsewhere on the planet, people burnt millions of dollars of fireworks in an attempt to hide their anxiety that everything they believed in might be taken away, or to underline their joy that everything would be wondrously different. We celebrated the New Year in a more subdued manner. We weren’t waiting for anything special. Didn’t expect much. We’d take things as they came. Nonetheless it’s this that stays in my memory. I remember sitting in the kitchen with the man who’d arrived from no-man’s land, the man from 1999, he sat wrapped in blankets, bearded, water running off him, almost six feet tall, and strong, and I remember thinking how completely absurd this was. But I think he had to come, sooner or later. If he hadn’t, we might still be sitting there, Havstein, Anna, Palli, and I. In the kitchen in Gjógv. Sometimes one doesn’t know what one needs before one has it.

I sat up in NN’s room on New Year’s Eve, the clock on the wall showed five and she was of two minds as to whether to wear the black dress or the navy one. She vanished into her bedroom, emerged wearing one, stood before the mirror and began a detailed analysis of what gestures and poses brought out the best in the dress or herself, before she resolutely disappeared, only to return wearing the other dress, new poses, fresh assessments, I sat on her sofa and watched a fashion show of limited repertoire as it went in a loop.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“They’re both fine.”

“But which do you think I should wear?”

“That one.”

“This one?”

She studied herself in the mirror, then grew bored.

“Or the other one,” I said. “I really don’t know.”

“You’re not exactly helpful, are you?”

I smiled. It reminded me of evenings with Helle when we were going out. I always liked it when she tried different clothes on, asking repeatedly what I thought, for my opinion. Can’t you just choose for me, she’d say. And sometimes I would, though she’d rarely end up wearing what I’d suggested. It was like watching the weather forecast on TV, you can have any opinion you like, but at the end of the day you have no power over what really happens. And now, new place, new person, new dresses.

“How about the blue one?” I ventured.

“Do you think so? The blue one? Hmm … maybe.”

“How about just putting a tracksuit on?”

“Mattias!”

“I’m sorry.

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