The Reindeer

Here is the scene: It is 12/21/08, the night of the winter solstice. There is a layer of snow on the ground, with a layer of ice and more snow on top of that. All of the trees are covered with ice. There is a stiff breeze blowing the branches, making them crackle constantly. There is also a light snow falling. The temperature is about 20 degrees F. I am standing under a big old tree. You hear the sound of the ice in the tree plus the wind blowing in trees nearby.

“The reindeer ought to live in our country,” Jules remarked, “since there is lichen for it to feed on.”

“In Lapland the reindeer is a domestic animal. There it fills the place of our cattle and serves at one and the same time as cow, sheep, and horse."

There it fills the space used fish to fill the gap of the absence of cattle, not least as a primary source of protein.

There it fills the space where the heart has to be

How little, how much incomparably little love is at the base of all those thoughts for which the individual believes he or she was born, or for which his or her existence was intended.

When she looked down into her dish at the diner, that's what she saw, the polar bears with their mouths wide open and the reindeer staring at the ground at this enormous polar bear's feet.

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