Snow with ice in it. It’s vicious. It actually hurts.
The wind, as though full of tiny knives. Fresh on our faces. Our faces too naked, too exposed.
We should have worn balaclavas.
The ice-wind, scouring. Scouring. Imagining how it would carve the metal after thousand of years. This will be a metal Monument Valley.
The wind of ice giants and Norse mythology. The wind of Fenrir and giant wolves. The wind of Ragnarok, who knows?
The world of sombre northern fate. Of Armageddon. Of terrible Nordic melancholy. Not dispelled by all their talk of hygge. That lingers yet in Scando-alcoholism.
The Viking wind. The pillaging wind.
The wind of doomed, melancholic northern folk, losing themselves in drink.
Is it a Gnostic wind? Would Cicero approve? Is there a special gnostic element in its mournful whistling?
The wind of wolf howls.
The cold breath of Satan.
The northsong. Of general northern grimness.
Blown from Denmark. Blown from Norway.
That’s come across the frozen seas.
That’s full of Nordic world-despair. The despair that drove the northmen to conquer half of Europe …
The evil’s growing. The evil’s increasing.
Evil is cold. There demons of cold.
The scouring wind. The whistling wind.
That’s come across the Finnish lakes. Across the tundra!
Snow usually softens things. Muffles things. But this snow…
And it’s grey snow. When did the snow turn grey? Was the snow always grey? Was it always this way? Was it always greasy? Why did they have to fuck up the snow?
This snow’s made of ice. It’s hard.
Is it snow or hail? It’s, like hard snow. Pelletted snow. The snowflakes are bounding off my head.
I’m actually turning blue.
Googling symptoms of hypothermia.
They’ll have to amputate our fingers. What will we type with?
Our noses.
They’ll amputate them, too.
Can your brain actually freeze? Can you like, get winter dementia?
The brain’s the last thing to shut down in the body. So we can feel the torture.
Not so much brain fog as a brain freeze.
Can your bones freeze? Can they?
We need huskies. A sled!
The Grand Solar Minimum is approaching! The return of the full-on Ice Age! Sheets of ice are coming. Miles high ice sheets.
And the northmen. In raiding parties! Fearsome! Terrifying! Like those guys from Game of Thrones.
Newcastle will fall. And then Newcastle will be scoured, and this campus with it. Isn’t that reassuring: that the campus will be scoured? All traces of it gone.
The last winter. A vision of eternity. The earth, turned into an ice planet. Silent. Lifeless. And just the frost-filled wind blowing across.
Do you remember the sun?
I don’t remember the sun. I don’t even remember the moon. It’s always cloudy.
Those clouds aren’t real. They’ve been pumped from somewhere.
We’re not allowed the sky anymore. The stars. They’re Verboten.
There’s a fog rising from the earth. Seeping out of the earth. A freezing fog.
How deep they are, the depths of winter. How lost we are in the depths of winter. How buried we are, in the depths of winter.
The world’s just an ice ball with some metal clad buildings sticking out …
Work in Progress 