Avicenna’s Floating Man

In the winter cabin of the refuge at Tjåktja there’s a log book where you should write your name, how you’re travelling, where you’re coming from, going to.
       ‘Handspann’ or dog-sleigh is dotted through the last column but most winter journeys are on skis. Every two or three days I meet someone pulling a little pulk behind them, proper winter travellers who always have the same question: why are you travelling on those things, are they not painful?
       But I like my snowshoes. In good weather, I listen to the crek, crek of the blades, question without answer.
       Ski…ski…hundspan…towards the end of the page I see something unusual — ‘flying’. Not something I’ve been doing much of lately.
       It makes me think of other times:
       Gliding down the col by Tagliafero.
       Scrambling to the peak of Dent Orlu.
       Crossing the coast of Belgium in a day.
       You don’t need wings or a lawn-mower motor to fly.
       Once you’re buoyant, you can find thermals in the blue sky.
       But this time around, it’s not like that.
       I’m slowing to a reindeer’s last winter.
       I think of Avicenna’s falling man.
       Imagine you’ve been created in mid-air.
       Imagine you are blindfold.
       There is no wind. You have been falling (or floating) since you were born. You have never experienced gravity or any other physical sensation. You do not even know that you have a body. Under these circumstances would you say that you have a soul?
       Avicenna says ‘yes’ and I agree with him. Not because his arguments are precise or elegant or logical but because I know what it feels like to float in the air.
       My own experiments confirm that he’s telling the truth.
       Avicenna concludes by saying that whoever is ignorant of these facts may be beaten with a stick. This may help his understanding.
       Son of the desert, philosopher of palaces and reflecting pools — what are you doing in the Arctic and why are you beating me
       Perhaps you want me to contemplate the pure geometry of ice.
       Or perhaps you want to bring snow back to Persia.
       I may be recalcitrant, even heretic but I confess:
       at no point on this trail to Tjåktja have I flown.

Laurence O’Dwyer | Svolværgeita in Summer
Contents | Mudlark No. 79 (2024)