W )   D E C E M B E R , 1 9 4 4   -   S P I R I T   B L A C K S M I T H S ,   I N D I G I R K A   R I V E R   D E T L A

“I fly, tormented by visions and spirit-scraped, haunted by memories of the pockmarked terrain with its many streaming rivers, to become the shaman. Clouds emerge, produce an ice floe from the embers of rough logs and sticks of long ago. My peculiar vision loops and spirals in endless nights deep in the unmistakable dream, taking me forward into the impossible. I stop several yards away from the sky. The shaman emerges from his trance and announces that the future smells of metal. I follow the dark silhouettes into the stench-driven under-ground in endless, low-tamed, cloud-constant filigrees. It was there now, in the pitchy blackness of the train tunnel, alone in the vastness, wandering amidst dark silos of ice. I fear for my sanity. Over boiled mutton, we exchanged stories: the mantra is pure gold. Towards the end no living man knows of, rounding the long abandoned arctic city’s many frozen canals.”

Thus appears an entry in Peter’s notebook. Imagine him, having just scribbled it down, rereading it as he sits shivering in the vast marshy dampness, trying to ponder what it could possibly mean. The light is starting to fail and a light drizzle is falling. Peter looks around for a matted, grassy hummock that will support his weight and prevent him from sinking into the mud overnight and when this is done, he erects his small oil-cloth bivouac, crawls inside, and lights his stove. Now he begins writing again:

“The incidents of a man’s life may be tossed up and scrambled as disorder spreads through the unwinding helix of memory, returning to its sub-atomic building blocks, but leaving the residue of disassociated incidents stranded in the blackness. But then, unexpectedly, before the heart beats again, this same wave is reflected, now a reordering principle, refurling the helix, but this time accidentally incorporating some of these free-floating strands from other lives that have been adrift in the darkness during this ceaseless process of destruction and reformation. A man shaving at the mirror pauses for a queerly elongated moment and sees a complete stranger staring back at him, a women who has never been to Germany remembers fondly the taste of strudel on a summer’s day near a waterfall in the Bremenwelt. And so, within this dark matrix, I see a new structure that did not exist a second ago, constructed of memories that may or may not be mine.”