On the Third Day, Page Five

Erik Jespersen
3 min readJul 14, 2021

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[Note to reader: The content herein has not been adjusted to your local date and time. The referenced data retrieval was entered (and recorded incidentally) December 22, 1969, 64.167147, -21.853770, with simple filter {!a}. Apologies for the inconvenience!]

[Note to reader: Pieces of this page were taken from an earlier draft of original text from generally around this time and region, but without permission. Modifications (seen as /* */) are implemented for continuity, as at this point in the enterprise, no fauna manufactured— not to avoid censure.]

[Note to reader: I think it’s just important to say, since you’ve come this far, that this is not one of those pedantic pedestaled pantheon of novels about a humanity that: never chanced to come into being, or does wacky things, or must invariably perish on its own blade. Instead, this aims to be a rare and genuine testament of appreciation, or psalm to the species and its future.]

Page Five: The Icefloe Cometh

If /*the idea of*/ corvids were to part, one towards the high sun and one away, they would each think the world were comprised of islands, and nothing more, Ms EleanoR, my phaedra-white phox. Because if you reel out far enough from this catch of a terrestrial crib, the /*imaginary*/ ravens vanish into her mesh, between the slithery kiss of your phages, encapsulated in cloud, an agate of blue, brown and blur, an algae limbo on the way from one state to another. Water, skeined in fibrous veils, divides us and defines us.

But the winter shall not oblige.

Whisky gum arabic fails to warm the soul, even geothermic vents spit misty ice sprinkles falling well short of the /*mythical*/ dragon’s eye. Untrodden and untouched, the land still speaks, in crinkles and small cracks that chide and titter in the quiet like a parquet of mating songs.

True, it is not the deaf earth breaking a solemn vows of silence, but the victory cries of an intruder. Sieged from all sides these bastions fell beneath the white-booted heel of winter, who dwells just out of sun’s reach flattened along the curve of the Earth. The Earth having been so bold as to write out its intentions in contract to rise up above the seas, inch by inch, to peel between slick beads and thrust stone, metal, dirt, silt, and all manner of cold, harsh, obstinate matter into the luscious, adoring gaze of the sky, embracing each lover impartially desirously and deliriously. But should the essential nectar of all /*vegetal*/ life vengefully sneak in one tiny tack, the Earth would shake its spine to ruthlessly shrug her off.

But the winter cannot flinch.

Hoary icicles refract the narratives of shivering pines to distort into fantasia the calumny of cohabitation. Could one super-possess the none? Can winter, in her blinding slight to illumination, bend the arc of physics back into the sloth and waste of vacuum so cold that it forgets to bear children? No, but to move more slowly, to better grasp the glacial metamorphosis of one jawbreakingly glorious and beautiful orb, this would be the true culmination of her being.

But the winter cannot falter.

Not today.

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Erik Jespersen
Erik Jespersen

Written by Erik Jespersen

MyLife Founder, humanist, futurist, posthumanist philosopher, software engineer, novelist, composer

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