context: This text is a route through the awakening of one day, or all days, or just a long one—through sleepless hours under the midnight sun in Norway, a dream filled with freshwater, light and ever-lasting dew.

The photographs witness the slow days in the cabin by the lake—reading, observing, resting by the fire, drifting through nights and days as if they would never end. Life is simply sprouting.

***

A dream can only be apprehended when it is lived as reality. A body that wakes without having fallen asleep does not know whether it has dreamed or whether its reality is spilling over. It wakes as from a convalescence, from those things not dreamed. Its eyelashes are stuck together with the desire to flee. Will it ever be able to live again? It leaves the room. On its skin lingers the scent of a being, wedged in the drowsiness of its nostrils. It wants to drive it away, to pound its skin, to peel it off. It steps out onto the terrace, breath to the landscape. On the sill of Norwegian summer days, the air is bracing, stripped by trees. The clear night waited for it to leave its dress in the cloakroom. But this door could never open, for the sunlight never left. Alike the awakening of the insomniac sleeper. It did not close an eye; it looks with its eyelids. As day breaks, it must nevertheless reappear from behind the mountain. Froth evaporates so quickly in the sun; it is a matter of freedom. Its body is hungry; it wants a piece of fruit. It chooses an orange and rolls it in its hand. It brings it to its nose, smells the amber skin oozing its soft, precarious juice. The fruit’s oily peel, turning, caresses its aching morning. It tears the flesh and pierces the fresh pulp. Its fingers, sticky with flesh, feel the spongy thickness of the orange peel. It is a burst sphere that it sets down on a plate.

the day that is rising, nevertheless.

Beauty offers itself each morning the dignity of being loved. It is the sun that rises and reveals the warm grace of dawn. It is the clouds, emerging damp from that pale dark. Light blooms like a fresh cascade, dazzling, limpid waters. Early day is in love. Dawn murmurs. The wise aurora absorbs the ephemeral, aware of the brevity of its time. For the day that breaks, a veil of dew lifts in the polish of the sky. It is a silver mist floating in the cloakroom, and the sky putting on its garment of beginnings. The sun of an everlasting early day strengthens its shadow as the golden oil traces its transparent curve there—milk of light upon the earth. A glance at the clouds architecture: blue columns, figures of angels. A reflection spills over the dew, a drawing of time as it evaporates. The day grows old through its images. Without catching its breath, it flows deliberately toward an evening which pretends to fall. The pastel of sunset spreads across the rough canvas of the earth. The golden disc turns to silver; a moon-shadow pierced by sun, swaying. For weeks, we pass through this day. The longest one, cementlessly made out of bricks, 24-hours light props. Not without fascination—they run in our veins. Through the wings of our gazes that will always beat, we love them, and their fleeting splendors blossoming at their sills. We remain with these days until night finally comes, watering them again with smiles and tender words, until they fall under the authority of the stars that watch without compassion.

His being fills the days he enters. I watch him, serene. He is weary with a double smile, his cheeks damp; he narrows his blue eyelids and draws on the wall behind me something strange that I do not grasp. Without the suppleness of night, I have no eye in the back of my head. We have shut ourselves in a time-suspended passage. His gaze goes too far. It lifts buried beauties upon which it is impossible to turn back. How beautiful that wall is—vast and smooth against my back. The space is so open. He sometimes looks at it so intensely that his eyes crackle. This gesture pricks me, hollows me out and penetrates me; at last it disarms me. Flowers are velvety in his pupils, and cool leaves on my skin. Still misted, they wrap me, shelter me, and reveal me with their balms. It is a fog of gaze that lets my face dissolve into heavy tears. The world shifts, a tender balancing of the hiding stars at evening. From a shiver springs a movement of air that seizes me—a blossoming of wide, soft petals, green and pink, that come to caress his ringed cheeks. Beneath his eyelids of blue vapor germinates the seed of an affection whose complexion takes on color with the day. A flower grows. I look at it without restraint; I lower my eyes to my lower self. It is split like that of an ivory Venus. Moist pearls fall upon my chest.

***

Now as you stand on the shore, I ask you to dip a foot into the water to feel its temperature. Let your ankle absorb the impression from below. As the water blackens from the shadows, gaze into the distance at the forest, and let your naked body sense how it will stay balanced in that water. Do not shiver. The trees stand in a frieze, they hold you. Feel your toes sink into the sand; notice the pebbles and seaweed gently brushing against you. Cherish that liquid coolness as it touches your soul. Gradually, the sheet of the lake rises over your belly, your hips, your chest. Its cool line numbs all sense of weightlessness. It is a clasp of love, an offering to the endless day. Look at the beauty that this morning burst open, sprang forth, and cast its gleam upon the lake; it closes upon your face the pulpy claws of a life in colour. You are entering the realm of eternal balance: Nature.