Renewal

Along the ocean’s edge in Arnarstapi, Iceland, I met a troll.

He looked as though he had just arrived home. Not tired—relieved.

I stopped. We spoke quietly, as if silence itself were listening. He told me he was eager to return to his glaciers. Too much noise outside, he said. Too many phones. Too many people trying to keep everything.

In his stone suitcase, he carried only ink.

Not for paper. For ice.

He writes his thoughts directly onto the glaciers, knowing they will disappear. That is the point. Each time the ice erases them, the thought must be rewritten—renewed, reconsidered, earned again.

“Deep thoughts,” he told me, “should never be archived. If you want to keep them, you must be able to remake them.”

Then he turned slightly, facing the sea. The conversation ended without a farewell.

This photograph is not about trolls. It is about memory that refuses permanence. About silence as a form of resistance. About the discipline of thinking again, instead of remembering.

In Sottoluce, even stone knows when it is time to forget.