it's been a while

I'm posting on the holiday because everyone is sleeping right now. I was scanning the house and I noticed most of the books in my folks house are either about Montana history or left over Spanish books from my dad's college days. I wish I could read Norwegian. When I was little my aunt would send us Norwegian children's books. I always loved flipping back through them. I have no idea what the content is but I can tell the story through the lovely photos. I know every other chapter is centered around a season. The fall seasons show little trolls chopping wood in late afternoon light with a very medieval looking axe. I especially like the winter chapter because the troll family has perhaps the coolest wooden ski sleds I've ever seen. The summer chapter has many trolls fishing and swimming but somehow I think the illustrations show some kind of conflict. They show the encroachment of different looking trolls. At least that is what I remember viewing when I was younger but now my perception is different. Flipping through it now I seem to notice the "other" trolls look like people with human qualities. It seems the encroachment of humans slowly forced the trolls deeper into the fjords. The last few illustrations of the children's book show the disguise of the trolls in daily summer life. It's Norse mythology I somehow understand without being able to read the language. It kind of makes me feel like Sancho. Exposed to something long enough and inevitably you will start to exude it's qualities. I used to think the books didn't show anything real but I now think differently. I'm sure they live in disguise in the world even if I can read their names or the dialogue on the page. The illustrations have been with me every holiday when I've been bored at home. In the time I do flip back I now know what "eternity within an hour" really is. If could read the language in the book I wouldn't have as much artistic allusion. What's left for me to interpret from foreign illustrations is the perpetual imagination of what I want them to be. I'm sure it'll change the next time I flip back through it but that's exactly what I want, nothing the same yet repeated again and again.