I’ve never visited the Faroe Islands, but my old best friend, Eric, has. He studied abroad in Denmark. He never watched them hunt puffins, but he watched them hunt whales. Each summer, men in boats drive migrating pilot whales to the shore. After the whales are beached, other men rush into the freezing water and use knives to sever a massive artery. The bay fills with whale blood. Many activist groups disagree with the hunt. They call it barbaric and boycott Faroese cod. They live in New York, Berlin, London, and most of them work in offices.

I work in a cube on the fifteenth floor of a building downtown. In a good wind, the building sways. During a real storm, when the rain beats hard against the windows, you can look out and almost pretend that you’re on a boat. But in my cube, I face a wall. I have to stand at the enormous windows in a conference room and coax the bay or the low clouds into a raging sea.

@ AGNI