by
You wake up in Reykjavik.
The world outside is chilled. It�s darker than dark.
The tap waters the cleanest you've ever tasted. The hot water stinks of sulphur. You wonder why do the bowels of earth/hell smell like the bowels of a man? A man who's eaten too many scotch eggs and omelettes of soured milk.
Your mind wanders back to how the city looked like streams of molten gold as the plane approached from hours of darkness. These thoughts won't leave you.
The wind slices like a cloud of ice shards.
The beer prices are no joke. They sober you.
Krona (ISK) means crown for a reason. Not treason. The golden trail of lights you saw on approach is the royal trust fund you would melt down to buy a cocktail (£35!).
The desolate mountains call you. Their misty peaks look full of mystical beasts. Dragons, giant lizards with butterfly wings hide in the misty shadows of hermafrodites with chiselled cheekbones, holding their Siamese kittens with gem stone eyes. Do they all really await in the cold purple fog yonder or did this bottle of Jack empty itself?
Day 2
Bloodshot eyes. Dry lips.
You awake in the back of a car. The car drives through space mountains. It races, pumping Sigur Ros from the stereo, through olden times of Vikings and man-eating dwarves.
When the car stops beside a pond made from a puddle where a giant once stept, the silence astounds.
30seconds pass and no-one says anything.
Nothing. Not even bugs. No engines, no tv static, no clocks ticking, not even breeze coasting past your ears. Your world of faux-ghetto and silence stomping bass is dead. Distant. Forgotten. For a moment at least.
Noiseohilism takes over.
Someone exhales.
Someone kicks a stone. Someone shouts. Someone splashes.
Screams to the hills echo back like children. But no-one is near. Not for miles.
This is the perfect place for a gangster burial.
The lake lacks sediment, pollution, colour, density, a sense of any water being in there at all. The biggest mirror you'll ever see reflects the Martian landscape.
The roadtrip continues... there're no bats.
The road swerves through the brush. The car snakes like mercury, like heroine, but it's barely heroic. Suddenly, as you race over the brow of a hill the road stops. The car slides around, skidding from side to side, the grains of rock and molten ash hails, thuds and thunders onto the underside of the car.
A JCB continues building the road.
A boulder smacks the side of the wheel. We stops.
Your guide for the next 2minutes will be a workman aboard a JCB. He'll tell you of the delights of moving rockslides. He'll assure you this is the main road you should be on. He is not a man eating troll. An elf. A barbaric midget.
10 minutes of car pounding later, the road resumes.
Fast forward to the geyser known as Geysir. The original.
Steam rises from the puddle, encircled by a rope. The water bubbles. It sways. It sinks a little. You feel like you're waiting to put in your pasta. Patience. It swells, first dark blue, then sky blue, then white, then BOOM!
The earth projectile vomits.
Like a whale spraying the man in the moon.
White like coconut milk.
The cloud of steam blocks out the sun. Mini-eclipse.
A national pride killing gaggle of British tourists scream, and ooh.
And aah.
Who needs pride in geography anyways?
The night is cold. It starts with german post-rock (To Rococo Rot) and ends with Scandi-pop-punka (Sahara Hotnights). Your blood is drowning in duty-free Jack and Absinthe. Your eyes are not your own. Your legs are rented to the ghosts of Eric, Thor, Viktor, Claus.
You sleep well tonight.
