Dawn

Dawn is just about to break as I write this and like many other days I’m awake to hear and see the world come to life. This is probably my favorite part of the day, when I’ve caught a few glimpses at the stars and the morning light fades them slowly out into a gradient sky of navy blue and turquoise.

Service vehicles dusting the streets usually bring the first sign of life along with the sound of the paperboy walking in my driveway, crunching the gravel with a hint of discretion, as if he’s afraid he might disturb the last vestiges of my sleep. Eventually car doors start slamming shut, engines cough their way into a mellow purr and for an hour or two the world is busy with the sound of people and their machines. And then it’s silent again.

I don’t go out and join them. During these moments I usually take a break to watch the commotion and on the rare occasion that I awake in sync with the world I just listen, drink my coffee and allow myself the luxury of waking up without forcing it.

Invariably a few minutes of an internal debate go by. Should I rest for a few hours before I start working again or will I allow the caffeine time to jumpstart my system and get me through what might just as easily be the end of a 26 hour day as the beginning after 15 hours of sleep. Sometimes I debate successfully, sometimes I concede to superior logic. Which is which depends on the day. While slowly turning me into a modern-day hermit this makes me happy.

My indulgence is temporary though and there will come a time, hopefully soon, when I won’t have a choice in the matter. The evidence pierces my poorly insulated ceiling each morning as the couple living above me are roused by their two-year-old biological alarm-clock, signaling the high tide of this golden hour. A clamor of feet rushing to and fro, indiscernible voices coordinating actions, a small tornado tears down the stairs and they’re gone. While the dust settles in their wake I remain, inexplicably looking forward of a tornado of my own.

On getting caught peeing

The last week has not been a good one.

I had to spend seven hours on a train. I lost a game of chess. I got locked inside an H&M while some thirty masked people stormed and looted the store next door. Outside, it’s been snowing like nothing else. Some homeless people have died. And I had to spend seven goddamned hours on a train.

Also, I’ve been getting caught peeing in my dreams a lot.

It’s quite disturbing, you know. Not the sort of thing you get back to sleep from.

And it’s not in the morning, just before I wake up. No no, at four at night. What am I supposed to do at four in the morning? My lab is under alarm, my apartment’s already clean, and apparently it’s bad form to wake up your girlfriend and ask for sex in the middle of the night.

These dreams are unsettling though.

One had me wandering through this monastery right before closing time. I remember it clearly. It stood on a hill, a very 1960s Italian cinema hill, surrounded by red mountains and set upon by the afternoon sun. I was roaming the corridors. It was closing time and I had to pee but I couldn’t find a toilet anywhere. So I went in a corner.

Another saw me in a garage. A low-budget student film affair, rather late act Reservoir Dogs. Except it was small and claustrophobic and it had a grating just before its doors, running along the length of that wall. And I had to go but couldn’t find a toilet anywhere. So I peed on the grating.

I could feel this was wrong. Neither of these places belonged to me. But I really had to go. So I went. And it felt good. I felt so good. Like brushing your lips against others anticipating a kiss, feeling cold tiles against naked feet, walking home drunk at night and watching the stars.

Then I heard someone coming.

Steps on stone floor,

tip tap,

no time, no time at all, stop and tuck it in, you can wash those later nevermind it now, just as long as whoever they are don’t find you, not like this, not like this, not like this, not – and then there they were.

The first was a priest. Or a vicar. Or something. One of those people anyway, fittingly enough, we being in a monastery and all.

The other was my dad. I have no idea what he was doing there. It wasn’t even his garage, though in the dream it was.

At first they looked suspicious, each on their respective night of course, what with me having just finished fumbling with my trousers, standing straight up with a look on my face. Then there was the stain on the wall or floor. Something was afoot.

”What are you doing?”

”No- nothing.”

It was a pitiful lie, ready to crumble to pieces, which, with the slowly rising smell of ammonia, it did.

I’m not sure what to make of those dreams. The general consensus, after years upon years of psychobabble, seems to be that dreams don’t mean a thing.

Still, my inner film critic is dying to have a go at them. He’s got all sorts of theories about defying authority figures and taking it out on the man ready, though I’m skeptical of his arguments. For one I’d be horrified if deep inside I placed religious puppets at the same level of authority as my dad.

He might have it wrong, but surely there’s something there. I simply refuse to accept that I drank too much water before going to bed.

— — — — — — — —

Actually, I believe I’ve told a lie.

I didn’t mind those seven hours on the train at all. I read the entire way, it was the most relaxing time I’ve had in ages.

Plus there are easily found toilets on trains.

— — — — — — — —

The bit about the masked looters is true though.

My fifteen minutes

I’ve made my decision. I’m making a sex tape.

I knew what I wanted ever since I was a kid. I wanted to be famous, no matter how, where or why. I just wanted to be on TV, radio or on the cover of the glamour magazines. Preferably, I’d want all three at the same time but since I’m 29 years old and getting kind of desperate, I’ll settle for one of the above.

The problem is, I have no discernible talents whatsoever. I can carry a tune but you wouldn’t wanna listen to me for free, let alone pay money. I think I could be a great actor but the premature baldness threw a spanner in the works. No one will hire a bald thirty year old for the latest remake of Melrose Place. Grey hair I could live with (damn you, Clooney) but I drew the short straw on this one for sure.

So television is most likely out for me, then, as is music. What’s left? I tried being a novelist but neither Penguin Classics nor Harper Collins ever replied to one of my emails, nor confirmed that they received the attached documents successfully. I thought about investigative journalism but that requires a degree, plus who has time to be both a private detective and a writer, all bowled into one? Not me, that’s for sure.

Anyway, I was getting very desperate when late one night, as I was watching E! Channel, I stumbled across Pamela Anderson’s bio. All of a sudden, it hit me. Why is she the most famous ex-Baywatch star? Surely it’s not her acting skills, nor could it possibly be her looks, which are mass produced at most and featured beneath the swimsuit of every co-star she ever had on that show. Nopes, it’s because she wrapped her lips (both pairs) around Tommy Lee’s assblaster in front of the camera. Turned a home video into a bonafide sex tape.

They certainly weren’t the first to capture their lust on tape, but hers was the first to get widespread release, and this was even pre-Internet. At the time of release, Tommy Lee was arguably the most celebrated partner in this particular trio (remember, we’re counting the assblaster also) but now he’s probably the least celebrated one. And in one small “oops!” for Pamela all of mankind took a giant leap forward to what is now essentially a world with no privacy for celebrities. Nor do they seem to want it, since it does their careers no harm.

Verne Troyer even has a sex tape. His unknown partner is now more famous than him.

So, I’ve given up on my hopes and dreams and decided to take the short cut. I’m making my own sex tape. It’s a logical conclusion for someone as devastatingly mediocre as I am. Thankfully, sex tapes have taught us that even mediocrity in the javelin area can be celebrated. For a scrawny kid like myself, with a short member and hardly any body hair for my age, this is good news. As long as the camera doesn’t show my head (remember, baldness, which I don’t think even the ultra low standards of sex tapes can let slide) I’ll be fine.

We live in a world that celebrates mediocrity, the absence of talent and the scandalous peeping-tom side of the media. I intend to take full advantage.

Now, I’ve just gotta find the right celebrity to fuck. What’s Neve Campbell up to these days? She must be just the right amount of desperate by now…

Correspond to two other biscuits

I awoke with a gasp, mid-turn, sweating under the covers. The bedroom was cold, a half-open window letting in the December air, and my short breaths sent little clouds into the night which dissolved before my eyes. The cruel memo was burned into the back of my mind. I saw it clearly.

”The end of semester is upon us. Prepare the final midterm. Next week. Before the vacations.”

That was a week ago. Maybe I could have been ok, if I’d shifted less around or denied everything, but the students found out somehow. They always find out. I had to tell them something. I panicked. With a hollow and tinny voice, like a purposeless man in a candy shop holding two lollipops, I told them the midterm would be on Friday. Tomorrow.

I thought I’d have time. That I could come up with a few exercises before then, or at worst steal some from other textbooks. But the textbooks were shallow uninspired things. The students would know their problems hadn’t come from me. They would ask questions, always questions, probing for any weakness.

The thought was unbearable. No. No, I’d have to make up my own exam. Inspiration would come.

That was then. A week ago. In the long ago. This was now. I had nothing. No exercises. No exam. Nothing. I’d tried, I really had, but each problem idea was worse than the last. Have them calculate the distance between a point and a hyperplane? Too abstract, they’d never make it. How about doing some intersections of lines and planes? No, no, no, that was completely trivial, it’d never do.

At some point I’d gotten up and sat at the couch in my living room, hunched over the low table before it. There seemed little point in going back to bed. I got some pieces of paper and a pen and in what little moonlight that made it past the buildings towering over my window I made failed attempts at points and lines and planes.

Then it came.

Two points. Six vectors. Two planes, defined by different means.

Oh yes. Yes. It felt right. Convert between the two forms, tell me sweet little lies, and bases; what if there were two, side by side in orbit, around the fairest sun?

I sharply inhaled and briefly ran a hand over my chest up my neck and bit a finger before turning turning returning once more to the page and imagined a linear system, then another. One overdetermined at first sight but not at the next, the other seemingly involved and generous yet not.

There was yet something missing. Then a mad thought.

Oh no. I couldn’t. I couldn’t. Not linear applications. I’d only defined them two days before, I couldn’t possibly include them here?

Could I?

Teasing my way around familiar letters, I traced an opening parenthesis, hesitated once, twice, then wrote coefficients and variables in quick succession until none remained, close parenthesis. Show me its kernel. Open up its image. Gaze upon its properties. Behold.

A moment passed in silence before I ruined it and moaned softly at the exam draft before me. I picked it up as if to convince myself it was real and set it down again. And I looked upon it and I knew it was good.

Dawn came later, with coffee and dairy products in contrasting colors as clichéd metaphors in waiting, then a dash to a photocopy machine, pull on your finger, another finger, then cigarette. The students followed shortly.

One by one they read the copy I gave them. Two by two their shoulders slumped. Sitting closely by, I knew and envied them. To see such beauty for the first time.

Some of the students cried softly. At the beauty of the exercises, I imagined at the time. Later, while grading the results, it became clear this was not the case.

Twilight

It’s that time of the year again.

I recently spoke with a friend of mine. He’s Moroccan and he’s lived in Iceland for a few years now. I asked him how it went and he just shook his head. “It’s this fucking darkness, man,” (he never swears) “I don’t know how you can handle it.”

I had hardly noticed, but once he mentioned it I felt a familiar feeling sweep through my body. Of course I’d noticed, I just hadn’t given it much thought. But, all the same, it was all there, yet again. The extended tiredness, the lethargy, the reflective mood, the sadness. In Iceland, it doesn’t matter whether you’re depressed or not. The darkness changes you.

Or should I say, the light changes you, because it is dark for two thirds of the year or so. We spend most of our lives waiting for those three golden months of pure brightness, those months when our country is transformed into a sun empire and all bets are off. There’s a reason we are a nation of maniacs – during the long autumn/winter/spring months Iceland’s suicide rate beats that of any other nation in Western civilization. During the summer, however, sleep is almost frowned upon. Nobody in Iceland dares to dream in June or July. Not when it’s all coming true before your eyes. In those times, all the world’s a stage, and life is a party.

Last year our entire economic system famously collapsed. That the collapse should happen upon the start of October, just in time for the arrival of extended, dark months, didn’t give me any pause at the time, but it sure does now. What would the collapse have been like at the start of June? Would we have raged, rallied and rioted as was the case in the darkness of winter? Or would we just have shrugged our shoulders and played another bout of midnight golf in the perfect twilight of sun and moon?

I often wonder about friends living in faraway places. Guys like my esteemed colleagues here, Björgvin and Gunnar, creatures of darkness living closer to the equator than those of us marooned ‘up here’. The one time I’ve ever lived abroad was the three months I spent in the state of Oklahoma, USA between September and December 2001. My most vivid memory of coming home on December 2nd that year was how hard the darkness hit me. Walking out of the terminal at eight in the morning into a blizzard storm, it was so dark you couldn’t see the blazing hail that attacked you from all angles. You could only feel it puncture the skin on your face. Like some fearless predator, once you saw it, it was too late. There was no escape.

Not even in rural America, far away from the lights of any kind of civilized world, would you find such darkness. Even there, you had the stars to look up to, to give hope to. When you’re besieged by stealth snow in the Icelandic darkness, there is no hope. Only one thought persists; find cover before you become too cold/wet/tired.

So, for my first post, I’d like to ask my fellow blahgers a question: how goes it for you? How’s the darkness out there? And, how does it compare to the north-Atlantic nights? Any sign of depression? No? Or is it just me?

Guess so. Now, excuse me while I set myself on fire. An Icelander can but dream of dying in a haze of light.

Olsen Olsen

A ‘swoosh’ carried through the valley, darted between the trees and rustled up some leaves, a few of which landed on our table. The three of us were on the terrace of a hotel which was the spitting image of The Overlook from ‘The Shining’. Simon and I looked around, trying to figure out where the noise had come from, but Jean sat still, his arms crossed, eyes closed and head slumped

We were at a weekend conference in the French Alps, in a town called Autran. In winter it’s one of the busiest ski resorts in the country, but here in the mid-September sun it was still as quiet as a church mouse. The Winter Olympics were held in this region about forty years ago and I think some of the events took place here. It seems plausible. Everything a sportif could want is here: an evil looking hotel, great ski slopes and, across the valley from us, a huge ski jumping ramp that stretched along the side of the mountain.

“Do you think there’s someone training on that thing?” asked Simon.

I didn’t think it was likely. There was no snow yet, which seemed to be a problem to me, but then again I’ve never known anything about skiing, or jumping for that matter. This was confirmed once again a couple of minutes later, when a small dark dot moved fast down the ramp, hung for a moment in mid-air before landing again, and brought us another ‘swoosh’ when the speed of sound caught up.

“I’m bored,” Jean said from under his beard. He looked up. “Let’s play cards.”

“What can we play?” asked Simon. “There are only three of us. We need four to play Belote.”

I silently thanked whatever gods there might be slouching around. Belote is a French game, played with a 32 card deck, and is completely incomprehensible. It reminds me of fairy godmothers, in that everything seems to be possible if you wish for it hard enough.

“That’s true,” said Jean and sat quietly for a bit, before turning his head to me. “Do you know any Icelandic games?”

“No. I’ve never liked cards,” I replied. “Oh! But yes, I know one game. It’s called ‘Olsen Olsen’. I used to play it when I was little.”

“Okay,” said Simon. “Teach us this Olsen game.”

“All right. If I can remember it, I haven’t played it for a few years.”

Jean sat up in his chair and pulled it closer to the table, while Simon passed me the deck of cards as yet another ‘swoosh’ reached our ears. I pulled a couple of cards out of the deck. I hesitated a bit, as my French is good enough for everyday conversations but is still a bit rough when it comes to games and hobbies, then I launched into the explanations.

“Good. We all start with five cards and we want to let them all go. When you’ve got no more cards left, you win.”

Simon raised his hand. “So do we give our cards to the others?”

“No. No, we just put them down there in the middle.”

“So we can put whatever we want down?”

“No, there are rules. You can only put down cards that have the same number or are the same…” I paused while searching for the French for ‘sort’.

“Colour?” said Jean.

“No, not the same colour, the same like this,” I said and tapped the diamond on the seven in my hand.

“Yes, that’s ‘colour’ in French.”

“Oh. Okay. The same colour then.”

“And that’s it?” asked Simon.

“Yeah, that’s all,” I replied and started shuffling the cards. “No! Wait, it isn’t all. If you have an eight you can change into whatever colour you want.”

“All right. So we each take turns putting down one card at a time,” said Simon.

“Yes. No. No, if you have many one after another, or many the same, then you can put them all down.”

“What do you mean?”

I searched the deck for another seven and put the two down at the same time, then I picked the sevens up again, found a diamond six and a five and put the seven, six and five down. Jean had leaned in over the table to watch and nodded his approval. “And that’s it?” he asked.

“Almost. You always have five cards, so when you put one down you draw another one instead and… no, wait, that’s another game. Nevermind.” Simon laughed. “But if you can’t put a card down, then you have to draw a new one. The most you can draw is three. Then you have to… to…”

“Pass?”

“Yes. Pass.”

“Okay,” said Simon. ”So do we play?”

I shuffled the deck and handed out the cards, first three to Jean, Simon and me, then two again to each of us, put one card face up in the middle of the table and the rest of the deck next to it. Jean hesitated, then put a six of hearts down. Simon had two sixes, a club and a spade, and I had to draw three cards. Jean rifled through his cards and threw the king of spades on the table. Simon looked at the king, then his three cards, and put the three other kings down.

“So that’s it?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered, surprised that the game didn’t last longer. “Do you want to play again?”

Simon shook his head. “No.”

“Oh. Okay.”

I looked at Jean, who had already leaned back into his chair, buried his head in his chest and closed his eyes, waiting for the afternoon conferences to start.

I gathered up the cards and put the deck on the table. I turned my head towards the hotel, then the table, and finally the mountain on the other side of the valley, just in time to see a little black dot come flying down it, well before the ‘swoosh’ that eventually followed.