An Accident Waiting to Happen, in Cairns (Part 1)

Isn't it strange how many of the great discoveries were made by accident? Penicillin was first isolated by scientist Alexander Fleming who, returning from holiday, noticed that fungus growing feral on petri dishes in his lab killed any bacteria they came into contact with. Naddoðr, legendary Viking king, was sailing home to the Faroe Islands when he lost his bearings and got barreled on to the eastern coast of Iceland, which was then uninhabited, and unexplored. Christopher Columbus found America on the way to China and in doing so, confounded the prevailing wisdom of his age. It was totally an accident that I discovered Cairns last week, fleeing as I was the triple tragedy in Japan, or more precisely my persistent panic attacks, which have pestered me like a plague for more than two years now, plagued me like a pestilence, and promise me plenty of fresh pain in the foreseeable future. Cairns is not the kind of place I would have chosen to travel to otherwise, but destiny drove me there... destiny and the deadly Tohoku Earthquake and tsunami, which dislodged me from my Japanese home of a decade, shook me from my sloth and my slumber, and sent me packing with nothing save my suitcase and the shoes on my feet. Like all Australians I knew Cairns, I understood it was a resort on the Barrier Reef, realized that it was touristy in nature, and during my many years in Japan I had also learnt that it was popular with Japanese visitors. Not surprisingly, then, the place had never really appealed to me. It didn't feel edgy enough, or so I thought, it didn't seem exotic. It sounded, basically, the kind of place bogans went for their holidays, and I would much rather embark for Bangkok, or Berlin, or even Bali, ffs!) A few days after the great quake of March 11, with relentless aftershocks rattling my apartment in eastern Tokyo, and radiation bleeding from the breached reactors up on the beach at Fukushima (福島), I saluted Japan with a sad sayonara, and then scrambled out the door. Changed the departure date on my Jetstar Airlines ticket, informed my boss it was over, and scurried out the fucking door. Of all three actions, giving notice to my boss was actually the most awkward, which speaks sagas of the sway he had hitherto held over me. For a long time, it seemed that I would be his bitch forever, a servant in the outhouse, the kouhai to his Koresh. It just shows that when the chips are down, when your life is actually at stake, self-preservation will always victor over subservience, and submissiveness (and don't fall for their piety, even the most devout religious types secretly fear their deaths!) Stockholm Syndrome be damned... I wasn't going to die from caesium contamination! Like the earthquake itself, the break with my boss was an inevitability that was long overdue, but something which neither of us had had the heart to hasten. Fittingly, it had to be forced upon us, by fate. According to my new Jetstar booking, I was supposed to stay in Cairns for a few hours on Sunday morning, just long enough to change planes, and possibly crunch on a croissant. But then destiny intervened, once again, this time more benignly. I missed my connecting flight, and was thus free to enjoy a full day strolling the streets and shores of this captivating tropical city, the capital of the cane fields, gateway to Cape York. This is the story of how that happened, and what I discovered there. In the meantime, let's wind the clock back a few days, to that crazy and chaotic aftermath of 3/11, when I honestly feared that my life was about to end, crushed by collapsing masonry, or felled by fallout. This is the story of how I became a nuclear refugee, and how the Moving House project met its indignant demise, dumped out on the pavement with the rest of the trash. Quite a few narratives met their demise on the same day, in fact, all of them indignantly. Let's give thanks to them, now, while we can, all of them one by one! They all deserve to be honored such, after what they have given me.

Soil liquefaction brings a pond of water to the surface, on the bank of the Edo River, where the baseball teams play (Japan, 2011)

On Wednesday morning last week (March 16) my boss rang me and told me not to bother reporting to work for the next week or so, as the school would be closed on account of the radiation. When I pressed him further on exactly how long this recess would last, he conceded it could indeed be more than a week... possibly two weeks, a month, who knew? Until the crisis was over, in other words (not there was a crisis of course, and not that he used so many words (typical Japanese doublespeak in action!)) Parents were too scared to send their kids to class (he didn't say that, but that's what I inferred.) Everyone was hunkering down, as if under siege (that was his unspoken gist.) "Don't go outside, ne," he added (meaning: deadly particles might be wafting down from the reactors.) "By all means, chant to the gohonzon on your own. But we don't do gongyou today." Hanging up the phone, I reclined on my futon, imagining a whole free week ahead of me... no, not a week, possibly even a month, a whole month free of work, a month cleared of chanting,  and possibly even purged of panic too! I thought to myself: Is this not yet more proof that the Third Free Month has arrived at last, in these dying days of my life in Japan? With every day, my life is becoming more free... freedom is breaking out all over the map! Maybe I could celebrate this change in fortune, I figured, by taking a nap? Because God knows, I needed one! So I sprawled out on the mattress, inserted my earplugs, and attempted to sleep. Try as I might to suppress them, however, thoughts kept arising in my mind, unsettling thoughts: what exactly was going on up there at Fukushima, and why were people so concerned? ... what if there was a powerful aftershock while I was asleep? would I have time to save myself? ... how am I going to survive without a job, especially now that I have retired from Telephone English, and am already living off my credit card? They were, in fact, much the same thoughts which had thwarted my efforts to sleep and eat a decent meal since the great quake struck, five days previously. Unlike my panic phobias, the fears that motivated these thoughts were real, and demanded respect: from time to time an actual aftershock did arrive, a seismic jolt shifting my bookcase on its foundations, and jiggling my windchime judiciously. One of the reactors up at Fukushima had indeed blown up, and I had watched it happen on CNN, and NHK (and all the other networks). I would now be completely unemployed, with no income save Google Adsense, and Chitika. That was reality, not hyperbole. My life seemed to be crumbling around me. On top of that, I couldn't even go out for a walk!


Sleep was out of the question, so I sat up, and dug out the letter I had started writing to N. earlier in the week. Sleep deprivation had rendered me emotional, and I rapidly scribbled out a page or two about how much I missed her, how this entanglement had inspired me to appreciate her love, and how much I was looking forward to living with her in Việt Nam if I ever got out of this mess, blah blah blah. Soppy, sycophantic shit it was, and I had a feeling that it might embarrass her to read it, as she is way less sentimental about these matters than myself. But what was I going to do: this could be my last transmission before the caesium cloud descended, my last will and testament if you might! Since she never replies to my emails these days, or even answers the fucking phone, launching a letter at her was the only way I could get her attention. And this made me ponder: Why does she make herself so hard to reach? It's strange behavior considering that I am giving up my life in Japan to be with her...

The windchime was jiggling before I felt the jolt. My bookcase shifted immediately after that, and began buckling on its legs, jumping like a catfish on a pole. I bolted up from the futon, and made for the back door, and my escape pod. While I was standing there on the back step, preparing to abandon ship, I noticed an announcement flash up on the TV: a magnitude 6.0 aftershock had hit off the coast of Chiba Prefecture, beneath the Pacific floor. While it rated only a 3 (out of 7) on the subjective Shindo scale here in Edogawa Ward, over at Choushi, on the headland I walked on New Years Day, the shaking measured an alarming 6. Across the Edo River, in places like Funabashi (船橋市), vibrations were recorded at Shindo 4. I know a guy who lives over that way (Jim from Telephone English (TE)), and I wondered how he was going. Shindo 4 is pretty serious, I have only suffered it a few times in my life, all of them in Japan of course, and most of them in the past week! According to Wikipedia, at Shindo 4 "hanging objects swing considerably and dishes in a cupboard rattle. Unstable ornaments fall occasionally. Very loud noises." This aftershock, prominent as it was, triggered its own family of afteraftershocks which erupted all around the east coast, each one answering the previous one, as if they were subterranean deities communicating, stocky dwarfs ringing their hammers of iron on the bedrock beneath my feet. I stood in the doorway until the commotion died down, and then some. This game was getting old. I was over it. I had to get out.

Official advice be damned, I decided to go outside for a walk. Just to be on the safe side, I switched over to the weather channel briefly, to see which way the wind was blowing. To my delight, Tokyo seemed to be enjoying a westerly breeze. What a relief, I thought, all that Fukushima fallout is being blown out to sea! I picked up N.'s letter, put on my coat, and bundled out the door. Happy to be outside, rather than cooped up inside, watching my death on TV. It was sunny out, and the wind felt kind of strong. There weren't many people around, giving the streets an eerily apocalyptic feel.

I mailed off N.'s letter at a post office nearby, and then shopped for some groceries at the Yamaichi supermarket on the old salt route (Shinozaki Highway), in Minami-Shinozaki (南篠崎). It was a place I discovered by chance, walking home from work one magic afternoon in the summer of 2007, when life seemed fresh and full of promise. The magic was all gone today, however, and the aisles of the supermarket were deserted. None of their sushi trays, or curated cuttlefish, looked particularly enticing to me. Perhaps all the good stuff had been snapped up already. I picked up some items nonetheless, and shuffled out. Out on the street, the wind blew, menacingly. It was rather a strong breeze, stronger than the weather channel had prepared me for. Possibly it was my imagination, but there seemed to be something caustic riding on that breeze too, something biting, something even luminous. It was only until I returned home, and switched on the TV, that I realized that the wind had changed direction during my walk, and was now blowing down from the north... down from the reactors... down from the fields of death in Tohoku...

I remembered that I had Jim's phone number in my address book, so I gave him a call. I hadn't spoken to him since my abrupt disappearance from Telephone English, and I figured I owed him an explanation. As it turned out, he was flat on his back, literally, across the river in Chiba Prefecture. He told me he was working at TE on Friday afternoon when the great quake struck. The temblor was so terrifying that all the edutainers rushed downstairs to take cover on the street (which, it seems, is a typical gaijin thing to do in this situation!) The phone lines went down, so they couldn't work. But the train lines were down too, so they couldn't get home either. They ended up camping out in the office, and Jim said he did his back in trying to sleep on the hard floor. Surprisingly, he didn't seem as rattled as I was by all the aftershocks. "The earthquake is over, it's finished, we had it on Friday... what you have to worry about is the meltdown," he said. "My folks have been on the phone, telling me to get out, saying you'd have to be crazy to remain here. That is, indeed, what I am planning to do... get out."

"You're going to leave?" I asked him, feeling a little jealous.

"I will only be gone for a week or so," he replied. "Long enough for things to cool down."

"I can imagine there would be a mass exodus, if things got really dire," I said. "You probably wouldn't even be able to leave... the flights would be booked out, the highways gridlocked with traffic."

"Most Japanese would stay, because they have nowhere else to go," Jim said. "We, on the other hand... we have options."

I remembered Ken-san asking me yesterday if I planned to leave Japan. Until that point, I hadn't even considered it. I mean, I was leaving on account of my panic attacks, I had a ticket booked and all, but I hadn't considered hastening my departure due to the disaster. Now, listening to Jim talk, I felt myself brimming with resentment, and envy. How come he could leave, and I had to stay behind? Why was it that I felt so burdened by commitments, and restraints (including financial restraints), that I had to quell my natural instincts to flee? If I was a true Vagabond, I thought to myself, I could leave at any time, I would just pack up my suitcase and leave. Stockholm Syndrome be damned: I never wanted to be a resident! A true Vagabond would just get a train out to the airport, and leave. And in one blinding epiphany, talking to Jim in the radioactive breeze, that is what I decided to do! I decided to pack my suitcase, and leave.

But first, I needed to call my Mum.

Magnitude 6.8 Earthquake in Tohoku, Japan

It has been a hot summer so far here in Japan, and everyone has been walking around like a zombie, drained by the humidity. It has also been an active time seismically -- four earthquakes in the past week, two of them strong enough to alert me, and to startle me. I have had some shocking migraines and headaches in the past couple days, and at first I attributed them to the heat and my badly designed counterfeit North Face backpack, and a dose of the strong summer sun. I know from my experience that prolonged exposure to the tropics can be enough to trigger a migraine, that is what happened to me once, waiting to meet some girls outside Saigon's Bến Thành Market in March 2007. I have also come to expect the odd headache and neck and back pain from wearing my rip off rucksack, which I bought from the very same marketplace in Vietnam, later that year. Nonetheless, just after midnight last night my new supposedly earthquake proof house started trembling and surfing on its foundations, and I thought to myself: could those migraines have been linked to the earth? Was there a correlation between the pent up pressure in the north and eastern coasts of Honshu, and the pent up pressure in my head? Interestingly, when I woke up this morning, most of my migraine was gone. It was still plenty hot outside, but Japan's seismic frustration had been vented, dissipated into shakes. At least for now. It will only be a matter of time before it gets built up again.

There were 60+ people injured in this morning's earthquake, according to an IBC News report.

There was an earthquake last night although I wasn't quite sure at first if it was really an earthquake, or dizziness associated with my recent bout of migraine headaches. I had to look up to the little Vietnamese windchime I picked up in the middle of a deluge in Đà Lạt to make sure, and sure enough, it was indeed jerking about even though there was no wind in my apartment. I jumped up and edged half way outside the back door a step or two from my computer, which opens on to a huge car park which I figure could make a good refuge if the Big One ever strikes. I pretty much knew right from the start though, that this wasn't the Big One. Big earthquakes start big and there is a kind of mathematical relationship between the size of the peak of the shake, and the intensity of the onset. Since this earthquake had started light, I figured it wasn't going to be anything more than a 3 (on the Japanese magnitude scale.) Nonetheless, it was scary as all earthquakes are scary and I had to tell myself to relax, to chill out, to even enjoy it in a kind of Stormchaser from the Discovery Channel vibe. This, after all, was my encounter with nature, and an expedition into the realm of unusual phenomena. Japan wouldn't exist, it it wasn't for the collision of the plates. According to some theorists, life on earth wouldn't exist either, if it wasn't for plate tectonics. I leaned back on the doorframe with half my body inside and half my body perched a foot above the grass outside, and was struck by how quiet it was out here, here in the outer suburbs of Tokyo. The frame throbbed gently against my back, like an electric current running through the house, and I understood at that moment that earthquakes were waves, the energy passing through the ground the same way a wave rolls through the water. The shuddering went on for quite some time, sometimes subsiding, sometimes fevering up a notch -- all in all a minute by my reckoning (although it seemed much longer than that.) When it became clear it was over, I switched on the TV to see they were already reporting on it. Panels of earthquake experts were assembling, providing instant analysis. Footage from a couple of security cameras was already on the air. How could they get it together so fast? The media in Japan are on their game, that's for sure. They showed this map of the magnitudes on TV, using the Japanese earthquake shaking scale, color coded. The Japanese have their own earthquake rating system, which is different from the Richter scale. While the Richter scale measures the energy released from a quake, the Japanese system (in a typically subjective, Asian way) measures the level of shaking in any particular place. So the further out from the epicenter you get, the lower the magnitude will be, using the Japanese system.

X marks the spot: the epicenter of the earthquake, in Iwate Prefecture, Tohoku region of Japan.

This map of Honshu Island shows the epicenter (X marks the spot.) The epicenter was in the Iwate Prefecture of the Tohoku (East North region of Honshu), which suffered some damage and injuries but no fatalities, as far as I know so far. On TV there were scenes of bags of crisps and snacks spilt in convenience stores, broken tiles, a broken grave or two. Apart from danger the red zone on this map signifies a "strong magnitude 6". It should be noted, that 7 is as high as you can go on the Japanese Richter scale, so a strong 6 is pretty bad. As far as I know, 6 is supposed to represent shaking and swaying so severe that you can't stand up, and your home or building could fall down. Radiating out from the epicenter, the orange zones represent weak 6 and magnitude 5 shaking, the green zones are 4's and 3's, while the blues and whites signify miniscule 2's and 1's. Folks in those zones probably didn't even notice the quake (unless they were earthquake sensitive.) When my apartment started shuddering and pulsing in Tokyo last night, I correctly guessed I was experiencing a magnitude 3 quake (on the Japanese scale.) I have faced down plenty of 3's over the past seven years, and in some way, gotten used to them. The heaviest I have experienced is a magnitude 4, back in July 2005. That was strong enough for me and I can't imagine what a magnitude 6 quake would be like. It was worth noting that tonight's quake was merely an aftershock of the temblor which killed a number of folk in the East North region a month ago.

As Japan Probe reported:

A little over a month has passed since a strong earthquake hit Iwate Prefecture, and the area has been hit with another quake.

A strong earthquake jolted northern Japan early on Thursday, injuring at least 76 people, trapping hundreds in halted trains and temporarily cutting off electric power to thousands of homes.

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said there was no threat of a tsunami from the quake, which struck at 00:26 a.m. Thursday (11:26 a.m. EDT Wednesday) and had a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 and could be felt as far away as Tokyo. 

At the time of this posting, NTV news was reporting a total of 109 injured, but the figure may increase as more information becomes available...

Here is a shot of those broken tiles.

Earthquake damage, in Tohoku.

The Tower of Babble

I surfaced early this stormtossed Sunday, eagerly welcoming my reconnection to the wired world. The man from Mediatti (Edogawa Cable Television -- phone 0120-281641) did indeed arrive at 11am, as the sky thundered; my contract was finally signed, 2.5 months after the first attempt. However, contrary to my expectations, the guy who handles the hardware side of the equation couldn't make it on account of the typhoon. He/she won't be able to come until Tuesday, in fact. Which means two more days of trying to avoid myself, in a world of reduced interactivity.

My computer has been in detox for like 10 or 11 weeks; I have been suffering withdrawal symptoms for just as long. There must be viruses and cookies on my computer flapping around like condemned fish on a deck, frantically trying to reconnect, and complete their programmed agenda. It makes me wonder: are there also viruses and cookies loose in my mind? Now they are in detox, they must be feeling the pinch. Are they toiling to hook up again with the Web, but are mysteriously being denied access? Access has been denied a long time now, but there are only two more days of this cold turkey left to bear.

Maybe it was a good thing the Internet was not reconnected today, because it encouraged me to go out and investigate the typhoon, which was hurling towards Tokyo. After a night of unremitting rain, I was surprised when at about noon the heavens cleared, allowing the sun to shine bright and hot. The eye of the storm wasn't supposed to pass until 6pm. I thought to myself: this seems to be a strange meteorological phenomenon, and if I go outside, I will be able to experience it. Just like my mate down in Chiba, surfing the waves... just like that mad Australian I would be meeting the typhoon halfway, and riding it. So, I hit the street, and the first thing I did, was skirt 'round the perimeter of my apartment block, and creep 'cross the carpark that it abuts. I wanted to see what my apartment looked like from the rear, but my incursion freaked out one of my neighbors, an elderly woman who lives perpendicular to my back shutters. She opened the backdoor of her house and wandered out warily, mumbling to herself. Perhaps she suspected that I was a burglar, they always accuse foreigners of something or another in this country. When I unsheathed my camera to snap a photo of my room, she gasped, her worst fears confirming. I bowed awkwardly, and apologized, "Sumimasen, ojamashimashita!" as politely as I could, wishing I spoke better Japanese. I don't think she understood me. 

Bruised by my latest collision with Japanese xenophobia (why do I always end up living next door to busybodies? and by the way, I am not the only gaijin who has trouble with odd neighbors!), I swiveled around and left.

My apartment, from the rear carpark (Japan, 2007)

I returned to the road, and discerned in the distance a tremendous chimney, at least 20 to 30 floors high, flashing through the mist. As in many parts of deterritorialized suburban Tokyo, my local monument is a waste incineration plant. Inspired by Paul Virilio's concepts of speed (and its effect on the city), I decided to walk towards it. It's good sense, after all, to be able to orient yourself by the skyline, in case you ever got lost. And as it turned out, I had gotten lost once around this tower, more than 4 years ago in another era of my Tokyo life, while I was distributing chirashi for Kobayashi-sensei. Back in those days I would never have honed in on something as utilitarian as a chimney -- but I have learnt to appreciate extreme engineering recently, it is what Japan is all about. I reasoned it would be a good way to experience not only the typhoon, but the devastation of Paul Virilio's speed -- the Japanese landscape which had been swallowed up, and cemented over, by progress. As I was to discover, this was also the perfect place to perceive the potentials of negating speed, by learning to slow down and smell the roses.

My local landmark, a garbage incineration chimney (Japan, 2007)

It soon struck me how much greener it is here in Edogawa Ward, compared to my former locality of Taito Ward (台東区). A tiny temple lofted into view, radiating such an atmosphere of calm that I knew it was a little pocket of old harmony, in other words a piece of original Japan which had survived the explosion of speed. As I ventured on, it became more apparent that there were flotsam and jetsam of old harmony all over the place. Weeds springing verdantly from a cracked sidewalk, their flowers reflected in sputtering puddles... to me they were not vagrants but spontaneous Japanese gardens, in miniature and scattered to the margins. The real gardens of the people living on the Kyu-Edo River, every inch of their front yards hogged by azalea hedges, without a single blade of grass in sight. Totally different from the suburbs of Australia! And the weather was also different from your weather back wherever you drop from, unless you hail from the hurricane belt -- yes, the weather was pretty interesting today. The sun fought a mostly losing battle with the clouds, but every now and then it would emerge again, and transform everything into a wonderful summer's day -- for a couple of minutes at least. Then the wind and the steam and the humidity would return.

Asked if there was any merit in information society, Paul Virilio replied: "Yes, because it finally poses the question of a common language. It cannot be otherwise if there is to be world citizenship. It is Babel, moreover. What we are witnessing is not the Tower of Babel but the return of Babel. Can the world have a single language? Is this unicity of communication good or evil? Another positive point: Information will make us earthlings..."

Greenland's Vikings, Victims of Climate Change

I have been reading a lot lately about the vanished Vikings of Greenland, how they just disappeared from the history books in the Middle Ages, never to be heard of again. I have been thinking a lot about them recently, those Europeans who for a couple of centuries eked out a civilization on the edge of the Arctic, trading in walrus ivory, worshipping in churches... they seemed to be flourishing and then one day they went MIA like the crew of the Marie Celeste, or those jet fighters swallowed by the Bermuda Triangle. It is worth pointing out at this point that I am in fact Australian, and thus hail from another European colony which was transplanted with all things Christian and European onto a barren, alien land, and left there to fend for itself. The Australian experiment worked, however -- the Greenland experiment didn't (at least not for the Vikings LOL!) Interestingly enough, Climate Change was the major culprit in the Greenland Vikings' demise -- not the Anthropogenic Global Warming we are (apparently) confronting now, but rather the Global Cooling of the Middle Ages (whose cause is still a matter of conjecture). Southern Greenland, once as verdant as its name suggests, presently chilled, then got snowploughed beneath a slowmotion avalanche of ice. The Vikings were snapfreezed out of existence; their neighbors the Inuit, who had migrated into the region at about the same time, somehow managed to adapt, and survived. Perhaps a similar fate awaits Australia in the future -- the white civilization which has ruled the roost for 200+ years will be forced to retreat from waves of heat and drought and searing fire, and the longsuffering Aborigines will crawl out from the margins to repossess their beloved homeland. History has a strange way of working like that. You never can really tell who is going to win the race, and revolutions are all too frequent. Gods hold grudges, and patiently plot their revenge. The laws of physics cannot be ignored, and neither can the science of Symbolic Exchange. Thus we have been warned! Thus we will be warmed.

Greenland is on the path to independence from its colonial master Denmark, and now has its own flag and a new name, Kalaallit Nunaat

Anything can happen in life, and history is full of sudden reversals. Global Warming could well be just a beat-up, the latest strain of the Armaggedonist virus whose DNA was identified in the Year 2000 bug, SARS and the Bird Flu Epidemic, and which has consistently frightened more people than it has actually harmed (infecting them not through physical germs but rather exposure to sensationalist reports on TV and the like.) I believe these hysterias are in fact media viruses, and mark a mutation of the virus from the physical world in which it has proliferated for billions of years, into the Baudrillardian mediaswamp we humans now inhabit. We're going to have a lot more media viruses in the future, that's my theory at least! Some people just love to think the world is about to end, and indeed such a deathwish is built into the mythology of the capitalist system itself. How it works is like this: somewhere in the "real" world (eg, China, Vietnam, Africa, anywhere Third World) a new virus arises in animals and kills a handful of people, triggering a pandemic alert. The media, ever hungry for a good scare story, jumps on to the case, and proclaims that the end of the world is nigh. What WHO fears is that the virus will jump the species barrier, but actually a more profound evolutionary leap is taking place: the virus is becoming digital. Panic takes on a life of its own, and becomes viral... this is how the pandemic spreads, this is what gives it energy. There's a run on flu vaccines... everyone on the streets of East Asian megacities are suddenly wearing surgical masks. Little do the masses know that it's too late, they are already infected! Their masks aren't protecting anyone, they are in fact amplifying the fear, broadcasting the infection! The best response would actually be to chill out, and ignore the doom. Or at least maintain a skeptical distance. That's what I would do, but then someone would accuse me of being irresponsible...

Look, what I am trying to say is this: Climate Change could be real, and could well be hype... but the extinction of the Greenland Vikings is a historical fact, and I find myself strangely haunted by their disappearance. Recently I thought to myself: imagine if the colonies had survived and the fjords of Greenland were now sprinkled with colorful, asymmetrical cafes and bulging nightclubs and bars; imagine if every young Greenlander today dreamed of being a poet or an anarchist or an artist or a rock musician? In other words, what if Greenland had developed into a New Iceland or a somewhat edgier, more tribal take on the Faroe Islands? Wouldn't that have been awesome, wouldn't that have been totally cool? Not politically correct to contemplate, but an interesting thought experiment nonetheless. I must confess though that Inuit Greenland has turned out pretty swinging in its own way, and the music scene is just as vibrant there as it is in Iceland, from what I hear. Nonetheless, I can't help myself from thinking: imagine if the Vikings had survived, imagine what Greenland would be like today? And I wonder: maybe the green days of Greenland are on their way back, after a long bitter winter? Spring is dawning in the Far North of the planet, and the Day of the Inuit is arrived. How I'd love to be part of it somehow. If I had any money, that is where I would be investing it! 

Straddling Two Worlds

Well, after years of fantasizing about Iceland, I finally found myself there last month, for the first of hopefully many trips. The only trouble was, on the way to Iceland I had stopped off for a few days in Copenhagen in Denmark, and spent almost all of my money in that eccentric, libertarian city. I didn't even have enough money for food, and travelling around Iceland was out of the question. Actually, apart from ripoff youth hostel room (2000 kr. or something like that), I had only the money for the most basic of purchases: a couple of loaves of bread and pieces of cheese for example, a few cans of light Viking beer from the supermarket, some slices of meat. Luckily I had prepared for this scenario by bringing a host of cheap, mostly tasteless items from Japan -- cups of instant noodles for breakfast, a box of green tea sachets which became the gourmet highlight of my holiday. I swear it was the vitamin C from the green tea which kept me going as I gradually starved myself in Iceland, losing a lot of unwelcome weight in my meantime! And as we all should know by now, green tea gets you high!

I was so broke I couldn't even afford to go anywhere once I arrived in Reykjavík, and had to travel everywhere on foot. This was not quite the tragedy that you might imagine because I was so happy to be in Iceland, even striding around Reykjavík was an unearthly experience. Of course I looked at the distant mountains and yearned to be able to reach them, but there were plenty of things to see in walking distance of the youth hostel. Gold boats down at the harbor, funky Nordic houses with primary colored corrugated iron walls and triangular roofs. The strangest sky I have seen in my life, which words can't describe. I was enchanted! Yes, the weather was often terrible. Usually I don't like the wind when it is blowing strong, but in Iceland I could forgive it. The same goes for heavy metal music, which seems to be popular in this North Atlantic nation. In other countries I can't stand it, but in Iceland it seems appropriate. It's the perfect soundtrack for a Viking wasteland.

I am proud to say that I never felt bored during my whole 8-day stay in Iceland, not even when I had to spend all night sleeping out at the airport because I didn't have the money for the youth hostel that night. The only problem is, I walked so much my feet soon developed enormous blisters, which plunged me into agony whenever I took my shoes off. But what was I going to do, hang around the youth hostel all day and recuperate? There was no chance to rest -- I had to push on, walking on the sides of my feet (which is a hard way to get around, especially somewhere like Reykjavík, where everything is so spaced out!) Anyway, I managed to scrape enough money one day for the bus ticket to Þingvellir, the ancient parliament which straddles the European and American continental plates, west of the capital. It felt great to finally get out of the city and see some of the scenery. At Þingvellir it was cold and windy (what else is new? this is Iceland!) I ambled around the big canyon there, formed from the aforementioned American and European plates sliding away from each other, as fast as a fingernail grows -- a gorge of jumbled stones and moss, quite possibly home to fairies (or so the Icelanders would believe). I've never seen so much moss -- it was the kind of moss wonderland I expected to find in Iceland. In some of the more secluded corners that the wind couldn't reach, when the sun peaked out from the clouds, I wished I could lie down upon these moss beds and have a nap.

I was crabwalking my way through one of these meandering gorges, somewhere near the waterfall, and keeping a mental track of the time so I wouldn't miss the bus, when I bumped into a friendly Italian man with graying beard and an impish bent. He was dancing from stone to stone, awed by the surroundings. "This is so wonderful!" he said. "Look at those beautiful rocks over there! Magnificent!"

I should have assumed then and there, by the way that he was prancing from rock to rock, that something was amiss here, and that I was falling in with a fairy. A moss fairy, no less. I should have heard the warning bells. Poor gullible, trust-everybody-me. Little by little, I fell into the trap.

Let me put it this way: I can see now why they always say don't take rides with strangers! The Italian guy (I can't remember his name -- maybe something like Rodolphe) promptly announced, as the wind swept his hair: "Let's go to the spa -- to the Blue Lagoon! There's nothing better than ending your day in the hot waters of the Blue Lagoon. It is the best thing in Iceland. Come on, let's go."

"But I have a ticket for the bus," I said, "and it goes back to Reykjavík soon."

"Forget about the bus," he said. "I have a hire car. I can drive you back to Reykjavík tonight. And besides, I can show you round this corner of Iceland -- it's more than you can see in the bus."

He had a point there, and despite the obvious risks of "riding with strangers", I decided not to be a pussy. From my point of view, it was an offer too good to refuse. I had been forced to challenge Iceland by foot ever since I arrived, and here was this guy offering to drive me around, in his hire car. Besides, I could never have afforded the bus ticket to the Blue Lagoon, which I was interested in seeing. He seemed like a nice guy. Actually Germanic in race, lived near the Austrian border in northern Italy. Ran a record shop, liked Icelandic bands such as Sigur Rós (nice one). Went to Iceland every summer, for the past three years at least. (I can imagine doing the same thing, but next time I want to go there in winter. Just to see the real polar night!) So, I agreed to ride with him. We passed the bus on our way out -- suckers! I thought, looking at the passengers cooped up inside. I had moved a step beyond them -- I was now seeing Iceland by car!

And what a rush it was sitting in the passenger seat with Rodolphe as we sped down the narrow roads being buffeted by winds, with the hills green and strange all around us. This was the Iceland I had been dying to see! As we headed south to the Blue Lagoon, I looked at his hand and wondered: where's the wedding ring? I remembered concluding that he had to be gay. In my naive way, I didn't think that would be a problem. (Not that I have a problem with gay men, mind you -- they just always seem to want to hit on to me! They get the wrong idea about me, when I am just trying to be friendly!)

The terrain immediately surrounding the Blue Lagoon is one of the most forbidding moonscapes I have ever inspected. It is the closest thing I have to an alien world I've encountered, and everything is exotic -- ground, sky, you name it. Out of the fields of lava suddenly pools of bright blue water appear -- the world-famous Blue Lagoon! According to explore-reykjavik.com, the Blue Lagoon is "located in the lunar-like landscape of a lava field... accidentally created by the run-off water from the Svartsengi power station. The reputed health benefits (particularly for skin ailments) of its mineral-rich, geothermal seawater have made it one of the most visited locations in Iceland. The Blue Lagoon (tel: 420 8800; fax: 420 8801; e-mail: lagoon@bluelagoon.is; website: www.bluelagoon.is) is situated on the Reykjanes peninsula, about 50km (30 miles) southwest of the city. Bus 5 leaves Reykjavik's central bus station three times a day, and the journey takes about 40 minutes)."

It was blowing a gale and absolutely freezing when we arrived in the barren, almost godforsaken car park adjoining the lagoon, in Rodolphe's little vehicle. I was out of cash, but thankfully Rodolphe (sugar-daddy style) offered to donate some gold Icelandic coins to help cover the rather lofty entrance fee (1200 kr.). Into the showers where we stripped naked and soaped up before putting on a pair of swimming trunks, and hitting the spa. It was a wonderful and surreal experience, especially after it started hailing, and my head was softly massaged by falling chunks of Arctic ice, while my trunk was churned by the warm current underneath! Fire and ice -- that's the Icelandic polarity.

Rodolphe suggested a spell in the sauna, which I didn't really like, and which should have provided me further confirmation of his sexuality (pardon the stereotypes here). However, he hadn't made a move on me even when we were naked together in the showers, so I figured even if he was gay he a cool gay (rather than the in-your-face aggressive variety I sometimes encountered in Australia.) After a spell in the spa, sweating out toxins, we returned to the lagoon, floating under the stream drifts which were blown this way and that by the relentless wind. We smeared white mud on our faces. I noticed my blistered feet began feeling better -- within the next day or two they were almost completely healed. Remarkable! We stayed right up until closing time at 9pm, as the world turned dreary and cold all around us. I love Icelandic weather which is one reason I want to come back in the winter, and see real desolation! Rodolphe and I drove back to my youth hostel in Reykjavík. It had been a great day, and I wondered how I could match it tomorrow (although the morrow did indeed prove just as memorable, as I met a future lover. But that is another story.)

Oh, I was forgetting -- there was meant to be a punchline here, or least some kind of climax! Well, the punchline is this: Rodolphe was in fact gay! And as we hit the Reykjavík city limits he made his move, and tried to grab my hand. It was touch and go there for a while, but I managed to get out of it with my dignity attached. Not as if I could bail our of the car while we drove through the lava plains, and it would have been lame just to tell him that I wasn't gay. I just handled the situation Japanese style, by not reacting at all. Hoping Rodolphe might pick up the hint. Some of the guys at the youth hostel were horrified when I told them the story later on, once I had escaped his grasp. Shortly before he dropped me off, Rodolphe informed me that he didn't have anywhere to stay for the night, and that he wanted to book something at the hostel. Thankfully the hostel was full (I dodged a bullet there!) Rodolphe said goodbye to me rather crestfallen, got into his car, and drove off looking for another inn. I never saw him again. My skin and hair smelling of sulphur, I went to bed somewhat pleased with how the day had gone... the way I figured it, it was worth taking the risk of riding with Rodolphe to see a part of Iceland I would never have been able to see. Sometimes you have to take a chance -- that's the Vagabondic way! To be honest, despite the experience in the car, I still think Rodolphe is a nice guy. Maybe I will bump into him again on future trips to Iceland -- perhaps in the sauna at the Blue Lagoon!

Regarding to Gay Iceland, I have heard it said: "Although a gay scene does exist in Reykjavík, it is very small. One good place to meet gay men is the sauna at the Vesturbæjarlaug-Vesturbaejar Swimming Pool (Hofsvallagata, IS-101 Reykjavík, phone: 354 551 5004)." If you are that way inclined, you might as well check it out. I don't go for saunas myself, but many guys swear by them...