I'm Back in 'Nam (and Man this Place Has Changed!)

Well, I am back in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam -- and after roaming the streets for a couple of hours this afternoon taking in the sites and sights, I have to proclaim: "Man, this place sure has changed, I don't even recognize it!" I had an amazing day which saw me shrug off my Tomomian gloom somewhere over the East China Sea, and then cure my fear of flying on my Vietnam Airlines bird, listening to cheesy pop. Over the past couple of years I have grown a little paranoid about air travel, even though I know how safe it is and all. Every time we hit turbulence on the way to Mumbai or Reykjavík on recent trips I have clutched the armrests stiffly, my heart pounding. It was kind of stupid, but that was how I was. It was a primal fear, irreconcilable to logic. Ever since I read that Naomi Campbell enjoyed flying because that was the only time she could really chill out, I have been keen to kick my paranoia. And it all ended today. In fact, I enjoyed the flight so much I wanted to stay up there in the sky all day, just "cloud surfing", as my old friend Matt Tumbers would have dubbed it. I had certainly hit the jackpot at Narita this morning by scoring a whole row of seats to myself, and this allowed me to slump lazily against the window shortly after takeoff and stretch out, bathed in warm sunshine (it's always sunny up there once you punch through the cloud cover!) It was all very comfortable and just like Naomi claimed, you do really feel removed from the problems of the world when you're at 30,000 feet. If I was rich and had my own jet I would spend my life just cruising the clouds, drinking champagne and dropping in at cool cities which I dig, following the party circuit -- but I guess if I did that people would brand me an enviroterrorist, and shun me. Whatever... it was a very pleasant flight and even when we hit a batch of turbulence over The Philippines I just shrugged it off, and sank back into soothing sleep.

Safe on the ground and looking for the bus, at Tan Son Nhat Airport, Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam, 2007)

But now I am back on the ground in Vietnam and after months of romantic strife in Japan, I find myself with a date lined up for the weekend (more about that later!) One of the first things which struck me as I deplaned (apart from the humidity of course), was the irrefutable evidence of how much Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) has changed over the past 10 years, since I was last here. When I first visited as a young innocent in 1995, this city was so primitive and crazy I hid like a mouse in my hotel for the first night, too scared to even venture outside. Whenever you dined at a restaurant in the Phạm Ngũ Lão backpacker district back in those days, you would get mobbed by throngs of postcard salesmen/women/children, beggars, shoe-shiners and all kinds of scammers. You couldn't walk around the block without attracting a retinue of cyclo drivers and taxi touts, or be chased by a gang of streetkids, some of them wielding rocks. The cyclo drivers and taxi touts and assorted hawkers are still here of course and they are still out in force, but the difference is these days they take no for an answer. Unlike in the Vietnam of 1995 -- and unlike present day India. Tell them you don't want to go on their city tour/buy their postcards/get your shoes shined, and they will accept that -- they won't complain or abuse you or follow you around the rest of the day, attempting to pull off the long hustle. I like that. Perhaps that is a sign that Vietnam has become richer as a nation -- or perhaps the millions of backpackers and travelers who have shuffled through the place since 1995 have educated the Vietnamese on international street business etiquette. If someone wants or needs to buy something, they will buy it. Abusing the customer or stalking them around town all day (as what happened to me in India in 2005) never gets you the sale -- it only pisses everyone off. Surely I am not alone in thinking that!

The streets of Ho Chi Minh City are just as congested as they have always been, but they look a bit more upmarket these days (Vietnam, 2007)

Apart from the evolution in tout and street hustler behavior, the skyline of HCMC has also evolved -- upwards. Particularly in the Phạm Ngũ Lão backpacker district and the downtown area, this city is starting to resemble a little Singapore. I have got a photo back in my bedroom in Japan of me drinking with a European woman (maybe Swiss) and an Asian-American guy in a bar at the corner of Phạm Ngũ Lão Street and Đề Thám Street in the middle of 1995, during my first timid tour of duty. That bar is gone -- it has been turned into a Japanese Lotteria hamburger restaurant. The yellow wall you can see in the background of that photo is also history -- it has been knocked down or whatever and replaced by a beautiful green park. On humid nights lovers and African guest workers can be seen frolicking in the park, hemmed in on both sides by streams of swarming motorbikes. What a cool place HCMC is becoming!

As soon as I had found a hotel in Phạm Ngũ Lão and had dropped my bags off there, I was keen to challenge Saigon's famous dining scene. I didn't have any particular destination in mind, I just started walking. The first place that caught my eye was the Trung Nguyên Cafe, situated on a busy intersection opposite the Van Canh restaurant (perhaps it was on the corner of Nguyễn Thái Học Street and Trần Hưng Đạo Avenue -- anyway, it was in that basic ballpark.) I ordered deep fried beef and a Tiger. I flirted with the cute waitress as she tried to squat a fly which kept bothering my food ("You're never going to catch it -- those flies have eyes in the backs of their heads!" I implored.) Nearby me, what looked to be a Singaporean family purveyed the extensive selection of Vietnamese coffee beans on display, in a glass cabinet as I recall.

Deep fried beef and a Tiger beer, at a Nguyen Trung Cafe in District 1 of HCMC (Vietnam, 2007)

I didn't know this at the time, but it turns out that Trung Nguyên Coffee is actually one of the big coffee companies in Vietnam, and that their cafe chain is Vietnam's answer to Starbucks! As Greenspun family has reported:

Capitalizing on an emerging, affluent middle-class and the simple attractions of aromatic coffee, 31-year-old entrepreneur Dang Le Nguyen Vu has successfully launched Vietnam's first nationwide franchise. 

Call it Starbucks, Vietnam-style. 

Over the past four years, Vu's chain of Trung Nguyen cafes has grown to more than 400 outlets in all of Vietnam's provinces, from the busy Ho Chi Minh City to rural of Sapa on the northern border. In Vietnamese, Trung Nguyen means "Central Highlands", an area famous for its coffee, and Vu now wants to spread the reputation of his coffee label well beyond Vietnam's borders. 

'I want to have the Vietnamese brand name of Trung Nguyen well known in the world. Our coffee is good. There's no reason we can't do it.."

I didn't know this at the time, but apparently Trung Nguyên Cafe is a good place to sample one of the best coffee brews in the world -- the notorious Vietnamese weasel shit coffee. Anyway, I really love Vietnamese coffee but I was scared of sampling the wares today, because strong caffeine tends to give me migraines. More about this disturbing handicap of mine later! The beef dish was great nonetheless and I hope to return to the cafe later, to see if I can get some of that weasel shit brew! And possibly even hit on the waitress, if she's there again!

Three Dimensions of Time, and the Multiverse

I dreamed about extra dimensions a great deal during my Australian life, for example whilst I was off my head with Boyd B. at our Rowntree Street kip, trying hard to impress the man they called the Wolf. I was on a New Age Spirituality tip at the time and I endeavoured earnestly to imagine what these other dimensions would be like, always picturing them as extra spaces, physically present but inexplicably invisible to my eyes, as well as my other senses. In the Fifth Dimension stars were Earths which had attained Enlightenment and Combusted, that is what they New Agers said (and like my cousin Kellie, they are still saying it now!) Of course it's wishful thinking, and I don't believe it -- ever since I moved to Japan I have become pragmatic, a realist, a disciple of Nietzsche's Here and Now. The world won't explode in the year 2012, I can feel that in my bones, but there is no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater, as the old cliché goes, and dump the entire New Age canon. Surely there is something in there worth salvaging, before that baby sinks? However content I am with my current reality, I can't get let go of the idea: Are there extra dimensions of space/time, beyond the three or four that we are all aware of? But if they exist what do they look like, and why can't we perceive them? Recently I have been wondering if I was barking up the wrong tree, by imagining the Fifth Dimension as a kind of Garden of Eden blooming less than a ℓ_P from our Cartesian cell. Maybe the Fifth Dimension is not a space, but a time. A plane of Time, to complement the classical field of Newtownian space. The Fourth Dimension is a line of time just as Einstein understood, the Fifth Dimension is a field, and the Sixth Dimension is... wait for it, a sphere. Or actually a Solid of Time, according to Ouspensky, who pondered such things well before I was born. As The Theory of Six Dimensions relates:

Some say there are three or four dimensions, some say more dimensions (10, 11, and 26 are current favorites of some physicists), some say there are an infinite number of dimensions. But Ouspensky's explanation of the six dimensions resolves that dilemma by showing how six dimensions are both all-inclusive and yet only partial...

In modern physics and science in general, the first three dimensions are the same as those described everywhere. But then things get a little confused. The fourth dimension, which is time, is sometimes described as space-time, which is actually the fifth dimension—as Ouspensky points out, the fact that space-time is curved requires another dimension.

The sixth dimension, all possibilities, is essentially the "multiverse" or "many worlds" interpretation of modern physics. The many worlds explanation is an attempt to explain observations of quantum phenomena that have no ordinary explanation but do have a consistent, but extraordinary, explanation. It basically goes like this: At every moment when you seem to choose among multiple possibilities, you actually choose each possibility, and different universes fork off, the one you are in now is the one in which you made the choice to read this, for example. There is another universe where you chose not to read this, another where you read part way and stopped and so on...

Sunshine and the Gloom: Reprise

After my successful date with Tomomi last night, I awoke to a sunny and generally pleasant Sunday, this being one of the mildest winters on record. I had an appointment with my old salaryman friend Tanaka-san at 4pm; he wanted me to transcribe the lyrics of a Country&Western song his partner was planning to sing in Osaka (大阪). I met him at Breaks Cafe at Ueno Station, and transcribed his lyrics. After that we marched briskly through the settling cold and madding crowds, down the bleak concrete lanes, to the Himonoya Restaurant in Okachimachi (御徒町). Tanaka-san had spotted the place from the train on the Yamanote Line as he passed on his daily business, and he was keen to check it out. Naturally, the shout was on him.

Himonoya, specializing in sundried cuisine, at Okachimachi (Japan, 2006)

The servings started with a complementary cabbage -- you better believe it a whole cabbage, which we ate with a smearing of slightly spiced mayonnaise. I am not a green veg buff by any means but this cabbage tasted amazing -- "it is fresh," Tanaka-san succinctly remarked. There followed a series of sundried seafood dishes, in the himono tradition -- Tanaka-san sent one of them back to the kitchen for having too much akaimono (red stuff) inside. Apart from the fish, the menu boasted grilled nasu (eggplant) and fried duck (鴨つくね) served with what looked suspiciously like a duck's egg. Who said the Japanese weren't adventurous eaters! There were also plenty of onigiri rice balls, some of them of tremendous proportions. Scary! Naturally, a full spread of Japanese rice wine and beers accompanied the feast. I took a few photos, and sent one or two of them to Tomomi. I returned home feeling elated, basking in the afterglow. The gloom in my heart was lifting. It's funny how your life can turn around, so quickly.

With a new job and a new girlfriend, I have achieved the aims of July 2006. So, let's bask for a while! Breaking free from Kidea is a longterm goal, and I have already come quite far, with 2.5 free days! Since money is the key to power I should focus on repaying my credit debt. There are too many  interesting things happening in Japan to worry about the implementation of Intermediate International Vagabondancy just yet. However, I have laid the foundations of this coming phase of my life.

Himonoya: 5-19-6 Ueno, Taito Ward, Tokyo, Japan. Phone: (03) 3831 8804.

Reykjavik Record Shops

Iceland's musical scene is legendary, and for such a tiny country, the island sure manages to produce an enormous amount of talented artists and bands -- not to mention the occasional superstar. How do they manage it? According to the Kimono guitarist I chatted with in my most recent visit to Reykjavik: "The scene here is so small that musicians have nothing to gain, and nothing to lose. People end up doing whatever they want to do." So Icelanders don't go seeking fame, I get that -- but oddly they receive it, on the international stage no less. Lately I have been wondering: is it not the originality of the Icelandic musician that is critical here, but rather the exoticness of the Icelandic sound? In other words, Icelanders don't mean to sound so quirky, that is just the way they are. The strange thing is that even when Icelanders try to emulate something mainstream (say, Foo Fighters), it nonetheless ends up sounding alternative (like Whool). This is the process by which the B52's is transmuted to the Ice Cubes, and Radiohead is transformed to Sigur Rós...




Much as they would like to be Anglo-American clones, eating pizza and hamburgers, playing drums in the garage, Icelanders are simply not fated to be so mundane. They have something in their background which might be boring to them, but is fascinating to the outside world. Some kind of idiosyncrasy, some singularity is crystallized in their DNA and that is refracted in their literature, their music and their fashion sense, and obviously their art. Where does it spring from, though, this mutation, this mysterious X Factor? The geography? geology? The Sagas and the mythology? I am not quite sure, but I know that it is there.

PLACES TO SHOP
There are basicaly three main record shops (plötubúðir) in Reykjavik -- wait, four if you count the big book store (Mál og Menning) who have CDs and DVDs and stuff on the first floor (self published Icelandic poetry and mystery novels on the second floor.) There may be more than this, but in my opinion there are only good three record stores (þrjár góðar plötubúðir) in Reykjavik worth going to. At one, you can relish the knowledge that you are walking on Björk's sacred space. Or something like that.

12 Tónar: Skólavörðustígur 15 | 101 Reykjavík | Sími: 511 5656 | Web: http://www.12tonar.is/.
Tone means "music" in Icelandic, and 12 Tónar refers to the 12 tones of the musical alphabet, from A^flat to G^sharp. Whenever I am in Iceland, 12 Tónar is one of the first places I head to, to update my knowledge of Icelandic rokk. To get there you must climb the mild incline of Skólavörðustígur from the groovy underground Kofi Tómosar cafe, up towards the big Viking statue and church, and stop off when you see the yellow and blue sign. The first time I visited Iceland, I walked straight past 12 Tónar without thinking it was anything more than a used knickknacks outlet. What a fool I was! On my latest trip, I did my homework, and earmarked this store for the first full day of explorations. Though it may be small, this is the best place to shop for local tunes. The staff are incredibly friendly. Head downstairs, and you can peruse the racks bathed in footlevel sun. Staff serve you coffee, you can listen to the latest Icelandic releases on headphones on a a comfy old couch while browsing art magazines from Japan (that is what I did the last time I was there, anyway.) The staff are no doubt musicians themselves and there are plenty of in-house events, such as free concerts held every Friday at five. While I didn't make it to the concert, I did manage to pick up some CDs here on my last visit, each costing around 1000 Kronurs a disk. One was Anarchists Are Hopeless Romantics, by My Summer As A Salvation Soldier (otherwise known as Þórir ). That record really resonated with me in the humid, horrid Tokyo summer of 2006, as I lamented the breakup with C, and the general collapse of my life. A rather depressing album, to be sure, but Þórir has also put out some more upbeat numbers, for example the euphoric Canada Oh Canada (Land of the Free), and he is also apparently the lead singer of a folk/punk band called Deathmetal Supersquad. A most versatile chap, all in all...

Bad Taste Record Store: Laugavegur 35 | 101 Reykjavík | Sími: 511 5656 | Web: http://smekkleysa.net/.
More than just a record store, Bad Taste (Smekkleysa) is a museum dedicated to the history of Icelandic music and art. It is also the shopfront of a music label, Bad Taste Records, which started as an arts collective in 1986. It became famous as the label which launched Bjork and her former band, The Sugar Cubes. Since that time many Icelandic greats have been signed by this label including Quarashi, Singapore Sling, and of course Sigur Rós. Given the history of the place, I was surprised by the limited selection of music here. You can, for example, order Bad Taste's entire back catalogue on their website. Why they don't have the music on sale at the record store as well is beyond me. Anyway, there are supposed to be performances put on here sometimes. Smekkleya isn't the only record label in Iceland: there is also the Bedroom Community. Just letting you know!

Geisladiskabúð Valda: Laugavegur 64 | 101 Reykjavík | Sími: 562 9002.
If the window display is anything to go by, this store seems to be devoted to the hard stuff: Heavy Metal, Death Metal, and hard rock. I must confess I have never stepped inside this place, as Metal is not really my thing. It is a genre that seems popular in the North, however, and has worked its influence into the indigenous sound. Jónsi claims to have liked Iron Maiden as a teenager. Listen to the climax of Glósóli, and the fruits of this infatuation are clearly audible. Albeit, obviously, channelled through a thick Icelandic filter. Which is, incidentally, just the way I like it! Geisladiskabúð Valda apparently stocks games and DVDs too.

THE GREAT UNSIGNED
As with anywhere, those bands with labels are just the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the ocean lies a great vault of untapped talent. How about these unsigned bands in Iceland, where do you find them? There are a number of websites to facilitate your search. Here are some of my favourites:

Hugi (Íslensk tónlist)
Jon.is
Rokk.is (defunct)

Internet Earnings Plan (The Freelance Life)

Imagine if I was earning ¥50,000 a month from the Internet? It sounds far-fetched, but it could be possible by the year 2016. While I would still need a regular job, an extra $US500 a month would give me a lot of freedom... including the freedom to spend long spells in cheap countries (such as India), to endure lulls in employment, and to quit jobs I don't like. This is the kind of freedom I crave... and it is coming my way, one click at a time. I am slowly building a new reality in Japan. I have a part freelance life, and day by day, I find myself getting over C. Who knows, soon I could have another girlfriend!

We're All Floating

Have you ever read a haiku poem? Not only are they fascinating compositions in themselves, as fragile as a cherry blossom, but they also open a window into the culture and the consciousness of the Japanese people.

For those who don't know, haiku comprise three nonrhyming lines of five, seven and five syllables. To our Occidental mind, they appear too fleeting and incomplete. We feel that there should be something more substantial. If we think Orientally, however, we will realize that they reveal something less... that is, the vacuum which encapsulates the core of the Japanese experience. Just like the empty gestures of the tea ceremony (茶道), they condense the essential nothingness of the Universe. This is the original meaning of the "Floating World", in my opinion at least.

The following haiku, by Matsuo Basho (松尾 芭蕉) is said to be one of the most profound achievements in Japanese literature, but is only seven words long:

"Furuike ya!
Kawazu tobikomu
Mizu no oto."

("Oh -- ancient pond!
A frog jumps in,
The sound of water.")

It should be noted that the "ya" is not even a real word, and it is merely deployed as a "state breaker", a crack of Zen revelation. I studied quite a few other haiku today and most of them were deceptively simple, but yet deeply mysterious at the same time. They make me wonder about how the same patterns coil round and round and in upon themselves, conchstyle. In Europe landscaping generally entails elaborate grounds with avenues of grand elms; in Japan the traditional garden is just a raked expanse of gravel rimmed by midget brutally pruned bonsai trees. Haiku are the bonsai of the poetry world, you might say -- severely pruned and bare.

A more contemporary state breaker can be heard in the song We're All Water, written and sang by Yoko Ono, and released on John Lennon's protest album, Some Time in New York City. Ono might be a terrible singer and the whole production is shambolic, but the curious structure of the piece redeems it. Each verse is like a haiku, with three lines of five or seven syllables each, for example this one:

"There may not be much difference
Between Manson and the Pope,
If we press their smile..."

Three is not a particularly rhythmic number at the best of times, at least on a Rock record, but here it lends an exotic, enigmatic quality. Listening to Ono's song, you might find yourself hanging on, waiting for the missing fourth line. Have the courage to let go, however, and you could fall into an abyss, one that you never even noticed there right before your feet... (For more of my discoveries regarding manifestation and the void, click here.)

Midsummer Magic

Call me naïve, call me paranoid even, but I used to worry that it would be hard meeting people in Iceland.  I used to get obsessed about it, back in the planning phase of this trip, and to combat my fears I would conduct rituals, Paper Burning ceremonies in fact, in my dingy sharehouse in Tokyo. Granted, I had met plenty of nice people on my previous visit here in 2003, among them Akiko a Japanese girl who turned into a lover, and Rodolphe the freak from the Alps who ambushed me in the mossy canyons of Þingvellir, and tried to seduce me. Great folk they all were, but they weren't locals, and it was the locals that I was really yearning to make my acquaintances with. Cute Asian girls are always a pleasure to encounter, but I can encounter plenty of them in Asia. It might well be easier hooking up with Japanese women outside of Japan than it is in their homeland, but truth be told I am over Japan after all my recent conflicts, and I want to take a break from it all. I need time out from all that stress, that Bushido bullshit! And visiting Iceland is such a rare luxury for me right now, I want to make the most of it. Icelanders are the rarest of species, anyway: how often do you see them in your home town, or at your nearest airport even? You don't see any, that's the thing... they are as elusive as elves. Apart from the staff at my youth hostel and the odd waiter or bartender downtown, I don't think I interacted with any real Icelanders on my 2003 trip -- and I was in their own country no less, in their capital city! This time around, having forked out so much for airfares and ripoff hotels, flown halfway across the world, etc, this time around I wanted to do things right, and meet the people who actually live here, rather than fellow travelers like myself. That of course can be hard when you are staying in a dorm in a youth hostel on the edge of town, and you only have six days to spend on the island. To maximize my chances of adventure, I concluded, I needed to have some kind of plan, a little piece of insurance up my sleeve. Obviously, I could have resolved to go out and network hard as soon as I touched down at Keflavíkurflugvöllur and that is indeed what I have been doing these past few days, networking my ass off so to speak! But, back in the planning phases of this trip, I required something more immediate to soothe my anxieties, something a little bit magical perhaps, something vindictively voodoo even. That is where Paper Burning came in. Call it irrational, call it superstitious nonsense, but Paper Burning seems to work. It can make your wishes come true, whether you believe in it or not. It is my key to manifestation.

Gateway between the worlds: an underpass, in Reykjavik (Iceland, 2006)

The process is so simple it's silly: in essence, Paper Burning is the transformation of psychic energy into its physical equivalent, the alchemy of -E into the "E" of Einstein's famous equation. Fire and prayer serve as the interface, the gate between the two worlds. You might liken it to mining Jung's realm of indestructible energy, or sparking a cluster of coincidences, summoning them into existence, and hoping they will play out to your advantage! That's one way of looking at it. Another way is to consider it the recycling of past events: episodes which have happened to someone else, somewhere, at sometime; episodes which you seek to recreate in your own life, right here, right now. In order for the process to work something connected to that past event, something linked to it by psychic energy, needs to be destroyed so that the psychic pattern it represents can cross the threshold into the physical realm, and (re)manifest. When I Paper Burn I first hunt down some person describing, in their own words, an experience they have had, usually online on blogs and forums and the like. Anything that looks genuine and authentic is good for me, for example stories about lucky windfalls, falling in love, ecstatic epiphanies, sex with supermodels, that kind of thing. Or for this particular occasion, the experience of going to Iceland, meeting tons of nice people, making lifetime friends here! Those are the experiences I wanted to manifest this trip: longterm friends and wanton sex! Paper Burning manifested my relationship with C., and it got me a kiss out of the blue with Akiko on the lawns of Shinjuku Gyouen (新宿御苑), so surely it could mine me a few babes and buddies in Reykjavík, and guarantee me a rollicking time here. Truth be told, however, my soul has been longing for something more luminous than just babes and buddies and rollicking fun recently, and I find myself hungering for an accomplice instead of a mere acquaintance, a Twin Flame rather than just a girlfriend, a collaborator or collaborators who can allow me to attain the Divinity in the flesh that I have sometimes glimpsed in my dreams... in short, post C. I yearn for no less than a soulbuddy or coterie of soulbuddies from another dimension, Rock star friends to deliver me the Rock star lifestyle I deserve, and dearly await! Listening to Icelandic music always gives me the suspicion that I am missing out, alienated from the art and adventure which ought to be my birthright. "Born in the wrong family, the wrong town, the wrong country," as I might have complained as a kid, growing up in regional Australia. Back then I used to call this malaise the "Goonie Feeling", and I fantasized about escape through all manner of exotic means: becoming a writer or a famous artist, a child actor, a pop star, a global citizen, etc. Assuming that my misplaced birth was the root of my woes, I figured that all I needed to do was to change my abode, and my dream life would develop around me, spontaneously. Thus my life of wandering commenced, the search for belonging in farflung lands: interestingly, the Promised Land I sought was always overseas, north not south, temperate not arid, erudite and articulate, emotionally intelligent, savvy and sophisticated, youthful but wiser than its years. The quest led me to Japan but much to my dismay, Utopia was not waiting for me there, alas. Japan is cool and all, I love the trains and vending machines, the endless concrete jungles, but it is not the social Promised Land that I was expecting it to be. If my cousin Kellie had been there to join me then perhaps it might have turned out differently, we could have established our colony. But Kellie flaked out on me, she ditched me, and after several years of life in the Far East I was compelled to resume the search for my (now) private Zion, my (personal) Canaan. Almost immediately, I settled my sights on Iceland, a country I have always held a fascination for, ever since I was a wee bairn. I booked a flight here in 2003, and stayed about six days. Amazingly, the place exceeded my expectations, it was even better than I dared to hope it would be. For the first time in my life, it seemed I had finally found the place to call home. If only it wasn't so hard to get to, and to emigrate to!

Corner of Frakkastigur and Njalsgata, in Reykjavik (Iceland, 2006)

Sometime last year I had a dream in which I was in an interior space, a long room of some kind, which was supposedly in Iceland. I can't really remember what was going on; while I often dream of being in huge parties, the atmosphere here felt sedate, more like a library than a nightclub. I was chilling on a couch, and presently I became aware that I was sitting next to this yellowhaired guy. We started talking about life and the universe, philosophy and politics and poetry, and I soon I realized that this man was going to change my life, or at least encourage me to become the real me, whatever that might mean. When I woke up, I knew it was an important dream, it was a dream with meaning. It was an inspirational dream, no less, and I used to think about it a lot during my relationship with C., when I should have been infatuated with her. I didn't know whether it would actually come true or if it was just symbolic of my Icelandic hopes: Freudian or Jungian, wish fulfillment or astral traveling, who knows. But I did remember it, and it did stay with me. That was one dream which crossed the threshold, always so foreboding and forbidding, from the unconscious, to the conscious mind... 

Memories of this dream played through my mind as I readied the Paper Burning apparatus for action, a few months before my recent flight. I had found a choice snippet to burn, which was now printed out on a pristine leaf of white paper, and which read beguilingly: "Though I can say that if you are doing the pub crawl around Reykjavik after 1 am on a Friday or Saturday, you will end up with lots of new friends who are very talkative and outgoing." This read, in fact, like the perfect fodder for a Paper Burning spell: disposable, just an anonymous quote from the Internet, but the way it had been appropriated gave it an edge of sorcery, of the sort you might encounter in Bronisław Malinowski, or vintage Harry Potter. I installed the sheet of paper atop a vessel crusted from the detritus of previous fires, and ignited a cigarette lighter. The vessel was actually a mini altar bell given to me by Soka Gakkai (創価学会), that mad Buddhist order to which I belong (and doubtless they would accuse me of sacrilege if they knew how I was about to treat it!) I settled on to the floor in front of the bell in my bedroom, crouched seiza style, and lit the edge of the page. Flame crept around the perimeter of the page, browning it, bending it, and lifting it with a draft of warm air. For a moment I was worried the blazing leaf might lift itself out of the bell and drop on to the wooden floor of my room. As previously related, my sharehouse is made of tatami mats and paper walls and wood, and it would burn down in a flash if it was set alight. I have to be careful with this shit, so I poked the page back into the center of the bell with a pen, ready to extinguish the flame if things got out of hand. Peak flamage subsided shortly enough, however, and the sheet curled up onto itself, disintegrating into flakes of ash and puffs of gray smoke. I bowed towards my Soka Gakkai gohonzon (sacred scroll) hanging on the wall, and chanted through the smoke three times: "Nam myou hou ren ge kyou" ("南無妙法蓮華経"). I'm not really sure why I do this, since I don't really believe in Nichiren, the Lotus Sutra, and all that jazz associated with the gohonzon. Maybe you could call this "hedging your bets": if Paper Burning didn't work, then at least Nichiren might do the trick, and grant me my wishes. That was probably my motivation. My Soka Gakkai friends would probably be appalled, but this is the system I employ, and it works for me. Freestyling forever... that is the way I play! You can't pin me down to any one style... no way.

The Sirkus, the "only bar in Reykjavik!" (Iceland, 2006)

I used to worry about meeting people in Iceland, but it turns out that this was a misguided fear. The reality of the social scene in Reykjavík is, the city is so small, it is really easy to get to know people. After just a few nights downtown doing the Runtur, I have started to notice and recognize the same old faces -- the Reykjavík gang. And because the city is so isolated, people are interested in you as a newcomer. This is the kind of place where you don't need to exchange phone numbers or business cards -- if you meet someone cool, chances you will bump into them again pretty soon, just walking down the street. And they will remember you. On Friday afternoon, while the wind blew, and I wandered around town checking stuff out, I popped into a corner store to buy a burger for lunch -- and who else was standing there at the counter but my old cocainehunting buddy from Thursday night! I have forgotten what his name was, and perhaps he never gave it to me, but he has become my first true friend in Iceland, my first Icelandic Goonie. Gods willing, more are on their way!

Saturday was Midsummer's Day and I was back down in the Miðbær (midtown) at the Cafe Rosenburg, nursing a hangover from the previous night, and submitting it to my usual hair of the dog therapy (ie, I was drinking another beer!) The Cafe Rosenburg was decorated with model ships, an old piano, and jazz instruments hanging from the walls. Outside was a beautiful day: brilliant blue sky, sunshine and a hearty North Atlantic breeze. I was drinking my beer, and to pass the time (which often seems to expand so enormously here in Iceland, especially when I am wandering around) I flipped through a copy of the Reykjavik Mag which I had discovered on one of the tables. I paused to read an article about a young cartoonist and playwright named Hugleikur Dagsson. According to the article and other stuff I have seen on the Web since then, Hugleikur is famous for his stage play Forðist okkur ("Avoid Us") and his comic books Elskið okkur ("Love Us"), Drepið okkur ("Kill Us") and Ríðið okkur ("Fuck Us"). And he also wrote another work called Bjargið okkur ("Save Us"). There was a photo of the guy in the magazine with short hair and slacker T-shirt and horn-rimmed glasses, looking uncannily like my old mate Dave Harris from Palm Beach in Sydney. (Dave is also an artist and an activist, although I haven't heard from him in years. I wondered what he would think of Reykjavík if he ever made it here.)

I ordered another beer, stuffed the Reykjavik Mag into my slingbag as a souvenir, and picked up a copy of the ever informative Reykjavik Grapevine newspaper, which the Rosenberg was kind enough to stock. Leafing through it, I stumbled upon an article about Midsummer's Day, which was being marked today. It stoked my interest, so I started to read the report which follows, quietly, as I sipped my beer:

In pagan times, holidays were marked by the phases of the moon and the changing of the seasons. The longest day of the year, Midsummer (actually the first day of summer), was a celebratory holiday that revolved around the goddess Freyja, whose primary areas of expertise were sexuality and fertility. You can imagine the gusto with which this holiday was celebrated -- after the long, brutal winter, summer's finally here, and celebrations are in honor of the Goddess of Love? You bet it was a good time. 

Not that things have changed very much since then. Even today, the arrival of summer is greeted with great enthusiasm, as you'll find that on the first remotely mild day of the year, Icelanders pour into the streets wearing skirts and t-shirts. But there are also a few superstitions surrounding Midsummer (due to begin on 21 June, 4:26AM) that have managed to survive. 

One of the biggest ones is, you can roll around in the dew at dawn on Midsummer and any wish you make will come true. This is risky, particularly in an urban area like Reykjavik, but people still do this... Midsummer is also a great time to gather magical rocks and plants, as they're supposedly at the height of their power on this day. I'd suggest getting out of town that day, going for a walk down by the beach, or in a patch of woods, and looking around for small stones that look magical to you. Pick up this stone, put it in your pocket, and keep it -- you've got your new magic talisman.

Boulders, anchor and crane, beneath a blue midsummer sky (Iceland, 2006)

Well, I am sorry to report that I didn't roll around in the dew naked on Midsummer Day 2006, but I did pick up some interesting lava stones down by the waterfront, and perhaps more importantly, I had in my credit a number of Paper Burning spells conducted in Japan which were doubtless swirling out there in the ether, biding their time, just waiting for their chance to do their thing and manifest. And manifest they did, in spectacular form! As I wrote above, June 24 had developed into a wonderfully sunny and beautiful summer's day, and it was the weekend (Saturday no less), with everybody in the mood to party. Thursday had been incredible, Friday had been sensational, and while Saturday had only just begun I could already sense that Saturday was resonating at a higher dimensional vibration altogether than all the other days... in short, Saturday was otherwordly. And who knows, perhaps it was all from the feminine Freyja energy in the air? I put the newspaper in my slingbag, drained my glass, and left the Rosenberg. After walking around for a while I landed at the Sirkus, the site of my adventures on Thursday night. As I approached the bar to buy a drink, I realized that the aforementioned Hugleikur Dagsson was standing at the other end of the counter, beer in hand. I quickly dug out the copy of the Reykjavik Mag which I had confiscated as a souvenir, just to check that I wasn't hallucinating. It was, indeed, him -- the guy standing across the room with a beer in his hand was the same comic and writer and artist I had just been reading about at the Rosenberg. He looked like he had clawed his way out of the page of the magazine, complete with horn-rimmed glasses and slacker T-shirt, and a Dave Harris smirk. Scanning the article, I noticed that Dagsson had been asked: "What is your favorite bar in Reykjavik?" And he had replied: "Sirkus. It is the only bar in Reykjavik."

I will drink to that.

I ordered myself a beer, and walked upstairs to the loft, where they were showing the soccer World Cup. When I entered the loft I thought to myself: Wow, this is the place from the dream, the dream set in the long interior room. This is where I am going to meet that guy, the guy that changes my life! I sat down, and this feeling of déjà vu intensified... the mood, lighting, dogeaten couches, carpet on the floor, and my own state of mind were all the same as they had been in the original dream. I thought: If that dream really was a premonition, I just have to sit back and let it happen! I don't have to force anything. So I reclined in my couch, and tried to concentrate on the game for a while, gripped in a rising excitement. From time to time I looked around, to see if anything truly luminous was going on. There wasn't, just guys slouched in couches all around me, some of them with trainershod feet sprawled on coffee tables, watching the World Cup. I was almost starting to lose hope, when finally this yellowhaired guy walked in from behind me and said. "Do you mind if I sit next to you?" I looked up and realized: Oh my God, that's the guy from the dream! Its really him! A yellowhaired guy in jeans and slacker T-shirt and bright trainers, flopping down into the seat next to me. He looked like he had just emerged out of my dreams, to grace real life. 

We started talking and after some formalities, he announced that he was the guitarist from Kimono, a band I have been listening to since 2003. I'm not sure he told me his name but based on stuff I have read online since, I am pretty sure he is Alex. Been touring for years, now back in Iceland. I told him that their Japanese Policeman in Scandinavia was one of my favorite songs and he remarked, "Wow, I didn't know we had that much of a following." We talked about earthquakes and life on the road, the Berlin rock scene, the Reykjavik rock scene, and so on. I asked him if there were any other musicians in the room with us right now, anyone I might know. "Yeah, there are a few," he replied, tantalizingly. 

The game ended, Alex made his leave, and not long after I bailed as well. I headed out on to the street thinking to myself: Man, this is one magical place. Everytime I come here, something extraordinary happens to me here! I wonder what will happen next?

Walking the streets of Reykjavik under a blue midsummer sky, looking for some action (Iceland, 2006)

After that epiphany at Sirkus, the rest of the day was an anti-climax. I wandered down into the eastern reaches of the city, down to the water where the wind blew hard, and the gulls wheeled low. I could have spent a lifetime there just photographing the houses, the cars, the dwarf trees. I read National Geographic magazines in Kofi Tómasar Frænda ("Uncle Tom's Cabin") in the evening, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. Finally, I got up, and commenced roaming again. Gatecrashed what seemed to be a private party at Hressó, sometime around 9pm. Plenty of people there, but it wasn't luminous. Eventually I left and moved on to Nelly's, which was rammed to the rafters. This was where the party was at: everyone was going crazy on the dancefloor upstairs, shaking their hands around like they just didn't care, etc. I got so drunk I fell down the stairs, and then decided it was time to call it a night. I returned to my youth hostel along the waterfront, watching the play of light on Esjan, and the sun orbiting the cold horizon. I could have spent the rest of the night out there, sitting on a rock, gazing into the grim hinterlands, that vast country of which Reykjavík serves as just an introduction. I remembered Alex saying that The Vines are pretty popular in Iceland, and that Nick Cave is actually a frequent visitor to the island. He apparently wrote the music for an Icelandic movie recently. Looking up at Esjan as I resumed my long trudge, I imagined I was Nick walking by himself on the lava beach in the middle of the night, striding home from a gig like a ghost in the mist. This is certainly the kind of country which would appeal to him, I thought to myself as I walked. Even more importantly, it is the kind of country which appeals to me!