moving & iceland.

So.  I’m moving.  You got that and the whole change-is-a-thing-a-good-thing-my-friends in my previous post.  Groovy, and groovier yet if you’re reading this!  The first one wasn’t boring, or at least not so boring that you didn’t want to dive into another one of these things.

If you’re coming just for the Lovecraftian pics, well, I understand entirely (raising Cthulhu awareness is a central tenant of my life philosophy) and will endeavor not to disappoint.  I love Cthulhu, so he’ll (should I capitalize that?  Mr. Tentacles & Scariness is a god, but, at the same time, not a first-movement-create-reality kind of god…) probably show up in a lot of posts.

Back to relocating with my family+family dog+small private library.  I’m actually kind of excited.  Our new house… it’s pretty cool.  I’ve loved our home.  I still do.  But, aside from the whole ‘Embrace the change, the Force will be with you, always’ bits of wisdom, I’m actually digging the house we’re headed towards.

(Side note: It’s not 100% decided.  About 97.4y7x9%.)

Is a tri-level.  Spacious.  Has some charming retro features– it was built in the late 60s– like the living room wall being a giant mirror.

The enormous wall-mirror was a selling point for me, even though my mom’s fairly bemused by it.  I let out an excited cry of joy; she thinks it’s a good candidate for removal once we start updating the house.

So, that’s cool.  There are bookshelves built into the walls of the bottom level, cool mini-winding staircases, a deck that runs parallel with two levels of the house, and– perhaps best of all– I’d get my own little wing.  There’s a side hallway, accessed by door, which has it’s own little bathroom and bedroom.  My private quarters, ahem.  *clears throat snobbily*

It’s odd, because the whole place gives off this wonderful vibe.  Like, ‘Hey, come live here in this pleasant place!’  Complete with hokey alliteration.  With the layout and the stairs and tucked away places, all with a strong central design, it’s actually got a kind of Tardis-like feel.

That’s a big claim, I know.  Maybe it’s just me projecting my desire for the Doctor to come pull me out of my life and spend years traveling space and time that’s making me feel that way.  We’ll see, I guess.

This is basically what the new house is like.

~          ~          ~

Maybe I’m not as comfortable with the whole moving thing as I think.  In general, I’m not truly at ease with a lot of aspects of being alive, so I really would love it if the Doctor showed up or if I walked through an archway and found myself in Faerie or if God opened a little door to Heaven and said, ‘Come home’.

So, it’d make sense that I’m not as chill with moving as I think I am.  Healthy suppression, transference, rock ‘n roll and all that jazz.  (I only sort of know what those words mean, but I think I’m basically using them right.  My roommate is a psychology major, so I’ve picked up on a lot of fun stuff from him, but I’m pretty bad at remembering technical terms…)  I have been kind of edgy, lately, though there are a lot of things on my mind.  That’s life.

       

Roomie!!  Isn't he adorable?  I loves my Jamie.  We have the same sense of humor, which makes life rather fun. (To be accurate, he's a psychology/ philosophy double major, and that combined with the humor thing makes our nighttime conversations the best.)

Ok.  Anecdote, then tie it back into the rest of that stuff, hopefully.

~          ~          ~

About a year ago, I was obsessed with Iceland.  Moving there, specifically.  What spurred that desire on, at least initially, was the fact that it was summer, and I unashamedly abhor heat.  I can barely distinguish anything over 75 Fahrenheit, because my brain goes all to mush and slides out through my nostrils and ears.  It’s pretty gross.  Hot is hot after 75, and I am miserable when it arrives.

Thus, I needed to find a cold place that was still essentially habitable, because I’m not really hardy or hale.  Love being outside, but I am no rugged explorer.  Other requirements: should be dark, because too much bright is annoying, and, in spite of needing awesome wilderness, I do require some urban, too.

In the midst of this, I was having a bit of a flashback interest in a band I’d enjoyed early in high school, Dimmu Borgir.  Symphonic black metal, man.  Cool stuff, if you’re into that.  I used to be and still listen to them upon occasion.  Anyways, they took their awesome name– which translates to dark cities or dark castles– from an absolutely absolute volcanic formation in Iceland, which looks like this:

Trolls be here!  If I lived in the Dimmuborgir, I suspect I'd become some sort of dark prophet.  Assuming the trolls didn't eat me.

   

Folklore maintains that Dimmuborgir is where Satan collided with Earth after he was cast out of heaven.  I don’t remember that being in Paradise Lost, but John Milton was Protestant, so some errors are bound to be in there.

(If you are offended by that, keep in mind that Milton is one of my heroes and remember that I post Cthulhu pictures.  Don’t take me too seriously.)

So, in the midst of googling Dimmuborgir or, alternatively, pictures of the band Dimmu Borgir (if you look up Shagrath, their lead singer, your day will become awesome), I thought, ‘Hey, why not check out Iceland as a whole?’

I did.

And I fell in love.

 

~          ~          ~

I was dying to move there, or at least travel for an extended period of time.  One of my closest of close friends, Caleb, was traversing Europe at the time, so that was probably a factor in my sudden and extreme desire for travel.  I was hot, and bright, and I wanted to escape all that and journey like Caleb.

Thus, time was spent researching Iceland.  Proportionally more time was spent discovering beautiful images of Iceland and daydreaming about traveling there.

 

Gods must roam Iceland.  I expect Odin's probably wandered eye-patched and ancient through this very landscape.

You can roam in Iceland.  As long as there aren’t any keep out signs, you’re free to wander private property in the great swaths of undeveloped land.  Whale watching.  Hot springs.  The sheer immensity, yet finitude, of the geography.  It looks so huge, but you know, at the same time, that it’s not a big place.  The population is less than half that of Detroit, and I’m pretty sure the whole island is smaller than Michigan.

But, to fulfill the urban lover in me, the capitol, where about half of the population lives, looks pretty fabulous.

 

Reykjavik, complete with sleek looking roadways and the biggest church in Iceland, The Hallgrímskirkja.

So.  That was my Iceland fantasy.

~          ~          ~

Obsessed with moving to Iceland, and it’s hot and bright outside.  Gearing up, at the time, to move away to college.  Also, was getting used to the idea of my best friend getting married.  Hmmm, that comes up a lot, doesn’t it?  I’m so happy for she and her husband (he’s a cool cat), but it was a transition.  A change.  Anyways.  Jump forward to the present.

It’s hot and bright outside.  Gearing up, right now, to move houses.  Instead of processing the change in my best friend’s life, I’m kind of locking on to my own and beginning to realize that poets a) tend to not have much money.  That’s not a bad thing, really.  But our society, whatever its pretentions, isn’t terribly humane.  I have a sneaking suspicion that homelessness won’t be as fun as it sounds and b) have an alarming tendency towards burning really bright really fast and dying really young.  Both of which are shields over my real concern– what am I actually supposed to do with my writing??  Woohoo, not really sure.  Only vague ideas.  But I’m borderline inconsolable when I’m in a position where I can’t write, be it writer’s block or unimportant things crowding up life, so it absolutely must have to be something with writing, but what exactly?  Really, really not sure.

  

Maybe if I drink from this water I'll have a better idea of what I should do with my writing.  Could work.

And, as long as we’re drawing suspicious parallels from 2012 to 2013, a bunch of my friends traveled in England for a month during a Spring Term class, so even friendfolk traveling abroad parallels my urge to pack my bags and travel north.

Apparently, I react to change and stress and moving by wanting to move far away to a country where I don’t speak the language or have any realistic way of supporting myself.

Sounds like a solid plan.

p.s. Also, the kraken legends originated in Norway, based on sailor’s accounts.  This is a very classic and horrifying picture of a kraken:

 

This is the first image of the kraken I ever saw.  As a child, it terrified me.  Didn't stop me from looking at it a million times, but it was still quite scary.  As a quasi-adult person,  I still find it horrifying.  Look at those eyes.

Norway’s not all that far from Iceland, and both are Nordic countries, sharing similar mythologies.  An Icelandic sailor might come upon a kraken.  It’s not too much of a stretch.  And krakens definitely share some attributes with…

Cthulhu!