Rimbaud must be acidic, said Worm.
Rimbaud and Verlaine are both very acidic, said The Regular.
Baudelaire must also be acidic, said Worm.
The French are mostly acidic, it’s the wine and French bread which fuels that great literary nation. Baudelaire spoke of the worm inside him that would not die, no matter how much wine he drank and French bread he ate, the worm kept on living, a serpent sitting around his heart like the Dragon Nídhöggr at the roots of the ash tree Yggdrasil. You quickly reach the conclusion that all the great poets are acidic and all the bad poets are alkaline, said The Regular, all immortal poets are acidic and all the forgotten poets are alkaline.
Ho-how can that be? Worm said.
There are physical reasons, said The Regular, the consumption of acidic food or acidic beverages, especially over-consumption, ferments inside the writer, some call it a worm but it’s actually a fungus, and this fungus grows and thrives and becomes an autonomous reality, not actual reality but fictional reality, the writer starts to have visions because of this fungus, even going outside their body up to the skies and seeing the world and the self both from outside and inside, the writer finds that truly spiritual, believes it to be some world-spirit controlling the poetic; it’s actually a fungus that controls the poetic, a particular fungus, yeast-fungus, I’ve called this poetic fungus Gerjólf, which is, of course, reductive, a complex process simplified, but all good theories must be distilled so people can follow their mechanics, Gerjólf is a symbol for all the acid the body craves, Gerjólf is the death bacteria, it wants to destroy the body, dissolve it in acid and preserve it, because acidic poetics are alive and breeding whereas alkaline poetics are stillborn and infertile. To be fair, let’s give the alkaline basic a name and call it Basólf. Imagine them as two wolves inside the body. Gerjólf is forgetful and irrational, Basólf is mindful and rational, Gerjólf is excess, Basólf is temperance; this is why acidic writers are often thoughtless and bad at relationships, unruly, alcoholic wind-bladders, often needing to apologize for various behavioral problems … are you at all familiar with this? The Regular said to Worm Serpent, and he was clearly relieved at such acknowledgement … alkaline writers are prudent and controlled and safe to be around and do not need have to have any particular concerns. The muse which poets have served from time immemorial is actually a fungus, a living fungus in the body, the muse is not a goddess in the upper atmosphere but a fungus called Gerjólf, poets have always served Gerjólf when they claimed they were worshipping the muse … poets have had a vague idea of this, in that they call literary talent an affliction, a sickness they fervently wish to be free from, whereas most minor poets look up to the muse and adopt assorted, desperate tactics in an attempt to approach her by chance; only little poets without literary gifts want to worship the Muse, that is, Gerjólf, great poets hate Gerjólf because the poetry within them will destroy the soul’s temple, so the unsightly spirit of the consumer might be raised up and power the economic cogwheels that trample the poet down into the mire, and Gerjólf himself at that, writers hate literary talents and start worshiping life and get themselves ridiculed. Given all that, it seems poetic to long for death, but foolish to want life.
I’m going to dedicate my next book to Gerjólf, said Worm, perhaps a new religion is emerging!? … in which poets are gods!
Gerjólf was born in the fields and so we should rightly thank the farmer for poetry and fiction and the body’s passions, the agricultural farmer’s labor birthed Gerjólf. One can see a clear correlation between cereal production in Iceland and written production, both were inactive for centuries, and now the whole country is covered by animal feed production, by ditches and fences, the country is entirely subjected to cultivating grass though not anything edible, except indirectly and dependent on violence against animals; amid this, fiction is entirely ignored … something, however, appears in this regard to do with climate warming and awareness about grain production and human production; still, it’s totally different from what was here at the settlement, when extremely pale fields glittered under the sky. Perhaps it’s not the best idea to keep on, said The Regular, addressing his words directly to Worm, or you’ll drink yourself to death, you’re quite free to do so, I personally hope you do, being acidic isn’t enough to make you a poet, not all drunks and gluttons are poets, Gerjólf gives you nothing if he’s over-saturated, experience has taught us that, any more than if he gets nothing but nuts and celery, because he will die. One needs to tame and constrain the wolf from within so he does not become too large and get loose from his leash, for if he does he will tear you apart from inside. Some think it’s enough to drink tons of alcohol in order to be a poet, but the reverse is true, when Gerjólf has been awoken, no bonds holds him, like the ancient wolf Fenris: poets are immediately enslaved by Gerjólf; Gerjólf is a hard taskmaster.
I think we should all go east to Öræfi this weekend, said Kiddi, who otherwise had sat silent during the telepathy, you too Worm, and you, Bernharður, are more than welcome to come stay with me. I thought it was a good offer, but I had decided to stay on the campsite at Skaftafell and study the place names. There’s plenty of place names at my place, Kiddi said to me, can’t you study them?
On Svínafell is where the swine went in ancient times, murmured The Regular as we stood up and went to the cloakroom; the band had completed Stabat Mater by Haydn and were packing their instruments away, we were the last ones to leave and found ourselves next to a pyramid of sheeps’ heads and empty champagne bottles that was a high as a person, the pigs back then were not pink and bald with huge asses like today’s factory swine, said The Regular as he slipped into his jacket, but dark and furry and with large shoulders and little asses—then he threw himself down on the carpet and lay face down and began to shake, he wept for a while, sobbing, he stood up again, rubbed his eyes, yawned and stuck his tongue out as far as he could, like a dog letting out its tension, he shook himself and went sloppily past us, through a large beige drape, and out through the revolving door, followed by three vaguely female creatures masked by shawls and mascara. We stood confused for a bit then walked out. He was standing outside in the morning light waiting for us. Oh, forgive me, I’m just trying to be entertaining, said The Regular, Bernharður said, interpreted the Interpreter, Dr. Lassi wrote in the report, Bernharður wrote to me in his letter, spring 2003.
1. Into the bright conflagration!
2. When the body dies, may my soul be granted the glory of paradise.
3. Worm I was
Worm I am
& Worm shall always be
with poisonous teeth
& a tambourine tail
I crawled alone
out of my skin
& switched hides.
III
MYSTERIES
Guilt goes by a winding route, it says in Proverbs, said The Regular on the way over the hill at the bus terminal, it’s a long and winding way from Klapparstígur home to Freyjugata via the wilderness that is Öræfi, a six-hundred-and-fifty-kilometer detour … admittedly, I always take the long way home; ever since I was a kid, I’ve wandered around and goofed off despite the fact that my mother repeated every morning as I left for the day that I must come straight home, straight home, my friend, my mother said every morning when I went to school, but I never came straight home, I always larked about and I will always lark about, I always take the longest route possible home, I will lark my way to the grave … and yet I also have the feeling I’ve wasted time, that my whole life has been a waste of time, I wasted time and it’s too late to do anything about it, I finished school late, didn’t know what I wanted, still don’t, I didn’t stick to any one job, I’ve got nothing, I’ve never been able to have a successful relationship with another person, I have a constant feeling of guilt, I’m young but I feel old, I’m old yet think I’m young … Back then things took longer than today: whenever we could, i.e. during school holidays, Kiddi and I took the green bus out into eternity, at
the time the bus took nine hours from Reykjavík to Öræfi; it now takes four hours by automobile. Still, that was a breakthrough, when the rivers were bridged and the sands, even if it wasn’t asphalt nearly all the way, just narrow, bumpy gravel roads, the bus larked about and perhaps still does these days, back then bus trips were very hazardous in winter, one had to stop at great cliffs and cross torrential rivers and put chains on the bus, sometimes we were stranded overnight somewhere in a storm and the bus company was forced to buy us accommodation in a hotel; I’d never stayed in a hotel, what a glory to stay in a hotel, I thought, clutching this foreign sensation to me, as a vacation from reality, I felt I’d finally become an independent being in the world. Being weather-bound inside a hotel in the countryside in a snowstorm is one of the best memories of my youth, said The Regular on the way over the hill, I can always remember exactly the feeling when I’ve been weather-bound, you recognize your own foundations, can descend to the very bottom, the calm becomes tangible, you read a book and you remember that book, the feeling of reading, the book becomes part of your person and is meaningful for the whole of your life, no matter what the book is, in fact, no matter what you do, reading a book or listening to weather reports on the radio or lying there silent, listening to the storm, life becomes filled with lyrical meaning, the storm isolates your character and holds it together, and before you know it you’re fearing the weather has died down, that the bus is leaving, that time is scant. I prayed to God for the weather to worsen, to remain that way for a week, a moderately long eternity, enough to read the entire bookcase in the front lounge, although all the books at the hotel at the time were perfect for that place at that moment.
Our departure from the bus terminal, BSÍ, took place early Friday morning, and we were all there, I, The Regular, Kiddi, and Worm Serpent; in fact, we had not even separated, just went right from the bar over the hill and down to the bus rank with my trunk in tow, making only a brief stop at Guesthouse Northern Lights on Freyjugata, where I cleared my room and settled my account; The Regular had no need to go into his room since all Kiddi’s stuff was out east, Worm Serpent didn’t need anything but the light jacket he was wearing, indeed, he didn’t have anything but the things on him, a worn leather bag with a few copies of his poetry books, a wallet, and the things in his pockets. I’m basically nothing but a dustjacket, said Worm Serpent, evidently distressed, I slip it off and there’s nothing more to me. The bus was short and tall, it was the bus used in the winter even though spring had arrived, you never know the weather out in the country, the roads, the bus was green and the words Eastern Way were written on it; we were the sole passengers. The Regular sat at the front with the driver; he snatched up the microphone and became a guide for the benefit of me, the tourist.
Our way first lies east over Hellisheiði, The Regular said into the microphone, which is an underrated beauty; on Hellisheiði Eggert and Bjarni marveled at the unexpected beauty as they passed through around the middle of the 18th century. But Reykjavíkers don’t see this beauty, they see just mines and outgrowth, things which are in reality destructive and wasteful: the beauty in Eggert and Bjarni’s eyes has been dug into and drilled and useless roads crisscross the torn-up moss and lava while endless pipes and power lines and high voltage towers are all over the place, there are also impassable routes and muddy waterholes, there are half-mountains, open-cast mining and nothing but facilities and factories, all monuments to the fate of Icelandic nature. Beyond the heath is Hveragerði, where you find massive hot springs, pillows of steam that rise to the heavens—but a stench lies over the settlement due to the burning sulfur fumes, they swell your thyroid, dandruff falls on your shoulders, sweat beads on your forehead, the poet seeks to shape this into the poetic spirit’s dwelling when it is in reality a poisonous vapor, inside the huge greenhouses druggies crawl around the tomatoes, hunting about under the heat lamps, sensitive to cold, the frequent earthquakes cause the greenhouses to explode and broken glass rains on the town, Hveragerðings are readily recognizable by abrasions and scratches wherever they go. Halfway between Hveragerði and Selfoss is Kotstrandarkirkja, which is called Flói, or the Gulf, and there are magical shifts in the light, a profound natural beauty that only artists with honed eyes know how to appreciate, there you find Ingólfsfjall, on which mountain the Icelandic settler Ingólf Arnarson was buried at his own request so he could watch Flói’s light show in the afterlife; by the side of the road men are at work destroying the mountain with never-ending mining so that this memorial to Iceland’s settlement might crumble, this holy mountain sacred to adventurers and poets, this Northern Parnassus which is being sundered by systematic work that destroys the nation itself, it’s an autopsy of the settler so that we might see the anatomy of our national character destroyed, ensuring nothing can be learned from it, it’s one thing to examine the land and another to dig a mine, well … under the mountain is Grýluskyr, blue cliffs in front of which stands Kögurnarhóll, inside which Ingólf Arnarson’s ship is buried; the road takes us between Grýluskyr and Kögurnarhóll, there, ideas frequently strike anyone open to them; a young Ludwig Wittgenstein rode through here on horseback with his concubine and had the idea for Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the solution occurred to Wittgenstein as he rode through the gate between Grýluskyr and Kögurnarhóll, he gesticulated wildly and called out to the glowing moor: The foundations of arithmetic are creaking now, maestro!—because in Tractatus, Wittgenstein refutes the teachings of Guðleif Frege, his mentor; Frege was afraid of Wittgenstein and moreover a terrible anti-Semite, so he sent Wittgenstein to Bernhard Russell in the UK, who told him that he should rebuild Jerusalem in Albion and all the Jews should leave for there. Guðleif Frege had spent all his long academic life building a foundational mathematical system for the world and language but when Wittgenstein, Frege’s student, was riding here between the blue rocks of the settler’s mountain and the ship’s tomb, free from Russell, he got the idea for the Tractatus and swept his mentor from the table of Western thought … it does not pay to offend Jews, The Regular said over the bus’s microphone; no one gets ideas here any more and moreover the moorland has been dried up by trench-digging so it no longer glitters under a lone sunbeam in Fló like before. The Blue Book is dedicated to Grýluskyr because it owes a debt to the blue cliffs, in the Blue Book Wittgenstein addresses at length sub rosa the beauty of changing light and sunbeams in Fló; the academic community has managed to miss that completely.
Then we cross over Ölfusárbrú—the bridge over the river Ölfus—and stop at the shop in Selfoss for ten minutes, as is unfortunately customary. The Regular fell silent for a while as we drove away from the place, everyone wanting to sleep; I saw a sign on the road, it seemed like a coat of arms rather than a road sign, spears and halberds in a cross, the purring of the bus and its dandling suspension had a strange effect on me, the slopes and mountain sights, the map indicating destructive forces all around, Hekla, Katla, I felt like an army of women was besieging us … Now we’re driving past Rangárvelli, said The Regular suddenly into the microphone, hoarse and mumbling, Þríhyrningur rises up here, a mysterious triangular mountain about which men know nothing. Then he stopped again, perhaps he had been asleep and had started talking in his sleep, finally we’re arriving at the site of Njál’s Saga where heroes once rode about the province showing off their ornaments and scarlet robes lined with gold and jasmine, this old dream of mine. I meant to get a hot dog in Selfoss, said Worm, when’s the next stop, the poet stood up and eased himself along the corridor to tell The Regular he wanted a hot dog. A stuffed skin tube drowned in sauce! cried The Regular into the bus microphone, at Hvolsvollur there’s a large shop, he said, fatherly and reassuring, there’s nothing but one big shop and a slaughterhouse, it’s a memorial to our Golden Age, a 20-minute stop at the shop which is named after the farm of one of the greatest heroes in Icelandic history, after his fate and history. We drove on, went under Eyjafjall and stopped at Skógar, over which the collector and elder �
�órður Tómasson reigns; he played the pump organ for us and sang Now Lingers Only Peace, a song by your country’s own Mozart, Þórður told me, Sehnsucht nach dem Frühlinge, a longing for spring, certainly appropriate since a late snow and cold spell was actually delaying the arrival of spring; we met the regional veterinarian, Dr. Lassi, an imposing woman (Dr. Lassi startles but keeps writing down what’s being interpreted) … a third man, Þrasi, who settled in Skógar, according to Landnám, was there in spirit, but the Cultural Heritage Officer for the Suðurlands, a sturdy, strong fellow, and all these gentlemen plus Dr. Lassi sang Now Lingers Only Peace to the tune of Mozart as Þórður pumped on the organ with great dexterity, not sparing the knee paddles; the stanza was sung over and over again until everyone started crying, we then sauntered over to the church and sang some hymns as a spiritual salve to clean away all our secular trash, like when Hindus bathe in the cloudy Ganges River, Praise Our God the Lord; a hymn especially for me, Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, first in German and then in Icelandic; and Psalm over Wine. We sang: God caused bounteous grapes to grow, wanted joy for a solemn world … then Þórður disappeared; no one knew what had become of him and the meeting broke up. It’s in archivists’ natures to disappear and appear to everyone’s surprise. After this unexpected concert, everyone returned to the passenger bus full of inspiration from Þórður and Þrasi in Skógar, a daily bread through the centuries. Now we will drive through Mýrdal, The Regular said into the microphone, a moist, green, fruitful valley, past the volcano Katla, she sleeps here, everyone sneaks about in the fields and whispers so as not to wake her, she’s what foreign languages call a tyran; we’ll stop at a convenience store in Vík to eat but they only serve hot dogs and hamburgers, french fries and cola, because that’s Icelandic food, although it’s not food but junk, we’ll pause there half an hour before continuing out onto Mýrdalsandur, which is like continuing out into death and the unknown, that’s what going out on the sand is, there will be a jökulhlaup if Katla wakes up, Katlahlaups are such fierce floods that the sand would become a single raging ocean, it’s good to be able to enjoy life a little in the shop, to do right by oneself and guzzle down a hotdog before you die on the sand and are washed out to sea in rapture.
Oraefi Page 16
