Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.01.2011, Side 26

26
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 1 — 2011 All of the participating authors have published excellent works of fiction
and/or poetry in the last decade. Be on the lookout.
Words and illustration by Kristín
Eiríksdóttir
00.00 01.01. 2011
I’ll probably be in the taxi once The
New Year arrives, it never comes as
was planned for. From the edge of
the city you can hear the noise from
fireworks, but you just see them vanish
up into reddish clouds.
01.00 01.01 2012
The crystal dissolves in the palm of
the hand. I can’t decide which party to
attend and suddenly everyone is gone.
Hallgrímskirkja looks like a Japanese
ghost slowly expanding its jaw. I regret
having eaten what I ate.
02.00 01.01 2013
No matter how I drink I stay the
same, made from spirits but might as
well be sober. It’s the holiday season.
This evening is always
supposed to be so great
but it sucks as much each
time. The bombs are
the same. I should have
bought fireworks. My
hands are useless and it’s
dangerous.
03.00 01.01 2014
The sheets are clean. I
haven’t stayed up this late
since 1993. The woman
at the dinner spoke so
much about the lack of
vitamin-D. She wore a
beautiful necklace and the f loors were
covered with mottled paper strings
from crackers but I can’t recall any
fireworks. Rickets, depression, bowed
limbs, fatigue and skeletal deformities.
04.00 01.01 2015
The teenagers know nothing of the
last century. They breathe like lap
dogs, with their sleepy eyes and always
sincere; they mean everything they
say. We’ll take irony with us to the
grave. Forgotten like some obsolete
technology. They are just not interested
in objectivity.
05.00 01.01 2016
Photo of Earth projected on the moon,
no need for mirrors anymore, if you
know what I mean. Where do they get
all this information? Did anyone else
notice a tiny shadow that ran across
there just now? Just disappeared into
the soot, and there is another one.
Once there was a pond right where you
are standing now, lead-grey from pike
and the bridge across collapsed.
06.00 01.01 2017
Children are the future, have you
looked into a tub of herring? Some still
wiggling in the pile but it’s just spasm.
Or movements arriving here from
the next life. What do we know? The
more the less, if you ask me. I always
meditate death at midnight. Grab your
mouth or you’ll come out. So many
futures, one per crown and you can
barely catch a glint of pavement.
07.00 01.01 2018
I have never had so much fun as right
now. Now is great, now can always
stay, just now, this is great. Nothing
can take my attention away from this,
now, this is wonderful.
Costumes? What a
mistake. No one told
me this was a costume
party. Hopefully
nobody is alone tonight,
or dying. Hopefully
everyone is just being
born. Now is great.
08.00 01.01 2019
Birds can keep the
Island. This thing that
came from under the
glacier can keep me.
Family trees with small
bird houses and mutated cats fill the
fox holes. You get used to the changes
before you notice them. Like that
through the centuries, may they keep
on coming. Cheers to the dinosaur.
Faith in science is a clown.
09.00 01.01 2020
I can’t believe I’m still up. Why do
I always start the New Year in total
chaos? Every time I’m afraid to miss
something my life goes to the trash.
Eyes filled with logs. Oxygen comes
through the tiny holes, I’d ask for gills
on my shoulder blades much rather
than wings. I’m so wasted. Tomorrow
I’ll ask forgiveness. Tomorrow is
already here. I’ll never get to bed. Now
was just then, God, existence can be so
confusing. Cheers.
</2010 LITERATURE>
Ten Short New Year’s Speeches
Into The Future:
May Oral Gnarr Annualise?
By Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl
Illustration by Inga María
Brynjarsdóttir
Municipal decree stardate 01012021-001
-- January 1st, 2021. State anarcho-
surreo-separatist municipality of central
Laugavegur and the united TGIFs of the
greater eurafrican kingdom.
Citizens of love and the Tao! I beseech
you! Hark, hark! Hear, here! Lo, lo!
Whiff! Feel! Taste! Orgasm!
I write you now to say: Another
decade gone *poof!* with all its wars,
poverty and abundance in abundance –
yay! Past rejoicing, you rejoicers-you, of
holidays a’bountiful – we hope you’ve
had meals worthy of the tallest tales
and presents in glittery packaging,
another winter, o ye of mostly
fashionable clothing – it is, alas (we
might add), now time for more serious
business. As your incumbent mayoral
dignitarious “Gnarr” (dee harr harr),
I’m thoroughly empleased to announce
the latest in modern fads:
More rules! Better rules of greater
precision!
First of all, less service (not really
a rule – more a “rule of thumb”,
if you will), although this perhaps
goes without saying: We must make
sacrifices for the common good, and
even more so, for the individual good.
We must, that is to say, make sacrifices
for the good, and not just some of the
good (as in the past) but all of the good,
the absolute totality of the good. This is
not a joke. We do not make fun of the
good. Unreproachable, we are, in no
jest whatsoever.
Hah, got ya! (No, really, we’re totally
serious).
As a follow-up to the successful
transaction of city concrete to the
unlaughably retro-capitalistic suburbs
(for which we received an abundance of
extremely extreme nail-polish remover,
traded with the Commonwealth
of northeastern Buenos Aires for
250 grand frappucinos (including
disposable stir-spoons)) it has been
unanimously decided, within the
municipal council, that the bicycle
paths on upper Laugavegur (strictly
speaking the property of our
theocratical neighbour municipality, a
matter of some concern, I assure you)
will be auctioned … going once, twice
… sold! to the Pescal Harbour Duchy
of Sæbraut (for two half-portions
of delicious halibutt – two tails, in
fact, fins intact, in tartar sauce with
potatoes and broccoli, yummy!)
(My telephone seems to be ringing,
but I’m not answering. I’m not! No, no,
no. Busy, busy, busy. *Sigh* I wish I’d
known politics was such a drudgery).
And then some: as this is a greater
decree of glee than thus far we’ve
permitted (the revolution must not
stop at the local petting zoo), it is with
some sternness and severity (ha ha!)
that we now decree a “gleeful grump-
hinder”. The mosques of central
Laugavegur (as well as the prayer
booths at TGIFs worldwide) will now
carry mandatory cartoon commentary
on the prophet (and his terrorist
followers), the at-laughing of which
will be equally mandatory (three times
during the cleaning rituals). Laughter
may be rendered in the form of an
slamic prayer-call, an adhan, but only
if it is provably (beyond the slightest
doubt) of a humourous quality.
No joke! (Funny, no?)
Nextly, I would like to start by
apologizing for using the word “bitch”
in a recent radio interview. As amends
I’ve forbidden the word (unless
pronounced with the utmost of lisps)
and any mention of “the incident”,
private or public. To those concerned
(I’m looking at you, sisters!) you have
my sincerest “oops”. I was speaking as
an artist, a true surrealist, and meant
nothing by it. Nothing at all. Your
ideologies disgust me and I’d never
sink to that level. I’m sorry already, get
a life.
I probably need not re-mention that
this is a tough job, I am under a lot
of pressure. I am just a normal guy, I
am no “tough cookie”, and cannot be
expected to be a Superman nor am
I, as some of the most humourless
fuddy-duddies amongst you have
deigned to imply, a super-villain –
and to tell you the truth I’m, like,
totally tired of your Predator-jokes
(your sense of humour, btw, is highly
unprofessional – this is a skill, people,
it needs to be learned) They are so
ten years ago it’s not funny. Not even
We contacted a bunch of our most be-
loved local authors and asked them to
write short short stories for us with, on
the theme ‘Iceland and the next de-
cade’. Their mission, should they accept
it, was to consider: “what’s in store for
our island?” then examine their feelings
about that imagined future and deliver
them in prose form using no more than
1200 words.

We are stunned that so many of our
favourites wound up participating, and
doublestunned with the stories they
turned in. While they are surprisingly
(and disappointingly!) low on futuris-
tic cyberpunk sci-fi scenarios and cy-
borgs, we believe that they offer a clear
window into our collective hopes and
fears at the moment; solemn medita-
tions on a future that’s very unclear
(even unnerving). They are also all very
entertaining and clever. Reserve some
time, read on and enjoy!
FUTURE
/
PERFECT
/
TENSE
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