Reykjavík Grapevine - 11.01.2013, Page 30

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Welcoming Winter
The phenomenology of migration
You move away. You're elsewhere.
You may move away repeatedly, you
may stay away for long, your else-
where becomes a here, your former
here a onceuponatime. Yet. However.
That onceuponatime lingers. That
supposed elsewhere remains more
here than you expected. Its stub-
born hereness bothers you, because
you thought you were moving. You
thought you might settle. This isn't
even hereness, you say as you look
around yourself. It's not even hered-
ity; it's hereish, at most. It's all just
mildly hereish.
All the heres you travel through
accumulate into a heap of hereish-
ness you waddle in, but the one
that most irritates you with its stub-
born refusal to become a there and
onceuponatime is the place where
you started. It even lingers in your
mouth; when you speak, it's there.
Your accent keeps giving you away,
linking you to lots of people you have
no particular reason to like a lot and
even more reasons not to particularly
like at all. Your accent even gives away
your relation to particular people that
may or may not like you at all; none
of you may like each other and yet,
there you are, all like each other, with
that never absolutely local pronuncia-
tion of whatever words, whatever lan-
guage you supposed might become
part of your new here. Pronunciation,
grammatical errors, slang, habitual
keywords, exclamations—hereishly
they stay.
What's more, you find you don't
even care. It's not just the old here
that presses on you more than you
like; the new here does too. All the
heres, they're somewhat rude. They
don't seem to know their boundaries.
They here you more than you care
to be hered. Still they never seem to
here you fully—they push as they
pull; they don't send clear messag-
es. You know there's nothing vague
about yourself, all f lesh and blood,
so it must be them. It's the heres that
are only vaguely here. They demand
you, yet they give so little in return.
They demand all of you, your abso-
lute presence, but you realise they
will never be fully yours.
You take a new turn. Whatever
there is that can be referred to as you
changes its attitude, takes pride in
this lack of a full and complete here
and decides: I'll be neither here nor
there, their refusal to ful-
ly here me, to here to
me, the necessity
they impose
on me is now
my choice,
my chosen
I, I will be
neither here
nor there.
You decide:
whatever lack
of here I feel,
that is my own
private here, I can-
not not be here, in any
real sense, wherever I do
not fully go, there I am. So here I am,
by definition, whether any acknowl-
edged, identifiable here heres me or
not.
I'm trying to deliver some sort of
thoughts on nationality or ethnicity
as experienced through migration.
In ‘Ref lections on Exile,’ Edward Said
paraphrases Wallace Stevens' ‘Snow
Man’: “Exile … is a ‘mind of winter’
in which the pathos of summer and
autumn as much as the potential of
spring are nearby but unobtainable.”
It's true. This betweenness makes
you always absent, absent as only
winter is.
Whether it was forced or volun-
tary migration, there remain traces of
that old place within you, around you,
that you may not care to bring with
you. You may never have felt at home
there either. Because you're anti-na-
tionalist. You're cosmopolitan. You're
no-borders. And yet, there you are,
somewhere on the national-identity-
obsession-scale, preoccupied either
by nationality as an enemy, some-
thing to conquer, slay and do without,
or, in rarer cases, as something to be
cherished. Origins stay with you the
way shared celebrations do, the way
Christmas does for anyone brought
up in a pseudo-christian, post-chris-
tian, post-post-society: not celebrat-
ing that sort of thing takes more
force than taking part ever does. It's
human-made, it's something we do.
Yet it's simply there, persistent as you
thought only mountains would be. A
habit.
Of course though, it's not just
about actual migrants. Wher-
ever you grew up is no
longer there. Phones
didn't use to be this
smart; energy
didn't use to be
this green. Cof-
fee wasn't this
creamy, the
heres weren't
this vague,
vague wasn't
this vogue, there
seemed to be a san-
er shade of vain. Even
etceteras seemed to know
their place and lead somewhere.
Etc. Still this is not nostalgia. (Ah …
remember when we had nostalgias?
(Ah … remember when we remi-
nisced about the times we had nostal-
gias (etc.)))
You're all grown up now, you mi-
grant, you let go of your here and
thought there was something to be
gained. You're all grown up now. This
is it. It's not even a this. Not even an
it. Just fifty old f lickering shades of
not here. Not even revolution will be
here in any fulfilling sense. Here is
over. Who killed it?
You move away. You're elsewhere. You may move away repeatedly, you may stay away for long, your elsewhere
becomes a here, your former here a onceuponatime. Yet. However. That onceuponatime lingers. That supposed
elsewhere remains more here than you expected. Its stubborn hereness bothers you, because you thought you were
moving. You thought you might settle. This isn't even hereness, you say as you look around yourself. It's not even
heredity; it's her ish, at most. It's all just mildly hereish.
“
„
Coffee wasn't this good, the
heres weren't this vague, vague
wasn't this vogue, there seemed to
be a saner shade of vain. Even etcet-
eras seemed to know their place
and lead somewhere. Etc.
30The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 1 — 2013
One of the greatest paradoxes of Ice-
landic discourse is the generalised
aversion to any form of small talk, but
an all-encompassing passion for the
subject of weather. All clichéd tourist
jokes aside, it really does change so
rapidly and drastically (sometimes dan-
gerously) that it can quickly put a room
in a tizzy. Our meteorologists have a
particularly tough gig on their hands
too, given how inconsistent it is from
one year to the next! The one that just
ended was no different, providing the
whole country with endless excitement.
We kicked off last winter with crazy
snowstorms carrying over from 2011,
resulting in dozens of grounded flights
and general havoc in Reykjavík, a city
thoroughly unprepared for snow clear-
ing. However, this was no match for
Ísafjörður, whose mass amounts of pre-
cipitation caused an avalanche warn-
ing to go into full effect, shutting down
businesses and schools. The children
of the Westfjords rejoiced.
The winter eventually petered out
in an anti-climax and spring ushered
in with classic showers. Things started
getting interesting in May as the left-
overs of that famous ash cloud rolled
into the capital area just in time for
allergy season, much to the dismay of
asthmatics. Luckily, the ash blew away
by the end of the month and gave way
to remarkably clear skies, allowing the
whole country to witness an extraordi-
nary and rare astronomical event, the
transit of Venus.
Starting in May and carrying on
through June and July, there was much
confusion about the island as the light
season clocked in record hours of un-
obstructed sunshine—836.6 hours to
be exact! While some rejoiced at the
rare opportunity to wear nothing but
hot-pant jorts and nipple tape (well,
not really), the sun forced others to
deal with real world problems: severe
droughts caused farmers to yield low
hay production for their livestock and a
state of emergency was declared as the
Northwest battled raging grass fires.
The north had it rough again in the
autumn, as sudden, extreme weather
knocked out power and killed thou-
sands of sheep during the round-up
season. (Let it be said though, they
were on their way to the slaughter-
house at the time.) Meanwhile, as tour-
ists and bands piled into Reykjavík at
the beginning of November, winds over
28 metres per second raged through
the streets, truly putting the air back in
Airwaves! These bouts of bad weather
caused much hubbub as people came
up in arms against the Icelandic Met
Office, claiming they hadn’t been
warned. The latter rightfully responded
that yes, they actually had.
Finally, the weather reporters got
one clean break by accurately bearing
the bad news that there would be no
white Christmas in the capital. Despite
a nice dusting to ring in the New Year,
it’s back to grey glutch for now. Hang
onto your hats; who knows what’s next!
- REBECCA LOUDER
YEAR IN
WEATHER
Words
Haukur Már Helgason
Illustration
Lóa Hjálmtýsdóttir