I'm Goin' out West where the Wind Blows Tall

Last month in country. It seems like a needlessly sad thing to leave Iceland in the winter, when the southern sun is doing all its pretty things, reflecting orange on all the buildings after lunch-time, passing through the trees and making the silver bark look gold, giving shape to the storm clouds and making the frozen Pond shine.

Google is refusing to let me post more photos, apparently I've filled up my quota. I'll put some up on facebook, soon, but I already sort of botched my intention to get all the pictures from Germany and Amsterdam up in short succession. Apologies. I have managed to get my diploma, get my first academic job transcribing manuscripts, and finish all my PhD applications in the meantime. And considering I have meanwhile somehow convinced myself that it's imperative to watch all of Star Trek DS9 again, I think it's a pretty fair amount done.

Deep ambivalence is ruling life at the moment (I think ambivalence might be the official emotion, not only for my life, but for liminal spaces in general); joy and sorrow at leaving Iceland, elation and anxiety at waiting to hear where I'll go next, and pride and disappointment that I have managed to embark on an academic career, yet somehow it managed to be about translation and grammatica and history rather than about Beowuld and mythology and dragons. Funny how that works, how curiosity and interest and time and opportunity all sort of twist around with each other and, if you're putting any effort into life at all, you end up somewhere different than you'd expect.

I will miss Skyr most of all (just kidding, Magda). Alongside it with be the wind and the water and sun, the rain and snow and hail, the basalt and the moss and particularly the birch trees; I will miss walking absolutely everywhere and only rarely thinking it's slow. I will miss the taxi drivers talking about Laxdæla saga and the bartenders talking about Guinness. I will miss my Irish session and the general feeling whenever I listen to medieval music while walking about that this is the perfect place to do it. I will miss the swans and the geese and the ducks and the gulls and whatever those birds were that attacked Paul's head.

I will mostly certainly not, however, miss any of my friends here. None of them have the philological skill to be worth missing.