Mercy or Murder - The Flipside of Paradise

This is not a happy post. 

Reality, nature and life are cruel and while I'm completely at ease with the theoretical notion of this, I'm also a hypocrite. But let me elaborate. If we have met in person, you are likely to have suffered through my "food equality" speech. I am not vegetarian and I think if you do eat meat, you should not discriminate on the base of cuteness, adorableness, personal ick factor or anything else. In my opinion, if you are a carnivore, you owe it to all animals that give their life for food to eat them. The little piglet that ends up on your barbecue has the same desire and right to live as your beloved pet. I will try anything put in front of me, and while not everything is equally easy to eat, so far, I have been able to be true to my convictions, while going out of my way to avoid endangered species (different story all together). However, and here is where my hypocrisy sets in, while I will eat anything, I really really don't want to be involved in the killing process. Of anything. If I accidentally step on a bug or some other creepy crawly, I apologise for taking its life and say a little prayer. Even though I'm not religious, go figure. I feel bad about taking that life, although it belongs to a creature that I find utterly disgusting. If I find insects and spiders in my house, I will not kill them, but catch them, carry them outside and set them free. In my opinion, this helps me keep my karma clean. 

In 2013, I visited Iceland for the first time. I went to a rural place in the north to go riding. Late June and early July mark the breeding season for birds here, so there were adorable little fluffy chicks all over the place and suicidal bird parents threw themselves in the way of our horses to lure us away from their nests. In one instance, I wasn't quick enough to move my horse out of the way and rode over a fluffy little baby bird. Filled with terror, I jumped down from my horse to see if it was ok. It wasn't. I had injured it. In my opinion, the only right thing to do if you have injured a wild creature is to kill it to spare it having to starve to death, wait for a predator to find it and suffer pain. Half-blind with tears and panic, I couldn't think of anything else, so I stomped on it with force. It would have died immediately. 

While people around me confirmed that I had done the right thing, this little bird has haunted me ever since. When I took its little life, it took a part of my soul with it and I have been terribly ashamed of the way I did it. I wished that I hadn't stepped on it, but that I had been calm and strong enough to honour it by taking it into my hands and breaking its neck. Quick, painless, respectful. 

I haven't told this story to many people, because it makes me cry and I don't like to appear vulnerable.

As it's breeding season again and because I have never truly gotten over the story from three years ago, I make sure to inform all my guests to stay on the paths and look out for birds, of course leaving out the details of my personal experience. Yet, three days ago, after four days with great guests, great horses and lots of fun, history repeated itself. Towards the end of the tour, I changed my mind about the way I was going to take and chose the more scenic, yet slower route instead of taking the faster road. My reasons were that on day 1, one of my guests and I had gotten into a conflict based on a misunderstanding on the faster route and I didn't want her to relive that moment by taking her back to the same place, even though this group enjoyed a bit of speed.

So the scenic route we took. Wile we were tölting through the meadows, a little bird baby, too young to fly, hopped into the sheep trail in front of me. I quickly steered my horse out of it and shouted "baby chick" to my guests, but I was too late, so I stopped the group and jumped of my horse, hoping that the little guy had gotten away. It hadn't. It was injured, we had broken its little leg. I felt the same horror I had felt three years ago and wailed in desperation. I am still convinced that it is my duty to end a wild creature's life, if I have injured it. I wanted to honour this little bird more than his little cousin, hoping that it would give me a little more peace. I took it into my bare hands, where it was trying to flutter about and made tiny cheep cheep sounds. It was the softest, fluffiest little thing I have ever touched. I was crying this whole time and apologising to the birdie and I wanted to make it quick and painless, so I took the tiny little neck between my fingers and twisted. In my need and desperation to get this over with, I applied to much force and ended up severing the little head from the chick's body. I had no idea how fragile and delicate bird babies are. I flung both parts of the body in different directions and found myself sobbing in my guest's arms. 

I brought my group home and spent the rest of my day hiding my pain and tears from everyone else. In the evening, I drowned myself in half a bottle of red wine and finally put up the wall tattoos I had purchased a while ago. Two little birds for the two little lives I took plus a big one to take care of them, as they were to young to take care of themselves. I will eventually give them a whole flock to keep them company and I sincerely hope that none of the other stickers I put up will ever have to represent another animal I killed.

I do think that I did the right thing and that killing the little birds was an act of mercy. That doesn't make me feel any less awful. And it doesn't make me feel any better about my hands. My hands remember the fluffy, not quite feathery touch of the wriggling little chick. They remember the snapping of the neck and the tearing of the skin and tissue. While they were simply following orders from my brain, they were acutely aware of the tiny specks of blood on them, the horror with which I looked at them and the utter disbelief I felt when each of them was holding a different part of the little bird. I can no longer use them for many tasks. While they will still hold a fork, dress me and do work, I cannot bring myself to use them for things like applying lip gloss with the tip of my finger or eat anything with my fingers. I can't have them close to my mouth or any other orifice for that matter. I have the feeling that I have baby bird under my fingernails. No amount of washing and cleaning has made this better so far.

I know that I'm being unjust towards them. If you have some tips about how to reconcile them with me, I would greatly appreciate. If not, I hope that time will heal us.

Catching up

It's been a while, hasn't it?

So much has been happening in the past months that I never really got around to writing it all down. Time to catch up and bring you up to speed.

First things first, you might have noticed that we are still in Iceland. We have decided to stay for now, but have moved from rural Hveragerði to metropolitan (cough) Garðabær, a neighbouring municipality of Reykjavik. With geekdom grossly underrepresented in rural Iceland, Frankenspouse wasn't finding enough like-minded people to play with and asked to move to the capital area. Three months' worth of searching, contacting potential landlords, sweating and expecting the worst later, we found our new place in the new neighbourhood Urriðaholt, overlooking a little lake, ridiculously overpriced of course, but very scenic.

For me, that means commuting to work, 45 km over a mountain pass by an active volcano with interesting weather conditions. On a good day, the drive is easy and relaxing through beautiful scenery, moss-covered lava fields, steaming mountains and very little traffic. On days with less than stellar weather, it implies crawling through dense fog with visibility of something like 15 meters. On those poor-visibility days, I'm so pumped with adrenaline by the time I get to work, I'm rather short-fused and need to calm my nerves with sugar before facing the happy, excited masses. None of this is matters right now though. Fríða, my little Honda Civic committed suicide by means of a broken alternator and our other car is in the shop for a broken gearbox. Only the 3rd and 6th gear were working in the end, which made driving over the mountain an interesting experience, to say the least. So now I'm condemned to using public transport, which, outside the capital area, is tedious and takes forever, but at least gives me a chance to catch up on my reading.

Last week, I went on a 4-day tour with one of the Icelandic guides that return each summer for a few tours. It was nothing short of a blast and I had my first shot at being in charge of the horse list. This means it was my job to match horses and riders, as well as to make sure all horses were getting enough rest and riders were neither overmatched or bored. Sounds trivial? You try it. It's basically an enormous puzzle that you solve several times a day, then throw all the pieces in the air and try to put them together in a completely new and different way, so that people don't always end up riding the same horse.

One of the highlights of the last few months was definitely Frankenspouse's Christmas gift to me, a tour into the lava chamber of a volcano. Þrínúkagígur (let's say it all together: Three-nookah-geeyur) is an inactive volcano close to Reykjavík. It is the only (known) crater in the world that didn't collapse with the volcano's last eruption or filled up with lava, allowing people to visit the actual empty lava chamber. We found ourselves in a huge, cathedral-like hall with beautiful, multi-coloured walls. The colours are due to different mineral deposits and evoke the feeling of being inside a ginormous piece of art. It is an incredibly beautiful and raw place, this lava chamber, one that makes you want to lie one your back and stare at the walls for hours, trying to grasp what happened here. You'll be able to follow the path the fire took with your eyes, you'll see where it burned the hottest, you'll see where the volcano's lava chamber was touching another, much older volcano's lava chamber, creating a completely different structure in the rocks. It's one of the places that make you feel small and irrelevant, yet giddy with excitement at how cool this planet is. It was a huge privilege to see this and if it wasn't so expensive, I'd go back every week, staring at the insides of Earth's womb like a kid at a Christmas tree.

Of Pain and Pleasure

Nope, this is not another sequel to 50 Shades of Grey. This is about the bittersweet feeling of calling more than one place "home".

I'm not overly prone to homesickness. Also, every time I walk out the door and see Iceland around me, I do a little happy dance in my head. This is still the case, even though the honeymoon phase is over, as they say.

However, in the beginning of December, homesickness hit me hard. Frankenspouse had already gone south for work and to spend time with friends and family and here I was all by my lonesome for three weeks in the cold cold and dark dark. Without him here, feelings that are always lurking in the dark but never really surface, well, surfaced. I miss home. As in the place where I come from. My mum isn't doing so well and while I'm trying to talk to her as much as I can, I have the feeling that I should be there in person to give actual, physical support. I want to spend time with my sister and see my niece growing up. I want to fall into a bottle of bubbly with my best friend, I want to hang out with my friend, the witch, who seems to understand my twisted insides a lot better than most others or who is simply that much more tolerant. I want to pop over to Luxembourg and see my friend's new baby and reconnect with all the people who touched my life, especially my superwoman Kindle editor colleague, who was the first to actually make it to Iceland to see me, and the rest of my team at Amazon. I want to hang with the in-laws (actually got my first hug by FS' little brother after a mere 9 1/2 years of dating. Historical experience!) and visit my father's grave. But mostly, I want to help my mother and stepfather, who are having a hard time, both individually for different reasons, as well as with each other.

So far, so good, if I want to move back to Germany after my year here is over, what's keeping me? What's keeping me is that this here is the place my heart lives, where my soul is at ease and my mind can let go. Apologies for the soppiness, I don't know how to say it any other way. The minute I left Iceland to go home for Christmas, I couldn't wait to come back, to breathe the fresh air, to see the strange moonscapes, to feel the angry weather on my skin. I prefer the person I am here as compared to the one I used to be. I am less stressed, less perfectionist and more relaxed. I don't care so much about the little things anymore. Don't get me wrong, I am still me and can still get my knickers in a twist about any old thing, but occurrences are much fewer and further between. I can even accept that I'm not always in control and that things will work themselves out eventually. 

I loved my time back home in Germany, I would have liked to stay longer and spend more time with everyone. While I couldn't wait to get one that plane and return to Iceland, I needed more time with my loved ones back home, because they are the one thing Iceland cannot provide. So when I got back to Iceland, I was homesick yet again. And in addition, I had apparently managed to somehow squeeze a supersized portion of Guilt with a capital G into my luggage. I am trying to befriend Guilt, welcome him and accept him as part of my life. On the upside, if I stay in Iceland, I'll never be alone again. On the downside, I'll have to carry this unwieldy fxxxer around with me. Excuse my French.

Unfortunately, my job does not have regular weekends and isn't very flexible about taking time off. It's like being back at the embassy, where I was supposed to take all my annual vacation at once. Being over 3000 km away, this doesn't really make it easier to stay connected with friends and family. Ideally I would want to go to Germany for a long weekend at least 2 or 3 times a year as well as to England at least twice. So this doesn't really work for me in the long run. 

As to staying or going home, the jury is still out on that. I would like to stay, as I can not imagine not being in Iceland. Originally, the decision was between FS and myself, but all of a sudden there is three of us. Guilt has reached adulthood and demands the right to vote.

On a happier note, we had our first Þorrablót yesterday (remember this post?) and it was a lot of fun watching FS eat all the sour stuff. Everyone else was at least one generation older than us, but we had a surprisingly fun time singing, eating and drinking with everyone. I scored some points for knowing the words to a popular Icelandic folk song and eating the infamous shark without pulling a face.