A and I decided to take a road trip to the black beaches of Southern Iceland in mid-January. I hadn’t been for sometime, and I longed to see the surreptitious, desolate landscapes again, to breathe in the crisp, cold sea air that prodded my senses into recognition, to meditate to the sound of the ocean waves that pounded ashore, pulverizing hardened black lava into the tiniest bits that looked and felt like sand, to watch the color of the sky morph into a life-sized water color, with pastel yellows, blues, pinks and purples bleeding together as the sun dipped towards the horizon.
We set off mid-morning, with a sleepy twilight still hovering above us, having just passed the long winter solstice. In January, the days get noticeably longer fairly quickly, but not yet. Like the usual winter morning in Reykjavík, the city felt hushed and movements slowed as though witnessing street life through the lens of a dream. That’s what the winter twilight does to me; not having grown up surrounded by 20 hours of darkness on the shortest days of the year, I associate darkness with mysterious evenings filled with revelry and surprises, reflection and exhaustion, or hours of self-indulgent sleep. One of the blessings (and curses) of being in a northern latitude as a foreigner is never really knowing the time by the color of the sky.
There are days when the sky looks like a wide, open road, and this was one of them. We headed east on Route 1 and drove for about an hour before reaching Gundufalur, a town known for steam emanating from the ground and a number of greenhouses erected in the area that somehow benefit from it. Large swelling hills surrounded what was apparently a golf course, not one resembling anything I’d ever before seen, green-brown due to the season, though one that would soon turn a lush, verdant green sometime in the late spring. The landscape was smattered with lava that looked like large rocks, which were covered with bright green moss nearly five inches thick. The moss was squishy to the touch and dense enough to lay on comfortably — a mattress made from nature.
After deciding not to cross a small river in our car, which, to our later misfortune, was not an SUV, we headed south towards the beach. A seemed to know where we were going after veering off of the main road and climbing down a winding one-lane dirt pathway. We passed a few farms along the way, which were situated significantly off the beaten path. I wondered how these families felt about living where they did. Had they previously tried city life and realized that it just wasn’t for them? Had they wandered out into the world, only to have their dreams somehow disintegrate into a mishmash of wounded hope and pride? Had they inherited the farmland from distant relatives and opted for an isolated life instead?
Lately I have been yearning to disappear completely, to settle on a farm situated scenically along the edge of the earth and live peacefully without a moment spent pondering motives or intentions. I don’t know if it’s a funk that I’ve been in or simply part of growing up, the part where you realize that people will often let you down somehow and your dreams, the ones you were nearly certain when you were 19 years old would be a living part of your future might instead be left unfulfilled for all of eternity and that’s just how life is. Because fate works in funny ways. It’s not so much a feeling-sorry-for-myself funk as it is retreating with my tail tucked tightly between, wrapped firmly around, my legs, defeatedly confronting irrevocable loss. It doesn’t matter who you are or how hard you work or if you’re a good person or if you’ve got wonderful friends or if you’re beautiful and talented or if you’re just not and you just don’t; when fate steps in, the consequences can be inexorably damaging. It’s an obvious point that we sometimes seem to recognize only as it applies to others, until it doesn’t.
We passed the third farm on our left, its white house planted some distance from a red barn housing miniature Icelandic horses and probably other livestock too. Approximately 200 meters from the edge of the farm land was a dirt road pointing directly towards the direction of the sea. It was barricaded closed, an express message to passersby that January is not the time of year to travel down it. And that is mostly true if one doesn’t have a proper off-road vehicle; that is mostly true regarding most roads in Iceland during the winter.
A got out of the car and opened the gate, got back in the car, and began navigating down the black road. I breathed in deeply as I heard the sound of the wheels struggle beneath us. The road was comprised of wet black sand, and marked by tire marks from the last visitors before us. We were nearly at the end of the road, where we’d have to get out of the car anyway and walk to the beach, when the car sunk into a puddle and refused to get out. After numerous attempts to move forward or backward, propping lava stones under the front wheels for traction, removing them out of frustration, the wheels merely dug themselves more deeply into the ground. We were stuck.
I got out of the car and nearly toppled forward from the wind. It was clear that we were close to the beach, though it wasn’t within our sight. The air smelled like sea air, the wind whipped us like air bursting up from the water, and the sound… the waves pounding ashore sounded like a freight train in the distance rushing over a rickety bridge that could barely sustain it. I shivered and felt the hair on my arms rise, as though subject to an electric shock. We were stranded, with no one and nothing in sight, save for seemingly endless black dunes in front of us and flat, dark fields covered with occasional brush to each of our sides.
A called the police and was instructed to contact the nearest farm to see if they could tow us out. The silliness of this feat didn’t fully register until I watched a man in his mid-30’s pull our car out of its sinkhole with an enormous red tractor.
I didn’t want to wait to catch a glimpse of the beach. The sun was beginning to drop towards the horizon and there wouldn’t be much sunlight left; we’d been lucky thus far with a decent three hours of sunlight on our trip. I grabbed my camera and headed towards the sound of the waves. I walked and walked for what felt like an eternity. The sound of the waves was louder than anything I’d ever heard before — louder than a Manhattan express train bursting through one of its stations without stopping — and as I walked closer to it, I felt an ominous anticipation: what if I reached this unfamiliar beach, only to discover enormous, hostile waves pounding far beyond the shore line, eagerly awaiting my sacrifice? The ocean sounded angry and uninviting, as though there were a reason few people made the trek down that desolate dirt road — there was a reason it had been barricaded shut.
The ocean felt so close, yet each time I’d cross over a large sand dune, only to expect the beach on the other side, I’d only encounter more dunes, more flat land, more brush. I walked across a flat sandy area smattered with sinkholes, some of which were rather large, and I wondered whether, if I walked across the untouched field, a large sinkhole would open up and swallow me whole, undiscoverable to A or anyone else. Later when A came to find me, he told me the same thought had crossed his mind, too, though each of us opted to chance it.
After more than 15 minutes of walking towards the rushed rumbling sounds of the ocean, I encountered an area sheltered by yet another dune, which contained thousands of purple and white shells, a bright contrast against the rich black sand. There were yellow, orange and white round buoys scattered around, as though someone had decided to play ball and quickly deserted the place, running for cover. How had these items reached so far ashore, in this cove behind the dune? I envisioned a winter storm so fierce and destructive, one in which the cold sea rose ten-fold and thrashed ashore, nearly reaching the closest farm. Had they ever encountered an unexpected tempest that could do this kind of damage before? Did they worry that they might?
I crossed another cluster of smaller dunes covered in dry brush and finally sensed the beach was near. My heart began to race as I realized how close I was to something that I couldn’t yet see, and my body shivered again. The ground suddenly dipped steeply downward, a clumsy introduction to the flat sands dispersing out of the ocean water. Yellow sunlight reflected from the water as it receded backward, making the beach resemble a giant mirror. I inhaled the salty ocean air and stepped forward.
The black beach spanned for an eternity in both directions, with no sign of life around at all. Waves pounded the shore line with an enormous crash, breaking three times before finally reaching the beach. The waters were violent and threatening, and not something one could languidly stroll into for a quick refreshment, assuming the temperatures were not sub-zero. I wasn’t sure if this was normal or whether a storm was brewing further out at sea. Still, it was almost hard to believe that the waves were responsible for creating such deafening sounds back on the dunes.
I walked toward the water, hesitating every so often. There were stories about rogue waves in this part of the country swallowing unassuming visitors whole. I decided I’d take a chance — I’m a quick runner, no? The water was mesmerizing to watch as it rushed the beach, then calmly retreated backward, leaving starch-white foam that bubbled and fizzed before disintegrating into the dark black sand. Each wave seemed to reach further than the last, as though the ocean was testing itself. The beach was completely flat and wet, a probable indicator that the sea had recently receded from high tide, and the sudden realization that the waves in front of me had just been where I stood made me shudder.
It felt as though I had reached the end of the earth, and that there was no need for anything or anyone else to be there with me. The glowing sun dipped close to the horizon, inquisitively facing me, its rays reaching out, gently warming my cheeks. As I watched the synchronicity of the waves pushing towards me, then pulling away, I felt weightless, embraced.
I turned around and headed back towards the car.
Wherein being a Gelfling doppelgänger isn’t necessarily a bad thing
The Dark Crystal was to the 1980’s what The Lord of the Rings and possibly Where the Wild Things Are have been to the 2000’s, though arguably, it is a darker and scarier world for a little kid. It’s a classic good versus evil quest story, though told through a unique story line and set in a land without any humans at all, where prophecies, guardians and mysticism can determine one’s destiny, and it’s a story that utterly captivated me as a child.
Jen, a Gelfling, is raised by the Mystics, and is believed to be the last of his kind, because the Skeksis massacred his people. Jen is the Chosen One, and his destiny is to find the missing shard that broke off from the kingdom’s Crystal and heal it, lest the land will become one of evil over good. (The Crystal harnesses the forces of nature in this world, particularly the light from the three suns, for the benefit of the world’s inhabitants.) A prophecy is inscribed on a wall in the ancient Gelfling village: “When single shine the triple suns, what was sundered and undone, shall be whole, the two made one, by Gelfling hand or else by none.” No pressure or anything. So when the Skeksis find out that Jen exists, they go a little Cheney on everyone, push the red panic button and send out troops of giant Garthim — these lumbering black beetle-like creatures that are capable of destroying anything within sight with their enormous pincer claws, all while making these disturbing clicking noises. Their orders: to locate and destroy Jen.
Meanwhile, Jen is helped by a gray, squishy curmudgeon astrologer named Aughra, who can remove her eyeball and still see through it. The logistics of this feat intrigued me very much as a child and left me wondering whether this was actually possible for terribly unfortunate accident victims. Aughra is a wise and witty soul who lives in an observatory and knows a lot about suns and planets; she explains to Jen that the Great Conjunction of the three suns is imminent, but not before the Garthim catch on to her.
When I first saw this movie, I was terrified! The Skeksis, the Mystics, the Garthim, even the Gelflings and the Podlings scared me. For some time after watching it, I became utterly convinced that if I stared at lights long enough — especially fluorescent ones — my “vital essence” would be drained from me (if only I’d known!). Watching the movie again over the weekend, the first time in many years, I was a little amused by how the movie once scared me so. It also made me realize how much of an effect it had on me and my desire to create things as a child, and also how transformative the power of imagination can truly be.
While some of the scenery and characters might appear completely archaic by today’s 3-D animation standards — I don’t think there was CGI in 1982 — there is something incredibly special about the use of “vintage” special effects (puppets and/or models) that computer generated graphics will simply never be able to compete with. To create the special world of The Dark Crystal, every single detail, every structure, every creature, every organism, every flora and fauna had to be built to move, to shift, to sway with the landscape, to evolve and respond naturally, from the lush, verdant landscapes to the scary Skeskis’ castle to Aughra’s planetarium and the caves of the Mystics.
There is a sense of intimacy in this kind of fantasy film that is often lost in the sterility of computer animation these days, though those movies are also often quite exquisite. Even with computer technology breaking new ground every day, in my opinion there’s still nothing comparable to the soft magic that Jim Henson created here. The Dark Crystal changed my understanding of puppetry forever, and it also triggered a level of imagination that had been previously unknown to me — the power of storytelling through imagery. It’s a film that does not underestimate the viewer’s ability to think and wonder and imagine and long to create, things that are equally important to everyone in this world, children and adults alike.
The beat that skipped my heart
A and I decided to take a road trip to the black beaches of Southern Iceland in mid-January. I hadn’t been for sometime, and I longed to see the surreptitious, desolate landscapes again, to breathe in the crisp, cold sea air that prodded my senses into recognition, to meditate to the sound of the ocean waves that pounded ashore, pulverizing hardened black lava into the tiniest bits that looked and felt like sand, to watch the color of the sky morph into a life-sized water color, with pastel yellows, blues, pinks and purples bleeding together as the sun dipped towards the horizon.
We set off mid-morning, with a sleepy twilight still hovering above us, having just passed the long winter solstice. In January, the days get noticeably longer fairly quickly, but not yet. Like the usual winter morning in Reykjavík, the city felt hushed and movements slowed as though witnessing street life through the lens of a dream. That’s what the winter twilight does to me; not having grown up surrounded by 20 hours of darkness on the shortest days of the year, I associate darkness with mysterious evenings filled with revelry and surprises, reflection and exhaustion, or hours of self-indulgent sleep. One of the blessings (and curses) of being in a northern latitude as a foreigner is never really knowing the time by the color of the sky.
There are days when the sky looks like a wide, open road, and this was one of them. We headed east on Route 1 and drove for about an hour before reaching Gundufalur, a town known for steam emanating from the ground and a number of greenhouses erected in the area that somehow benefit from it. Large swelling hills surrounded what was apparently a golf course, not one resembling anything I’d ever before seen, green-brown due to the season, though one that would soon turn a lush, verdant green sometime in the late spring. The landscape was smattered with lava that looked like large rocks, which were covered with bright green moss nearly five inches thick. The moss was squishy to the touch and dense enough to lay on comfortably — a mattress made from nature.
We passed the third farm on our left, its white house planted some distance from a red barn housing miniature Icelandic horses and probably other livestock too. Approximately 200 meters from the edge of the farm land was a dirt road pointing directly towards the direction of the sea. It was barricaded closed, an express message to passersby that January is not the time of year to travel down it. And that is mostly true if one doesn’t have a proper off-road vehicle; that is mostly true regarding most roads in Iceland during the winter.
A got out of the car and opened the gate, got back in the car, and began navigating down the black road. I breathed in deeply as I heard the sound of the wheels struggle beneath us. The road was comprised of wet black sand, and marked by tire marks from the last visitors before us. We were nearly at the end of the road, where we’d have to get out of the car anyway and walk to the beach, when the car sunk into a puddle and refused to get out. After numerous attempts to move forward or backward, propping lava stones under the front wheels for traction, removing them out of frustration, the wheels merely dug themselves more deeply into the ground. We were stuck.
A called the police and was instructed to contact the nearest farm to see if they could tow us out. The silliness of this feat didn’t fully register until I watched a man in his mid-30’s pull our car out of its sinkhole with an enormous red tractor.
I didn’t want to wait to catch a glimpse of the beach. The sun was beginning to drop towards the horizon and there wouldn’t be much sunlight left; we’d been lucky thus far with a decent three hours of sunlight on our trip. I grabbed my camera and headed towards the sound of the waves. I walked and walked for what felt like an eternity. The sound of the waves was louder than anything I’d ever heard before — louder than a Manhattan express train bursting through one of its stations without stopping — and as I walked closer to it, I felt an ominous anticipation: what if I reached this unfamiliar beach, only to discover enormous, hostile waves pounding far beyond the shore line, eagerly awaiting my sacrifice? The ocean sounded angry and uninviting, as though there were a reason few people made the trek down that desolate dirt road — there was a reason it had been barricaded shut.
The ocean felt so close, yet each time I’d cross over a large sand dune, only to expect the beach on the other side, I’d only encounter more dunes, more flat land, more brush. I walked across a flat sandy area smattered with sinkholes, some of which were rather large, and I wondered whether, if I walked across the untouched field, a large sinkhole would open up and swallow me whole, undiscoverable to A or anyone else. Later when A came to find me, he told me the same thought had crossed his mind, too, though each of us opted to chance it.
After more than 15 minutes of walking towards the rushed rumbling sounds of the ocean, I encountered an area sheltered by yet another dune, which contained thousands of purple and white shells, a bright contrast against the rich black sand. There were yellow, orange and white round buoys scattered around, as though someone had decided to play ball and quickly deserted the place, running for cover. How had these items reached so far ashore, in this cove behind the dune? I envisioned a winter storm so fierce and destructive, one in which the cold sea rose ten-fold and thrashed ashore, nearly reaching the closest farm. Had they ever encountered an unexpected tempest that could do this kind of damage before? Did they worry that they might?
The black beach spanned for an eternity in both directions, with no sign of life around at all. Waves pounded the shore line with an enormous crash, breaking three times before finally reaching the beach. The waters were violent and threatening, and not something one could languidly stroll into for a quick refreshment, assuming the temperatures were not sub-zero. I wasn’t sure if this was normal or whether a storm was brewing further out at sea. Still, it was almost hard to believe that the waves were responsible for creating such deafening sounds back on the dunes.