Oraefi by Ófeigur Sigurðsson

Author:Ófeigur Sigurðsson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781941920688
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
Published: 2018-08-08T16:00:00+00:00

1. Into the bright conflagration!

2. When the body dies, may my soul be granted the glory of paradise.

3. Worm I was

Worm I am

& Worm shall always be

with poisonous teeth

& a tambourine tail

I crawled alone

out of my skin

& switched hides.

III

MYSTERIES

Guilt goes by a winding route, it says in Proverbs, said The Regular on the way over the hill at the bus terminal, it’s a long and winding way from Klapparstígur home to Freyjugata via the wilderness that is Öræfi, a six-hundred-and-fifty-kilometer detour … admittedly, I always take the long way home; ever since I was a kid, I’ve wandered around and goofed off despite the fact that my mother repeated every morning as I left for the day that I must come straight home, straight home, my friend, my mother said every morning when I went to school, but I never came straight home, I always larked about and I will always lark about, I always take the longest route possible home, I will lark my way to the grave … and yet I also have the feeling I’ve wasted time, that my whole life has been a waste of time, I wasted time and it’s too late to do anything about it, I finished school late, didn’t know what I wanted, still don’t, I didn’t stick to any one job, I’ve got nothing, I’ve never been able to have a successful relationship with another person, I have a constant feeling of guilt, I’m young but I feel old, I’m old yet think I’m young … Back then things took longer than today: whenever we could, i.e. during school holidays, Kiddi and I took the green bus out into eternity, at the time the bus took nine hours from Reykjavík to Öræfi; it now takes four hours by automobile. Still, that was a breakthrough, when the rivers were bridged and the sands, even if it wasn’t asphalt nearly all the way, just narrow, bumpy gravel roads, the bus larked about and perhaps still does these days, back then bus trips were very hazardous in winter, one had to stop at great cliffs and cross torrential rivers and put chains on the bus, sometimes we were stranded overnight somewhere in a storm and the bus company was forced to buy us accommodation in a hotel; I’d never stayed in a hotel, what a glory to stay in a hotel, I thought, clutching this foreign sensation to me, as a vacation from reality, I felt I’d finally become an independent being in the world. Being weather-bound inside a hotel in the countryside in a snowstorm is one of the best memories of my youth, said The Regular on the way over the hill, I can always remember exactly the feeling when I’ve been weather-bound, you recognize your own foundations, can descend to the very bottom, the calm becomes tangible, you read a book and you remember that book, the feeling of reading, the book becomes part of your person and is meaningful for

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