Preemptive Retaliation

Next week I will be in Iceland. I am very excited.

I don’t really know what attracts me to the place, really. Maybe it’s because I like the cold. I like wet, dreary landscapes. I like coming in from a biting wind and finding someplace warm waiting for me. I like being wrapped up inside a thick jacket and thick boots while my cheeks are whipped raw. I really, really like being inside when there’s a storm outside.

But I also like sitting in the sun drinking a beer. I’m a complicated person and there’s no real place for me in this world.

Anyway, I’ve always wanted to go to Iceland. I think it’s down to the Northern Lights. When I was in high school I read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, and I was immediately enamoured by the description of the Northern Lights. There was this magical blanket of light covering the night sky and casting its glow over cliffs of ice. It was described as a reflection of a city in the sky, hanging like a veil, and it turns out it was a gateway between worlds, or entire universes. In my young adolescent mind I found the whole thing outlandish and insane, yet crystal clear in my imagination.

And then it turns out the thing was real.

There’s a phantasm of solar winds and electromagnetic energy that plays a light show above people’s heads, way up in the North where I might be going, where I might get to see it play out. I might get to watch the aurora flicker through our atmosphere, and I am filled with this small childlike glee at the possibility.

It’s not often that I get to see the real life equivalents that inspire stories and writing, or even the real world settings in the pages. It’s why I get so intrigued by films and books set in Scotland. I end up playing a game of Bingo with myself on streets I recognise and scenery I’ve seen before. It makes everything instantly familiar and relatable, and real. People keep saying that when they read my book they get that sense of familiarity, of recognition that they had been to these places, and that they had done similar things. It resonated with them, and when it happens to me with other things, I get this little thrill, like I’m complicit with the story.

And I might be able to see the Northern Lights! Like Lyra lying at the boat, staring at another world.

Goddamn. I am so excited.