I sat in a bar this evening in Reykjavik, whilst sipping another beer contemplating my previous trips to Brazil and Bristol I was suddenly interrupted by a strange voice.
“Is anyone sitting here?”, enquired a husky female voice
“No, please sit if you require”, I replied. As the woman sat opposite me I took time to notice her strange appearance, long wispy hair that looked like it had been soaked in a cold morning dew, her eyes a dull blue that could be distinguished for grey in a darker light. Her facial features were distinctive but weathered with time.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
“Yes I am, just thinking aloud in thought”, I quickly replied
“About life?”, she quizzed me without any haste
“Yes, life and it’s direction” I stated with an air of comical authority and how perceptive this woman was.
The next 20 minutes were spent engaged in a conversation both heavy and also inquisitive on both parts, was she trying to chat me up or just helping another lost soul in her native island? Did I come to Iceland to seek refuge, trying to find an answer to my own heart that has since fallen down into a realm of despair? She seemed willing to ask me questions that those who have known me for decades would not dare, yet in her bravado and straight forward direction I knew that this woman would unlock the answer to the question.
“When were you last happy?” she said as she looked me deep in the eye
“1999” I replied in honesty, to which her reply was “When you were someone else?”, she got me now.
Not someone else as in another personality, nor alter-ego but I remember when I was happy in life, the days when my friends would call me DS, which simply stood for Dark Soul. Maybe that was the Gothic phase of my life, but back then I would be the life and soul of any party, the comical attitude, the recklessness abandonment for authority and laws, the swagger that I carried was somewhat famous back ‘In the day’
I felt a sudden ease with this woman akin to knowing her all her life yet she stoked something within me that I realised must change.
In the years when my friends would call me DS I was not so accommodating and hasty as I am now, I was more rebellious. These days people just use me and have no care at all for my feelings.
So to Suvi I say thank you for igniting the old DS fire within me.
Life suddenly just got a whole lot better.
