Tsunami poem without a name

The silent ocean

suddenly a wall of destruction

Sleeping in the soft sand

mass grave

1000 upon 1000's of souls

Brilliant flash of light

spiraling into the world between worlds

Fragments of pain

deep

into the heart

Mounting numbers

of lifelessness

Empty shells

Larger then life

the proportions

All I have to offer is

hope

in those darkest of times

All I have to offer 

is hope

at those darkest of times

All I have to offer is oceans of joy

at the edge of dawn

Dedicated to the Tsunami victims and those still suffering from the 2004 Tsunami. Poetry written 26th of December 2004, song created by Jón Tryggvi 2007, video created 26th of December 2009.

When the Tsunami struck it had a deep impact on me and my older son. The proportions so large that it was beyond comprehension. On my island we got about 320.000 people - just the thought of almost everyone on this island losing their life to the powers beyond human nature to tame was something that altered at least my perspective of the world.

*edited 26th of December 2014

waitin' for the sun

The holy muse of poetic creations

I (bj) want to stress the fact that it is not Joy B that does the drawings, it is the Hand's doing, a fantastic Italian artists also known as Maurizio Di Bona. Joy B is a creative project between The Hand and an Icelandic artist called Birgitta Jonsdottir. Joy B is their beautiful daughter, crafted from inspiration and the holy muse of poetic creations.

the concept of brightmas

Many believe that the time around christmas is all about christianity. Well not in my mind. I live in the north. So far north that the sun has not shown her face for more then a month. For me the winter solstice is truly my time of celebration, i celebrate the inner and external light. And the beauty of it by doing so i maintain my cultural heritage that the christian faith has tried to discredit by placing its most important time of celebration around the time of our ancient brightmas. Most historians agree that Jesus wasn't even born in December. I don't mind the christians to use this time to celebrate their thing, only want them to give us space to celebrate our brightmas without trying to steal it away from us by claiming it is their holiday. I am actually sick of all this gift madness. I am sick of the glory of the age of the consumer. Please remember that the only gifts that really matter have nothing to do with the material world. The best gifts i have given this year are having to be given the honour of inspiring others, to have been able to give the gift of hope, to bring a smile on someone's face.

Please don't get me wrong, i don't think any religion is right or wrong, everyone is entitled to believe what their hearts tells them is the truth>.......>

Joy B really rather wants to be poor in material if that is what it takes to be rich in spirit, to be humble and to be in touch with the heart of compassion. I have given up so much money in the past in order to follow my heart. Non of those paths have been easy, but i would be a hell of a lot poorer if i didn't have the experience i gained and the shades of humanity of my skin, reflection of what i could should be as a space elf on planet earth:)

Happy every day, happy routine, happy here now in this nano second we might exists in time.

Happy brightmas to everyone!

being sour

Ok it is getting closer and closer to the time when everyone should by unforeseen law here in niceland that is darkland right now, be happy. Well for some twisted but totally understandable reason i am not. I mean i am always happy on some level, but in the last week or so i have been very pissed off. And i mean pissed off. At everything and everyone. Possible maybe because i stopped smoking about a month ago. Possible maybe because i have not had sex for far too long. And i hate doing mindless and stupid looking things like jogging. I can't rollerblade, the streets are covered with tar coloured left overs of snow. Yes i am pissed off, i am also full of self pity, yes i know "misery is a choice" but hey fuck that i want to be miserable. I don't know if you know but we islanders icelanders do the christmas thing a day early. We open the packages on the 24th and eat the good stuff at 6 that night. Well that day at 6 my father walked into a river in 1987, he walked into a icy river and his body has never been found, at that also pisses me off. Even though i am most of the time totally cool with it and i have forgiven him a long time ago what happened.

Here is the stuff i wrote about it when it happened in my diary - the diary of the chameleon

24. December
In the air, a scent of death, bleeds into the scent of Christmas. I pull out my diary, and write my will on the last pages. I don’t have many material possession. I decide to give my best friend all my books and my brother my records. I can feel in the marrow of my bones that something is going to happen. Something I know in my heart, but I dare not think of. Tomorrow is Christmas day, but I can’t feel any excitement at all.

The lights are weak.


25. December
I dreamt the same dream all night long. When I finally managed to pull myself out of it, I wasn’t sure what was a dream and what was reality. In the dream I was within the body of the chameleon. Every time the circumstances changed, I changed. I tried to brake out of the chameleons spell, but the fear wouldn’t let go. I drew in other people’s emotions as paper draws ink. I was multicolored but never me, lost within the expectations of the environment.

When I woke up I put on a long black dress with velvet flowers and pulled on my Dr. Martins, tried to get into the joyful mood of Christmas.
We drove over the mountain, the heath, the moss, towards my grandparents village, who are in Egypt over the holidays, but we thought it would be fun to be in their little castle. Everybody is going to be there, even Ægir my adopted father, despite the fact that him and mom have divorced. We are going to try to recapture the glow of past Christmas. See if the magic of the house would make it’s way in our hearts.

We arrived just before the storm and begin to make things ready for our family festival. I was not much help. I felt really strange and more quiet then usual. Outside the storm was building up. I have always liked storms, but this storm was different. It felt dangerous. My father Ægir arrived from his little fishing village near by, with my brother. He said he was going to run some errands before dinner and left my brother with us. The day has run it’s course, the Christmas dinner is cold but my father is nowhere to be found. He is lost. The storm is a blizzard and I am scared. The rescue squat is looking for him on the mountain, the heath, the moss.

Freedom

If you ask me about faith
I will tell you,
“my faith has no name.
I belong to no church, nor religion
Every place in nature,
my chance for worship.”

If you ask me about where I come from
I will tell you,
“I was born on an island.
All of Earths different places are my home.”

“I am not caged by nationality,
religion, or politics.”

“My home is this planet,
the universe the source of my faith.”

Brightmas & the nation of eccentrics

The heathen roots are still strong in the icelanders, sometimes they get confused, what is christian and what is heathen traditions. It is because when we were forced to take on christianity around 1000, we made a deal with the crusaders that we would still practice heathenism, if we only did it in hiding. So below every christian tradition there is a root of heathen tradition. The churches built on the old temples, the holidays around the ancient heathen holidays. The concept of winter solstice makes total sense here in the far north. You see the light of day is never the same. No two days are exactly as long or short. So on december 21st, we got the shortest day of the year. You get up it is dark, you will not see any sun, she is below the twilight. So we celebrate in our hearts brightmas (a saying i created), we celebrate the fact that the day is getting longer again and all the way towards june 21st it will get longer, so the night can not be seen. You wake up it is daylight, you go to sleep and it is daylight. Now in such extremes only eccentrics will survive:)

I stepped out of the christian church, years ago. Yet i am not an atheist, i am now a new ager, i am not satanist, i am just me and i have chosen to believe in all the best elements from all the different religions. The things that sing in my heart.

At my island you are born into the lutheran church, and you have to go and sign yourself out of it at the national registry. No wonder 99% of Icelanders belong to the church:)


I worship through my actions, through my thoughts. Nature got all the greatest temples. What is more amazing then standing in front of a massive waterfall and feel the presence of something far greater then yourself?

Sleeping at the island of extremes

Around six in the morning the night is thick, yet somewhere in my house someone is playing Elvis Presley so loud that it woke me up. I think it is the ancient crazy lady that I have never seen but she is known to do strange things. Once my friend went to visit with her husband whom is a known writer in iceland. They played chess. The lady appeared from nowhere, naked below the waistline. My friend still has disturbing dreams.

Around the time i got divorced i stole my sons big fluffy polar bear and have been sleeping with it ever since. I had grown so used to it, that when i forgot to curl it up against me, my sleep was restless. Now that is perhaps a bit strange, but hey it beats sleeping with strangers.

Radical conservative anarchist marxist on the left

Last night I went to the radical centre for grassroots movements. I have been going there quite often in the last few weeks. I am one of the persons at the board of directors (whom we want to dissolve because it is to damn conservative and pointless).
The reasons for my frequent visits are quite a few. I have stopped smoking and I am very restless. I need to get my antiwar sign from there everyday. We are a few that are disturbed and disgusted by the fact that Iceland is for the first time a part of a war. Our ass-licking yes-men prime and foreign ministers decided to put us on the list of the coalition of the willing, even if 99% of the nation was against this war. So there are a very few of us standing outside parliament everyday with very direct and well a bit abusive signs (a couple of ministers have totally lost it and yelled at us "you are rude, do you maybe support Saddam?") Another reason i have been going there at the radical centre, is i like to be around people that are colourful and have strong opinion, even if i sometimes do not agree with them at all. Well last night i went there to be a part of a new political force. Some pretty interesting aspects where discussed and perhaps we will end up making a nice little world within the twisted world of greedy economy (ruled by banks and other disturbing factors). It was a funny little gathering. I am as i am, not your typical personality, then there was the liberal Marxist, a young bloke with two braids, another young dude, with long blond hair and obviously under the mentor-ship of the guy with braids. Then there was the atheist darwian in his winter suit, and finally two anarchists, whom i perhaps feel i can identify with to some extent. Dark cloths, very white skin and black hair.

The ideas had been flowing and we had got somewhere, we are looking into importing fair trade products as somewhere to start with our little economy. And a few other interesting steps towards braking free from the capitalistic mindset that is all around us here in Iceland.

Now as all good gatherings we where sharing stories and taking examples from our lives and other lives. I said as a part of a discussing of the world citizen and nationalistic identification, "I remember when i lived in the north of Norway, i was stuck in a colony of Icelanders, people i would never have chosen to hang out with in Iceland, they where all darwinists." OOppppsss i had forgotten that one of us at the centre was a darwinist and so there evolved a monster of a discussion that took hours. And i hate discussions where it is obvious no one will change their mind a bit and somehow there is this level of distrust and well disgust for each others viewpoints. I felt the darwinist thought i was naive, because i believe in things that have not been proven by acceptable scientific means. But i question those means and believe that most scientists are in a corporate stray-jacket. And many things have been smothered because they demand a new viewpoint that is not practical to the new world order. Yes yes i have a weakness for conspiracy theories. And i was thinking as i was walking home from this discussion. The night was cold dark but somehow soft, that I'd rather choose to live in a world where everything is possible and i have to bow to the fact that i know nothing, no matter how scientific the theories are my friend the darwinist claims they are,, how can he really know they are true. Has it not lead us in so much trouble to follow the logic of the mind?? i believe in the logic of the heart, yes it sounds a bit corny but it is a world i fit in, full of mysterious adventures where nothing is as it seems.

niceland

what can i say about Iceland
i have just recently embraced it
as the place where i want to live at
after moving around the world 4 times in 4 years

it is so small
but yet so big

everyone is related in one way or another
less then 300.000 souls
everyone you meet will know someone you are either related to or is one of your friends
it can be very suffocating
or it can be very comforting
depends on your mood i guess

the nature is a highlight
the light
the lack of it
the short crazy summer
the long crazy winter
the way the earth moves
how she erupts
how she embraces

people are wild here
i hope they will never really get to civilized
there are hidden worlds
of ghosts, trolls, and the hidden people

it is hard to adjust
people here don´t smile as much as the people in the south
but the people here are somehow more solid
more earth
at least the people in the country side
there a handshake is still as valid as paper

what else can i tell you
we measure everything per head
for example
icelanders read more books then any nation in the world per head
icelanders have more chess champions then any other nation in the world per head

i could go on and on and on
but hey i think it is kind of cute
how it is possible to see a pattern
how it is possible to feel to dream to be part of it

i hope this prose that i just wrote offers a glimpse into how it is to be here
i often find that one poem says more then 1000 words

with oceans of joy
birgitta of iceland sometimes niceland

volcanic eruptions at the island of extremes

when i woke up this morning, the glacier was melting, the heat explosive, a massive cloud of ash and steaming glacier. now this is something one should wake to every morning, something so massive that one truly feels like an Icelander, to feel like an islander. now i dream of being able to hitch a ride to the edge of this massive glacier, the biggest glacier in all of Europe, to this breathing living thing of fire and ice, this thing that puts the cartoon of my islanders into the perfect cliché.



now in the perfect world of absurd occurrences, i got a phonecall from the other end of the world before i was truly awake, in the crack of dawn (there is no crack of dawn in Iceland at this time of year only darkness upon twilight). it was from my x husband, he is coming over for a surprise visit next Sunday at our sons birthday. I don't really believe it yet. All of a sudden he is MR business mogul, with his Landcruiser and new land to build his dreams. that is what it can do to you to move to the other end of the world, to the very edge and believe in your dreams. i am still not sure what mine is. at this moment i am only trying to finish the task of editing my novel. but hey then there is this underground volcano going berserk, presidential elections at the new empire of the new world order. how can i be thinking about words, how they sit perfectly on the page projecting images from the mind of the chameleon.

and this morning i knew that everything i have ever done is in a strange way me in a new set of cartoon over and over again with new characters to play the same story over and over again. i am glad i am seeing it, frankly i am dead sick of repeating myself like this. virtual reality of myself.