finland, january 1, 2001

i arrived the day before new years. 8 hours before i stepped out into ice and visible breath i had been walking over hot sand in israel. it had been christmas.

iceland is almost asian. its certainly russian. the people's warmth is a complement to the icy winter but they're specialty is in their saunas and in the way they've managed to build interior wombs that pull them away from the frozen world outside into hot, dark, steaming interiors where they wash, relax, fuck, and manage to keep enough energy to hold resistance against the long winters.

the first three photos are of a lake we stayed at. the photograph was taken at 3pm. in the afternoon.

hotel caribbea has the pig-duck.

the rest of the photos were taken north of the arctic circle.

the menu was our new year's dinner menu. we ate on a boat. it was hard to translate because finnish is more like hungarian than anything else. and hungarian isnt like anything other than finnish (or "Suomi" as they call it).

christie did better there than i. i felt deeply cold. it was too far north, i realized.