FIRST WANDERING.
THE DEPTHS OF THE EARTH. ALONG THE PATHS OF NORTHERN DREAMS.
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The very first wandering I followed as part of my research took place in Iceland. There, I roamed across lava fields and rough surfaces. A significant part of these wanderings consists of dreams, merging with the polar day and human everyday life. On one of the fifteen days of the wandering, I wrote:
In my human form, I chose to wander the most familiar way – by traveling. To carve out my own path of northern dreams. I searched the surface of the Earth for fissures, the kind H.P. Lovecraft wrote about in the 19th century, speaking of the island of Cthulhu, a place where nothing is ordinary. But in truth, the only cracks I found were within myself. Slick, black surfaces twisted and warped, threatening to swallow me whole.
The moment I arrived in Iceland, backpack on my shoulders, a volcano erupted on the Reykjanes Peninsula. Another one stirred within me. Just as everything in life follows its own course, so did I — driving across the island, deep into the north, always knowing the climax of this journey would lead me to the edge: where the earth spits fire and my own decade-long chapter would violently close.
Like every story, mine wasn’t particularly special. It began on what seemed like a perfect, familiar, scorching summer day. Beautiful — until you looked closer and caught the scent of melting asphalt turning to tar, and realized this surreal heat signaled something strange and unknown. It felt more like a scene from a Lanthimos film than a truly lovely summer afternoon. So I wandered — across Iceland’s rugged terrain and along the margins of human fragility — seeking a balance I wouldn’t drown in.
From the very first moment, I tried to fill my lungs with life-giving oxygen, but all I could feel was carbon dioxide burning my throat. One morning, somewhere near the Vatnajökull glacier, I woke drenched in sweat. A dream — of an old wooden village engulfed in flames — had pulled me violently from sleep. I was running, slipping into mud, trying to hide. The feeling wasn’t new. I’d been waking up this way for some time, dreams full of fleeing — not from the burning village, but from myself. From a hollow space inside me, deeper than anything the conscious mind can name.
And in the end, that overwhelming veil of loneliness, soaked in unbearable fear, would disappear only when I opened my eyes. I felt myself drifting — from love, from my own essence, from everything that mattered. It was as if, in that dream, I’d stepped into my own shell, where some unrecognizable creature was desperately clawing for release.
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That morning, lying beside the melting glacier, I felt each drop of water pierce my body. More clearly than ever, I understood — there was no way back. Yet still, I waited.
By day, I wandered through the mountains, listening to the roar of wind mixing with the cracking of ice masses. Waterfalls crashed recklessly into the earth, screaming in chaos, and the sun above, though no longer warm, blinded even at midnight, searing my dreams. As I neared the Reykjanes volcano, those visions in sleep grew sharper, their pain sinking deeper.
Eventually, even with eyes closed, I would find myself sitting between four walls — a place I called home, yet it felt like the most unsafe place on Earth. I’d rather have thrown myself into the abyss than waited there. Every night, I tried to lock those walls in place, in vain. Until one night, my home was empty — and the doors, always impossible to close, had lost their physical form entirely.
That morning, I left my front door unlocked — along with the threat still lingering in my dreams — and woke up in the middle of the Icelandic island, inside my car, surrounded by vacuumed silence. My body felt unbearably heavy, as if gravity had deepened. It was around 4 a.m., and the sun still blazed into my face, trying to pierce through a bleeding red sky. Even opening my eyes was a struggle.
All I wanted was for the light to burn through my mind — to scorch it clean — to leave only silence behind, so I could finally forget that haunting feeling of being unsafe. But the closer I got to Reykjanes, the heavier everything became. I couldn’t explain what was pulling me toward the need to stop time, nor could I understand why this journey terrified me so deeply. Slowly, fear of the night crept in.
I wanted to stay in the middle of nowhere — lost in the North — and burn beneath the endless light of the polar day.
WANDERING THROUGH THE LAVA FIELDS
You have to be careful when you put your foot in, so that it doesn't dissolve in the sulphur. Wandering through lava meadows, where the surface is barely 5 cm in places, is like wandering through the valley of death - every step could be your last. I cannot explain what invisible force pushed me into a steaming lava meadow, where just a few hundred metres away, a volcano was erupting. Within moments, I could feel the soles of my shoes melting in my feet, and I had to quicken my steps to avoid getting stuck in a sea of hot lava.
The smoking cracks in the earth resembled the birthing grounds of some new, unknown life — boiling, poisonous, and about to hatch from eggs that had been forming for thousands of years. Nothing — absolutely nothing — resembled home. All I could think about were my feverish dreams, the kind you’d do anything to escape from, even if escape meant erasure.
I looked up — where there should’ve been clouds and sky, there were only billowing smoke plumes, chasing each other like cryptic, fluid hieroglyphs etched in hauntological time. At times, I could inhale only carbon monoxide. And minute by minute, I drew closer to my destination. Mountain after mountain. Day and night no longer existed. The smoke-cloaked sky had stolen the light.
Somewhere in the distance, a violet-red horizon began to shimmer — a hue I’d never seen before. My breath grew heavier, my steps crunching over gravel, forty kilometers in, and the journey became unbearable. On the horizon, the final pulse of life was burning — dry grass smoldering, black smoke ascending skyward. My thoughts became crystalline.
Wandering knows no feeling. Hormones - whether from fear or happiness - are just a response to stress and affect the body in a similar way. I stood on the edge of the world and watched something incredibly frightening approaching. Butterflies fluttered, hitting the peritoneum and dying the most beautiful death. In that macabre light, at about three o'clock at night, lost in the northern mountains and walking fifty kilometres, I felt that dreams were mixed up with dreams and you couldn't tell which was reality.
And then, breaking through the smoking meadow, I saw it — the end of the world: a spitting abyss and a river of flowing lava. The heat was so relentless that one more step would’ve meant burning alive in light.
I stood before the volcano and felt tears forming in my glands, turning to salt the moment they touched my cheeks. Somewhere deep inside, the journey had awakened a primordial creature, gently thrashing against my organs, trying to be set free. Euphoria flooded my shell. It felt like falling into an abyss. Like falling in love — again and again.
Wandering does not recognize feeling, and neither did my body. The hormones — born of fear or joy — were simply responses to stress, affecting the body the same way. I stood at the edge of the world and watched something immense and terrifying approach. Butterflies fluttered in my gut, beating against my peritoneum, dying the most beautiful death.
In that macabre light, around three in the morning, lost in the northern mountains and wrapped in dense fog, pushing past the fiftieth kilometer, I felt it — dreams merging with wakefulness. And I could no longer tell which one was real.
From this wandering, I shaped wearable relics — artefacts born of the Earth’s fury. Forged from lava stones gathered on the Reykjanes Peninsula, I bound these raw fragments of life with toxic lead, transforming each piece into a quiet curse.
These are not adornments, but offerings.
Undeniably beautiful — yet unwearable.
They carry within them a silent, invisible, slow death.
At their core: scars. Wounds sealed in stone.
A hardened pain, crystallized in lava — pulsing like a diamond.
