» TheCuriousCyclist Mile42

Headed East

July 30, 2021 by TheCuriousCyclist Filed under Curious Tagged with iceland2

Time to leave civilization for the rugged frontier of slightly less civilization!

I find this map - printed on the side of a van - highly amusing.

For almost a week I’d been staying at Birgir’s AirBnB place on the north side of town. We had pretty different schedules, but when we did collide we always had fun conversations.

Birgir is an awesome host, and he's a fellow cyclist too!

Since it was my last day I had to pack all my gear on the bike, but before I did I asked if he wanted to give it a test ride, since he’d never tried a recumbent. It wasn’t adjusted for his height (Icelanders are such tall people!) but he bent his legs awkwardly and managed to go 50 meters, then turn around without help. He said it was pretty cool but not his kind of ride: Not aggressive enough!

I rode to my habitual coffee shop and enjoyed the mocha for the last time, and assembled my final set of visa paperwork. I had a decision to make: Should I go to the print shop in town today, or try and find one later so I’m not hauling a stack of paper across the country? My plan was to submit the papers at a government office in Egilsstaðir, near the ferry terminal. Could I rely on a city that size having at least one printer I could use? Probably.

Next, I rode up the peninsula to the hardware store and bought two batteries for my speed and cadence sensors. The clerk thought I’d purchased different batteries at the store a day ago, and apologized for “the trouble” of me supposedly having to come back because I bought the wrong ones. Did I have a doppelgänger wandering around? It was too late for me to correct him; I’d already paid and was on my way out.

And that was my last piece of business in Reykjavík. I went north again, winding along the upper edge of the city towards highway 1. So far I was on the same route I’d taken two years ago, but that would change.

Looking over to the island - and archaeological site - of Videy.

Vatnagarðar harbor. Modern shipping is indispensable for maintaining Iceland’s first-world affluence.

On the way out of town!

I stopped at a fast food gas station joint and did some tourist watching. The olympics was on the TV. I got a “Memphis” burger, which turned out to be a cut-rate fast-food style burger with barbecue sauce added.

Honestly, it wasn’t bad! And it checked the protein and calorie boxes.

Replacing the batteries in my cadence and speed sensors. I love data!

Yes, it has fish collagen in it. Or at least, that's what it claims.

I was able to use good bike paths almost all the way out of the city. Geese and rabbits lingered in the parkland on either side.

This sign is brought to you by the local gangs "FLORA" and "KGB"...?

THERE ARE BUNS

Lazy bun-day!

So many rabbits! I guess that’s the thing about rabbits: Where there’s a few, there are soon many.

The weather was glorious. For a while the path followed a riverbank. I stopped at an intersection and discovered a free water fountain, and a collection of bike tools hanging from wires. How thoughtful!

It has no button. It just runs perpetually. Well, unless it freezes I assume?

Bike tools are everywhere!

The path ended at the highway. I passed fields full of horses, and people on horseback. The highway was legal for bicyclists but I didn’t like the noise, so I tried to escape onto a parallel road for a while, which suddenly turned into dirt and loose rock. Whoops!

Along that road I was passed by a large group of young women riding horses. There was no place for me to pull aside because the bushes were quite thick, so I just stopped. They went about 200 meters ahead, then shuffled to a halt where the road got even worse, and chatted for a while in a low cloud of dust. Slowly the whole group turned around, and soon they passed me again going the other way. I stopped and waited again as they went, just in case some of the horses were nervous. Many of the women waved and nodded or said hello, always in English. It was obvious I was a crazy tourist.

I enjoy signs like this.

I thought it would be easier than the highway. I was wrong!

Just when I thought the road couldn't get worse...

When I went ahead I saw just how uneven the road was. Passable for a horse but not very fun for a packed-together group. I cycled along with a leg out for balance, wiggling around the largest rocks. Soon I found the main road again.

No winter service! Good thing I'm nowhere near winter!

It went up and up for hours, following a pipeline on the side of the road. What was in there? Hot water maybe?

I paused many times, and ate a bunch of leftover fish. The wind pushed down on me and I ranted out loud to the sheep that since I was saving money on hotels I could spend extra money on fish.

The going got steep and wiggly, but I wasn’t bothered. I listened to lots of Goon Show and podcasts.

The road behind, with the city beyond.

The road ahead. Up and up it goes!

Some steamy action in the distance!

Now we're pretty high up...

Check out the little joint at the bottom to handle shifts in temperature.

I call this rock "Pointy Gap Rock". (I also call it my temporary bathroom.)

Ugh, when will the climbing end?

Floridana: Produced in Iceland. Hilarious!

At the 1300-foot mark it finally peaked, and I wiggled around through a couple of high valleys.

Just before the road pitched downhill, I stopped and ate a few more snacks. My destination was a campsite called the Úlfljótsvatn Scout And Adventure Centre. I was worried because it was getting late and I’d never been able to confirm that walk-up camping was available. Perhaps I could sneak in at the edge of a group?

The descent to lake Úlfljótsvatn was monstrous. I was very glad I didn’t need to climb it. The road was striped with tire marks, some of them moving alarmingly around the road. People overcorrecting, or lane-wandering, or perhaps being surprised by sheep.

Holey Muckei!! That is well beyond a 15% grade!! ARRRGH!

I passed a hot spring with a sign warning about the extreme temperature. The water was weirdly inviting, but I decided there was no time for another stop.

I love the politeness of this sign.

Eventually the hour grew so late that it got dark. I found the camp and wandered from one building to the next, hoping to find an official who could tell me where to put myself. No luck. I did see a mowed field near a long stand of trees with campers gathered on it, so I rolled the bike over to the fringe of the crowd, pretending like I knew what I was doing, and quietly set up my tent.

I was almost done moving things around inside the tent, when some older guy with a daughter waved a flashlight at me and went “Weeeooo weeeoo, it’s the police! Haa ha ha ha hahahaa!”

I scowled at him. Then I picked up my tent and moved it further away. No one likes to be messed with at night, and this guy looked like the kind who would do it.

I wiggled into my sleeping bag and poked at maps for a while on my phone. In about an hour the camp grew quiet, as the last of the revelers turned in. A decent end to a solid day of riding.

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Thoughts in a Reykjavík Cafe

July 28, 2021 by TheCuriousCyclist Filed under Introspection Tagged with iceland2

A hundred years ago, when international travel was rare and difficult, everyone considered “race” and “geographical origin” interchangeable. In modern times we’ve driven a wedge between these things and started to whittle down the importance of “race” as a carrier of behavior and value, which is a positive change. This change is not comprehensive though. People with the same origin but a different appearance are still treated quite differently, within their own communities.

Some of this is inevitable, because stereotypes are a very natural shorthand. They’re how we operate in communities larger than a few hundred people, where it’s impossible to personally know everyone we meet. A cab driver can be expected to know the traffic. A frail senior citizen would appreciate your seat on the subway. An angry-looking man in a giant shiny 4×4 is probably not a defensive driver. If that man has a bumper sticker reading “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” he probably doesn’t march in Pride Parade. Et cetera. Without stereotypes, society couldn’t function in real-time.

Stereotypes become even more obvious when we travel. If I meet someone from Saudi Arabia I am fully prepared to assume they pray to Allah multiple times a day, because that’s what modern sociology has prepared me to assume. If I think of the Vikings that sailed around in the North Atlantic, I think “socially conservative, environmentally destructive, and violent in their settling of disputes,” because that’s what historians have repeatedly told me. And despite knowing that people from different places can be all shapes and colors, if you asked me to picture these people in my head, I would conjure up specific clothing, facial hair, and skin colors.

And that’s where things can go sideways, because that’s where “race” gets involved.

I think we should all continue to drive that wedge in, between race and stereotypes, to reduce friction in our connected world. But how do we do that, on our own personal scale?

If I meet a Black man on the street in Oakland, I bring to bear a decades-long and complicated accumulation of assumptions about how that man perceives me, how other people who look like me have treated him, and how I can present myself so as to show I am not bound by those assumptions and will treat him with dignity and camaraderie. It took quite a while for me to be aware of that baggage of stereotypes, not just on an intellectual level by reading about it in a book, but on a behavioral level from living in Oakland. Sorting through the baggage I kept asking myself, “how can I act that actually helps?” I wanted to act in a way that would move the interaction beyond the fear and suspicion and get somewhere else. I didn’t want to just signal that I was what people used to call “woke”. That would make the interaction about the stereotypes, or even about me.

Sometimes I’ve asked myself, in this kind of situation, would it be better for both of us if I was completely unaware of any stereotypes, like my young nephews generally are? Then I would be guaranteed to treat him like anyone else. A little bit yes, a little bit no. It’s likely I am more helpful when I see what we’re all working against. Plus I can avoid saying or doing something stupid by accident.

Like, say, excitedly asking the Icelanders I meet if they can teach me how to forge a sword and build a longboat.

Answering the question of “what helps?” is often difficult, but I find that a good place to start is with another question, “what do I have to offer?” Sometimes the answer is, your social standing is what you can offer, by finding a way to make it transferable.

An easy example: Several jobs ago I was asked to collaborate with a group of software developers, one of whom was a Black man, a first-generation American whose family was from Morocco. Where I live, it’s extremely rare to meet a software developer of that ethnicity. He was shy, very hard to read, and kept his head down in design meetings, but he could write good code. It seemed like he had grown used to being kept at arms length by other developers, and felt that since he would inevitably be marginalized, why fight it? Since I was joining the group in a lead capacity, I had a chance to do something about that.

We worked together one-on-one for a while, establishing some trust. A month later I began to deliberately defer to him for advice during meetings, which raised his social standing just a little bit to the rest of the group each time. Eventually he was comfortable making arguments and presenting his work just as often as everyone else, and I was glad for it. It didn’t just make him more comfortable, it made all of us better at our jobs.

(As an aside, there are people who will actually try to denigrate this sort of action by declaring me a “white savior.” I poked at that for a while and found there was a reasonable conclusion: Those people are jerks!)

Sometimes the thing we have to offer is subtle, like social credit. Sometimes it’s immediate, like protection from physical harm. (That’s come up for me a bunch of times, being out and about in Oakland.) Sometimes it helps just being a witness in a sketchy situation so we can make sure the truth is told later, anywhere from a traffic stop to a classroom to an argument in the street. What’s especially great is that when we move outside our comfort zone to elevate someone else, we are also expanding the range of who we feel comfortable with internally. So, we improve ourselves. We decrease the chance that we might unconsciously be part of a problem.

This is a fine effort. But you know what it demands? Security.

People who do not feel safe – physically, financially, socially – are in less of a position to take risks extending help or protection to people they don’t know, especially people who might respond unfairly. And that means, when you can – when you feel some security – you’ve got to meet people more than halfway.

That’s a lot to hold in your head, when the pace of life and the immediacy of social interaction make things shift around you. Don’t stress yourself out even more by involving guilt. Just think about what you might have to offer in a situation.

Oh, and I suppose this is a bit ironic given where you’re reading this, but … why waste your time signaling virtue online, when you can go outside and have it?

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Exploring And Working In Reykjavík

July 23, 2021 by TheCuriousCyclist Filed under Curious Tagged with iceland2

This was definitely a work-cation, and I took advantage of that mobility to explore. But I also needed consistency to stay “in the zone”, which meant working at my new favorite cafe most of the time.

I did visit the one I liked from two years ago, just to get that odd twitch of nostalgia that comes from walking back into a place that I’d etched into my memory only because I never thought I’d see it again.

Back in the cafe from two years ago!

It was a lot less crowded than two years ago, which made sense because of the pandemic. For the first time I sat on the bottom floor, within easy view of my bike, and had a chance to do some people-watching. The people watched me as well — or at least they watched Valoria the recumbent.

Strangers love the bike!

I wrote code without headphones for a while, and the conversation from the next table drifted in. It was a man and a woman clearly having some kind of mandatory socialization meeting for their jobs. They were both contractors for an international company and the man was newly stationed in Iceland, and still finding his feet.

They were digging down trying to find anything to talk about that wasn’t the usual “Where have you gone; what was it like; where are you going next; blah blah blah”. I felt sorry for them both.

After a while I wanted to lean over and suggest other topics, just to cheer them up. “Hey, there are 20 things right here on the coffee shop walls that are fun to talk about! Look at the cover story on the New Yorker sitting right next to you. Look at that Icelandic woman with the tattoo of Betty Paige getting shot full of arrows on her arm. Talk about the logistics of sourcing Peruvian coffee out of Iceland in a pandemic…”

They eventually defaulted down to complaining about Donald Trump. Always a lively choice… And a strong reminder for me just then, that where you are on the planet doesn’t matter half so much as where your headspace is.

When tourism shut down last year it was like turning off a money faucet for almost the entire country. Many things have re-opened, but some did not weather the drought. For example the kitschy, vaguely insulting store I saw two years ago on the main street, called “I DON’T SPEAK ICELANDIC”, which was previously full of souvenirs pitched at the more wealthy and less discerning tourists, was now a dusty, empty glass box.

The city didn’t feel any less inviting for it though, and the weather was nice. But I’d only booked this much time in Reykjavík because I wanted to get work done, and potentially see the Directorate of Immigration. I wasn’t interested in the bar scene and didn’t want to do the shuttle-based excursions.

What I did want, was fish:

Fish and chips out of a wagon? You bet I'll try it!

Oh yes, the fish! THE FISH!!

Now this is the good stuff.

Pretty sure this is the best fish and chips you can get in the city.

I also had time for local cats, of course. There were plenty.

Hahaa now this human is my property!

Local cat rubs are the best!

Another local cat!

Do I spy a local cat?

Writing code for hours is often taxing to the brain, and leaves me in a state where I want to ride my bike or take a nap afterward, even when I’m in a city with live music, friendly people, and museums full of curious exhibits. I really should have checked out more indoor things, but I mostly explored via bicycle seat and took photos.

Kids and tipsy adults hopped along this all day long.

A sweeping view of the cathedral.

It’s been a real trip sitting in different places and observing the tourists, which outnumber Icelanders here in the Reykjavik downtown by 3 to 1. Makes me wish I could understand Icelandic, because the English conversations are really repetitive.

Alex

Crocs, lattes and Instagram ahoy?

Yeah, lots of crocs and lattes. But worse.

Alex

Dongs, bongs, and songs?

It’s bongs, crocs, heels, American Express, unnecessary taxis, shiny pants, shouting, bongs, vapes, and inadequate layers.

Alex

So, just getting through the day.

In style!

Alex

Always Be Vaping.

Yes; that’s an ironclad rule here, if you’re a tourist.

Here by Tómas Guðmundsson's statue you can listen to Hjalti Rögnvaldsson perform the poems "Hótel jörð" and "Við Vatnsmýri" from the book Fagra veröld, published in Reykjavík in 1933.

Hangin' with the poet Tómas Guðmundsson.

I guarantee this is not the most profitable shop in the city.

This should be in every workplace.

Puddles! I must ride through them.

The Lebowski is still there despite COVID-19.

Houses by the lake. Charming!

Are you enthusiastic about fish? We here in Iceland are very enthusiastic about fish.

This is where you can sit and gaze quixotically out to sea, then go for a short walk and eat a burger.

I dig this vehicle.

Bringing my bike back after a nice day of riding.

This ad was everywhere.

That cheeky Nordic sense of humor??

The economy has slowed for the nordic tchotchke business, but it’s still going!

Sending snax back to the nephews.

Like last time, I mailed a pile of weird candy to the nephews back home. I did not include a middle finger sculpture.

Care for a ginger beer?

This translate app is a miracle of software engineering and also hilarious.

Glass bottles don’t ship well, otherwise I would have included this funky drink. The translation app made the usual amusing hash out of it.

My “coffee, work, and explore” routine continued in the city for another week, and the most traveling I did was switching to a different AirBnB. Every now and then I would spot a cycle tourist, or an advertisement, or a map printed on a wall, and remember that I had an adventure to continue.

Ancient map used as wallpaper in a fish restaurant.

Ancient map spotted on a restaurant wall.

Soon! Soon I will head into the hills.

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Where does my brain go at night?

July 23, 2021 by TheCuriousCyclist Filed under Amused Tagged with iceland2

The singer Bjork is eating the roses off the bushes of a house nearby. It’s just something she likes to do. I decide they must be tasty and I should try one. I turn the bike around in the street to go back to the rose bushes but I see my ex girlfriend, walking about 30 feet away from Bjork.

“She’s out here too?” I think. “Uh oh. The two of them are bound to get to know each other, and then she’ll will find out that I scheduled a date with Bjork for Sunday. I think I’m still in a relationship with her. Wait, am I? What’s my situation? Didn’t we break up like, half a year ago?”

I turn the bike back around, knowing that if I get close to either of them they’ll just walk away from me. They want private time. So, am I seeing other people, or dating again, or am I still with my ex? I can’t remember. We need to talk.

I wake up in an unfamiliar bedroom. I think it’s the house I share with my ex. I hear kitchen sounds in the distance. “Well, that’s probably her. I better get this over with.” I roll out of bed and pick up my pants, which I have trouble putting on because there’s something jammed in one of the legs. I reach in and extract my phone.

She walks into the room. “Okay, here we go,” I think. But instead of seeming worried like I am, she’s relaxed. She’s also wearing no clothing except for underwear.

“Follow me,” she says urgently, and walks into a different room. There’s another bed here. She dives onto it, then reaches into a bedside drawer and pulls out a condom in a clear plastic wrapper, and flicks it onto the covers.

She wiggles around until she’s partly under the sheets. I know what I’m supposed to be doing but I’m not feeling into it. Something is still wrong between us. I’m also skeptical of the condom: It looks too colorful, like something you’d find in a bowl at a saucy adult party. “What time of month is it?” I ask her pointedly. Things are already dysfunctional, and having a child on the way might pull us together into a commitment neither of us feels good about. She’s looking at me expectantly, as if to say, “What’s your problem?”

Some friends and relatives of hers wander into the room, carrying groceries and food. They’re about to throw a Thanksgiving celebration. She climbs off me immediately. We can’t have an intimate conversation with all this family around. Am I the only one who thinks we need a discussion? I get off the bed and walk out of the room.

Night falls instantly. I’m wandering around the gritty courtyard of a large beat-up hotel. The walls are charcoal colored, like either a deliberately spooky paint job, or just a phenomenal amount of decay. People are emerging from the doors and windows of the hotel and wandering around in small groups. There is a party-like atmosphere. I look down and see several coins in the dirt, and pick them up. One is a very thick coin with dull round edges, as big as a silver dollar. I turn it over in my hand and notice that it is stamped with a year far into the future, somewhere in the next millennium.

Impressed with the coin, I begin waving it around and singing an improvised song, in the style of They Might Be Giants:

Hey look! It’s:
MONEY FROM THE FUTUUUURE
Who knows what you can spend it on
When all of civilization’s gone?
How valuable is this techno-coin?
Come on everyone, let’s join
The search for
MONEY FROM THE FUTUURRRE
Check it out, it’s
MONEY FROM THE FUTUUUURE
-My brain, 4:30am

Music erupts around me. Some of the people wandering around turn into band members playing instruments, and when one of them starts a wicked guitar solo, I go running down the street, then jump up onto a wall, then run along it and jump onto a roof. The music fades in the distance.

“Dammit, now what do I do?” I think.

I wake up.

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Graveyard antics

July 22, 2021 by TheCuriousCyclist Filed under Amused, Happy Tagged with iceland2

Today was one of those “this is what it’s all about” touring days, even though I had to put in six hours of work.

Actually it started on a strange note. I woke up to weird animal sounds, coming in through the screened window of my room. The window was over a central plaza, and as I scooted around in the bed I thought “This is a very urban place to be hearing animals. Actually… What kind of animals are these? There are no coyotes in Iceland. What else would be large enough?”

Eventually I realized I was hearing words, mixed in with the gibberish sounds, echoing around the walls of the plaza. What the heck? … And then the sound resolved to two middle-aged people having sex, in a room somewhere else high up with the windows open. It was a mixture of grunting and words, but I could only parse some of the words – which were all curse words in English – because the rest was in Icelandic and sounded like the babbling of a semi-human animal.

“That is hilarious,” I thought. “Also, dang, Icelanders are surprisingly kinky. I thought this was a more conservative realm, but perhaps I’m using a definition that doesn’t fit…”

I laughed for a while, then debated whether to make them aware they were being overheard. It would certainly embarrass them, but it would also be quite funny to the other people who could hear them too. I couldn’t be the only one. I wanted to lean out the window and shout, “THAT’S THE WAY TO DO IT, LAD! PUT YOUR BACK INTO IT! GET ‘ER WHERE SHE WANTS TO GO!”

But I changed my mind, and decided to roll out and start the day instead of spoiling theirs.

Some company's representation of how the city plumbing looks. I think it's pretty cool!

I’d done plenty of riding around the capital city before, and even with all my wanderlust I am a creature of habit, so I ended up going to the same coffee shop as yesterday. In fact I went there for almost an entire week, to work and write or just get a nice coffee to start the day.

This map is how I know I’m in a good place:

And this became one of my go-to meals. Swiss mocha, fresh bread, and a kind of tuna salad to spread on it. This got me through a lot of meetings and a lot of lines of code.

Tasty coffee shop fare.

Nice decorations here too. Not too loud, but still a bit playful.

This guy is everywhere.

After working into the afternoon, I shut the laptop and rode the bike over to a hardware store, where I purchased some velcro straps to do a minor bike repair. Then I took off, taking streets randomly for a while.

How tall does a building need to get before Vikings stop trying to raid it?

I wonder how many times that viking has tried to kill that spider...

Strangely, this statue has no explanatory plaque saying who is being depicted. Perhaps it's just J. Random Vikingson.

I found myself out on a spit of land bearing an art installation, known as Þúfa:

The word means “tussock” in Icelandic, but it can also mean “small mountain” or “hummock.” At the top of the mound is a shed used for drying fish.

There was plenty of other stuff to photograph around the marina as well:

If this isn't a company logo, it should be.

I dont know what this is supposed to represent, with the duck and all, but it sure looks tragic on the side of a half-demolished building.

What does this local art mean?

I went to a fish and chips shop I’d spotted earlier. Ate fish and chips and did some code review, then got some soup to go. I also found a chocolatier, and made a memo to check it out the next day.

Around 5:30pm it started to rain lightly, so I put on my raincoat and waterproof socks and kept right on biking.

Two hours later, most of the way around the peninsula of Reykjavik, I blundered across the city cemetery.

The gate was open, so I walked in and started taking pictures.

My first glimpse of the shadowy graveyard cat.

Just around midnight I looked up from the camera and saw a black cat picking its way between the gravestones.

The classic Halloween cat pose!

Lookin' spooky!

Why not take a nap on a grave?

Perhaps the ghost of a mouse will wander by. Or perhaps a mouse that will soon be a ghost.

Posing for me on a grave.

Flash photography: Cats don't like it.

It walked right up to me as though it was keeping an appointment. I imagined it saying, “Hello, I’ve been stationed at this cemetery to complete the spooky picture for you tourists. Sorry I’m late. Where are we sitting?”

I pet it and sang it the “graveyard cat song”, making it up as I went:

Graveyard cat.
Grave Yaard Cat!
Spooky at midnight, how about that!

Bein’ all fuzzy,
Pokin’ at the graves,
Lookin’ for a mouse to chomp today.

Cat cat, cat cat
Catcat cat!

Graveyard graveyard
Graveyard cat!

Does this picture just scream "Halloween" or what??

The cat sat down nearby, so I took the lid off my fish soup and set it next to the cat, and it licked the lid clean while I drank from the cup. A nice little shared meal.

I praised it for being spooky and photogenic, and did a round of language practice on my phone, and sent several people back home some cat photos. It watched me patiently while I made weird human noises at it, blinked for a bit, then got up and wandered away.

I learned a while ago that the instinct to hunt is not tied very strongly to the desire for food in cats. That is, they’ll hunt for the heck of it even when they’re not hungry. That makes perfect sense because if cats only tried to hunt when they were hungry, they’d starve before they got good enough to catch anything.

It also explains why a cat who’s recently been fed will still pounce on a small creature and maul it. I assumed my cat friend was heading out to find some cemetery mice and ruin their evening.

20 minutes later while I was on the other side of the cemetery the cat walked up again, and jumped onto a gravestone and posed for me. I give it a small piece of fish which it licked and then abandoned.

I tell ya: I don’t know where else in the world you would be able to get lighting this weird without some very expensive hardware and a few long extension cords.

The cathedral is visible from almost anywhere in the city. You can navigate by it.

Such wonderful textures in a cemetery.

I don’t fully understand my own contrarian nature sometimes. I really feel relaxed and comfortable when I’m sitting around in a place full of old bones and stone markers, commemorating death. If it’s midnight and I’m alone, all the better.

I didn’t used to be like this. When I was a kid I was scared very easily. I also had a stubborn desire to not be controlled, even by my own fear, so I’d go outside at night into the forest and stand there, letting myself freak out, then letting the fear ebb down to a flicker, then taking a few more steps until it flared up again, and so on. It got to the point where I was actively wishing for a ghost or demon to materialize before me, because the fact of it would open up a whole new universe of possibilities, and upend all kinds of things I’d learned about science and nature, which would be terribly exciting.

But it never happened, even once, and it still hasn’t happened, even with plenty of opportunity. Instead the practice of standing around in cemeteries and calming myself has conditioned me to relax in these places, perhaps too much, and I start thinking deep thoughts about nature and spirituality.

Also I think those cartoons about Halloween and “grim grinning ghosts” and the association of scares with candy may have contributed.