ENOUGH

ENOUGH! I felt deaf from the ‘noise’ of information, constantly butting, buzzing against my mantra of: “The quieter you are… the more you… hear!” At present, my lifestyle felt media manipulated: tv, radio, newspaper, mobile, computer.. ad infinitum! Besieged by endless emails, monopolizing mobiles, beset by frenzied yaps from apps! Enough is enough is….. ENOUGH, I have to escape from the unrelenting hullabaloo. Can the human brain endure so much information and who am I, an individual thinker or group dancer? However, relief sat just around the corner as next morning I boarded the flight to Reykjavik. A three-hour taxi journey with a taciturn islander, people and communication diminishing by the mile until finally a twig of a boat out to Ellidaey Island. Boating and bobbing towards the uninhabited …hideaway, an isolated jigsaw piece of land off the southern coast of Iceland, I appraise a small-boned building clinging to its side with ‘RIDICULOUS’ scribbled all over it. Someone had said Iceland was a niceland where you could float free, peace and tranquillity! But someone hadn’t warned me about…Mr Loneliness Who was soon tapping me sharply on the shoulder. So here I sit, three days into my week’s stay in the island’s lodge, dubbed the world’s loneliest house where the only neighbours are passing ships and puffing puffins. No internet, no tv, no electricity, no running nor strolling.. water just remote, alone and contemplating my countenance while wondering if God is lonely too! Suddenly, clouds bump and bruise against each other as they race away before the darkness snarls in. Soon, night has sent in its stormtroopers who land and splinter into shadow groups while wind angrily sprints up to the house bombing it with blockbuster punches. Then rain happily joins in, machine-gunning the house until the building begins to stagger and stumble. I check my face and it is still in the same place but I sit timorously trembling, tyrannised and terrified while my eyes follow the house’s dimly lit path as it wags its tail to the cliff’s edge and jumps into the void of darkness. But this poem is a broken wrist, with a twist, as suddenly, my bones brittle and inside myself…..I faint! What possibly could happen now? But there it is.. the knock at the front door! Ian Souter