I need a new dream because I fulfilled a long-standing one, right at the top of ye olde bucket list. To go to Iceland, stand on its moss, rub the noses of its ponies, gaze at its glaciers, be wine-drunk somewhere where 4am looks like late-afternoon. I guess it all started somewhere in my teens, with Hyperballad or maybe Flugufrelsarrin; it seemed like these songs from the great glaciered island had a certain quality of cavernousness, oldness, paleness, sparkle of crystalline, like you could imagine that maybe they were really adapted from the chants of vikings mixed with the harmonies of weird little elves who live in piles of rocks. Then came the actual imagery of it, all of that lava and those gentle little sheep and those massive and desolate fields of green or gray that seemed to go on truly forever. And no billboards—how can a place in this space-time point have no billboards? And can I go there, can I really? And I did.
And it was cold, and so empty, and when it’s summer in New York and you’ve tired of brunches with three Bloody Marys and rooftop parties with bored graphic designers, well, that’s just the kind of place I’d like to be. 
I was also blessed to be with wonderful friends from the UK, and to meet their wonderful friends, and to all drink whiskey together out of a flask that I bought at a geyser and to laugh at the austerity of our barely-manned, minimalist airport hotel. And the grocery stores were so confusing, Christ, they were confusing, with sheeps’ heads and what felt like 300 different flavors of yogurt, and way too much salted licorice. And then at some point, I’m back at my desk in New York, in Times Square, sorting spreadsheets and writing Tweets and listening to Bruce Springsteen on Spotify but still being able to hear honking through my headphones. That ache of having been alien and going back to just being a busy little person in a big noisy city.
So, where will it be next? Or should I forfeit Starbucks and subways and just become a shepherd?
HILARY POLLACK 