Time is up, this time for real. Many times this year it seemed that Hljómalind would have to close, but somehow we always managed to survive, but this time we are closing for real. We already stopped to buy food, because by the end of the month everything will have to be gone. We're going to have a staff party on the 14th, and probably a huge sale at the end of the month, where people will be able to buy anything they want from the café, even the equipment, and bring it home. The place that made my stay in Iceland so special, that allowed me to support myself during my studies, that gave me food, friends and even shelter, will be soon gone forever, and with it a huge part of the feeling that tied me to this country. People are leaving, I cannot get any unemployment benefit after losing my job because I'm a student (students should take a study loan, they tell you, but yeah, only Icelandic students, so for me there is nothing...), and Iceland, just like Italy, will become for me a mere (and cheap) holiday destination.There is a growing rumor that the Icelandic economy will not survive the winter, also. I'm not sure this is one of the many cases of mediatic terrorism that someone will profit from - I remember last November it came in the news that stores were running out of basic goods like noodles and oil, so that some people ran to the stores and bought everything possible. It may well be a false alarm - but it seems clear that, sooner or later, something like that is bound to happen. And there are still people that have the courage to write on newspapers that capitalism is good. A recent counter-article argued that capitalism is long dead, and what we have right now is the pale out-of-control shadow of something that has died out - or rather degenerated, I would say - long ago, basically when the most important currencies went for the first time out of the gold standard (1932 and again as a consequence of the Vietnam war in 1971). Right now there is no government using gold standard, meaning basically that any currency is in fact worth the paper or poor metal it is made of. Maybe I'm being simplicistic and I don't understand much of this, but after all, who said that everyone who has the right to vote needs to be an economist, or rather, the less you think, the better the system fares. And the politicians that are elected by "the people". Never heard of Zeitgeist?I only have one thought in my head: besides that I have decided to leave because of so many other reasons, why should a foreigner in Iceland leave the country just because of the economic crisis? Is it a good reason to leave, i.e. escape from a disaster that in fact anti-capitalists like me have but advocated? I don't really believe that such "disaster" will quite harm people, as a sympathiser of primitivist theories. This can be a good chance to go back to a more traditional, less consumeristic way of living, and reverse a mentality centred on the accumulation of wealth. I do believe in all that, so leaving makes me feel like fleeing a monster that I don't fear at all. But I do feel something scary in the present situation, because things I have been enjoying are over. But let's ask the real reason why they're over: Hljómalind is closing because of a landlord that is at the mercy of some banks; the house will go to back up some of his loans that still (incredibly) support his crazy business. The only thing folks can do right now is hoping that he won't be able to do it for long.Nevertheless, as long as you live in this world and haven't chosen to alienate - that's exactly what I'm hopefully going to do in Slovakia - you need to play by its rules. And the rule is that you need money to do things. Sometimes it's not much, because the system is not as bad as it could possibly be. For instance, I pay very little tuition fee for going to university, but in some way I have to support myself. So I'm happy that in order to study, I don't have to take a loan that it will take 20 years to pay back afterwards (especially because not doing it won't influence the direction of your studies, allowing you to freely pick what you like and not what will make more moneymoneymoney), but if I didn't have to work, I would have probably already handed in my M.A. thesis by now, as I intended to. This is not the only problem, but in a time when I'm desperately thinking about finding a job for the next months that will allow me to go on with my education, this seems terribly relevant. What I'm afraid of, is that this need will push me to situations that won't do any good to me - like, is it really the right thing to do, to spend the winter in a ski resort where I can make a lot of money but where probably I'm not going to feel any good? Is it really worth it? Is running after money what I really want? Or am I too much an idealist if I think that I can make so many nice things without money?That is surely true for some things, but not all of them. Opting for the free things is for sure a nice choice, but there is more in life, or there are things that not everybody can achieve by himself, like it or not. To take an example related to school, not everybody can self-teach the piano, but if you spend most of your time working for paying piano classes, you won't practice so much as you need and you're going to be a bad pianist anyway. That's why you need both working and not working, i.e. the best solution as long as you live in this system is to accept a necessary evil using it for your purposes without becoming slave of it. Making money is necessary and acceptable as long as the purpose of doing it is not making money itself. I dislike many things that I do every day, included using a computer to communicate as I am doing now; it's consoling, though, that I'm aware of it. But no, I don't believe that looking beyond it is idealism, rather inspiring realism.
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