Dreams

Wandering around Laugavegur on Saturday was really enjoyable. A light, new snowfall still stuck on roofs and trees, glowing in the holiday lights that the city has just put up. Inside the Mál og Menning bookstore my friend Eva Einarsdóttir was signing copies of her new childrens book, Saga um Nótt (the title could easily be translated as 'The Story of Night' but it's actually based on a girl named Saga, and her journey into nighttime Dreamland.) The artwork is by Lóa Hjálmtýsdóttir  who many of you will recognize from The Reykjavik Grapevine. It's a lovely story, sure to become a kids-lit classic.

I worked at Mál og Menning (voted one of the best 12 bookstores in the world by Berlingske Tidinde) one holiday season a decade ago, and I noticed that something was missing in the tourist books section: the book that I would want to buy! Something smallish, colorful, interesting and inexpensive. A year later I started Iceland Eyes, and about four years after that I walked into a random publishers with my basic idea, which he liked. The book, Reykjavik, was published, but at that point the tourist books section had been moved in the bookstore, and my life got more than busy, and more than complicated, so I basically forgot about how Mál og Menning had inspired me.

Ten years along and the bookstore has moved the tourist books section back to where it was, and that book that I had imagined is right there on that shelf, exactly where I'd pictured it. The path my life took to get to there has been fantastic and crooked and unimaginable to the girl I was, straightening and dusting off the books at Christmas time all those years ago.

But that's how manifesting works: visualize, and hold the vision in your mind. Create a prototype to touch and experience, even if it's not perfect. Keep moving forward, tending your idea, but refrain from poking at it! As they say, the seed is taking root even if you can't see the sprout just yet. And then let the Universe work its wonders while you trust that life has an almost magical way of helping your dreams come true : )