News

More macro loveliness from the heart of Reykjavik, this time of a flower medley in my parent's front yard ~.~

While cruising the interwebs today I ran across a link from the Bookworm Bookshop in Beijing highlighting the City of Reykjavik's first Reading Festival in October 2012, Sleipnir and the Joy of Reading. Reykjavik is a UNESCO City of Literature, which will be no surprise to my more literary readers (góðan daginn, Professor Batty!)

In other news, I promised to keep us all informed about the winner of the competition for the redesign of Ingólfstorg. They are the ASK architectural firm, and here is their winning design. Even though some people are righteously furious over everything that smacks of change, anything is better than the bad chi feng shui state of things in that downtown square. The city of Rvk has made a recent valiant attempt to draw more summertime life there, but when I drove past yesterday evening there were exactly 8 well-known town drunks (who usually hang out at Austurvellir) taking advantage of the new lounge chairs, two bikers, and lone skater petulantly sliding a measly wooden box. I'm beginning to think ancient Indian burial ground for that particular plot of land...

So though I try my best not to sleb gawk, ok, ok, yes Tom and Katie came into Valentína's ice cream store on the last official day of their pre-divorce papers marriage.  And as it seems that the final photo of them holding hands EVER displays the very same double vanilla latte that Katie politely ordered from Kristjána (the cute girl in the headband in the back row of this photo) while bodyguards waited outside and Tom flashed her his winning grin, I thought I'd go ahead and mention it.

Speaking of visitors, I mentioned cruise ships in the last post. The following photos are from June 18th, when four huge luxury liners docked here and spewed forth 10,000 curious humans which, combined with fold arriving by air, meant the highest number of visitors Iceland has ever had in one day.

One of the ships was the Costa Pacifica, sister ship to the ill-fated Costa Concordia (this last link is to a very compelling article in Vanity Fair about her last night afloat.)

These pics are however of the German AIDAmar, a 252-meter long Sphinx-class cruise ship with 1096 cabins and adorned with a smile, unlike her pensive residents in these shots, who I'm sure were just unwinding from a long day of Golden Circling and postcard buying and such. It seems that tourism is booming here on the Lava Rock, and with more arrivals and departures from Keflavik International than ever, as well as the increase in cruise liners, it seems things won't be settling back into any kind of "isolated republic in the North Atlantic" any time soon.

Have you tried Dynamic Viewing yet? Five new views in all. Use the blue tab at the top of the view page to check them all out : )

Pink

With all the words floating about in the ether, both spoken and written, words that inform, report, damage, debate, judge, describe, as well as those that thankfully admire, respect and heal, I think there is simply nothing much more to communicate than what this bloom signifies.

In the words of Tolle, "Flowers, more fleeting, more ethereal, and more delicate than the plants out of which they emerge...[are like] messengers from another realm, like a bridge between the world of physical forms and the formless." 

Beyond language, beyond society and petty things, beyond even the human capacity to create, and recreate, a simple blossom says it all.