Diorama

This isn't a summertime version of the flaming protests of January (though some perpetually pumped-up and eternally dissatisfied ranters have gleefully engaged in a new round of struts and pot-banging down in front of the Parliament building) but a dramatic interactive diorama we found at Árbæjarsafn this evening. Push a button and the thing, about four feet square, lights up and crackles to reenact the Great Reykjavik Fire of 1915. We loved it. It was cheesy and cool.

Post Script: As you can see in this video there's more going on down at Austurvöllur than I realized, and I would be hard pressed to judge the elderly white-haired woman banging her pot in protest as a hot-blooded rabble rouser, or the woman wearing the national costume, or the nice-looking guy who's going to camp there as a stance against the ever-increasing cost of living. (Read more about the current situation Here.) These people obviously do not fall into the same category as those bores (admit it, you know one) who somehow get off on blame and injustice and (sigh) chronic, very public self-pity. Hurrah to the campers and may they enjoy their weekend tenting in the riot zone that is drunken 3 am downtown Reykjavik (no irony intended)!

Green

No words, I think, are needed...

(Just found this review of my book, though, after (yeps) Googling myself, as well as this interview from 2007 if you're, you know, interested.)

Dapple

Just pretty.

This is the little grove on the southwest side of the town lake where my father says he used to go with his childhood buddies for summertime picnic adventures. The trees, probably not much taller than he was fifty (ahem!) -odd years ago, have matured beautifully.

If you love old things and measures of our ever changing world like I do, you'll enjoy visiting the Reykjavík Museum of Photography website. The photo that I've linked shows an overview of the town lake, and from the very barren patch in the lower left hand corner of that 1919 image the lush little forest shown above has tenaciously emerged.

Hay

Thanks, all, for your support and visits to Iceland Eyes! We've got a steady average of 5000 views per month, about half of those new and a quarter regulars who drop by often during the month for new posts. Not too shabby for a little online hobby!

Read about His Holiness, the Dalai Lama's visit to our humble(d) island here. (Today's Fréttablaðið newspaper reports that China, which formally protested the visit last week, has now recalled its ambassador to Iceland. Go here to read China's latest bullying threat on the issue of Tibet.)

Yet while grownups threaten, war, abuse and defend in the world arena our children play at simpler games, hopefully, ideally, kept safe from the tensions and dramas of their fathers' lives.

Lunch

A preschool trip with Oðinn to a Mossfellsdalur farm on Friday included a hot dog bonanza in the big barn with cookies for dessert.

Signal

This one's for Valentina. She likes this shot a lot.

View from Here

Ahh, life is simple, sweet and lovely. Of course it all depends on your point of view...

Silence is golden, smiles are free, the sun shines and not so far from where I sit a bell tolls the hour. All is good.

Park

Here's where the washing was done up until the late 1920's when the Reykjavik finally piped steaming hot ground water into the city center. Women lugged their dirty loads the 3 kilometer distance from downtown to Laugardalur, Hot Springs Valley, walking Laugarvegur, or Hot Springs Road. Going out there and reading the info plaques about what laundering was like and how it was all done less than a hundred years ago helps to put things into perspective . We've come a long way...(Here's a good link if you want to read more about Iceland's more innocent version of dirty laundry)

When we pulled up to the entrance to the Laugardalur botanical gardens this past weekend, just by the little zoo and skating rink, I saw some skinny young badass hanging about at the edge of the parking lot looking all jittery and expectant in his cool sunglasses and swanky sneakers. Two cars pulled up for whatever he was peddling in the time it took me to park and guess his game. By the time the third car was pulling away, the kids had run ahead of me into the gardens and the skittery, embarrassed-looking dealer knew that he'd been made by a 'suburban' mom. So just to bug him I called out in English Dude, you are So obvious and smirked. I know, he replied as he sheepishly jogged away, I know.

Times change.

Play

Play, originally uploaded by blue eyes.

Our beautiful Eva Guðrún Gunnbjörnsdóttir presented her graduation production for the Theatre: Theory and Practice department at the Icelandic Academy of the Arts on Saturday.

The play, Pósteria, was written, designed and directed by Eva, who also acted the role of a sweetly ignorant, hopeful, frustrated, underpaid and disturbingly gullible post office worker (seen here at the beginning/end of the play reading a Cosmo quiz for her coworkers.) It was a painfully truthful, quirky and very funny look at the modern day feminist dilemma, full of awkward and loaded silences interspersed with roars of energized rebellion against the roles women adapt to and, often all too willingly, adopt. Cyclical, contained, explosive, sentimental, ironic and shyly childish, the play is like growing up, coming of age, becoming an adult in a world we don't quite understand, even if any number of subtle (and not so subtle) clues are left here and there to form and guide us. It asks What if I don't get it? What if I don't want to take part? How does this secret happiness thing work? What do you want me to do!? and leaves us with enough thoughtful detail to help us form our own, very personal answers.

Congratulations, Eva. Wonderful stuff!

Blooms

Springtime in Reykjavik, with pretty blooms and hints of blue skies, is finally here after our long winter of discontent.

New life is pulsing, quickening, in the warming earth and in our hearts. Elections have brought hope to many that our little island nation will survive our recent disgrace and grow again, if ever so humbly. We can't escape our pasts but are forced instead to review missteps, misdeeds, selfish living and a collective disconnect from the land we live on. But Nature, in her wisdom, always grants a new spring, a new chance to plant and nurture, sow and reap. The lessons never go away. They are revisited on us until we get them right, until we learn to cherish, selflessly, all that truly matters in our lives. What we run from comes back to us in ways we never imagined, offering new chances to bloom, and to grow.

Tower

You've all read this Vanity Fair article about Iceland's crash, yes? Here's the tower Michael Lewis refers to. It's glorious, shiny and very very empty...

By the way, Mr. Lewis nails us in many ways, but yes, we do have more than ten or twenty names in circulation here, and no, not too many SUVs have been blown up and sorry, but even the women here can be stubborn and bumbling and inexcusably, unapologetically aggressive when in public.

It's a space thing: Dr. Seuss' Zax anyone? (and the Zax's even agreed to disagree, and not barge into each other sans eye contact, a disturbing local phenomenon for those from more cultured cultures.)

Atlantis

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," as Keats put it and to be boldly truthful, the resort casino down the beach from the ashram was a daily draw. Great pools and aquariums abounding with local sea life, the overly-manicured landscaping and the immense hotel structures towering over the gentle Paradise Island beaches testified to the human will to tame nature and erect monuments to the gods of engineering and ingenuity.

It was very worthwhile to saunter over for immersion in American family-vacation reality, a big reminder that while daily silence, yoga and meditation are a way of life, humanity in all it's baseness and glory doesn't disappear in the meantime, and that we're all in this life thing together. In other words, those little trips (along with forays into urban, decaying Nassau) proved that Oneness, Service and Compassion are always the order of the day.

All that, and a daily double latte to boot.

Way

Paths wind through the ashram foliage, yours to choose.

Here you are not an accumulation of all you've been, but an unfolding of pure potential at every moment.
 

Doves flow through this compact jungle, cooing the name of Sumer's goddess, Hu.
 

If you step softly you may even hear the soft rustle of a swami's orange robes on a path nearby, or the gentle chanting of students in their morning meditations.



Here you stretch your heart to the sun, on a beach, by the trees...
 

...and meet like-minded souls over shared meals.
 

And, of course, there's always the sea...
 

Paradise

Paradise, originally uploaded by blue eyes.

The dock at another little island in the Atlantic, called Paradise.

Keflavik to New York to Miami to Nassau and onto a small boat and suddenly you're there, at the ashram for a week of sun, kirtan, asanas and silence. Your mind stills, and all the pains of yesterday are washed away in the warm and salty sea.

Kaffi

One of Kaffismiðja Ísland's owners, Sonja Grant, is refilling her grinders with fresh toasty beans, roasted on location in a fantasy-pink coffee roaster at the most cozy café in town. The location is sweet, the coffee amazing and barista Hjörtur makes the perfect drink every time.

Be their guest: stop by, order something warm and inspiring, flip through the selection of classic vinyl, put something on the turntable, have a seat, sigh happily, smile, and enjoy.

Sushi

On Laugavegur, just above the intersection with Skólavörðurstígur, is SushiBarinn, a tiny jewel of the Orient tucked unobtrusively in between a café and the walled off carcass of a house slated for demolition/renovation. It's easy to miss, and looks from the outside as if it would be ridiculously impossible for more than one or two people to sit inside at a time, but appearances deceive. Inside it somehow expands to accommodate, and provides a small bubble of meditative respite from the hustle outside. And the sushi is excellent too.

March

Sunny, snappy, at turns gusty and calm. We're living and loving here, facing our transformation, unsure of our direction but fully aware of our need to change. Old patterns and habits no longer suffice.

Kiddie steps into our future are called for: constant, without hesitation, at times wobbly, but always looking forward with joyous expectancy, adventure, anticipation.

Bridge

Our version of the Golden Gate, spanning the Ölfusá river at Selfoss. Not so majestic, but pretty on a winter's evening.

Sunset

sunset, originally uploaded by blue eyes.

Oh, poor little island...so many things are exposing in this, the twilight, of our millennial glory. It's all we can do to keep the love lights shining in the face of so much freshly raked muck. If it's more disaster/recession/meltdown content you're looking for, search other sites. Iceland Eyes stays neutral and seeks, as always, to find the shine of beauty in our world, made all too common, all too often, by the squabbles and pettiness of men.

Find something beautiful today and give it your love.

Lopi

This photo is an homage to the person who created the very nifty kids pink wool one-piece that we saw hanging in the Red Cross charity shop on Laugavegur.

It's one of a kind, or at least I've never seen this particular design before. Someone knit this with dedication and a loving hand for a child who outgrew it and has moved on. Maybe it even passed through a family, a klatch of sisters and cousins who inherited it for a winter or two, snuggled or itched in it, loved it or suffered it, until their arms poked too far out the sleeves and their ankles got too exposed, and then it was conveyed on. Decidedly unfashionable, it was finally relegated to the second-hand heap, stuffed into a plastic bag, donated to a good cause, and delivered to the storefront for a chance at a new life where it has maybe already found itself a small winter body to warm.