A few first moments from an Icelandic adventure in progress

When we got here it was all against the sky. And the sky was all blue. When there is nothing behind it but the sky what you are looking at looks like the end, the edge, the very tip of what there is. And also the light is sharp, it has a sharpness and cutting blue. The camera takes it all in blue unless you trick it. Cool light that cuts and sharpens and brightness that causes blindness and white and the contrast is hard and the shadows are long and the night is twilight for hours until the fog softens it and then drowsiness makes way for sleep.
Now I could sleep again but it would be like a cat nap—the circle of fur in the back yard finding a warm patch of sun not expecting to sleep for long. Each time I woke in the night I checked the window and standing there was attempting to develop a photo in my mind. But each time was much like the last until the fog came and I never looked at the clock. It was its own time and set apart.
It was the quietness that threw me off at first and only secondly the light. It is quiet because at some points no one is about. Or everyone is stopping a moment to think. But I mean really quiet and I hear no motor humming or water falling or wind working its way through some kind of grid. And I was shocked to see a face in a second floor window, hard drawn and a bit suspicious. I thought there was no one awake but this face with a white ring of electric shock hair, tight eyes, and a stern demeanor gazed out at me there on the street stumbling along to find out what there was to do for 5 hours while we waited for the man to let us in to our room. Ragnar, of the tight striped trousers, the hard sparkle and the evil chuckle, his rooms, one of which we had booked to stay in but not until 2pm were all shut up this early in the morning whether empty or with sleepers we weren’t getting in. And he repeated “after two” with great emphasis on the word after. And he had not answered our question each time we had asked by email whether or not we could check in early since our flight was arriving at the ungodly hour of 6:30am. This is the world I’ve expected my whole life. The very nice, the friendly, but the unmovable, the never-give-an-inch, the held fast man who wants you to earn it and then he might bring you in. He suggested we hang out in the garden of the sculpture museum. It, he said is open 24 hours. The gate is unlocked, he means. I wonder when the last time it was that he laid down on the grass of that garden. Maybe he sees a lot of backpackers. His place isn’t very expensive. In Icelandic terms.

First we searched for a hotel that would be serving breakfast. It was now 8am after all and an ordinary hotel would be serving breakfast to early risers. We heard someone at the airport say they were staying at the Radisson. Now that sounds like a place that would have a lobby and a breakfast for weary travelers. Ragnar was going straight back to bed after locking our suitcases (minus the one the airline was keeping for an extra day) in the stairwell just inside the back door. He doesn’t serve breakfast at his guesthouse anyway. He provides a kettle and a toaster in your room and you can fend for yourself, which is fine, but you have to get in first and we definitely weren’t in yet. And who can blame him. Check in is at 2pm. And I’m just stating facts here. This isn’t the office of complaints.

How would we have appreciated the silence of a Sunday morning without this moment? We wouldn’t have. We were so exhausted we would have taken a short nap. But now we ambled down the street in search of breakfast even though Ragnar had chuckled that nothing, I mean nothing, would be open. And he was wrong. But perhaps he doesn’t think about other hotels and what they offer that is different from his own. At any rate everything is close together in Reykjavik and the Center Hotel Klopp was open and had their breakfast buffet spread out in the lobby and they took us in and let us use the toilet and eat breakfast and only charged us most of what we had exchanged at the airport and we were glad to pay it. And somehow I felt on the edge of the known universe. A frontier feeling and the buildings around us in this small hotel lobby reminded me of buildings in small old towns across the United States only different and some of them have corrugated tin walls and they are painted fantastic colors that reflect boldly in the bright light. And we sat in the warm sunny window and the back of my head melted in one spot even though outside it was a bit chilly.
As the morning moved forward we went in and out of various states of being and when, finally, 2pm came around we went quickly and quietly to our guest house and folded into our beds and fell hard and long to sleep until the little beeping woke us up to metal-hanger us out of bed and go back out into the bright and find some kind of vegetarian restaurant that would feed us for less than four hundred dollars and so happy was I that I ordered a piece of banana cake and as I was eating it CJ made the conversion in his head and announced: that piece of banana cake costs $10. Which I later remembered as $12 and it was very good but I will try to enjoy every single thing I eat here and allow the memory of taste and texture to linger as long as possible. Even more than usual it seems like a good thing to savor every moment.
And today we went back to everything we walked past yesterday but were too bleary-eyed to take in fully and went again to the best café in town and found the Icelandic fish and chips and went to the Art Museum to see the Roni Horn exhibit and the admission fee is good for three days so the savoring will be even easier. And even the boats in the harbor impressed us and light makes all the difference.
Hello to all the fine sweaters I will not buy and the sleek outdoor wear that everyone must fork over thousands of kroners to call their own. Maybe I’ll buy an asymmetrical dress or a t-shirt but the fancy high-tech fashions may have to stay behind in their own country rather than making the trip to America in my suitcase.

I haven’t said enough about the light which is what I sat down to describe but I will simply have to try again. Tonight we will go to a backyard fish grill because we’ve been invited and our host says it is so rarely nice weather out they have to do it now to take advantage of it. And it is nice weather, very nice. And bright. And the Icelandic people are wearing shorts and t-shirts but others are in sweaters and jackets because even though it is summer and it is bright, it is definitely not warm.