We flew from Boston on the hip new no-frills Icelandic airline, Wow Air. The flight left in the evening, losing time zones as we went, and arrived at Keflavik airport around 4:30 am local time. We picked up our rental car and drove through the flat lava fields toward Reykjavik as the first light revealed an overcast, drizzly sky.
I took a short nap after breakfast, we drove with our host to a nearby phone store to get Icelandic SIM cards for our phones, and went to the fish store. After a fine dinner we went to bed early, slept ten hours, and woke up feeling remarkably fresh.
That afternoon I took a walk in the rain through the park near our friends' house. It was Sunday, and also my birthday. When I discovered this Chartres-style labyrinth, I decided to walk it, and the meditative tracing of its paths steadied my mind and helped me place myself in this new environment.
Soon I came upon the entrance to the Reykjavik Botanical Garden. The gate was open, and I went in.
Past a bust of the garden's founder, on a tall stone plinth, was this Steinhaed, or rock garden - one of several on the grounds.
It was planted with alpine species, many completely new to me, including a number of remarkable gentians:
Gentiana farreri
There was sea-holly:
And, of course, mosses: a gentle preview of the dominant type of plant we'd be seeing for the next five days on our road trip around the southern coast of Iceland. Looking back, moss-on-lava was about the only thing I was prepared for, on what turned out to be an epic journey.
In a short time, I'll be heading back, heart in hand, to Iceland.
We're going to visit dear friends, native Icelanders who were our former neighbors in Vermont. This time we're staying longer, we'll be doing some shopping and cooking for ourselves, biking daily to soak in the thermal pools at Laugardalur, and renting a car in order to take some day-long excursions near Reykjavik and a four day overnight trip along the southern coast of the island. I am totally excited, in spite of the fact that it's already cold there, and will no doubt be raining and wretched part of the time. That's Iceland, and it's OK.
Back when we used to downhill ski, I loved being on mountain summits and ridgelines during all kinds of weather: the aliveness of nature becomes awareness of your own aliveness, which then transcends our usual sense of separateness from the world we not only inhabit, but of which we are an intrinsic part. The encounter with nature's power, strangeness, and unpredictability grants us permission to accept our own. I have no desire to push the limits of safety or sanity: the sea, in particular, is a force that I respect and fear. We will see volcanoes, waterfalls, and glaciers -- from a safe distance. But I've never felt closer to creation than in Iceland, where it is happening all the time, in a raw and primal way unknown to most of us who have spent our lives in far older, worn, and docile landscapes. I've wanted to go back ever since our plane lifted off the lava fields of Keflavik and flew over the glaciers and icebergs of Greenland, almost incomprehensibly returning my changed self to the highways and cities of the urban northeast, and the tree-covered mountains of New England.
Iceland gave me the inspiration to draw again: the four years since our trip in the fall of 2011 have been the most fruitful and productive artistic period of my life, as well as propelling me on an inner journey where I've thought about creation and creativity in entirely new ways. I'm returning with anticipation but without specific expectations, hoping to be as porous as possible to whatever I encounter.
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I may be posting here during the trip, but I'm not sure about internet access. I will not be on FB, and will not be crossposting there; if you'd like to see photographs from time to time, please follow my feed on Instagram.
It's been a beautiful summer here. Great weather, a little hot, but bearable; some happy traveling and visits with friends, both here and out in the country; and a lot of lovely evenings when we simply took our dinner and some wine over into the park, lay down on a blanket, and relaxed along with our fellow Montrealers under the canopy of leaves while young people played their guitars and flutes, ducks splashed on the lake, and seagulls made lazy circles overhead until the sun set.
At the same time, it feels like la rentrée - that Quebec term for the fall back-to-school, back-to-work "re-entry" - came early for me this year. With several big projects happening, both for Phoenicia and in our design/communications business, I've had to be super-organized and focused for the past six weeks. Choir rehearsals for the fall season begin tonight. A week from tomorrow, I'm leaving on a two week trip about which I am very very excited. And when I get back, there's going to be a lot of work, a lot of singing, and deadlines coming up right away.
This is, I admit, how I'm happiest: being busy. I don't like feeling like it's out of control, but I've always preferred to be a little over-scheduled and under a certain amount of pressure -- often self-applied -- than being at loose ends. Many of my best friends are people who are also like that, which makes sense. I've found, however, that Canadians (and maybe French Canadians in particular) are much more laid back than Americans, and that's been good for me. They take weekends off. They take long vacations, and actually go away, often far away. They don't take their work home with them. They've taught me the value of stopping to relax and do nothing - not even read a book - and just look at the sky while making a glass of wine last a long time. The way they enjoy their leisure time and their friends and family, and insist on putting the latter first, may not be the the road to national productivity and efficiency, but it may well be the path to a happier life. We've always loved having people over or spending time over a home-cooked meal with friends; here this is common, and a shared pleasure no matter what people's social or economic circumstances may be. There's so much less self-comparison, insecurity, anxiety and judgment. People are more accepting of difference, and happier and more contented with themselves, just as they are.
Having spent the first fifty years of my life in the American pressure-cooker of higher education, over-achievement, self-employment and entrepreneurial business-creation, as well as trying to move forward in my own artistic pursuits, without any social "safety net," there was a constant demand for self-direction and self-discipline, and acceptance of competition.Furthermore, as self-employed people, we were responsible for saving and paying for everything, including our own health care, insurance, retirement. That creates a huge amount of pressure, even without having children to educate. I don't know if people who haven't been there can really see what this does to individuals and to a society; likewise I wonder if you can really understand the lack of it if you haven't lived for a while under a different system.
I may be happiest when I'm working hard, learning, creating, and collaborating, and think that will always be true, but I'm not too old to see the good in different ways of life and gentler values. I'm grateful to Canada and especially to Quebec, and hope they always stay this way.
Toward that end, we registered to vote last week, and will be casting our first Canadian ballots in the upcoming elections. Together with our newly-arrived Canadian passports, these were the final steps toward really becoming dual citizens, and I'm awfully happy to have finally arrived at this point.
While adding some new pages to the Phoenicia Publishing website the other day, I managed to delete the home page. While reconstructing it, I decided -- whether fearlessly or foolishly - to try out a new theme, and ended up giving a facelift to the whole site (and devoting way more time to it this week than I'd planned, but, hey.) It's something I've wanted to do for a while but I guess I needed this push by fate!
Please check it out and if you see anything amiss, please let me know. I'm always interested in your opinions about the content, look, fonts, sizing, ease of use, navigation. The photo-headers are new, and may change with the seasons; we'll see. What do you like, or not?
In addition to getting ready for our new publications coming later this fall, I was also posting a new Phoenicia blog post, with more behind-the-scenes photographs of the recording process during last month's sessions for the forthcoming Jon Appleton CD.
And there's a new sign-up for the Phoenicia email newsletter, no more than twice yearly, but it will offer special prices, pre-order offers, and occasional giveaways, exclusive to the subscribers. Some of you are faithful readers and much appreciated customers, and are already on the list, but if you aren't and would like to be, please do sign up!
In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well, you know what happened.
