Gimlé

I’ve been away for a while.

Three weeks in Iceland. A week and a half semi-unconscious due to the fact that my Icelandic body thinks that 20 degrees centigrade is tropical while the heat has been hovered around the mid-thirties.

The Icelandic word óveður comes to mind, basically our word for weather with a negative prefix.

“Bad Weather” essentially, but with additional connotations.

The main difference being that the recent heat here in the UK definitely qualifies as óvður but might not be “Bad Weather” according to the English.

So Iceland and a torrent of scorching heat partially explains why I’ve been so silent. Making this weblog like a graveyard more because of its utter lack of noise rather than the customary morbidity or cynicism.

It doesn’t help that I don’t particularly like this Iceland.

For some reason that never fails to surprise most people, both Icelanders as well as foreigners.

As with most things interesting, the reasons have something to do with history and change.

And awareness of change.

The easiest way to attain some sort of personal growth is to go to a new place. Put yourself in a different context.

Not for a visit. To stay. If you can do that without knowing whether the move is permanent or not, so much the better.

A new place. Uncertain circumstances. Strange surroundings. New friends. All force you to change.

And if you go with an open mind, your basic survival instinct will force you and your personality to adapt to the new situation.

Weird social interactions. Seemingly arbritary rules in conversation.

It remolds you.

But for the personal change to turn into personal growth, you have to return.

You have to go back. To a locus. A center. A place where you both knew yourself, your old self, and where you have a lot of friends and acquaintances that know you. Knew you.

If this sounds like a narrative cliche, that’s because it is. The horrible thing about life is that it tends to be an aggregation of formulaic events and nasty, scratchy cliches. Non-formulaic is just another reason why novels and movies remain cliches.

I’d fire my writer were I a TV series.

Returning home, that’s the time when you notices the changes.

Which is fairly important because most of the time, noticing your personal changes, those small, incremental and evolutionary changes, is impossible.

But you, as you return, get a fairly unique chance to see them. To note down which ones are obviously bad, which ones are obviously to the better.

You might notice that you’re more mellow. Or that you engage in conversations in a much more forgiving manner. That you are more critical of some things and less of others.

You see which friends you still have something in common with. And the ones you’ve grown distant to.

And the simple act of being aware of the changes, affects them. It gives you perspective.

Sight.

A small, dark light…

And a glimpse of the path you’re treading.

Coming back to Iceland once every six months is important.

But my old self—the person I used to be—is alive in all of my memories of that place.

It’s a person I don’t particularly like.

Baldur Bjarnason.
Clifton, Bristol.