Double Helix

Back from a three-day respite at the beach – a check-in with my favorite spot on earth, water flowing at my feet, footprints made and washed away almost before I had time to turn around to watch them last briefly. As usual, there is so much to write, but not much time for the written word . . . and like cherry picking when the tree is full, I begin by nibbling . . .

I awoke to the words of an Eric Clapton song, “If I could change the world . . . “ – But why? I no longer want to change the world. I always saw writing as my personal way to change the world. A noble goal, I once thought – but finally, off the hook, relieved that I don’t have to do that. Those footprints in the sand don’t have to last forever – after all.

This new insight may come from age and reality, but also prompted from a book which I avidly read on the beach as the waves tumbled to my feet – The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner, a book about the happiest and least happy places on this planet. I especially enjoyed reading, and re-reading, the chapter on Iceland because I’ve always been fascinated by everything Icelandic – its history, landscape, personality, lore – especially the sagas from a thousand years ago. Iceland is – and this is no shock to me but is meant to surprise the readers of Weiner’s book – Iceland is the happiest nation of people on this planet. The author has traveled the globe and discounted out the most suspected reasons for happiness: good weather, personal success, financial security, political stability, religiosity, ritual, etc. – and the answer comes that Icelandic people are happiest because of an inherent creative spirit that is not reserved for a few so-called successful artists, but a way of life for everyone.  

Weiner writes: “In Iceland, being a writer is pretty much the best thing you can be. Successful, struggling, published in books or only in your mind, it matters not. Icelanders adore their writers. Partly, this represents a kind of narcissism, since just about everyone in Iceland is a writer or poet. Taxi drivers, college professors, hotel clerks, fishermen. Everyone. Icelanders joke that one day they will erect a statue in the center of Reykjavik to honor the one Icelander who never wrote a poem. They’re still waiting for that person to be born.”

Icelanders write, but they also love to read what others have written – whether in published format or by the guy next door. “Better to go barefoot than without a book,” is an Icelandic saying. Reading and writing and telling stories -- also, music compositon and visual art -- is the Icelandic way of occupying the winter hours, most of which are shrouded in complete darkness for months at a time. No one is expected to become famous from their art, or to change the world, or to make millions of krona, or even to be recognized. Art is fun, to be enjoyed – and to be shared around the hearth or in the mead halls.  I guess we Westerners would call that unambitious.

Another noteworthy quality of the Icelanders is their high level of tolerance for the idiosyncrasies of others – their ancient heroes are the likes of Ref the Sly, Gunnlaug Wormtongue, Sarcastic Halli, and Thorstein Staff-Struck. Women were no less independent, the most famous being Gudrid the Far Traveler who is said to have crossed the Atlantic eight times and dubiously lost two or three husbands. She gave birth to her first son, Snorri, in what was to become America 500 years later, that is once the European man named Christopher Columbus made his “discovery” official.  In old age, she summed up her life's accomplishments by saying that Karlsefni (one of her husbands) told the tale of these voyages better than anyone else.

Icelanders expect failure – even applaud it – because that means a person has challenged the impossible. Failure, they say, is living proof that the goal was a mammoth one, one that took on the brutality of existence. That’s what they admire – the attitude of challenge and all the endless creative ways to accomplish a goal – and then, best of all, the stories about what happened.  

There were times on the beach last week when I deliberately walked a weave-through pattern to the footprints of those who had walked earlier that morning:  a man with a very high arch – a child about two or three years old – a flat footed person of short, husky stature – a large dog – our prints became woven together like a grand helix – and, there, I had added my strand too – and all lasting no longer than the time it takes to turn around and watch them fade.