Being Someone

There’s someone connected to my social circle who is young and unendingly passionate about being someone — being someone in the sense of wealth and grandeur. There’s nothing wrong with what he’s doing or his views, rather it got me thinking. Just now, my wonderful host from the small town came to visit me in Reykjavík with a mountain of Icelandic books from her collection. She’s letting me borrow them for a year or two: the complete collections of Halldór Laxness and Gunnar Gunnarsson. She came inside, and we spoke a little, all in Icelandic. She also brought two other books as gifts and some prints of photos she took of me at my event.

These people I meet and interact with are so unfathomably gracious and kind. I keep writing about appreciation, but words are truly not enough to describe how grateful I am for them: these Icelandic people I meet who bring so much meaning and humanity to my personal world. However, there’s a glaring issue: I don’t speak Icelandic well enough to simply speak as I wish... Fluency is a lot to ask for, but now it’s bothering me to the point of making me feel a sense of desperation to be fluent.

I would love to speak to this woman in Icelandic, about the topics she brought up that I couldn’t really answer about. To her husband who doesn’t even speak English. To the artist who runs the gallery who wanted to talk about art and philosophy. To the man who runs the book place who can speak to endless depths about life and literature… To read all those books and write my own stories and poems.

As I become a part of the literature and poetry scene in Iceland, I feel more and more like someone. As I expand into the Icelandic-speaking communities, it makes me feel even more so. And what causes this personal development is my initiative in building communities, hosting events, speaking to people, and making an effort to learn and connect. I wrote before that everything I do is an expense to me rather than a livelihood. My point is that being someone has absolutely nothing to do with money, fame, or influence. It’s about belonging and being at the center of a something, whatever that might mean.

I’m still not in a position where I can write about what weighs on me, but at least I can write about the idea of living a life. I’m going to take this time to deeply engage with the Icelandic language and work on my next books. My mind is filled with stories and inspiration. Born of many disappointments.

While in the countryside, I came up with a profound piece of hermitary wisdom inspired by being on the beach and having rocks and sand absolutely everywhere with gale-force winds and rain: “You can never have too many rocks in your shoe.” The meaning being that having rocks in your shoe implies that you were at least outside. I came up with another one recently: “The saddest life is a life lived without sadness.” I joke about these being my “profound wisdom,” but I like them and may as well share.

On the topic of sadness, I was thinking about my own creative work. If I lived a happy life, would I be anything at all like who and what I am? creating what I do and working on such projects? Obviously, I can’t definitively answer that, but I don’t believe so. I think the motivation for everything I do is the difficulty I’ve encountered in life along the way. It’s a strange thought, because it makes me feel like happiness would take away from who and what I am. But at the same time, it’s the search for happiness that is what I’m doing. It’s quite paradoxical; I’ll give it no further thought because I don’t mind a nice paradox.

I’ve been talking to everyone about community and groups. I keep proposing new things, and people keep expressing interest. It’s nice, but I’m also longing for my own people: the kinds of people who would read poetry at every possible opportunity in the city, attend each and every exhibit opening, throw themselves at cultural literature, and write stories into the next morning. I’ve only really met two or three such people in my life. None of them are in my life anymore. That’s Iceland. Everyone comes and goes. Some of us remain. We’re the strange people who hike on sunny days without using sunscreen because we know the sunburn will be our only chance to get a tan for the next three months.

With my business partner leaving, the desire to meet that one other person who shares my passions for art, literature, and community is feeling almost like a pressure. She was that person for the longest time, and I appreciated her for that. But life happens. I don’t like meeting new people — at least not the effort it entails. Invite me to meet, and I’ll say yes, but it takes the force of the earth to prompt me to invite someone else to meet. Especially someone new.

Anyway, I want to be someone in the sense that I want a voice. I want a means of communicating my thoughts and ideas about the world and a way of showing my creations. I’ve never seriously tried to put any of my stuff out there. I never once advertised my books. I don’t even sell my art online. But I also don’t like social media or anything related to the internet. It’s another paradox: a cruel, modern one.

More rambling. As always, the flow of a post is a representation of my mind: disorganized. I’ll end with something I wrote a day or two ago:

I am an actor, my stage name is The Fool, and my starring act is playing a man who knows what he is doing.