Day 24 -- Travel from Paris to Reykjavík

Saturday and one more day of travel!

This time it was up bright and early for the flight from Charles de Gaulle to Reykjavík’s Keflavík International Airport. And so began one of the most surprising episodes in this European trip.

I knew just a little bit about Reykjavík and the island nation of Iceland from a friend who had spent his honeymoon there and from what little I could glean from the likes of Björk and Sigur Rós. I had been to one of the latter’s concerts at Roy Wilkins Auditorium and it was one of the few events in my life up to this point that I would describe as genuinely ethereal.

I also knew that Iceland had almost zero violent crime and even petty theft was rare -- to the point that parents leave their children unattended, bicycles are not locked up and hitchhiking is a perfectly acceptable form of transportation.

I also knew that the Icelandic language was Tolkien’s model for elvish.

But nothing really prepared me for the strange reality of the place.

Even the drive from the airport to downtown Reykjavík bespoke an alienness. Outside the window of the bus was a landscape treeless and volcanic yet somehow still lush. Small, bright houses with corrugated metal roofing popped out from amongst the black and green. The sky was overcast, but not gloomy.

When we arrived in Reykjavík there was not a lot of time left in the day. We got dinner at Piccolo Italia, a small Italian restaurant run by a man from, I believe it was Sicily (maybe Crete). And we did get to wander around Laugavegur street, the main retail shopping stretch in Reykjavík.

The highlight of this particular walk was the discovery of a used clothing store in the basement off the street.

There was no storefront, but just a small rack out front and a sandwich board pointing to an entrance to the downstairs. Inside things were sort of a jumble. Shoes here and there, coats in various places -- the sort of place you could tell was not manicured for chic customers (though a couple of the “vintage” clothing stores in Reykjavik very clearly were).

It was just Dietrich and I and once we got in we met the magical proprietor of the place. He looked and behaved just as I imagine Mr. Ollivander in the Harry Potter books.

The man was fussy, had a fine sense of taste, and keenly wanted to match a piece of clothing with Dietrich. He knew where everything was, and would go find it for you if you asked. He helped Dietrich try things on, gave him advice on fit, turned some pieces down.

It was marvelous!

My only regret was that we really couldn’t find anything that both worked and was affordable. We really did try.

Before turning in for the night after such an early morning, we stopped by a neighborhood concert. The band set up on a small stage, people gathered around socializing, and the band played their music. Some wandered in and out, others were more set on staying. Kids played around at the front of the stage.

This sort of thing seems that these are a staple of Reykjavik society and characteristic of the culture that we saw in the time were there.

Day 24 Reflection

All proprietors should be as that nameless man operating the nameless store that we walked into to shop for clothes.

He was a connoisseur without snobbery, an eccentric gentleman perhaps fallen on harder times, but still so obviously dedicated both to the things and to the people in his immediate care.

There is, of course, much to object to in Karl Marx’s thought and especially in the development of the only communist regimes we have ever known.

However, the rarity of something like this gentleman’s demeanor does point to something Marx got right in the broken relationship we have to our labor -- perhaps even more so in the 21st century consumerist culture.

“In what consists this ‘alienation,’” Marx asks. “First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it.”

I do believe Marx’s critique of our relationship to our work is accurate. It accounts for everything from TGIF to the mess our educational system is in, where what should be an intrinsically satisfying activity (learning about the world in which we live) has become a means to getting a job.

I do not agree with Marx’s solution.

Rather, I think we have to make an effort to be like this man in the small basement shop in Reykjavik.

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