Wandering around Laugavegur on Saturday was really enjoyable. A light, new snowfall still stuck on roofs and trees, glowing in the holiday lights that the city has just put up. Inside the Mál og Menning bookstore my friend Eva Einarsdóttir was signing copies of her new childrens book, Saga um Nótt (the title could easily be translated as 'The Story of Night' but it's actually based on a girl named Saga, and her journey into nighttime Dreamland.) The artwork is by Lóa Hjálmtýsdóttir who many of you will recognize from The Reykjavik Grapevine. It's a lovely story, sure to become a kids-lit classic.
I worked at Mál og Menning (voted one of the best 12 bookstores in the world by Berlingske Tidinde) one holiday season a decade ago, and I noticed that something was missing in the tourist books section: the book that I would want to buy! Something smallish, colorful, interesting and inexpensive. A year later I started Iceland Eyes, and about four years after that I walked into a random publishers with my basic idea, which he liked: turn this blog into a book. Within a year Reykjavik was published, but at that point the tourist books section had been moved to the back of the bookstore. My life had gotten much, much busier and complicated, so I basically forgot about how Mál og Menning had inspired me.
Ten years along and the bookstore has moved the tourist books section back to where it was, and that book that I had imagined is right there on that shelf, exactly where I'd pictured it. The path my life took to get to this point has been fantastic and crooked and unimaginable to the younger woman I was in 2003, straightening and dusting off the books at Christmastime all those years ago.
But that's how manifesting works: visualize, and hold the vision in your mind. Create a prototype to touch and experience, even if it's not perfect. Keep moving forward, tending your idea, but refrain from poking at it! As they say, the seed is taking root even if you can't see the sprout just yet. And then let the Universe work its wonders while you trust that life has an almost magical way of helping your dreams come true : )
2 comments:
It's good that your book is on sale again. I look at the copy you gave me from time to time, it is a great remembrance. I've spent some quality time in the coffee shop there as well, seeing that picture really makes me want to come back again.
It's actually kind of funny what a long, slow, drawn-out lifespan the "Reykjavik" book has had. I was walking past Drekinn, the shop on the cover, with a girlfriend the other day and she exclaimed, "Is that your book? My father bought a bunch of copies an always has me take them out to people when I travel!" That made me really happy : )
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