norðurljós

It's finally dark enough again, and the past few days have been clear enough again, to see the Northern Lights. Tonight was the first show of the season for me. Not much this time, just a thin green line. But man, what a magic green line that is. No matter how jaded the Icelanders are about this phenomenon, it will always strike me as something special. Because, since my youngest days, in all the times that I looked up in the night sky from the dock in the marsh in New Hampshire, I never saw anything green, shape-shifting, or curtain-like. The night sky from the Cabin dock there is beautiful, a rich black diamond-encrusted tapestry. But superimpose some shifting green sheets of color on that perfect sky, and suddenly it feels like you're far off, in a remote and otherworldly place.

In other news, I just came back from Ölstofan, the finest bar north of 64 degrees, and the place was hopping with its normal early-Friday energy. I watched with admiration as a bouncer literally carried out an overdrunk patron who had inadvertently bought me a beer by leaving it on the bar next to me (after spilling another all over my sleeve). Then I talked to a Hollywood film dude who's in town to work on the Clint Eastwood Iwo Jima gig that's being filmed down on the south coast. These guys are working 7 days a week, 18-hour days, to get this movie filmed. They're here for only 3 or 4 weeks, working all day then going out at night, slapping the bartop for service, ordering shots of Jack Daniels, yelling across the room in loud English (when will Americans abroad learn that they're not speaking a secret language?), and getting up at 6 a.m. to do it all over again. Clint himself is staying near my neighborhood, and my golfing friend (of menningarnótt fame) is hoping to get in a round with him before he goes.