I am writing this from the pew of a church, seated among picture-snapping tourists. A person who I presume to be a local Reykjavikian is pounding periodically at the organ near the entrance.
I’m sweating and that sweat is mixing into the rain caught in my beard and hair. I am matted.
As far as churches go, this one is bland. No enormous epitaphs or depictions to dead saints. A modest table at the front, and a bowl made of glass for baptism. Its beauty is not in its extravagance, but in its space. This church is tall, and the ceiling is high. Mostly grey.
As I sit and watch the people, a woman that could be Greek splashes her fingers in the absent water within that bowl. When she leaves, a Japanese boy comes to make a face at its rim for a quick picture. His mother quickly shoos him off so that other tourists from all corners come to see the bowl, and check that it is empty.
There was a service an hour ago by the time I sit in my pew. I am alone in the row, and the rows three both behind and in front are empty. Candles that had burned during the service sit cool and melted, five in a row. I’m sure while I type this I am being pictured. The boy on his phone in church, being judged as they be judged by he.
They do look somber. That’s something. Somber people cracking their jawls into a grin for a capture of that moment in time. Then the face sets back into…
They look bored.
Everyone here looks so bored.
The windows look empty, glassless. As if when the moment came when the world spun and the church tilted, we would tumble through them out into the grey sky.
People behind me are talking about doing exciting things, getting their money’s worth, and then visiting a new country. A new place. Maybe New Zealand.
Buy a pass to a hundred sites, capture a moment where I’ve cracked a smile, then move on and on.
I’d like to say I’m different. Sitting in this church with busy thumbs and observing the things around me. Noticing. I’d like to say I’m better. That I enjoyed my time here and I lived in the moment that I was here. That I said a prayer to a few God’s who would like to hear from me.
But my feet hurt, and I’m really thinking about those pools and hot springs that I’ll be soaking in later tonight in my rented bathing suit. I already have my pass.
Holding the universe together 