High rises

Today Gunnar Marel invited me along for lunch with Brent Meade, a deputy minister from Newfoundland and Labrador with whom he had worked when Íslending sailed there in 2000. We had several mutual acquaintances, and it was great to talk about cultural tourism opportunities linking Newfoundland and Iceland. Plus the food was good at Duus Hús.

The conversation turned to the celebration in New York in October of 2000, and then to the World Trade Tower and then of course to 9/11. Since I was not really in the mood to talk about that day, I instead mentioned something about the observation area on the top of the Empire State Building.

It strikes me now that it to, though to a far less degree than the World Trade towers, also has with it a sense of pathos, of drama. But it is a more romantic kind of tragedy, the place where King Kong clutches his starlet before falling to his death, and the place where too ill fated lovers agree to meet in an Affair to Remember, and the place from which hundreds have committed suicide. But it is also the place where Sam, Jonah, and Annie all finally meet at the end of Sleepless in Seattle, in a suitably quiet, bittersweet way (he's left behind his teddy bear, for anyone who has not seen the film).

The highrises here in Iceland do not, for me anyhow, have that emotional register, they do not seem to have become a part of the fabric of the lives of the people in the city, not even Perlan. I guess in Iceland Austurvollur would more fit the bill--a grassy field.

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