to: see "from"

Posting things to yourself always feels a bit odd. It's the grownup's version of the only child's fantasized game of catch, in which preternatural fleet-footedness allows the single player to slip his hand under a ball he has only just thrown. The adult can drop the package off on the way to the airport and race it to their mutual destination. You will pass it with ease and, if you are sharp-eared, spring up to open the door before the mailman even reaches the steps. Surface mail is nowhere near as fast. You will have unpacked, caught up on sleep, seen friends, attended movies, and maybe half-forgotten posting it by the time it arrives.

Strangely, the closest analog to the impossible ball-toss is the slowest. Don't put it in the mail at all. Lock it up somewhere. Go about your life, probably several hundred miles away. Procrastinate. Then get around to finding the appropriate weekend and drive back there. Open it all up and take out what you put inside. Once it's in your hand, you'll be amazed that the thrower and the catcher could be one and the same person.

flogið

There were birds under the window last night. I heard their voices. I did not understand what they were saying. I listened anyway and felt like an eavesdropper.

stígur

I only looked down once or twice. It's never a good idea. It would be so easy to misstep, and there really isn't any way one would survive the fall. It is fortunate that it should be just as easy not to misstep. Up there the path is only a dotted line. Every step has been marked by the people who came before you: right, left, right, left. Just slide the toe of your boot into the red-brown print. It feels like the insole of your oldest slippers, the ones you don't even have to look at because your feet find their own way into them before you even know you are sitting upright on the edge of the bed.

þoka

I've never heard that horn in this town before. The spire of the church is gone, smudged out by whiteness like a correction on a blueprint. Are the boats in the bay still out there? Now even the water by the shore is an island.

sólin

Eins og sólin, she kept explaining. Samsetning bókarinnar er eins og sól: bjart í miðjunni og svo dofnar birtan um leið og geislarnir ná lengra burt.

Sem sagt eins og hjól með geisla í öllum áttum.

Nei nei. Eins og sólin. Mikilvægasti hlutur textans er í miðjunni og mynd af konunginum, en á undan og svo eftir er fjallað um alls konar atriði sem skipta minna máli.

Eins og sólin. I drew a sunburst.

Nei nei! Ekki þannig, ekki eins og hjól!

Ég næ þessu ekki. I flip the pencil around my thumb. Then I see it. Þú átt við sól lágt á lofti. Sólsetur. Sólina á Íslandi. I draw the bright stripe under the clouds, over the water.

Já! Já! Sólina á Barðarströndum!

Það þekkir enginn þá sól þar sem þú ert að fara.

Ekki það?