Guðrún Eva Minervudóttir: my first year at Vatnasafn

It was by far the most spacious, tiny apartment, I had seen.

Though the first time I walked in, I didn´t really see it because the president of Iceland, Olafur, was filling out the door.
What do you want? He said.
I.. I am supposed to live here, I said.
From the bed, I could hear the first lady's voice.
Good, I thought. They sent Dorrit, the first lady, to try out the bed and see if it was good enough for the writer-in-residence.
The truth is:
They had been sent down there to rest for a bit, in between speeches.
A few hours later the president was flown to Reykjavik in a helicopter, suffering from exhaustion.
The numerous cocktails and grand openings of the Library of Water had also worn me out, but not so much that I had to be taken to a hospital like Olafur.
I only had to stay in bed for a week while I got used to the aching silence of the place.
The nerves panic when you go from constant city noise to an almost complete silence.
They order a system shutdown while they flush out the remnants of noise-pollution and fine-tune the mind so that it can sense what lies beyond the absence of noise.
I spent the rest of May writing a libretto for a small opera company.
The dramatic melody of my freshly written words singing in the brain while the nature outside my window was singing in the rain, turning more green by the hour.
The opera people were happy with the libretto, wich meant I could return to my beloved novel with a clear conscience.
All I did was write, read, swim and ride my bike along the white road made out of crushed scallop-shells.
Sometimes I was lonely.
But I also had visitors. Somtimes many at a time.
This called for more frequent trips to the grocery store and the wine store.
Once I even felt the need to offer excuses to the lovely lady who ran the wine store.
Here I am. Again, I said.
Yes, she said.
I bought a few bottles of white yesterday and now they are all gone. But I swear I did not drink it all myself. Honest to God. You see: I have a whole bunch of people staying at the house.
She looked at me with a hint of pity.
I don´t really mind how many bottles you buy, she said with a kind expression on her face. I don´t think like that.
I know, I said. I just needed to get this off my chest.
The summer was a bliss of hard work, beauty and light.
I wanted to stay for ever in the chic appartment by the sea.
(For ever, in my mind, meant: At least until I finish my book.)
Have friends and strangers admire my view and extreme luck.
By September I had fallen in love.
A most rare event.
Love lived in Reykjavik.
December brought with it corny feelings of not wanting to be alone, in the dark, working all the time.
But wanting to be in the city, where everyone was having a good time. Without me.
So I started going back and forth, dividing my time between The Library of Water and The Library of Everything.
In late March, when I finally moved out I wanted to take the place with me.
And in a sense I did. View, smell, bliss, conversations, endless illuminating thoughts, a libretto and 200 pages of a novel.