Just like nothing. But the way it happened, the way it just happened, like everything else happens, but with a difference. It was like nothing but is was like an accident too.
I was down by the harbor in Reykjavík. The end of the day was approaching. The sun was moments beyond the horizon, but the air was filled with light. It was a light with no apparent source, a light that seemed to be an organic part of each thing. It cast itself with equal intensity everywhere. With exquisite clarity it named each part of the view. Every aspect, no matter its size or shape transfixed me. My gaze was ubiquitous as the light. And in this new knowledge I felt myself intensified, clarified, and named too.
Time passing brought a darkness that was visible, and then a darkness too dark to see. That shift, so delicate and nuanced, that shift diffusing seamlessly into an invisible but sensible climax. And almost without knowing, I understood that I was watching a thing change radically before my eyes without actually seeing the change. In this way a view becomes part of you.
(No. 13, Iceland’s Difference, Roni Horn, August 24, 2002)