Category: Writing

HOTM 368 words yesterday

Received MA NT I S from D. yesterday; a fine little book, very nicely made, which is a filk of MAINTAINS, a poem by Clark Coolidge, who also wrote this:

 

Writing is a prayer for
always it starts at the portal lockless to me at last leads
to the mystery of everything that has always been written.

To which I respond:

writing is a place where transience rushes inward to meet the eternal

Childcare for Alex tonight.

Made a nice big batch of oatmeal for breakfast.

cough lightened up overnight

I’ll be pushing vitamin c and fluids; got me a nice cuppa tea and I’m about to put on my creative fire rune and see if I can’t write twenty times as much as I’ve already written this morning!

Dishwasher is running.

Moon kept me awake last night durn moon.

Late this aft I’ll be taking foodicles to Peggy and Tom’s for a musical soiree with SMALL children. Sounds disastrous but the last time I think Ben touched a standup bass for the first time since the twins were born (did I mention they had SO MUCH CUTE) AND he was backing one of my tunes (Clem’s walk). SO anything to provide a chance to get out of the house for tired parents. Also Josie is cute too but in a more quiet and toddlery way.

Was feeling too rotten to see Mike this weekend, but from the sounds of things he was just barely upright himself, so…

Off to HOTM land.

brief thoughts regarding companion animals

If I had a doggo with a headcam I think everybody on the stream would be tired of the LOOMING CROTCH SHOTS (augh, what the hell, dude) within about ten minutes. (My eyes, dude, my everything.)

I have made the bed in the guest room, hung up or put away my instruments, and put my comforter on to wash. I want to hang it up outside but it’s a damnedsilly idea when next door is a noisy dirty and continuous construction site.

We had thought poor Buster was running away, but he hasn’t been. He wants to stay close to his hoomins and notes that while the noise is unpleasant we do not flee. (The whole house shakes, sometimes noisily, sometimes violently, sometimes both.) So he has been sitting under the basement stairs on a pile of cardboard, as insulated as he can be from the noise without getting too far from water, food, litter tray and he can bolt to the exit in less than two seconds if he has to. Soft good Buster. Jeff really didn’t want him leaving the house, although he can leave anytime between 5 am and 8 pm, which are the hours of cat door being open.

He’s a free cat – every day he’s got a cat sized version of Camus’ problem. Too smart to want to kill himself – really seems like a mug’s game to something with the intelligence of a cat – his main philosophical question is should he return to the place that smells like home or leave for more salutory adventures? Fortunately he has been ensorcelled by my scritches and Jeff’s general indulgence so at the end of his daily wanderings – rain and sun – it’s only snow that keeps that cat indoors – he returns to his accustomed perches with every sign that he intends to continue treating us like staff except when we’re extra special wiping his bum or taking him to the Pointy Place, or clipping his claws, which he is perfectly capable of taking care of himself thank you.

crud

as is often the case, I’ve come back from an air trip with some congestion

The sore throat I had for three days (very mild) is gone, but I now have a very low grade fever and I just coughed up something pale green. I suspect this is actually something I carry around with me most of the time that waited until I was really underslept to pounce. Anyway, I’ve been sleeping 12 hours, in two long draughts of sleep, every day since I got back, so I’m pretty sure I’m on the mend.

Now I’m actively glad I didn’t see the little man.

MONDAY IT’S A music night!!!

Se non è vero, è ben trovato is my new “If it ain’t true it otta be” but that’s because it was provided by a Jesuit on twitter.

 

I have published thousands of words of fanfic since I got home. I’ve been writing every day. Today, back to HOTM.

 

Flight delayed

Weather was atrocious – they couldn’t use skyways, I actually walked out onto the tarmac with all my shit and went up a metal rolling staircase… BLOWING mah god.

Uneventful flight. Saw Greenland from the air.

Grabbed a cab, came home.

THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR WAS GONE. That’s right, Harry and Inge’s old house disappeared yesterday. The noise was so bad Jeff was scared Buster would leave home. But he appeared for skritches, and he gave me such a heartfelt look of thanks it was quite wonderful. THEN caught up on the Expanse,

safely in room 210 at the Storm Hotel

at 615 I’ll step out and walk to Kex and eat dinner with my tour group for the last time. Really a stellar bunch, and Saga is such a damned good driver I really cannot praise her highly enough.

Today I walked behind a waterfall and got so cold and so wet and a stranger had to help me walk up the pile of cold wet rocks leading to the stairs but it really was rather exhilarating. We saw lots of falls, and the most important part of today was

Þingvellir

which in 930 CE was the site of the first Icelandic parliament. Stirring. Last thing on the tour.

I’m a 5 minute walk from the Phallological Museum.

SHOULD I?

WHAT KIND OF TOURIST WOULD I BE.

nothing but wind

going over the day

got to the hotel at 10 PM last night after a long day of brutal driving and sitting around doing nothing…. I didn’t go on the glacier hike, and it was delayed by an hour. The wind and rain were just south of what would cause the guides to cancel, so you can imagine how Allegra would have felt about it. Also, my parents already paid for the glacier expedition of a lifetime, and I knew that my sadness at the cold and wind would have been piqued by knowing how fast the ice is coming off. So a two hour hike accompanied by ass freezing cold and me all cry face over climate change yeah, no.

Now, going forwards through the day

The dark spot is the hole I put in the sensor trying to get a pic of the fallstreak clouds. Mike can sigh with disappointment later, I plan on buying the camera off him. The damned bus jumped when I was taking a pic and there ya go.

Anyway that spire of ice, which is in the Vatnajökull lagoon, is six stories tall. Just in case you wanted to know. Weather conditions at this point were offshore wind steady at 50kph gusting to 80kph bearing sleet mixed with rain. Hecate Strait weather fer sure.

The blurriness is my fault, the wind was incredible.

Then we went to Diamond Beach, where pure ice on black sand is wonderful, and would be even more wonnerful if I hadn’t been as miserable as a chimp in a rainstorm at the time.

spots are rain of course. Pictures by an amateur don’t give the brilliance.

Then I ate a $25 bowl of lamb goulash in the Vatnajokull visitor center and then I sat on the tour bus and waited for folks to come back from the walk, and then we went to have supper at the only pizza parlour on this part of the island. It was okay. I kept half for noshes today.

No other pics from yesterday. I know I sound disappointed but honestly I was relieved, and I had wifi and Egils soda to keep me company, also scored the last McVitties Dark Chocolate Digestives at the gas station.

 

embarrassed

Honestly it’s been two very very busy days. Today will be slacker since I’m not going on no fricking glacier hike.

Going backwards over yesterday:

spent 2 hours laughing my ass off in the hot tub(s) at the Glacier World hotel… it was a very convivial group

Spent 1.5 hours on an amazing meal. Imagine looking at a plate with ten lobster tails (nephrops norvegicus) and then devouring it. They weren’t boiled, they were oven cooked. Delicious and beautifully served. Then Guinness chocolate cake for dessert. There was salad.

Spent hours on the road… the scenery in Iceland is amazing, but this part of the trip made me want to renounce atheism and take up Ãsatrú.

We got to the top of a fjord (once again large chunks of the road, with stomach churning drops, have no parapets or railings, or they’re ‘fitful’), Saga put on Icelandic death metal, AND WE WENT INTO THE VALLEY BELOW while row after row of weathered green and gray faces (in my imaginings) looked down on us. AND A FALLSTREAK CLOUD TOOK SHAPE — I HAVE NEVER SEEN ONE, AND THEN

there was another

and another

and another

And I tried to get pictures but I thought my camera battery died and shooting out a bus window sucks especially if you’re doing it more or less into the sun and I couldn’t get the professional grade photographers on my side of the bus to pay attention to the fact the sky was doing something very very unusual. aw fuck em

So I do have one pic of the first one on my phone and here’s the best I could do when I realized the camera had been charging on the bus’s two to a seat USB charger long enough to work, so here is my apologetic potato pic.

AAAAND THE HOTEL WIFI BARFED

fml

anyway believe me it’s weird

but that whole drive was amazing; one kind of layered weathered lava was replaced by something completely different, like worn battlements coming out of the turf.

We went to a town where the city parents put up signs thanking tourists for shitting in the right place. also where some guy sculpted the eggs of most of the common birds of Iceland and stuck them on pillars on the outskirts of town. (let’s just say that Julia Finsbury would NOT have approved, they were so…. big…. and so…. you know.) There was a man with a dog and two whale skeletons in his front yard that we were supposed to see but he was away for the first time evar. Took no pictures of any of those things.

Before that we drove along a rushing river with dozens of small falls. Before that we saw the tallest waterfall in Iceland, which involved  2.5 k hike straight up and down and I said screw it as did the only person on the tour my age and we had a lovely conversation in the BRILLIANT warm sunshine, out of the wind and close to the bus and the very nice bathroom and ate lunch instead.

Before that I spent 80 dollars for two pairs of socks and I don’t know how much on a couple of beers (to drink in the hot tub later) and I don’t know how much on a fantastic truck stop sandwich (this is to make Jeff laugh, but it’s true; I don’t think it was sentient) and a choccky bar and another one of those damned Egils sodas because I love them with a fierce unholy love now.

Before that a lot of driving past Icelandic forests and leaving the town of elves. We climbed the hill of the queen of the elves. We were advised in very flat terms to do nothing disrespectful as it might impact the rest of our trip. Given that two enormous ravens circled the hill crying continuously (couples noise, not like their usual harsh croak, much more friendly and musical) you can bet your ass I didn’t spit like the fucking American did on one trip and then they got stuck for three hours and missed connections etc. If Huginn and Muninn are showing up I ain’t arguing.

We saw the turf house and the tiny church in the Town of the Elves, and I have pics of the view from my window. Day started rainy, but oatmeal in mah belleh (indifferent brekky totherwise) was good. And, of course the day started with somebunny having about ten minutes of percussive mattress joy right through the wall into my right ear. No vocalizations, just bang.bang.bang… bangity… bang you get the idea.

THAT WAS A SINGLE DAY The day before was BUSIER. Can I get back to you on that?