Geysir, Gullfoss and a Hydroelectric Dam

I was genuinely hoping that WOW air would refund us some of the money we lost getting a last minute room in Reykjavik and getting toiletries. Our plan was to start driving the first day and camp out but since our tent was still in US along with our toothbrushes and most everything else, we had to find a place to sleep. Unfortunately, as of now, nothing. We e-mailed them multiple times to get only initial responses, and called only to be told to wait even longer than we already have. *UGH*

also the second Yucca plant is now also gone for the worse. Help?

We slept that night at Captain Reykjavik, took sulfer-scented showers and headed over to the Sandholt bakery. The museum ticket we had bought yesterday lasted for 24hrs and allowed entry to 3 museums, so we headed to the sculpture museum. It's in an artists house and though it was at that time simply filled with his work, there where three small things I liked about it.
1) the dome upstairs had the strangest acoustics. It felt like I was walking ahead of myself, the way of the echo of Matt's shoes lined up exactly with when I was about to step. Like the opposite of a thunderclap being delayed after lightening strikes, or an auditory version of the rubber hand illusion. 

2) The artist had created the building, it's white and stark . He said he wanted to make it like the stark land around him, that Icelandic architecture is often made of wood even though there are no trees, and that this is not the way it is supposed to be; that architecture is supposed to expand off of the landscape. It made me pay more attention to the buildings for the rest of the trip. 

3) There was a sculpture garden outside with little windy paths and thickets of trees, and I always find those types of nooks warm and inviting. Not very expansive, but still nice. 

We walked around a golf course before heading to get groceries (always great in a new place: the aisles are wider, and the carts are four-wheel drive), sushi for lunch, propane and our luggage.


From Reykjavik we started on the Golden Circle and the Southwest of Iceland. First stop was Þingvellir. Two things attract people to it. Firstly it's a rift between tectonic plates, though that comes across more clearly in ariel shots. Secondly it is by Alþing, the location of the first parliament in the world, which isn't really much to look at. We walked to Öxarárfoss (foss is always waterfall) in the area. Iceland has so many gorgeous waterfalls, and we started ranking them as we carved our way around the coast: this one consistently stayed in last place. In sum, mostly a tourist destination with a pool in which a bunch of women where drowned. 

After that we tried to find our first natural-hot-water. Our guide book had mentioned a municipal geothermal pool. We came to the Laugarvatn, consisting of two residential streets intercepting. The village pool was closed: we wandered around the building and saw the pool, which looked like a standard swimming pool but did not smell of chlorine. All the lights were off in the building and a family was just leaving. It felt like we were snooping around a YMCA. There was a place we could have paid 40$ but that seemed a bit much so after finding the YMCA bathroom, we moved on. 

Next stop was Geysir: the gyser after which all other geysers are named. It was freezing outside but we did not have to wait long for it to spout. The water is blue in the pit, and before it gets ready to spray it gets sucked in a bit. Ten minutes in between expulsions builds up appropriate suspense. The one that was spouting was actually not THE Great Geysir but Strokkur, which is younger and erupts more frequently but with less intensity. The pictures I took turned out fairly terribly, so here's one of me with the snarky entrance sign too. 

And then we went to Gullfoss. Foss is waterfall, remember? Gull is gold - gold waterfall. As, again, with the wind so cold we were spared the thicket of tourists that should have followed us everywhere on this trip, but also we did not have the light that perhaps contributed to the waterfall's name. Gullfoss is really large, and I while I did take pictures they don't capture how small we felt standing next to it. We spent some time in existential trepidation staring at the water crashing down.

One of the places my father had really talked up in Iceland was this meeting of two rivers in the Fjallbank Nature Reserve, specifically the Landmannalauger area. Even the handy guidebook highlighted the hot streams in the area, along with some hiking through gorgeous rhyolite peaks. The specific area my parents had enjoyed there was a cold river that met a hot river, and a lot of cool people where hanging out there: bikers, hikers and such, and the water was perfect for relaxing in. So we headed towards there, into the highlands where civilization became even sparser.

We drove for a while. At some point late we stopped at an old stone Skaftholtsréttir (sheep fold) no longer in use. It used to sort the sheep in the south but now they use a more modern one closer to the capital. It was 11pm. I was too tired to even get out of the car but Matt was intrigued by the random-maze we found and stopped to explore and figure out what it is. There was nobody else there. Even though there was an official plaque it isn't marked on any maps. Long-day induced magic. We kept driving.

We came up on a hydroelectric dam. It was menacing but the road forward was roped off. We set up our tent for the first time, the wind blowing, no trees to protect us. I had been thinking this whole time that park meant trees but it was now that it dawned on me that this word mapping did not apply in this strange land. We set up our tent; it was cold and the sun had set but it was still light out even at 1am. Just as we entered the tent for the night, it began to snow.

white border

My mother asked me why I haven't been writing lately.
And here's why:
Every attempt in my head of cobbling together words and thoughts about my everyday existence cascades out like a white boarder around an honest black square. The white mundanity simply a frame for everything that needs to be said but I am not yet ready to say; all of my time at the hospital, year and a half, the river that I keep dammed up. Black square white frame, one simply a complement to the other how funny that things can be so simple when there are so many complex horrors in the world. 

But I will try, I will try to take that white border and make it it's own gray world. For no day-to-day is truly banal when taken on its own terms.

This weekend was a long one, fourth of july, fireworks and patriotism. My family usually goes up to the north of Maine to escape it, camping with leeches and moose, mosquitoes and gnats. This time we left too, but not quite so barbarically far away - up to a friends vacation house in Vermont, just us five (both my parents wrote to me: K's house! But they won't be there. Join us?) We walked paths in the woods and I noticed how we always pair up: two people talking and one person wandering in their own thoughts, but switching off. In the morning, my brother - startlingly - in my mother's hat - dutifully washing the dishes. Bickering and wine and hopping on rocks along a river. On the ride back: the sky - a pink so delicate, like sooted paper after a bonfire, print legible, it falls apart at the touch of a finger.

emerald leaves

The emerald leaves are like a latent desire. Autumn comes and the leaves fall shivering in the wind, until the trees stand naked, branches arched achingly against the sky. The trees' heart beats slow and they hold the weight of snow and break under the burden of ice and we want but know not what. And then spring comes, and first the flowers bloom, and then the leaves begin. Tentatively, limp translucent green and fuzzy curls. We say "I had forgotten that trees have leaves, but they do and Oh! Oh! that is what I wanted all along". 


partings are beginning. I swung with Amanda in a hammock one late evening before going down to the waterfall, sang at Baccalaureate yesterday, which was followed by senior dinner. Had a meeting with a clinical professor for an hour and half, hoping for words of wisdom, and attended a bonfire/bbq at the co-op. Psychology luncheon and surrealist circus.

campus is mostly empty and almost all the students left are seniors -- feels nothing like l&t. It's more or less the same group, at least by name, as the ones who entered freshman year three weeks before the rest of the school had arrived. Oh! Oh! We cannot and will not go back.

sum some

The last month was a whirlwind - trying to finish up senior project while attempting to pretend that I don't have that weight on my shoulders. I attended an ASO concert (Strauss - Emperor Waltz, Accelerations, The Blue Danube; Conus - Violin Concerto; Brahms - Symphony No. 2). That night I came home to Jono and Noah playing goat simulator for two hours.

All the tennis matches happened in April (I think we lost almost all of them). 4/20 at Blithewood. We celebrated birthdays - Kelsey turned 21 on the 21st. We were 21 together for a day and then I turned 22 on the 22nd. Golden birthdays. Went to the diner for Adrienne's birthday on the 28th. Eggs and potatoes and rye toast, everyone else got chocolate milkshakes.

We performed Verdi's Requiem with the ASO two nights in a row, very close to the senior project deadline. A 92 year old man had a heart attack because of the music the first night. That Saturday we sang at William Weaver's memorial service - he was the first to translate all of Umberto Eco's works and some other modern Italian literature, and seemed to have had some colorful characters in his life. 

This Wednesday I finished formatting my project and went with Adrienne & co to get it bound - three copies, one for each member of my board. We got food at the Golden Wok and then checked in around four, an hour before the deadline. Many birthing jokes ensued: 9 months for delivery. Bard t-shirts, alumni sign-up, bbq and snacks and then we went behind stone row for free beer. Ended up sipping margarita's at Santa Fe and then the Bard Orchestra concert and then saw Hannah and Jack and Will and his friend Steven. Thoroughly sleep deprived and incomprehensible, though I still fell asleep at one, unable to break the habit from the past month, waking up at 8:30 as usual and kept going. I joked that we drink not just to numb the bruises from senior project, but fill the void left behind by it.
As I was falling asleep the next day for a nap, I was swarmed by thoughts like bees buzzing bumbling bustling and realized the tunnel vision that comes with working on one thing so single mindedly, that you forget (can't afford to) think about all the other thoughts in your head, though they are still there.

And then this weekend was spring fling. Thursday night was a small gathering at the Root Cellar (incoherent singing and the cliqueness of the people who tend to go there: Sorrel Hannah and I left pretty soon after arriving). I joined Kalena the second night and danced with Kelsey (music: Deerhoof, Branchez, Giraffage, Speedy Oritz, Celestial Shore).

The third we had a pre-party with Amanda & co. and that's where most of the dancing that night happened - at the tent, it was too crowded and jumbled, the currents making it impossible to stay still and sway, one moved through the river, bumping up against rocks, coursing round in circles (music: Lil B, Slava, Silent Addy, Chi Ching Ching). We hung out in the beer garden and campus center instead, smiling broadly and talking to people we don't talk to and holding hands and hugging: Bardians are nice when drunk. I went to the waterfall where Will and Hannah and others set up a fire and that was lovely until I felt sleepy and took the 2:40 shuttle home.

and that's the last month, summarized.

Pursuing Forsythia

The following is a piece I wrote at this time freshman year, and edited a tiny bit just now. It's quite strange to see where I was emotionally (in a way that I didn't not communicate here) and what I was thinking about. Probably more interesting to me than to anyone else, but somehow it seems appropriate to put it here now that I'm in the last stretch of my undergraduate education.

Removed.

“Clair, I don’t think you’re drunk” says Marie, yawning – her knees bent and feet bouncing her little body up and down before she plops down on Andrew’s bed next to me and sips some more yellow orange juice and rum. I doubt that she should be drinking anymore. Marie is on her computer and on occasion rocks towards me, the frame of her computer nearly bumping into the rim of mine.

I’m sober and thus isolated, uselessly. Isolation does not create the craze that is romanticized as a byproduct of productivity. (Imagine: a thin man locked up in his room for nights on end, composing his final masterpiece. Imagine another: cooped up in the middle of the woods, tapping into his brilliant mind away from the humbug of his fellow human. Not fellows at all!).

It is like a normal night, all of us in one room. But their minds are clouded gray. Isolation does not create independence. I almost wish I was drunk with them, silly (or that they were sober), but I had been writing and then I came, and they were already inebriated. I wish that I didn’t care.

Only very few people can be independent; it is a prerogative of the strong. Yes, I am dependent on society—is that weakness? Is enjoying companionship, preferring companionship—weakness? Is to feel lonely in a group of friends removed by a few glasses of diluted yellowish liquid—weakness?

And does it impede one’s ability to produce?

Leaning, swaying, smiling, giggling, and then dancing: just the two of them, in the middle of the room.

***

Removed.

My face is covered in the thin sheen of sweat, my breath is audible.

Hot air in and out of my lungs.

I feel almost lighter, perversely, melodramatically. My eyes feel lively, darting around.

It’s death I tell myself. Death. Just death? Death (panic).

Easter. I saw it and at first I thought the deer’s head had been ripped off. Then I realized it was its tail, white fluff. Cold, wet, its long neck swung over a rock so I couldn’t see the head at all. I raised my hand urgently, pointing at it and giving a panicked looked at Emily who as scrambling onto the other side of the road: away from it as I walked towards it, its large body cold, wet, four legs jutting out of a large brown gray body. I looked at her walking away and followed. It was raining. I imagine its eyes, rising it from the dead.

I can feel my sweat now that it’s growing cold against my skin. We walked up the path towards the water processing plants, yellow forsythia in full bloom. I remembered that I hid in them one time in middle school, because I didn’t want to walk back home yet. I came up towards it and smelled the bright yellow flowers, grayed by the cloud light and rain, the water dripping onto my face. Emily was standing making a face with large eyes, trying to look vacant and dead. It seemed like one of those moments when one tries to arrange ones facial expression to how it should look, and more effort goes into that than actually feeling. She stood. I stopped smelling the flowers, feeling that perhaps I should also make a dead face. We walked to the dorm. The tree branches let through water droplets, there were deer hoof prints in the gray mud.

On campus there were people; a violinist was practicing above in one of the dorm rooms made of cinderblocks, a boy skateboarding by. I let her go in front of me to open the door to our dorm and didn’t (couldn’t) respond when someone in the common room said hi. Neither of us could. We walked up to our rooms silently. I put down the empty 40 bottle I had fetched out the Hudson and took off my coat and sweater and looked at my face, still covered in the thin sheen of sweat.

Death. Just death? Cathartic because it brings my emotions into perspective—they are nothing in comparison, but are also there, solidly expressed in nature. The tips of my fingers feel lively; I write quickly with a tinge of guilt — perhaps my classification of Emily's facial expression as a simulated version of what it should be is simply bitterness on my part…

A knock.

“Come in”

“Okay”

“Is it locked?”

“Yes.”

“One sec…”

I get up and open the door, Emily gives me tea and I say “come in” again, and wave at the room for her to enter. “That was disturbing” she says. Yes, yes it was. Disturbing. I should feel disturbed, which I do, but mostly with myself by this point. My initial reaction had been wrong, morbid even, like one of those old women who attend stranger’s funerals to wail, in hysterics. But then all I could think to do was write.

We make small talk about work, and then about boys.

“I think you should go after your trombone player” she says. I don’t really want to talk about boys, so I shrug. I don’t really have a trombone player either, but I know who she means. “Seriously though. I saw him talking with a girl the other day. She was not pretty at all” because that’s it, right? Beauty—but I don’t want to pursue this conversation, so I just say “He’s always talking to someone. At chamber singing, behind stage, always. In Czech and in English,” I sipped the tea.

“I really think you should.”

“I don’t really feel like pursuing anyone right now. Or anything, really. Just writing and producing art” I say it straight out. My voice isn’t bitter, but it isn’t bright and yellow either, it isn’t forsythia.

“What time is it?” she says, because she has orchestra rehearsal soon, and we haven’t eaten.

“17, do you want to go quickly to dtr?” after 5, that time of day when nothing has yet been done.

“Yes, let me go put on socks” but we have done something, we have seen a dead deer.

***

Removed.

not to be dependent on any person, not even the most beloved-every person is a prison

It seems that isolation is romanticized, that the virtues of writing or painting alone in a room for days straight augmented: that it is only way to go past normal human capacities for productivity, driving oneself to the point of insanity to create. Genius (inspiration, perspiration) is strange, seductive, a person willing to forgo society for creation (isolation)…

I am not alone, lying in the middle of Blithewood at night, a yellow pink light of the road lamps shinning onto a yellow tractor, painting out the yellow tinted leaves against the dark sky. It pushes up against the creamy yellow columns, calm, strong, melting into shadow. Little bugs flying, their transparent gray wings, and another person is with me, typing, sighing at the trouble of work, listening the sound of the waterfall in the distance, its water hushing, hissing, humming. The air is warm and the clouds over the Hudson are gray; the rumble of the cars in the distance, as well as the sounds of people talking, reaches here.

I enjoy the non-silence around me, the yellow lights, and the sound of another person typing by me. But still, something inside me thinks I want…full independence, full non-reliance, an unattainable illusion of strength: this ideal.

The misconception that pure isolation is the perfect form of independence, it plagues…And when independence is attempted by someone who has the right to it, but does not need it, we have proof that this man is probably not only strong, but bold to the point of recklessness

And that (only) this recklessness allows for creation? Only the independent are strong, and that this independence is ultimate, uncompromising?

It is a lie, but I can’t shake it.

deep snow

Valentine’s day morning Hannah and I went for a walk, enjoying the 21 inches of snow that had recently fallen on top of the snow that had already been there for a week. I look like Snow White: dark features against white skin when I was five I thought I was ugly because I’m so pale. I told my father I thought I wasn’t pretty and he was very confused, but I don’t remember telling him why. I told him I thought I stick out in the class picture they took of us at school; a white face, a red splotch of lips, a dark tangle of hair that nobody could manage. He told me he didn’t think I stuck out oddly, and that he thought I was pretty, and possibly that he wasn’t just telling me that because I’m his daughter.

I went to the root cellar briefly and but soon left with a friend. She was angry,  we took a walk -- kicking snowbanks and then sneaking into the music building to try and play someone's drums but the sound we created was terrifying and so ended up in Blithewood, looking at the cold-struck vines lacing against the moonlit sky.

That weekend I took a walk to the waterfall, where the only animals before me had been deer. Their hoof prints in the deep in the snow, their dragging bellies making a path that split in two closer to the water.

Movies the last two are ones I forgot to jot down from two years  ago:

1. 砂の女 (Woman in the Dunes, 1964 Japanese)
2. Amores perros (2000 Mexican)
3. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997 USA)
4. Submarine (2010 UK)

french toast

A German a Japanese and a Russian-Jew are eating french toast.
It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.
Bianca said she would visit me as soon as she got a job. She has a part-time unpaid internship showing art in NYC. Close enough. She came on Saturday. We walked by Blithewood and the waterfall, enjoying the sudden onset of autumn. In the evening we went to Christo's sisters band Tinmouth at smog. At some point we had texted Shinno telling him to come join us. He showed up on Sunday and Monday morning we ate french toast.

I received some advice about The Future. Bianca was an art history major. She's planning on going to Vienna for a year come December and then grad school for geospacial analysis. Shinno was a psychology major. He's planning on grad school and deciding somewhere between design and fashion and making sure to not get deported - he's on an extended student visa, but he's lived here since he was ten.

They both left Monday evening. I was just sweeping the floors and stairs (on my chore rotation) listening to Built to Spill.

Baxter State Park 2013

Wednesday after my internship I went to Penn Station and took a bus home. The next day my family and I packed and drove up to Baxter State Park, as we have for years. Since we last went, both Sima and Yosef have grown quite a bit, so the tent is getting a bit tight. But the weather was warm and there were plenty of gnats to go round. We swam, hiked, canoed, and sat around the camp fire drinking tea and fishing mosquitoes out of the soup.

Sima kept telling me the following joke -What do vegetarian zombies say? -What? -GRAAAAAAAINS

Spring Flung

The next weekend was spring fling. During the day we had choral rehearsal. I said to Ben “tomorrow everyone is going to be so hung-over” and then realized I was being naïve, and that people were already drinking during rehearsal.    

That night I drank too much on an empty stomach while coming down with a cold and after having had dizzy spells from low blood pressure all week. Turned out to be a bad idea and I woke up at 5am to the question “do you know where you are” to which I responded “yes” but they told me I was at the hospital anyway. Amanda came with me in the ambulance but I don’t remember. In the morning I had to meet with the Dean of Student Affairs. Bianca came and Shinno too - with pretzels. It was interesting to see how information traveled. Kelsey and Megan didn’t know until I told them.  A whole bunch of people I never talk to asked me how I was doing. Also my friends’ responses reinforced what I already knew about them – some good, some bad. I felt bad for making people worry, either way.

“You sound good, but you look hung-over. Y’all better get over that real quick” said James before the concert that night.

Schaffe in mir - Brahms

Anthony O'Daly - Barber

The Coolin - Barber

Sucepit Israel - Bach

Sicut locutus Est - Bach

Die Mit Tranen - Schutz 

God is our Refuge - Mozart 

Os Iusti - Bruckner 

Psalm - Ives

After that I went out again to the block party and danced with various friend groups. Even though they tried to keep strangers out, there were still quite a few high-schoolers and very grabby 30-somethings there, but otherwise it was fun. Later went with Megan and a couple others down to the waterfall. It was incredibly chill; a bonfire, people talking, the bubbling of the water. I fell asleep at 3am, content.

Not Purple

The other night I had a dream and what I remember from it was the empty stone whales. They were life-size, and sometimes they would fill up with water and bacteria and drown, but the new ones and the ones with tops that were closed well floated, even though they were stone, because they where filled with air inside. It was a giant park. I was looking at it from above and there was a really clear river flowing through, but it wasn't horizontal, it went up, like solid bricks of water, somewhat like an aquarium without glass. There was beautiful coral and seaweed growing in the river, and a boardwalk throughout the park. I also remember some friends taking funny photos in a bathroom; making faces at the camera and standing in ridiculous poses, but I only remember Louisa being there, though I know there were more. She was wearing a costume, it was black and red. Also I'm pretty sure CIA agents were somehow involved, or maybe the mafia.


Also Inka helped me dye my hair. Osya and I went to sleep over at their house and that night we went to the pharmacy to get dye. The only purple dye they had was "Spalt".
1) Bleach for an hour (not all my hair, there was only enough in the bottle to cover about a third)
2) Dye it in "Lusty Lavender" for an hour (there wasn't enough bleach to cover all my hair)
3) Wash it out and watch most of the dye come out (it didn't stick)
4) Sleep
5) Decide if I want to keep the pink, copper and natural hair (it was still nice, but I was set on purple)
6) Bleach/Dye with Llongueras "Violin" which Inka had brought from Spain for an hour (even though it said 35 min)
7) Wash it out.

It still isn't purple. 









































Today nothing exciting happened; had my weight and height measured, blood taken and answered a bunch of questions. Physical. Haven't had one since before college. I also met with Eames at Copley yesterday and we got froyo at the Red Mango and walked around Newbury Street (that's when the photo is from.)

Tonight is the third (and last) night of filming with Sara and a few of her friends. We have been shooting at the Newton Library from library closing time to when the lights go out (9-12) about four kids who are meeting up during the summer after being at college for a year. They grew up in a really Christian town and there is a whole thing set up around strawberry cigarillos (thin cigar; no filter and you aren't supposed to inhale.) as a rather pathetic attempt to be cool.  I play the girl girl who brings the cigarillos and is trying to convince everyone that "we are the same people we used to be...just cooler"

my ears arn't hearing properly

lots of dubstep, and the crowd was the biggest one I've seen here. booty banger xii.

what else...went to the burrito stand and the waterfall earlier today, after my photo class (three hours long)

but yeah, the music was loud enough that i could feel the bass and my ears can't hear properly right now.

One Ending...

Today we went to Tastebudds with Adrienne and Rosette.
The day before Margaret, Cat and I got pie at the pie shop (plum, coconut cream and lemon, respectively), and the day before that it was so warm that Rosette and I went and swam in the waterfall.

also went to the freestore today, again. two dresses, among other things...

My dad is picking me up tomorrow!
I still have one more essay due on Friday, but I can send it in my e-mail. I had my last creative nonfiction class at Celia Bland's (the professor's) house, and my last printmaking class was this Thursday (I went to the studio today for an hour and half anyway...)


recent movies: Stranger Than Fiction, and about to watch Atlantis
I remember watching it when I was like...8 maybe, I don't think I even saw all of it. I thought the main guy was cute, and I liked his hands. That's basically all I remember.

recent baked goods:
rosette and Margaret made these: chocolate m&m cookies (had so many of those Wednesday night), and thumprint cookies
and Margaret and I made coconut cupcakes with butter instead of oil and cream cheese frosting.

oh, and we did henna today (I drew with it for the first time :) )