later that month. sugar, caffeine, alcohol, chocolate are driving the frenetic burnout trajectory of the developed world.

oh well. how we interact with the energy flows of our embodiment determines our trajectory.

remember to buy deodorant.

and, at some point in the last days, the travelog counter went over one million (since the first php implementation in April 2004), a quarter million page loads each year. and rising. nothing compared to phat bloggy blogs, but solid and ramping-up traffic. no stable stats predating that, unfortunately.

listening to the sounds around the house, summer storms range through the suburban spaces as do Risk games on the north porch.

the morning tea-making process becomes a variable ritual: implemented across a variety of situations with a variety of tools and procedures, along with different people, it is a core expression. and it sounds different every time.

enroute. heavy security gauntlet, got picked for extra testing twice -- once at Tegel in Berlin and once in Heathrow. sheesh... now immersed in the media and the seamless advertising of all places of transit and transport. in this fear-full new world of old ways. secure and safe in the knowledge that life in Under Control. now where's the friggin' baggage claim?

there are ways of movement that smooth the soul, and other ways which bring turbulence. turbulent systems are a product of the god within, rioting for, or simply bored with the offerings of the social system.

the lady in the next row reads Becoming Best Friends with God, what does this mean? can life be so transitory that anything (thing, why thing? any action?) potentially is transcendent. any event, instance, pattern of movement, Light refracted through the small round door portal shifts through all the visible colors. and we see. I must choose to obey God in faith. the book exhorts.

back with the Kiel crew. Fritz as bright-eyed as ever. talking a lot. calling my name with a very cute accent. dear child.

Christian's mum is there as well. we chat about student exchanges which were so formative in their family.

but NO photos, how can this be? slacking yet again on the portrait side of things. constructions sounds from Düppelstrasse are the only fragments gathered up.

on to the market with Steffi and Oma.

picking up brüchen for neighbors and the homies.

oh, nothing new. was just waiting for the ICE train from Berlin the Hamburg at the Hbf and so, hunted around the place for a seat of which there are very few, given the size of the station and the numbers of people who use it. finally found one. arf arf.

Berlin, Kiel, Berlin, New York. place frames time. more-or-less. and what of it? multiplicity of options and possibilities frames the next phase of movement. and it is only a matter of survival.

Miga makes a plate of pancakes. with jam from his parents garden. nice!

creative production slows to small fragments of text, some images, and some sounds. no mental space to work on the numerous proposals which hang over the head. not interested in the green consumer revolution which is leading the media art world around, tugging on gold-ringed nostrils to keep the plod in acceptable directions. as with so many times before the engagement of science by art is naive and un-productive even in the simple critical sense of raising real issues and stimulating real dialogues. disappointing.

but conversation with Udo last night around aporee maps and some ideas come up along with possible information/collaboration sources that I already have in place from older networks.

in Berlin for a day.

where you going to? no sleep, travel night's sleep. and up in bright 04:00 morning. and away after hearing night movements of the teenage child. other kids over after I go to bed at midnight, doors opening and closing, and then escaping, returning at 03:00. (sigh) nothing to be done anymore except be another human on the planet. closer proximity might help, might not. while heart comes to ache emptily. but with a foreboding of malfunction as per the way. nothing is always. and forever shades the eyes from seeing everything this is. how to crack open what can be?

day starts with French toast, frisbee a bit later, things that Loki and I share over the history of sporadic presence. cut my hair off last night, making a pile in the middle of the living room floor. clean it up. clean up the kitchen, and other details. so it goes.

make a museum tour as well to the National Museum to see the new Steina Vasulka installation which is monumental and fits the space perfectly. then on to the Kjarval and the Hafnarhusid as I discovered as of February this year they are free to the public. the Martha Schwartz I Hate nature / 'Aluminati' installation in the courtyard of the Kjarval is a nice critic of the horrid environmental degradation happening at the hands of Alcoa and corrupt government officials who are selling the landscape to make aluminum smelters and the dams which are necessary to power them.

also wander down to the harbor to take some photos. observing with irony that the whale-watching ships are docked immediately across the pier from the whaling ships -- a fact which no doubt escapes most tourists as the signage is not easily interprable. anyone from Greenpeace would know. (heh, Simmi tells the joke, my favorite meal is whale meat with green peas...)



managed to get over to Seltjarnarnes to visit with Edda, Stefan's mum, who now has a flat in the same place that Jón and Helga lived some years back.

not much interesting to write about here. haven't gotten many of the sound files that I have picked up over the couple weeks online yet. as usual, behind the flowing times. months, years behind on all this -- picking up, accreting material observations, when to start the reverse process to dis-engage with this acquisition obsession? rhetorical questions. to scatter into a text of frequent error and mis-apprehension.

seven visits to the pool, either Vesturbaer or Laugardalur, sunny after the fog rolls back by late morning. old folks doing aquarobics. what's different in Iceland this time? seems all the crosswalks and corners have been improved with stroller and handicapped ramps. that's new. more cars. more construction, more fancy flats. more of all kinds of stuff. food, furniture, more foreigners, immigrants or whatever. people with different colored skin. not just tourists. uh.

the economy is in pretty bad condition with inflation cranking up as is the case in Eastern Europe, around ten percent. the Euro is around 127 kronur, the dollar at around 85, this makes the prices for local things slightly more reasonable than on previous visits. bus tickets are the same as in Berlin, the swimming pool tickets when buying ten at a time are just EUR 2.00. not bad. but food prices are increasing on a weekly basis. economics. this was the situation when I lived here in the early 90's. not pleasant. stagflation.

drop by I-8 gallery for a noisy opening of works by Hamish Fulton, and end up talking to a whole bunch of folks that I've not seen in years -- Kees, Kristin, Ingolfur, and many others. strange to think how much I was into that sector of the society here all those years ago. how life makes pathways open and close.

and no visit to Reykjavík is complete without a stop at Hlemmer, the main city bus station, Iceland's version of Port Authority in New York on a microscopic scale. the fringes of social behavior are relevantly displayed. notably, on this stop, a couple clothed teenagers demonstrating a variety tantric positions on one bench, faces making a range of slurping and sucking noises, whilst a Dutch tourist argues with the ticket lady about the bus schedule for the next morning. only the tourist is easily evidenced on the ambient sonic recording.

over for a visit with Sara. and her sister, Cecilia drops by -- she was Loki's art and design teacher last year.

big news here are the armed marines guarding the HMS Exeter docked in the main harbor, here for a conference on the Arctic Convoys (from WWII). police do not carry weapons on a regular basis in Iceland and the country basks in a peaceful idyll interrupted only by the influx of immigrants which are routinely tabbed with a variety of crimes.

through the white Lightness, reminded of Light, suffused with Light. the pressing back of liquid globes, securely maintaining a barrier to all that Light is from entering the soul in extremity of be-ing. what more to say.

see some people, some products arising from the lives of people, tasting some compiled energies. distributed and distant lives come close for a moment of microscopic visioning and, yes, tasting. within all which is living.

Simmi invites Stefan, Loki, and I out for a fast fishing cruise on Kollafjördur on his speedboat. I happen to hook the first cod and pull in a number more. Stefan and I had to stop at ten moderate-sized fish because we only had a little box to put them in. Simmi was bleeding for the whole trip after slicing his thumb open with the filet knife. we hailed a trawler for some band-aids, turns out he should have had stitches, but it was too late when he finally went to the doctor the next day. the cockpit of the boat looked like a crime scene.

days spin into the weeks. and time begins to come to an end here already. so, trying to get in touch with folks, Palli, Sara, Magnus, and others. too short. and pathways too long. and there is no time to catch everyone. made it to a big opening at Kling og Bang with some former students and saw a whole slew more from the period of time I taught at the Art Academy between 1990-96. very nice to talk to some of them after this long gap. many are still active.



three years since that crippling accident. still walking, still talking, but still realizing that at any moment it could all stop. happy every morning that I can get up and make some tea whilst listening to construction noises in the neighborhood.

just back from Helga's funeral service at the Seltjarnarnes Church and the reception at Hotel Saga afterwards. sad to see the ones who grew up with that old way of living pass away, that long-ago generation. Helga was born in a dirt-floored sod hut in Svarfathardalur near Dalvík on Eyjafjördur just shy of one hundred years ago. she was the matriarch to four generations of descendants who follow her on the pathway.



while I will always be an outsider in this close-knit community deep in the North Atlantic, I will always be bound to the place through the people of this family. bound in the living and the dying, the movements, the step-wise step-fool wanderings along the rugged sphere's surface, floating in a suffused crystal darkness. where replication and desertion become forces driving Light and spare living. messages arrive from all corners of life. direct in the face, through this and that face rarely seen, age-lines and sagging skin characterizing it all. eyes peering out from under greying crop. young ones dancing around, some so young that the dance has not yet begun in the newness of be-ing. but where eyes wide open take it all in to map pathways across pure soul. they take it all in. and the living move on, the ones who have left are there in memory as the ones who formed us.

drop by for a visit with Val to catch up on her work updating the database of the National Gallery of Iceland. meet for a bit with old friend Posi who is now the director of the museum and Rakel who I worked with way back in 1994 on the first stirrings of network activity in the form of a web presence for the organization. brings back memories. and thoughts.