hundasöngur

The web bursts with videos of dogs "talking," most of them proclaiming love to the world. I conclude from watching several of these not that dogs have the power of human speech (though I have no doubt that they love and love unashamedly), but that dog poetry must be syllabic and that spitzes are fine tenors.

1896

Should it surprise me that there are multiple Rip van Winkle's, each from a different age? This one is from 1896.




Maybe what is remarkable is merely that these images should resurface today, but that is the last thing that should surprise anyone.

hvergi

It was a nothing dark on the tarmac, a nowhere dark. The air contained nothing in particular, not even the shocking empty clarity I have seen elsewhere. I could see the baggage handlers, and then in the air, lights.

hraði

Hastings, and a teenage boy in an orange shirt is running along the opposite platform with his arm outstretched, palm towards the train. Someone is on her way back to the city. I can seem him clearly as he flashes by under the platform lights. I cannot see her. She must be in my car, her face in one of the other windows, smiling back at him.

saknað

Charm me back! It is terrible barely being able to remember the timbre and rhythm of your voice. You used to howl around the corners of the house, even though it was a featureless, Soviet-seeming blokk. You used to call after me, I think. I didn't always answer, but I miss it now.

vestan

Eastward, the sky is striped in narrow horizontal bands like I once saw in Denmark, but orange. And there is no bælt here. I miss the gray line of sea. There was one here once, the only trace today the wide invisible expanse of limestone underneath everything. Caves wind through it, I understand, where rainwater has bored its way downward and back in time. Still, I am having trouble working up any nostalgia.

tapers

When they finally gutter out, a streamer of smoke suddenly rises: the white flag of surrender.

fákurinn

Í mánaljósi á ís yfir malbiki ég reið,
skrikuðu hjólin á snarpasta skeið;
en viðsjált, viðsjált er á vetrardegi veginn að ríða.

Framhjólið spólaði, sporum fer úr,
spáði ég illu mér um þennan túr.
Því viðsjált, viðsjált er á vetrardegi veginn að ríða.

Snjókornin fauk yfir frostþakið golf;
fákurinn – andskotinn! – snerist á hvolf.
En viðsjált, viðsjált er á vetrardegi veginn að ríða.

Bið afsökunar, Grímur.

klepper

OUTLOOK
DAY
RADIO
INTERNET
INFORMATION
HAZARDS
WIND
ADVISORY
SYSTEM
VALLEY
SNOW
INCHES
PATH
AREAS
RIVER
RAIN

SPOTTER ACTIVATION IS NOT EXPECTED AT THIS TIME.

magnað

How did they smell? The warm, waxy, purple ink had a special smell. I can't quite bring it to mind, and that bothers me. Wasn't it a little bit sweet?

That machine was always called the mimeograph, but apparently it wasn't one. It seems that no particular smell attached to mimeographic technology. The old name must have carried over in common use. The warm machine with the rotating drum must have been what I have just learned is called a spirit duplicator. I can only imagine how that name would have worked on my younger imagination.

I remember being given the special treat of drawing on my own two-ply master, allowed the pleasure of seeing my thicket of curlicues and dragons and dog-headed figures reproduced -- even if only once -- in fuzzy aniline purple. Maybe, even in ignorance of the machine's proper name, I sensed that they were intangibly magnified with every turn of the spirit drum.