NFF: Breaking

The Institute has reappeared without warning - ! - but on the opposite side of the street. An inspection of the premises is underway by a mixed group of scholars and security professionals. Meanwhile, please avoid the area.

ókenndir fuglar

 

There!

Four this time, black against the morning sky (or perhaps simply black), with what seem like red beaks. In some formation the rules of which I do not know. 7:15am again: they must be on their way to work. 

I cannot now find here the post in which I wrote of the swans that commuted from Seltjörn to Tjörnin and back, winging daily over my perch in the blokk on the west side. Did I imagine writing it? I don't think so. They were trumpeters. I am certain their descendants still wing that way, and I will look for them.

And then I will fly back.

svá sem

What is it like, it like:

This time the plane is enormous. It approaches the Towers as in a slow-motion film, but not in a film, because I see it live (though it brings death, death). It has been coming for weeks, and I have been watching it come.

The nose has (slowly, slowly) pushed through the glass window. The fractures spider out from it further and further.

It does not slow.

There is roaring in my ears and a drone in my heart.

norðurrós

The embers are still glowing on the Island in the City. The night is smoky dark. We'll have to wait for morning to see whether the rumors are true, that one great rose still blooms in the north face.

skam

Hva da?

Watch too much tv, and last night's dreams all take place on the linguistic edge of Norway, where it borders Iceland's looming bulk. (On my personal map, Iceland has long since outgrown Norway. The words are piled up so deep they've become glassy blue glacial ice, an Orðafjallajökull.) All my sentences started on Oslo's West Side—okay, some in Løkka—but once off the ground, the austanátt would blow them well out to sea, where they would splash down with a finnst þér ekki, ef segja má, í alvöru talað, einum of. My interlocutor's brow would furrow and I'd fumble around in my own mouth for the phrase, embarassed. 

Æ fyrirgefðu, sorrí, unnskyld, men det er så ekstremt mye islandsk ofaná, på toppen lissom. La meg grave litt.

vanfært

Fingertips dig in and rattle over trapezius like a crappy mountain road. Potholes and frost heaves all across my back. The county really should do something about that.

Or else number the route with an F designation. This is all-wheel drive territory.

And then there another pair of fingertips and I groan. Bad road or no, I need to get where I'm going.

rabbit rabbit rabbit

In reverse order: 

I saw you kick high, flying over the brush on the corner and out of sight of the wondering dogs. Go!

I saw you hop lazily into the shade on campus, plopped into the grass from a temporary prison in a recycling bin. Go! And stay out of the street!

I saw you, the remains of you, broken in the road, and I knew you from the bottom of the garden, watching me side-eyed through the chives.

sér

Sjåande


Køyrande nordover frå 
Akureyri,
såg eg eit skip med raude segl.
Eg snudde meg mot deg og
spurde
Om du såg det òg.

Vel kveðið, finnst henni enn. En kvæðin er leyfi útásandafarna ástarsambands. Textinn fangir raunverulegt augnablik: hún var ekki viss um hvað hún sæi, hvað henni fyndist. Hún bjó í svo miklum vonum, samt. Vildi svo geta treyst tilfinningunum.

En hún reyndi ekki skyggn, ekki sjáandi, heldur blind.

Nú sér hún.

incisive

It's only been clever since about 1850.

Before that it was only the quality of the literal cutting edge, zipping swiftly to some in-more place. The heart? The quick, at least. 

lesbrigði

Transciption error.

Happens all the time in manuscripts. Copying by hand invites certain kind of errors. All of them have technical names. Of course they do. The work of the sort of people who copy by hand attracts the sort of people who study that kind of thing, and they are exactly the same sort of people: they like system and dead languages.

Handverk. Work by hand or, also, craft. Mostly craft, an activity that requires skill. Even the skilled can err. Homer nods, and all that. Even the tiniest, with the finest dainty hands, may slip and churn out nonsense.

What if, what if (a zillion-to-one) it weren't nonsense but the worst incantation, a formula, once read, that would summon the worst of monsters? The emperor of monsters. What if.

Quick -- tear out the page.

hawk eye

Hawk!

No. A shadow in the branches. 

Dark in the long, mid-morning winter sun and especially stark through polarized glass. The signature of one branch crossing another.

Or maybe a nest.

dogs in a mixed-faith household

Transitioning from Hanukkah season to Christmas season: gentile dog finds and eats two nights' stash of Hanukkah gelt, then cheerfully poops out glitter.

Sabbath loaf: Long thought to be mythical (intermittant sightings never confirmed) but recently found to be a very unstable object with half-life measured in fractions of nanoseconds when in the presence of Jewish dog.

Is the Jewish dog Reform, Conservative, or Orthodox? Reform. Jewish dog does not keep kosher. (Poop is not kosher, not even when pooped by a dog who does keep kosher.)

Is the Jewish dog observant at all? Possibly: Jewish dog would not eat non-kosher-for-Passover matzoh on Passover. However, the matzoh was several years past its sell-by date.

Is gentile dog Christian? Unlikely. Has been known to pee on the Christmas tree.

What is gentile dog's cultural-religious background? Possibly indigenous Siberian, unevangelized. Ritual behavior includes veneration of food offerings and lengthy performance of chant-songs.

landvættir

Coyote in the Bronx. Puma in Hollywood. Boar in the city of bears, in Berlin, now Boar-lin? Even the fertile family of squirrels who have made the neighbors' eaves into a rodent-filled clown car make me smile.

I cringe at the news that escaped bison, west-bound, took the mighty Hudson in easy hooféd stride but were felled with lead. It is well that the authorities raised their rifles with sadness. Show some respect. These cliff-headed beasts were the gods of the plains. Make way, make way, and tip your brow, raise your eyes in awe as they pass.

If I had it to choose which kind of muzzle were aimed at me in the assumed safety of my streets,
the one that barks bullets or the one that bites, I would chose the whiskered one. We have claimed everything here. Would we lose so much by giving back the night? It was never our native land, and we hold it by force.

Bring the cat in and go inside. Let the coyotes patrol our cities for us. Make way, make way for the gods of the land. Tip your brow and raise your eyes in awe.

nei, hæ

Always a bit odd to stumble over a firefly midday in the garden, like when you ran into your homeroom teacher in the supermarket.

fjarvera

She hasn't been here. Why hasn't she been here? I'm not certain.

She's seen sad things: a squirrel, unaware his hindquarters have been crushed flat by a tire, goes about his business gathering nuts and climbing trees. He is so light that he can do this with only the use of his forelimbs, not weighed down by knowledge of his certain death from sepsis, kidney failure, the obvious. Extraordinary, ordinary animal. Then again, his spine was probably severed: he feels nothing. He isn't there the next day.

This is not the reason. I do not know the reason.

dormirecanis

It is a better world for that dogs dream.

They sleep away most of the day, draped over the upholstery or sprawled across the carpets. Furry bellows rise and fall, long lips slack, eyes quiet behind velvet lids. I am about my work. But a breath drawn too quick and I look over to see pads spread and clench, ears flick, hear tongue click against palette to draw up cool, phantom water to slake thirst won up running crazed loops around the field of nodding poppies, chamomile, valerian. Another sip and he's off again, racing, still in his chair.

I am glad they dream. They don't live long. Dreaming half the day, their lives are twice as long. 

hér, nú

Disembarking, the scent of flowers washes over her, until she realizes it is the sea.

krabbinn

You have nothing to say to me.

You never have, but I am less patient now, less willing to grant you polite audience.

I have heard your incoherent roar before, the rushing sound of thick water against the eardrum as the top of the throat slams shut. You have filled my nighttime head before with mad chattering and dreams of annihilation.


I cannot stop you. You will rage and tear through my world and the days and nights of my loved ones, but I will grant you no more of my life, waking and sleeping, than I must.

You have nothing to say to me, to anyone, and never have. 

You may go to hell.

sopa

Cardamaro
Islay scotch
two slices of cucumber
two young leaves of basil
ice cube
soda

The proportions are left as an exercise for the reader.

nýárshaukur

New year swoops in, flaring a many-fingered hand of flight feathers, braking in the air for a snatch and drop.
Audubon ought to have seen it, but it's only me and the dog looking on from the corner.

Now he pauses under the low canopy of a bush.When he flaps up into the tree I can see the limp body in his  talons. Last year? Or just yesterday? It's so small and still. Takk fyrir það gamla, það litla.

In any case, good morning, good morning, slate back and clear eyes. Gleðilegt ár.