Collected journal entries for April
2nd - The air is still & even if my face is giving the opposite expression because of the blinding brightness I feel good. Three butterflies pass me & I’m reminded of Rebecca Solnit speaking about transformation. How the process can be ugly & how some seem to be born with unquestioned sense of self. Yesterday me, Kári & Vasilis were discussing solitude & sanity, debating if they were necessary & how much is too much. Behind the conversation lurked the idea of insanity & genius being soulmates, a love story more tragic than Romeo & Juliet.
(Eyja)
4th - Flóki and Þorri are ready,
like an Alice Cooper leopard in a cage,
waiting for their first gig,
in two days;
we prepared costumes (pig ears and noses),
a banner for the performance and flyers.
I wish I was a Rocking Pig at the age of 6,
instead of excavating my nose.
(Vasilis)
6th - Áður en við byrjum:
Í dag var mamma ROSALEGA skemmtileg og þegar ég skrifa ROSALEGA SKEMMTILEG þá meina ég alveg allt í stórum stöfum …líka, mig langar svolítið í tattú af sígarettu á mallakút. Mig langar eiginlega meira að hún Eyja mín fái tattú eða tátú frekar. Byrjum nú. Í gær fór ég í fótbolta með mömmu minni og var örugglega bestur (fannst mér allavega). Þorri var rosalega góður og var eiginlega betri í fótbolta en 10 ára Mexíkóskur strákur. Hann sólaði hann út í eitt og skaut … alveg MARK! hann hafði skotið í gegnum klofið á honum og hann var 19 ára.
(Flóki)
6th - Oaxaca
Í fyrradag á meðan Flóki var hjá lækninum þá var ég með Vasilis með „listening class“. Við vorum að hlusta á punk music eins og The Stooges eða Green Day og núna er ég á kaffihúsi sem heitir Blasón.
(Þorri)
7th - „transformation consists mostly of decay“ or something along those lines (Rebecca Solnit)
Finding, making or changing yourself, whatever you chose to call it, is often emotionally hard on you. Throughout the years the people that go through this have been sharing their stories. Stories of seeing the light or finding the path all in the hope of making someone else’s journey easier. We all change throughout our lives, some changes come gradually & some drastically, sometimes it comes naturally while others cause struggles. I can‘t describe my inside struggles in any art form not did I find anything, except for my current state of self.
(Eyja)
8th - Við erum að bíða eftir San Pablo Taxi og núna erum við í San Pablo Taxi með vond music. Og hann Flóki nennir ekki að skrifa. Mig myndi langa í staðinn í David Bowie en mexíkóska music. Við sáum Eugenia og Arleth í bílnum þeirra þegar við vorum á leiðinni í Oaxacaborg.
(Þorri)
10th - One of the decisions we made when planning our trip was that this would be a period without television or computer entertainment so before arriving we asked our landlord to please remove the satellite TV, so proudly noted in the description of the house. It´s been pleasantly surprising that the younger boys have not made a single complaint about this throughout all our stay, quite happily inventing their own games with whatever they find in the garden or up the hill while also drawing, reading and playing cards in the house. Every night after dinner we have a get-together in the living room and take turns reading out loud, sometimes lighting the fire in the fireplace, although the temperatures lately have not exactly called for heating up the house.
When we return to our lives in Iceland I think we need to be conscious of exposing all of us to diverse cultural material, in order not to re-normalize American-dominated entertainment consumption.
(Orri)
11th
Dear diary,
I was mad at you,
and I’m considering breaking up with you also.
Motivation is getting a bit like a 5th gear uphill,
the city sirens are calling for me,
and I’m gonna give in,
like a Coke bottle,
falling on command,
from a vending machine tree.
(Vasilis)
11th - Hann Flóki er að teikna mynd fyrir mig af General Piggis með Rolling Stones merki neðan á myndinni. Og hann skrifaði mér smá á myndinni það sem hann var að teikna. Núna í dag sáum við indjána hús með allri fjölskyldunni og það var skemmtilegt að sjá allt. ENDIR
(Þorri)
13th - Kæra dagbók,
Í dag var Eyja með spænskutíma um mat en auðvitað hafði hún ekki neitt kjöt út af því hún borðar það ekki.* Ekki heldur kjúklingur út af því hún er hrædd við þá.** Bara grænmeti. Svo fórum við mamma að lesa Risaeðlur í Reykjavík og nú er ég að skrifa eins og þú veist örugglega. Núna mun ég segja fyrirgefðu við hana elskulegu mömmu mína fyrir að skrifa svona rosalega illa fyrir drottninguna út af því að skrifa eð svona
!
*alveg þótt hún er frá Íslandi
**alveg þótt hún ætti að slátra þeim
(Flóki)
17th - Í dag fékk Flóki glóðurauga með því að ég klessti með enninu mínu í augað hans. Hann fór að gráta.
(Þorri)
19. apríl
Eftir glóðurauga.
Á hverjum degi tekur hann pabbi mynd af auganu mínu til að sjá muninn á því. Í dag er augað eiginlega röndótt, gult og fjólublátt. Ég vildi að við ættum make-up og þá gæti ég verið með tíkó og tætt gallabuxurnar mínar. Endir.
(Flóki)
21st - I guess the rain season has started. Today is the fourth day in a row that it rains. It is nice. The air is fresh and the plants welcome the water. We thought the rain had stopped earlier today and went out for a walk. A bit above us there are a few donkeys that the boys have become friends with. They bring them fresh grass and get to pet them in return. Kári joined us but it started raining after only a short walk so we decided to return. Flóki and Þorri were not ready to go home yet, but the rest of us did not feel like getting soaked so we told them they could stay a while with the donkeys before returning to the house. They both enjoy such moments of independence a lot. And when they returned a moment ago I could tell by the way Þorri walked and spoke that he felt really proud and happy. He told me that he and Flóki have given all the donkey names and went on to explain the reason behind each one.
We allow Flóki and Þorri to go on their bikes a bit up the hill and unto the gravel roads that run a little above us. And each time they return home it is like they have grown a few centimeters. The other day they got into a bit of an adventure when Flóki fell off his bike and onto a cactus. We could not hear them but some workers nearby came to their rescue. They took out most of the needles from Flóki’s leg and walked along with them for a bit with the bikes. The next day Orri met one of the workers on his way home from work and thanked him for the help. Don’t mention it, he replied. The atmosphere and attitude here often reminds me of small towns in Iceland. People around here know by now that the long-haired, blond boys live in Fidel’s and Eugenia’s pink house and they will help these gringo kids if they need help, just like they keep an eye on other kids in the village. I remember the same from living in Ísafjörður as a kid and the workers from Slippurinn keeping an eye on my brother and me as we played around the seashore. The same is fortunately true for many small communities and villages around the globe and the thought of it makes me happy. Letting go of our kids and trusting our neighbors and community is, in my opinion, an important part of raising kids. I don’t believe in constantly monitoring what my children are doing. And I don’t like a culture that manufactures and promotes fear and distrust. I think children need to explore on their own and even get a little bit lost and a little bit hurt. Of course parents should set boundaries and be aware of their children´s safety, but not to the point that it suffocates and stifles the independence and initiative of their kids. When Kári and I were discussing this the other day he told me that in her book A Field guide to Getting Lost Rebecca Solnit has come up with a good phrase for this relatively new generation of people who have grown up under constant adult supervision. She calls them Generation House arrest.
(Þórdís)
21st
I shouted at a stray dog that wanted to have my leg today.
-Hey! Don’t do that, it stresses me out!
-(bark bark) (bark) (bark)
-I’m a smoker, I must therefore taste bitter,
like a barrel of a gun.
It left, I either spoke doggish for a moment,
or it spoke English.
(Vasilis)
21st - Í dag dó Prince, hann var bara 57 ára. Þorri talaði rosalega mikið um hann eins og vanalega. Það er samt alveg allt í lagi, truflar náttúrulega engan útaf því að allir eru svo vanir því, búin að lifa með honum í 6 ár. Það er frekar mikið eða allavega fyrir mig, ég er nú bara 2 árum eldri.
(Flóki)
21st - Í dag dó Prince 57 ára. Enginn veit hvernig Prince dó. Ég og Flóki vorum með Vasilis í dag og við vorum að fara í búð með Orra, Eyju og Flóka. Eftir 5 daga þá erum við að fara í bíó um Ziggy Stardust og David Bowie.
(Þorri)
24th - While living in Toronto Þorri and Flóki got more curious about rock music and for our last 3-4 months there they got particularly fascinated by two artists; David Bowie and Prince. The rather bizarre coincidence of their recent, and somewhat untimely, deaths has therefore been a source of much questioning from the boys. Having just formed a band with Vasilis where they compose their own music they wonder if musicians possibly live shorter lives than others?
These unfortunate events have not lessened the boys´ interest though, they continue to sing along to Changes and Purple Rain and study the outlandish fashion decisions of 70s Bowie and 80s Prince. Flóki has started designing his own clothes and, although fascinated by the 70s punk scene, he´s also asking for high heels and makeup. Þorri has already designed his own “Devil Guitar” that he wants to build as soon as we come back to Iceland, no doubt inspired by Prince´s multiple unique custom built guitars. To be allowed to re-live experiences like these through observing the wonder in your children is one of the great pleasures of parenthood.
(Orri)
24th - When walking to find a taxi to the market with Eyja this morning we stumbled upon a roadkill and Eyja screamed, a Mexican women nearby started laughing.
I started reading Ficciones by Borges. One of the short stories (TLÖN, UQBAR, ORBIS TERTIUS) was of an imaginary world, created by a secret society, where all thinking was very different from our own. There were no nouns in the language so “for them the world is not a concurrence of objects in space, but a heterogeneous series of independent acts.” I have often dreamt of creating alternatives ways of thinking about the most fundamental things, this story did that. I think about finding our deepest patterns of thought, which shape our perception of everything, and taking them apart, reconstructing them. I think that our way of perceiving is probably a narrow one so I want to find new ones, better or worse, just to show that there are alternatives. Finding something truly different is hard though because I can’t know what to look for. But maybe using only one way will always be wrong, maybe the trick is to be able to switch between ways of processing information and generate new ones, freely. Maybe our mind will always be victim to rigid thinking patterns, maybe it has to be.
Is all thinking limited by language?
(Kári)
25th - This day started rather disappointedly. We woke up early because we were expecting a call from an Icelandic radio show. Orri and I were hoping they were going to make a program about education and give it some space and depth through interviewing both of us, talking about our project and even bringing in different voices and opinions to give the subject more substance. We had asked the older kids to take the boys out and leave at 8:30 so that we would have the house to ourselves. Therefore Eyja decided to recharge her cell phone, which has been more and less dead for the past couple of months, and set an alarm. Ironically, when the phone sounded the alarm, Eyja picked it up and dropped it on her face, causing a front tooth that had been broken and fixed when she was twelve, to break again. Thorri lost a tooth last night and woke up very early to see if the Tooth Fairy had paid him a visit. So when he saw his sister he asked earnestly if she had also received ten pesos this morning. No, unfortunately she had not as it will cost her quite a few pesos to have it fixed. The kids went out to the creek with funny hairdos and few teeth while we waited for the phone call. Typically for the culture we are getting a break from, the Icelandic interviewer said he was on a tight time schedule and the interview was an in-out operation. Just when Orri was warming up he was told that they had run out of time. I never even got to the phone and we were left a bit frustrated and sad.
Anyway, now it is off to the dentist. I suppose this day could still get worse.
(Þórdís)
26th - Af hverju eru skottin á bílum kölluð skott? Þeir eru bara með rass og ef þú hugsar um það vel þá hafa þeir rassgat útaf því þú getur opnað það. Þetta var bara til að byrja söguna svo þið vitið hvað er skott og hvað ekki. Dýr hafa skott (stundum ekki).
Ég byrja þessa sögu á því að braka í puttunum mínum og ef ég gæti farið úr skónum og sokkunum (þá er ég eiginlega að braka í tásunum mínum líka) en nú er ég búinn að skrifa 2 blaðsíður og þarf ekki meir. Bæ bæ...
Einu sinni fyrir langa löngu voru 2 vinir, ein býfluga og einn björn. Einn vetrardaginn var björninn að leita að mat og reyndi að finna býfluguna. Hann leitaði um allan skóginn en gat ekki fundið hana. Hún var dáin. Björninn var orðinn rosalega svangur núna. Hann dó þá líka. Endir
(Flóki)
26th - Í dag erum við að fara að horfa á David Bowie and the story of Ziggy Stardust.
(Þorri)
26th - We spent the day in Oaxaca City, had coffee, walked around and visited graphic art galleries. There are a lot of galleries and workshops all over the city and many of them feature etching prints. Some of these prints were amazingly complex and beautiful and many of them include a political message or criticism. The streets of Oaxaca are also filled with images and graffiti, some of which are tags that are one ever the other and create a tangled mess but often you see a beautiful image or a powerful message on a wall or electric box. This represents for me the rebellious spirit of the city, the art in the galleries, the art on the streets and even the tags display some discontent. It shows that the people are still aware and critical of their politics, something I sometimes worry about at home. In Reykjavík there is quite a bit of graffiti but the vast majority of it is limited to tags and bombs that seldom carry a message with them. I think this is similar to the mentality of many Icelanders (my age at least), that know or feel that something is wrong, but often can’t put their finger on it. In Toronto I felt like it was even worse, there was not a lot of graffiti on the streets and I never noticed a particular message in it. There were some walls that had been painted with big and often beautiful pictures but they were never critical. The same goes for the art galleries I visited there, I sometimes felt like they were too polite. I think this says a lot about the attitude of many Canadians (or people in Toronto). In the 8 months I lived there I never heard anyone criticize their government, the closest I heard was when someone made a joke about their former major (a crack addict). I think that the graffiti in Toronto, or the lack of it, reflects perfectly the obedience of many of its citizens. I guess Canadians might argue that this is simply because Toronto is better than Reykjavík and Oaxaca, but that is a different topic.
(Kári)
26th
I’m sorry dear diary,
life has been demanding lately,
she wants us to date more,
she even left her toothbrush in my bathroom,
and I don’t know how to reject her.
I’m definitely not turned on by her current social status.
(Vasilis)
26th - Yesterday’s alarm clock went off, the first one to go off in months. I lifted my phone to turn it off & it fell on my face chipping the front of my tooth, I caught the piece with the tip of my fingers (hoping it was from my phone deep down knowing I wasn’t going to be that lucky). The room was silent for some time. Then I broke the silence “I broke my tooth”… a moment passed “good morning”. My brain has stopped working after this incident. Now I can only think of fixing it & how lucky I am, that my “problems” are so small. But how should one measure a problem? Is it by comparing to other people’s problems? Or are they measured how each & everyone rates them personally? Perhaps how much you can do about it? Solving, mending or/& living with it. I think my brain just jump-started itself.
(Eyja)
29th – I went with Þorri on a walk today and we met a ton of different animals. We sat down to watch the goats who slowly worked their way towards us until we sat in the middle of them and watched as they got on their back legs to reach leaves on the trees around us. Some of the goats got within a meter of us and were soon joined by a couple of cows (vacas), dogs (perros), two donkeys (burros) and a farmer. On our way back I asked Þorri to lead the way, which took a while but eventually he found his way through the trees and into our house, where we started writing in our diaries.
(Kári)
29th - Í dag sáum við beljur, geitur og eina kanínu og við ætlum að fara að búa til túttubyssu. Hann Flóki og Orri voru í bæ. Ekki á morgun, heldur hinn er afmælið mitt.
(Þorri)