rainbows

Meanwhile, the immediate things force their way into my attention. Loki is still sick. I noticed before we went to the hospital yesterday that he had some red spots on his abdomen that looked like the beginnings of chicken pox which he already had three years ago. The doctor said that it was just atypical something-or-other from a viral infection that was going around. The doctor advised nothing could be done, that the virus would have to run its course. Loki has not wanted to eat or do much of anything except listen to story cassettes or watch the 30 minutes of children’s teevee offered by state television each evening. He was doing better last evening, but this morning he went back to bed after breakfast. I listen to Turkish music, read an anthology of Black women writers and poets from the US, continue preparing laser-prints for the exhibition, organize my papers, and mull over the situation.

This afternoon we wander downtown, just a five-minute walk from home, where there are a variety of street entertainers and activities to while away the warmest afternoon yet of the summer. And tomorrow will be warmer. It is probably over 70F in the sun. I suddenly notice how many young girls there are with babies — there are babies everywhere, children underfoot, everybody has babies! Iceland has, I believe, one of the highest birthrates of any developed country, and it shows. Somehow this seems absurd and incongruous with a modern western culture. Like in Amerika, as a middle class person, I was taught that uncontrolled birthrates were synonymous with underdeveloped countries. I know that in the three years of teaching at CU-Boulder, I had one student who had a child. Here, more often than not, my students have children. What does it mean? I dunno. Culture is different cream on different cakes. Musing on this and eating the Batman ice cream that Loki picked out but didn’t like, I can barely walk back up to the house, my sciatic nerve is firing like a blow-torch and there are grinding sensations deep in my spine. I realize that this defect has so colored my year thus far that I am hardly the person I was last year at this time — healthy, energetic, active compared to grouchy, slow, easily-fatigued, lacking any spark. Gees. I pause to consider this narrative to be dead in the water. As a matter of fact, I will stop it here, July 12th, near midnight, for the foreseeable future until I radically change my energy state or until I find something seriously better to engage in online. Please note yet another change in URL for my main web site: the new URL is https://neoscenes.net/index.php. Anyway … The rainbows seen from Hrísey last Monday reminded me of this passage that I have been reading to Loki from time-to-time.