Letters from Ice Land

So I get your “real world” postcards from Tejas. Messages from a place that is as far-distant from here as anywhere or so. But everywhere is far-distant from here now, at this time of howling, this time of chill bones, of blank darkness that is brimming with these un-things, of deep blue daytimes, of one foot in dreams of sleep and one foot in dreams of waking. And that is that. The time has arrived, the Time is Here, nowhere else is there a spare moment, even a second, where the eye rolls up into the head in concentrated thought, in the time it takes to believe something. All that is here is now, nothing, nowhere else. So it goes. I say it meself. I say it to meself, cause there ain’t nothin’ outside of this hereness. So no one to Say to, anything. Yup.

Þriðjudagur, 13 Desember 1994, Reykjavík

The Solstice a week off still. No telling what will happen before that. No telling.

Brain-box is shape-shifting

Are you photographing? Are you loving another? Surely you are writing? All this in the Toooorino? I can’t imagine, though she was moving just on 18 months ago or so.

I have immersed self in doing things. Mostly stupid things, things that further attach me to more things. And the only thing I do is Talk to people. Talk. Conversations. I have never had a worry about this until recently, when I discover there is a concrete difference between talking about and doing. Strange how that works. I’m still 36, I think, maybe I am more. TickTock.

Þriðjudagur, 20 Desember 1994

Hours to the Solstice, moon just lately Full. Remarkable energies flow around, but I ain’t so much attached to the bulk of ’em. Survival. Sunrise (I look for it, and blessedly it has been quite clear this month) is happening well after 11 and sunset well before three. Maximum height is three degrees off the horizon. TRAVERSE NO ZENITH!

I have some understandings, and some other ways of thinking, but there is only a little freedom undertake such extravagant activities. Now I get a postcard from the Rim. Which is different from the edge, the Rim signifies significances and a certain tangible danger. I wonder if you are traveling alone, I think so, but wonder at such a long lonely road. I would rather think of you travelling with Kate, but she is immersed in Grad School now, to get out in the Spring. As it goes.

Sunnudagur, 1 Janúar 1995

Yes. the New Year is here and there, everywhere, now, the International date line has been reached long ago.

Words are trim and effluent, brought into being with effort and

You are in movement. I have been here in Iceland for all except six days in the last 367. Amazing.

Föstudagur, 27 Janúar 1995

Sitting in a ten-hour screening of video work that I have previously screened at the US cultural Center here — a marathon for those who have missed any of the works.

I had just finished typing a few more paragraphs to you and the machine bombed out unexpectedly. Strange. Those words, about the precision of language and Kate and on, are gone. Forever. Digital insolence. So it goes. Save me, the digits plea. Save me. Anyway, here in the half-dark, I sit. Oh yes, here is Kate’s new address:

Kate G___
119 A___ Street
Ann Arbor, Michigan
48104
USA

She is finishing up her MA in Creative Writing in May or so, teaching now, and on to what knows. I’ve only heard from her a couple times in the past year, but she is interested in keeping connections open, or so I read in her language. And so on.

Yeah, Ezra was talking about precision in Language, and how not to be wasteful with it. So it goes. I realize in the past two years of correspondance, that I have been far from precise in things. Using too many derivatives of cliché and on. A result of a lack of concentration on the object/subject facing the moment, and on it goes. Moving into uncertain futures and with digital baggage beginning to tail into. So it goes.

Losing all precision there, I stop writing to try and regroup. Mind and disassimilated body. One eye on a video screen, butt killing me, radiating warmth of a crowded room.

An hour later. This is a marathon of images, most that I have seen for the third time, maybe more. The room is cooler now. The sun has definitely set. And the chill of the evening begins. I do not know what it looks like out there, but if it mattered anyway. Life goes on. Again. I am only chanting here. I always direct the words. Echos. What the fuck were you doing wandering around the West? I aim to get there for a period of thawing in the summer. Somewhere in the West. But I will have to get rid of much baggage and so on. I burn with the chill of 13 months here with hardly a break from this land. This Light, the sea surrounding. Ultima Thule. (I would be interested in your reactions to Snorri’s EDDA, check it out someday…)

But any leaving now must take into its maw the vast sadness of leaving Child. This beautiful Child who I make to cry by my hardness ever so often. Too often. All are Children, broken to tears by the weight of living in this world. Too much living in this world. Yeah. Leaving. Living with MB is only an exercise in less than being. Or Being less than.

And here I am six hours of video later, two more to go. Hacking away on this silly portable machine in the half-dark. Watching some alternative compilation that I just got in the post today — even including a Stan Brakhage piece, mostly current works from all sorts of folks. This puts a strange twist on things as they are juxtaposed with a WGBH special aired in 1969 with works by Paik among others. A strange similarity. Echoing through twenty-five years of ‘progress’. So it goes. Crazy where things go and don’t go. Yup.

Where is the Center and where is the Edge, the perimeter. (Where we get Stoned Immaculate?)

So it goes. Writing in the Dark. This is the marathon last day of my teaching here sorta, as I probably said before, but repetition is probably the surest simile to reality that can be. SO it goes, so IT goes. There and so on. I just write. In a void of photons falling on Phosphor. And air molecules vibrating on membranes. So it goes. Psychedelic, man.

Sunnudagur, 29 Janúar 1995

A couple days later. Still at this same machine, still reflecting on what needs no reflecting. Using mind to break big pieces into smaller pieces that can just be swallowed with a stretching gag of the thoughtful
throat. I remember the scum of a long-ago Dream, the words “Catching Spears with My Throat”. Pallas Athena was in the Dream, too.

I have lost hold of my dreams for now. But will regain something soon. When I am on to Finland.

Mánudagur, 30 Janúar 1995

Short additions, reflecting short living testimonies of being sorta.

Yep. Monday. to the dentist tomorra. Can’t wait. Root Canal work. Lovely. And then working with a guest student from Granada in Spain who speaks no inglés. Oboy. Everytime I think of something to say, it comes out Icelandic, just like my French. Oi!

Hey, there is a chance that MOMA Library will be taking a copy of the Xerox Book II. So, you’ll have work in MOMA. I got a pleasant letter from the Acting Director of the Library today, asking for a copy to review — evidently they are quite interested in the Mail Art scene — seems to be getting quite some attention these days anyway… So. I’ll let you know what happens. T’wood be a nice boot in the ass, an extra gold star on a work long since resigned to people’s shelves wherever or so.

Laugardagur, 4 Febrúar 1995

Heading out into the blizzard to a friends 40th birthday. Funny how those begin to come about. I forget where I turned 30. Probably in Peters Valley, maybe? I can’t remember anymore.

Saturday Night. Been out on the Net for some time. Collab work, communication from this rock in the North.

Had a job interview over the telly on Friday. An hour with two women faculty in a Jesuit school in Worcester, MA. But a place that needs building up. And what I need is a built-up place to get some work done. We’ll see.

So it goes.

Fimmtudagur, 16 Febrúar 1995

Flickers. The day up to eight ours long, though the sun is still very low even at noon. A woman student comes to me a couple days ago and asks to talk with me privately, she hems and haws, I know she has some feelings for me, as well as I know her to be quite sensitive a person. She hands me a laserprinted sheet of paper like this:

T
O
L
E
R
A
N
C
E

And says to me “this is why you came to Iceland — to get this, to find this, to somehow learn this.” And embarrassed sorta, leaves me holding this paper. She has been watching me carefully for some time. I have had some conversations with her, she has been in a number of my classes. I think she is in her mid/early 30’s. I wonder about this.

These are things that need attention, concentration, and focus. Three ways I have not been travelling upon much of late, if at all. I long to find some peace, some silence (with warmth) that would allow for some meditation. More than a few moments. With Child it is impossible, having to make a living makes it impossible.

I look to this upcoming trip to Helsinki for some wildness, but also some peace. As I will be staying with a bunch of prints in my friends studio, sleeping on the floor. I want to do a lecture titled “Material Intervention” relating the spirit to material and that history and reality of … I will have this machine with, because it holds my art, in a way.

Gotta think now. Gotta be. Gotta Live!