Icelandic cataclysms large and small

The geothermal pool at our guesthouse in Keflavik

Fourth of July with the UW field crew. Beach: normal, mittens and hats: not so much.

The view from the backyard of our farmhouse

I think they're talking about sulphur-reducing bacteria. I wasn't really listening.

A few bandages can't stop the flower-picking

Sulphur-reducing bacteria-eye view of us.

Mama by Milo

It's midnight and I am watching the sun on the horizon, though the light gets most magical around 1 a.m. Tonight after the children finally collapsed at 11 pm, we went birdwatching. Visiting Iceland in the heart of their summer is a bit of a mindgame: the day never ends but summer arrives in, like, two seconds. It's been cold, really cold, and the landscape looks - even for Iceland - rather bleak. And then, poof!, it's sunny, still and 17 degrees celsius.

Our travels with two little ones in tow were relatively easy. The most challenging part was the sketchy airport hotel in Milwaukee. The best part was waking in a guesthouse in Keflavik beneath handmade crocheted blankets to a breakfast of Icelandic smoked salmon, fresh baked bread and homemade skyr. After fortifying ourselves with dark coffee, fish and a family soak in the backyard geothermal pool, we set out for Lake Myvatn, a six-hour drive along Iceland's ring road. Given the time difference (5 hours) we woke late and only set out for our trip mid-afternoon. Which meant when we stopped to view the Golfoss waterfall en route to our field house in Lake Myvatn, it was 11:45 p.m. Messed up.

The trip has already been filled with more cataclysms than I bargained for. This country is a study in big geological events, those I was prepared for. The one I was less prepared for was Kyra's fall into the 4th of July beach bonfire and the terrifying 45-minute drive to the hospital to have her burned hand (and to a much lesser extent, lip) treated. She is fine, healing remarkably well and shockingly not in as much pain as we expected given the 2nd and 3rd degree burns her little hand suffered. The doctor (named Unnstein!) treated her hand, sedated her and released her about an hour later and we got to take her home. We anticipated a long night, especially as the pain relief wore off. Instead she slept all night and woke in a good mood, almost delighted at the big white drumstick her right hand had become overnight. The entire hospital experience here was as surreal as the endless light. The young doctor in Diesel jeans who came to unlock the clinic door and let us in, the sign asking visitors to remove their shoes before entering the hospital and the billing process. As in: none. He told us not to worry about it, it had already been a hard night and we should go home and take care of our daughter.

Today, we watched this little girl of ours not skip a beat. She just ate and played with her left hand and by the end of today, had mastered a pretty functional pincer grip with the exposed tip of her thumb and index finger of the injured hand (see flower-picking above!). Given her cheery disposition, we took her and Milo to some much calmer catalysmic sites: fumaroles and boiling mud pots. Tomorrow, she'll have her bandages changed and then probably master left-handed chopsticks.

Stay tuned...
Helen

it's all one.

"I'm beginning to believe that one of the last frontiers left for radical gestures is the imagination...Each public disclosure of a fragment of private reality serves as a dismantling tool against the illusion of ONE-TRIBE NATION: it lifts the cutains for a brief peek and reveals the possible existence of literally millions of tribes." - David Wojnarowicz

Saw this image last week at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art and it stopped me in my tracks. Some later research also revealed that U2 used the image in an early version of their video for "One". Eerie and beautiful and oddly enough, a song that stopped me in my tracks when I first heard it so many years ago.

a month into it

The photo project is getting fun! The more I look, the more I see. I was worried I'd run out of things to photograph.

weapons of mass creation

To me, gardening has always been an act of revolution. A revolt against the ten hours of desk work, the multinational food giant, soft hands, and city living. With every transplanted seedling, I am master (mistress?) of my domain. When I pop a warm, ripe backyard raspberry into my mouth, I feel like I stick it to the man, just a little bit. There are so many kinds of self-sufficiency of which I know absolutely nothing. But this I know: I can take a seed, stick it in the ground and make food come of it.

My friend Mara, whose beautiful shoe is photographed above, speaks of seeds like they are magic, music, medicine. She keeps a small vial of heirloom seeds on her and will shake them for a sort of musical meditation. Wendell Berry writes poetry about ploughing the earth. Me, I make charts. My charts tell me what seeds I have left (and how much of them) and what seeds I desire. Sometimes I'll add a picture to remind myself why "Chervena Chushka" was a must-have the last time I browsed Seed Savers catalog. I chart out an indoor starts schedule and then an outdoor starts schedule. I may even chart the planting boxes, so I can rotate a few different crops. Oh yes, spreadsheets have a poetry and music of their own - the only kind of poetry and music I can produce with wild abandon.

And yet as controlling as I am at this end of things, there always comes a point where I succumb and let the creation take over. Those rigid spring spreadsheets decompose into June's sprouts, July's entropy and August's gravity. We always, always, lose control. We enter the garden with one part intimidation and three parts glee as we stumble and bump our way around the overgrowth plucking warm tomatoes, twisting off an eggplant, bending into a carrot firmly entrenched in the soil. The dirt and toughened skin is never fully scrubbed off the hands. And you wear it like a badge of honour because it reminds you that you haven't completely lost your tie to the earth.

Sowing the seed,
my hand is one with the earth.

Wanting the seed to grow,
my mind is one with the light.

Hoeing the crop,
my hands are one with the rain.

Having cared for the plants,
my mind is one with the air.

Hungry and trusting,
my mind is one with the earth.

Eating the fruit,
my body is one with the earth.

- Wendell Berry

total: 20 days

Beautiful winter weather so my camera pointed outside a lot. Which is a good thing for February. Plus some crazy texture courtesy of the funky packaging from a box of schwag delivered to the office that week.

five minute break: an experimental film

to the lake


I've always loved the sounds associated with snow. Apparently, we are many who share this fascination.

weekend mandate

once more with feeling

the first ten days, originally uploaded by Helen de madison.

Deep winter has settled in and I sit still a lot more frequently this time of the year. It's great for seeing, all this sitting still, and the more I look at seemingly unimportant or banal things, the more fascinating they get. They call to me to find the beauty, the fascinating, the fractal complexity. And then, in the way that cosmic forces seem to converge and lead to something wonderful, I have lunch with a friend who tells me she has been taking a photo a day and that she can look back at these pictures and remember almost every day that they were taken. I'm smitten. For the next 365, I will take a picture a day. To see. To remember. It seems, this is a recurring quest in my life.

Here's what I'm drawn to these days:
*edges and transitions, where snow and ice meet pavement, how light moves around the corner of a small box of mints sitting by the window, where the self-contained meet and overlap, and interesting things happen;
*blurry images, where the tangible seems to be infused with magic and you can play tricks on your own eyes, flower morphs to octopus;
*little tiny things and my macro lens.

Ah. It's good to be back here.

summer fun!

like a hot house tomato

That's what life feels like these days. It's deep summer. The garden is busting out: fruits ripening, leaves multiplying, new sprouts seemingly exploding from the ground hours after the little seeds were tucked in there. I just might, maybe, be getting a bit of lettuce fatigue.

But our life in general feels like how the garden looks right now. The projects got bigger fast upon returning to Madison. Good things have been happening professionally. The kiddo, my favourite sprout, has been exploding with vocabulary and movement . He is like grass growing so fast you can literally see it getting longer before your eyes.

I am a little distracted with the unruly pile of things I need and want to do in a day, anything from grant writing to repairing the broken vent/faucet/toilet/hose/shower rod to making freezer jam because it's strawberry season. We have a non-functional shower but have managed to build a gonzo sandbox in the backyard out of a derelict raised bed. Do I continue to unpack the office or go for a run or make dinner?

Yes, you can say that the tendrils of our life have run a little amuck lately. And yet, somehow it works for us right now. There's a joy to the summer chaos that can only be appreciated after a long, isolating, sickly indoor winter. I kind of like feeling sand underfoot in the living room and sticky ice cream fingers wrapping themselves around my neck. And I think I'll finish writing that grant tonight. I'll make the jam tomorrow. And the office can wait a little longer.