Ice #6 Such Love

better days ________ www.coopradio.org

Iceland #6 : Such Love

The other morning the sun came to Reykjavik, so Disa roused
me from sleep and away we flew, east of the city, toward a
place called Thingvellir. It is the site of the world´s original
parliament, where in the year 874 some farmers began to gather
regularly to address and solve the problems of the day. Disa did
not choose the main road for our journey, but instead took me
over an isolated and mountainous route. During the trip we
did not see one other vehicle. She wanted to show me where
Reykjavik gets it hot spring water from, and also, I think, to
show me another part of the beauty of her homeland.

There is a subterranean danger in this breathtaking place. I
doubt that any of us would choose to live in the shadow of
active volcanoes, where regular earthquakes come rising from
the Atlantic´s floor. Yesterday, a little to the north, there
was a shaker in the 3.5 range.

The road down to Thingvellir winds along a torquoise lake
so deep and mysterious that it is home to species of fish found
nowhere else in the world. The lake was born of a volcano.
It is magnificently wide, part of a national park now. We
stopped at the park´s center to look at explanatory exhibits
about the secrets of the lake, and had an Icelandic hot dog.
The mustard they have here is to die for. Being a sunny day
and windy, too, the air at this elevation had a little too much
bite for a long walk, but the panorama was stunning.

I have been meeting Disa´s family. I told you of the acid test
her father, Gudmundur, put me through. Today was Disa´s
mother, Aagot´s, birthday and we went to Mosfellbaer to
celebrate. Aagot is 69, delicate, full of life, articulate, well-read,
intellectually conversant in English. I like her. Disa took her a
present. I bought her some roses and gave her a cd. We had
some sweets, a nip of schnapps, and I got to meet Disa´s sister,
Anna, and her family -- husband Siggi, son Gummi, and daughter
Asta. Siggi plays clarinet in the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra.
Anna is a gifted classical pianist who has traveled many countries
as a guest soloist. Gummi, short for Gudmundur, is eleven and
has already written a science fiction book; his intelligence,
for his age, is a little scary. Asta is an Icelandic teenager,
looking fashionably bohemian with dark hair and eyes, nose ring
and studded tongue, and a wide range of music likes. They live
on a farm with a stable of Icelandic ponies. So, guess where
we´re going on Saturday? Tumi was also there, son of Disa´s
oldest sister, Hjordis and brother-in-law, Steini, who are out
of town at this time. Tumi is 21, studying for university exams,
tall and strong with a good handshake.

Yesterday we went for coffee and homemade pastries at the
home of Disa´s younger brother, Sverrir, and his wife, Gudbjorg.
They have 11 year old twins, Rebecca and Sverrir-Pall, both
blond and adorable. Sverrir-Pall is older by eight minutes, as
he didn´t mind telling me. Sverrir also plays clarinet, and runs
an instrument repair shop out of his basement. Gudbjorg is a
public health nurse. Tomorrow, Rebecca and Sverrir-Paul will
perform a little soiree concert for me, on flute and piano.
Disa´s baby brother, Kiddi, is in Sri Lanka, working as part
of a peace-keeping mission. It´s a big, wonderful family.

Everywhere we go we run into people Disa knows. The other day,
we went to the east side of Reykjavik to return clean laundry
from Snussa to Ingibjork and Gardar, who loaned us the cabin.
They have a handsome, dark-haired son, Isleifur. Last night,
two of the counsellors Disa has worked with were at the blues
festival. Julia was there, too, best friend to Kiddi. I´ve come
to like meeting Disa´s friends, as they all offer big hugs and
kisses on the cheek. It´s a good way to meet, by embracing.
I got to speak a while last night in the performers lounge with
Gudmundur Petursson, the lanky ringlet-haired guitarist. He
has traveled and played with Pinetop Perkins, and appeared at
the Chicago Blues Festival. He met Son House, too, and we
enjoyed sharing stories of the music business both here in Iceland
and across the water in North America.

Last night´s headliner was Magnus Eiriksson, the "Grandpa of
Iceland blues," as Dori called him. Magnus is probably 65 or so,
white hair, a big man who plays guitar with deep feeling, sings,
blows harmonica, and has written a few hundred songs in all
styles which are well-known in Iceland. As Disa said, "We have
been listening to Maggi for forty years." Another woman told me,
"He has been making us cry for a long, long time." He came on
and hit a subtle, rolling vamp blues, with his band of bass,
piano and drums gliding with him. There was no flash about him,
but as you listened you could hear the mileage and the truth,
and how honest and generous his music is. When he sang, it
was in the voice of a man with a life so big it caught in his
throat. I am so impressed with the talent here. Magnus blew
some harp that was perfunctory, and then they moved into
a riff blues in almost a Santana-like feel, and it was in this piece
- having established the love and affection of his listeners -
that the older man dug into the fretboard and tweaked the tone
knobs to produce a solo that was almost erotic in its combined
tenderness and ferocity. The lyrics, Disa told me, were about a
man asking his wife to come back home, that he just wanted
one more time to hold her in his arms. I looked out across the
audience and, believe me, in every set of women´s eyes I could
see that, if they were the woman in the song, they would say
yes, Maggi to his plea for company... such was the love for this
blues grandfather in the Hotel Borg ballroom last night.

It is time to go down to the hotel again. Disa has gone ahead,
to ensure a seat. Andreu, the "Koko Taylor of Icelandic Blues,"
is going to do a full set this evening, and it is expected that
the house will again be packed to the brim. Can you tell that
I am a little rhapsodic? Thordis Gudmundsdottir has made me
feel so welcomed here, in her home, in her city, in the homes
of her family, in the company of her friends, in this humble yet
tenacious country where she grew up. She is such a kindness,
without pretense, and all I need do is hold her the better to
know my own purpose here in the world.

It´s raining so lightly just now, a mist. I walk through 101's
narrow winding streets by myself, twenty minutes to the hotel.
I told Disa to go on ahead without me while I finished writing
this. I suppose that I wanted to be alone a few minutes, to
collect my thoughts and feelings. Really, I´m rolling with so
many emotions, my heart so wide open, feeling as if I could
break out in song or tears or giggles at any moment. Call it
a fullness, then. I am ripe with my years and my yearnings.
Alive with colours I did not know were still in me. Such love,
oh yes, such love. What else keeps us alive?

DL

live in reykjavik 2004 (photo by tumi)

Laurel Mae

better days ________ www.coopradio.org: 04/06/05

Laurel Mae

You were older, I was younger
You were sure and I, afraid
My fear became part of the flame
The fire, entwined we made
That night the lad was lost in me
My innocence did crack
It’s not as though you took it, no
So much as gave it back
Laurel Mae

I rode my bike the wet roads home
The clock said almost four
Where were you, my mother cross
Her dark eyes in the door
I said, tonight I found a star
To tie my dream horse to
I knew love and told her of
My feelings then, for you
Laurel Mae

That night I never slept at all
The rain a shawl outside
When daylight spilled into my room
I curled up there and cried
That night the lad was lost in me
My innocence did crack
It’s not as though you took it, no
So much as gave it back
Laurel Mae

All the fear we disappear
The shadows we consume
The candle wick where passions flick
The touch that makes perfume
And how the moon will find its way
Into the darkest room
And dew enclose the secret rose
We die and we resume
Laurel Mae

You were older, I was younger
You were sure and I, afraid
My fear became part of the flame
The fire, entwined we made
That night the lad was lost in me
My innocence did crack
It’s not as though you took it, no
So much as gave it back
Laurel Mae

DL

Nebel im Gailta (photo courtesy of Jackie) 

sit still and allow the bird to kiss you 

The Cup

better days ________ www.coopradio.org

The cup was white once. He held it in his worn,
yellowed fingers as he sat on the porch stoop at
sundown. Over the years the cup had absorbed
stains, stains so deep that even after a scrubbing
the cup remained a sad vanilla with brown scars.
One day he simply stopped trying to get it clean.
There were other, newer cups in the cupboard
but he never took them down except when guests
came by on a cold day wanting coffee. They
seemed to come less frequently now. He had
an idea why that was.When she left, almost a
quarter century ago, he'd let her take almost all
the dishes, all the pots and things. He kept this cup.
It was new then, and white, and had a shine.
It didn't have a shine now. Two or three cups of
coffee a day will do that. From the porch he could
see into the neighbors' yard, the neatly-arranged
patio, barbecue, rakes and shovels, trowels hung
on nails, rose bushes pruned back for another year.
Other people always seemed more organized. He's
seen Mrs. Pavone use over a dozen different cups
over the period he'd stuck to his one and only.
Hers had floral pattern cups, big yellow ones, tall
and stately black ones she brought out in summer
when she invited friends back from the country club.
He was embarrassed then to sit where she could see
him, and would go around the front of the house,
sit in the shade with his old cup, the java steaming.
He bought his coffee from the young Latin couple
who ran the little place up the avenue. After trying
six or seven kinds, he'd settled on the Peruvian dark
beans. He'd read a story once about the soul of black
Peru, and had seen a photo of a woman who looked
like she'd come out of fire. When he drank his coffee,
he thought of her sometimes, imagined her in the other
room, naked, waiting for him to tie his boat in and
remove his workboots. He'd bathe first, rub lemons on
his arms and hands to take away the smell of the fish
and the brine. He collected books, in Spanish and in
English, but the books were like the other cups in the
cupboard. It was The Old Man And The Sea that he
read, Hemingway's little novel about the aging fisherman
whose great fish was eaten by the sharks. He read it
many times, until its pages were creased. He most loved
the parts where the old man dreamed of the Gran Ligas,
of the great DiMaggio, and of the parts where the boy
would come while the old man slept dreaming of the lions.
Cup of memories. It was white once. Everything was
white once, and clean, and new. Then a day comes
when the whiteness is gone and no amount of scrubbing
brings it back. He held his cup in his broken fingers, sat
alone on the porch watching the night sky swallow the
last evidence of the sun.

DL

Sweet Disa

Maple Shade

.
Would you come away with me
For now and ever after
To live and love in mystery
To offer tears and laughter
We are of the same cloth made
Survivors of the winter
Meet me in the maple shade
The first day of the summer

All the love our labours show
There is no concealing
The pleasure that our bodies know
When we return to feeling
To run barefoot on steaming clay
When baptismal rain has fallen
And sleep in late on Saturday
A heavy quilt for heaven

Our losses are beyond belief
And still we find a meaning
In the joy and out the grief
And honey for the keening
We trust the sun will yet return
And ask that dark December
Loan a lamp to light and burn
Help us to remember

Let us steal sweet time back from
The sentry of the hours
Too many lost without a name
We mark the path with flowers
Flowers for all time at once
A bloom for every colour
Lift the eyes and join the hands
And find the way together

Would you come away with me
For now and ever after
To live and love in mystery
To offer tears and laughter
We are of the same cloth made
Survivors of the winter
Meet me in the maple shade
The first day of the summer

DL