June 15, 2007

It's just about two in the afternoon and we are all in the state one would expect less than fourteen hours before flying to Iceland. Packing isn't done, but clothes are strung all over the house and a good number of them are waiting to be washed. There are four huge bowls of apricots on the kitchen counter I picked off our tree getting softer and softer waiting for me to pit them and put them in the freezer as future chutney. I haven't found my paint, my 2nd carry-on is stuffed and I still don't have a spot for toiletries because I have so much paper-books, articles, journals, postcard list-taking up room. Louis is returning library books, Sam is exchanging coins for cash at Albertsons, and I still have to decide if I'm going to go get that rubber computer sleeve or not. When does the college bookstore close, anyway?
Still, I'm amazing relaxed for an anxious person about to go on a really long flight on a really heavy plane over the ocean. Part of it is that Jesse and Nicole will be taking care of things for us here, and part of it is that I found illustrations from a Norse Edda (alliterative poems)from Iceland on line and they are such beautiful illustrations combined with calligraphic text that I became excited all over again to go to the Icelandic institute and hear about the history, the literature, the land, the flora, the fawna from people I am imagining to be giants of their fields.
I'd better get a move on now, get ready to get to that Wyoming of the North Atlantic. Pit some apricots.
Spring