"I remember you once said that what you were most frightened of in Sviðinsvík were the children of the streets," said Örn. "So I can't expect you to enjoy listening to me. I am the children in the streets. I am the child who was brought up in the ditches and on the fences, the child who had everything stolen from him before he was born, the child who has yet another misfortune on top of all the other misfortunes of the family, one handful of dirt to add to the midden on which the cockerels stand and crow.
"But because of that, there's no need to talk to me as if no one has ever recognised the need for a more beautiful world except you. I know just as well as you what beauty is and even what the spirit is, even though you are the Ljósvíkingur himself and I am only called after the eagle and the wolf. Beauty -- that is the earth; it is the grass on the earth. The spirit -- that is the heaven with its light above us, the sky with these white summer clouds which cluster together in banks and then drift apart again. If there were any justice in the world I would have just one wish -- to be allowed to lie on my back on the grass, in this heavenly light, and look at the clouds.
"But whoever thinks that beauty is something he can enjoy exclusively for himself just by abandoning other people and closing his eyes to the human life of which he is a part -- he is not the friend of beauty. He ends up either as Pétur Þríhross's poet, or his secretary. He who doesn't fight every day of his life to the last breath against the representatives of evil, against the living images of evil who rule Sviðinsvík -- he blasphemes by taking the word beauty into his mouth"
World Light / Book II: The Palace of the Summerland
(Heimsljós / Höll sumarlandsins)
by Halldór Laxness, translated from Icelandic by Magnus Magnusson
It was a blessing to be given a day with this book in my duty yesterday in camp, beholden neither to my sergeant nor to my laptop. This story, the most vividly emotional in the Laxness novels translated into English, tells the life of Ólafur Kárason of Ljósavík, an aspiring poet from young, and a father and career poet where I left him just now in Book III.
He is a brilliant poet with his head in the air, but with an unfortunate apathy to the lives or happiness of other people, random pretty wenches excepted. This lecture by Örn Úlfar (pen-name of Þórarinn Eyjólfsson). I think it is in Örn one hears a word of caution for the artist: those who in their aloofness distance themselves from the people they are the souls of.
II. Two meetings with friends in The First of May, also the Feast of Saint Joseph, the Ascension of the Lord, and Labour Day:
The first in Bukit Batok with Yee Chien, Xiang and Yuan Yi because we haven't met for so long. It was a good get-together, only it's a pity it won't last the whole year. And then by August or thereafter I'd be sitting somewhere with a rifle in my lap and saying to no-one in particular "sian!" like much everybody else. Finally, after eight months as a soldier! Andy is getting tired.
There was a board game in Xiang's house called True or False? which swamped the players with ridiculous trivia and left it to us to decide whether they're genuine facts. And her brother was playing the generous host. The little fella Huan Huan was so boisterous; he might grow up to be a genius someday.
The second in town, in the restaurant New York, New York with my class, three of which (Lisheng, Desmond, Alex) took up the dare to down a burger the size of a head plus a battalion of fries. I felt full just by looking at them eat (those in the know, they know I did a little more.) The reward for doing so successfully, according to the gleeful manager, was a free root beer float per meal finished. They did, and the mugs of float were shared among the rest of the class.
III. A premonition of a return to my favourite field of science in my primary school days:
The other day we spotted a toucan in camp, feeding upon the berries growing on the palms, yes, the sort of berries which resembled the berries in Sanya in my childhood, and the sort which in Singapore would be consigned to the pavements to be carelessly stepped upon. The toucan fascinated us all, citylubbers with no touch with reality of tropical Southeast asia, with its immense beak, its proud crown and the sound its wings made as it flapped away. Later on an iguana was seen, just under a metre long, and it eyeballed, frilled and bobbed its throat at the onlookers before making off up the tree. More recently a goanna popped out from nowhere, and scared a fellow who was on the way to the toilet. Bloody goannas, now they're everywhere.
We'll be encountering biodiversity sure enough. Possibly it is even more an emphasis for the medics than the others, who must make acquaintance with many of them venomous creatures in order to treat stings and bites. Otherwise, it's a matter of bringing home the, um, bacon. I don't really mind; I've gotten used to eating weird things already.
