What do you think, is this photo beautiful? Do you see light, color, and fluffy clouds matching the fluffy smoke? Or do you see a planet in destruction, no trees and no Nature anywhere?
Is there a collective, pan-human sense of esthetics, or is what our mind considers beautiful conditioned by the surroundings we are subjected to? How much of our sense of esthetics is objective, focusing on for example form, color, and light; and how much is subjective, weighed down or lifted up by our personal values, memories, and associations?
Complicated thoughts one morning above the Netherlands.
(The Netherlands; March 2018)
Another bleak March morning, another flight to goodness knows where. I forget. Perhaps it was Copenhagen? Amsterdam? Munich? Mindful living was surely not within reach that morning. Shame on me.
One bleak Saturday we stopped by at the Helsinki Art Museum’s permanent exhibition of Tove Jansson’s works. You know, the author and artist behind all things Moomin. There were two large frescoes, one showcasing a party on the countryside and another a party in the city. All very 1940s post-war joy. And then I saw a little moomin, hiding away behind flowers and a glass of champagne. Right there, in a quite seriously adult piece of art.
(HAM, Helsinki, Finland; March 2018)
Another day on the job: deep diving (without a bath duck) into the German biotech ecosystem around Munich. Every now and then I remind myself of how grateful I am that somebody wants to pay me to do all this fun stuff.
I know it is late in the day and my brain is probably not at full capacity, but why is there a bath duck in Tirolean gear wedged into the shelf in my minibar?
In February the days are lighter already – and this past winter they were terribly cold, too. What a surreal feeling, then, to lounge in a tropical climate in a bathing suit, sipping cooling sparkling wine, and looking out at an icy winter coast landscape.
No, that is not the South Pole or Northern Canada. That is Pärnu, Estonia, surviving the polar vortex freeze of the winter of ’18.
Just for a moment I slipped in-between the seconds of time. I was not happy nor sad. Not awake nor asleep. There was no sun nor shadows. Nothing brand new and nothing very old. Nobody coming or going. Nothing beginning or ending. Just an old tree and a lady reading underneath it.
In the middle of Zurich, high up in the Urania observatory, there is a panorama bar. It looks a little like an old water tower from the outside. And it can be so busy on the inside that one barely can take in one’s surroundings, which somehow are supposed to have something to do with Jules Verne’s stories. Fortunately the windows are large.
There are no holes in Swiss cheese in its proper form: melted into a fondue pan, and mixed with white wine and a hint of garlic. In this form it is solid, warming energy on a cold winter’s day. Fat and carbs galore (because oh, all the bread served!).
This blue marble 