Stuck in traffic in downtown Stockholm for half an hour. The reason: lots of shiny-helmeted King’s Guards on equally many pooping horses. And a few hundred university graduates driving around, honking and waving. Ah, the easy everyday problems of peaceful Sweden. At least for now.
(Stockholm, Sweden; June 2016)
All set for summer adventures! France, I cannot get enough of you. Bali, I promised you I would be back. With some detours around SE Asia on the way in and out.
Wanderlust. What is it, other than a hyped-up hipster blogger word? Kahlil Gibran said it best: “But you, children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped nor tamed. For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.”
(Helsinki, Finland; June 2016)
Much talk about science and little time to recognize that today was an unusually warm, balmy early June night. As I sat on the hotel terrace sipping a Provence rosé, looking at the Crown Princess’s house across the bay, I could have been fooled to think it was August.
I wonder if the Crown Princess and her baby prince and princess were relaxing outside, thinking the same?
(Stocholm, Sweden; June 2016)
As we descended through the clouds, suddenly there was an island floating in the sky. Cloud people seem to tend to their land as well. Perhaps this is the place e.e. cummings meant when he wrote “who knows if the moon’s a balloon, coming out of a keen city in the sky – filled with pretty people?”
(Above Denmark; May 2016)
Thought of the day: to be happy with what one has means not looking for more. If one is not looking for more, one is not curious about change and new things (unless purely for speculative or rhetorical purposes). Thus, contentment kills curiosity, and without curiosity there cannot be proactive personal growth. Is it, then, an impossible equation to not chase for more (be content), and simultaneously grow as a person?
Why is contentment spiritually valued, if it makes us too lazy for personal growth? How can one ever attain the selfless contentment spiritually valued, unless one already is enlightened and has nothing more to seek?
Thoughts larger than a glass of wine above the rooftops of Stockholm…
(Stockholm, Sweden; May 2016)
Trucks, trolleys, fuel, luggage carts, catering, cargo loading equipment, pushback truck… It is incredible how much equipment and work is needed to send away one 747 jet.
(Heathrow airport, London; May 2016)
Hello little sleepy St-Paul-de-Vence. Beneath your car-free cobble stone streets, green facades, and chirpy birds I can sense a a vibrant energy bubbling under. I wonder if I drank from that fountain and stayed here, would I morph into an artist? 
While it must be terribly hot in the summer and dark and windy in the winter, right now it is just right. Ice cream weather and a splendid day for sketching the beginnings of a masterpiece. Many people come to stay for a while, but Chagall never left. I can understand why.
(St-Paul-de-Vence, France; May 2016)
There is a reason for why the French Riviera is also called the Côte d’Azur, or the Azure Coast. And there is a reason for why so many late 20th century painters like Renoir, Picasso, Chagall, Matisse, Monet, and even Norwegian Munch, all stayed there – or moved there. I wish they would have had the delight of seeing the azure waters from the air.
I am not a painter, simply someone in dire need of a brain break and some girly time with a dear friend. A walk along the Antibes wall will do.
As I walked along the windy coast, I could not help but wonder how easy it is to be petty-minded and swirl down the vortex of “oh no, I missed that deadline” and “oh no, I still have not replied to X or done Y, what will they think of me?”. In the end this is all egoistic thinking: the company does not fall if I miss a deadline or don’t send an email. Nobody probably gets into trouble if I don’t complete a task in time. The company and most of my colleagues don’t really care about me in their daily lives. Sure it is great to have me around, and hopefully my leadership and productivity is beneficial, but should I leave (or die) nobody would miss me longer than for a week. At work, nobody is indispensable and nothing is really about me even if I’d like to think othewise.
Because our lives are usually all about “me, me, me”, we corner ourselves with expectations and are usually our own worst critics. The lunacy is only revealed once we step back (and take a brain break for example on the French Riviera).
With all the headspace and air around me I could not help but think of the Japanese proverb: “nothing in life is as important as gardening – and even that is not important.”
(Antibes / Juan-les-Pins, France; May 2016)
From down below the sky often looks the same. Either it is blue, or there are some clouds drifting, or a degree of overcast or even completely gray. But from above the clouds the sky is never the same. There are skyscrapers reaching above the sky. Fluffy clouds like steam above a thermal pool. Layers of cloud like sheets of down duvet. Towery black clouds lit up by lightning rods exploding vertically.
Down below we forget the sun does not go away on a cloudy day. One just needs to be above the fluff-talk and confusion-soup of daily life to see it. 
(Somewhere above Europe; May 2016)
Here up North, gardening is serious business and all about flowers. Perhaps a bench could be in order. Or, if one has courage, a teensy weensy fountain. Or, for the most brave: a little statuette.
Kings and queens, on the other hand, have larger gardens. Mostly parks. With lakes, forests, and hills. A little fountain or statuette would disappear in such a garden. Kings and queens also used to get quite easily bored – if there was no war going on that is. Or famine. One can only host so many tea parties in a park with the exact same landscape. And one can only re-landscape a park every so often.
The most trendy solution during the 18th century was “follies”. Buildings made for absolutely no need except for to look nice. Or for example to dine outside with a view over hill and lake bathing in the light of the setting sun. One could just have a table carried out – or one could build an oval gazebo in the backyard and paint the ceiling with flowers.
And if a tea party turns out to be a bearable pastime and a summer tent was needed, why not build a Turkish tent out of copper? Or host the party in a Chinese pagoda?
And, folly of follies, should the king become utterly completely bored with his beautiful castle, well, how about building a little garden shed, with just two wings and about 30 windows, for the king to move into? A little like a boy moving into the empty toolshed in the back of the garden? The king of Sweden did exactly this. Gustav III lived his last summers in his “garden shed” – until he was shot during a Venetian style masked ball. 
(Royal Haga Park, Stockholm, Sweden; April 2016)
This blue marble 