This blue marble

– and yet it spins

Category Archives: Travel


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In the marketplace

coventgarden-1Once it was a field. Then, the suburb of gentry. Later, a fruit and vegetable market; and during its darkest times, the playground for ladies of the night and lost poets. Today, Covent Garden is a market again – and one of the most timelessly hip ones (if that is not an oxymoron).

Even the musicians are back – sounding as classy as the other Covent Garden just next door (also called the Royal Opera House. Never ask the English about how they name places).coventgarden-2(Covent Garden Market, London, United Kingdom; April 2016)


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Looking up

If I were a painter, I would paint the play of light in Stockholm old town. I would sit on a rooftop with a canvas and colors and paint the light of the setting spring sun hitting the ochre and sand colored walls of houses.

But because I am just a businesswoman getting a breath of fresh air after work, with no canvas or colors, I use what I have: my iPhone and my memory.

When was the last time you walked in a city and looked up? Try it. It’s worth it, especially when the sun shines.Gamlastan-3(Stockholm, Sweden; April 2016)


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I need the sea because it teaches me

seashore-1

I need the sea because it teaches me,
I don’t know if I learn music or awareness,
if it’s a single wave or its vast existence,
or only its harsh voice or its shining
suggestion of fishes and ships.
The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves.

(Pablo Neruda)

seashore-2(Helsinki, Finland; April 2016)


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If the sky were yellow

stockholmairOn the ground our world might seem green like the deep green spruce forests. It might be a burnt ochre like the Saharan desert, or yellow, like the fields in August. But seen from the outside, our world is blue. Blue like the sky – even if one is in the sky looking down at the world. So perhaps, then, it is the sky that is blue, between us and the world?

From the stratosphere, our marble is blue because of the sunlight that scatters in the oxygen- and nitrogen-rich sky. If we had more sulphur in the sky our marble would be yellow like Venus – but we would not be able to breathe, at least not with our current physiology.

Yellow is the color of the sun, energy, and joy. It is also the color of warning, both in traffic and on a wasp. Whereas blue is calming, quieting, and heart-rate lowering, like the constant sky and sea. But what if we lived on Venus? Would we then be conditioned to feel calm, secure, and at peace when surrended by yellow?

Random thoughts in the stratosphere above Stockholm on an April evening.

(Stockholm, Sweden; April 2016)


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Borders are a human invention – part II

loviisaforest-1Borders are a human invention. Ownership of anything is a human invention. We cannot function without slicing and dividing this planet into pieces, each claiming ownership of one plot – or several. In society at any age in history, landless people were always the sorriest lot. In many countries owning land is common, whereas in other cultures the divide between land owners and the landless is broad and deep.

But Nature knows no borders. Nature owns everything. And so we must work to keep the borders between my father’s forest and the neighbor’s forest clear and visible. Yet I could not find the borders of our forest if I tried. A rock here, a cleared corridor there. Fortunately we have no fences as animals know of no borders either.

As we walked around, trying to get a feel of which turf and tree is owned by whom, I got a sinking feeling of being a badly programmed human. Because I would easily overlook any border and happily chop off a christmas tree in the neighbor’s forest. And I thought of a passage from my favorite poem in the whole world, “Progressive insanities of a pioneer” by Margaret Atwood:

He stood, a point
on a sheet of green paper
proclaiming himself the centre

with no walls, no borders
anywhere; the sky no height
above him, totally un–
enclosed
and shouted:

Let me out!

loviisaforest.3(Loviisa, Finland; March 2016)


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Spring sunset at 20,000 ft

abovebalticSome take the bus to work. I take the ATR-72 prop plane. Some admire the sunset over the city when going home. I admire the sunset over the Baltic Sea, from 20,00 ft above. And this week was the first week of the year when we flew home before darkness sank over us.

As I sat up there I thought again of the immense trail of carbon I keep leaving behind, and how to be kinder to the planet. To be continued, soon…

(Above the Baltic Sea; March 2016)


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Between the magnolias and the Misérables

londonaboveLondon, it’s been three weeks and how I missed you! I missed circling around the city in the morning light, almost looking in through the Queen’s bedroom window, and almost hitting the Shard with an airplane wing. I missed having sushi for lunch down Oxford street, and I missed the crazy traffic and even crazier cabbies. I missed the morning rush in the tube where nobody elbows and everybody is Sorry and I never have to carry my suitcase up or down the stairs by myself if don’t wish to. londonspringThis St Patrick’s Day is pink, not green. Magnolias galore, even off Piccadilly. While most people were mainly occupied with where to find green beer, I occupied myself with Les Misérables, along with a theater full of teenagers and university students. Even the miserable lives of Victor Hugo’s characters were glamorous – although nobody wore much pink.

As I walked back to the hotel, pushing through the St Pat’s celebration throngs in Theatreland and Soho, I thought of the infinitesimal likelihood that I would be born into a world where I can admire magnolias, see musicals, and have dinner in a European city any time I wish. Had somebody thrown the dice again I would most likely have been born into a life not very far from the Les Misérables scenes. Or perhaps I have been, on multiple occasions, during other lifetimes? Perhaps this lifetime is the exception, unless I work very very hard towards becoming a better being?

As I crossed Piccadilly on my way out towards Green Park, I resolved to try harder to be grateful, even when I mostly would feel like being miserable. Because even my most miserable day is probably a dream-come-true to another person.

Ingratitude is the dark side of adaptability: we humans constantly recreate our zero-point of reference by weighing it against our surroundings. We adapt, because otherwise we would not stay alive. And when we adapt, we forget that our gratitude should be weighed against an absolute scale, not one that moves along with our ever-changing aspirations and subjective setbacks.

I walked underneath the pink magnolias again and in the dark they were as gray as the rest of London. I sincerely hoped that, as evolution pushes the human species further towards greater challenges that require adaptability, gratitude would not become an extinct trait. lesmiserables(London, United Kingdom; March 2016)