This blue marble

– and yet it spins

Category Archives: Travel


by Leave a comment

Ubud organic craze

ubudrestaurants-1Cashew milk spirulina raw chocolate mint smoothie for breakfast at Clear Café, raw tex mex food for lunch at Earth, and lovely vegan candlenut coconut curry for dinner at Yellow Flower Café. Beer is not my cup of tea, the local wine tastes terrible, and most of the Indonesian fare is vegan. Ubud is probably the easiest place in the world to subconsciously slip into a healthy eating lifestyle.

ubudrestaurants-3Nothing better than lazy afternoons in café Atman sipping peppermint tea or a chocolate date almond milk shake, surrounded by pillows, people wired into the world on their MacBooks. And nothing worse than jamu health tonic at Clear Café. But they say it is good for you… and it colors your tongue and lips bright yellow. I drank it all. I hope the gods are happy with me.

ubudrestaurants-2 (Ubud, Bali, Indonesia; August 2015)


by 1 Comment

The yoga of living – or staying alive

shala-3

I am unable to describe (in words or pictures) the rain on the leaves, the rooster caws, the incense smoke from the morning offering, and the silence in the soundscape. There is no distraction and nothing else to do except for a sun salutation. And another. And then a padangusthasana, a padahastasana, a trikonasana, and onward, and inward. Stiff shoulders and tired thighs are to be acknowledged, nothing more or less. Yoga is not about stretching to reach the next pose, but about the process that happens in any pose. It is not about just striking a pose that looks kind of right, but making sure that it is grounded, and centered around breath and gravity.shala-1Yoga is also about accepting that a knee injury requiring surgery means going back to the basics and then rebooting the system of practice. And it is understanding that not many people master to truly live while surviving intact throughout life. In the last 4 years I have not only crashed and burned, but also experienced my first emergency surgery, my first stitched wound, my first broken bones, and my first sports injury. The 31 years before kept me unscathed.

As I sipped my daily post-practice coconut water, I could not help but wonder whether yoga means living in it all, or living despite of it all?

shala-2(Ashtanga Yoga Bali Research Center; Ubud, Bali, Indonesia; August 2015)


by 1 Comment

In the rice fields

ricefields-3

There were new friends, and a path away from Ubud to the rice paddies, where the air is clean. There were newly planted rice greens, and palm trees.ricefields-1There was a famous sunset over the rice paddies – somewhere hidden behind the clouds. There was really bad fruit wine, and tales of unlikely career choices: horseback endurance riding through the Arabian desert, smelling out new healthcare solutions that sometimes seem like science fiction, and the choice of comfort versus chasing something that makes a heart beat faster from fear or thrill or both.

On the way back in town there were glow worms and fireflies lighting the path. As we passed their morse code of flickering lights we must have missed great secrets or serenades. Life is only as much as you can perceive and absorb – even if it is all displayed in front of you for the taking.

Live today. Tomorrow you can’t anymore.

ricefields-2(Sari Organik restaurant; Ubud, Bali, Indonesia; August 2015)


by 1 Comment

Cockfights and karma

cockfight-2There was a throng of men cheering on at the temple, and I was curious. More men were hurrying up the stairs, carrying what looked like shopper baskets. Pushing past the elbows I ended up in the front row – of a cockfight. Two beautiful roosters were almost ready to fight – or rather, their owners considered them ready. As a last step, the poor birds were irritated until the verge of aggression by making their beaks touch and fluffing up their neck feathers. Let down on the dirt floor they will only see one another as an enemy to kill, and fight with metal hooks on their legs until death. The losing human owner loses his pride and losing betters sometimes even lose their farm. And one bird loses its life. Every time.

Cockfights are not really allowed on Bali and gambling not at all, but each temple is obligated to host one fight per year to appease the gods. Whatever happens after the first blood is shed is superfluous culture. The gods will not care one way or the other. And so, it is not really the cockerels that fight; it is the human (male?) ego. According to anthropology theory cockfights are a way to channel the ancient Balinese tribal warrior spirit in a less violent way in this modern world. Unfortunately, channeling the warrior spirit does not bode well for the poor roosters.

As I saw one more bird bleed to death on the dirt floor after a fight lasting perhaps a dozen seconds, I could not help but wonder: if according to Hindu belief any unnecessary death or violence increases a person’s karma, and the only way to find bliss is to shed all karma, what does such endless bloodspilling on a sacred temple floor cause?

cockfight-1(Ubud, Bali, Indonesia; August 2015)


by 1 Comment

The daily struggle

Baliofferings-4According to the Balinese, two silent powers constantly struggle for control in the universe: good and evil. Equilibrium requires work, otherwise chaos gains foothold. But equilibrium also means the one cannot exist without the other. As soon as there is light there will be shadows. Good cannot exist without evil. And evil can only be kept away from human living by daily offerings to the spirits and gods.

Every morning right after dawn, the scent of flowers and incense floats around every Balinese house. Little banana leaf boxes are filled with flowers, rice, scatters of coconut shavings, and perhaps a sweetener, a cookie, or a candy. Incense sticks are lit. Each building requires offerings outside every gate, every main door, by the house shrine, and other places where protection is needed.

Baliofferings-1Sometimes bad things happen. Demons must be appeased. Unlike protective spirits who are given beautifully decorated and scented gifts, a demon offering may be rotten fruit rudely thrown to the ground. Sometimes this is enough for the demon to let go of the hold on the family.

As the incense smoke weaves through the village streets, equilibrium is restored and another good day can begin. And the pigeons and the ants get their well-blessed and tasty breakfast.

Baliofferings-2(Ubud, Bali, Indonesia; August 2015)


by 6 Comments

On Bali every flower has a purpose

Baliflowers-2One lonely frangipani flower lies at the toes of a griffin carved in stone. A monkey statue has two red hibiscus flowers sticking out behind its ears. A buddha blesses a fresh, sun-orange marigold in his hand. On Bali, no flower lies anywhere by chance.

Baliflowers-3Every flower has a purpose. Godly forces and beings are everywhere, and everything man-made has a religious purpose or has been blessed for its proper use. And the lotus flower is the most sacred of all. It grows in every little pond and pot by the door, with its feet in the mud and its flower held high.

There is much muddy water in this world. Most of us wade or swim through it without ever knowing better. We forget what it was like to be a child and to skip on the surface, feet barely touching the dirt below. The lotus has realized that barely floating is not the best salvation: only by rooting into the mud it is possible to stretch and reach above it, and to enjoy the pure air and sunlight.

Standing by a lotus pond in Ubud I was wishing that I could grow lotuses home in Helsinki, too, as a reminder of what is within my reach, if I only remember how to reach for it.

Baliflowers-1(Ubud, Bali, Indonesia; August 2015)


by Leave a comment

Hello again lovely Cambridge

Cambridge-2Happy to be back in Cambridge, where punting, flower skirts, panama hats, and Pimms with lemonade never go out of style. Where dozens of church bells play their own melodies every Sunday morning, and where cows grazing mingle with people walking dogs in the park.

Cambridge-1Happy to be back at my old school, and to have a reunion with fizz and formal hall style dinner, and to hang out by the pub by the Mill Pond in the sunshine, just like in old times. Sometimes it is a lucky and wonderful thing that schools and classmates do not change.

Cambridge-3 (Cambridge, United Kingdom; July 2015)


by Leave a comment

Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?

Grantchester-2would I were
In Grantchester, in Grantchester! –
Some, it may be, can get in touch
With Nature there, Or Earth, or such.
And clever modern men have seen
A Faun a-peeping through the green,
And felt the Classics were not dead

But these are things I do not know.
I only know that you may lie
Day-long and watch the Cambridge sky,

Until the centuries blend and blur
In Grantchester, in Grantchester ….

(Rupert Brooke)

 

Happy to be back in Cambridge. Rupert Brooke felt it, too, as he longed for Cambridge and Grantchester meadows from his apartment in Berlin in the spring of 1912.

103 years later we ditched our luggage with all their Polish dust at the hotel, grabbed Prosecco and strawberries and the picnic blanket and headed for Grantchester meadows, river Cam, and the summer sun.

Grantchester-3Hours later, heavy from soaking up the sun, we climbed over the cow fence into the Orchard at Grantchester, where Brooke and his friends Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein once used to sit and repair the world with the power of thought, word, and verse.

The church clock may no longer stand at ten to three, but there is always honey for tea – and fresh scones with jam and clotted cream.

Grantchester-1(The Orchard tea garden, Grantchester, United Kingdom; July 2015)


by Leave a comment

All the world’s a stage

GlobeFacing up against tube strike, sitting in the cab for 1 h 15 minutes from South Kensington to Southwark, wolfing down a wonderful pre-theater dinner at the Swan in 45 minutes, and we made it to the play at the Shakespeare’s Globe. As You Like It was classy and wonderfully fresh, with Celia and Rosalind cracking the audience up, as two loons living to love and loving to live. Even the airplanes landing at Heathrow were given a part in a 17th century play.

Drinks and barbeque food were served outside and allowed in, to recreate the feel of Elizabethan times. Alluding to the same feel we asked if throwing food at the actors was allowed. It was, with the disclaimer that the actors might well throw some back. Seeing how they tormented some poor selected ones in the crowd we did not doubt the warning. Next time we will certainly bring both roses and rotten tomatoes. 

This time the choice towards roses would have been easy.

(London, United Kingdom; July 2015)