Spain was brown and barren already in the end of June. How can so much delicious food and vegetables grow down there? Perhaps this is why most of Spain’s veggies are grown in greenhouses? And perhaps (hopefully not) this will be the view down above Germany some decades for now, if we let climate warming run its course.
(Above Madrid, Spain; June 2016)
Storms and a wall of cloud in Zurich. Just like in Andrew Motion’s poem:
Cloud shadows drag their hands across the white;
Rain prints the sudden darkness of its weight;
Sun falls and leaves the bleaching evidence of light
(Above Zurich, Switzerland; 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)
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)
A telltale sign of getting old is to get stuck on one place and return year after year. I confess, I have got stuck on coming to the Riviera. How could I ever wait for a whole year to return again? Impossible. I will not. Since I can work 1-2 days of a week from anywhere, it is not impossible to consider flying down for a long weekend to work on a patio with roses and pool instead of in the office.
My heart is whispering to me that to not have a place of one’s own down here during this lifetime is unthinkable. I am struggling not to listen, but talk to me again in 10 years from now and we will see who wins: my mind or my heart.
Perhaps it is not too bad to get old, after all. Until next time, Côte d’Azur.
(Juan-les-Pins and Nice, 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)
From up in the air, the Tower Bridge looks like a lego bridge next to the huge modern skyscrapers of the City. But then again it is from another millennium.
(London, United Kingdom; April 2016)
On 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)
Some 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)
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air… .Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.(John Gillespie Magee, Jr)
(Above the Swiss Alps; February 2016)
This blue marble 