frost -still water, just harder. And smaller.

One interesting part of travel is jet lag. It's not just about time difference -i'd say that's only a small part of it. In William Gibson's novel Pattern Recognition it is described as the time it takes the soul to come back to the body; we travel faster than our souls can on airplanes, and it takes a while for them to reconnect. You sit still for a long time and when you get up again, you're in a different world. It takes time to adjust, time for the soul to travel the same distance the body just has done.

After Vertical Blue, i went from a blue water white beach warm world filled with friends and passion to a grey and cold London filled with hard work. The transition took a week of grump. The two things that helped were my girl, and water. Water, as an element, is endlessly fascinating in all its forms, and even though i was away from its blue deep form, i was surrounded by its frosty form. It beckoned me to go out exploring again, even if i'd been working outside all day and had become quite frosted myself.

It was near the end of the day, and though i was surrounded by monuments





my attention was drawn down



from monuments to moments, almost literally frozen in time







and i saw the cohesion, the link between blue water and frost



which is when my soul returned to me, i reckon

It reminds me of something my father wrote about the element of water: "That water is an element means that man could attribute an endless amount of meanings to it, but only based on the fact, that the water itself is the centre, and not subjected to an ‘egotrip’. It’s not man that makes water, it’s water that makes man and invites him to contemplation. Drifting on water, listening to the waves or with his eyes following the stream he is confronted with something that in force and duration surpasses his own existence and on which he depends."

putting the art in earth

I often wonder who painted the sky, but when you're in the sky, you can wonder who drew the earth, for it can be quite mad. All this blue and green can be Rothko on a not-so-linear day



and these spots can be Pollock using a fatter brush



but this looks like Japanese script



betcha it says "hurricanes fuck off"

Wordsworth probably had something to do with this



and maybe Miro had his hand in this



but who made these alien eyes?




though i suspect O'Keefe designed its tear ducts

a colorful week

Upon reflection



it was an incredibly colorful week



which you'd expect when you hang with gardeners





but i was thinking more of this



and this



but even there you'll see some fantastic things





merely getting around was colorful



and often painterly



there were some blues Miles Davis could have worked with





and some blues that were yellow (don't wanna know why)



some yellow quite mellow



But often the most colorful moments were those with the bugs



like this extremely green thing



or this huge one -who had an orange mouth, which i slightly envy



but as is often the case, red-hot red was hottest

Nordic Deep, or prejudices on a scale of Sweden

Ok, freediving trip to Sweden, so you kinda expect green above and below the surface



and about equal amounts of water on both sides





and perfect looking blonde people





but the strange thing is that -though we did have the type of sky you half expect Odin and Thor to appear in, throwing farming equipment at each other-



most of the time, the weather was actually lovely and we had skies that were postcard sweet



that's also the place where the competition boat moores



the other pier, near the camp site, had been roughed up a little by the elements



actually, they both had been



the little boat worked, though



and i worked as a safety diver, but completely fucked up as a competition diver



(announced dive: 50 no fins. Realized dive: 33, free immersion on the way back. No clue how to equalize. Photo by Maria Hovden)

the line was clean and straight



the competitors and safetydiver not always



Maria, Saint of Frisbees was with us



sending more than a few into fits of higher frisbewareness





even the bed got in on the action



but who needs beds?



i'm telling you, these Swedes get in some pretty cheeky situations



Weine even managed to catch the frisbee between his



Miha juggled



Peter tried



Ola became a Japanese sperm (with plans of world domination)



and i slept with Barbie



So even though it rained once



or twice



with other forms of splashing as well



and there were about a million and a half of these beautiful but mean fuckers



it was actually sunny most of the time



The people were sunny too -even the non-blondes





The kids were up to the usual



And while Sebastian proposed to Fanny with an oximeter, he was looking at me while doing so



Seb, by the way, doesn't quite live in the middle of nowhere -but you can see the road towards it from his house



Best parts, though, were the effervescent and horny Peter B



and of course the chicks





who knew sparrows had such cute butts?