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July 22, 2021
For the month, I’ve been back in Stockholm. From the moment I stepped off the plane I felt something shifting–this ever so slight adjustment to my perspective. Moment by moment I could feel my self straightening, aligning and moving into some kind of balance.
This is movement is slight, like a millimeter a day but after a couple weeks I wasn’t crooked. My shoulders were straight, my legs were straight, my back and core were straight and I found myself in equilibrium.
This doesn’t mean that I wasn’t irritated at times when I couldn’t get all three kids to agree on a single day’s plan or crazy happy when everyone had a good time when they thought they would be miserable. The balance I’m talking about is a centering of my perspective at it’s neutral position. A centering that isn’t overly stressed, overly concerned, overly worried or overly anything. A center that is exactly in the center–exactly where it should be.
I lived through the same 14 months as the rest of the universe of course and just like everyone else I’ve been run down by it all. In my mind, Covid has been this cat6 hurricane wind trying to blow us down to the point that we all look like the picture of the single solitary tree, sitting onto of a hill windblown to near horizontal–that picture that pops up in black an white on Instagram all the time in different incarnations–weathered and near beatdown but still standing. Sure Covid has taken its toll on all of us but I don’t think that all it is.
Death, suffering, economic injustice, racial inequality, lack of community, lack of purpose and lack of spiritual essence were always there, Covid simply nudged them into the daylight of everyday purview. This beautiful life that we tell ourselves we live was caught in the lie it is, and the resulting emotion strain blew down our souls like the wind and that tree. For fourteen months I’ve walked a crooked man’s crooked walk, everyday becoming more and more unbalanced.
But now, here and now, I feel I’m standing straight again because I’m here. From the air that I’m breathing to the lakes I’ve been swimming in, I feel myself pulled right. It’s not that Sweden has magically solved its problems is some utopian society. I’m pragmatic enough to not be so gullible. Because Sweden is trying to be a society run by human beings who actually care about the outcome and not acting like it’s some tribal zero sum game they achieved a sense of equilibrium. There’s a balance not because of some unachievable absolutism that the left and right in America are always hot in pursuit of, but because there is a compromise and ebb and flow and a desire to live a beautiful life. And my god this place oozes with the stuff.
Ester doesn’t want to go back to the states. I can’t say that I blame her. I’m ready to come back home for good. Why would anyone want to go back to that chaos when you could be surrounded by so much beauty. It’s easy to look forward to the future when it actually feels bright. Well, at least until it starts getting dark around here in November-ish.
Shot on a LeicaM7, Kodak Tri-X pushed +2 at the Icon.