mellow people

I'm going to my mother in law for the weekend. We're having relatives over from NY.
I'll leave you with this picture from Bali. We hired a driver and guide for the day. When they picked us up at the hotel they had a hole lot of things lined up for the day. I had to take the guide aside, and I said " You have to understand, we are norwegian and we are mellow, slow-moving people. Three stops will be enough". He looked at me for a long time and then he nodded.

I think he kind of got after we spend about to hours at this coffee plantion, where my husband smelled everything that it was possible to smell.

the journey

Pictures by norwegian photographer Julia Pike. Se more of her work at http://www.juliepike.no/.


One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
though the hole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles
"Mend your life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen branches and stones.
But little by little
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as you own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world, determined to do
the only thing you could do-
determined to save
the only life you could save.
-Mary Oliver

fashion

Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.
- Coco Chanel

Picture from Une fille comme moi www.garancedore.fr

a new day

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
- Leo Tolstoy

reading

Books are my religion. Books like yoga opens my mind, shows me new horizons and teaches me about the world and my fellow human beings. Books help me help me to meet people with compassion and understanding. I'm currently reading four different books. This is one of my flaws; I can't ever pass up a bookstore (even when I go to the states I dive into Barnes and Nobles for hours. I cannot help but just love the place...) and I read tons of books at the same time. You see when a book enters my house I get so excited. I will sit on my coach smelling it and leafing through it randomly until, all of a sudden, I'm reading another book.

Two of the books in the picture I'm reading as part of my teachers training. I've read both the “The Bhagavad Gita” and the “sutras” many times and every time I find something new. In January I'm going to write no more than 4 papers based on these books so I figured they need another reading. Chasing the flame is a biography about Sergio Vieiro De Mello. I love it. Like it says on the back cover "The best way to understand today's messy world is to appreciate the inspiring life and diplomatic genius of Sergio". He worked as a UN high commissioner until he was killed tragically in Iraq in 2003. It is a fascinating portrait of a philosopher trying to save the world.

In “Sashenka” I’m in St Petersburg, snow is falling in a country on the brink of revolution. Need I say more??

decorations from yesterdays party

We had some friends over. My sweetheart made the best dinner ever...and we had lots of red wine:-)

daughter and fireworks