From yesterday’s 12k hike in a nature reserve near Båstad. Like all the other trails on the hills of Hallandsåsen, the Axeltorp route was stunningly beautiful and surprisingly empty of other hikers. This is such a beautiful time of year to hike in southern Sweden. Spring leaves are a bright, chlorophyll green which contrasts wonderfully with last year’s reddish brown leaves on the ground.

This is from early this morning as I inspected the eight ginormous prints of my photographs from the Dockan area in Västra Hamnen. The client, Whilborgs Fastigheter, has purchased the images to decorate the walls of their new corporate headquarters.

Here’s yours truly yesterday, standing in front of a couple of my new, surf-themed acrylic paintings and my trusty old retired shortboard at Clarion Hotel Sea U in Helsingborg, Sweden. The exhibition opening was a cozy affair with plenty of friends and guests stopping by to say hi and take a look at the collection of photos, paintings, and the surf film I’d produced for the show. I love being able to exhibit and share my creativity through different mediums so that a show like “Silhouette Surfers” becomes a more immersive, conceptual experience.

I’m in the midst of a really optimistic, creatively productive flow right now. Hopefully, it’ll last a few more days, at least until my exhibit on Friday. Above is today’s palette. I probably spent about an hour of my 7-hour session just mixing colors and figuring out what hues would work for the two paintings on my easels right now.

This is the view of the harbor in the old coastal village Mölle-by-the-Sea, about an hour northwest of Malmö. Turns out that 2023 is the year of two significant milestones. 

Firstly, on August 15 1998, Charlotte and I were married at Brunnby Church, just a few clicks from Mölle. While I do remember fragments from the matrimonial ceremony, it was the dinner and party after the wedding that to this day fills my heart with joy and love. This is obviously highly subjective, but I have yet to experience a wedding party that’s come even remotely close to ours. There is also some sadness when I think about that evening as about a half dozen of our guests have since passed on.

The fact that Charlotte and I are already celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary (a silver jubilee, no less), is simply amazing!

The considerably harder anniversary for me to grasp is that in just a few months’ time, I’ll be 60 years old. A sexagenarian. No matter how I try to absorb this fact, the more abstract the “anniversary” becomes. I just can’t relate. Thankfully (he says with ill-concealed sadistic pleasure), I have a lot of friends that also turn 60 this year. Pain shared is pain divided, I suppose.

I wonder what it’s going to feel like when we all turn septuagenarians (70-79).

Yep, it’s that time of year again. Spring never arrives casually in southern Sweden. It literally breaks out from one week to the next. A kind follower from this page let me know the other day about the courtyard where she lives and how beautiful the cherry trees are right now. I went over there today and the delicate pink and white blossoms certainly create a stunning, almost surreal sight for these winter-worn eyes.

While genuinely appreciated here in Scandinavia, cherry tree blooming is a really important cultural event in Japan, where it is known as Hanami. People gather under the blooming trees to celebrate the arrival of spring, and to enjoy picnics and parties with friends and family. A few years back, Charlotte, Elle, and I celebrated Hanami in Tokyo. It was nothing short of amazing!

In addition to their obvious aesthetic and aromatic appeal, cherry blossoms have symbolic significance in Japanese culture. They are seen as a metaphor for the fleeting nature of life, as the blossoms only last for a short time before falling to the ground. Cherry blossoms also represent renewal and the beauty of new beginnings.

In the United States, the National Cherry Blossom Festival is held annually in Washington, D.C., to commemorate the gift of cherry blossom trees from Japan to the United States in 1912.

Walked by this utility station the other day. Regular readers will know that I am always on the lookout for these stations, wherever I happen to be in the world. As far as I can remember, it’s the only original, old-school utility station that I’ve ever seen in over 25 years of living in Malmö. I love the design and above all, the old logo relief on top and on the manhole below.

There was no posting on it, and therefore only interesting as a relic of Televerket, the precursor of today’s Telia, Sweden’s partially state-owned telecom company. When I moved to Sweden in 1978, Televerket was a monopoly and omnipresent in society. With a fleet of bright orange vans and an army of orange-clad technicians, there was no shortage of critique and jokes about Televerket’s notoriously bad customer service which some would argue is only marginally better today. To a degree, I think the monopolistic mentality is still alive and kicking.

Here’s a little Televerket-to-Telia background (courtesy of ChatGPT):

Televerket was a Swedish telecommunications company that was in operation from 1853 to 1993. It was established as a government agency and was responsible for managing all aspects of Sweden’s telecommunications infrastructure, including telegraphs, telephones, and radio communications. In the 1980s, Televerket began to face competition from other telecom companies, and in 1993 it was restructured and transformed into the modern telecommunications company Telia. Today, Telia is one of the largest telecom companies in the Nordic region, providing a wide range of services including mobile and fixed-line telephony, broadband internet, and digital TV.