“Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer – and often the supreme disappointment. ”
(Ansel Adams, photographer). As a photographer I can assure you that there is perhaps no other more truthful statement than this about photography.
SKÅNE COUNTY, SWEDEN //
Winter snow in South of Sweden is not common at all, even if one may think the opposite, especially in Malmö and along the coast. Secondly, having the snow and then a sunny day it’s something extremely extraordinary.
So, when I came back from Poland and I found a snowy Sweden, after I had a little taste of it just after the landing (then we went home to rest after we woke up at 3:30 am…) and after I checked the forecasts, I decided to entirely spend the day after for a photoshoot.
A year ago I wrote on my journal:
“The bomb blasted at work! At home early – stress – union…It’s the turning point!”
A year ago it happened what brought me to take a radical, drastic and, for many people, irresponsible decision: to leave my job to get out from that cage I was dying in, and take my life back!
Things weren’t going well for long time already, actually were going pretty bad: I was sleeping shortly and badly because of nightmares, and during the nights I was waking up all the time thinking about work and stressing tasks to do; even during weekends or evenings with my family my mood could rapidly flip because, don’t know why, my mind suddenly could “bring me back” to my office, to my asshole colleague, to my hated boss.
Really?BOSJÖKLOSTER (BOSJÖ ABBEY), HÖÖR, SWEDEN //
On a weekday cold afternoon, we decided to visit the Bosjö monastery/castle (Bosjökloster), on the banks of Östra Ringsjon (literally “Eastern Ring Lake”), in the municipality of Höör.dsc_4001
Benedictine abbey founded in 1080, is now a private property which, however, opens door to the public, behind the payment of a symbolic offering for the maintenance of the structure since it does not receive any public funding, the old part of the castle, the gardens and the adjacent park with its centuries-old oaks.
And this captured our interest today.
Growing up, moving on my way, I started to believe, more and more, that solving our problems, overcoming difficulties, is much easier than what we believe.
Yet, when I was down, when I went through dark times, I could not remember how to feel good again, how to find the light again.
MÖLLE & KULLABERG NATURE RESERVE, SWEDEN //
Know how to wait … Always.
In the belief that the best is yet to come.
In the belief that as it can not rain forever, so no darkness can prevent the light from returning to shine.
Waiting!
Being confident that great things and little great miracles are waiting for us, though if everything around us now is trying try to tell us the opposite.
Knowing how to wait … despite everything!
I’ve just arrived at work, as usual I’m the first.
Sunny day, the morning jogging has brought me back to life: I’m feeling energetic, happy, in a fantastic mental and physical condition.
After few hours I’m starting to feel my happiness going down: the work environment, as a vampire, sucks the joy out of me.
Some time ago I wrote about the path we can follow to reach happiness, inner peace, or, anyhow, a more serene life.
Actually, I was talking about working on ourselves, and how, if done well, it becomes enjoyable, and can bring the first small, great, satisfying results.
But it’s a continuous job, without any rest, because it’s about changing our ideas and beliefs, controlling our thoughts, trying to aim them to our target, trying to tune onto a “positive wavelength”.
…I’m smoking another cigarette, and I’ve already lost the count for today.
It’s another wonderful day, not a cloud, temperatures between 10 and 15 degrees, and a sky so deep blue that makes you want to go…
And I think I’m wasting time locked in my job cage, especially when there is little or nothing to do, and time goes slowly while bored on Instagram, Facebook, and so on.
And smoking, of course.
Time flies fast and relentless.
I realised it by looking at the statistics of this site and seeing how little I wrote in the last few months.
I realise it now, thinking it’s already Tuesday, and this week, like the previous one, is just flying away.
It seems like a full life, but I can not accept and cannot perceive any positive vibrations from this optimistic view of the working week.
Along the path, tall and large secular trees, some of which are marked by old letters of lovers or just by names and dates; it was funny to think that those who had graven those hearts and those letters, promising perhaps eternal love to each other, were probably already dead and buried, while those trees were still there, magnificent and strong.
A few days ago I read that in Sweden we have reached the amount of 400,000 unemployed which is a remarkable and worrying percentage on a population of about ten million people.
I myself have been in that situation and I know what it means to look for work, knocking at all the doors, not receiving any answers or even being shout out in a bad way.
Yet, just after 5 months, I got different and interesting possibilities.
Luck? Maybe, but I don’t think so…
“This is living” was the masterful advertising of the latest video-games console.
Was that the real life? Was that the perception of living for millions of people, and not only kids or teenagers, happy to rush home, and close themselves in, just to play and join a virtual life?
Was it living to give up the real life, the real world, and spend instead time in front of a screen to fight, kill, drive, fuck?
We spend time trying to kill the time, this is the point.
After the years and all those stages imposed by the society and the family, we find ourselves in our 20s or 30s, already addicted and swallowed by the working life. We take our first responsibilities, our duties as a good citizen, and we find ourselves almost unconscious, tied up and involved with the system, the community, and the institutions around us (the same things we might have tried to fight or to evade just a few years before …).