Between Everywhere and Nowhere

Between Everywhere and Nowhere

  • Astrology, Curiosity and the Search for Meaning

    Astrology, Curiosity and the Search for Meaning

    🎨 I Fantasins Värld, Isaac Grünewald

    Some questions don’t start with belief. They start with curiosity.

    Since my earliest memories, I’ve been trying to understand something beyond daily routines—something about potential, existence, and why we are here at all. Like many who get lost in such questions, I found myself moving between ideas, systems, and ways of explaining life.

    The more I read, the more I noticed something I couldn’t ignore: the universe feels incredibly vast. Yet, I keep returning to something very close: this planet and the bodies surrounding it.

    The Moon moves the oceans, causing tides to come and go. And at some point, I began wondering: if it can move entire oceans, could it influence something within us, even in ways we do not yet fully understand?
    Perhaps the question is not about proof, but about what we are willing to feel without measuring it.

    For the past few months, I’ve explored astrology—not daily horoscopes, but its symbolic language: planets, asteroids, and fixed stars. Not as predictions, but as a framework people use to interpret life. I even use my own experiences as a personal experiment to see how it resonates.

    During this learning process, one sentence resonated with me: “The Moon represents the left eye, while the Sun represents the right.” 

    At first, it sounded poetic, metaphorical, nothing more. But I remembered something I had never questioned before: my right eye has always been more sensitive; I instinctively avoid direct sunlight. The Moon, on the other hand, has always felt different—calm, quiet, and easier. Moon chasing and moon bathing have been my favorite nighttime activities for years.

    Could there be a connection? Or was I merely trying to find one? To test it, I did something simple: one day, at midday, I went outside and stood under the Sun, almost like declaring a small, personal ceasefire. Since then, my right eye has given more stable results at the ophthalmologist. 

    Was it coincidence, conditioning, or did my body respond to something it actually needed? I don’t know. Perhaps that uncertainty is part of the experience itself.

    There are so many things in life beyond my control—timing, outcomes, other people, opportunities. Sometimes, that lack of control feels heavier than expected. Perhaps this is where astrology becomes tempting. Not because it provides answers, but because it offers direction; a sense that moments carry meaning, that something might be aligned even if I don’t fully understand it.

    Maybe astrology is not really about planets. Maybe it is about how we deal with uncertainty. How we look for patterns when we feel we cannot control outcomes. It may not make it true, but it doesn’t make it meaningless either.

    The moment I started studying astrology in depth, seeing my existence through its symbolic “mathematical” lens gave me great excitement. It is an interesting experiment to see Saturn as a harsh mentor or Jupiter as a spiritual protector. I even unlocked a new adjective for myself: Saturnian—someone under the intense influence of Saturn.
    I found astrology surprisingly consistent with the layered structure of human experience: the Ascendant representing our outer experience, the Moon representing emotional tendencies, and so on.

    During this process, I also reflected on the Barnum effect—a cognitive bias where vague statements seem personally meaningful. Yet, I noticed astrology is ultimately about potential. Believing, doubting, or cherry-picking is up to each person. Darker, shadowy aspects of myself caught my interest more, for example.

    Also, when I shared my “new” curiosity with a friend familiar with the astrology, she said: “Of course you’d get into astrology. You have Neptune in the 9th house and a retrograde Mercury in the 8th house.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or take it seriously.

    Astrology may not be something we strictly believe in. But, for me, it gave goosebumps through its consistency. Then I thought: “Of course it reflects me—it’s a mathematical mapping of who I am.” 

    Perhaps it’s something we hold onto when certainty is unavailable, or when we are rediscovering our potential. A lens through which we attempt to make sense of randomness, find patterns, and navigate life with intention.

    Ultimately, maybe astrology is less about planets and more about ourselves—our curiosity, our reflection, and the ways we seek connection in uncertainty.
    It can even feel like a subtle collaboration with the planets, fixed stars, and our unique universe.

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  • We Float on a Planet and Yet…

    We Float on a Planet and Yet…

    🎨 Cloud Study, 1822, John Constable

    We actually live on a planet.
    Not metaphorically. Not poetically. Literally.

    A massive sphere drifting through an endless universe, carrying oceans, mountains, cities and us.

    And yet, most of the time, we hardly feel it.
    We wake up, scroll, work, eat, sleep, as if this is the only reality there is.
    As if the ground beneath our feet were fixed, stable, permanent.
    As if we were not suspended in space at this very moment.

    Sometimes I catch myself looking around and wondering how much of this I truly notice.
    How aware are we of the world we inhabit?
    Or more unsettling: do we really belong to it?

    Because when you think about it, the planet is not equally welcoming everywhere.
    Some places freeze you.
    Some burn you.
    Some suffocate you.
    Some simply do not allow you to stay.
    It is as if the Earth quietly draws invisible boundaries, deciding:
    Here, you may live.
    Here, you may not.

    For most species, that is the end of the story.
    They live where they can.
    And nowhere else.

    Humans, however, are different.

    Not long ago, I watched a couple of videos that stayed with me long after they ended.
    Not only because they were spectacular, but also because they made something very clear: we do not truly belong to some places on our own planet.

    In one, ski mountaineer Andrzej Bargiel climbs Everest without supplemental oxygen.
    Not rushing, just moving one step at a time. At that altitude, even breathing is uncertain. Each step grows heavier than the last. Not because the mountain is steep, but because the body resists where it is.

    His rhythm is no longer his own; it is dictated by oxygen, sunlight, survival.
    It does not look like mere freedom.
    It looks like freedom in negotiation.

    In another, explorer Chris Brown and his team journey to Point Nemo, the most remote place in the ocean.
    The deeper they go, the more their bodies resist.
    Dizziness. Nausea. Vomiting.
    It feels as if the water itself pushes them back, a reminder that this was never meant for us.

    And yet, they persist.
    Not because the place suddenly becomes hospitable, but because we find ways to exist within it.
    And this is what struck me.

    In these moments, I did not merely witness landscapes or feats.
    I saw what happens when humans refuse to accept the boundaries of where they are “allowed” to be.

    We do not simply remain where it is easy.
    We go where it is difficult: climbing where there is no oxygen, diving under crushing pressure.
    We live in extremes of cold, heat, isolation.
    And somehow, we endure.

    Not because the planet grows gentle, but because we adapt.

    And here is the most fascinating part:
    It is not only our bodies that adapt.
    It is our minds.
    Our curiosity.
    Our determination.
    Our intelligence.
    And, perhaps above all, our culture.

    We do not face the world alone.
    We create knowledge. We share it. We build upon it.
    We develop tools, technologies, and ways of living that allow us to survive in places never meant for us.

    We turn the “impossible” into the “manageable.”
    We observe. We learn. We strategize.
    Step by step, we expand the map of where we can exist.

    And sometimes I wonder: is this adaptation or something else entirely?
    Are we learning how to belong?
    Or simply refusing to accept that we do not?

    Perhaps the planet does draw boundaries. But humans are the only species that negotiate with them.

    We do not merely accept limits.
    We test them. We stretch them.
    Sometimes, we even redefine them entirely.

    In doing so, we transform not only our environment, but ourselves.
    We are shaped by the planet, yet constantly reshaping our place within it.
    And that tension is mesmerizing.

    It leaves us suspended somewhere in between.
    Between restriction and freedom.
    Between nature and intention.
    Between being placed and choosing where to stand.

    Perhaps this is what it means to be human:
    Not simply to adapt, but to learn how to move within the world.
    We may not belong everywhere. Yet still, we keep going.

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  • That Greenland Issue — When Democracy Stops Being a Shield

    That Greenland Issue — When Democracy Stops Being a Shield

    Fiskmarknad i St. Ives, Anders Zorn

    Lately, Greenland has been appearing in the news again. This time caught in a turbulent agenda between the United States and Denmark. Considering the aftermath of the Russia–Ukraine war and the growing security concerns surrounding the Nordic region, this renewed attention is hardly surprising. Yet Greenland rarely appears as the main subject; more often, it functions as a surface onto which larger powers project their anxieties, ambitions, and strategic calculations.

    Still, Greenland is not a new topic. Some time ago, I remember coming across discussions linking Greenland to the United States, alongside the autonomy demands voiced by Greenlandic people themselves. Even then, it felt like more than a geographical matter, more like a quiet reminder of how fragile “belonging” can be for small lands in a world shaped by powerful interests.

    What I am about to write is neither political nor scientific. I do not have the qualifications to produce a paper, nor do I intend to analyze treaties, military strategies, or economic forecasts. This is simply an observation that emerges when I place two names side by side: the United States of America and Denmark.

    If we put history aside for a moment — imperialism, colonialism, wars, and all the heavy baggage humanity carries — we are left with two very different representations of what a “successful country” looks like.

    On one side, there is the United States. A global leader in almost everything: economic power, military capacity, cultural influence, technological dominance. A country that shapes the world, often without asking for permission. Admired, feared, envied — sometimes all at once.

    On the other side, there is Denmark. A country that, for many, represents a kind of modern utopia. A place where I have personally witnessed genuine calm and happiness in people’s eyes. Trust. A sense that life is not constantly lived under pressure.

    In my country, there is a saying: Being an enemy of the United States is hard, but being a friend of it is harder.

    This sentence has stayed with me for years because it does not speak only of hostility or alliances; it speaks of power. Of the cost of proximity to power. Of the subtle ways in which strength demands loyalty, compromise, and silence.

    I want to state my thoughts independently of the current leaders of these countries. Leaders come and go; names change; faces change. But states operate through structures that outlast individuals. At their core, they serve agendas far larger than any single person. There are always bigger plans above smaller plans, systems layered over systems. Almost everyone knows this, even if we rarely articulate it openly.

    What troubles me is the comforting illusion that such dynamics belong only to “unstable regions” or “less developed societies.” As if democracy indices, welfare systems, or economic rankings could somehow exempt a country or its people from being tested. As if development itself were a shield.

    But history keeps proving otherwise. These moments of tension are not exceptions; they are examinations. And they do not discriminate based on development levels or political self-images. They test how power behaves when opportunity arises and how quietly it expects acceptance in return.

    If the Russia–Ukraine war was not enough to remind us of this reality, the Greenland issue certainly should. Not because everything is uncertain, but because nothing is guaranteed when control lacks legitimacy. Not borders, not alliances, not even the moral positions we assume to be stable.

    Yet power does not operate only through states and institutions; it also reveals itself in ordinary reactions, far from negotiation tables and official statements.

    When a devastating earthquake struck my country, I remember reading comments online from some Nordic users saying, “This is karma. God punished them for blocking Sweden and Finland’s entry into NATO.” What disturbed me was not only the cruelty of those words, but how effortlessly they surfaced. How easily judgment replaced responsibility when faces disappeared behind screens.

    That moment stayed with me because it revealed something uncomfortable: no society is immune to moral shortcuts. No level of development erases the human tendency to justify harm once it is framed as deserved, strategic, or necessary.

    This is not resentment. Every land has its own version of “those people.” And it is always easier to spill poisonous ideas when there is no real identity, no real face looking back at you.

    Because societies, no matter how advanced, are ultimately shaped by individuals, these impulses do not disappear; they simply learn new, more acceptable languages.

    Perhaps this is what we keep missing when we say, “This wouldn’t happen in our time.” We forget that no matter how advanced our institutions become, we are still dealing with human impulses: fear, dominance, self-interest. We no longer call it conquest; we call it security. We no longer say control; we say stability. The titles evolve, but the instinct remains.

    Both countries and the people I have encountered from them have shaped me in different ways. Denmark, for instance, gave me Kierkegaard in the simplest form: not merely as a philosopher, but as a reminder of quiet responsibility. For that reason, my thoughts come from closeness, not detachment.

    It may be right or wrong, but there is one thing I have always acknowledged about the United States: it is relentlessly loyal to its own interests. There is a brutal clarity in that. What troubles me is not this pursuit itself, but the way such interests often define the boundaries for everyone else, including those too small to negotiate on equal terms.

    Perhaps this is why Greenland feels like an “issue” again. Not because it suddenly matters more, but because it exposes an old truth we prefer to ignore: in a world governed by interests, control without legitimacy is never neutral. And small lands are often expected to accept it quietly, while the rest of us watch, comforted by the illusion that democracy, development, or distance will always keep us safe.

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  • Is It Incompatibility to Fit In?

    Is It Incompatibility to Fit In?

    …or do we just mean not to fit in?

    I længselsfulde tanker, Wenzel Tornøe

    We are born within certain borders, raised according to them, and over time we internalize what those borders and their communities show us. A tailored persona is handed to us early on. But does our essence actually accept this persona that borders and their dynamics impose on us?

    Maybe yes.
    Maybe no.
    Maybe intentionally yes.
    Maybe intentionally no.

    A while ago, I was reading Ett nytt land utanför mitt fönster (literally, A New Land Outside My Window) by Theodor Kallifatides.
    As he described his dilemmas, I kept finding echoes of my own thoughts. He is Greek, I am a Turk, and at certain points, our perspectives overlapped almost uncomfortably well.
    That made me think: maybe being someone who cannot fully fit in is not unique at all. Maybe it is universal. And maybe there is nothing special about it, which is, in itself, unsettling.

    In my culture, we are taught very early to “give the best to the other.” To be considerate. To host well. To sacrifice quietly.
    Now, in my young adulthood, I sometimes feel that this land keeps the best for others, while keeping the guest room permanently locked for me. The space is there, clean, prepared, but never really mine.

    Sometimes I try to look at this from the opposite angle. I tell myself that maybe my essence is different because this land also needs difference. But difference is far more easily embraced when you are not considered an integral part of society. When you are an outsider, tolerance has a wide threshold. Difference becomes interesting, even charming.

    Once you are labeled as “one of us,” however, the expectations change. You are then required to behave according to a very specific, carefully tailored script. Difference, at that point, becomes deviation.

    This is not about leaving one’s land or hating one’s own people. Except for extreme circumstances, I do not find that healthy, at least not in my case. Still, in this modern world, being a responsible citizen matters deeply to me.
    I keep thinking: if you live among like-minded people, you must assume all the responsibility required to deserve life within that particular border and among that particular group.

    I have become many things within my own society:

    a daughter,
    a big sister,
    a best friend, a
     student who excelled in languages,
    a student who insisted on not being good at math,
    a reliable colleague, and so on.

    But… being a migrant? Could I become a migrant? Would I ever be capable of carrying this hat, too?

    I am aware that it takes a long time to deserve being an integral part of a society if you arrive later. And if someone were to look at my face and say, “You are not wanted here,” what would I do?
    Unlike my usual personality, I probably would not say anything. Perhaps because I think the native has that right, or perhaps because I am not as certain about my own anymore.

    Recently, I found myself experiencing a different kind of dilemma, what I call losing my religion. Not necessarily faith itself, but something closer to frustration and desperation, to losing the ground beneath my feet.
    I wonder what it would be like to live among people who think similarly. What could I achieve there? Would I be more useful, more productive? Or was the whole point living with a different essence in my own land all along?

    But then again: is it actually my land?

    Sometimes, while jogging through the park, a sentence forms in my mind:
    this country blooms its cities with our tears.
    Then I find these thoughts ridiculous, too dramatic, and make fun of myself and my way of thinking.

    Maybe all the magic lies in living in your own country while carrying a different essence. Or maybe, in another place, I would become nothing at all: typical, standard, unremarkable.
    Being “the spicy one” is not a sustainable trait when you cannot convert that spice into something tangible, something productive, into energy, or at least into light. Also, will I have enough space to enjoy my different essence while blending a new personality with my brand-new identity of “migrant”?

    Maybe it is all about the need to feel important. Or different. Or necessary. Or just being able to meet the ends.

    And yet, at its core, it may have always been something very ordinary.

    Maybe it is not the right time yet.
    Maybe the planets do not allow it.
    Maybe they push you forward.
    Maybe God has a plan.
    Maybe it is karma.
    Maybe it is frequency.
    Maybe it is all about vibe.
    Or maybe it is just coincidence.

    Should it happen?
    I do not know. Not yet.

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  • Granite Gneiss as an Idol

    Granite Gneiss as an Idol

    Have you ever bumped into a piece of granitic gneiss? More specifically, a migmatitic gneiss?

    This stone does not come from the Earth’s core, but from depths where pressure and heat are sufficient to reshape rock without melting it. Once granite, born from fire as an igneous rock, it later becomes gneiss, transformed under the slow, persistent force of the Earth’s crust. What changes is not its existence, but its structure; its identity reorganizes without destruction.

    After this seemingly violent journey, it emerges with an elegant and solid presence. Its feldspar and quartz quietly shine, not loudly, not insistently. Watching and learning about this kind of transformation, it becomes almost impossible not to think about human endurance.

    Perhaps the first step of endurance is accepting the dynamics of one’s own life. I accepted early on that my life could be turbulent most of the time. Yet it is less about what happens to us and more about what we choose to become, about where we decide to stand. What should happen has happened, is happening, and will happen anyway.

    This solid rock reminds me of the capacity to make the best of pressure. Pressure does not always aim to destroy; sometimes, it reorganizes. The immense forces it faced did not cause it to fall apart, but to realign its internal structure, to transform without losing its essence

    Diamonds are often presented as the ultimate symbol of endurance under pressure, a balance between pressure and elegance taken to its brightest extreme. But endurance does not always seek brilliance. Not everyone, and not everything, is meant to become visually outstanding.

    I place myself much closer to granite gneiss: stable, solid, mostly grey, yet carrying its own quiet sparkles. It shines partially, without demanding attention, offering instead a sense of security, endurance, and silent elegance.

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  • I Cannot Be a Hygge Girl

    I Cannot Be a Hygge Girl

    Too much anger, too much fury, too much negativity, too much exploitation, maybe too much reality.
    Whatever we choose to call it.

    Sometimes, I want to shed this crust of anger and awareness, to feel as light as possible, even for a moment. To soften. To float. To rest.
    But I cannot.

    We are constantly encouraged to heal inward. To slow down. To withdraw from the daily rush. Hygge, the Danish philosophy of coziness and intentional comfort, or meditation, which teaches us to focus on a single point and quiet the noise, all promise relief. And for some, they work.

    But I keep asking myself: what is the meaning of all this, if the magic disappears the moment you open your eyes?

    I cannot unsee what is happening around the world. I am not extraordinary in any sense, just another ordinary someone among millions. And yet, I feel deeply empathetic toward others, while simultaneously constructing dystopian future scenarios for myself, shaped by everything I witness around me. Awareness, once acquired, does not politely step aside when you ask for peace.

    Most of the time, I argue with myself.
    “You are under too much stress,” I say. “You cannot even focus on meditation or any kind of hygge mindset. But what real change could you possibly bring to the table, even if stress became your core identity? Probably not much. What would change if you turned that anger inside out? Nothing, most likely.”

    And yet, silencing it feels equally wrong.

    I find myself trapped in a constant rollercoaster of dilemma. A dilemma between self-preservation and moral alertness. There is that well-known prayer: God, give me the strength to accept the things I cannot change. Some days, I tell myself to prioritize my health, to step away from the current agenda, to go with the flow. Other days, this feels hollow, as if deliberately unseeing, deliberately tolerating, is a quiet betrayal of my own conscience.

    Lately, I have been wondering whether our obsession with escaping discomfort might be doing more harm than good. What if that persistent tightness in the chest, that boredom, that inner unrest is not a flaw to be corrected, but a signal to be interpreted? What if constantly soothing ourselves, numbing every sharp edge, slowly damages something more primitive in us, our survival instinct, our ability to sense when something is fundamentally wrong?

    At the core, I believe boredom begins when something in your life needs to change. The dynamics shift, and boredom becomes the warning light. In that sense, it is not laziness or indifference, but information. And I am afraid of becoming careless toward such vital signals, afraid of mistaking anesthetization for healing.

    Perhaps it is the over-exploiting nature of our time that makes focusing on inner peace feel almost unethical. Or perhaps we have internalized the long-term consequences of individualism for too long, confusing detachment with wisdom. I do not know.

    Of course, there must be a balanced space somewhere in between, between collapsing under the weight of the world and pretending it does not exist. I have not found that place yet. But for now, this unresolved tension itself has become one of my resolutions for 2026: not to escape discomfort too quickly, not to romanticize it either, but to listen before I attempt to quiet it.

    What I am searching for is not comfort, but my kind of hygge — one that can coexist with an awareness born from discomfort.
    For now, I remain outside of it.

    🎨 In the Hammock by Anders Zorn

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  • Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

    Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

    As we say goodbye to 2025, we welcome a brand-new chapter filled with new hopes, luck, good health, and joyful surprises.

    May 2026 bring you prosperity, inner peace, and a sense of fulfillment from your successes.

    Wishing you a wonderful holiday season with your loved ones and yourself! ✨🎁

    🎨 Merry Christmas / Glade Jul  by Viggo Johansen

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  • What a Year 2025 Has Been

    What a Year 2025 Has Been

    Above the Clouds at Sunrise by Frederic Edwin Church

    A big, full twelve months is about to bid us farewell. And what a year 2025 has been.

    Looking back, the world felt louder than usual. New national leaders took office, Gen-Z-led protests filled the streets, and military attacks dominated the headlines far too often. In between, culture and history unfolded side by side: Anora won five Oscars, Taylor Swift got engaged, and we said goodbye to figures who once felt almost eternal, Pope Francis and Ozzy Osbourne among them.
    Science, meanwhile, moved forward quietly but steadily. The FDA approved its first cervical cancer test, and NASA’s Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System detected Comet 3I/ATLAS, an interstellar object that may be the oldest known comet. So many events, so many shifts, all compressed into a single year.

    It would be easy to call 2025 turbulent – and it was. But strangely, I don’t look back on that turbulence with resentment. Quite the opposite. Somewhere between the noise, the uncertainty, and the constant sense of change, I found myself needing a place to pause, to process, and to put things into words. In an unexpected way, this very turbulence became my source of inspiration to start blogging.

    During this turbulent year, in my personal life as well, I began translating the ideas sitting in my mind into words, simply to create space for the challenges still ahead.

    At the beginning, I was deeply skeptical. I questioned whether my ideas would be worth reading, whether I should take up the time of people who might happen to stumble upon my thoughts, and many other doubts inevitably followed.
    But perhaps thanks to the age we live in, all it took was creating a quiet harmony between the keys of a keyboard and my ideas, as if I were a pianist giving life to notes. And somehow, that was enough.

    Through this blog, I discovered the quiet joy of sharing my thoughts and feelings in their simplest form, even with people I may never meet. Those of you who chose to spend your valuable time with my reflections became an unexpected gift of 2025, a birthday present I did not know I was waiting for. 

    And I am so grateful for that! Thank you so much!

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  • Just Praising the Color Green

    Just Praising the Color Green

    The Equatorial Jungle by Henri Rousseau

    Have you ever realized that one single color can quietly occupy almost every corner of your life — and mostly in a gentle, reassuring way?

    We eat green to feel lighter, put our feet on green to ground ourselves, rest our eyes on green to soften our vision, and even speak of “earning green” when we talk about surviving, sustaining, continuing.

    It is December now, when red dominates the visual world with its urgency and celebration, green remains its silent companion — calmer, steadier, and somehow more enduring.

    I have always perceived green as a color that does not demand attention but earns it. It exists before interpretation, before symbolism, before we even needed a word to name it. Only later did language catch up: the word green derives from Old English grene, rooted in the Proto-Germanic grōni- and ultimately connected to the idea of growth — living, expanding, becoming. The color of growing plants was not defined first by sight, but by movement and vitality.

    Across mythologies and cultures, green has consistently been linked to life. In Greek mythology, it symbolized fertility and love; in Norse mythology, the evergreen tree represented cosmic order and eternal life. Folk traditions associated it with freshness, permanence, knowledge, liberty. Of course, green also carries less comforting connotations – unripe fruit, mold, decay, decomposition. Yet even these are not contradictions. They are warnings, transitions, signs that one phase is ending so another can begin.

    Perhaps this is why I experience green almost instinctively as a positive presence. An unripe fruit promises ripeness ahead, decay signals caution and awareness. Green does not deny discomfort — it integrates it into a broader cycle. It reminds me that life does not move in clean lines, but in layered processes.

    The color of life, of sources, of quiet hope – green announces itself without noise. You can sense it by stepping onto grass, by breathing near seaweed along a coast, by letting your eyes rest on forms shaped in green.

    And in art, green does something similar: it slows me down, steadies my perception, and invites me to feel rather than rush to understand.

    I began to recognize this feeling most clearly when green appeared not in nature, but in art – carried onto the canvas by gifted minds, through pigments synthetic in matter yet organic in awareness.

    Just look at the green moonlight in Ralph Albert Blakelock’s Moonlight. Do not analyze it too quickly – look and let yourself feel the harmony first. This is not a light that exposes; it is a light that settles. The green hue spreads softly across the landscape, not illuminating every detail, but allowing enough visibility to feel safe within the darkness.

    I imagine sitting under this quiet miracle: the green light resting on my skin, a gentle breeze brushing through my hair or catching the edge of my jacket. The night does not feel cold here; it feels attentive. And strangely, I find myself almost smelling the color green – damp earth, leaves holding onto moisture, air that has learned patience. Blakelock’s green is not decorative; it is immersive. It does not ask to be observed from a distance, but to be inhabited.

    In this moonlight, green becomes a mediator between shadow and reassurance. It does not promise clarity, but it offers presence – the kind that calms the mind without demanding explanation.

    Blakelock’s night feels inward. It asks for depth – the kind that requires honesty. It evokes a night in which you recognize the need for transformation, stop resisting it, and allow yourself to question who you are without defense or urgency.
    The green in his moonlight is not comforting; it is clarifying, it is empowering.
    The color green pats you on the back – encouraging, without insisting.

    I move on to The Pond at Benten Shrine in Shiba by Hasui Kawase:

    Serenity at its finest. Where Blakelock turns me inward, Hasui opens the scene outward. His green belongs to the day: calmer, steadier, almost ordinary – not because it lacks meaning, but because meaning has already settled. It is the moment when things fall into place, when you pause and realize where you are and how far you have come. No resistance, no transformation demanded, only presence.

    And Litzlberg on the Attersee by Gustav Klimt:

    Green feels like the clearest sign of a complete and secure life. A quiet certainty: I can live here. I can exist here. I can breathe deeply here.

    In Klimt’s landscape, I feel surrounded by green nature – hugged by trees, greeted by mountains. And the water, with its gentle reflections, gives us a kind of family portrait of the green we already possess.

    My reflections may not align with academic interpretations of these works, and my reading of green may remain incomplete. But perhaps art has always been about perception – about noticing, attributing meaning, and finding even the smallest space where we are allowed to speak.

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  • The Importance of Balance in Eating

    The Importance of Balance in Eating

    Kvinne kjerner smør (ca. 1920) – Gustav Wentzel

    Do you live to eat, or do you eat to live?
    Or, perhaps, that isn’t even the real question.

    When we look closely at our daily rhythms, we notice something simple yet profound: food quietly accompanies the most significant moments of our lives.

    We celebrate achievements with dinners.
    We mourn losses with hot tea in quiet rooms.
    We reconnect with friends over coffee.
    We try to refocus by grabbing a snack “just to reset.”

    Food becomes an anchor, something around which conversations unfold, relationships deepen, and emotions settle. It is far more than a biological necessity; it’s a social script we all instinctively follow.

    Once we recognize this, eating stops being merely “fuel for our bodies.” Feeling full is only the most primitive part of the experience.

    Beyond that, eating carries emotional, cultural, psychological, and even spiritual meaning. Why else do we crave certain foods on stressful days, or why does a particular smell transport us instantly back to childhood?

    In these moments, balance becomes more than portion control. It becomes a form of self-care, a way of regulating our moods and honoring the rituals that shape our days.

    This understanding is not new. Throughout history, many scholars, thinkers, and even prophets have emphasized moderation as a foundation of well-being.

    Avicenna, for example, believed that regulating, and at times even reducing, food intake could help treat a range of illnesses.¹ His broader view suggested that an overloaded body burdens the mind, while moderation creates clarity and vitality.

    Interestingly, this ancient wisdom aligns with how many of us intuitively feel after eating too heavily: slow, foggy, less alert. It also resonates with today’s movement toward eating with intention rather than impulse.

    A similar idea appears not only in philosophy, but also in the evolution of gastronomy.

    In the 1970s, a group of French chefs, trained in the classical kitchens of Fernand Point, began shaping what would soon be known as nouvelle cuisine. They noticed that diners no longer wanted the heavy, elaborate dishes their parents and grandparents had enjoyed. Instead, people were asking for food that felt lighter, healthier, and more surprising, without losing depth, or flavor. The result was a quiet revolution: a cuisine designed not to overwhelm the body, but to leave it clear, energized, and awake.

    Modern science expands on these ideas through what we now call the gut–brain axis. Research shows that eating is influenced by far more than physiological hunger. Sensory cues, like the smell of freshly baked bread, can trigger appetite even when we are full. Emotional states also play a role: stress can shut down hunger or amplify cravings for sweet or salty foods. Hedonic mechanisms, habitual behaviors, sensory cues, and psychological factors all shape not only what we eat, but why we eat it.² Eating is not just a bodily act; it is a psychological and sensory conversation happening beneath our awareness.

    We can even see this dialogue between body and mind in the subtle signals our physiology sends us.

    Morgengabe (c. 1920), Brynolf Wennerberg

    And I notice this balance most clearly in my own body. When I eat in a way that is too one-sided, I feel a quiet heaviness, almost like something in me hasn’t quite settled. I’ve always been naturally distant from animal-based foods, simply because of my taste. But when my nails start breaking more easily, I take it as a gentle reminder to shift my intake and add a little more protein-rich food.

    The same happens with sugar. If I see small bumps on my skin that weren’t there before, I know I’ve been leaning too much on sweet comfort and I give refined sugar a pause. Our bodies speak long before they struggle. Often, they are not trying to control us, they are trying to guide us back to a way of eating that matches our lifestyle, rhythm, and even our genetics. In this sense, the body doesn’t betray us, it mirrors us. Its shape, energy, and appetite simply reflect the life we are living.

    Modern life complicates this search for balance even further. We live in a world overflowing with food stimuli: oversized portions in restaurants, carefully curated “food porn” images on social media, 24-hour markets offering instant gratification. Even our emotions get intertwined with eating, we reward ourselves after a long day, soothe boredom with snacks, or signal a moment of pause with a warm drink.

    These habits are not inherently harmful. But they do require awareness if we want to eat in a way that nourishes rather than numbs.

    Perhaps this is why the proverb “a man is known by the company he keeps” can be reimagined as “a man is known by the food he chooses to eat.” Our food choices often reflect our internal state, whether we are seeking comfort, routine, excitement, or grounding.

    What we take into our bodies doesn’t simply disappear; it becomes part of us. It enters our bloodstream and ultimately reaches our mind, shaping our mood, energy, and clarity. In this sense, eating is not just a physical act but an act of becoming.

    Balance, then, is not a strict discipline or a rigid rulebook. It is a relationship- one we learn, unlearn, and relearn throughout life. It means paying attention to why we reach for certain foods, noticing how they make us feel, and choosing nourishment that supports both our body and our mind.

    Sometimes balance means savoring a meal slowly. Other times it means stopping before fullness becomes discomfort. And often, it means sharing a humble dish with a friend simply because connection is part of nourishment too.

    Maybe the real question isn’t whether we live to eat or eat to live. Maybe it is how consciously we choose to nourish our lives – physically, emotionally, and spiritually – through the simple yet profound act of eating.

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