Living in the Light

Camp Out at Vomb Lake

"What are some of the feeling toned symptoms of a disrupted relationship with the wildish force in the psyche? To chronically feel, think, or act in any of the following ways is to have a partially severed or lost entirely relationship with the deep instinctual psyche. Using women's language exclusively, these are: feeling extraordinarily dry, fatigued, frail, depressed, confused, gagged, muzzled, unaroused. Feeling frightened, halt or weak, without inspiration, without animation, without soulfulness, without meaning, shame-bearing, chronically fuming, stuck, uncreative, compressed, crazed.

Feeling powerless, chronically doubtful, shaky, blocked, unable to follow through, giving one's creative life over to other life sapping choices in mates, work, or friendships, suffering to live outside one's own cycles, overprotective of self, inert, uncertain, faltering, inability to pace oneself or set limits.

Not insistent on one's own tempo, to be self conscious, to be away from one's own God or Gods, to be separated from one's revivification, drawn far into domesticity, intellectualism, work, or inertia because that is the safest place for one who has lost her instincts.

To fear to venture by one's self to reveal oneself, fear to seek mentor, mother, father, fear to set out one's imperfect work before it is an opus, fear to set out on a journey, fear of caring for another or others, fear one will run on, run out, run down, cringing before authority, loss of energy for creative projects, wincing, humiliation, angst, numbness, anxiety.Afraid to bite back when there is nothing else left to do, afraid to try the new, fear to stand up to, afraid to speak up to, speak against, sick stomach, butterflies, sour stomach, cut in the middle, strangled, becoming conciliatory or nice too easily, revenge. Afraid to stop, afraid to act, repeatedly counting to three and not beginning, superiority complex, ambivalence, AND YET, otherwise, fully capable and functioning. These severances are a disease not of an era or century, but an epidemic anywhere and anytime women are captured, anytime wildish nature has become entrapped.

A healthy woman is much like a wolf: robust, chock-full, strong life force, life-giving, territorially aware, inventive, loyal, roving, Yet separation from the wildish nature causes a woman to become meager, thin, ghostly, spectral. We are not meant to be puny with frail hair and an inabilty to leap up, to birth, to create life. When women's lives are in stasis, or filled with ennui, it is always time for the wildish woman to emerge; it is time for the functioning of the psyche to flood the delta.

How does wild woman affect women? With her as ally, as leader, model, teacher, we see, not through two eyes, but through the eyes of intuition which is many eyed. When we assert intuition, we are therefore like the starry night: we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes.

The wild nature carries bundles for healing; she carries everything a woman needs to be and know. She carries the medicine for all things. She carries stories and dreams and words and songs and signs and symbols. She both a vehicle and a destination.

To adjoin the instinctual nature does not mean to come undone, change everything from left to right, from black to white, to move east to west, to act crazy or out of control. It does not mean to lose one's primary socializations, or to become less human. It means quite the opposite. The wildish nature has a vast integrity to it.

It means to establish territory, to find one's pack, to be in one's body with certain pride regardless of of the body's gifts and limitations, to speak and act on one's behalf, to be aware, alert, to draw on the innate feminine powers of intuition and sensing, to come into one's cycles, to find what belongs to, to rise with dignity, to retain as much consciousness as possible. "

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves

"Every creative genius has been a channel. When I speak of a channel, I have an image of a long round pipe, with energy flowing through it like a pipe in a pipe organ, with the music coming through. The channel image has three important features: 1. It is open and unobstructed inside so energy can move freely though it

2. It has definite physical form; a structure surrounds open space so that energy is directed in a particular way. Without this structure, the energy would be free floating without any form.

3. It has a power source- something which moves energy through the channel. We have a common power source (the universe), and the same creative energy flows though each of us. "

- Shakti Gawain, Living in the Light

Malmöfestivalen- The Hip Side of Sweden To me there are two distinct sides of Sweden that I love. It seems to me it is both more modern and hip, and more wholesome and pure than the USA. This is embodied by IKEA- the hip side represented by the sleek Scandinavian design of the perfect chair. The IKEA folks, like many a scandinavian designer, can make a simple everyday object more beautiful, more functional, even fun. And then the wholesome side is represented by the stores offering free babysitting in the kid's playroom while you shop, and a general family friendly environment like having kid sized toilets in the bathroom at the store. And the popsicles you get with the cheap kids meal are even food coloring free. Family friendly and wholesome. I blog a lot about the 'wholesome' side of Sweden, because to me, this is the foundation of the hipness. I am raising kids. Wholesomeness is the ground work for the creative life. I think it is just Maslow's hierarchy of needs- you need to get your food, shelter, and love needs met before you can move on to the higher realms of creative thinking. Any living thing grows better with a good set of roots. A decent connection to the earth, their family, and the basic workings of the natural world are a good foundation for children. In Sweden, they so have their bases covered on the wholesomeness, they are freed up to trip and spin on the creative part, too. I have been having a love affair with the nature here, and am totally enamored with the fields of grain, the red barns, the baby horses, the daffodils, the green forested paths, the chanterelle mushrooms, and the many different kinds of wild berries. We live near the farmland in the woods, and Swedegirl goes to a Waldorf school that is all about the seasons, nature, and simple pleasures. But the best part of this simple living, is the way it can inspire your wild imagination. And the Swedes have this covered too. When we want to feel like hipsters, we just need to drive to Malmö, 30 minutes away. We spent two days in Malmö this week enjoying the Malmöfestivalen (link), which is a celebration of the Swedish creative life. Everywhere you turned, the city was decorated, and there was something fun to do, with the simple pleasures offered in a urban environment. The lamposts were made to look like flowers. There were sculptures on the streets. It is a party the whole city has just because the world is a beautiful, wonderful place and we can do whatever we want in it. Music, food, crafts, art, performances, dance. The whole city went all out for nine whole days.

This tent offered (free) fabric arts- sewing, felting, and printing. The pierced tattooed guy pictured here was sewing a heart on his jeans Swedegirl made a felted arm band, and printed on some sponges.

There is so much to do at the festival it could have kept us entertained for way more than nine days. But two was just fine for us. The things we choose to entertain ourselves were low key. We started with a picnic in Folkets park, at the rose shaped splash fountain. We managed to find a whole pack of English speaking friends, a few vacationing brits, and a Swedish mom who lived in Arizona who met and married an American, who is raising their three kids outside Stockholm. We made friends because were both wearing babies in ergos, and it turned out they had their last baby at home, too. The joy of instant connection! The girls became fast friends. We splashed in the fountain then headed off to see a movie in Barnen's Scen, 'Dunderclumpen'.

New friends turning SwedeGirl on to their favorite part of the festival- Chocolate from Malmö Chocalte Factory!

After that we headed to see a jugband! Mama don't allow no JUGBAND playin' round here. Yeah, I know, it was the festival, we could have seen Lady Sovereign, Timbuktu, or EMD, but this is the live band we watched!!

Then there were a bunch of performances we never got to, as we got sided tracked by this amazing thing. Fun, just because we can!

Swedegirl in A Bubble, in the canal of Malmö

How you get in

Me and Swedegirl!

Swedemonkey Daddy

There was tons of street food, but I have to note how many 'Moose' booths there were! (About 10,000 wild moose a year are hunted here to keep the population in check). Woked Moose? Moose Kebab (which is really like gyros, in Sweden that is called 'Kebab'), and more moose, reindeer, and wild boar!

And if you want to pass on the moose, you can wait in the long line for the Pickled Herring/ Sill! My hopes were up when I saw this sign for New Orleans food. Pralines? Crawfish? Gumbo? Po' Boys? Nah, burgers. 'American' Food! (We ate ate an American BBq place that had nice BBQ, actually.)In the American game 'Candyland', Licorice guy is the bad guy. In Sweden Licorice, especially salted licorice, is LOVE. After developing a love of circle dances at Midsommar, Swedegirl jumped right in on this exotic 'Square Dancing' lesson offered on the rink where she learned to ice skate this winter. Again, there were tons of hip dance performances, but my girl has a knack for loving the kitch like I do. She thought the lady wit htthe green skirt looked like a princess. A Swedish Square dancing Princess. And SHE danced with her! I did a nice pan of the park, you can see Muslims hoola hooping, and the hip parent park scene. Malmö Swedes know how to dress, if I did not mention that. Folkets Park is the hipster parents Scene, man. Sweden, where the parents are hipper, the clothes are cuter, and you can run around in a big ball on the water while listening to a jug band, and finish up with some stir fried moose and chocolate puddin'. Oh yeah.

"So here's a little post for the never-believers. If you think that there is nothing out there to see, that nothing is cool... yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.... Hey baby, are we having fun? "

Happy 40th Anniversary
Mom and Dad!
Happy Birthday SwedeDaddy!
One thing, I know, I Love You!

Tree swing! We put up a tree swing this weekend. We took advantage of this funky birch tree that bends over towards it's neighbor, tied them together, and hung up a swing from the center. Yay!

SwedeGirl got the camera and took some pictures. This is what her world looks like.

My rainbow goddess did this self portrait. How does she do it?

Now, she can swing from the trees! (Notice she managed to take over the ergo and stuff her own baby in it?)

Slimminge Skördag - Harvest Festival We live in the south of Sweden, which is a great area with two decent size cities- Lund, an old University Town, and Malmö, an urban center. Plus, we are not all that far from the Capital of Denmark, Copenhagen. But the most notable thing living outside the cities in Skåne is that we are in farm land. Driving to either city means driving past farms with fields of grain and little red barns. The cycles of the growing season are very apparent. We notice the planting, sprouting, and harvesting of the fields around us as a simple fact of our life, in a way it was not part of life in Florida. It is also notable how all the farms seem to be family farms. There is an absence of Conagra mega farms, and there must be policies in place that support small farms. This is so wonderful to see, coming from the USA where Willie Nelson and others have to raise funds for Farm Aid (link) with benefit concerts to try to save the American small family farms. So many have been lost due to poor political policies that favor agribusinss to the detriment of the small farms. Anyway, now summer is peaking, we have been watching the big harvest machines go to work making bales and harvesting the grains. So we thought it would be fun to check out what the farmers are up to by going to the Harvest festival/ Skördag in the small old farming village of Slimminge. It was a rainy day, but we headed out anyway. Slimminge is a very small village, set amongst the rolling hills of Skåne. The view from the festival over the hill tops was lovely. We parked in a harvested wheat filled on the stumble of the straw. There were threshing demonstrations, where they showed how the wheat was cut in the old times by hand with a scythe. Then it was carried by the horse drawn cart over to the old fashioned steam engine powered machine that extracted the grain from the straw.

We got a ride in the horse drawn cart while they carried the wheat bundles from the harvest field over to the threshing machine. The cart was loaded with fresh cut wheat.

The horses pulled our cart

The wheat was hoisted up and loaded into the steam powered machine

And out came husked wheat on one end wheat

Wheat Berries

And Bales of Hay on the Other End and Isn't that guy a dead ringer for Pettersson from Pettersson and Findus? Here is a little video of the process

After the horses were unharnessed from the cart, SwedeGirl got to go for a horse ride There were various old engines and farm equipment on display, and a number of old grinding stones.
The old spelling of Simrishamn, with a 'C', Cimbrishamn, the largest village near SwedeDaddy's childhood home
Now a days things are done more efficientlyThe festival had a small collection of tents with local vendors, a bouncy house, and food.
This was the competition for strongest man and woman. They were cheering this woman on, in the competition of who could hold the buckets up the longest. This vendor was selling linen, and demonstrating how the bundles of raw linen are crushed, combed, and spun into thread. This fellow makes brushes from animal hair. This little brush is made from human hair, just for fun. Most of his bristles are made from goat and horse hair. We met a woman who keeps 35 angora bunnies. They keep escaping and breeding, and they are so cute she just keeps them all. She uses the fur to spin yarn and make felted angora crafts. These were so soft! We bought these little bunnies from her to give Swedegirl's teachers from last year. We wanted to give them a little gift, toys for the classroom, as a thank you when we see them this week at the back to school fika/ coffee. And there was food...Fresh and varied tomatoes, my favorite! The typical Swedish fresh produce selection- roots. A variety of onions, potatoes, carrots, and beets. The apples are coming in! These fresh tart ones were just 1 kronor each.

The BBQ- they went WHOLE HOG. Of course we had some, the smoked pork and ribs were served with apple sauce and this super creamy pineapple relish. And this lady was demonstrating how to make the traditional Spettkak over a cast iron stove. Spettkak means 'spit cake' since it is made on a spit like this. It is like meringue, and made of eggs, potato flour, and sugar. We tried some of this, too. She had some interesting artwork in her tent, including this painting of Nils Holgerssons, a character in a famous children's story intended to teach geography, about his travels on the back of a goose across Sweden after he is shrunk to leprechaun size. Since we have been trying our hand at baking bread this summer, this trip to the harvest festival tied together the process and source of our 'daily bread'. We are grateful to the farmers. And to Sweden for it's support of the small family farmers. There is so clearly a long tradition and deep knowledge of how to work the land here. We were glad to honor their efforts by learning a bit about their work at the festival.

You can learn about supporting American farmers at Farm Aid, just follow the link to learn what you can do to make sure the USAcontinues to have small farms like Sweden does (click for link).