Showing posts with label scenic views. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scenic views. Show all posts

Sunday, October 24, 2010

In Arcadia


To complete my posts about pastoral landscapes, I once dreamt about the mythological / utopian Arcadia. The sketch above depicts a water-terrace arrangement on the slope of Mount Helicon, which the dream situated there. I have written more extensively about the dream here.

" /.../ at the vast terraced slopes of Mount Helicon (as I´ve seen it depicted in alchemical illustrations) with a bewildered look of concentration on his face, while the well-springs of the rock´s inspirational muses were bubbling and forming huge dandelion-like water globes behind him."
/NN

Friday, October 22, 2010

Heaven and Tax-Refund

I´m attending a political lecture, where Kristian Kristansson, editor of Kris, is just stating:

"People actually believe that the taxes they are paying somehow returns to them."

He shows an illustration of this:


Then another illustration is shown. It reminds me of Waldemar Lorentzon´s Cosmic Mother, but instead of that painting´s mother-figure in the clouds a flute-playing Pan-figure appears:





At the same time these words are accompanying these pictures:


"Panpipe tones in the boy-depth
Clouds descend into the landscape
One rejoices at the soft sincerity of the sky"
/ NN

Friday, October 15, 2010

Looking Down


Dream-sight:

An old woman sleeping in the vast landscape of her blue dotted dress.




Associations:




Habitable exoplanets:




Taeniura lymma. An attractive bottom dwelling fish:




/NN

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Surrealist headquarters

1
After long waiting, I am being let into an apartment in Marieberg, Stockholm, where there is some surrealist activity going on. I had been walking around in a suburban shopping center with a visiting foreign surrealist, whose name I can't remember, and as my surrealist friends here have been taking apart and only halfway reassembling my computer, I can't search for the name in my files.

2
I am walking through the city at night, in a very good mood. If I am in such a good mood, why don't I go into a pub and mingle with the other nightwalkers, isn't there a place that I like so much around here? But of course going into a pub is usually quite de-enticing and perhaps it would be too much of challenging fate anyway. Nevertheless I keep thinking about this place, perfect for meetings as well as for social hanging out, its details are just like the famous "Harlösa Grand Café" in a small village in Skåne, but it lies within reach of the big Stockholm Northern Cemetary, and looks out over the trainyard north of the Central Station.

Inside I find Erik B sitting there having his lunch, entertaining the other customers with paranoid political comments, as if he was of the ordinary local alcoholic character gallery. I sit down at his table, and at first I try to make him lower his voice, but then I realise that some of the other customers are actually far more into his monologue than I am. So instead I start flirting with the waitress, who is also the owner, and the only member of the staff. She gives the impression of being a stranded spy from another planet or dimension. I offer her my help. She says she would much appreciate if I would come by during her lunch break to have sex with her.

At that point we all go out to see the sunrise from the Barnhusbron bridge, and a big confusion reigns.

3
The thing I actually enjoy about lucid dreaming is to attentively look around in fantastic landscapes. And on the other side of the narrow sound there is a beautiful islet. In fact it is the islet facing my childhood bathing place near the family summerhouse, but much more dramatic. It is actually so dramatic that I don't think more about lucidity. The islet is just a big granite rock in the sea, the higher parts are exposed rock, surrounded by ordinary "hällmarkstallskog" (again that word with no everyday english equivalent: a semi-open granite bedrock scots pine forest with lichens and lingonberries). The open area, like a bald crown, has two buildings, one ordinary archipelago house (early 20th century two-storey red-and-white villa with a glass veranda and many carpenter ornaments) but one house which looks older and sinister, it must be a chapel, in the shape of a cross with a semicircle, it looks like a ruin from an alchemical engraving, it could be an elaborate columbarium or something even worse. Some steep but not high cliffs, interesting vegetation (very much like Fredhällsparken in Stockholm). It looks like this would be magnificent new headquarters for the surrealist movement. We would go climbing there, in the sunshine it would be like "Picnic at hanging rock" and if it rains it will be "Wuthering heights".

I have to get there immediately. I somehow launch myself swimming in rocket speed, and when I quickly reach the eastern tip of the island I realise there are houses there, and a lot of people bathing, hidden under the weeping willows leaning over the water. I slow down as I turn westwards to follow the shady coast of the islet, and there I find a small pier. I go ashore and find myself in a huge open barn, with large containers of stuff, and various computer and surveillance monitors.

4
I am taking the westbound train the southern route from Stockholm. I am impressed by the dramatic primeval forest. We are climbing a hill. I am told that this is such a wild area, and the rise is so steep, that only some trains make it, the others have to turn back to Stockholm. The mountain we are climbing is the famous "Södermanland's watershed" which is symbolically and geographically the divide between western and eastern Sweden, western Sweden being drained through Vänern-Göta älv-Göteborg and eastern Sweden through Mälaren-Stockholms Ström. (In fact, I am making this up. There is a geographically important hilly region in this direction, but that is further in, namely the Kilsbergen hills of Närke, representing the border between the hilly Norrland terrain and the south-swedish plains; but there are no larger hills in Södermanland.)

We make it up the hill. It is extremely beautiful, with this wild forest and the vast view. And we just keep rising. Eventually I see a vast sea, with some big islands. Somebody tells me it is Hjälmaren, and for some reason I accept that (even though Hjälmaren is actually a completely unimpressive shallow plains lake). Everybody gets off at the summit station, where there is a small tourist café. I think this is so great. The whole national park that we are in should be proclaimed the terrain of the surrealist movement, and we should have all our meetings there.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

All Harvests Are Unreal

This image was seen in a moment of hypnagogic revery, accompanied by the phrase "all harvests are unreal". It seemed to present itself like an idea for a painting. However, I reproduced it by photoshopping a found landscape painting which conveyed a similar atmosphere. I have as yet no immediate ideas about it and welcome your thoughts and interpretations.

/NN

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Om Sörmland vore vackert

För den som är berest i småstäder och naturmiljöer runtom i landet erbjuder alla landskap vissa påfallande vackra liksom många banala och enahanda element; Södermanland är inget avvikande i det avseendet. Men när jag letar igenom gamla drömmar ser jag två drömmar från olika tidpunkter som båda bygger på att godtyckligt måla upp Sörmland som något påfallande vackert. Går det att hitta gemensamma drag hos sådana platser som väljs ut för att fyllas med skönhet, eller är det verkligen godtyckligt? Finns det exempel på motsatsen, att vissa områden i drömmen utnämns till entydigt fula?

1
En fantastisk turistresa med tåg genom Sörmland, som jag gör i ett större sällskap med många barn. Jag håller låda för barnen om olika geografiska sevärdheter längs vägen. Mest upphetsande är den “kinesiska vägen” där tåget åker i ett dike längsmed kanten av en sjö, och spåret är faktiskt lägre beläget än vattenytan, man kan t o m se vattenytan bukta sig i ögonhöjd. Sedan bär det uppåt och vi far ut på vattenytan av Sörmlands påstått berömda “fagersjöar”. Snart når vi fram till något utflyktsmål där allt är halvdant, glest och lerigt, och vi håller på att tappa bort vissa barn.

2
Jag ska dela ut ett diplom till en markägare i Sörmland som skött sina marker på ett exemplariskt sett ut naturvårdens synvinkel. Hennes skog, mestadels låglänt och fuktig, är full av gamla alar och ekar, linjer och kluster av morotformade träd, många avbrutna vid en viss höjd av någon lokal katastrof, det är mycket vackert. Jag talar med henne i hennes kök, och sover på hennes tältsäng, och läser hennes lokaltidning, ja jag funderar på att flytta dit eftersom det är så vackert och hon är så vacker. Och när hon visar mig runt så visar det sig att det inte bara är denna skog utan också vidsträckta sydlänta torrbackar, precis vad jag behöver. Hon lägger sig ner i den sluttningen och särar på benen för att ta emot mig i ett förseglande av våra planer.

/MF