Serious

Another beautiful day in the world. I'm working hard on seeking the beauty and the power in the outburst of pure life that goes on along side of a variety of doomsday prophecies. It's important for me to look for balance between the two in order to navigate in a straight line.

Ten of my friends went for a ten km. walk on the great plane of Alvaret on the south part of Öland, the area is a world heritage. The word "Alvar" sounds just like the Swedish word for "serious" spelled 'allvar', hence the name of the blip. Read more here if you like.

Our half way coffee brake was set for a desolate "village", a collection of small house foundations and stone fences. This was the home of the poorest of the poor, often pushed out of the community they tried to fit into and forced out here, in the middle of nothing to try and survive. There's hardly any soil out here, two to four centimeters at the most. It's impossible to understand how people could survive here. Some of them made a living by stealing from the farmers in the area but some tried hard to stay alive on what the little soil could give them. I can't even start to imagine what life must have been here, in a country where social security was completely unheard of during the eighteen hundreds.

Everything growing out here is small and extremely specialised. Many plants only exist here in the whole world, some can be found in other places growing in the same conditions. For us, visitors in another time is struck by the beauty of the colors and the very special landscape, something those people struggling for life here, probably never noticed.

I'm thankful for who, when and where I am in life and humble knowing the thin difference in lifes lottery.