the horrible beauty of the world (places, flowers, life)

places, flowers
saturday morning. rain outside. temperatures like autumn in july, all over Europe, while a heat wave wraps up America.

in the web, the new language/place blog carnival now online: "The poetry of place". hosted by Walter Bjorkman, this edition leads through 24 places in blogs from all around the world, through cities and along shores, to places of the past, and reflections of the now, which are all united i an opening slideshow: The poetry of place at Qwik-Bake Synthetics.

yesterday evening, after a day of project flow, i realized that the 100 days task is still waiting - in the last days, my focus there was on the Paris journey. now i returned to a home garden moment: phlox petals.

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this world
then, the news, and the terrible images from Norway, reporters trying to give the picture while it's still not clear what happened. then this morning, the heavily updated death toll. so many young lives lost, so many families and friends affected. who comes up with such a plan, to walk into a youth camp to kill? and again, the realization: how vulnerable our lives. and that you can only secure things to a certain reasonable point.

and then, the moving response from Norwegian PM Jens Stoltenberg, "We will stand by our democracy. The answer to violence is more democracy, more humanity."

the images of the island also bring back memories of the love parade desaster, which happened at this weekend one year ago here in germany. where many died, not on purpose, but due to a chain reaction of bad planning and ambitious cities, and ignored warnings. i blogged about it back then.. here. love parade death trap. a post that also starts with a flower image. strange how flowers are both the symbol of life, and are then placed on graves.

and then, Africa. no bombs there, no parades. just a silent disaster beyond all our imagination. how to be part of this world?

which brings me back to the reflections and blogs from March this year, after the Japan shock, and these lines from Jennifer Saunders, on Songbirds and nuclear reactors and the horrible beauty of the world, here:

"..that’s the horrible beauty of the world, that these two things exist at the same time, that it is our duty to see both of them, to take them both in.

Stare at the horrible images. Watch the songbird out the window. Hold these two things simultaneously in your heart."