future and past skies

A sky that was all about the future: sunset at the wedding day of a friend.




A moment from my short trip to Cologne, same time, last year. came across this scribbled note again that made me remember:

Cologne Dome.
Old stones.
Young people.
Future and past, 
on a stairway.




And a sky from last weekend: a touch of autumn in summer: harvested fields.

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more skies: skywatch friday
more moments from august: augustbreak2017

bird sky, storm sky, sunset sky

We had a weekend of all kind of weathers and places: from sunny skies to cloudy to thunderstorms moving through. Here are some highlights, the first 3 are from a short trip to the Black Forest:



On the way, near the spring of the Danube river, we saw a group of huge birds circling, maybe 20. Coming closer, we noticed it’s storks. It looked like a gathering – maybe they are flying with their youngsters? I caught a photo but only with 2 of them.




In the black forest it first was sunny – and then clouds moved in. From route and wind direction we figured it might work out with the route we had planned, but it was a gamble.

 

At the ending point of our tour, up at Kandel hill, we had a stunning view of the weather around us, and could sit watching weather fronts… and we had about 10 minutes there, then rain started to fall, finally catching us. Back home, I wrote a micropoem to catch that feeling of this day:

A day in the black forest 
this different flow of time 
a bench, a way / the sky 
simple, huge moments

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The mixed weather repeated its cycle yesterday. We were mostly lucky again. In the evening we were invited to a garden party, which brought a stunning sunset, and another micropoem:

Garden party 
with sky magic  
strings of colored clouds  
strings of music

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more skies: sky friday

july skies

July - when green turns yellow 
and the fields turn into cubicles of color 
under an open summer sky



cloud dance  
swallows crossing
evening is all up



rain arriving
like a train
headed - right here
fascinated, we stand and watch
who catches the first drop?

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more skies: sky friday

april skies unplugged

Some skies from this week....

...logging into the blog, even though I knew I havn't blogged since a while, it was a surprise to see that the last entry is from a month ago. 

Interesting to see that without really planning to, I actually did a "digital fast" and unplugged from facebook, twitter and the blog, and only posted photos at Instagram every now and then.

Today I am enjoying the skies, and remembered sky friday... more skies from everywhere, over at: Skywatch Friday.

winter skies, world books

Today we went for a winter walk - this is just ten minutes from where we live. Today it felt like walkig into another world.

And another lovely sky moment from this weekend: Walking into the living room. Walking into sunrise... and there is more:

 

As I stood and watched, a flock of tiny birds appeared and flew to the fir tree, to settle there, and gaze at the sun and drink in the light - just like I did.

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Next week, this time - when all works out as planned - we will be enjoying some warmer skies in the South. Looking forward to it. So it will be a busy week now, preparing and packing.

What's packed already are: the books I want to take. It's something I really enjoy, to look for books to read, and to start to gather them. It's a mix of art, fiction, memoir... here's a photo:

Will blog about them from the island. And I finally started to adjust and update the world reads page here in the blog.

Right now, I am still reading the Antarctica book by Jenny Diski. Not sure if I will read through all continents this year... but then, looking at the book photo, I could try. The surrealism book is international. The green book is a poetry book from Taiwan, translated into German - I received it at the Leipzig book fair. The third book is a memoir by Susan Sontag. And the small book with the tree on the cover - that is a book I have since ages, but it has an odd cover. It's about the Celts, about their culture and era.

So combined, that would already be a trip through half of the continents...

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more skies: skywatch friday
more books: life as a journey with books

December reflections + 11 rules of being a human being

The new year 2017 is just some hours away. Still really happy about the #decemberreflections2016, and the way they brought back so many memories. Reflecting on 2016 also made me think about 2017. Here are some notes from this different December:

• This year was, and: 168 hours / week
• Best decision of 2016
• Biggest lesson from 2016
• 5 things about me

While browsing through the blog this week, I came across this thoughtful list. and as I sooner or later will forget about all this again, I thought I pull the post up again, as it also fits with the reflections:

11 Rules For Being A Human Being:

Rule 1: You will receive a body.
You may like it or hate it, but it will be yours for the entire period this time around

Rule 2: You will learn lessons.You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called life. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or think them irrelevant or stupid.

Rule 3: There are no mistakes, only lessons.
Growth is a process of trial and error: experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately “works”.

Rule 4: A lesson is repeated until learned.
A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go on to the next lesson.

Rule 5: Learning lessons does not end.
There is no part of Life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

Rule 6: “There” is no better than “here”.
When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here”.

Rule 7: Others are merely mirrors of you.You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate about yourself.

Rule 8: What you make of your life is up to you.
You have the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

Rule 9: Your answers lie inside you.The answers to life’s questions lie inside you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust.

Rule 10: You will forget all this.

Rule 11: You can remember whenever you want.

star / light

Today was all overcast and rainy. But the week had some sunny hours. Like this one above: an afternoon sunset moment. And once the sun sets, it's time for candlelight. And for the real starlight. I even had a starlight dream: I was standing in an open space, with a wide horizon (like back then, in the desert of Rajasthan). All was peaceful and the stars so bright, such an abundance - and there was Orion. Like an eternal butterfly of flight.

And 2 light memories: smallstones, from January:

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Tuesday morning. dark sky with a string of blue,
and at the horizon, a pulsing stream of lights,
coming and going -
early morning traffic

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Half past five, daylight fading already
lighting a candle, I look up and see
right above the roof:
the moon

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more skies from everywhere: skywatch friday
and more light notes: #decemberreflections

contrasts, mountains, modpo, and a drunken boat memory

Mountaintime ahead!

After the colorful trip to Cologne and the Gamescom last week, there is a very different road upcoming this weekend: a weekend trip to the mountains of Austria. We will visit the "Ötztal" again - that's where they found the "Ötzi" a couple of years ago, the frozen mummie of an ancient person who crossed the Alps a couple of thousand years ago. 
Here's a bit about the region: Ötztal Alps/wiki

Fun facts: it's about the same distance from here to Cologne and to the Ötztal (4 hours), but very different destinations. The drive to the Ötztal is fascinating already: the mountains appearing in the distance, and then coming closer, and closer, until you are right inside them.

Looking forward, especially as the weather forecast looks sunny. Will blog from the road again :)

And two really nice links:

Modpo is starting again, at the 10th September!
If you haven't heard of it: " ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry. The next live, interactive 10-week session of ModPo will begin on September 10, 2016, and will conclude on November 21, 2016." I joined in 2012, and for mie, it still is one of the best Coursera courses / experiences so far. I just enrolled to the new course. More about it, in my blog posts from 2012: Modpo notes, or: 70 days of poetry. 

Drunken Boat memory
And I received a mail yesterday that I first thought was spam, but that turned out to be from an editor of Drunken Boat. Turns out, they started a "vintage" series of blog posts from previous issues. And one of my pieces - "The Space Behind the Ridge" -  has been selected as this week's feature for the vintage series. It is now online. The images in the piece are from the trip I once made to India. ah, past travel memories... and a good prelude to the upcoming road trip, too.

march sky + a counterpart memory

Today: driving up to the Alb plateau for a walk. And being suprised by: snow. It's just a 300 meter difference of altitute, but it feels like another season up there.

The sun came out for a bit, and it was good to walk, and let all those themes of the week settle.

The way leads to those two old trees, with a bench - and standing there, I remembered that I took a photo of the place the last time I walked there, too. September, that was. Now I looked for it, and it's the counterpart view, and the counterpart season:



Soon the trees will turn green again...

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more skies from everywhere: skywatch friday

stork is back

This is a photo I am happy about for several reasons: such a good suprise to walk up to this tower in the botanical park, and see a stork there. It's like: "spring is coming, the migrating birds are back". and to be there just at that point, with the stork standing on its nest, just while the dove was crossing.

Seeing the stork brought back memories from another stork moment: in France, in 2013. Sitting outside for breakfast, and looking up, there was a flock of unusual birds. I tried a photo... and it was only later that I figured out that those were actually storks. Normally, in Germany, you see them only single or in pairs. never like that:



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more skies from around the world: sky friday 

friday sky rituals

It's Friday - so good that the weekend is upcoming. The week has been rough, what started with the stream of bad news last week (Paris + more troubles news) sadly kept continuing. I hope to get a new blog entry together with an update tomorrow.

But Friday also means: it's sky friday. So I went looking for skies. It's good to have those rituals.

yesterday's morning sky

last week's Friday morning sky

sky with Venus and a second planet, that was on 10th November
wanted to blog more about that and check planets
still glad that i caught that one.

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more skies from around the world

3 november moments: walk, sky, sunset

November is a festival of colors right now. So good. 

It feels like the colors of the leaves are stronger this year -
maybe due to the rather warm and dry summer?

Or is it my mindfulness practice, or the effect of having been away 

for 10 days, and thus seeing the change not gradually,

but in contrast to a landscape that was mostly green?

Probably a combination of all of it.

Here are 2 more photos: 

Walking along a scenic country path, watching sky patterns:

And a sunset moment: 

more skies from around the world:

skywatch friday

mountain road trip sky

for sky friday... a mountain sky moment:

this is a special sky - I finally could go on a trip again, leaving

Wednesday afternoon after my final hospital date.

so good to drive through mountains with this feeling of freedom

the next photo is from the same road,

even taken in the same minute - just a slightly different angle:

this is on the "Fernpass" which leads from Germany to Austria,

on our way to Innsbruck:

more about that trip, in a longer post later today ...

which is now online: tyrol short trip - part 1: from hospital to road 

to loft to mountains, or: this new feeling of freedom

and such weather luck.

today it's rain pouring both in Austria and Germany

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more skies from around the world: sky friday 

moon moment + shooting stars upcoming

Since days, the moon keeps hiding - I finally looked up moonrise and moonset-times, to learn that currently it is mostly a daymoon. But once, it stood right there at dusk, just above the street lamp.

The main sky event of this week, though, were: shooting stars! On tuesday evening, the sky was all clear, and the high temperatures of the day were still lingering, so we sat outside and watched the stars appear, one after the another. A bat flew by, and we some satellites in their orbit - and then the magic started: shooting stars! First one, then another, then a third one... so beautiful.

I looked for a meteor guide to learn more about them, but there is no specific meteor listed for the 21st July. The upcoming shooting star dates are:

• July 28-29, 2015 Delta Aquarids 
• August 12-13, 2015 Perseids

It might be an idea to mark the date for the Perseids this year:

"The famous Perseid meteor shower ... will peak on the mornings of August 11, 12 and 13. It’s going to be a wonderful year for the Perseids! The moon is out of the way." - earthsky website

Googling further, I came across this German page that also includes smaller meteor showers - so the one we saw on the 21st july actually might belong to Piscis or Delta-Aqurides, both had middle or high activity at that date. (Sternschnunppen-Kalender)

International Space Station 
To round up the upcoming sky events, here's the ISS-location-website that shows its visibility, depending on location: ISS observation / Visible Passes

About the ISS: if you once seen ISS, you recognize it – it’s much larger and brighter than all the other satellites. I just looked for a video and found this timelapse: International Space Station Flyby

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 more skies from around the world: skywatch friday

july heat wave moon

July starts with a heat wave here in Germany. "Extreme temperatures," warns the weather forecast. Tropical nights. Blazing sunny skies. The best time to enjoy the weather is in the evening, when you can sit outside until midnight, and watch the moon and the skies in a warm breeze, something that is unusual for these regions.

The heat reminded me of this short flash story I wrote in another summer, with the same heat, while it was world soccer cup in South Africa:

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Antelope Summer

It was the summer of vuvuzelas. The ball rolled on and on, down there in the South of Africa, between all those countries of the world. Huge screens glowed in the night, green reflections of success and failure.

Then suddenly, it was over. The TV channels returned to their normal daily and weekly schedules. The heat kept lingering, though. It turned lawns into patches of prairie: yellow and stubby the grass stood, as if waiting for antelopes and hyenas. Still hesitant, you went, and bought one of the last vuvuzelas on sale, and we finally learned to do the rain dance.

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More skies from around the world: skywatch friday

solstice upcoming & "El Sol"

Solstice is upcoming - the day that is the longest day of the year, or rather: the day of longest light-time, before the days start to "shrink" again.

The photo is from the archive, will try to catch on Sunday, though (and hopefully it will be a sunny day)

And to go with solstice, a multi-lingual sun story I wrote some summers ago:

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El Sol

Early morning. The swimming pool is still asleep, its surface a reflection of the sky above: clouds moving in water, tainting it in sunrise colours, orange, yellow and pink.

Like a water colour painting, she thinks, like a water colour painting that leaves no traces, that appears and vanishes again, soft like a dream. She considers to change, to leave the scene for some moments, slip into her bathing suit, head to the pool and slide into the water, to become a part of it, to feel the sun on her face, the water on her skin.

But she doesn’t want to disturb the picture, doesn’t want to disturb the quiet of the morning. And she doesn’t want to miss the moment the sun comes up, she couldn’t be far.

The sun. El sol. Strange, she thinks, how in Spain the sun is male, and the moon female: la luna. For her, it was the other way round, always has been. The sun she, the moon he. The ocean neutral, just like the sky.

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more skies from everywhere: skywatch friday

atmosphere, or: why is the sky blue?

For sky friday: a sky memory from a flight that brought a view of the shoreline of Spain.
Here's "continent's end" and the start of waterworld:



And in addition, a sky photo that turned out blurred, but with some photo editing now carries this feeling of flying high above through the atmosphere into the blue:



Which leads to that interersting question again: why exaclty is the sky blue?
Nasa has the answer, here's a short version: "Sunlight reaches Earth's atmosphere and is scattered in all directions by all the gases and particles in the air. Blue light is scattered in all directions by the tiny molecules of air in Earth's atmosphere. Blue is scattered more than other colors because it travels as shorter, smaller waves. This is why we see a blue sky most of the time."
More about it, here:  nasa/sky

More skies from around the world: skywatch friday

sky crossing + tulip umbrella

For sky friday: A sky crossing moment from this week, which came with warm sunny weather. The trees are blooming already, and the tulips opened some days ago.

Unfortunately, now the skies turned overcast just in wrong timing for the weekend. The tulips decided to stay closed yet, turning into their own umbrellas. Still they shine:

Have a lovely sky weekend, everyone~

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more skies from around the world: sky friday
more sky moments in this blog: sky diary

sky friday + international "light" haiku day

For sky friday: a sunrise moment from earlier this week, with clouds moving in.

And more skies:
In celebration of International Haiku Poetry Day, April 17, 2015, the haiku foundation is organizing an “EarthRise Rolling Haiku Collaboration”. Everyone is invited to join with a "light" haiku written at dawn at their time.

The collab is happening directly online, here's the webpage: EarthRise Rolling Haiku Collaboration

Below are my contributions, the first is from dawn:

single rain drops 
sunrise without color 
still the blackbird sings 

And the second from noon, noted while waiting to be picked up at the oncology centre after the next chemo session:

a blue bottle rolls 
in the wind
all the things 
that wait for us

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Join!
Take a sky photo and/or write a "light" haiku to join the round-the-world collabs:

• EarthRise Rolling Haiku Collaboration
• sky friday

day and night, with 2 special sky surprises

yesterday brought 2 sky suprises:



Circumhorizontal Arc
In the afternoon, looking up, i saw a hazy rainbow-coloured patch in the sky. it wasn't large, and didn't last long, but it's a special sky effect that i've seen once before, in a larger and brighter shape: a Circumhorizontal Arc (here's my first encounter with that effect, when i had no clue what i was looking at: cloud halo)

And later, in the evening, a bright "star" appeared in the sky:

 

Venus + Uranus + Mars
From the brightness, it was easy to guess that the star actually is a planet. But which one? The sky map app had the answer, which came with a surprise: 3 planets were joining in that spot at that hour: Venus and Uranus and Mars.

Back home, I looked for a website with more information about it, and found it at Astronomie.info: they have a night schedule with visibility of planets and the moon along a timeline. I marked the constellation we saw with a yellow spot:



So interesting and fascinating, to catch those sky phenomenons.

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Links: 
For more sky moments in this blog, try this link: sky diary
And for more skies from around the world, visit skywatch friday