I currently find myself residing at a house in a rural German village tucked into the corner where Germany meets the Czech Republic and Poland. It’s a region where one of my first art historical loves, Caspar David Friedrich, often wandered. He captured the rolling hills, distinguished by pale nuances even at sunset, in many of his paintings, although Cross in the Mountains (painted in 1808 and now in Dresden) depicts the nearby, pointier, red sandstone peaks a few kilometers southeast….
Tag: empathy
Balancing Act
During the past year, the unexpected deaths or devastating traumas experienced by close friends and family have instigated intensified reflections on mortality, materialism, legacies, and the choices we make. I’d prefer to have such thoughts poke me a lot less often…
Vision: Motif from Visby
As a staunch Social Democrat from the bourgeoisie, Bergh hoped to dissolve social demographic barriers, establish common ground, and generate empathy among social layers…
Hope & Happiness
I thought about my sudden change of humor and how someone else’s success transformed my somber mood of detached concentration into a vibration of joy that lingered as a gentle quivering undercurrent…
The Ninth Inning?
Is humanity on the fast track to self-destruction, or on the eve of a new era of enlightenment and sustainability?
The Blessing
There’s a certain pleasant sameness to my beach mornings at Playa Lagartillo but one morning strayed from the routine…
A Happy Reunion
I arrived at my little paradise of Playa Lagartillo on Costa Rica’s west coast a few days ago, where I resumed my cherished simple routine of rising with the sun and strolling the dusty, 150-meter-long path to the beach…
Mustard Seed
I keep this photo on my laptop desktop. It captures a banal moment in my peripatetic life. Taken on the S-Bahn (commuter train) between Berlin and Potsdam, I love it because of the way its significance has metamorphosed over time….
Last Suppers #1
Twenty years ago, I realized that some of the social moments I recalled with the greatest clarity were the meals I shared with friends or family at our last (unexpectedly last) meeting before they died….
Father’s Day
He called me Macushla, after the 1912 song undoubtedly sung to him as a child by his Irish mother…