This entry will be removed. Just testing to see whether Surftown, the web hosting firm on whose server this blog runs, has fixed the PHP screw up that prevented us from uploading images. Well then, here is an image, or maybe not?

The uploaded file could not be moved to .

Hej,

thanks for your mail.

I have reconfigured your webserver settings and reloaded the service. It should be running fine now.

Vänliga hälsningar

Peter Frank
Surftown Support

Now let’s see whether anything changed:

Unable to create directory /hsphere/local/home/dhyana/dhyana.se/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07. Is its parent directory writable by the server?

Changed upload directory and verified it was writable.

The uploaded file could not be moved to .But finally, after many trials and tribulations I managed to get things in line. Uploading a test item, now. Keep in mind this is not supposed to have any deeper meaning (we anyway question the validity of meaning).

So much has happened since my last post that I don’t know where to start.

I quit my job. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I would have preferred to have landed another job before quitting, but I was getting nowhere with that and the ground was burning under my feet. I felt if I didn’t quit now, I would really, really only have myself to blame if I got burned out.

What gave me the last push was when I got a book deal with a publisher. I am writing a book on communicating with young people with Asperger’s syndrome. I told my boss and everyone that I was quitting because I had a book to write. The truth is, it is already written. The workload and workplace situation they know what I think of, it is no secret, we are all in the same boat. But it was easier, gentler, to have that book project to point to.

There were three of us in the original team and I am the last one of us to quit. Funny, each of us quit in frustration without having another job to go to. My colleagues are doing fine and so will I, hopefully.
I will be out of my job in less than a month. The quitting period was three months and I have gotten through two. Things are becoming slightly calmer since nobody gives me new cases, new patients anymore. I am tying things up.

The book manuscript is ready, I sent it off to the publisher a week ago, will get it back in two weeks, edited, for review.

Next Monday I and a colleague are delivering a public lecture on communicating with people who have Asperger’s syndrome: how to make sure we really understand each other, and not just assume things. It will be a three-hour lecture delivered twice that day in a large auditorium. The topic is exciting and could generate interest for us as teachers, I hope. That would be a job I would really like.

In the meantime I have applied to several jobs, taking advantage of the fact that I am still not unemployed and do not have to explain why I quit. Nothing so far. (Most weren’t dream jobs anyway.)

Now the challenge is thinking and moving forward on several parallel tracks. Keep applying for jobs. I sent two applications yesterday. Research further teaching or article-writing possibilities, but that needs to wait until after the lecture since this will be my main credential. Create a website for myself as a professional. Research writing another book. Research whether I can translate my book into Polish and publish it there. (Preliminarily yes, but I need to find out more.) Research some education tracks in case there won’t be any job. Most schools have application deadline 15th of April för the autumn term. There is a 1,5 year course for supervisors, half time, at Stockholm university, where I want to apply. But they require that one has a supervision job organized already. So I have been asking around at the workplaces associated with mine or where they know me. No positive answers yet.

It’s a lot of managing diverse tracks. The challenge is staying centered. It’s easy to get distracted, lose creativity, and just grab whatever comes my way to get rid of the uncertainty.

And, this amazing long severe winter is finally over. The snow that came in mid-December stayed firmly put until mid-March. Not even once did it melt. I have posted some pictures in the album Winter. The one below was taken three weeks ago outside our apartment block.

I have finally gotten around to processing and posting the pictures from inside that church, visited during our stay in Cracow in May this year.

The church itself is impossible to miss, standing as it does in the center of Old Town:

It took us a few days walking by before we got a chance to enter. It is not always open, and you enter only at times designated for tourists. Luckily they allow photographing, for an additional fee.

We got more out of it than we ever imagined. We milled around with other tourists, but when it was time to leave, we stayed inside. A mass was to commence. It being May, it was a so-called First Communion Mass for children — the first time they accept the Sacrament. Preparations and the mass itself took quite some time. Apart from the children, also their parents and other wellwishers stayed in the church, and were allowed to move around relatively freely. Which suited us just perfect! We only had to be careful to stay out of the way, not to take too many pictures at once, and of course not to use flash.

View of the main nave:

After the ceremony, the children were led out in groups, but one group was left in the church with their parents, apparently by oversight. Everybody waited for further instructions. After a while, nobody cared anymore, families began walking up to the front and taking pictures of their darlings before the main altar. Thanks to this we, too, could walk up quite close with our cameras.
I don’t know if I had ever been inside St Mary’s Basilica before. I should have, as anyone who grew up and went to school in Poland. But I have no memory of it. The experience was breathtaking. This is the most opulent church I have ever seen. Not a smallest space on the walls or ceiling is left unadorned. The whole experience is somehow feminine, one imagines the ceiling is made of soft velvet. It seemed as distant as the sky and stars:

And the altar, carved in lime wood by Veit Stoss from Nuremberg, in late 15th century — who would believe this is not Baroque? Yet it is not even Renaissance. It’s Gothic! This man could carve anything, even the wind, as the poet Galczynski wrote. I have read somewhere that his altar aroused controversy when unveiled, for he chose as a model for his Mary a young flower seller from the market!

I was very, very happy to have my camera with me. At times one may wonder whether taking photos can detract from the experience. Perhaps, sometimes… but in this case, it enhanced it, allowing me to see things I wouldn’t with the naked eye, and to take the experience with me.

To view these and other pictures properly, go to the album Cracow Old Town, and click on the pictures to get full-size versions.

They seem to have played that Christmas song one time too many in the shopping centers. Now we have lots of snow. Which has resulted, in keeping with the tradition, in a region-wide commuter traffic failure for a couple of days. Most of these days we have luckily been free, so we stayed at home and allowed ourselves to be snowed under.

Our backyard in the snowstorm:

A bus, negotiating its way through the poorly plowed, not sanded street:

A titmouse at the feeder in a brief moment of almost-sunshine:

Ek in the kitchen, trying to ascertain where all the snowflakes are coming from. “But they are still fewer than the digits in the pi number!”

Moonrise:

Ghost of a snow plow, finally sanding the street after 24 hours of snowfall:

I have bought a light therapy lamp. Whether it has any positive health effect I cannot tell yet, I’ve only had it for three days. But I like sitting in its light, and can’t believe how dark it becomes when I switch it off — even with all the other lights on, including what passes as daylight in this country.

Today morning, we put it on our breakfast table. That was nice! We saw what we were eating! (The bluish shadows in the window represent the so-called broad daylight, about 9:30 today.)

Here is a sparrow photographed yesterday. It looks as if it felt about autumn just the way I do. Link to full-size picture further below.

sparrow, full-size

On my way to work, I pass through a villa area. Many houses have gardens with flowers, decorative bushes and fruit trees. In summer, birds feasted on cherries and a passerby like me could also pick a handful from the lowest branches hanging over fences. Now, in September, there are apples in the grass. And plums. A tree nearby spreads a wonderful honey fragrance. I did not understand what it was at first, then I saw heaps of large yellow plums on the asphalt underneath. I ate a few and picked a handful to take home.

There is another plum tree right next to where I walk. It is small, short, with plentiful large plums hanging down from the branches in heavy clusters. But the tree is a good distance from the fence… no luck for me there, though I can’t help eyeying it.

A week ago, the owners trimmed the tree of a half its branches. The cut branches are all lying on a pile by the fence. Still full of fruits. I reached over stealthily and managed to pick the nearest plums. They tasted delicious.

The tree itself has no fruits now. But see what’s underneath?

They cut fruit-bearing branches and let them lie. They gather fallen plums — or maybe pick them? — to leave them under the tree. Why? Are the plums just for decoration? I don’t understand.
The owners of that other tree did not pick their plums either. They drove their car through them.
Even in public spaces, many of the trees in Swedish towns are fruit trees. Several wonderful cherry trees stand along my short walk from the station. Most of them are allowed to grow tall. Only the lowest branches can be reached. In August, day after day I walked by a tree plastered by shining red sour cherries. A cherry lover’s dream. And I wondered and wondered. Why does no one pick the fruit? Give some youngsters ladders and buckets, let them pick the fruit, eat as much as they desire and sell the rest. I would pay handsome money for the fresh, local, fragrant fruit lying in gardens or drying up on the trees. It never makes it to the shops and rarely to markets. It never makes in to people’s bellies. Why?

Ek and I made a round trip by car on Monday in the Nynäshamn area by the Baltic Sea, stopping at locations with interesting nature or buildings. An inspiring, if sweaty, excursion, the last one this summer. Today we both went to work. (It went smoothly. It’s Thursday, we wanted it like this. It’s easier to get oneself back on job track knowing next weekend is coming soon.)

Here are some photos from the excursion:

An early medieval church in Ösmo. Decorated with murals by the order of the same pope who ordered Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel. Once an important temple, today it stands in the middle of pretty much nowhere — slightly more than a village.

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Sorunda, another early medieval church with some Renaissance features. Unfortunately it was closed because of risk for theft. Yet another massive temple filled with historic art, standing in the middle of cottages and fields… Both churches are in continuous use.

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Late afternoon we arrived at Lovön near Nynäshamn, a fantastic place to visit on a day like this. We clambered happily around the rocks and I took a dip in the sea from the small bare rock center left. I haven’t bathed in the sea since the ceremonial dip in the Indian ocean at Puri in 1997!

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This last picture was taken last Sunday. The heron flew unexpectedly overhead during an evening walk around a protected lake not very far from where we live. I didn’t have my proper zoom lens with me, this photo is taken at meagre 210 mm! Grrrr.

It’s been a month since my last entry. I had two weeks very full of work, and now I am halfway through holidays. More precisely, my amassed overtime. Four weeks’ worth.

In contrast to our spring holidays, we haven’t planned any trips, we are staying at home. It’s relaxing, life is simple, we enjoy eating breakfasts together without rush, doing things without rush. But to get out of our ordinary life routine would perhaps be easier if we went somewhere.

When I lived in Almvik, working and studying, I never felt any need to travel somewhere else when I had free time. We lived in a special ecological house at the edge of a forest. I cooked on a woodstove with living fire. One could pick blueberries or mushrooms. And I had a garden I had created myself. There was always something to do there. Working shifts played a role too. I prefer “irregular” working times, as I had back then. Office hours chain my mind to a routine that becomes difficult to break.

I still find travel to be something I would rather skip: a mental challenge with all the preparations. But to stay somewhere else, that would be welcome. Every day begins with us wondering what to do with this day!

We are making small excursions. We need to figure out some bigger ones.

I am also making an effort to do some thinking about ideas or projects that are possible, that I never have enough mental space to think about otherwise.

And no friends to meet with! What a life we are living. I am friendly with some people through my job, but we don’t meet in private, I wouldn’t even want to although I do like them. Real friends, old friends, have scattered across the universe, it seems. A bunch of people I would like to meet, Gaudiya Repercussions pals, live in the USA!

I have never been outgoing or good at networking, but being an immigrant and an ex-Hare Krishna seems to compound the alienation.

As Ek and I walked about in Kazimierz that day, 16th May, we noticed policemen assembling. Many of them. Several police cars. All apparently waiting for something. Looking around, we soon found ourselves at a square where people were assembling with banners and flags. A demonstration for the rights of HBT people, it turned out, cordoned off from all sides by a ring of riot police.

It was chilling. Why would they isolate the demonstrators, did they see them as a threat? Curious, we walked in.

I didn’t expect the message on the banners would hit me the way it did. I have no special place in my heart for gender issues. But some of the slogans made me cry. Poland is a country in the firm grip of the Roman Catholic Church and its moral values; to stand up for gay rights equals opposing the Church. Some of the messages on banners expressed criticism of the Church and of religion. Practically all messages were about ideas; they made no demands and did not call for any concrete action. It was all about asserting one’s right to be what one is and to think and feel what one does — even if it be ridiculed or condemned by the majority. They had but one chant: “Tolerance!”

The slogan here says, “Love is one”:

In Sweden, the rights of HBT people are recognized and Pride parades are attended by mainstream politicians. Even our local food supermarket, on the display of wedding cakes and decorations, features figurines of newlyweds in both hetero- and homosexual edition:

It would take something extreme, like a gay couple demanding to be wed in a church, by a priest, to spark controversy. (A demand that I have little sympathy for: it seems an act of contrariness rather than asserting one’s human rights. Why the church, of all places? They know what the Bible says, so why insist?) Of course discrimination occurs in Sweden too, but the society’s consensus condemns it. I had forgotten how untypical this was of the rest of the world and of my own homeland.

As the group began preparing to leave the square, we realized those hundreds of policemen were not there for surveillance but for protection. Shocking, to see how much of a threat they had anticipated. We followed with them and photographed all the way. It’s amazing Ek did not lose me, for I was running around and climbing on every possible wall or lamppost, anything to get a better view. I was happy to be there. Tempted to just walk with the others, but the urge to see and document took over.

The march left Kazimierz, entered the Old Town of Cracow and ended at the Market Square. The closer we came, the denser the crowds. People staring curiously, incredulously, or cheering the march on, but little or no aggression. At the square, it changed.

We did not know it at that time, but there had been two counter-manifestations taking place there. One of them had announced they would not let the March of Tolerance enter the square. The police must have pushed them off before we came, though. All I saw was empty egg boxes on the asphalt, a few eggs hitting policemen, and groups of jeering, threatening young men. Thirteen people were detained, all from the counter-demonstrations.
All my pictures from the event are in this album:
March of Tolerance

Below, a link to a news article in Polish with pictures from counter-demonstrations:

article and picture gallery