Into the dark

When October and November kick in, you know it is time to look things into the eye that you could dancingly ignore over summer. After my hommage to sunny days, this is to leaning into the dark and just rolling with grey and cold autumn time. We all know, life is not always sunny. And when the sun leaves us, we better address the somewhat darker, deeper and less fun aspects of what we need to do, work on and think about.

And to be honest, I really enjoy it – once I accept it. Time flies anyway – until winter puts its soft white cushions over any muddy brown combat fields.

In November, Philipp joined an International Conference on Neonatology in Venice – meeting up with experts supporting his pharmaceutical start-up project. It was such a nice chance to meet Philipp’s brother-in-arms, Stefan and his family, Katarina and Ellen. The following photos are dedicated to the Johansson-Novak family-encounter over coffee, Biennale impressions and Spaghetti alle Vongole:

Plane tree at Giardini

Brothers in arms for healthy newborn babies

Sound Stones at Arsenale Harbour

Austrian Pavillon

Coffee for Stefan

Philipp and Charlotte

I was never really a Venice fan. But this autumn I felt its magic spell. The ambivalent combination of picturesque perfection and marine roughness makes it so fragile and mystic. As a sailor’s daughter, I know sunshine can turn into wild, scary darkness within minutes. And that is exactly what I love about the unpredictable power of water and wind. It makes me feel humble and in awe.

Lido beach

For Mum’s 65th Birthday, my sister and I spent a weekend with Mama in Southern Spain. Their autumn feels like our summer and it is easy to be sunny, when you are blessed with this amount of light for most of the year. I was deeply impressed by their cheerfullness and joy when hitting the dark sides of life.

I mean, listen to Flamenco and you enter every imaginable kind of human drama! But it does not stop them from moving their hips in the most graceful ways and singing with their whole hearts. Even cemeteries seem to have a lively tune in the air.

Unfortunately this does not apply to politics. Politically speaking, when times get less sunny, humans tend to lose trust quickly. Putting the men that scream the loudest up the hierarchical political ladder to lead us back to sunnier fields, is a tricky game. That is especially the case when votes are based on fear – fear of the other, fear of the unknown, fear of having to leave our collective comfort zones. The day of the Austrian parliamentary elections was a dark moment for many of us.

The Hungarian pavillon at the Biennale was all about viability and necessity of utopias. It proposed replacing the currently prevailing pessimism with reassuring scenarios to keep our faith in the coming of a better age.

“Imagine all the people, …”!