One of my inspirations is the vivid imagery of human pleasures in slow motion. Sure one would normally think I mean our sensual aspects of life. For this certainly slowness is a bit too narrow as things can be so heated that everything just ends in an "explosion". I would imagine that a good life involves a variation of the tempo when it comes to this kind of pleasure though and similar to many other of them. Variation of tempo is kind of equivalent to a creative living in my mind. But now I want to speak about slowness and how we can improve our life through a more "slow cooking" of our experiences. Pleasures can be food for example, as a classic non-sexual activity. I touched on this in my post about food dance. In this post I want to take up one of my favorite parts of Sweden, Norrland (the land of the north). And more specifically their slow mindset and how they connect to each other slowly and make a pleasure of it. I will illustrate this with a short story from my life;

It is summer. My stepfather and I were picking up a tool from one of my niece's friends. We needed to pick it up on the other side of the village. We did so in my pearl and waterhole in life, my little electric car. This beautiful jewel gives life something extra. Something to zoom along the roads, with an open window and air combing my body and hair. And usually those suckers are quite fun to drive with some serious action if you push the accelerator. As we returned my father asked me to take a detour through another village further away where our white chalked and majestic church hoovered over the valley beneath it. I love the scenery there, so I said it was a great idea, turned around, and headed in the new direction. We talked very little. Just small words about nature's artistic creations. How they enamor us of this art, as we pass through the world. How all these surroundings touch our minds as we move. As we reached the village my father asked what I suspected. He wondered if we could stop by the church yard, and so we did. Life will end someday and a few weeks before he had been visiting the gate at hindsight and returned after his heart stoped for a moment at the hospital. I guess he was contemplating life and the reality of it. I felt the moment deeply reflecting on those dear souls that we've lost, now at rest in the yard. I thought about my father and myself as well. Life's continuation and how hard it will be to leave it, some point in the future. Hard to be a stone figure when sitting there, feeling. Anyway we looked at each other, my eyes were wetted and I was emotionally taken. But at the same time I felt the slowness, how we had this common moment, touching and tough in some sense. We felt the life in our veins and I moved the car along the down path beneath the church. A very small and narrow road where only one car can pass at a time. We did not say much, just a few small words, deep, humming male voices. A car came up behind us as we moved so slow and contemplated still the moment. We let the car pass us by slightly turning into a side street, then continued. As we moved on we were ready to enter the highway, the tenseness and sensitivity had dried out and life started to be present. The church was now just a beautiful object immersed in the scenery. There were no cars and I drove onto the highway, straightened the car and then we looked at each other and nodded slightly. I pushed the accelerator to the bottom and a smile entered our faces and a small laugh could be heard as the car jumped away with all its power. I just love these Northlandic moments in life.