You can find additional content by clicking many of the images and underlined links below.

Please bear with me while I am in the midst of migrating my blog to substack.

Carl Jung on Synchronicities

Beginning at a young age, Carl Jung had direct personal experience with the paranormal, including unusual visions and events that could not be explained. This led to his fascination with the unknown, the mysteries of the supernatural and his longtime interest in parapsychology... He observed early on that scientific rationality could not easily explain many things. Jung's ideas at that time intersected with what we now know as modern quantum physics and the double split experiment, where particles can behave differently, depending on whether they are observed...

Synchronicities, according to Jung, are events that coincide in time and appear meaningfully related, yet lack a discoverable causal connection and are, according to him, a profound interaction between our consciousness and the physical world..

Poem by Derek Walcott

Poet and playwright Derek Walcott (1930-2017) originally set out to follow in his father’s footsteps as a painter but soon switched to writing. He published his first work while still a teenager. Born on the island of Saint Lucia, Walcott was the first Caribbean to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992. He was also the recipient of a McArthur genius award and the T.S. Eliot Prize , among other honors.

“Love After Love”
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Scandinavian Nordic Noir Television

I might be partial having been married to a Dane for 25 years and having so many connections to that region of the world but when I am looking for something good to watch on TV, I turn to the Scandinavian thrillers and mysteries. They seem to be more sophisticated and intelligent than your run of the mill American equivalents as clearly evident in the contrast between Swedish vs. American version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. If for some reason you missed that movie (or book for that matter by Stieg Larsson), it is well worth watching and reading...

Here are a few of my favorites, available on various tv platforms.

Deadwind, on Netflix, is a Finnish thriller featuring a very interesting intelligent female detective, Sofia Karppi, 30 something from the Finnish police department. Recently widowed, she is raising a young son and teenage stepdaughter. The plot revolves around her discovery of a young woman's body on a construction site and a chain of events that threaten to destroy her life again...

One of my favorites of all times (and chilling in a political way) is a series called Occupied, available on Apple TV. The premise of the show is that the Green Party wins in Norway and decides it is irresponsible of them to continue producing oil. Russia and the EU freak out because they are dependent on their oil and Russia decides to take action by occupying Norway, saying they will just stay long enough to get oil production up and running again. Plausible, yes and you will be on the edge of your seat with this intelligent thriller that evokes the history of Norwegian Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling ...The series got under the skin of the Kremlin--read here to see why...Search around but you can definitely see it on youtube.

Trapped, on amazon prime, is another of these great TV series, this time coming to you from Iceland. It is a crime-drama series following a police department as they try to uncover a mystery against the elements, in the constantly snowy environment of a small town. When a dismembered, mutilated body washes up onshore, the local police realise a murder has taken place just hours before. Everybody trapped in the vicinity, including the inhabitants of a 300 person ferry from Denmark, immediately become potential suspects and chaos descends as they try to find the killer.

There are so many great shows--I only mention a few here, none of them new. I will revisit this topic again...

Photo of the Week

A very colorful house full of art in El Cerrito, California.

Charity of the Week:

About The Author

New York City based contemporary artist, Pam Smilow, began writing the creative lifestyle blog “things we love” in an effort to foster a sense of community during times of isolation and reflection. To read more about her and her art, visit her website and check out the essay written by Frank Matheis entitled The Sophisticated Innocence of Pam Smilow.