On the move
Puer to Senex
What ties me down is what sets me free
Tankerton - UK
3 June 2025
How to escape the reality I’ve created for myself - and do I want to escape it. Is getting out better than getting distracted.
I inherit the breakups and the deaths.
My freedom is my prison.
What ties me down is what sets me free.
Lizzie comes on the stereo in the seaside pub - talks of parties, dresses and american sadness on the road. Around me the tentacles and the ties of a community, those people who live by the cliffs. The chattering, the exaggerated laughter, gentle smiles and old couples looking in the distance. Not much of a crowd. A late afternoon glow. The flirting at the counter. The young girl left alone at her table sips a beer ; she lets her hair down and for a moment the sun behind her gets split in a multitude of warm rays that get scattered across the room. Sunset will come soon.
Past the tainted windows the ocean is calm ; serene. I wonder what lies on the other side and how far that is.
The clunk of wine glasses behind the bar shifts me back to my stool. The wooden ceiling beams all point towards the exit.
The tape that doesn’t make it
Wye - UK
5 June 2025
It’s uncomfortable. That bench is sloppy. The wind is strong. I can’t hold the pages down ; looks like layers peeling off ; maybe a good thing. But the pages are still empty and their turning too quick. I intend to fill them with ink, slowly, with purpose, over the next 3 months.
I don’t know what to write for the time being, but I feel an urge to hold pen and paper.
In front of me, a clear horizon. The vast fields of Kent.
I’ll set off for London tomorrow, again. Whilst my friends are buying flats and having kids, I’m looking for water taps, launderettes, and shops with big enough parking lots. What am I really looking for?
I’m getting overwhelmed by the prospect of this Scandinavian trip. Weeks in the making, but most of it in my head. I need to lay stuff down. I want too much, too many journeys at once - the drive out on the open road, the dive down inside the mind, the creative pursuit. I’m still wondering how to ensure that I do it for myself. How to reconcile that with the documenting of it. And a need to make something that transcends me.
Why? Not sure. Another reason for it. Validation. Purpose that goes beyond me. I’m afraid that doing it just for me won’t be enough. But why do I need to make a performance out of it, and with that, the risk of losing authenticity? What am I trying to reach for? Me should be enough. Only me. Only is everything. That’s the vision. The perspective. The shift.
Rebalance. Repurpose.
Me. Me. Me.
Trusting the journey ; the observation ; the feelings ; the discovery. Documenting. Whichever form the moment inspires, whichever format the heart dictates. Just doing. Just being. For the sake of it.
What if what’s left is the inbetween? The claps, the cues, the real deal. Is ‘authenticity’ the not trying? The space between rolling and performing ; what’s left on the cutting table. The tape that doesn’t make it.
I can’t tell whether I’ll end up with something truer if I expect to throw it all away.
There’s no fear if I don’t expect anything.
The Puer Aeternus (Eternal Child) is a Jungian archetype that lives inside many artists, dreamers, wanderers.
Restlessly, idealistic, enchanted by beauty, freedom, and possibility ; allergic to rules, time, responsibility, limitations.
When he dominates, he keeps one flying—never landing
The senex is the archetype on the other end ; the older energy: structure, depth, patience, weight, integrity.
Moving from Puer to Senex. Moving from potential to presence.
On Growth
London - UK
23 June 2025
The Funny One deflects pain with charm.
The need to feel special overrides the need to feel whole.
The need of the Eternal Child - Puer Aeternus. What is a Puer Aeternus? How does he shift and transform into a Senex - a grounded wise man?
What is the Persona? What is the Shadow? What is the Anima?
Which Archetypes pull my strings?
Below the Ego, behind the cracks, my Self.
Have I ever known it? Can I remember it? Can I get closer?
The Shadow is not the enemy, it’s the seed.
Connection still feels like a threat to authenticity. Trading truth for approval.
I perform brightness even when I’m dim inside. I want love, but I fear it will vanish when my light dims. I need to hide my faults. I need to hide my weaknesses. I need to hide what’s dark. I need to hide when I’m not at my best. People won’t stick around if I’m not at my best. Even at my best, I’m not enough. Have I got the right to not be at my best? Am I enough when I’m me, when me is not quite there? When me misses the mark. Is it ok to want silence? Is it ok to be tired?
When do I rest if I perform energy when I’m tired? and when do I reset if I perform brightness when I’m dark?
What does it mean to fully show up.
My greatness already lies here. My capacity to be fully me.
Bold is not big. Bold is true.
My mind is a loud city of voices.
I need a pause for clarity. I need to understand the voices. Where they come from and what they want.
A shift from fixing to emerging.
Giving space to the unknown.
Trust the unfolding.
I can leap if I can land.
Do I learn to leap? Or do I learn to land?
Growing is descending.
I want the man to take in the hurt. I want the man to handle it. If everything was to fall apart, I’d still be enough. When everything falls apart, I am enough.
Voices. Archetypes. Strings. Masks.
Sit with me. Move with me. Breathe my air. Sleep new nights.
I am you. You are me.
Touching The Shadow
Canterbury - UK
26 June 2025
Eyes on the road.
Heart in the pocket.
Pocket full of gold.
A dialogue with the night.
With my night.
Don’t mistake transgression for transformation.
Dancing on the edge.
Art that bleeds - hunger, desire, risk, sex, decay.
A flicker in the grain.
The art of rhyming vulnerability with power.
What does a shadow reflect when held in front of a mirror?
Bending light. Revealing absence, shape, and movement. What emerges.
There’s no escape in darkness, where I reveal myself.
Can I look myself in the eye? Who am I looking at?
Touch them to understand what they know about you.
The lucid tenderness of dangerous places.
Stroking hair while asking what their dreams are made of.
I don’t want their name.
Touch me like you’re folding linen. Hold me with intention.
Feeling the flow
Dover - UK
3 July 2025
The weight in my hips. The weight in my feet. My weight on the ground.
Holding space and holding time.
Slowing my pace down.
Holding space and holding time.
The ferry pushes me away.
Pulls me away from this hole in the ground.
“‘I am safe in my body.
I carry the Father within me.
He walks with me.
He speaks through me. I listen.
I am safe in my body.
I won’t abandon you.’”
I packed a van and began driving north.
I’m carrying a voice I don’t recognise anymore, and the echo of a boy I never quite let go of.
Somewhere near the top of Norway, I’ll set him free.
How long do I need to wander to truly meet myself?
I wanted freedom, solitude, escape. Underneath was something else.
Purpose. Creativity. Belonging. Love. Masculinity. Expressing myself. Finding that Self.
On the road, I found the concept of the Eternal Child. It hit me like a mirror. Now the van isn’t just a van anymore. The road not just asphalt. It becomes a personal journey. A rite of passage. A path toward something I can’t name yet.
A shedding of skin. Chasing the myth. Hunting for the Man.
I drive North. To the farthest point I can reach. Something’s waiting in the cold.
No plan, only direction.
Here’s my logbook. Somewhere between land and sea, static and silence, something begins to shift.
From Puer to Senex. Child to Man. Boyhood to bone.
From escapism to grounding. From noise to silence.
Fragments. Memories. Tape. Hiss. Lomography. Blur. Field recordings. The moment. Music of the landscape - the one out there and the one within me.
Built from imperfection.
After the night, past the fog, from the fragments, I hope to build a spine.
I’m starting the drive on my longest road.
The bumper cars of Brakel
Brakel - Belgium
5 July 2025
Two hours into Belgium.
The park led to the town. The town led to the square. The square was the fair. “Here for a week,” the bartender said.
Three hours into Belgium.
I’m drunk. Neons, screams, kids, kicks, spinning lights, rides and music. I’m overwhelmed. Parents and their children. I wonder if I’ll ever bring mine to a place like this. It plays on my mind. Not grief exactly — a flicker of something that I always thought would be.
Four hours into Belgium.
Drunk crying.
Bumper cars - childhood ghosts. Fragments.
Memories of the waft of fried onions in the streets on those long summer nights. And that of the smoke from the rides — drifting through it. The showmen shouting through their mics: “Allez, allez, encore un tour! Eeeeeet ca repart! Allez on acceleeeeeere!” Flashes. Colours. Cotton candy — that sweet pink cloud that once in your mouth suddenly vanishes. A thousand sparks in the sky, all colours, fading slowly too, lying down along the horizon. Hundreds of strangers. Thousands maybe. Their gaze pointing in the same direction. Unity, for a brief moment. United in the same illusion.
In the middle of my daze, from a distance, the sound of bagpipes grows. A man in full Scottish regalia weaves through the crowd, booming. He blows into his horn, breathless, red cheeks, passes between the terrace tables, enters the bar. The bartender runs after him yelling something about wearing underwear.
Bumper cars. It suddenly hits me that my greatest pleasure was to avoid others. To swerve, trace clean curves. To avoid collision and violence. The crash. The hit. The pain. To fully enjoy the beauty of the curve. To caress the turn. To feel its force carrying me further. Even the last-second dodge — sharper, but just as controlled. Charging straight ahead. Face to face with the other. Two bulls. Two knights. Then, the sharp turn. The escape. The stolen thrill. My pleasure. I rejoice.
What to make of these patterns? Simple childhood games? Or something else beneath? Between two beers I need to piss. ‘Left’ they say. I go left. I mistakenly walk into someone’s apartment.
Five hours into Belgium.
Night falls. A middle-aged drunk woman wants me for the night.
Magic was a childhood passion. Illusion. Control. Surprise. Performance. I’m not manipulative. But I know how to shift attention. To draw the eye to one side while the truth, the mechanism, unfolds on the other, out of sight. Not a gift. Not a flaw. A necessity. To hide when needed. To protect and preserve truth while illusion plays upfront. And maybe, with time, a consequence: believing that we all play all the time. Always digging deeper to find people. To find a truth. The masks — how thick are they? Games. Boys forever.
Six hours into Belgium.
Fries. A cold breeze. Rain in the distance. Bedtime.
Clean your shoes
Amsterdam - Netherlands
9 July 2025
'Clean your shoooeeesss!! It's ruining the outfiiiiit!!'
Memories of that middle aged dutch lady, shouting at me at the bottom of the stairs to Amst. Centraal.
She was so right.
Hobbies, fleeting
Projects, fleeting.
Location, fleeting.
People, fleeting.
My mind, …
I fantasise about future possibilities, ideal versions of myself.
Stagnation is death - a slow death by mundanity.
Entrapment of the mind, entrapment of the body.
Death by regrets is my greatest fear.
Death by mundanity comes second.
Can one die of regret?
Grounded in boredom. A motion sickness in which I want to be sick and intoxicated.
Don’t disappoint and don’t hurt.
Be good. Not you. Good.
Is good, me?
Am I good by default, or do I need to perform?
I didn’t build myself around what I felt. The Self is not to be built. The Self has been suffocated.
To receive love, to be worthy of love, I gave up my emotional space.
A Suffocating trap. Waking up in panic looking for air. After the collapse of the lungs came the collapse of a fragile world.
The liminal zone
Trappenkamp - Germany
13 July 2025
I’m disorientated - Feels like walking a liminal zone
Revisiting the behind the curtains, again and again, and turning the windows into mirrors. My Anima staring at me through them - every step of the way, every turn, every corner, every window a projection. Confronting it. In the den my battle.
My ego is the vessel of my imagination. People and places collapse inside my memory. Madness or wisdom. Reality, that projection we agree to sleepwalk in.
Who I was is slowly vanishing.
Walking towards my threshold, the death of the former Self.
Fragments & Flashes of Amsterdam
The narrow streets. The skin-scorching sun. Des baisers sulfureux. Sweat dripping. Women and thresholds, in waiting. Darkness. Brief exchanges, a tremble, a whisper. Mirrors looking back. Silence and shallow breaths. Plastic. Red & Black. Strangers. No mask — only masks. Qu'importe.
Scrolling through old pictures, I look like a ghost.
Only halfway through Germany, and I mix up Antwerp with Amsterdam, Bremen, Lille. None of them matter. All the same to me. Not in Scandinavia yet. Such a long slow way up, and all is mixed up already. All the roads turn into one. I'm scared of going back. I'm scared of what will happen, because so much already has. Movement, grief, destruction, lights, smoke. Flashes from Belgium and neons from De Wallen. Whiskey by the water and grass on pastel red bricks. I got lost behind Aldi. Days Blur. Time stops. I’m in London, Bali, Nigeria - all at once. Drifting through a map, it’s all laid out, the compass points North. Its arm trembles, tentative. I turn the headlights off for a detour, longing for more, hungry for more. Mirrors again, all around me - red light and the sun comes through this thick velvet curtain. Behind it, streets and noise. An endless hunger unfolds. A jolt, and gone.
An addiction on a drip. Entering me and making one with my blood. Can’t shake out that longing, and how is this any relief? Late at night it comes alive. Empty me, I’m full of it. The road is only twists and turns. I'm looking, searching for it. In The Thick of Night it appears. The Shadow is moving, the edge is near. I walk that line, hand on heart, heart on my sleeve, sleeve up my arm, the drip, sweat dripping, infused smoke, burnt ashes, incandescence. Flames are high by the water on this endless night. When comes the morning?
At dusk the fog comes down. There’s a Self out there. In the dark woods I throw it all out in the fire. People left behind, they burn here too. Backseat hobo looking for something ; none of that no more.
The fog lifts and unveils an alleyway at dawn, still humid from the night ; still humid my skin, for giving it once more. I gave it all. Tight throat, havens, working roundabouts. It's slippery now. Them behind, they burn. Dozens more. Pulling the tight rope and holding hips like holding on to a flicker of hope.
Freshly cut grass and filtered coffee pots
Rodding - Denmark
16 July 2025
The jarring and out-of-place smell of freshly cut grass.
By the side of the highway, between the trucks, diesel, and grey water spilling over the concrete.
Sundays in the countryside come back to me —
the mid-morning golden sun. Familiar birds. The scent of just-brewed coffee, steam still curling from the glass pot. A long, slow day that felt like it would never end — yet always ended too soon. What’s left behind: colours, sounds, and scents.
Here, the coffee is worth nothing.
Still, I seek it, wait for it. The burn of the first sip. A stimulant that helps soothe.
My foot presses down and the rest area is gone in a flash.
Too fast. I’m back with the carved white lines that never end.
Endless roads. Endless days.
The coffee. The cut grass.
Two worlds crash with nothing in common.
Miles blur past in bursts. So do faces — virtual masks that amuse me. Memories and past lives, people and places ; my worlds blend, realities braid into one another. The distances I cross each day always bring me back to the same place - an echo chamber. So what is the need to leave? What is the need to move? There is, inside the unknown, a loss of bearings. Losing reference to find something new. Alone with myself. Nothing resembles anything anymore. Letters swirl in a fevered waltz, settling wherever they please, forming alien words — not words anymore but shapes, familiar and unfamiliar all at once. A liminal space, where reality splinters.
I saw a windmill today. A Dutch windmill, on the Danish border.
One hesitant step inside — I glance at the dark wood tools. I hear murmurs from the room next door, and meet the gaze of a woman with glasses, her hair just like my grandmother’s — soft grey curls, floating in still air above a kind face. I offer a faint smile and move toward the exit. She catches up to me and invites me to visit the mill, and to have a coffee. She hands things off to her colleague, whose English —simple, but enough — will do better.
For the next twenty minutes, we climb from floor to floor inside the mill - wooden ladders tied with thick rope, dusty planks glowing under soft light spilling in through small windows carved into thick concrete walls. Four levels. Each with its own hulking wooden mechanism. Wheels you could get lost in, ropes and brake systems that — together — from floor to floor, turn grain into flour. Flour slowly packed into cotton sacks marked in French ink.
The mill’s been out of use since the 1950s, but the team still takes turns caring for it, turning it once a week — spinning the blades so the rainwater flows. Seventy people a year. Volunteers. The coffee is hot, and takes me back again to the glass pots of my childhood. The cake is delicious. My hosts invite me to the evening performance at the open-air theatre near the lake. Shows run for two weeks — an homage to Danish folklore and the Vikings.
Out of phone credit, I look for wi-fi near the little shops on the town square. I am staying away from social media during this trip. But I am interested to think of the masks they help us wear. A magnified Persona. Ravenous, destructive. Writing new truths, new stories, new narratives.
Where does the Shadow hide now?
The Self is the center of the psyche.
Integration.
Wholeness.
The Senex walks the road back to the Self by descending into Shadow, ripping the masks, listening to the Anima, and carrying the Child.
The Shadow is everything that is repressed, lost, forgotten: fears, shame, desires, rawness, mess, rage, craving, vulnerability …
It is not the enemy, but power unclaimed.
The more it lies hidden, in the unconscious, the more control it holds.
When faced, it can fuel depth, art, truth.
Let the fears, the desires, the encounters of the night come to light.
Writing from the Shadow. Art that bleeds.
The Anima is the inner feminine relating function in a man - emotional depth, intuition, erotic power, vulnerability. A means to communicate with both the outer and his inner world.
The Anima, when unclaimed, not integrated, will be projected, mostly onto women - lovers, muses, an obsession, a longing. Crave for a woman to “see me”.
To truly grow, the Anima must be integrated ; to listen inward, to make the muse a part of oneself.
Stop outsourcing your emotional life.
Your Anima is your bridge to deep intuition and creative authenticity.
Stop chasing - invite.
The Persona is the mask -layers of masks- built, sculpted, polished, shown to the world.
A false identity, a fake life. Built from demands. Built to belong. Approval.
The risk? Getting stuck in the image and never growing deeper roots.
There will always be a Persona - individuation means not hiding behind it. Being aware of it. Carving it consciously. The Persona serves truth.
Making Waves
Greve - Denmark
18 July 2025
That feeling of abandonment.
Who abandons me? How am I abandoning myself?
When I give it all I lose myself.
What am I giving, to who? Why?
I’ll find myself and it’ll make waves, but they’ll be mine.
Copenhagen
Copenhagen - Denmark
19 July 2025
That dream that won’t go away - sat on the edge of her bed, discussing Milan. Nothing but skin. Her round breasts for all to see, except there’s only me. She stands up, casually puts on her flurry slippers and fetches me a glass of water. We’ve known each other for years. Maybe we’ve been to the movies, or spent some time at the cafe down the road. Fine curves, her face is blurred. Skin made of silk. She quietly opens the door. A final whisper and I wake up - my legs are flaking.
She carries both sweetness and ache. Weakened, the daylight catches up with me.
I’ve never felt as lonely as I do now amongst this crowd. I wander adrift, not knowing what I’m looking for. Going after toxicity and illusions. For the first time in my life, I don’t feel equipped for companionship. I don’t know that I can find stability. I feel like everything is ephemeral. An illusion through which I’m flying. Disconnected. Dissociated.
Afraid of regrets. Afraid to die with regrets. Not afraid to die. Can one die of regret? The aching pain in the heart that can’t be cured. Tearing off the pages of a calendar like peeling off layers of skin. Am I making of life a frenetic race away from regrets?
It lingers.
Creating layers of illusions in the sunny streets of Copenhagen. Feels like I'm letting some masks slip, whilst putting on new ones. Is that integration? Tears dry quicker in the sun. Expecting humanity off a transaction. Feeling inadequate.
Meatpacking has become an enclave of expensive restaurants. Outside tables well laid out with crystal wear. Well groomed clientele, designer handbags parading around. A few hippies too, all of them somehow turned towards the sun, like sunflowers, eyes closed, dreads to the ground.
The most elegant middle aged Danish lady passes by me, hopping on her bike. Silk blue top, creme linen trousers. Long blonde wavy hair gently dancing in the soft breeze. One foot on the pedal. Effortless. My mouth is full of cold steak burrito.
After a night by the stadium, Sunday morning coffee. Clear blue skies and a sun that burns already at this early hour. Bird, at the corner of Palaegade and Store Kongensgade. Classically stylistically Danish. Airy, minimal, breathy. Inspired of the japanese hifi bars. Vinyls spinning. Espresso tonic, and Charlie Parker in the background. Tasty - the drinks, the space, the mood. Calm and serenity. I close my eyes. Calm after the storm. Another sip. Bitterness in bubbles. Comforting discomfort. Reclaiming groundedness.
Fredrik's church finds me again, many years after my last visit to Copenhagen. No church has left such a vivid mark on my mind. The grandiosity, underneath the enveloping scale of its dome. Looking into infinity, being sucked into it. No angles, lines or edges. Perfect curve - holding itself, supporting its wholeness. Grounded. A senex design. Totality through itself.
I’m drawn to black and white - textures, grit, noise and mess. I’m drawn to bold colours - flat, clean shapes, minimal design. Nothing in between. No stale warm water. Hot or cold. And shifting from one to the other.
If I don't own my space I can't stand on my own two feet.
North of Roseborg Castle. Vivid ochre buildings, dusty bricks, the passing of time. Roses ornating doorways and wooden windows. Bicycles in between. Calm and stillness. A dry early afternoon. Some kids play football in a nearby street. Their screams and the bounce of the ball on walls echoes through the deserted alleyways. An old lady in a bright flowery dress works a crossword on a shaded bench. Her glasses perform an equilibrist act right at the edge of the tip of her nose - feet away from her eyes, it seems.
Riding the rails back I’m starving, hot, feeling weak. The sun passes through plastic sheets that reflect a pastel pink shade throughout Rodovre station. Flashbacks of Amsterdam and its neons. Sounds and colours become sharp and blurred out at the same time. A feeling I know too well. I need food. Sugar. Memories of playing basketball with my dad in the courtyard. Flashes. Black screens. Heat. Bouncing. Throw. Black screen. Flash. Falling on my dad. Being picked up. Walking back inside. Not a word. Finding cool air again. Memories of Greece. Heat. Black screen. Dehydration. Entering a train station. Flashes. Need food. Holding on to a pole. Black screen. Flashes. Noise. Shaking as if electricity was going through my body. Flashes. Fragments. Waking up to paramedics on top of me. Flashes. Food. Noise. Neons. Pink. Black screen. Amsterdam. Heat. Sweat. Flshe. Crash. Dehydka. Bla.. scrnm. Flag.. amste... od cra. .f... de...h d. G
Day 1
Norra Akarp - Sweden
21 July 2025
“no more dissipation, it’s time for me to quietly watch the world and even enjoy it, first in woods like these, then just calmly walk and talk among people of the world, no booze, no drugs, no binges, no bouts with beatniks and drunks and junkies and everybody, no more I ask myself the question O why is God torturing me, that’s it, be a loner, travel, talk to waiters only, in fact, in Milan, Paris, just talk to waiters, walk around, no more self- imposed agony... it’s time to think and watch and keep concentrated on the fact that after all this whole surface of the world as we know it now will be covered with the silt of a billion years in time... Yay, for this, more aloneness”
The repeat creates the pattern’s inner tension
Bjarnum - Sweden
21 July 2025
The child still jumps out and takes over. Everything that had been built just before evaporates. When he jumps in I put on a mask, a clown costume with devil thorns.
I’m daydreaming. Tired. W — the Insomniac Boy — has been active. He, too, jumps out. The Red Hot plays on a loop inside my head. My relationship to women wants to weave itself. A tapestry. Corners, angles, edges I hadn’t considered before.
Am I trying to reach out to something too far beyond and ruining this experience? Or am I confronting this energy, staring it in the face? Hide and seek. Drags me down — In the shadows I dive. I drown. I breathe. Apnea. Down in the shadows. Bottomless well. The stagnant waters. Eruption. Out the light. Reconvene with the mother. Black gloves. Silk. Tights. Neons.
The ant goes around the rope and around the rope. My mind - a storm and a blank at the same time. A compulsion. Because I’m not good alone. Pain in my stomach. Breathing. Ana jumps platforms, and the masks, they slip. Two now. It's two now. And Alice. My eye of Fatma is loosening.
I remember when I first did this, the journaling, on the road. Middle of France: A large area of high grass, vibrant, yellow and purple, by the stream, orange sky. My first stop. I wrote about the drawer I’d forgotten to lock the day I left. How it flew open. Fell out and broke.
I’ll record the lake tonight. Elizabeth says hi, from Argentina.
Sharp stomach pain — diaphragm attack.
Ana doesn’t know who I am.
I’ll record the lake tonight. And the sound of boats. There are upside-down boats here. They look interesting. Sharp pain. Diaphragm.
Now I understand why you say men play with your heart.
What’s your favourite horror movie?
I’m starting the Senex work. Tonight I finish Joe Brainard. Then onto The Puer Problem. Integration. I don’t know how to stop this.
I’m wondering whether Karma’s question —what are you searching for?— and her follow-up —what is that cage you’re trapped in?—might be the first stepping stone.
Ana is an instagram model. She has a cute english accent. I don’t understand anything she says. Victoria also jumps platforms — we parachute out of the conversation.
So, Victoria and I — my brain write about itself. Victoria and I can co-write a book. Whoop — the lake!
Victoria and I — co-writing. The road trip. Four hands pulling a thread. This story is going nowhere.
I need to record the lake tonight. Sharp pain in the diaphragm. What is espresso tonic?
A Swedish red ant - I don’t think that’s a species. It’s just a red ant that happens to be in Sweden. A Swedish red ant bites me. Sharp pain. Crease of my arm. The neck of the elbow. Skin goes red. Needle-like prickle.
I have videos of the lake. Tonight I do the sound. And the boats. I need pictures too. Tomorrow I load the lomo. Elizabeth is a nurse. I’m scared. Tall dark green trees all around me — Sunlight slipping through the moving leaves.
Copenhagen behind. And Meli. Now Sweden.
When to start. When to stop. And what matters?
I’ll follow the book. I need videos of the map.
Are you a bit of a nudist? I think I am. Why are you telling me this?
It starts now. I’m scared of getting dragged. Dragged down the shadow. Apnea. 1, 2, 3, 4.
If I land in your country tomorrow… I not enough? The Man in the Mirror — M — looks out. There’s a lake. And upside-down boats. Tall herb that swings slowly with the wind. Ripples. Light reflections.
I remember the dense forests of England. Sandringham. Thanet — a year ago. The Wounded Lover — H — and a strong Anima. My relationship to women. To the mother. Tonight I start reading Puer. Chapter 1. Soon I’ll be alone here. Me and the forest. I took a picture of flowery patterns to send to Lais, at the Designmseum.
“A pattern — shapes and colours, repeated. A pattern repeat. The repeat creates the pattern’s inner tension.”
The repeat creates the pattern’s inner tension.
The repeat creates the pattern’s inner tension.
Becoming starts with lies.
Truth is no absolute — merely a consensus. An acceptance by repetition.
Being a fraud is beginning. Putting the future on replay.
What about real world shadows and how they change throughout the day?
Shadows are the longest at sunrise and sunset. Let’s think of a day as a lifetime.
Sunset is birth and childhood. The Shadow is long. The child, naive, innocent, plays with it. Visible and meaningless.
Sunrise is elderhood and death. The elder, wise and experienced, carries the Shadow behind him like a flag. Visible and meaningful.
In between - noon, adulthood. The shadow is shortest, invisible. The adult walks on it, unaware.
It is at noon that the Shadow hides beneath us, invisible, most dangerous. Affecting our choices unconsciously. Most performative.
The work is to name it, so that at dusk the wise elder -the Senex- can walk beside it. It doesn’t dominate, it stands as an experience.
The longer the shadow, the more I can see how far I've come.
At dusk I can see what’s been with me all day.
Puer to Senex ; not a path of removing ; not a path of forgetting ; a path of emerging.
A chat with Karma
Bjarnum - Sweden
22 July 2025
Got to Sweden 3 days ago — the real start of my road North. Top of Norway. I’ve been alone in the forest for the last two nights — wild, quiet and grounding.
The flow came good and easy. The ideas of The Problem of the Puer Aeternus will guide the project. The inner work started well before the camera was rolling. I feel behind, I need to catch up creatively.
What is the format? I trust it’ll reveal itself. I need to put the backlog behind me. I need to document the present for the sake of authenticity.
‘As I read your messages - there’s something I need to ask you… is overthinking something that you’re attempting to end?’
“The puer aeternus never quite touches the earth. He never quite commits himself to any mundane situation but just hovers over the earth, touching it from time to time, alighting here and there, so that one has to follow such traces as there may be. [...]
They do not like conventional situations; they ask deep questions and go straight for the truth. [...]
Such people tell you suddenly that they have another plan, that this is not what they were looking for. And they always do it at the moment where things become difficult. It is the everlasting switching which is the dangerous thing, not what they do. [...]
That is the great problem, I think, in a nutshell; namely, how can one pull out of this fantasy of youth and youthfulness without losing its value? How can one grow up without losing the feeling of totality and the feeling of creativeness and of being really alive, which one had in youth?”
People talk of ‘talent’.
I don’t know. It doesn’t mean much. It’s dismissive even.
There is technical ability in talent. The cost of hundreds of hours or work. Solitary work - hundreds of failures, picking yourself back up every single time, and keep going. The ability to use a tool as a means of expression.
There is grieving in talent. Putting a song out means dozens of them, unfinished, left to rot on a hard drive somewhere. And hard drives piling up over the years. Putting a book out is hundreds of pages of crumbled paper in the bin - each page more frustration and less belief. A project that see light of day is the abortion and the grief of the ones that will forever live in the shadows.
A long journey, and I can’t tell whether the joy and relief of something being out makes up for the pain, the tears and the sweat left in the process.
There is a sense of completion. But the beauty is in the journey, not the product, and the journey is a battle. The beauty is the battle. And a battle is ugly.
[ref Gracq - les livres non aboutis]
There is creation in talent. Creation is reaction, A reaction to an observation. An observation turned into an intuition. An intuition is an emotional response to stimuli experienced before. A recall. Knowledge and references. Creative references. Talent is recalling, compiling and merging what’s been done before. Adding a small brick to the output of humanity.
There is no miracle in talent.
Just humanity and battles.
Imposter syndrome.
Imposter syndrome with women too - they’ll expect much more than what I am.
V
Annerstad - Sweden
23 July 2025
Hey V
You weren’t around in 2001
Can you believe it?
Hey V
Marilyn, John, Diana, Elvis,
Oswald and Kennedy
Hey V
Any thoughts, speculation,
On the moon landing?
Hey V
Who are you gonna believe
In a world on the verge of insanity
Hey V
Who are you gonna believe
Now the world is collapsing
Hey V
Who are you gonna believe
In a world on the verge of insanity
Hey V
That’s not the world as I know it
Hey V
You’re too young for me
I told you, yes I did
Hey V
Doesn’t matter to you
I’ll pick you up, where do you live?
Hey V
Doesn’t matter to me
Pack up your shit we’re taking off at speed
Hey V
If you’re in I’m in
If you mean it I mean it
Long winding swedish forest
Skuggebo - Sweden
25 July 2025
Those long winding Swedish forest roads. A rapture for the senses. I'm caressing the road and its perfect curves. Tall dark green pine trees frame each side. Endless. Seems to stretch forever. I don't know whether I'm going somewhere or I've arrived. The road is there for the purpose of going down it, to its end. Do we build bridges to never cross? The breeze is soft. The light rain, warm. The rustle of the leaves is distant. I've got Miller in my lap, but I can't focus. My mind is racing and the rain gets heavier.
Now I’m wondering if this whole transition to Senex really had a backbone is my relationship to women. My idea of what a woman in her thirties will expect off a man. And therefore a need to grow. Outgrow. There’s a strong pull from somewhere, someone, in the Shadow, and a projection of my Anima. Long term relationships are like bubbles, a world we build, but the danger of conforming to ideals neither of the two partners is seeking out. Growing together, growing out of each other. Journeys, paths, wrong turns, going back. A sense of a relationship coming to an end. Where have I ended up? Where am I going? And what does a woman expect of me?
Is this whole journey tied to that simple, maybe biased and misplaced, fear? Is the backbone of all this, my projected Anima?
“He is looking for a mother goddess, so that each time he is fascinated by a woman he has later to discover that she is an ordinary human being.”
Wood during the day, skin at night
Jonkopping - Sweden
27 July 2025
Kath was great. She had that mood about her. Something of the 90s. Grungy. Staring down the barrel asking for more. Asking of the world so what? An edge that got lost. We're being polished. Sweeping the dust we leave behind, brushing the spiderwebs in the dark corners. Too much humidity, the wood cracks. We're made to forget and look the other way. Kath never got back to me. Now she's back, wondering what. Staring down the barrel asking for more.
I've regained an ounce of stability since arriving in Sweden. Mental stability. The last few countries were a blur. I was totally dissociating. Here everything looks the same. That consistency helps the grounding. And it happens to be beauty everywhere. Grandiosity.
Up on the hill of Jonkoping the Swedish flags flutter. Seven of them. In front of me a lake that looks like an ocean. Pine trees and lakes. Wood and water. That's all there is and it feels good. It feels like this is everything that ever was, and everything that will outlive us. I’ve been thinking of working wood. Like my grandads. Using my hands on noble materials. Wood during the day, skin at night.
The other day, as I was roasting in the van, I realised it was winter in Brazil. Well, Lais told me it was winter in Brazil. It's her birthday today. I'd never thought of Brazil in winter. Most times in life we sleepwalk. We just float away.
I walked in the park earlier, amongst deers and llamas. Children kicking and screaming in the playground. The morning was cold. I left Damien earlier. He's from Dordogne. We found each other by Skuggebo. He'd been up Norway but shortened his trip - too many mosquitoes, and too warm to hike. He says I shouldn't be too affected by the time I get there. Most tourists will have gone too. He's got a small house in France in the woods, but he loves it here, further North in particular. He's been around most of Europe. But it's here he'll probably move to, soon.
Blu (Da Ba Dee Da Ba Da) is a holistic dancer from Peru. No, a holistic therapist. The dancing is separate. I thought it wasn't, at first. It turns out she heals on God, but dances on Shakira.
I don't know whether or not to sleep with a duvet tonight. The weather is changing. It's always too hot going to bed, and gets colder overnight. It wakes me up. I'm in a sort of in between. Change, transformation, uncertainty. A threshold. Perfect.
“The overwhelming power of the State, the devaluation of the individual, on a minor scale, is the problem of every puer aeternus whenever he has difficulty adapting, but it is also the problem of our time. The revolt which most people feel at being reduced to the level of a sheep in a flock is not confined to the puer aeternus, for there is something genuine and justifiable in it. Everyone who has not settled that problem within himself—namely, how far one has to accept the fact of being just one of a number and how much one is an individual with the right to individual treatment.”
The Shadow. It leaks.
The power it gains by being denied.
Myths and religion.
The dragon. The dark twin. The doppelgänger. The trickster.
A false identity built by suppressing everything that contradicts it.
Parents, education, society.
Breaking free. Diving down.
The Shadow belongs to that sub-reality, murky waters. The level below.
Unless it doesn’t. It lingers in reality, and we sail along an illusion. The illusion that we build. Consciousness comes to us from below. It builds us and the world around us. All we do is project. Projections, everywhere. Throwing paint on an otherwise blank canvas.
““What we don’t deal with, we project.””
A baby’s stare
Jonkopping - Sweden
28 July 2025
I walk down the deserted streets of Jonkopping, and down Polhrmsgatan I sit down for a coffee. That baby is staring at me. Won't let go. A piercing stare that won't budge. Straight through my soul. The thunder of Thor. The malice of Adonis. He climbs onto the table holding my gaze. Slowly makes its way. A furtive panther. Its elongated shadow following him like a tail. A slow snake undulating, moving along like a dark mirror. Everything that's dark in broad daylight. I'm a prey and I shiver. It's a girl! they say. It's a girl! That cinnamon bun sticks to my teeth like Meli sticks to my mind. That sweet aftertaste in my mouth for the rest of the day. Jonkopping is full of pizzerias. There's as many pizzerias here as there are Germans in Germany. A duo of Swedish women talk of being approached by men. They like to be approached. They want to be approached by a lynx, not by a weasel. They want a condor. Not a city pigeon. That gray pigeon that lands on their shoulder, only to be wafted away with urgency. Avoiding just in time the shit it takes on their head as it takes off again.
At the bottom of Jonkopping is a pleasing port. That's how I translate port de plaisance. A little harbour, with little boats, for little people like us. A railway track goes alongside it, and anchored there, a red and yellow wagon. I fight the urge to parade the high street again. I stride back up Kyrkogatan and cross over Sofia's Church. 2.15pm, God indicates. Since talking of sexual video calls with Blu, our conversation has come to a halt. She likes to be told what to do. I like the joint buildup of a fantasy. Four hands in the dead of night by candlelight. I haven't had much food today. For lunch, my instinct tells me a banana will do. I plan on returning my instinct to a nearby store. I'm at the terrace of the Stugan as the day comes to a close. The hill quietens as the sun casts a final warm glow upon the town below. The crowd is sparse today. I have the luxury to be a stranger here. I might stop around Flakoping tomorrow, with great views of the valley.
Above Falkoping
Falkoping - Sweden
29 July 2025
Top of the hill. Above Falkoping. The view reminds me of that of Kent. Wye Nature Reserve. Boundless fields of washed-out yellows and greens. And that straight line far away. I pour the last gulp of my Norrland Guld. A few locals gather in the café ; bikers and old couples in their pickup trucks.
There's something American about Sweden. A depiction of the American Midwest that I picture in my mind. The vastness, the wildness, the open roads - that sprawl. Miles of forests in solitude - derelict farms dropped in here and there, the road signs - that yellow - the truckstops, the caps, the checkered shirts, the boots, the coffee pots, the white enamel coffee cups. The America of the plains and the valleys. Sweden by David Lynch. Sweden by Gregory Crewdson. The wind whispers. A delicate touch that feels like a warning. Something’s about to change.
The rain starts sweeping down. I move inside. For more Swedish americana, I pour myself a mug of coffee. The pot is still hissing hot. The Puer craves the stimulation of the bitterness. The Senex wants the comfort of the steam. The waitress, later, will come for a top-up.
It's on top of that hill, here above Falkoping, that I decide to listen to W - the Insomniac Boy. It's been five years that he’s been lurking ; lately at 5 a.m. He coils in my mind and rattles my body. He sits down at the end of my bed and stares at me with his resting bitch face. He pokes me in the loin. A parasite. A leech. Sucks my blood and drains my soul. M - the Man in the Mirror - is asleep. Doesn't want to hear the calls, the screams, the agony. Years of looking the other way. Kick it in the butt. Grab it by the balls. Watch its scream and spit some pus. Hold it close.
Closer.
Listen.
Make his scream your siren. Louder! Louder! Let that weight be your anchor. That flesh is yours. The mask has melted over your eyes. Rip it off! Rip the skin, all the way to the bone. Let it all spill out onto the floor.
Now you hear me.
The Puer shook you away, stubborn as he is.
The Senex puts a hand on my shoulder.
Now we converse.
“It is prison wherever he turns. He has only the choice of two prisons, either that of his neurosis or that of his reality; thus he is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. That is his fate, and that is the fate of the puer aeternus altogether. It is up to him which prison he prefers: that of his neurosis, or of being caught in the just-so story of earthly reality.”
Things to emerge
Kinnekulle - Sweden
31 July 2025
The high fantasy that spirals in my head only exists because I don’t externalise it.
My mind constantly races through vast landscapes of thoughts, ideas and lives that I am not embodying. The storm settles when I enter a state of flow - when I create, and express that inner turmoil. The boil comes down to a gentle simmer. I was talking to Oumaima about it - she feels the same ; her grounding occurs when she’s at her craft, engraving mirrors. Those fantasies, they need embodying. Once they’re out there’s nothing left for the mind to run after. But those fantasies, they’re a trait of the Puer. I’m thinking, for them to be embodied, for them to be organised, planned and executed, that’s when the Senex shows up. That’s the ‘work’ Carl Jung refers to and describes as the solution. Only the Senex is able to weave together these fragmented ideas and fantasies and their anarchic waltz into my tapestry. Out there in the open.
Now I feel I have something to hold on to. A metaphor I can visualise for ways in which the Senex can emerge. And through this, pulling the authenticity from the shadows, ripping off the masks, getting closer to the wholeness of my Self.
It’s at the bottom of the towering iron red cliffs of Kinnekulle, sat in the shade of a sapling, that the mythology emerges. That American Midwest and its cowboys now merges with Scandinavian folklore and its Vikings. Two worlds collide, one myth remains. The archetypal Man. Those pickup trucks, they slowly pass by, as if teasing me, and the dust they leave behind settles all around me. The sun is high ; the land, dry. Wind rustles in the leaves and flies buzz all around. Crickets give us a song and faraway birds join in. Out the trucks come out tall handsome men, with blonde braided hair. Their boots stomp the land. They own their space and cast their gaze far in the distance. There is no doubt that they belong. They belong in their land and they belong in their body.
“It is a trick which many pueri aeterni perform: the realisation that they should adapt to reality is an intellectual idea to them which they fulfill in fantasy but not in reality. The idea is executed only in reflection and on a philosophical level. The puer aeternus will understand everything, will integrate the shadow and the fact that he has to work and come down to earth. But, unless you are like a devil’s watchdog behind it, it is all a sham. The whole integration takes place up in the head.”
Swedish Dives
Tivedstorp - Sweden
2 August 2025
I've been watching the swedes execute some beautiful dives into those lakes.
Effortless.
They've practiced all their lives.
So I decided to take a dive too. But I'd forgotten to tie the drawstring of my swimming trunks. I jumped, they slid off, mid-air... and as I crashed into the water, they completely flew off.
Yes crashed - because by the time I hit the water, the clean Swedish dive had long been forgotten. I crashed in there like a flying waffle.
Carry On (Flashes of Amsterdam)
Orebro - Sweden
4 August 2025
Riding through the flashes of Amsterdam
Whispers, red and black, behind the window’s blinds
The alleyways at dawn still humid from the night
Humid my skin, on a drip, throat’s tight
Carry on, carry on, like I don’t care
Party’s on, party’s on, up in my head
The soft slow pulse of your tide
I got her skin on my mind
Can’t shake out that longing when the night comes alive
Whiskey by the water and barb wired grass
The road and its curves behind a thick velvet mask
Enter me, empty me, pour me another glass
Havens and closets and working roundabouts
The flesh and the bones, mirrors shine a light
It gets slippery and I’m pulling on the rope
Holding hips like holding on to a flicker of hope
Carry on, carry on, like I don’t care
Party’s on, party’s on, up in my head
The soft slow pulse of your tide
Jolt, sweat, smoke, breath
Cast Shadows on the walls
Noir, kiss, nicotine
Carry on, carry on, like I don’t care
Party’s on, party’s on, up in my head
I must be out of my mind
The Shadow manifests - Projections, Distorsions, Emotional Triggers, Patterns, Hypocrisy, Dreams and Nightmares
The price to pay - Anxiety, Depression, Self-Sabotage, Destructive Behaviour, Loss of Vitality
““Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.””
Finding cause - the cost of emotional restaint
Stockholm - Sweden
7 August 2025
Swedish girls come in threes. Trios only.
The humid cobblestones of Stockholm. In them, Monet paintings of the old town above. Swirls of colours. Diamonds in the rough. From Gamla to Giverny.
There's a constant biting breeze here. Cuts through like a knife. Une lame de fond. Keeps me on edge. Table for one in Ostermalms. Sun and rain swap places as quickly as my moods these days. Unstable playground.
I have too many 'me's around to know what I fear people finding out about me. Perceptions of me that some people have, and not others. The masks I wear here, but not there. The performance I put on in this circus ; a different one in that one. Layers and layers. From shadow to persona. The impulses. The jumps. The exits. Got enough of this, let's move on. But by respect, and to honour my masks, I stay put. I don't fear people finding out anything in particular, I fear they'll disappear if I truly show up in my contradictions, my exits, my impulsive jumps. So for the sake of keeping people around -those dear people- I tame it all, to the point of total erasure.
I'm not a highly critical person but I envy unapologetic opinions. Fearless convictions. Owning the space. That unflinching grounding. The laisser faire approach. And god damn it, I should be good at it! But I'm not. Wanting me to be enough. That shadow holds me within its tight grip. Drags me in the corner. With space comes shine and what I live for.
The wind blows so hard I can't keep the pages down. I feel inauthentic, split, with everyone. All the time.. I'm inauthentic with myself. Other people come second, they hardly matter. If anything, I'm more authentic with people who don't know me so well. They don't know that old, decayed, version of me. The one that festers in those corners. Damp and smoky. Flies hover around it. Sacrifice. Rebirth. Not getting through the mask. Not seeing through the holes. It sticks to the skin like an armour. But first, authentic with myself. That's the only goal that counts for now. I wondered a lot over the last few weeks whether being alone on this journey was worth anything. How can I see those changes when I'm alone? Surely I need people around to gauge it. I need society in all its forms. Now I feel though that I will gauge the change. Society, people and their reactions, don’t have anything to do with judging and gauging. They don’t hold a mirror to me. They hold a mirror to the judgement I have of myself. For now, authentic with myself. True to myself. Getting to know that Self.
As a kid, I learnt not to colour outside the lines ; colouring in means being good and doing well. But outside those lines of expected normalcy... the error! The mistake! What if they didn't like me? What if they rejected me? Why do I need their approval? What about the embarrassment and shame I'd feel if they reacted in an unexpected way? My Self relies on other people's feelings. It feeds on them.
Always having to fit a mould. I am anchorless in my closest relationships, that of my close family. And I’m drifting. A father that left me behind for greener grass. A mother that left her and I behind in a better past. An brother who was never there for his younger siblings. I grew up away from everyone and I got no role I hold. Not for myself, not for anyone. No anchor anywhere. I'm at sea, carried to other lands.
The gaps left behind are like black holes where other realities may be. All the what ifs. All the worlds of possibilities. The Puer dreams about them ; the Senex can leave them behind.
“The puer aeternus cannot even be quite unhappy! He has not even the generosity and the courage to expose himself to a situation which could make him unhappy. Already, like a coward, he builds bridges by which to escape the disappointment in order not to suffer the blow, and that is a refusal to live.
[...] It means, practically, to grow more and move into the reality of things—it means disillusionment. The greatest difficulty we drag along with us from our childhood is the sack of illusions which we carry on our backs into adult life.”
Overdrive
Sveg - Sweden
9 August 2025
An energy, a whirlwind so intense that I can’t even write. I was fine until that young couple showed up. They bombed at me something I can’t handle ; togetherness.
I can’t get my head around my Anima and its projections. S - The Drunk Stranger - came round for a visit, and when he does, he knows how to leave a mark. He makes me squeal and shake and stutter. And God does he know how to make me talk. So then I wonder, what’s left when he’s not around? And why do I need that poison to enter me? When it does, K - The Performer - retreats. That clown that only knows how to shit out niceness on a podium. Pigeon shit on grey pavement. That of London, that of Paris. Nights of abuse left to fester in vain.
I’ve left the Victorias, Aprils, and Naomis behind. Now that fire burns in front of me.
I’ve left Stockholm, and Mora, behind. Had a nap between Max and Willy’s. For the last couple days I went for the miles. Constant Motion. I had enough of stagnation — stagnation was too much. Foot down, looking North. Head in a constant spin. I don’t know that I’m doing enough but I feel there’s nothing more here for me. Ran out of energy, inspiration, purpose, and reason.
So I’m going North.
Full gas.
The road an intravenous drip keeping the Puer from collapse.
Mora’s gone.
I’m alone. By a fire pit and a slow moving river. A naked dip and the scorching of the flames. The wood cracks, opens. Amber, ashes and heat. Resistance. That grey smoke makes me sick, but the wind turns. Running on fumes. I feel I’ve lost something behind. And I can’t make up my mind as to whether that is a good thing or not. Something that was raw and that felt like me. Impromptu flames. I can’t light them up anymore. Maybe it was just an illusion. I’m drifting. I can’t contain any of this.
An overdrive.
I’m working on getting that electric guitar, and I stand a chance.
“It is often better to expose one’s childishness so that it may be recognised and not be too reasonable and hide it away, because then it only gets stuck. The anima has put something between you and reality in a very clever way. In a man, it is generally through the mother complex, for that is like a plastic envelope between him and reality so that he is never really quite in touch; nothing quite counts at the present moment.”
Golden Chains
Sveg - Sweden
10 August 2025
Cut em loose these golden chains
Take a step and hold my hand
Cut em loose these golden chains
Hold your breath and count to ten
First Alliance with the Senex
Ange - Sweden
11 August 2025
Everything is distracting the shit out of me. Something isn’t clicking anymore. The pattern though, I recognize it. T - The One Who Tries Too Hard - is emerging, and with that, a lack of authenticity, lack of vulnerability. Him, and K, they’re having the time of their lives, dancing on the table and pissing in the fire. They shake me, tear me apart, unarm me. I leave strips of skin behind. The languid current of the river brings calm with it, but I wonder if it’s all in vain. I wonder what authenticity there is to find if my goal is to make a spectacle of it.
Deep down, the lack of process presses on me. A formula, a frame, a routine. How to generate that calm when I’ve decided to go looking for it in total, deafening chaos.
Between Mora et Ange the lines tighten, and the work of the Senex begins. The Puer has had his fun, the Puer wants the creative, and expects it to just get to him. But it’s time for work. Time for the Senex. Despite a maddening lack of direction, it’s clear that the lessons are accumulating. No blueprint. No map. I make it up as I go along, and naturally a lot goes to waste. That is the process. What works, what doesn’t, what’s triggering, what’s changing — that is what needs observation. That is the output itself. I blame myself too much. I still wonder whether I can make it, whether I’ll make something out of it. I’m still scared of going back, exiting Scandinavia. But the road ahead is still long. The cold is settling. This morning was a wake-up call.
For days now W knocked at the door in the early hours, engaging a battle between the Puer and the Senex ; torn between day and night. W woke up in the cold this morning. I’m further North. Summer will soon wave goodbye. The landscapes have been arid, then rocky. The forests, always dense. I too leap from one landscape to another, one mood to the next, always searching in this forest for a break in the canopy. The Boy has shown up in lack of commitment to a task, unless flow had been reached. But The Man –M–, the Senex, is watching with tender eyes. I feel him over my shoulder — he knows that I’m trying, and more often than before he sits next to me. His warm presence makes all the difference. M knows how to slow my mind down, and slow the world down in turn. He believes the Puer can lead with ideas and creativity, and he knows when to take over. He wants to take over. I want him to join and embrace me, put his hand on mine and bring peace.
‘Let him speak through you. He won’t abandon you.’
“The puer aeternus can work, when fascinated or in a state of great enthusiasm. Then he can work 24 hours at a stretch or even longer, until he breaks down, but what he cannot do is to work on a dreary, rainy morning when work is boring and one has to kick oneself into it.”
Leaving a mark
Renfors - Sweden
13 August 2025
I got that new electric guitar in my hands. I want to name it, mark it, make it whole and make it mine. I'm looking for that black paint, but I’ve left my brushes behind. Foraging through the toolbox, past dirty screwdrivers and rusty wrenches, my fingers stumble upon that black marker. Three inches long. It was my grandfather's. I didn't remember I had it in there all along. More than the tool I need. The quietness of the Renfors’ waters get to me. The back door’s open as I sand down that new wood I got, making room for new marks. Felling that tree for new growth. For the last few days my Anima is being shaken. It's moving along, hitting me, cancelling me, building me strong. I'm making grains out of projections. They steal the show. They’re on that huge IMAX screen and I'm just watching from afar. Just a seat in the dark, the light beam rushing past me. I want to catch it, and project myself where I belong. I know I can.
Here all is calm ; the wind has receded. Past Umea, something's gone. In that town I paraded some more, as I like to do. Mustang in one hand, Jim Beam in the other. In the back pocket, Rain Dogs. And like a stereotype full of himself, I march along. But something has shifted. A need to belong. A need for someone's eyes in which I'm strong. A need to pause. What is next?
My Anima is less projections ; it's becoming ingrained, something to drive from, something to live from. It's pushing me forward ; it wants me to jump in the unknown. After those blacked out windows, after rented apartments, there's finally something else to knock on. A need to belong.
In Renfors is quietude. Sanding down some new wood, ready to leave a mark. And my grandfather's marker has made an appearance. All generations all at once. In the palm of my hand, the tiniest creature. We look back at each other. The child that was, and the child ahead who wants more. Granddad sits in between. In the palm of my hand, I hold him. The sun glitters in the water. The sun holds me for a second. Seconds in silence that last a lifetime. Makes my eyes watery, hungry for more, aching for more. I take off the black marker's cap and bring it to my nose. The smell pulls me back to days gone. I'll hold it strong. On that new wood I'm ready to leave a mark. For generations. Puer to Senex. I want to belong.
“The Child is always behind and ahead of us. Behind us, it is the infantile shadow which must be sacrificed—that which always pulls us backward into being infantile and dependent, lazy, playful, escaping problems and responsibility and life. On the other hand, if the child appears ahead of us, it means renewal, the possibility of eternal youth, of new possibilities - the life flow toward the creative future. The great problem is always to make up one’s mind in each instance whether it is an infantile impulse which only pulls backward, or an impulse which seems infantile to one’s own consciousness but which really should be accepted and lived because it leads forward.”
Synchronicity song (??)
Renfors - Sweden
14 August 2025
And you hide and you hide
Stick it out, hold the line
Stick’s a cane, an old man
For once in your life
Let the child sleep at night
Am I flawed by design?
Haven’t been myself in a long long time
Spark the fire, turn the tide
Mora, April, Ange, Naomi behind
I split myself a 1000 times
Who’s calling now?
Hundreds straight miles
Everything and nothing mean a lot, at once
tame it, take me, tame me
Book excerpt
Arvidsjaur - Sweden
15 August 2025
“The puer aeternus, in the negative sense of the word, very often tends to be too impressed and too weak and too much of a “good boy” in his relationships, without a quick self-defense reaction where required. For instance, he takes much too much from the Anima of the women around him. If one of them makes a scene, finding fault with him about this or that, he accepts too much of it at first and then suddenly one day has had enough and just walks out of the whole situation, in a completely cruel and reckless manner. There is no transition stage. The yielding “good boy,” the man who gives in too much, is suddenly replaced by the cold gangster shadow without any human relatedness whatsoever.”
The incomprehensible ways of synchronicity
Jokkmokk - Sweden
16 August 2025
Today Jokkmokk - the weather’s turned, chills my bones. Incessant rain. Fog in the distance, the pine trees get lost in it. Off of the fragments of the past, a confusing clarity comes through. The Arctic Circle welcomes me. And with this I enter stage two.
Reaching rugged mountainous areas. By the rapids.
I've been waking up around 5am for the last couple of weeks. Since listening to W and waking up when he shakes me, I don't tire anymore for the rest of the day like I used to, battling insomnia. I just let the Senex answer the call of W and let him decide that it's time.
I started driving a lot, reaching the northern parts of the country. I hadn't quite prepared myself for the vastness of it. Looking on a map is one thing. Being in it, another. There's also the time constraint - three months. And I’d already spent too long crossing all the countries between France and Denmark. It is what it is. Now I need to get going.
I don't feel I have explored myself as much as I was meant to, or that I have documented it very well. But at the same time I don't feel like slowing down. For some reason I feel that I have experienced what I needed to, and the rest is to follow, by going North now. I trust the unfolding. I feel that pressure to get through the books though, and to record music too. The whole thing is too much. I wanted to be able to produce a song fully in one location. Capture the moment - the music, the sounds of that place, and the words that reflect my inner state at that moment in time. I'm realizing how daunting that is. I've been writing a lot, and I need to pick words from the past and make them match the present of the song I'm capturing now. That song itself will only be a draft. I'll add to it over the following days, weeks maybe. And the field recordings, sometimes they're nonexistent. There's only so much wind and water I can record. So, it's all a mess. But maybe chaos is the best way to describe what I’m going through. As a puer, as an Aquarius, with a peppering of ADHD. I don't feel that those songs are particularly reflecting any psychological progress, or any struggles that I can pinpoint to a location. I guess I'm too ingrained in the details and in the process. I need to zoom out, and make it about the journey as a whole. I'm unsure whether I’m fucking it up.
I've been crying a lot lately, more than during the early stages of the trip. The movement, the changes, struggles and questions, are overwhelming. They are all tied to each other. I need to find a way to slow down whilst keeping momentum. And maybe remember to enjoy it, too. I'm afraid that nothing will have changed - nothing drastic enough. But I trust the process, the books, the journaling. I'm not sure what to actually do with any of it. I'm realising I need to shift something. Maybe settle again. I'm not sure about London. and I'm not sure about what I want to do. It's all a blur. I do feel now though, that a more mature vision is emerging. By digging inside of me, reconciling parts I had lost and shedding others, I feel something foundational can emerge. Something that can ground me. I may be okay going back to the simple things of life that I seem to have been running away from for the past two years. That stability that I equate with mundanity and death. One location. One person. How simple that sounds. Everything that I do now goes against finding this and it hit me throughout the journey how much of that impacts my choices. I just wasn't seeing it before.
I don't know exactly where the Senex comes in, how to drop some masks, or what to bring back from the Shadow. But I have been shaken by my Anima. The agitation birthed breakthroughs and unveiled a huge amount of hidden material that I started claiming back. And then it all stopped, just as I started its integration ; just as I started seeing its edges and its shape ; just as the Senex slowly started coming through. There are some incomprehensible ways in which synchronicity affects it all. Taming the Anima, making a room for the Senex, reveals a longing for closeness with people again, at the price of some dreams and liberties. It doesn't feel like a loss. It feels like turning a page, and writing a new story. But a story within a larger book ; one that incorporates these elements from the past that are dear to me. There’s no denying, no erasure, no burning away. Complexes stand by each other, deep inside. Totality lives with itself. All it is, is bringing the Senex into the driving seat to organise the rest of it.
“Individuation is a process of inner growth to which one is attached; one cannot get away from it. If one says no to it and does not accept it, then, since you cannot stop individuation, the process of inner maturing and growth goes on unconsciously and ruins the personality instead of healing it. [...] The inner possibility of growth is a dangerous thing because either you say yes to it and go ahead, or you are killed by it.
When the wrong inner overgrowth of fantasy is pulled down and recognised as being simply the mother complex, then another dimension of consciousness appears [...]. It is not a narrowing of the horizon, for pulling down that wrong growth of fantasy means a widening of the human horizon.
One of the objections which the puer aeternus always brings up when you want to encourage him to fell the tree is that he does not want such a narrowing of the horizon. He could not stand such narrowing! But it is not true! If one has the courage to cut down this wrong kind of inner greatness, it comes again, but in a better form—the horizon and life are widened and not narrowed. If he only knew how much wider life would be if he could give up that wrong kind of inner life, then he might perhaps do it.”
The blocks get knocked down
Vittangi - Sweden
17 August 2025
As I was driving earlier, I couldn't stop tears from flooding down.
Toying with the past, trying to unfold it - childhood, teenagehood, Pau, Pointe-Noire, Paris, London. My relationship to place, people, friends, girlfriends, and how I was fitting in those environments. Wondering when I was happy and why. Wondering when the first hurt occurred. When I started splitting myself. When I put on my first mask. When I started repressing feelings. Why. When the fragmentation and the hiding began. When I started to care. Why. When I started performing. When confidence dropped. When manhood felt in danger. When I felt not in my place. When I stayed. When I exited. Why.
There's been a lot of places. A lot of people. A lot of experiences. I’m grateful for everything I was able to do during my early life. Now I wonder whether that set the tone for what was to come, and for a dissociation with something foundational. I realise that every few years whatever I was standing on was taken away. Those foundational blocks cracked, and kept cracking. People. Places. And every time starting from scratch again. It always felt easy, even fun, to start over and over. Now I’m having doubts. I wonder what is the effect of always building new blocks from scratch, instead of adding layers to what doesn't move, to what is held in place and lasts a lifetime. Knocking bricks down. Building again. And again and again. You'd think the more you do it, the easier it gets. But there's no practice in starting over. You don't add up pieces, you shed layers of skin.
I don't know that through that process, adapting and surviving, I started putting on masks, whilst repressing what it really felt like to always grieve something whilst building again. So I started fragmenting. And I assumed I could only rely on myself. Since then I rarely ask for help. And I keep people away, or I don't offer myself fully. It hurts to look back. But it's a good hurt. I still don't know what to do with any of this. A good understanding is foundational. But, as I've been made aware, it is a trait of the Puer to keep things in the domain of the intellect, instead of acting on it in real life. Not that I don't want to. I just don't know where to go with this. What's next.
Anyhow, I will be exiting Sweden within the next couple of weeks. Just earlier I still was thinking that this journey may not bring me much, and that my arc - going North as a Puer, South as a Senex - was probably not going to exactly work out. And I was really fine with it. Whatever happens happens. But now, by uncovering the past and its patterns, the early causes of the masks, the fragmentation, the shake ups of my Anima, the desires they brought up, how that fortifies the Senex and gives him direction and purpose … then maybe, within a couple of weeks, I will reach Northkap for my threshold, exactly as the Arc draws it.
“If one believes in Time then one has no possibility of sudden change, there is a constant expectation that “in time” everything will come all right. [...]
Such a mechanism is illustrated by the case of a very gifted writer who wanted to write a book which he thought would be the most important book in world literature, but he did not do more than have a few ideas as to what he would write and enjoy in fantasy what the effect of his book would be. He still insisted that he had nearly finished it. In reality, he had not even written a single line, not a single word; though, according to him, he had already worked for several years on it.”
Kiruna
Kiruna - Sweden
18 August 2025
Kiruna. In limbo. A mine, an incident, a collapse. Digging, excavating. Those blocks, they crack. Going deep. Too deep, at the risk of the whole town going down. Instead of death at the end of the road, relocation. One step to the East. One brick at a time. From scratch. Rebuilding. New soil, new ground. Keeping intact what's always been there. A slow, slow, steady move. Time, effort, consistency. To keep it alive.
The destroyed manifestations of masculinity - dirty, wild, aggressive. The feeling of being alive.
The impulse that will lead the boy away from her.
The split-off shadow of a gorilla, a boxer, a criminal.
If I run away from the prison of my neurosis I end up in the prison of reality.
I’m attempting to paint my soulscape with any and every tool I have at my disposal. Painting, sculpting, shaping - why? A subconscious choice to visualise it all. Visualisation is how my mind works. And putting it out - why? Because in my head it remains a storm, a chaotic, frenetic, endless motion, messed up with everything else that constantly waltzes in there. I need to fixate it ; lay it out in front of me, in a visual manner. Seeing the archetypes, seeing a road, seeing calm lakes and thunderous skies.
“The child in the adult is the source of suffering ; it is that which suffers because with the grown-up part of oneself one can take life as it is and therefore one does not suffer so much. The sufferings of childhood are the worst though they may be over minor trifles. In childhood there are such terrific tragedies, which shows that the child within is the genuine part, and the genuine part is that thing which suffers.
So one could say that what is genuine in a person and what is naive like a child in them is the source of suffering. Many grown-ups split off this part and thereby miss individuation, for only if one accepts it and the suffering it imposes on one, can the process of individuation go on.”
Behind rage is power.
Behind fear is intuition.
Behind envy is desire.
Behind shame is authenticity.
Integration is not becoming pure. It’s becoming real. Becoming whole.
’I am both light and darkness’
Nigredo – chaos and disintegration
Albedo – clarity and reconnection with meaning
Rubedo – integration and embodiment of a new self
Stare your archetypes. Stare them in the face. Follow them. Meet them. Let them speak to you. Listen to their fears. Listen to their dreams. Spend a late afternoon on the porch with these old friends ; they aren't going away.
'Who are you? What do you want? What are you protecting?'
Separate the present from the triggers and the childhood wounds.
The dark night of the soul. An evolving soul the Ego can no longer contain.
Deep forests and wandering through cities in ruins being rebuilt.
The land behind the trees
Kautokeino - Norway
19 August 2025
Norway. Kautokeino.
The landscape opens up. Sun and rain dance a tango. An unstable pas de deux. As off balance as my mood's been for the last few days. Sweden seems to have been a very long, endless, corridor framed by majestic dark green pine trees. A velvety blur, feverish dream. The sudden change in landscape punches me. Open land. Miles away. I see the terrain around me. It feels off. Sky turns grey, pelting rain, bad night's sleep, it gets to me. The land bordering the road is barren. Harsh. Unwelcoming. Then it hits me. That land is the one of Sweden too. But those tall pine trees, they hid it away from me, like a veil upon my eyes. They gave me comfort - a soft blanket. A bubble of safety and wholeness. The whole country put me to bed and kissed me good night. A foggy night. What was laying there all along, behind those draping huge trees, I did not know. As the child dreams and drifts, Norway opens the door. The light comes in, the wooden floor creaks, and I wake up. Pine trees are gone. The land lays there naked, in all it has to offer. Vastness, beauty - emptiness, it lingers. I feel uneasy. The wound's open. I crash within. Land of the man, for wholeness means the boldness of imperfections. It lays bare. Cold headlights pass by. An absence. Seeing far, seeing more, trying to catch myself as I tremble. Above, a huge rainbow. Ahead blue skies. Everything that can be laid out is there. All for me to take. The All that the man is expected to handle. Light and darkness. The lakes and the gutter. The sunlight reflects itself the same in them both. Breaks those flat straight lines into a million diamonds. A break. I catch my breath. The wind goes soft. I'm back in the driver seat as my soulscape widens. The road pulls itself out again and scintillates under my wheels. Foot on the gas, I see further. The distance and the closeups merge into one. Those trees gone, makes me aware of what's at stake, what there is to handle. Strength comes back as I drive further along. The beauty of the wholeness circles me. I'm alone. The in and the out make love and press my guts. I want the bruise to last for it makes me myself. To the road ahead and all its landscapes.
“The puer generally tends to avoid the immediate friction of realization. [...] He makes an artificial barrier, separating what he is living from his real self. [...] To have a mental reservation about it means that it is not lived at all, and that is why the puer aeternus is sometimes cut off from the stars below, and why the solution for the dreamer is that he should sink into that world. [...]
If you accept your life, you really, in the deepest sense of the word, accept death, and that is what the puer does not want. He does not want to accept mortality, and that is why he does not want to go into reality, because the end of it is the realization of his weakness and his mortality. He identifies with the immortal and does not accept the mortal twin, but by going into life he would assimilate the mortal brother.”
I Saw The Sun Rise
Kautokeino - Norway
20 August 2025
Empty bottles and cigarette butts
Muddy leather boots, thick grey dust
There’s a storm raging outside
Til the doors sling open you'll be on my mind
Sun and rain dance a tango
An off balance, impromptu, unstable, pas de deux
Swing’s as bad as my mood these days
Open land. Harsh terrain. Punches me in the can
I hear you call my name
In the rising sun
I try to hold your hand
But it feels like sand
I ain’t got no rear view mirror
But it ain’t so bad
The only way is forward
There’s no going back
A feverish dream, velvety blur,
The wood floor creaks, the body shaken
In a soft cover I’m put me to bed
Kiss me good night, over my eyes cast a veil
Land of men, imperfectly bold. It lays bare
Cold headlights on the stones
An absence. A tremble. Drunk stranger is a fool
Rolled in too fast, crashed into an open wound
I hear you call my name
Press my foot on the gas
I can see further ahead
I want the bruise to last
The emptiness lingers
No loops and no repeats
The push and pull crush my guts
I'm in the driver’s seat
Light and darkness
The lakes and the gutter
The sun hits em both in a reflected splinter
Pelting rain, smokes of holy gods
Breaks those flat straight lines into a million diamonds
The burn and the blaze
The light on the edge
I drove in a straight line
Til I saw the sun rise
2 Days to Nordkapp
Nordmannset - Norway
22 August 2025
Feels like Sweden was just a dream.
Endless twisting and turning. Cocooned in its forests and its lakes.
Norway is a majestic beast, a beauty with no sensuality. Its grace is its force of nature. Resilience. Roots of stone in the harshness of the land. The wind comes round by surprise and punches hard, cuts the skin, opens the flesh. The serene waters, tricksters, suddenly pull crashing waves that speed at you with their teeth, ready to suck you in.
I feel rested, calm, yet anxious of missing out on the experience. Last couple days have been wet and windy. I need to accept the retreat when the outside is not inviting. That’s part of it too. And accepting that I won’t see all of it. I’ll have to zoom past some incredible areas.
Worries about going back down and making choices.
The swiss couple next door smoke like chimneys. 4 or 5 fags each by 9am.
Nordkapp, maps, music.
Outside is grey and rainy, calm and serene.
A hooded man stares at me through the window. I hold his gaze. Non-plussed.
I’m always in two minds about what I’m doing - sometimes it feels like working on the creative output goes against my internal work. Also conscious of how much going for an output may have an element of performance instead of authenticity. That’s now less the case than in the earlier stages. So it is good to capture and observe a shift. Is the thought of public attention and approval still lingering in the background?
Restart. Refocus.
1 Day to Nordkapp
Kamoyvaer - Norway
23 August 2025
Tomorrow, Nordkapp.
Why do I call on to S? I don't trust myself to feel anything. Or to express it. So I call on to darker characters. The darker one dig deeper. They go there. They have that courage.
1 day to Nordkapp. The sun hasn't shined as much as today in weeks. Days of rain gone. One day of warmth. Serenity. Clarity ahead. I see far. Wide. Colours. Shapes. The edges are defined. Gone the clouds and the fog of the past few weeks. How long have I gone for? When did this start? What day is it? What month? People pass by. Pairs. People come in pairs. It takes two to dance a tango. Shine Sun, shine! My skin recovers. Days of clouds in an instant gone. I am here, I've arrived. Shine Sun, shine on me! Open up the land. Show me the way. The shadows here, they give direction. All point in one direction. I let you in. I let you complete me. I haven't been this hot since some past week in Sweden - across its lakes. Amsterdam in my backpocket for a threshold, half a finale - same euphoria. Here the air reminds me of the Pyrenees. And the land, plateaux, valleys. Short grass, rocks scattered in. Bathing soft sun light. Golden hour soon. Or is it? How soon is now? All this energy goes to waste. I am back in the Pyrenees. London. Amsterdam. Copenhagen. People here, people there. Women and my obsession to get past something. There's a threshold, it takes one step. One to start engaging. One step ahead - one step dread. An easy path - a long road. It took a journey, now it's a matter of a step. Take it. Go on. To her. To all. To you. One step to align everything. Senex and Anima, both in a step. Take her hand. Alta. One step there, one before the next - Alta. Her red fertility, good fortune. Start of a new chapter, there in Alta a step is taken. One step to fail, but a step ahead to cross a line. Increments. Up I look. Short grass, gravel, a wide road splits the landscape.
“Even if I feel no floor beneath me, I still must take step after step, laying down a strip of accomplishment each time until I have built my own floor.”
Nordkapp
Nordkapp - Norway
24 August 2025
Threshold.
Nordkapp.
A final dash up, and gone.
Feels like an end and an anticlimax. But I remind myself I'm only halfway through. I'm trying to lean into that anxiety - fear of going back down. Lack of point to return to. So I'll let the second stage of the journey unfold and trust that process. The day started in a thick fog, entering that final top edge of Europe was a misty affair. The curtain opened up for a brief moment, just enough to take it all in - as if teasing of what's ahead, what's further, what's possible. And it closed again without warning. Applause. Act II starts now.
“When we discover that we have been living what constitutes a false self, that we have been enacting a provisional adulthood, driven by unrealistic expectations, then we open the possibility for the second adulthood, our true personhood.
None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realise it. And once they’re done, they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.”
Miles Away
Nordkapp - Norway
25 August 2025
Do you know where I’m headed
There’s a light on the other side
You say ‘Hi’ I say ‘Home’ instead
Miles, miles away, miles away
Love is all it takes, it takes it all away
Do you know what it feels like
For anywhere to mean nowhere to stay
Miles, miles away, miles away
Call me up once you know
I’ve made it all ok
I’ll pick you up
I am here to stay
I’ve been dancing in your twilight
Watching in the rain
Seen you fadin in the moonlight
Yet the stars look the same
Between the beauty and the pain
Memories remain
Miles, miles away, miles away
Trio at work
Alta - Norway
26 August 2025
That single winding road brought me back to Hanningsvad, Strand and Olderfjord. Diesel, hotdog and coffee. A new Scandinavian routine.
I’m in awe of those majestic landscapes. If nothing was to come out of this, it was at least worth it for the eyes.
The sun shines on the way down, onto a landscape that's changed again, already. Valleys, tormented rivers, a straight road that splits the Earth in two. I get to Alta. A roundabout. I don't remember the last time I encountered one of those. And I wonder about traffic lights too. I'll spend the night on a terrain vague behind the town. Less grandiose than the previous one on top of the world. But there's a sort of different comfort to being by a town. As foreign as they may be, they're all the same. I do wonder whether turning all those miles was a necessity to meet the archetypes and dig some tunnels. I wonder whether I need the foreignness, the loneliness, the driving as a meditation. There is something particular about being alone in a foreign street, sat at a cafe, or between the aisles of a grocery store. There is an inexplicable link I feel to those people I don't understand, stronger than the one of a place I know. Possibly another Puer trait - an attraction to the unknown. But where is home anyway. It all feels foreign to me.
So I’m in Alta for a night. Maybe two. Tomorrow I'll make a better plan for that first stage of coming down. Alta, its phallic church, for The bridal town of fecondity. I don't know what to feel about any of this. I feel here the same as I would by Mora, Copenhagen, Bremen. The difference is in the head, and I do wonder where my head is at. It is that comfort of feeling at home anywhere, but lacking those deeper ties everywhere. It feels lonely no matter the city, the place, the country.
I've always relied on my brain a lot. Now I'm not so sure. It feels like it's working against me. I’d never been able to see that storm inside there from afar. Now I do. I can sit and observe it. I can see myself mouthing and mining conversations. With myself, with other people, but all in my head. The vivid world in there flows out all the way into my muscles, my nerves, my skin. It pulls some strings, and I act it out as if it was real. I’d never been aware of that bubble I’m in. How opaque it is to the so-called reality, or to the outside world at least. Reality, a whole other topic. My reality is in there. Everyone's own reality is in theirs. What we see, feel, experience is only subjective. We were never in the same world to start with. I happen to act out my world - the one of that bubble- in this space I share with all these other people. That weird illusion. I wonder how blind we all are. I wonder how much we actually relate to each other. Where are those undercurrents, how do they work on us. That collective unconscious - the myths, the symbols.
So in Alta, I don't know what to feel. A bit deflated, but serene. One day at a time. The sun shines, a soft rain comes down. Light and darkness. Wholeness. A thick rainbow hangs from the clouds and throws itself behind the faraway trees.
Anima. Senex. They will walk hand in hand. There is something stuck in there that needs clarity and action - less intellectualisation. Jumping. Unlocking that creativity that gets stuck in its bubble. Poking it as if it was made of soap. The brain loves the attention, but I need it to waltz outwards.
Puer ahead for its guiding light, Senex within, grounding the movement, Anima for trust and intuition that will let it all out.
“The transit of the Middle Passage occurs in the fearsome clash between the acquired personality and the demands of the Self. A person going through such an experience will often panic and say, “I don’t know who I am anymore.” In effect, the person one has been is to be replaced by the person to be. The first must die.”
Burn-out [pause]
Lofoten Islands - Norway
29 August 2025
Abandonment.
It is my responsibility to take myself by the hand.
If I abandon myself, it's on me.
Since Nordkapp all has faded. An abrupt change. Is it the surroundings, the weather, the burnout? I feel out of it. An odd series of miles that lead both to the most extraordinary places, and to nowhere at all. Something’s been dropped. No more writing, no music, capturing on autopilot. Reading is difficult. The thinking stalls. I remind myself to breathe. I remind myself that this is part of the process. Pausing, for clarity. Resting. The mileage is wearing me down. Logistics, personal journey, creative output, burnout. The Senex knows. He tells the Puer to slow down, not to panic. Trust the instinct to pause. When the time comes again, it comes again. I trust the unfolding. I don't remember deeply relaxing on this journey. I'm looking too hard. I want answers too fast. I remind myself that there's no clear outcome, no date, no expectation - just a process that will take its time. The Lofoten are an incredible feast of nature. Driving under these towering peaks that seem to sit in vivid yellows and greens, whilst, just on the other side of the road, lay the most pristine clear turquoise water. The sun’s been here all along. I'm grateful. The Lofoten feel like an endless corridor. A single road for all to share. Something feels off within me. I feel trapped. Tomorrow I'm out. Ferry towards Bognes. Then Bodø. Back in town. I realise I haven't emptied my grey water in days. I haven't replenished fresh water either. None of this occurred to me. Something’s off. The Lofoten are a world apart, but it's been coming since Nordkapp. A shift. Not the shift I expected. A shift that feels like emptiness - a void. Maybe a well needed and well timed shift that calls for patience, rest, grounding ; to start again stronger.
Abandonment.
It is my responsibility to take myself by the hand.
If I abandon myself, it's on me.
Abandonment. I won’t abandon this. It needs to rest. Then I'll dig into abandonment. The Lofoten and its big dark tunnels, they called for this. Getting ready to go deep again. In, deep, out. Darkness, light again.
I will explore abandonment. When I abandon myself, like a pattern.
The missing pieces of a man.
“Patterns, with their costs and side-effects, can only be discerned as patterns when one has suffered them more than once. [...]
Reviewing one’s life from the vantage-point of the second half requires understanding and forgiveness of the inevitable crime of unconsciousness. But not to become conscious in the second half is to commit an unforgivable crime.”
Reset
Bodo - Norway
30 August 2025
We sail away.
Finally thrown onto this scorched-by-the-sun white sea. Pale blue peaks in the distance. Feels like leaving a country to find another. Dotted lines, fragments. No linearity, ever. Jumping from an island to an idea. Leaping from a country to a mood. A fatigue that the calm sea softens. We glide slowly, and could fall asleep. At last, a stretch where the wheels don’t turn. Everything rests. The people around, calm too. It’s still early. Everything seems to awake slowly. Few words. Each in their own head. Everywhere masks. Shadows. Wasted dreams. Endings that came too soon. As many realities as there are people. We don’t understand each other. We sail on different boats and we go in circles. Each with our own tunnels and debris. Each with our own edifices. Each with our own wreckage. I like being far, among strangers. But I need connection too. An ambivalence, always.
In Bodø, reset. After the turmoil of recent days, the sun strikes and summer returns. A pause. Reset. Back to a terrace, a coffee, a book. The excitement in the street. Disconnected all the same. Days ago, the end of the world - cliffs, peaks, islands, sea. At the edge of Bodø the familiar pines of Sweden return by the roadside. Dissociation. But calm. On this terrace I am everywhere - Canterbury, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Jönköping, Stockholm. Does it matter? Was it a month ago? Two?More? I’m everywhere, a ghost. I will bring back more fragments. Heavy and light at the same time. After pasta in Stockholm, ramen in Bodø. I always opt for the local cuisine. The last ramen was Canterbury. Softness, spices, soup, a need for good nutrition for a body that falters. Fatigue, headache. A chill I’m still carrying from Nordkapp. The sudden heat invaded the cabin during the drive, prisoner, I roasted there a little this afternoon. I like to think the headache is a new me emerging, being born. A spirit making its place in my mind and in my soul. I like finding meaning in everything and nothing. Sometimes I see meaning in the most trivial things that don’t mean much. Sometimes I‘m blind to what strikes me head-on.
“Two Greek words for “time,” Chronos and Kairos. Chronos is sequential, linear time; Kairos is time revealed in its depth dimension.
The Middle Passage occurs when the person is obliged to view his or her life as something more than a linear succession of years. Then a vertical dimension, Kairos, intersects the horizontal plane of life; one is now open to existence in a depth perspective:
“Who am I, then, and whither bound?””
Anchors
Mo i Rana - Norway
31 August 2025
En route pour Mo i Rana, on land and at sea, the mounts above me all show wrinkles. When do I abandon myself? It's been a few days that I've been trying to refocus. Rest. Focus. Move. Wheels turning devouring the asphalt. Gliding. I know I'm going down, I don't know where to. I'm missing an anchor point - something to go to, something to talk from. I feel far from who I've been, further away from who I become. Writing from my old self was easy, albeit performative. Now I don't know. Nothing emerges. My inner world is moving as fast as the view outside my window. Trying to adapt. From a place unknown and going in the dark. No reference point. Tunnels and bridges. Refocus. Taking time in a frenetic race. Freezing an instant before it gets shattered by the next. Holding a thought before it gets replaced. Holding on to something. Looking for anchors. Or letting them come my way. My pen glides on the paper like I glide on the road. At every turn something unexpected, shifting landscapes. Loaded ink that draws shapes and motifs until I find the missing pieces. Keeping at it. One single line from the heart to the page - dialogue and reaction. From nothing something emerges. Unexpected. In stillness it comes. On land or at sea the body’s shaken.
Anchors
Mo i Rana - Norway
31 August 2025
Looking for anchors
Letting them come my way
Putting pen to paper
Chasing the unexpected
Loaded ink, drawing shapes, wrecked ships, til I find the missing pieces
A single line plants on the page a heated curse, from a plea something emerges
Tunnels and bridges
From a place unknown
Silence of the soul
Far from who I become
Holding on to a thought, the mounts above, gliding on until the stillness comes
A dialogue far at sea, the body shakes, to the child, backtracking memories
And he can’t stop whistling
In the middle of the night
Like a fucking kettle on the stove
But his fire never dies
Calling on the wolves and the bears
The leaders of the pack
On his heart they feast
A good death for a fresh start
Crosses and heart shapes
The demons and the saints
Loosening the grip
Unbolting the chains
Helping hand, soothing land, long burnout, safety pins, slow pull of the wave
Come and gone in a flash, an odd stretch, the bubble burst, the pressure of the depths
The second adulthood
Trondheim - Norway
1 September 2025
“I call the period from roughly twelve to forty the first adulthood. A period which may in fact extend throughout one’s life - a provisional existence, lacking the depth and uniqueness which makes that person truly an individual.[...]
The second adulthood is launched when one’s projections have dissolved.
The sense of betrayal, of failed expectations, the vacuum and loss of meaning which occur with this dissolution, creates the midlife crisis.
It is in this crisis, however, that one has the chance to become an individual—beyond the determinism of parents, parent complexes and cultural conditioning.”
Reason To Stay
Aure - Norway
2 September 2025
To call it Home one day
I need a reason to stay
Are you the reason to stay?
The otherness of the Other
Kristiansund - Norway
3 September 2025
“Romance feeds on the distant, the imagined, the projected [...]. While the encounter with one’s lesser qualities may be painful, their acknowledgment begins the withdrawal of their projection onto others.[...]
It takes enormous courage to say that what is wrong in the world is wrong in us, what is wrong in marriage is wrong in us, and so on. But in such humbling moments we begin to improve the world we inhabit, and bring about the conditions for healing of both one’s relationships and oneself. [...]
Living together on a daily basis remorselessly wears away the projections; one is left with the otherness of the Other, who will not and cannot bear the largesse of the projections.
So people will conclude at midlife that “You’re not the person I married.” Actually, they never were. They always were somebody else, a stranger we barely knew then and know only a little better now. Because the anima or animus was projected onto that Other, one literally fell in love with missing parts of oneself.
To have a mature relationship one must be able to say, “No one can give me what I most deeply want or need. Only I can.”
Simple questions
Sunnfjord - Norway
4 September 2025
“A great problem for many men is that the chest is a numbed zone. Conditioned to shun feeling, avoid instinctual wisdom and override his inner truth, the average male is a stranger to himself and others [...]. During the Middle Passage, he has to become a child again, face the fear that power masks, and ask the old questions anew.
They are simple questions:
“What do I want? What do I feel? What must I do to feel right with myself?”
Few modern men allow themselves the luxury of such questions.
What is not conscious from our past will infiltrate our present and determine our future.
The degree to which we feel nurtured directly affects our ability to nurture others.
The degree to which we feel empowered directly affects our ability to lead our own lives.
The degree to which we can risk relationship, or even to imagine it as supportive rather than hurtful, is a direct function of our level of conscious dialogue with the parent complexes.”
Answer the call
Bergen - Norway
6 September 2025
“We cannot grow up until we can see our parents as other adults,[...] wounded perhaps, but most of all simply other people who did or did not take on the largeness of their own journey.
We have our journey, for sure, and that is large enough to take us beyond our personal history toward our full potential.
Just when we have achieved a measure of stability, we may be undermined from below and called to a new direction. [...]
“What am I called to do?”
Then, with planning, the paying of dues and sufficient courage, we must find a way to do it. The sacrifice of the ego, with its need for creature comforts and security, is painful, but not half so much as looking back on our lives and regretting that we failed to answer the call.”
Taking an appointment
Oslo - Norway
8 September 2025
“Neurosis is suffering which has not discovered its meaning. Keeping our appointment with midlife involves both the suffering and the search for its meaning.
We must address the making of our myths more consciously or we shall never be more than the sum of what has happened to us.”
Back to Sweden
Skee - Sweden
9 September 2025
Back in Sweden, already - feels like home. A comfort, peaceful. Back to Sweden and back to writing. Back to fields, rivers. Nothing but the sound of water passing by. Norway will stay on my mind as a majestic land of figures and symbols flying around me incessantly. The land of synchronicities. Also an odd stretch that’s come and gone in a flash. A straight line where stopping always felt on the go. A land of contradictions. A land where forward was the only way to go. The road was always calling. Feels like a long burnout that started right from the top. And from there the bareness and the horizon. Followed by the mounts and their heads in the clouds. Thin long waterfalls - straight white lines cutting through the rocks like that line that parts the road in two. I was losing myself in a race forward. An accumulation of ideas and epiphanies which I could not jot down. Frenetic jumps. Contrasted by quasi non-stop drive that felt like a weeks-long meditation. A meditative space in which landscape and soulscape were confronting each other. In the middle, just my body, the road and the sound of the engine. An eruption of memories, questions, conversations with myself and with my Eternal Child. Laughs and tears. A long drive down, tunnels and bridges. Island hopping. Working my fragments. Detaching cause from consequence. I’m neither my cause nor my consequence. Watching archetypes at play. Finally uncovering buried wounds. Finally the start of an understanding of the weight I’ve been holding. Finally understanding how to relieve the Puer. Where I abandoned growth. Fracturing the shadow, unbolting the chains, loosening the grip. Talking to the Child so he can rest.
“The ego structure which once worked so hard to create is now revealed to be petty, frightened and out of answers. At midlife the Self manoeuvres the ego assemblage into crisis in order to bring about a correction of course. [...]
We must separate who we are from what we have acquired.
“I am not what happened to me; I am what I choose to become.”
[...]As long as we remain primarily identified with the outer, objective word, we will be estranged from our subjective reality.”
Talking to the Child
Gothenburg - Sweden
10 September 2025
I visualise old pictures. I’m 4, 5, maybe 6. And I remember. I can feel the child. I can feel the wounds. I need to dig deeper. I remember. I can look at him. I can talk to him. I see him hide. He’s scared. He won’t talk. The Shadow grows. And I fed the Shadow all this time.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry I let you down. I’m sorry for all the masks I made you wear. All the weight I’ve had you carry all this time. I’m sorry I expected the child to play the adult. You’ve been screaming all along and I turned the other way. I’m sorry for the agony. I’m here now and I won’t abandon you. I’m here to listen to you. You’re still scared, but I won’t go away. I’m here to take your hand and take off the weight that was never yours to carry. You are the child and I need you to stay that way. Be my lightness, my playfulness, my impulses, my drive. Be my light ahead. I’m relieving you of the heaviness that was never yours to handle. Together we are exiting the first adulthood. Together we enter the second. You’ll always be me, you’ll always be my eternal child. Now the Senex takes the weight off you. Now you can rest. You’re not my ghost anymore. You’re my light. The Senex is here, he’s been waiting to relieve you. I was blind and deaf and I’m sorry. Now you’re free. Now you can sleep. The Anima will draw from within. The Senex will ground and execute. You’re ahead and you’re alive. You can be yourself again. You don’t have to hide. You’re not alone anymore. I’ll never leave you alone again.
Tomorrow I'll ponder
Malmo - Sweden
13 September 2025
A sea of humans. Malmo old town. Terrace on a sunny afternoon. Solo beer. Final day in Sweden. The loop is looped. Tomorrow, back in Copenhagen and those streets I was lost and confused in a few weeks back. Walking amongst strangers feeling disconnected. Now, strangers again. In what way am I different? Tomorrow I'll ponder. Today I take in Sweden one last time. My stomach churns. My throat tightens. A foreign faraway vast land which has been much more than my home for a long summer. A land that saw me like I'd never seen myself before. A land where its myths met my archetypes - where they stared at each other. Where looking out the window to the passing majestic landscapes, hours on end, was like looking at a mirror and into my soulscapes. Projections slowly became paintings I could hazily look at. Liftings veils like passing endless tunnels. Gathering fragments like hopping islands. Remembering. My child. No Puer to Senex. Puer and Senex. Birth of a long journey, second adulthood. Birth of new questions and new perspectives. Tight throat and watery eyes. I put on my sunglasses in that sea of strangers. Now I wonder. How many around are in their first adulthood. How many will go on as is. Couples and their projections. How many are hanging on. How many are receding. Where do I stand in all of this.
From the get go i had to split myself
Spent my life climbing hills to meet other people's needs.
This is what i want.
How do I not split myself. I am enough. I am whole as myself.
In what way am I so afraid that I am avoiding myself?
How can anyone meet me when i can't even meet myself?
Nothing was ever amiss.
Better overall, the edge is near. I understand Nordkapp now. It was never a question of coming back. It was a question of ramping up the momentum through Sweden to enable the jump. Far I jump. Deep I dive. Let the currents, the speed and the chaos mess with me.
On the walk back, a pier which reminds of England. The smell of algae at low tide. A saxophone player in the street performs a melancholic version of Auld Lang Syne - ce n'est qu'un au revoir. In the distance the Øresund Bridge. Tomorrow Copenhagen. Tomorrow I'll ponder. My stomach churns. My throat tightens.
“When we are alone and quiet we are afraid that something will be whispered in our ear, and so we hate the silence and drug ourselves with social life.
When we are not lonely in being alone, then we have achieved solitude.
When we grasp the wheel on the captain’s deck, scarce knowing our direction, knowing only that the thing must be done, then we live the high adventure of the soul.
In the long run, it is the only journey worth taking. [...]”
In The Fall I Breathe
Malmo - Sweden
13 September 2025
It’s better overall and the edge is near
And I lose control and I disappear
Silence on his own, climb up the hill
Far a jump I dive, in the fall I breathe
The jigsaw
Copenhagen - Denmark
14 September 2025
To the part of me I rejected.
I was afraid - of who I am, what I want, where this would lead me. Afraid of people and afraid of environments. I was wrong. I want to be seen. I want to push, pull, tighten, expand. I want the bubble to burst through the pressure of my depths. The masks slip. I'm in control. I turned my back thinking I'd please the world. But the world is just more masks and games, and it led me here. I see you, parts of you, between hiding and emerging. You’re safe now. I can see you, hold you, carry you. We are walking together. I was a fragment of me. Now I want you to complete me. Make me whole. We hold each other. There's more than this. I understand the hurt and I want to know more. Abandonment, absence, self-reliance, containment, pleasing, ,escaping. Art as escape and Art as means of expression. The stars and the Universe to look far away in the unknown. The mind and the Self for all the paths uncovered. What's behind the horizon. Escaping the here and now. Creating fantasies. Living through them. Enacting them. But forgetting the moment and the embodiment. There's nothing boring in this reality. There's boring in the inauthentic - a charged path with no beginning, no end, and no substance. That inauthenticity is filling our reality.
I want to know more. I want to know what you need. I want you to complete me. I'm a puzzle. But an evil hand took pieces away from me. Where are those pieces? Can I find them myself? Where does the hand come from? Do I need to dialogue with the figures it belongs to? Can I have it work with me?
Help me complete that jigsaw.
“Risking loneliness to achieve that sense of oneness with oneself we call solitude is essential if one is to survive the Middle Passage.
“How much of the unknown me was tied up in that person or that role?”
When we can acknowledge loss and recoup the energy that was once invested outside ourselves, it becomes available for the next stage of the journey.
We are rewarded for specialisation, not only at work but in intimate relationships. [...] Given the kaleidoscopic character of the Self, only a few facets will ever be lived. This incompleteness is part of the existential tragedy, but the more that can be lived, the richer one’s life will be.”
Safety pins
Wenden - Germany
20 September 2025
Past Berlin, past Hanover. The collision of what's behind and what's ahead. The ineluctable pull of that wave, thrown forward. It feels like having a long trail behind me - crumbs left along the way. I feel split, as if some of me was still there. Maybe it is. Those fragments remain where they've been scattered. Me, there, everywhere. I feel I've been watched all along, by those tall figures above. I never felt alone. Risk loneliness to find the necessary solitude. Helping hand, soothing land. I cut down trees of Youth in order to see further and to plant new seeds. Emptiness is vastness to be filled. Blank canvas, bottle of ink. Fills the sky at night of its darkest wash to reveal the immensity beyond.
I'm in total burnout ; exhausted in the fields of Germany.
Travel out, travel in.
In Wenden I do what I do best - wander. One step where I falter still, feeling like a bother. A step which hinders. The flow of conversational rivers turns into dry land. I feel a need to escape and leave space for others. But here again, the Senex takes shape. In holding time and space I trust him to carry that burden. The child that was hiding, rushing and running is to be freed up of that duty. The Puer/Senex/Anima trio comes back into the picture. The Puer ignites the flame. From deep within, the Anima sustains it ; it grows stronger. The Senex holds the torch, standing his ground where, before, darkness meant fear and struggle. I had a dream of safety pins keeping my mouth shut. Ravaging the skin, blood dripping. One after the other they came out, unleashing what lies within. Throwing away the false sense of safety. Watching the horror in taking a leap. But I wonder still, how did this come to be? Searching for the wound so it can heal. I feel it's near. The Senex is with me. He holds space, he will hold the weight.
“The conscious experience of the Middle Passage requires separating who we are from the sum of the experiences we have internalised.
Then, most strangely, surplus of existence floods our heart. Then we move from the knowledge of the head, important as it sometimes is, to the wisdom of the heart.”
Sparrows
Cologne - Germany
22 September 2025
Walking over Deutzer Bruck feels like crossing Waterloo Bridge. Sunset, evening stroll, soft city lights. I remember emptying that flat we’d shared for 10 years, letting it all go, and waving goodbye to London before embarking on a life on the road. Grieving a relationship, a neighbourhood, and the city as a whole. Wandering through streets I’d seen dozens of times before. Passing by buildings, trees and corners I ended up ignoring and now seeing them in a new light. And those areas full of tourists that are best left avoided - Covent Garden, Soho, the SouthBank, Hyde Park, Trafalgar Square and many more. Striding through them again. A slow stroll, taking in spaces which hold so many memories - forgotten ones now emerge again. Looking at tourists taking pictures, the amazement on their faces warm up my heart. Remembering too being there for the first time, almost 15 years earlier, taken by the big city in the sweet naiveté of youth and of new beginnings. Feeling a knot in the throat wondering when I’d see those streets again.
I pass underneath Severin Bruck, a familiar feeling again, but here the BFI is missing. Hundreds of sparrows fly past me, circle around, in and out above the river, slaloming through the bridges and their pillars.
In the fields of Germany I grieve Scandinavia. I grieve an old me. Life on the road is a series of goodbyes. And starting fresh every day. Is there in this my Puer pattern of always starting again instead of building up layers. But without this long travel out, I wouldn't have done the travel in. I don't know how long I can sustain this. But for the sparks, dives and epiphanies that have so far come out of it, it's been worth every minute.
Ducks
Landen - Belgium
23 September 2025
A pond in Belgium. The weather is grey, the air chill. The language, I'm not sure. A man throws breadcrumbs around and claps his hands. The ducks get into a trance. Remains of Tomorrowland perhaps. I remember Belgium on the way up. Months ago. Early summer. Bumper cars, neons, music. Excitement, apprehension, just the unknown ahead. Me and myself. Me and my puer and so little I knew. Months have gone by. The edge of the world and back. Now, ducks parade and quack around. I did not expect the turns I took. Hadn't planned them. How does it feel to stand between two selves?
Past Kortrijk the grocery shops are very french. Reminds me of a home that's not home. Where is home? I miss the Scandinavian aisles of products I'd never seen, the labels I don't understand. Feeling in and out at once. A liminal state of mind, at ease and whole around people I can't understand. Why do I feel more distant from the people I do understand? Why am I feeling split again closer to home? My emotional charge of those foreign lands hardly lies in their landscapes and moments of amazement. It lies in how an alien day to day became my new normalcy. It lies in the mundanity of the everyday details that you slowly become accustomed to. When things taken for granted that make up your whole world get replaced. The shift occurs and fills the soul from within.
90 Days
FR to UK
30 September 2025
90 days.
9 countries.
Completion. Enlightenment.
Ferry. Early morning. A crossing that feels less like hopping. Towards the Cliffs of Dover. Neither a beginning nor an end. Just another crossing. Take it for what it is. But is taking things just for what they are too meaningless a void. Should there be meaning and purpose to find in it? Is emptiness enough? Is every second and every moment a blank canvas to paint with symbolism and perspective. Each life a giant tapestry in the making, opportunities for colours, motifs and patterns. Each of us our own way to weave it. A collision of experiences, worlds and complexes.
The engine roars. Seagulls dash around. Squeaks. First deck lounge ; breakfast. A calm crowd, heads turned towards the horizon, past the giant glass windows. We pass the harbour arm. Retired couples, lorry drivers, single middle aged women in a line, young students. An old man with a coffee looks in the distance. I look in the distance. I don't know what I'm looking at.
90 days.
A blur. A flash. The present - the collision of memories and future possibilities. Flows like water through a fishing net. It feels like nothing has ever started. Limbo and liminal seem to have become my lounge. Can someone be liminal? Walking on the edge of life - on the edge of reality. Upper deck. The cold wind slaps me in the face. Jokkmokk. Kiruna. Porsanger. Nordkapp and back again.
I float. I walk. I’m free.
Canterbury - UK
9 October 2025
Something’s stuck, something’s off. The mind boils ; erupts even. Girl walks in looks 17, sits down turns 43. Nowhere near anything.
Annoyed at myself, in limbo. Physical, spiritual. Not a reset, not a pause. Limbo. I'm not sure where to walk to. Where has everyone gone? Mood swings. I got scared that the Senex had disappeared. What have I left in Scandinavia, far far behind? Anima. Projecting. Talking to the child. I got scared it was all gone. Fear. Disappointment. Abandonment, again. Again not taking myself by the hand. Left behind. The lightness, the grounding. Limbo.
Where am I? Who am I? What's my worth? Is anything worth anything?
I cried a few too many tears. Then, lightness took over. In a flash. A sudden strike. The weight, gone. The fear, gone. Limbo, maybe. But limbo like a blanket. Laying there, in it, with it. Lightness. Light. I realised I was free.
Free from everything. No want to want. No need to need. My brain was bashing me against a bubble of my own making. My own expectations. Suddenly I was free.
I float away. The world slows down. I take a walk. I feel the wind. I feel my skin. I feel its pores. I feel them open. I feel my steps. I feel my feet. I feel the earth pushing against me. All those narrow paved streets I'd walked so many times before. It all slows down. I watch people around me. I'm free. Their game, their reality. My game, my reality. I walk, I talk, I laugh, I sing, I applaud, I smile, I flirt, I love. They smile, they laugh, they love. Nothing bothers me. I float away. I ride the streets and I ride the day. I’m out of me. I play. A conscious play. Switching Masks as I please. I let go. Hands to the sky. In a crowd I'm alone. They carry me. My field widens. I feel theirs narrow. I feel their pace. People. Crowds. I feel their rush past me. And I see nothing in their eyes. I stop them. We breathe. I walk. I'm free. Who am I? Who is this? What is the playing field? I float. I walk. I'm free.
The Puer ignites the flame. He’s not afraid because he knows he doesn't hold the weight anymore. He strikes the match. The Senex holds the weight. The Puer floats. The Puer flies. The energy of emotions and feelings, let it go, discharge. Let the conduit free for the Anima to emerge. My Anima down within, suffocated by the negative energy of emotions. Drop them, let go, clear the path for the Anima to come up and emerge. In that chimney, clear the black soil and the residue ; clear it up for the Anima to rise from the fire below. I float. I walk. I'm free.
“If our courage holds, the Middle Passage brings us back to life after we have been cut off from it. Strangely, for all the anxiety, there is an awesome sens of freedom as well.”
I breathe.
Canterbury - UK
14 October 2025
There's something I've never fully admitted. The mind wanders. West coast, Kate, Jack, Perry. I breathe. The heavy energy, released. I keep going. I jump and I fly, shaky ground. I can't steady myself. I need flow. A focus so sharp the mind gets lost in it. There's an energy in and around me, a field, that I don't understand. It pins me down. Shackles. A distortion which blurs my vision ; a whirlwind in which I find no anchor. I can't define the energy, I don't know who is talking to me, who is getting agitated. I breathe. Street’s being taken apart just in front of me - machines hitting, piling, crushing and tearing the road apart. A perfectly orchestrated ballet. Chaos. Rubbles. Dust. Flashing lights. I breathe. An unidentified shadow object is messing about. Who is lurking? Something I've never fully admitted. Up & down. Highs & lows. Deep dive & transcendence. A strong current, and swimming against it. What if I let go - head first. The Canterbury tales. Immersive experience. Opening soon. Breathe. Release. Up. Down. Intoxicated. Suffocated. Thrashed away. Is there a better flow? Where am I headed? A force wants to carry me away.
