Malmö, religion and the relativity of things

Today I borrowed John's camera - and headed out into town on my new bike. Since John's away, and I didn't have a lock this morning, I had to set out on my new adventure without the luxury of leaving my bike for long. Luckily, one of the many immigrant stores in Malmö are open on Sundays, even more specialized stores like the key and lock store I visited.

I took a little round near to Möllevängstorget where we're going to live to shoot some of the stores and life around it, that makes it so special, almost like New York, John says. I haven't been there, but I think it's a mix between Oslo's Grønland, and Trondheim's Svartlamo'n. That is a mix of cultures, both based in geography and political affinity. I made a little collection of pictures from my day on the bike.

After heading home I came across this dude, who's in some way is doing some kind of religious praise, or some kind of personal enlightenment procedure, where he faces the sun, with his hands pointing up, in a 90 degree elbow position, and then, before he finishes, crosses himself, and resumes his otherwise normal activity.

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Today I met him, in a more direct manner, our roads crossed, so to speak. I stopped, and asked him what he was doing, if he was part of some religion or something. And he didn't stop, but after he'd passed me he turned around and said "Search, and you'll find. Do you get it?". I said "Eh, no, no. I... I... No, not really. What do you call it, who do you belong to?" And to this he replied, "why do you have to belong to anything? It's him, it's God, you don't have to belong - search, and you'll find - don't you get it?". Then he was gone. I continued walking, mumbling... "No..."

I'm still kinda baffled, that this guy, so openly doing something so weird, relative to his location and time at least, was so reluctant to talk about what he was doing. Enlightenment without teaching. Personal religion - though he'd probably oppose any such labeling as "religion". I mean - regardless of if I agreed with the fella, he might have had some interesting stuff to tell me. This dude has had some epiphany, and doesn't want to share. That's rare.

The other day though, at the midsummer party, we got to meet this buddhist, vegan, American, who's called John, and has worked and lived in Palo Alto as a programmer, much like the old John, or John One, or any other suiting label. He's into sanskrit, computer games and linguistics - not unrelated as such, but still, John Two is to me a good broad education specimen. He also made me aware of a movie, Powers of Ten (download: 147MB), which is been deemed culturally significant, by the US Library of Congress. It's a 1977 documentary, showing the meaning of powers of ten in the universe, from a couple having a picnic in Chicago, zooming out to the outer limits of space, by adding a power of ten every ten seconds. For anyone having studies physics, I suppose it doesn't add anything new to the table, but it's still an interesting visualization of the large and the small, and the relative scale of things.

Now it's time to address more secular interests, like watching Ecuador beat England in the world cup.