A moment of summertime

For a few days, it suddenly became warm and summery and everything took on that touch of light-heartedness that always accompanies this weather.

It was another week dominated by working through my to-do list, to which new items were constantly being added. So, despite continually ticking off individual items, the list doesn’t get any smaller. But since life is a work in progress, that doesn’t seem too tragic to me. As long as I have something to work on, I am alive. And when I talk about work, it’s usually something that gives me pleasure. What made this week special, however, was that there were a few days towards the end that finally felt like summer. It was oppressively hot and humid. Unfortunately, the Rhine swimming component is still a danger, as the river continues to have too much water to swim in safely. But apart from that, it felt perfect.

Powerful invisibility

Once again, it was the small, everyday things that caught my attention this week. The wild flowers that are blooming everywhere or the summer clouds in the sky. As it is very warm in my attic apartment in summer, I always get up very early to make the most of the pleasant morning hours. As soon as the sun rose, clouds began to pile up over the Jura hills. This happened with incredible speed and every time I looked out of the window, I could see a different formation, which disappeared a short time later and was replaced by new towers of clouds. You could literally see the air boiling. I like these summer skies with the different cloud formations and how the sky looks so different on a warm summer’s day than it does in January, for example. And the fascination of what it all actually is. Air, humidity, temperature. At first glance, something unexciting, simple and invisible. But something totally unpredictable. When harmless little clouds turn into a black wall within a few minutes, which darkens the sun and can develop completely different, destructive forces. This became clear once again this week, when storms triggered disasters and caused loss of life. They all started out as a gentle breeze. Nothing is what it seems and everything deserves respect in our universe.

A kinda martian moment

Fortunately, we got away without any major weather incidents in Basel. The most tragic thing was perhaps the Sahara dust on Saturday, which covered the sky for the umpteenth time this year, turning the hot summer day orange instead of blue. Also a new experience.

California dreamin’

On my Friday run I noticed California again and stopped to take a photo of it. California is a patch of tar on the Marie Lotz Promenade in Birsfelden, which I always jog over when I do this lap. It has the same shape as the state of California in the USA. California was my absolute dream destination when I was young and I constantly imagined how I would live there one day. I soaked up everything I could find about California (in the pre-internet days, sources were still limited). I often sat with my atlas and studied the landscapes and the outline of the state became deeply engraved in my mind. I was all the more delighted when I discovered this similarity on the ground a few years ago. There is even a crack across it, as if it were the San Andreas Fault. Ah, California… I think every time I jog across it and I always do it with a bit of melancholy, because to this day I have never managed to get there and experience the land of my (youthful) dreams.

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