Tag: Carl Milles

Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale

  1. Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
  2. From Blossoms
  3. Wild Geese
  4. The Peace of Wild Things
  5. My Gift to You
  6. Departing Spring
  7. The Skylark
  8. What a Strange Thing!
  9. Although The Wind …
  10. The Old Pond
  11. Spring Is Like A Perhaps Hand
  12. Hast thou 2 loaves of bread …
  13. Youth and Age
  14. A Postcard From the Volcano
  15. The Kraken
  16. He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
  17. There Is a Solitude of Space
  18. Because I Could Not Stop for Death
  19. Mad Song
  20. Answer July
  21. Success Is Counted Sweetest
  22. Hope Is the Thing with Feathers
  23. The Bluebird
  24. A Vision of the End
  25. The Crying of Water
  26. A Rose Has Thorns As Well As Honey
  27. Winter
  28. The Dark Cavalier
  29. There is no Life or Death
  30. Sheep in Winter
  31. To a Snowflake
  32. Sextain
  33. A Crocodile
  34. Sea Fever
  35. The Giant Cactus of Arizona
  36. The Coming of Night
  37. Going to the Picnic
  38. Moon Tonight
  39. A Southern Night
  40. Greenness
  41. Twilight
  42. On the Wing
  43. In Summer
  44. Before Parting
  45. Sonnet
  46. The Red Wheelbarrow
  47. Acceptance
  48. At The Pool
  49. Incurable
  50. Bluebird and Cardinal
  51. [Say What You Will, And Scratch My Heart To Find]
  52. The River
  53. Vas Doloris Scheduled for 15th October 2024
Jonah and the Whale (1932) a statue by Carl Milles at Millesgården, Stockholm (Sweden)
Jonah and the Whale (1932) by Carl Milles at Millesgården, Stockholm (Sweden)

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.

Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires

with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.

Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.

Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way

for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review

each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments

of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.

Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound

of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart. 

Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,

where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all

the things you did and could have done. Remember

treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes

pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

by Dan Albergotti


To read more poems, click here.



The Zone: No. 15 – Jan 28, 2020

  1. Welcome To The Zone!
  2. The Zone: No. 2 – Oct 22, 2020
  3. The Zone: No. 3 – Oct 29, 2020
  4. The Zone: No.4 – Nov 5, 2020
  5. The Zone: No. 5 – Nov 12, 2021
  6. The Zone: No. 6 – Nov 19, 2020
  7. The Zone: No. 7 – Nov 26, 2020
  8. The Zone: No. 8 – Dec 3, 2020
  9. The Zone: No. 9 – Dec 10, 2020
  10. The Zone: No. 10 – Dec 17, 2020
  11. The Zone: No. 11, Dec 31, 2020 – Special Edition
  12. The Zone: No. 12 – Jan 7, 2020
  13. The Zone: No. 13 – Jan 14, 2020
  14. The Zone: No. 14 – Jan 21, 2020
  15. The Zone: No. 15 – Jan 28, 2020
  16. The Zone: No. 16 – Feb 4, 2020
  17. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish!

Milton Glaser’s 10 Rules for Life & Work, the Library Explorer, radiators and the pandemic (true story), a squirrel getting tipsy, and much more in The Zone No. 15.

Another Thursday, another Zone! Are you ready? Here goes!

  • Milton Glaser‘s 10 Rules for Life & Work. Difficult to pick any favorites, but I’ll give it a try.
    • Some people are toxic. Avoid them
    • How you live changes your brain.
    • IT DOESN’T MATTER.
  • Internet Archive, the non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, music, websites, and other treasures, offers now a thrilling way to browse their library shelves in 3D through their Library Explorer.
Layers and exposed bedrock on Mars
Still photo from Spirited Away (2001)
  • You’ve probably guessed how much I enjoy Studio Ghibli movies; it seems Studio Ghibli is one of the standing points in The Zone. Here’s a good introduction to the Japanese animation studio.

My Zone

A Quote I’m Pondering

Build pockets of stillness into your life. Meditate. Go for walks. Ride your bike going nowhere in particular. There is a creative purpose to daydreaming, even to boredom. The best ideas come to us when we stop actively trying to coax the muse into manifesting and let the fragments of experience float around our unconscious mind in order to click into new combinations. Without this essential stage of unconscious processing, the entire flow of the creative process is broken.

Maria Popova

From My Photo Archives

The Angel Musicians, sculptures by Carl Milles. Photo by Mihaela Limberea
The Angel Musicians, sculptures by Carl Milles at Millesgården, Stockholm.

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To read more The Zone posts, click here.



Fragmentary Blue

Man and Pegasus statue by Carl Milles, at Millesgården, Sweden. Photo © Mihaela Limberea www.limberea.com
Man and Pegasus by Carl Milles, Millesgården, Sweden. Photo © Mihaela Limberea

Why make so much of fragmentary blue

In here and there a bird, or butterfly,

Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,

When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)—

Though some savants make earth include the sky;

And blue so far above us comes so high,

It only gives our wish for blue a whet.

by Robert Frost (1874–1963)



Back at Millesgården

The stairway from Little Austria/Olga's Terrace to the Upper Terrace, Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com
The stairway from Little Austria/Olga’s Terrace to the Upper Terrace, Millesgården. All photos © Mihaela Limberea.

One of the joys in otherwise a pretty bleak summer (hey, COVID-19!) has been the re-opening of Millesgården. Not only for me but apparently for a large number of other people. I’ve been there several times since the re-opening at the end of April, and there were many people every time. Mostly Swedish tourists, though, usually there are busloads of foreign tourists. In any case, it’s good to see Millesgården open again, and so many people enjoying it.

Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com
The Venus Fountain at Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com

The Venus Fountain (1917) showing the godess’ birth from the sea.

The Middle Terrace, Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com

The Middle Terrace with its’ row of lemon trees.

The Middle Terrace, Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com

Middle Terrace – on the right hand you can see The Genius (1940).

The Genius at Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com

The statue is a replica of a grave monument to the Swedish actor Gösta Ekman.

Cymbalaria muralis grows on the steps of  Olga's Terrace, Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com

Cymbalaria muralis grows on the steps of Olga’s Terrace.

Olgas Terrace, Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com

Olga’s Terrace, Carl Milles tribute to his Austrian-born wife. Olgas was an artist, too; she was a painter.

Olga's Terrace, Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com
The Aganippe Fountain at Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com

The Aganippe Fountain (1955). The indoor fountain was created for the Metropolitan Museum but has later been moved to Brookgreen Gardens (South Carolina). I like how Milles re-interpreted the Greek myth and changed the muses, typically portraited as women, to young boys.

The Water Nymph at Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com

The Water Nymph, part of the The Aganippe Fountain.

The Aganippe Fountain at Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com
The Aganippe Fountain: the musicians (and in the background, the painter). Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com

The Aganippe Fountain: the musicians (and in the background, the painter).

Roses at Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com

Rose is a is a rose is a rose. (Gertrude Stein)

Clematis at Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com

Small flowered clematis on the upper terrace.

Roses at Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com
The Lower Terrace with St. Martin at Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com

The wonderful flower beds on the Lower Terrace with St. Martin sharing his mantle with a beggar in the background. St. Martin’s statue is part of the St. Martin Fountain from 1955, Carl Milles’ last completed work of art.

The Lower Terrace at Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com

The flowerbed has been created by Ulf Nordfjell, a well-known Swedish garden designer. The theme this year is Bumblebees and bees go pink.

Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com
Angel's trumpets at Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com

You have no idea how hard it was to take this photo. This is a small service area, and water hoses, buckets, wheelbarrows, or other garden tools are very often strewn about. This time there were two wheelbarrows and one huge waste bag (the kind of bag that has to get picked up by a truck due to its weight).

It is a quite pleasant spot when not encumbered with wheelbarrows and the like, and I really wanted to capture it. I know that many people would just retouch the photo and remove the stuff, but that’s not me. I like a challenge and making the most of what there is, not create an illusion. I also think that creating those composite photos, adding bits and pieces to create one fantastic image, is not what photography is about. As all artists know, creativity thrives on constraints.

Angel's trumpets at Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com

The large flowers of angel’s trumpets Brugmansia suaveolens. All Brugmansia species are amongst the most toxic of ornamental plants!

Lemon trees at Anne's house, Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com

Lemon trees in front of Anne’s house, a two-room house built by Carl Milles for his secretary.

Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com
Millesgården sculpture park, Lidingö, Sweden. Photo by Mihaela Limberea. www.limberea.com

I’ll stop here for now (congratulations if you’ve made this far!), but you can be sure there’ll be more Millesgården posts on this blog.

 In the meantime, stay safe, stay healthy, and soldier on. And don’t forget to laugh. 


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A Brief Visit: Millesgården

Angel Musicians by Carl Milles. Photo © Mihaela Limberea

While other countries in Europe are under a lockdown or the freedom of movement has been much limited, Sweden goes its’ own way. The elementary schools, kindergarten, and shops are still open, the limit for permissible meetings is 500 people* and there is no mandatory curfew. However, more restrictions apply almost every day, so it’s likely we’ll see more movement constraints eventually.

* A few hours after writing this, the limit has been set at 50 people.

Some of the museums and theaters have already closed on their own, though, so my husband and I went to Millesgården last week in case it would close too. And right it was because Millesgården closed as well – the day after. We saw the announcement when we returned home.

Angel Musicians by Carl Milles. Photo © Mihaela Limberea

Carl Milles (1875 – 1955) was a Swedish sculptor. Millesgården, which he designed and built in 1908, was his home and is now a museum with Milles’ antique collection, sculpture garden, and art gallery.

The Hand of God by Carl Milles. Photo © Mihaela Limberea

This is my favorite sculpture of Carl Milles. I probably have hundreds of pictures of it, I never tire of photographing it.

Angel Musicians at sunset. Photo © Mihaela Limberea
Millesgården – the Lower Terrace. Photo © Mihaela Limberea

The garden is inspired by Italy’s Mediterranean gardens, and it’s a work of art in itself. Carl Milles and his Austrian wife Olga, an artist herself, spent the winters in Italy that both loved.

Angel Musicians by Carl Milles. Photo © Mihaela Limberea

My husband and I both love Millesgården. We used to visit it very often as we’re annual cardholders and it lies 10 only minutes from our home. During our seven years in Switzerland, these visits were one of the things we missed most, and we were looking forward to them when moving back to Sweden. Unfortunately, the corona pandemic put many things on hold, Millesgården visits included.

The Hand of God by Carl Milles. Photo © Mihaela Limberea

But life goes on, and even the coronavirus will eventually be contained. When Millesgården opens again, you can be sure we’ll back in a heartbeat.

In the meantime: stay healthy, stay safe, stay calm and wash your hands. And don’t forget to laugh.


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