I love the smell of kerosene on Amsterdam Schiphol International Airport. The one in Newark, New York has a good smell too. Bristol International does not have the perfect kerosene smell, but it comes close. Well, if that is not politically incorrect, I don’t know what is.

People, I just can’t help it. The smell reminds me of adventures and family and friends’ visits, the ones I count as the best experiences I’ve had in my life. It does mean that I fly the world over for work and to visiting my loved ones, but I do recycle, compost, buy local produce and products and I do love my chickens.

Here’s another one. I like the smell of tarmac and of freshly laid tar paper on a sheds’ roof and when that tarry whiff is accompanied with the soft cooing of a turtle dove on a warm summers’ afternoon, my happiness is boundless.

The long walk on the hot, nearly melting tarmac of Paramaribo Airport, Suriname on the northern coastline of South America is one I will not forget lightly. I almost kissed the simmering surface. We (two sisters and I) were just released from a massive Boeing after a ten-hour flight, together with at least two school classes of noisy and fidgety spotty adolescents. They bumped into my seat for the duration of the flight and after friendly and later not so friendly remarks and requests I succumbed to their inability to comprehend that they were not the best that could ever happen to this world at this moment in time. Their school must have been on an exchange program with a Suriname school; their uniformly worn t-shirts shouted the slogan “Living Together! We Know How!”

The photo I took of myself and my two sisters, holding the camera on arm-length distance, shows a certain very politically incorrect hand gesture, just above our heads; a teenagers’ way of taking revenge on three middle-aged slightly overweight women. This was the politically incorrect way my mother described us three younger siblings when my sister in Suriname pondered if she would recognise us after having not seen us for a long time.

Today’s smell of a moped driving by takes me back to my first boyfriend. Protective headgear was not mandatory yet and my parents were concerned about my safety in many ways. They were standing at the gate, wringing their hands, watching their youngest daughter being snapped away by a 16-year-old boy with the nickname Fox. Adventure and possibly a kiss or two were expected from my side, accompanied with that delightful smell of gasoline. And sometimes, when I stop at the petrol/diesel pump filling up my car, smelling those car smells, a distinct sense of freedom takes a hold of me.

I have flown, been driven and drive for my work and for visiting family and friends. I have to live with the notion that I – very politically/environmentally incorrect – have to use a plane and a car and possibly a boat or two for the foreseeable future, if I want to get to the ones I call my nearest and dearest. I do walk as much as possible and use public transport when present, wherever I land. I still have to work on learning to love the smells of train stations and bus terminals. I’m getting there.

Mother Earth, can you hear me above the monotonous drone of our traffic? I want to thank you for your gifts of metal, fuel and other materials that make it possible for me to travel, being loved and to love in return. I promise you I will conscientiously use these gifts. That’s the best I can do. For now.

- Karin Schluter Lonegren

Last month, Sig and I and traveled to Ireland. Sig was invited to give a talk at the Boyne Valley Revision conference, where Martin Brennan gracefully and charmingly played the lead role. It was my first time in Ireland and my first time visiting Newgrange.

I fell in love with Newgrange. We were the last ones allowed in the chamber after hours of waiting. We finally went in with our fellow visitors from different nationalities of whom two were Celtic/Irish Shamans. They had brought a drum and we all agreed that they would play and we all would sing to greet the sun and celebrate our lovely planet.

Circling up with the guide telling us about the monument and the people who had made it, I ambled to the back of the chamber. On my right I saw the outline of a hand carved in the stone which was a part of the structure forming the back chamber. Sig stood next to me and I shouted: “Look, a hand! There is a hand carved in the stone!” He didn’t hear me. I decided to take a photo (later I heard that it is not permitted to photograph in Newgrange. My apologies).  When we met with the organisers, journalists, other speakers and people in the know about Newgrange for coffee at the visitor’s centre and I showed them the photo, they told me that they never knew that hand was there.

The Hand

My priority in Newgrange was to connect with the Heavens and Mother Earth on the auspicious day of the Winter Solstice and I managed to do that. That was priority number one. The weekend of the Boyne Valley Revision was a weekend of reconciliation and warmth.  The conference itself was held in a huge marquee with at the start of the day a failing heating system and freezing temperatures, it became my second priority to keep my body warm. I did not have to reconcile with anything but I was a witness to the end of a 30 year long feud between archeologists and archeo-astronomers in Ireland, to the great relief of all. To call it a love-fest will go a bit too far, but it was close.

My third priority of that weekend was one I am not very proud of. On the last morning of our stay in the Newgrange Lodge, the fire alarm went off around 7.30. Sig was bathing, I was dressing myself. Quickly I grabbed our coats and ran out into the hallway. Sig followed me. I stopped in my tracks, turned around and ran back to our room. I realized I had forgotten a purse with my favorite lipstick in it. Can you imagine? I really did that. Soon we heard that it was a false alarm; a guest had toasted a limpish waffle, it caught fire and no-one knew how to turn the alarm off. It went on for half an hour; the manager who lived in the next village had to wake-up, get dressed and drive to the lodge. When we talked together standing in the lobby, I noticed she was not wearing lipstick.

As soon as I came home I had another priority to attend to. The director of the Los Angeles Griffith Observatory, has at least two passions: the heavens and chocolate. I told him about raw chocolate and how great it is to mix it with mashed banana or to make small balls of ground up dried fruit, dessicated coconut, some hot water and cocoa powder. He’d never tasted raw chocolate and I offered him to send some to the Observatory. He did ask me where it came from during dinner, where we had been drinking a good red wine and my answer was: the health food store in Glastonbury. Only later I realised that of course he wanted to know where it was sourced and I could tell him it was in all probability fair-trade and possibly organic. Sending that packet out was priority number four.

Priority number five is happening right now; this year promises to be a very busy year. And my priority is to make it into a joyful time and not a hectic one. My priority concerning my work is to make all my clients feel welcome and safe and happy with their readings or energy treatments when they come to SunnyBank Centre. There are some challenges coming up later this year I’m looking forward to and it is a priority for me to embrace those challenges.  I wish you all a priority-filled 2010.

- Karin Schluter Lonegren