In Madrid teaching...my way... more and more...

LOVE FIRST!
I try more and more to move away from a dogmatic, academic approach.

Sharing, dreaming... as a way to learn, to remember, to visualize and project...

The interaction with that new batch of EOI/ IMSD has been quite special... and it does comfort me more and more that if you are authentic, speaking, starting from a place of love, even the most complex concepts of economics around Social Innovation ( i.e. market failure in waste management, ill defined property rights, social costs, value creation, shared value, collaborative impact...) can reach good results; be transformed in ideas, projects, willingness to participate, to change the world...
and an ambiance for such a mood can be created out of...
music and tools to share, to facilitate the dreams of ...
a better world!

A tango of diversity, a salsa of senses... smiles and personalities changing over the days, the context...


So thank you EOI/IMSD students to have organized that great dinner and have all gathered!...
daring to come, to share about yourselves more personally...
to sing
(I had to play some ukulele too :-)
... to dance...


Absolutely fabulous to be a witness of all this!

Can't say I have a hard job :-)

Partying until late at night... too many chupitos!!!!...

and then capture the lights of Madrid by night...
early dawn!

Such a difference with some arrogant moments, interactions at a conference of another business school later on, the certitude felt, that they feel they know, they are told they know, that they are the best... and act like it!

Look at the top of the statue...graced by a flock of Sea gulls!!




When the colors of the start of winter make you forget how cold it is outside...

Each drop of water in that fountain of Retiro park, seemingly goldening the rest of the statue!

Another grace of nature, only for that very moment!

and as well the light of Madrid, biting cold but sun shining the whole week, pure light, sunshine!
So the last day was my time to gather inspiration...
from the Museum Reina Sofia:  www.museoreinasofia.es/en

and its very inspiring gathering of artists and their approach, fights agains war...

Minimal Resistance Between late modernism and globalisation: artistic practices ... The new abduction of Europe: debt, war, democratic revolutions...

just as well as the lightness and poetry of the Museum Thyssen:
www.museothyssen.org

A few pieces from Picasso not seen often...

and the beauty of its exhibition on Surrealism and the dream... quite a propos after such a week of teachings around dreaming...

Angeles Santos: un mundo in 1929!
You can compare it to the "Origin of the world" by Gustave Courbet, that I saw a few weeks later in Musee d'Orsay in Paris...

In between a walk to the parc nearby, where you can see the life of madrilens during the weekends: un paseo, caminando, de barca...
www.esmadrid.com/es/retiro

And in the end the grace to meet up with my friend Murali, the wonderful Amritapuri pianist, giving us a review of 19th century to contemporary music... from France to India, passing by Russia, spriritual elevation...

and friendly ambience, more sharings...

De lo bueno poco, pero gracia pura!

Witnessing nature changes, from summer to fall...feeling life in all senses

I have been avoiding cold weathers for the past 3 years, spending most of the winters in tropical Kerala, south west India, escaping as soon as the first frost, snow were showing up in Europe.

Well ... beginning of this year, 2013, I got trapped in a "winter storm" (among others!) of 3 months of continuous snow in Munich! I must have paid for all the tropical weather I enjoyed before, I guess!
And besides an amazing week in Austria and a few wonderful snowboarding rides in pure powder I was really frozen, shrinking more and more, suffocating there!

This year, getting in Europe at a time when I was bringing an "indian summer" back in Biarritz with temperatures up to 35 deg in october, nice waves and every body in bikinis and baggies...
I jumped on a plane to Finland!!!!
(Complex guy innit?)
where I was hit by a generous 15 to 10 deg, hoping to fly a jet, to spend some time with friends I had met in the ashram...

There I did feel the change of seasons, the way nature sets its cycles of life...and instead my teenager dream of an air-force career, I got hit just as well by the colors of a fall I had never seen before in my life... maybe differences under such latitudes.


I had seen the most beautiful sunsets in the Pacific, in the carraibic where I grew, but there is something about those northern countries the way life, nature sets herself tenderly to a harsh winter, to rest.
Changes that help you to change, show you the way naturally, accepting time, patience to wait for the right time...

I got hit by those finish people too, courageous, beautiful... that fought the russians, always kept independent...
and that is to be seen on their tough faces.

They fought, they know how to fight... under the cold faces of bears were, at times, tender dears, welcoming people... at times just as well closing up... as cold as the weather Finland was entering in: a long dark winter! just good to stay... home! (no wonder why alcohol and suicide are often sought escapes to really hard conditions)

Yet nature was really romantic that time, and there was no invitation to drink or discard the beauty of life.

Just to sit on a rock in one of those island and watch the day pass by, with the warmth of the sun on your face, still strong this year before the cold and dark night would force you to get closer.

Like that sailing boat where I enjoyed the most beautiful salmon soup, and the sweetest hug, a true sailing dream... like in fairy tails...wooden sailors cabins...

which for my last day was sailing by in the bay of Helsinki...
as a sweet and sour goodbye.

The day I fell in love with a ... beautiful Lorelei, a Snow Queen jumping around on a trampoline, taking me to her hidden secret garden...

You want complex... I am a master in choosing complexity especially in relationships!
My friends make fun of me: "I have tried to compete with Dieg... but he is still in the lead!":
An african kenyan princess in London, a singer daughter of a Dutch magnate, another snow queen, Snow White keeping a court of "ex..dwarfs" (or dominating giants...well you get the picture) all around... and this in London, Munich... really far from Biarritz...and now is the day...
I had to fall in love with a mix of a Lutheran pastor and a shrink!


Bitterness, sadness to feel close... and such a closed heart ... along with the clarity of negative signs, the incompatibility as well as non reciprocity... the universe...resignation to feel it could have been possible and yet is so...impossible.

But so happy it existed... so happy to have seen them, those colors.

They call it being "un coeur d'artichaud" in french! Don't know why this vegetable...but I am indeed one...drawn to try, to jump into a plane, to go and discover those colors...sunsets...waves that take me...trust and try.

Such is my life, moments of grace, teaching me never to expect ... more