man, stockholm is great

you don't get lost in stockholm or overwhelmed by it the way you do other cities. part of why new york is so dazzling and vertiginous is because you can't get any perspective on it. when you look at a painting in a museum you step back in order to get a sense of it. in cities, the buildings are like paintings, except that you can't back up because there's another equally large painting right behind you. it's because of this that the most recognizable pictures of new york are of its skyline, taken from new jersey or something, someplace where new york has finally ceased looming over the photographer, where the gigantic fact of new york is comprehensible. because stockholm's a bunch of little islands, you regularly get that vista, that room to breathe. though it is a pretty weeny, homey place; when i first came here over the summer i felt i could count the windows in this city if i wanted to. 

seeing water all the time is a psychic boon. water's dynamism is a relief from the unchanging, dirty and boring things that people build. it moves! it changes color! it's a richer sky. it also enriches the sky; this summer stockholm attracted herds of clouds that feasted on the city's water, building their cumulous castles and swallowing all the sun, as fat and luminous as happy cows.