I’m just back from a beautiful trip to the states. I spent a lot of time walking on my own touching, seeing, smelling, feeling, listening to and tasting the other world. The world I don’t usually belong to. All the sensing resulted in some thinking and the thinking resulted in more walking. Walking or hiking is a bit like meditating or doing yoga to me. I breathe, I move and my mind and body become one. I stop planning the future and remembering the past and I start experiencing and belonging to the present. It balances me.

An idea occurred on several walks. This idea set words to a notion that had followed me on my trip. The thought belonged to neither present nor past, and the notion itself was about belonging and not belonging. About being one of the others both here and there. I am both American and Norwegian and sometimes that makes me feel neither American nor Norwegian. It feels like belonging to two cultures, languages or countries constantly places me with “the others”. Do we look for differences or similarities in others?

 

Well, looking through the 1547 pictures I returned with on my iPhone and Nikon cameras, I realized that the Weekly Photo Challenge topic “Near and far” has been a part of my trip to the US. I think you might be able to spot the topic in 2012/09/02 South Beach, 2012/09/03 Aquinnah, 2012/09/04 South Beach and Walking to South Beach among others. I find that they express my notion of being close, yet not quite there, and therefore they are both near and far to me.