It’s been an interesting day – a Saturday. We headed out early to our favourite beach in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, I’ve blogged about this beach so many times, and I never get tired of it. But this time we came from across the city as we have moved away from the area.
If you haven’t been reading, we moved last Saturday – it’s been a week, so it was different re-visiting a place, this beach, that use to be a 5 min drive down the road. It’s not like we will be strangers to this beach, we will visit a lot, but as visitors and not as locals.
I wonder where the boundary between being a local and a visitor change? I live in the same city, but if there was traffic, my ‘visit’, the round trip, could take over 3 hours, possibly 4.
My new ‘locals’ are all new, the ‘local’ food market, the ‘local’ chemist, the ‘local’ book shop, they all need to be visited for the first time, and then a relationship with myself and these new spaces need to be formed.
A Beautiful Saturday Morning
As I walked along Cornwallis beach, it felt different. It also felt the same, maybe I was different, I had already left, my attunement for ‘local’ was somewhere else.
During the last week in our new neighbourhood I have been on many walks. Trying to familiarise myself with the ins and outs, the street corners, the curiosities or this new ‘local’ environment. So coming back to Cornwallis was like a breath in of the familiar, I didn’t need to look around, or try to decipher new information, I relaxed in having been there many times before, there was something inherently peaceful about ‘sameness’. But I also felt that my relationship with the place was changed. I will now always be a visitor.
But a happy visitor – so that is something.
Let me know in the comments below your experience of shifting or travel, I find thinking about spaces/places a very interesting topic.
Catch you tomorrow xx
Kick: Creative Action 