exquisite. ordinary

two weeks ago  |  i was sitting eating a japanese-style breakfast from the buffet of my hotel room, looking out over tokyo; i was sitting on the tokyo metro, whizzing my way towards a park where i could stretch my legs before meeting up with friends – fernando & family, david, cynthia, daniel – for a quick shopping trip in ginza; there were friends i hadn’t met yet – a second trip to hokkaido still in my future.

today  |  it already feels like lifetimes ago as i return to the exquisitely ordinary: unpacking winter and doing laundry, scrubbing the bath tub, making to-do lists and grocery lists, pulling weeds from the garden,watching the light change as the skies clear, preparing for kiwiburn whilst in a little bit of a jet-lagged fog, contemplating breakfast options whilst thinking about the gorgeous breakfast buffet at our final hotel in hokkaido.

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i’ve been thinking a lot recently about barefoot mapping – a term that briony penn introduced me to at the DO lectures in 2013 when a group of us created our own barefoot map of an area at Campovida.

before i met her, it’s something i’d been thinking about myself since beginning to travel and experience new places; not specifically with any kind of ecological agenda, more one of wondering if we ever truly know a place. people i know travel more than their parents and i now have friends all over the globe that i have met through our travels too. i love the experience of visiting new places and seeing new things, though i am also a firm believer that adventure doesn’t necessarily mean a trip to tokyo, or vancouver, or iceland, or anywhere else – adventure can be found in our very backyards and neighbourhoods if we make the time to seek it out.

how many of us have spent more time visiting places — or making photographs of — what we perceive as exotic and/or interesting and very little time documenting the truth of our immediate surroundings? i certainly am guilty of it.

the one camera, one lens project i undertook towards the end of last year was a way that i could map some of our own exquisitely ordinary story. a way to record small moments that make up the truth of my life.

and, whilst i will continue to travel and explore the world as much as i can, the mapping that i do of the days in-between the adventures, will continue to become closer-to-home adventures of their own.

Love says ‘I am everything.’ Wisdom says ‘I am nothing.’ Between the two, my life flows.
― Nisargadatta Maharaj, from I Am That