photoshop life

"I mean, how often do the various parts of your life get to come together like this, in the same room?" - so said my friend Sarah tonite, at her place, where she hosted a bunch of us for a delicious dinner attended by her father, auntie, uncle and a family friend, as well as me, Bridget, Nadine and Ash, as well as my Mum and Dad!

Mum and Dad arrived in Toronto last nite (well, technically it was 3am this morning - because their flight from Vancouver was delayed by 6 hours!)... We've been having a ball, making plans for trips and things to do in this lovely city, and catching up on various family gossip and updates.

This afternoon we went for a walk around the place, and on the way we took this photo:

Here they are, Mum and Dad, standing in the street in Toronto! I mean, how strange! Two very different parts of my life, in the same photo? Surely this photo is doctored! Surely it's... photoshopped?

Actually, the wierdest thing about having them here is how wierd it *doesn't* feel! I mean, it's very exciting of course - and there 's so much I'm excited about showing them etc - but it also kind of makes sense.

Hmmm. I seem to live a photoshop life, in which people and places don't always stay in consistent relationship with one another: where people move, and places change, and people from 'there' come 'here' and vice versa. I suppose the strange thing is that it seems so strange and yet also so normal: I wonder if the algorithm in my head that calculates the links between people and place has become timid, no longer able to be certain about what's to be expected and what's an exception.

This doesn't mean I'm taking things for granted, and it doesn't mean it has been anything but a very exciting day! But, I guess on some emotional level I'm getting ready for living outside Aotearoa again: a blurring of the concepts of home (Aotearoa) and home (elsewhere). A deliberate ease with the idea that my life is made up of mobile, flexible, grounded, supple, interconnecting strands.