12 January '07

A couple of nights ago I flew back into New York. When I first arrived here, five months ago today, I requested a window seat. As the plane came down over the city I pressed my face to the Perspex and marvelled at the city lights that spread like a bushfire from horizon to horizon. This time, in a sterile airport in Dusseldorf, I requested an aisle seat—the more practical option—and gave but glancing attention to the city as the plane descended, preferring instead to ready my carry-on for swift alightment. Later, the shepherding through border control, then baggage collection, then customs, then transport home was met with grim resignation rather than nervous excitement.

While the loss of novelty may initially seem just that, a loss, in its place came an altogether new feeling: familiarity. Arriving in New York, this time around, was arriving home. Although most of my friends are away, and the route home from the airport was novel, there is enough that I know in this city to feel comfort just being here—the idiosyncrasies of the subway, the manner in which you hold your head when you walk in my neighbourhood, the twist-jerk-turn the mailbox lock requires—all of these contribute to a sense of belonging that, for the moment at least, is enough.*

The last few days in Oslo were covered in a layer of snow. A thick layer, as light as down, punctured only by the intermittent hoof-prints of various woodland creatures. Snow is still novel for me, a strange and alien substance. In response to my yearning for New Zealand summer after witnessing photos of bush, bach and beach, a friend remarked that my photos of Oslo induce quite the opposite response. New Zealanders are—to varying extents, granted—creatures of the landscape. Whether it is a deep-rooted symptom of our settler heritage, an extension of the Māori concept of turangawaewae, or some other psychological condition, there exists a heavy reliance on the landscape as a marker of identity. When I yearn for New Zealand, I yearn for the unique and ubiquitous rocky coastline and scraggy bush. And when faced with a different—violently different—landscape it is difficult to understand it with anything but the mute fascination that a visitor ‘understands’ a beast at the zoo. There is distance from it, little engagement with it, a curious observance of it. As such, my friend felt no connection with the Norwegian landscape as depicted in my photos and I, while there, was a disconnected spectator.

The last few days in Oslo also saw me increasingly astounded at the expense of the place. Four-dollars for can of vending-machine coke. Six dollars for a plain coffee. Eight dollars for a loaf of bread. If it wasn’t for the largesse of my family I would have exhausted in two weeks what I spend in New York in two months. I just cannot understand how the same product service can be so absurdly different from one country to the next. Especially when the countries run up against each other, are complicit in the same union, work from the same currency.

***

A friend from New Zealand has just arrived and will stay a day or three. On Monday we set off for Boston, then Montreal, then Quebec City, then Toronto, then the Niagara Falls, then home. All of this in a minivan with a dent in the door and a trunk that doesn’t open, on the right side of the road in the ice. There will, however, be good company, a fine soundtrack and another country to transgress.

* (Also, typically New York, were the occupants of my subway-carriage home. Opposite me was a bald albino repeating in a resounding clamour the financial advice proffered from the priest in his headphones. At one end was a Haitian princess in full garb, with a two-foot hat and hollow, unsmiling eyes. At the other a homeless man resplendent on a nest of plastic bags chuckling to himself while suckling on a bottle of anonymous fluid).