Summer, still

The other day I felt it. For maybe the first time in Norway this year, that special summer feeling. The day before I had spent a very nice evening at a friend's summer house in Moss, we had taken a swim in the lovely ocean water, and eaten shrimps with white bread, lemon and mayonnaise, a traditional summer dish in Norway. When the night got cooler we gathered around an outside fireplace and drank red wine under wool blankets. A wonderful evening. But the next day I was just walking along the street on my way to a little shop, waiting for my friend to pick me up in her car and taking me to the train station. The sun was warming me, I heard a car going by somewhere far away, and there were hardly any other people around. I felt a remarkable calm, and the biggest concern I had on my mind, was whether or not I would have time to buy an ice cream in the shop before my friend arrived.

It struck me that this is the true wonder of the summer holiday, when you are able to be so blank, to have so few concerns, and just enjoy the moment. This was very easy when I was a child, but has become more difficult the older I have gotten. Not that I'm always super worried about things, but I can rarely say that I don't have any concerns at all. Especially not this summer, which has been a sad one for Norway.

Cambodia now seems very far away. The streets, the restaurants, my apartment. Sitting on my friend Dar's motor bike. I wasn't that impressed by the book "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance", which I tried reading a few months back, but I liked how he talked about riding a motor cycle:

On a cycle the frame is gone. You're completely in contact with it all. You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it's right there, so blurred you can't focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.

Just before leaving Cambodia, I got the sweetest Facebook message from my friend:

"Hey, are you still in Cambodia? I'm in the Phillippines, alone and crying! No, just kidding. No, not really. Maybe I can come visit you?"

I sent her my warmest invitation to The Kingdom of Wonder (or the kingdom of water, as my friend calls it in the rainy season), but she didn't end up having the time to come. It still made me think of how lucky I am to have friends in different parts of the world. The cost of the plane ticket will always be an obstacle, but when you have a friend on the other side of the journey, travelling becomes so much easier. Almost as if they were just on the other side of a fence in a field. Jump over, and come see my world.

I saw this photo that Alisa took of me and Indre, the day Indre left Cambodia.

We're not far from the Monument of Indepence.  Im not sure why I like this photo so much. It's crooked and colourful, just like Phnom Penh. Maybe because it already looks a bit old. It's as if I can imagine myself many years from now, looking at this photograph and remembering the day. This is the person I was, May 24th 2011. This was my face, my arms, my legs. The worn-out shoes that I had used every day for five months, when I wasn't barefoot in white sand. The bag I bought at the Tuoltompuong market. These were the clouds, the light, the scorching sun. This was the tan girl I worked with and laughed with and ate with in our gloomy little office. These were the streets, the bikes, the puddles that made up Phnom Penh.