You don’t need to go anywhere so long as you are totally present where you are.  Being here is so much        

Rilke

Living in another country is a strange experience. It gives and it takes away.

There is always a balance between what is wonderful here and what I am missing over there.

Some days this bothers me a lot, and other days it doesn’t.

I try to imagine how I would feel if I had never left home….the security, the familiarity, the sense of deep roots connecting me and holding me fast.

All I know is that somehow this experience of being ‘somewhere ever so slightly alien’ makes me feel awake, even when sometimes I would rather be sleeping.

This evening, walking at dusk through the natural reserve at the Aiguamolls, worrying slightly that we might not reach the car-park before dark, the colours of the sunset made me stop thinking for a long moment. Suddenly here too it felt like home – ‘planet earth’ home – ‘the amazingness of being alive’ home.

I don’t know where home is and I don’t even know what it means to be alive but in those moments when nature is outstandingly beautiful, dreamy, magical, I almost catch a sense of what it’s all about.

Do you know what I mean?