Natsumi Kobayashi: Going Between Here and There

“Ah, it exist in real” – I thought when I arrived at that distant place.

“It was very nice by the waterside”, I said to my friend living nearby the next day. He laughed. “It is just a place in the middle of the city”, and took me to a beautiful dense forest. However, that scenery of the waterside was embedded deeply in my mind. There, I felt a simplicity and honesty. The place revealed its special characteristics by being located in the heart of the city. The waterside, when I arrived after a 10 hour long flight, connected me to little, simple geometries of nature that I had always held right here in the palm of my hand.

For me, going between here and there, equals floating again in simplicity when being sunk in complicated thought. Sensing that these things have a similar influence on me; to go to a distant waterside; to see the water bowl in my garden which I fill every morning and which every minute a bee comes to collect; to sprinkle the salt crystals on food; and to hold a flower in my hand. Teaching me what exists both here and there.

The line crossing the image is the water.

Through the waterside, I have being going between here and there for some time.