#13 JUST VISITING
This is Donna-Michelle St. Bernard. This is thought number thirteen.
I never want to be a tourist
A person who observes the external from a distance that they are at pains to retain because the view down the bridge of the nose is quite pleasing. Everything is quaint. Your time in another person's life is like a dream if you don't look past the seams that are sewn to contain what is shown to you. If you only get and take and enrich yourself with experience.
I prefer to be a guest, one who is invited, who sees that it is more than an offer to be accepted or declined, but a door being opened to come closer, actively0. My time in another person's life as a sacrifice of their privacy, their patience, their hospitality, a sacrifice that I should not meet empty-handed.
I'd rather be a guest than a tourist. Though I know that, often I think that I am one, when I am in fact the other.
At the beginning of our collaboration based on his very personal story, photographer Nir Bareket Wright said to me, "I gladly invite you into my soul. I only ask that you first take off your shoes."
I felt that. You should see where my shoes have been.
You should consider where yours have.
Tread gently with each other.
(music by Blunted Beatz. photo by Brenda St. Bernard)
