あの国へ

Photo by Linask

かの国へ行くことが決まった。

ずっと夢見ていたあの国へ・・・

張り巡らされた網の目は、

いとも簡単に世界を繋ぐようで

世界はだんだんと狭くなるようで・・・

でも、

この目で確かめてみたい

この肌で感じてみたい

やっぱり世界は広かったと・・・

A story brought by a photo

Photo by Asuka

Life is full of excitement.

Sometimes we get something amazing happened without any notice
in our daily lives.
And at that moment, we realize how wonderful life is.

This is a story about my friend and a man living in Russia
who have never met each other but are bound firmly by one thing.

Photographic it is.

About 10 years ago from now...
My friend, Asuka  was into taking photos with her
film-based  camera when she was young. But once she got
busy with her life and  stuff, her passion of photographic had
been kind of away and her busy life just passed by
remaining somewhere inside her with a little flame of desire.

In these couple of years she has been getting interested in the
beautiful scenery of the Arctic for some reason. And one day, when
she was surfing on the internet,a beautiful picture of Northern light
just caught her eyes and she was totally moved by it. And that was
the moment that she took back her desire and decided to take
another chance to have it in her life again.
It was the photo taken by the Russian man who I have mentioned.
A year and a half ago from now.

First thing that she did was to buy a new digital SLR camera and
started to take a lot of pictures. It was not so easy for her to
go out carrying a heavy camera while taking her little son with
her.
However her desire was strong enough to beat those excuses.
She also started to study  Russian only for the  reason to
step on the land of Russia someday and take pictures there.

From what I've seen of her photos, I realized that they gradually got
better and better. She kept putting those photos on the internet site
"Panoramio" in which the Russian man was also uploading his.
I don't know if he was also looking at Asuka's photos on the site
at that time or not, the photos which he had been updating were
always giving her so much energy.
The truth is that she once told me that she was inspired the most
with "Atmosphere" of his photos than any other photos taken by
anyone else in the world.

The most amazing moment suddenly came up to her in Autumn
last year. The Russian man sent her a greeting message because
he realized that Asuka had voted a lot of his photos as her favorites.
And since then, they started to contact each other  and they
still do so often. His name is Andrey, a talented and very nice young man.
Asuka sometimes shares with me about his photos and things
and I myself feel very warmed all the time.

Well, you might think this is some kind of a romantic relationship
between them but it's not. It is another firm relationship bound
with photos.

I believe that they will meet each other in their real lives some day
and become forever friends...

目標

最近夫が、また新たな目標を投げかけてきた。

会社を立ち上げてからの「夢」であったそれが、

少し真剣みを帯びてきたのが、

彼の眼差しからうかがえる。

立ちはだかる困難を乗り越えて、

果たして今年中に実現できるのかどうか・・・

少なくとも、

2011年は、このゴールに向かって

進む年になりそう・・・

駅

故郷の駅にて列車を待つ。


いったいここで、どれだけの列車を待ったことだろう。

今は亡き祖父母の住むところまで、寝台列車に乗るのが

何よりの楽しみだった幼少時代、

汽笛を鳴らし滑り込む列車を

この駅で今か、今かと待ちわびた。


父親の転勤が決まり、転校を余儀なくされた

中学のあの日、

初めて故郷を離れることに

まだ青々とした不安を抱えてホームに立った。


それから再び家族でここに戻ってから間もなく、

私はその家族に見送られ、

たった一人、このホームから旅立った。


もう二度と、あの頃へは戻れないけれど、

毎年このホームに立つたび、

この駅に残したあの頃の自分に、

またひょっこりと会えるようで・・・