Constitution Day - 5-17-12

DELAYED POSTING FROM ALESUND NORWAY

Alesund, Norway

It’s always been a grand delight for me to get lost in clouds of people, be it on a crowded dance floor, a jovial happy dining room, a theater lobby at intermission. Today it was an epic parade. 198 years ago Norway achieved its independence and the sense of patriotism is a sight to behold. The rest of the world has much to learn from Alesund about staging grand public events.

There are 45,000 people living in Alesund and I‘m certain every one of them came out of the woodwork at 9:45 AM to show up for a Constitution Day parade. Everyone dresses formally for this parade, participants and observers alike. It’s astounding how elaborate traditional dress is; opulent cuts of worsted wool with much ornamentation added. The entire city was closed for the day with speeches, church services, and large happy meals being the order of the day following the parade. On a cloudy sub-arctic day where spring has a tenuous hold at best, the thousands of brilliant Norwegian flags and costumes made colorful imaging effortless.

I managed to garner a viewing spot in the street along the parade route and with a 10 mm ultra-wide angle lens was able to capture the wonder of the entire event. The parade passed less than eighteen inches from me. Participants and observers paused before me, making clean sharp images effortless to collect. Bands, floats, color guards, drill teams, and every school class in the city participated with great enthusiasm. A dojo even had its martial arts students out in their whites.

Even in the midst of a vast happy crowd, one is able to be a bit introspective and wonder about the rich lives of all these people around me. I’d never even heard of the city of Alesund before. These very attractive patriotic and athletically fit people live in a virtually crime-free country with nearly the highest standard of living in the world. I wonder about the story each of these individuals could tell of their lives. What was once an unknown dot on a map has become a vibrant textured world of great color and feel.

Even as I have essentially no meaningful knowledge of the dot that is Alesund, neither do they have knowledge of the dot that is my hometown. Even with the severe challenges my town faces, ones essentially unknown to Alesund, my little troubled city gives me a sense of history and place I will never have in Alesund, even if I stayed here another twenty years. When I return home I will hear my phone ring constantly, get a hundred e-mail a day, see clouds of friends in the gym and university, even hold forth in the retail shops. One of the important lessons of creative absence is learning community is really not place dependent as much as it is people dependent.

Unlike so many prior voyages I’ve made, I find myself relishing the view of a familiar face, especially if I find my glasses in the Bank of England. Perhaps there really is no place like home, even if one has just been to paradise.

Blessings,

Craig C. Johnson