with a french keyboard is qnnoying. get it? i’m up late on my last night in france. i reckon it is the combination of still being on nc time, a brand new sinus infection, and some espresso after weeks without caffeine since diagnosing myself with a heart condition. every time i come to france i want to move here–at least live here part of the year. is that too much to ask? it wouldn’t be too much to ask if hadn’t squandered my inhertiance. i lamented this fact with my bestie yesterday. lamenting le facts doesn’t change ’em though. so, my plan is to dive deep into my new and potentially well-paying career of médiateur the application for which i filed just before labor day and i’m impatiently waiting to get back. the girl friend has been kind enough to check my po box in my absence. speaking of ma copine, i cannot wait to introduce her to all things french including my godson, his amazing mommies, and their family n friends–oh, and phenomenal wine and cheese and the cheek kiss greeting and the forever-long meals of awesomeness and the savoir faire. yes, even though i’m in the south of france, i have missed my girlfriend. i am glad i got to do this trip alone though. i was getting, um, domesticated? maybe natural for someone my age and in the stage my relationship happens to be in? which stage that would be, i dunno. it’s still new, just past the six-month mark, but very different from all prior relationships in that it feels so happy and good and invincible 99% of the time, a flip-flopped ratio from what i’m used to. i’m normally my own saboteur, though. outside of a few occasions, i can only blame myself for my failures within relationsips. at this point though, i must rejoice in those failures because they (along with loads of serendipity and therapy) have brought me to this new-ish and great love, a healthy seed with pristine conditions that can germinate and in which i see potential for a full and beautiful bloom.

i expressed to the girlfriend a few days prior to my trip that i was scared to hitchhike and that i didn’t get how someone who had hitched all the fucking way across europe could be scared of a little 200 km trip from barç to perpignan. the girlfriend was fine with me being scared because she didn’t want me hitchhiking anyway. “i want you back alive.” of course, but how can i be alive AND allow an unconquered, unexamined fear to sit inside of me? so i hitched. it returned so naturally, the demeanor and fortitude needed to flag down a stranger for a ride. three thousand plus miles of a behavior has to have some effect i reckon. just outside of barcelona, i flagged down a trucker almost immediately and then had my first bad experience with hitchhiking. i got back on the horse though bc i wasnt going to let one creepy spanish fucker ruin my good time. i have told the girlfriend i hitched but i am torn about telling her of the bad experience lest thumbing be a seriously and permanently forbidden form of travel pour moi. and that is another thing–maybe this should be my final hitching hoorah. the girlfriend has informed me that she will not be traveling in that manner, she has no interest in that type of adventure–mushroom trips, yes. hitchhking trips, no. speaking of, it was awesome to introduce the girlfriend to psychedelics–we compared acid and shrooms and both decided we much prefer the fungi.

but really–should i cut out hitchhiking for now? it is a behavior neither my friends nor family appreciate. well, some like to hear about it and live vicariously but they inevitably follow up listening to a hitchhiking story with the remark, “you’re crazy.” am i crazy? probably. but am i crazy for hitchhiking? yeah, something bad could happen but jesus christ the risk involved in driving a fucking car is really fucking high if we wanna get into risk-analysis. my mom doesn’t eat red meat anymore because of the miniscule, MINISCULE chance she may contract mad cow disease. “it’s just not worth it,” she says. i’ve stopped arguing with her for what i see as a dumb reason for not eating red meat. there are so many other legitimate reasons to give it up but she picks this one and fine let her have it. but she tries to apply her terrible mad cow logic to some of my behaviors (eg, hitchhiking) to illustrate how irrational and foolhardy i am. she tries to instill a fear in me and fear only motivates me to an action that will result in the eradication of that fear not toward an action that causes me to shirk from that fear. she should know better–i’ve been her child for 33+ years now. but my mama likes to see in me her own vision of what she wants me to be rather than what i actually am which is a hobo-ish anarchist-ish vegan-ish queer jesus freak who is bad with money and worse with women. she doesnt mind the queer or christian parts but she doesnt appreciate how i express those parts. but as ive tried to tell her so many times in the words of Kahlil Gibran:

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

she will get it one day. maybe that day i give her grandchildren–if that day ever comes. of course no one thinks it will come if i keep hitchhiking which brings me back to whether i should be doing that shit or not. ive gotten my jollies for now, it is unnecessary in a financial sense, im an official godparent of an official french babyand should consider that, but for fuck’s sake, i’m going back home alive, like really ALIVE, and rejuvenated in every sense of those words. perhaps i can tease out that feeling from another, less controversial activity and /or find a way to keep it burning brightly in between trqvels. i dunno but my fear of letting it go for now is pushing me to do just that. so, upon returning home i will hang up my hitchhiking hat and fully embrace my domesticity. My mother delivered a piece of my furniture to our place while I’ve been gone, my special butler’s chair. The girlfriend doesn’t really like it but she is glad something of mine is in OUR place. Up until Saturday it was just dirty clothes and a couple of cast iron pans, things quickly repacked or easily left behind not representing much of an investment, no underwriter for all my amorous verbiage. My new-relationship IS the next big adventure. It like hitchhiking may not end well but the potential payoff of a big, big love is well worth the risk.

