taking the train to arles with salome and this trip to france has been very different from most of my trips to paris. i am enjoying the intimacy of havig a local friend to show me around and not have to be on guard/aware all the time. the pace of the experience has soak in other things besides the foreignness of travel. this would obviously be the prefer way to travel, to just go with the flow and see things from a local perspective. having travel enough in my life, the urge to just see things for the sake of having been somewhere is close to being meaningless to me. being able to visit salome’s home in the country side and hearing the birds sing while enjoy the moist breeze. more and more, i find myself feeling at home and cherishing the quiet moments out in nature. of course, i am gratefu for the ability to able able to travel and eat wonderful food. interestingly enough, i think i rather eat a very good foreign meal than go site seeing. i am thinking it’s more consistent with my own deeper desire to be present in the experience that is more enriching with me. places to see are generally secondary to how i experience things and who i am experiencing it with. another aspect of this particular trip was being able to witness to salome’s relationship with her family. i’ve been a francophile for a long time but i never had the pleasure of witnessing the expression of the culture within a family unit. no doubt, it has strength my francophileness but fuel my fantasy of marrying a french buddhist living in the country side. meanwhile, i am forever grateful to able experience all that is french to my french friends. I am hoping to able to see my original french mate in the country side on this trip. it’s been over 10 years since we experience each other’s company first hand and i sorely miss the friendship. i still remember the night we stayed up all night in paris and walked around in a stupor in the bitterness of winter while still drinking bad beer in the morning stilling on the steps of mont marte. yes, experiential memory is so much richer. 10 years later, we are very different people now. will we able to go superficially deep again? ps. i am digging train travel more. if there was a power outage and internet connection, it would be perfect but i am really enjoying the slowness of the experience. i think there is a confluence of presentness/slowness in my life that i am beginning to really embrace. maybe i am coming out of my mid life crisis and the clearing is about really slowing down life and experience all it’s richness. it would seem the first 40 years of life, you want to get their faster. get the relationship, get that job, get that house, get those babies and have those fancy vacations. then you realize that half of your life is over and all you got are things society tells you what a successful person should have. i guess that now that i thinkin about going beyond this phase, it’s telling me a bit longer to find my own voice on how i will contribute to humanity. i tell my ego that it’s not able trying be unique in serving mankind but of course my ego wants me to do something special so that it feels special. just do the work with the right motivation and keep the ego out of it and i will die knowing i have inch further on the path of evolution.
on the train to vannes after shooting the 2nd part of salome’s brother’s wedding. tried to dose off but wasn’t quite successful. feeling melancholic as i watching the french country side go back and i am listening to some of my favorite classical music. i was telling salome that this was the best french trip because of what i experience with her and her family and not what i saw as a tourist in my previous trips. i think everytime i get to watch closely at other’s people family especially positive examples, i get a bit envy. it’s the one thing in my life that my success in life has not really given me. ganted, i am building that future with uma and i am creating more experiences with my dad and brother but even in those moments, i feel like it lacks the richness of history. alas, my lack of family history has undoubtedly strongly influenced my desire to create a family unit with my ex. and now i am on the open road again, not fixed to any one direction. obviously i wont make the same mistake again and the pull of family isn’t as strong with uma in the picture, i know there remains residual desire. the question is how will i fill out space. with few friends that i regularly experience deep bonding, i reckon the default answer is still another partner. i suspecting that seeing a therapist may help heal that component and allow the possibility of a spiritual practice to fill the space. i certainly wonder how i may go about in experiencing more spiritual ‘fulfillment’ in order to strength it’s draw. the answer is probably just more serious daily meditation. even though i have meditation wagon of late, i still think that the practice in the past year has help my daily experience. there is a more skin deep sense of ease that i am experiencing. i am really hoping my new found freedom in the RV will help with the practice. obviously it shouldn’t because a daily practice doesn’t require a RV to enhance it but i am hoping that with more meditation and time outside of my normal routine, the open space will help cultivate the spacious of the practice. at this point, i am just making lame excuses of my non regular practice but honestly i do miss it in my life. like i miss running in the woods and doing yoga now. i know that daily practice is so nutritionally rich for my soul that it leaves that desire to do more when i don’t do it. time to shift soon or i will hit another level of rock bottom.
i made a very long trip to hang out with an old friend today. i question the whole notion of the time and money to see my friend in the country side and of course, the experience proved me wrong. it feel so of awkward not having really spoken to damien in over 10 years and then just get off the train, go to a outdoor gig on a farm and then finally get totally wasted until 5am. i guess that’s what old friends do. it was pretty intense 22 hours really. we’re not much talkers but we still enjoy our friendship after all these years. i am sort of still amaze that we even became in the first place in london over 20 years ago. i am happy that he forged a new direction in his life, helping people and staying the romantic that he is.