A letter from the dirt.

When I am without you I am the true Vagrant Optimist.
I am an introvert of sorts because I don't let anyone as close to me as you.
I don't care about how I look because I only want to look good for you
(plus I haven't seen my reflection in over a week).
I don't eat a lot because I have a different kind of hunger.
I live in squalor. My warehouse tent from New Zealand is falling apart at the seams. Its a mess of loose change and broken ukulele strings.
I use your bag of clothes as a pillow. The fragrance of you keeps the air breathable, and the nights sleep-able.
I pick ditch-berries to eat for breakfast. I return bottles to buy more. I barter and trade with coconut oil.
I eat my food from a recycled ice-cream container.
I know a man with a blender. I buy roasted peanuts and them have them turned into peanut butter.
I eat day old bread daily. I indulge on cheese, malbec and helado. My new favourite food is milanesa.
My biggest goal in life is to speak español fluently. Estoy mejorando cada dia (yo pienso).
I have more than I need to keep going.
I have you to keep loving.
I have a life to keep living.
And its always better with you. 

time capsules

It was January- the last week before I left Canada and the snow had fallen quite heavily already (it would drop heaps more after I was gone). I was out in my Dad's garage going through 6 boxes of my past belongings. Six dusty tote bins of material things that I have hung on to since I first packed my bag and went off to meet the rest of the world nearly ten years ago.
On this particular night I was trying to consolidate these 6 boxes into 4.
The task was easier than expected. I felt a small lump in my throat as I chuckled at the treasures I had hoarded away.

Of my entire VHS collection of films, these were the ones I had decided to keep when I first packed my belongings, along with copies of un-cut footage of the road trip across North America that wet my appetite for a life of travel.
The elephant is the very first from my Mom's extensive collection. The one my Dad and I gave to her for her birthday. The one I accidentally knocked off the table while horsing around one day. Its trunk broke off and I used toothpaste to hold it together while I searched for crazy glue. She found out about it anyway. She always did.

Then I found some of my old note books and some memorable pieces of paper that I had saved from friends.

This last one contains 2 quotes that I had recently read while I was living in The Milton Vineyard in New Zealand.  My Mom found it 12 years before me and wrote it down while I was out on the road trip. 

Now it's the last week of February and I'm back in Thailand. When I returned to my Family's house in Chumphon, I found another box I had stashed there when I first left 4 years ago. There wasn't much in it; a puzzle piece lantern, some park entrance  passes for trekking in Nepal, some small maps and more notebooks. A lot of what was written in them were movie ideas- scenes and dialogue and experimental writing exercises. All of it was written in Thailand except for one page, written on July 19th, 2012 from Alice Springs, Australia.

I remember writing it, sitting outside on the patio of a bar, already four ciders into an easy afternoon.

What I don't know is how these words ever got to this box in Thailand. 

July 19, 2012

WHY I'M GONNA KEEP ON TRAVELING

The more I move around the world, the more I learn about myself and everyone else. I realize what's truly valuable in my life and I feel that old, ignorant skin shed off my exterior while a fresh essence of enlightenment grows inside. 

To travel is to develop an understanding of all that is unknown, unfamiliar and unrestrained. In the modern world of labels, excuses and forced explanations for everything, my freedom is found in movement without reason. Most of my life I've felt the need to explain myself for that which I intend to do. 

I'm done with that now. 

I'm gonna keep on travelling until I find something or someone that I'm more passionate about than travel itself. 

This is my last explanation. Everything I do from now on is either for you or for me. So don't ask, just enjoy and try to understand.

I know, I know

Sometimes I think fantastical things. 
Sometimes I dream far-fetched dreams. 
But I'm glad that I do. 
I hope I never stop. 
And I don't know why I would ever want to change that 
for anyone or anything. 

Things I've always known

I would travel. 
I would live on a beach. 
I would learn to speak Spanish. 
I would endure and overcome hardships. 
I would fall in love with a foreign, exotic woman. 
I would play a musical instrument in public.
I would enjoy and earn from a trade. 
I would have scars I was proud of.
I would run with wild animals.
I would be ok being alone.
I would have long hair and a beard.
I would sleep in a hammock, high up in a tree. 
I would have loyal friends and family all over the world.
I would make a positive difference on at least one young life. 
I would leave a long trail of written thoughts, recorded memories, photographed moments, and unusual lessons to be found and shared after I was gone. 

a broken record playing a humble song.

Ever since I arrived back home this time I feel like I've been living a life of luxury while staying with my friends and family for spurts of days, weeks, sometimes months at a time.
Driving nice automobiles, eating heart-warming Canadian meals, sleeping in cozy beds with animals, smoking in expensive hot-tubs, and on and on and on.... as if all these things were mine.
But even if I did own these many fine things, they would still not be mine alone because I would share them with the people I know and love, just as they share them with me.

I really hope more than most things that my family & friends know how grateful I am to have them, to know them. To have you, to know you. I am not I without you.
We all share our lives with certain people for certain reasons, and you are all at the heart of the greatest reasons. You are my home.

Let the levee break

Dear friends,

It's been nearly a year. 

Today I remembered the password to this thing. 

Tonight I will go through some of my notes from the past year. 

Tomorrow I'll share. 

Hope you're all well. 

Jeff D's shorts

Shortly after Jeff Darling left this world his family gave me his favorite pair of shorts. They were navy blue corduroy with a secret pocket for secret stuff. I only used it for weed and money. I wore them well that summer and when I moved to Thailand I took them with me. That was 5 years ago.

Today I finished painting the house of my adopted Thai family. A big, ice-cold beer was waiting for me. As I drank it I looked down at the state of these shorts that had been with me through the heavy heat of Thailand, the ruff n' tumble of India, the mountains of Nepal, the arid lands of northern Australia, the endless sandy beaches of Bali, the cold concrete of Montreal and the moist mornings of British Columbia, and I knew it was time to hang 'em up for good.
My half-ass sewing efforts kept them going strong for a healthy duration of travel and received quite a lot of compliments over time and place.  The chords are completely flat, the color is grey like E.T. when he got really sick and there is a huge hole in the left knee. But the main reason is that it's just time. The pattern I've noticed with the dawning of every new chapter of my life is that something of nostalgic importance always seems to wear out or simply disappear. And this is sad, but it allows room for more in my already minimalistic lifestyle. It leads me to new things- new nostalgia.

In 2 days I fly to Singapore. Then New Zealand. My backpack will be slightly lighter, but having written this tonight I feel content and ready for a new pair of hand-me-downs.
Respect.