The daily routine of the Vagrant Optimist in 2020

daily doings (at Sunshine Bungalow!)

7:00 - Wake up.  Drink water. Read an article online or practice español, check social media. 

8:00 - Go outside. Smoke a facito and enjoy the sound of morning. Water the crops. Return inside to exercise with music. Coco oil pull. Meditation. 

8:30 - read/shit and shower.

9:00 - Breakfast: mimosas, eggs n’ toast with avocado.  Make a fruit/veg blend to drink throughout the day. 

10:00 - Organize/clean room. Prepare for both known and unknown events of the day. 

10:30 - Comence work, whatever it may be that day ….  pallet designs, paint jobs, selling, gardening, work on house, teaching, learning, writing etc…. all while drinking maté. 

 

14:30 - Lunch (if desired).

15:30 - continue working/creating

18:30 / 19:00 - drinks while jamming or reading, writing or making love. Cold shower.

21:00 - snack time (oncé)

22:00 - Tiempo tranquillo: watch a movie, make love, keep jamming...

24:00 - prepare fire bath

24:30 - take fire bath with a joint and a glass of wine. 

1:00 - meditate and write

2:00 - sleep, if not already. 

A tip o' the cap.

Tonight a realization sprang to mind about the small but legendary group of women I’ve had meaningful relationships with in my life. They are all lost souls. None of them have ever held down a job for a real long time because they know they can always do better at something else. All of them are artists of some sort. They make beautiful things. Its a talent they don’t talk about openly because they create their best works when no one's looking. All of them are truly amazing women who chose to live restlessly throughout their lifetime. And I was lucky enough to share in some of that time. 

And then another thought. 
How do they feel about me?

February 11, 2015

I've been living what I can only describe as a 'living dream' since the beginning of this, my favourite month of them all. Once again, I'm back in the Kingdom of Thailand. I've come here to begin the 15th chapter in the story of my life and step into my 32nd year of living it.
I write this on the deck of a bamboo bungalow in Bo Daeng, on the little island of Jum.
I'm staring out, waaaaaaay out into what this year has to offer, and I see a fortune of opportunities.
I've just spent the past six months back home in Canada, prepping myself to learn more than I've ever learned before. I'm ready for the moments I've only seen in my mind. I believe in my path whole-heartedly now.

This 'inner-lingua' began a year ago in Sunnyvale, New Zealand when I saw Katherine Bielefeldt of Chile. She was sitting in a gazebo, painting happiness on paper. The energy that I felt around her was off the charts.
But our time was short. She was en route to Australia. You don't let a feeling like that pass you by when you feel it. She felt it too and we both knew something without explanation. All I really knew was that I had to see her again. So five months later, on the way home from New Zealand, I stopped over for 5 days in Melbourne. I took a train into the city and she found me in a phone booth outside the station. Our brief time in Melbourne was like a 2nd date for us. It confirmed everything we had felt before and it was evidently necessary that we had to meet again. Somewhere.

That somewhere is here,  another 7 months later, on our 3rd date, we've found ourselves in a true traveller's love story. A Chilean artista and a Canadian house painter. Together we dream a future with no clothes on. Then we get up, get dressed and go out to make it real. It's nearly that simple.

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.