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. 

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.

Thailand khidt̄hụng ṭhex (I missed you)

October 18, 2013 
Bangkok

 The plane landed last night at midnight- almost 2 years exactly to the day I left for Australia.
I took a taxi to Rambutree road and recalled my vocabulary of Thai language with the driver on the way. Unfortunately it was too late to go to P'Toom's- the humble 5 foot king of Couchsurfing. Plus I had forgotten his address and was too tired to risk tracking it down. My dry mouth began to salivate in disappointment knowing that I wouldn't get to taste the spicy breakfast I had been longing for at the kitchen down the street from his house. But Rambutree road was a sure thing and all I wanted to do was take my backpack off and stand under an ice cold shower. It took almost an hour to get there. The driver told me it had been raining all day in Bangkok and the roads were nearly flooded. I didn't mind. The later and less cluttered Rambutree was when I arrived, the better. It was low season for tourists- that was good too. When I showed up the majority of the guest houses were closed but I kept walking, looking for the small green sign that read "My Guest House". It had one room available for 180 baht- approximately $7.00. I was back. Surrounded by it all again; the sights, the smells, the sounds, the food, the cold-faced warmness, the warm-faced coldness, the heat, the culture. My second home.

Now, after a day of drinking and playing ukulele on the street with a Swedish dude named Osmo, then a sleepy seven hour night bus ride south to Chumphon, I find myself back in my old bedroom at my adopted family's house. It's gotta be almost 5 in the morning but I don't wanna sleep. Feels like I'm eight years old and it's Christmas.

I'm not afraid of who I am.

Not afraid of being physically alone because I know I'm never spiritually alone.

1 is All & All is 1.

" I've been wondering all about me
ever since I seen you there,
on the cliffs of your wild cat charms I'm riding
I know I'm 'round you but I don't know where.

You have slayed me, you have made me
I got to laugh half ways off my heels.
I got to know babe
Ah, will you surround me
So I can know if I am really real? "

-Bob Dylan
(Spanish Harlem Incident)

Ten years to the day

   It was around 7:30 in the morning when the phone rang. It woke me up out of a light, un-easy sleep. I heard my Dad answer it upstairs. I already knew what the call was about. I got out of bed, walked over to the closet and picked out a nice button shirt and tie to put on. A natural numbness was already beginning to set in. I don't even remember eating breakfast. We were in the car, driving silently to the hospital- a man preparing to say goodbye to his wife and a boy preparing to say goodbye to his Mother. My Dad made a comment about my attire. “Couldn't think of anything else to wear.” I responded.

The two of us were trying so hard to be strong for each other's sake but it was evident we were both on the verge of breaking down. The road had no distance. The people had no faces. The day had no time. It was just us in a room. Dad by the window, Aunt La in the chair, Mom in the bed, me at her side, holding her hand. Absolute silence except for her breathing. I whispered “go.” And she did.
Then it began to rain in that room. It poured down in a variety of different tears; Despair and joy. Grief and peace. We took on a new pain as she was relieved of hers.

It was then that I noticed the sun shining through the window. And then we were there, outside in the warmth, walking through the concrete acres of the hospital parking lot. I couldn't stop gazing up. That warmth held me as if I was a newborn baby again in her arms. And at that moment I knew she was there. I knew she would always be there. So I smiled and put my arm around my Aunt, told her it was going to be okay, and we drove home.
Two days later I wept for the entirety of a night until I had no voice and nothing more to cry out.

I never shed a tear for my Mom again after that. And I never realized that fact until this year.

The memory of Valerie Wicks lives on in the heartfelt stories of my family and friends. She was a magnificent person who did a lot of good for a lot of people while she was here on earth. Over the last 10 years she has shown me signs, pulled strings, pointed me in certain directions, and saved me from bad situations. Some nights I even hear her voice answering my heaviest questions. She has become my Obi-Wan Kenobi, guiding me through the epic journey of life. This, I believe is proof that Love is truly the most powerful force in the universe. If you let it be. 

The best investments of late:

 

+ $2.35 < 100 yards of dental floss

+ $156.00 < Fender ukulele

+ $.50 < 'Walden' & Civil Disobedience' by Henry David Thoreau

It's all happening.

+ started a band with my brother.

+ learning Spanish.

+ learning to ride a horse bareback style.

+ working for Kingfisher Painting services (check em' out).

+ doing restoration jobs for fun and money.

+ still writing my book.

+ still discovering Vancouver Island.

Lesson Learned

I traded 10 dollars for 10 mangoes.

Because I love mangoes more than money.

Thoughts on the Past / Realizations in the Present / Thirst for the Future.

Baseball.

It was one of my first loves. Very boring to most people, but for me the game seemed more noble than any other sport. There was a lot more happening on the field than the eyes could see. It was mental and at times, spiritual. And besides all that, I just loved to throw. I played baseball for years, until eventually I reached the threshold of an opportunity to play at a very competitive level. And suddenly it wasn't just for fun anymore. It was the first of many crossroads in my life; Get serious or get outta here.

I remember my Dad telling me a story about a kid who loved the game so much that he threw one ball, hundreds of times every day, at a painted target on a brick wall. If he hit the target right on, the ball would come back to him. If not, he had to chase it down. Yeah, there's a metaphor in there somewhere.

The kid evolved into a phenom of his sport simply by repetition, experience and overall pure love for what he was doing. For him, it wasn't work. It was desire.

I'm not sorry to say that I didn't make it in Baseball. I obviously didn't want it enough. I had access to a ball and a brick wall and a can of spray paint. And honestly I didn't even really consider going for it. I chose my friends and the freedom of summer over committing myself to Baseball. It was an easy choice for a young dude. But I can't say that I didn't look back, because I did. I look back on other crossroads I've come to in life as well. I realize I've made some minor, not-well-thought-out decisions for sure, but when it comes to the big life decisions, I feel dignified with every direction I chose at every set of crossroads I've come across thus far. One of them was what lead me here to this moment, writing this.

I left Canada over three years ago. Before I boarded the plane I wrote a message to everyone stating that I wasn't coming back until I had really figured myself out and “found a career that I love as much as everything else that I love.” When I finally returned in August of last year I was sure of one thing:

My hobby, my sport, my career, my desire, my love is LIFE.

Family & friends, music, film, photography, cookin', drinkin', tokin', creating, painting, sharing, sweet hot loving, trading, playing, learning, teaching, and traveling.... these are the wonderful necessities I have to enjoy it successfully. And I feel beyond blessed to have all that I do.

Five n' a half months spent in Ontario provided me with an interesting review of who I was when I left and who I am now. I was able to see where I had been and what I had done abroad through the eyes of the people I cared about most. I had never felt so at home before being away from it. And the best part was the alleviation of my concern that my family wouldn't fully understand or support my decision to keep on traveling. Because of all the life decisions I've made, this was perhaps the easiest. It was easy because I know now what I'm here to do. Whether or not you believe in past lives, destinies or any of that, doesn't matter. I believe that this time I have here is all that I get and as far as destiny goes, this is it: Writing my story as I live it. So naturally, I'm gonna make it an epic one.

The year 2013 is still fresh and new. I'm thirty years young and officially into the next chapter of my life, which is shaping up to be the best one yet.

Another crossroads is waiting on the horizon. I can't hardly wait for it. I'm doing all the things I love to do and sometimes I even get paid. But if I'm not working for money, I'm working for me. When I'm working for both, I'm living the dream.

Lesson Learned

The more people I meet (whether I connect with them or completely oppose them) and the farther I go (both geographically and mentally), the more confidently I believe in myself and love everything else.

 

I'm beginning to jam on the ukulele in the same way that I like to explore a woman's body. In those moments after a sexual escapade where we are both so satisfied and floating comfortably. That's where it's at. I dig those more than the romp itself sometimes. I cover a lot of the body-map with my nose and kisses. I connect the dots on moles and beauty marks. I look for those dimples in the small of the back, and if they're there, I stay a while. I do a lot of other stuff too but I don't wanna give it all up.

Restless now. 

I started writing this because I was playin' around on the uke and I realized how familiar it's becoming to me and how I'm beginning to see it up close now. I feel like I'm right down there, wandering through each fret, jumping curiously from string to string. It's a fucking great feeling. But if a woman was beside me right now we'd really be making music.