Midwater limbos

The hardest is not to go but to come back. Dropping my smelly bag in my apartment. And standing here, my head full of sand, in the silent of the doorway that watched me going, feverish and determined, two months ago. I didn’t want to unpack my bag, neither change my clothes nor wash what smelled like firewood. I still could feel dirt on my skin. I didn’t know why I had left. I didn’t know why I came back. All my lives sounded vain.
Manifeste Vagabond, Blanche de Richemont

I used to feel the same when I came home, as clueless as Blanche. I especially remember my departure for my first summer in the US: as I was locking my apartment’s door, cheerful and impatient of my destination, I already foresaw this happy action would be my grave when I would come back. But not today, because today I won’t go through the same doorway that watched me going. And today, I know why I am coming home. I am not totally sure to know why I left but I know why I come back. I am fearless.
Except for a short moment on Vancouver Island, I wasn’t afraid of going home. I never truly thought through. I successfully stayed in the present of my wandering almost all the time, I didn’t want to worry about something that hadn’t happened yet. Thus, used to this weird idea of changing home on a regular basis, my return is both very touchable – I am getting out of a plane – and utterly unreal – to where? -. Even when I go through the airport gates to get my luggage, I don’t fully acknowledge where I am.
I am ready to come home though, because both mind and body have this incredible power of subconsciously getting prepared.

And when my whole – minus one – family surprises me on the other side of the metallic gate, I am overwhelmed. Happy like a sun in this rainy day, I don’t feel ready to reach my joy’s depth. Impossible to make it beat through my heart. There is too many emotions in one shot, emotions that I haven’t got access to in a while. Blanche – who will become my return’s Bible – says, unable to share what she had been through with her mum, her mum and her talked about the weather when she came back from the desert. French to our skin, we talk about politics. Even if in this moment, we’d probably rather not be talking. I would like to gaze at them one by one as long as I gazed as my American deserts. But we are not used to our silences anymore. I would like to feel them and recognize what is going through them in this minute. But we stand in the airport hall for an eternity. Clumsy and blessed. I would like to hear their soul shinning and endlessly hug them. But we talk about American elections and Macron. Our reunion has clumsiness and imperfection of life. It is perfectly real. As confused as we are without saying, I am so perfectly happy to feel them close to me.
True reunions take more time than a hug in a busy hall and ours have the entire life to intertwine.

I have changed my side of the Atlantic, I have changed time, weather, language, activities. I go back to my unchanged thoughts, lingering here, but I am not the same anymore. My departure aimed for a metamorphosis, my return as well. French life immediately keeps going like I had never left, like a beautiful unusual daily life. And I let myself go with the flow, docile and happy. I meet my friends again in the same messy urge, we will go in details another day. I process my wandering without thinking, my subconscious is working with no effort. I process caught in the folly of life.
I feel my journey’s truth is unspeakably going away though. Which means the sparkle making everything possible is fading away in front of people I know too well, of people pointing out my beloved incoherence. I wander in between two waters, almost in some limbos of my life: I have so many decisions to make. Writing. Abroad. Studies. Somewhere. Tomorrow. Further. Then I am getting a bit weaker because I don’t think. Then I take advantage of a quick break in the countryside, I look at my close past in order to know better my future.
The same thing always stands out: Writing. Further will wait. Writing and settling somewhere for a while. Travels will wait. Because if I keep wander throughout the world without giving birth to my blossoming ideas, I won’t have enough of a life to live.

As a matter of fact, I am not fully done traveling, my backpack is still my best friend for a few weeks as I become a wanderer at home, visiting my beloved ones, awaking every night in a different bed oblivious of where I am. All my realities tangle to one another
And words from other travelers follow my immobile wandering, Blanche de Richemont and Olivier Roland ahead. I realize my adventure is not extraordinary nor one of a kind. It was never my goal anyway. Abroad, my words from abroad, were my necessity. They were my light, they were my mean. Yet, there is something comforting in knowing I am not the only one, others have cherished the failure throwing them on the roads. There is something transcending me when I read words of somebody else who I understand and understand me in return.

The wanderer hasn’t given up on happiness. He still hopes to find a haven for his soul. Sorrows are often the cause of big breaks. Pain makes us get out of our stagnation, find another truth, elsewhere. At the highest point of our pain, we question our role in the world and wonder if our life belongs to us. Essential questions in one destiny. The one who goes is still strong enough to find it. He is saved.
Manifeste Vagabond, Blanche de Richemont

My adventure is not extraordinary, it only perfectly fits its time. Like others, I was looking for answers I couldn’t find where I was. I was looking for questions theater had stopped to ask. It couldn’t save me anymore. I went through so many characters in order to understand myself better and I ended up going further rather than closer. I was hiding, I was fooling myself. Theater was not real enough, it was not my answer anymore. Then I got lost in travels, I threw myself in wandering. I was so dark, I let myself being pulled.
At that moment of my life, it became my way to answers questions. The next moment – when I had almost become dependent like an old bad habit -, travelling enables me to understand it was not giving me answers, it was uncovering the one I had inside. It proved I had all the tools I needed. It is the reason why I able to listen to my heart today and to accept I need to settle somewhere. Abroad most likely, to feed my need of new. But stop.

I will stop later though. For now, my hands are full. For now, my return is always moving. I go to get some fresh Atlantic air in Vendée. And I only write down some fleeting notes. The translucent light on the lighthouse as a black storm awaits. Wild ocean facing the clean and tidy promenade. The green beach like an Irish day along the ugly buildings from the seventies. Rain like a shower cut with some surprising sun. Clouds raining in the twilight on the port. Not exactly twilight, the end of a rainy day’s peculiar light, when the sun trying to kiss the horizon goes under the clouds. Absent wind leaving room for a drizzle and touchable clouds drowning you in your own depths. A precious moment with my mum in order to understand our common roots, a moment ending along tiny little green and wet roads towards Jonzac, along big and anonymous roads towards Toulouse.

And I end up in an airport even if I only go 20 kilometers way for a working weekend. There is something comforting to be here, as if it was the place I truly belong. This international space closer to my roots. Where my backpack and my traveling soul randomly cradle with rolling suitcases’ noise. This place weirdly and always brings me to somebody of my past when I have flown so many times since then….

And my rhythm finally slows down, I spend a few nights in a row under the same roof. I have time to think. Or more exactly the need to. Since the world violently brings me back to reality. Since the death goes ahead as I am slowing down. I wanted Italy for my spring but Italy is locked down, I wanted the Beyond but the Beyond doesn’t want us anymore. I wanted to stop and the Universe, doubting my word, gave me an ultimatum. Then I follow the move, I retreat from the frightened world, I long to sink in the novels I have dreamt about during my journey in order to draw them in black and white. I realize I am about to go through another strange adventure – a pandemic and its consequences -, that my yesterday journey still moves inside me, that I haven’t step far enough for a hindsight. Therefore, I keep my journey here, hanging close to me. Patient and immobile.