Frozen Wanderer: Week 7-8

Hopes

DAY 46

Yesterday, I hit the road beyond authorized fields. Almost. I had to empty my storage box, where I pilled up all my treasures before my grand journey almost a year ago. I took them all from the box to a car or a truck, and from the car or the truck to a garage. Not mine. I haven’t decided yet where to store myself. My dreamy destinations are still out of reach.
I therefore hit the road and suddenly connected myself, in my blessed loneliness, to those sparkling miles along which my moving body activates my imaginations and paradoxically enables my mind to pause. I wasn’t writing anymore but my frozen hands allowed me to process and anticipate my future and past tales.
I thus crossed a piece of my country, flying above hills, mesmerized by the springish green landscapes, memory of Ireland. We didn’t need to be jealous in this last day of April.
I sadly regretted wild and pink flowers barbarously being cut in the middle of the highway. I drove under plane-trees like a tunnel to a fairy world. I deeply felt miles exploding my imaginations.

Today, I drove the other way to come back to my quarantined home. St Ferreol Lake’s splendor broke my first morning minutes; last time I gazed, it was completely empty in a naked winter, when this morning, it was flourishing with mute birds, virgin wilderness and sun reflections on the quiet wave. I admired the Pyrénées with the look I had on the Rockies breaking into Montana Plaines in my absent passenger’s window last winter. I drove through little hilltop villages, praising for Middle Age and winding streets I will hit when explorations are allowed again. I moved my foreign wonders to my own country. I fully enjoyed this fleeting escape.

I cherished every minute of beauty despite a tough dive in reality: facing the gloved and masked storage box’s owner, only waiting to go back to his life of before because he can’t handle being quarantined with his kids anymore…! My hopes for tomorrow are collapsing.
This face-to-face definitely convinced me to stay quarantined instead of suffering a fake proximity.

DAY 51

Do we absolutely need to keep distance with our family, the one we come from, the one which saw us growing? Because we un-know how to live in this sphere and being in touch for too long drown us into depths we would like to pretend are already healed? For me, I start to feel lost, to rewind, to cancel my progress. Thus, here would be the truth: a peaceful relationship to your family can only be in theory to stay real? It exhausses with practice, even if it is our deepest wish?

But, may it be a blessing in disguise? This homecoming brings me back to my wounds, my difficulties, my positions, my place in the world, my lacks, but it mostly proves me how mutable I have to be in front of changes. That my family is dual, it is both my deepest wound and my biggest strength. That happiness is not a flat line, it is a time-consuming path whose I accept sharp edges. My family then becomes my essential mood barometer, allowing me to spot my happiness cursor.

And this last quarantined week is tough, so hard. My incarnation burns my eyes, I can’t stand who I am. In flesh. My body has been left out my exploring metaphysical healing. My idea of things is breaking into my frozen reality. And if my transcended soul cannot cross the visible border of my flesh, I stay intangible and so easily blown by any meanders. And this statement frightens me because I can’t see the finish line, and I feel like this line is necessarily the beginning of everything. I am sadly wrong.
The perfection I try to match in everything in order to Be, is actually unreachable. And I need to accept that truth as something else than an impediment. Better, I need to embody that truth, my foreign miles has already theoretically proved me; I now need to print it in my physical cells. In order to BE. To LIVE.

DAY 52

It is my last escape in the vineyard. Wires all have been dropped, I now need to lift them in order to imprison vines that could wildly and untamedly grow. That could prevent grapes from being turned into bottles. The day is a party! Sun starts to smell like summer. We are all together, fleeting and weekly quarantined companions. We drink, the air buzzes with messy conversations, whispers with revealed secrets. Here, now, like every Thursday or Friday depending on the week, quarantine doesn’t exist. Neither did sickness. There was only nature. Vineyard. There was only life numbing our hands and the leaves.

DAY 53

I just finished my Harry Potter marathon – films (annual ritual) and books (the first time since my 17)-. Like any end and separation, it leaves me empty. But my emotions mostly surprised me as I was reading it. It connected me to such an old period of my life, to a piece of me – the teenager – that I had forgotten, that most of us prefer to forget; and which matched this homecoming in my family bubble.

And in front of Harry and Voldemort’s dual, I understood better my fascination for dystopia. It is always about the idea of the end of the world which, in my opinion, would be necessary to change people, to deeply bring the world together. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t wish for an end of the world, I only want collateral effects, possibilities it could create. My fascination for shadow only works with the light it brings. Then, this is the excitation I could feel in my heart at the beginning of this crisis, the believe it would bring us together, only that version of the end of the world could make a new opportunity. Vain hope..?

Those are therefore running my tears like a bleeding wound in front of any real or set act of solidarity?

DAY 55

A good king doesn’t compete with what he owes but what he has to offer. Thinking our President should learn from The Lion King‘s quotes!

Tomorrow, it is May, 11th, tomorrow we de-quarantine. And I terribly feel like a prisoner.

Tracking Apps are ready. Radar bracelets are perfect. People are happy and reassured about it. At least, those showed on TV. I am scared. Tomorrow, you’ll know who to blame if you unfortunately get sick. Tomorrow, you’ll ring if your neighbor comes too close. At least, in the meanwhile, there is no terrorist attack one would say….

I see everything in black, I know. I would like the end of the world like in Harry Potter because I am not patient enough to watch our societies change step by step like it did during our quarantine. But following one of my friends’ wise thought, I decide to forget about waiting line in front of MacDonald, masked and gloved avengers, tracking and other barbaric words, 100 kms perimeter, our leaders’ cruel genius. I choose to see but not focus on humans’ dark side to end this quarantined diary with light instead, because there is always a huge sun to rise hopes.
There is this teenager fond of 3D printers who supplied his district with protections, made with his mum in his improvised factory. There are millions of little hands that sewed masks to fix our government’s lacks. There are those who chose the local grocery instead of the big store, making new habits, more organic. There are all the volunteers who helped their vulnerable neighbors, parents, friends. There are all those songs written on a balcony, those gym class through a screen and out loud so all the building could enjoy it, those bingo games played from one window to another. There are all those clumsy and unsufficient applause, even alone in the countryside, screaming encouragements and atoning frustrations, to counter abandon. There are those artists – dancers, singers, writers, actors – who created differently to keep bringing lights in our soul. There are all those humans who has chosen love, joy, fraternity over fear, death and dictature. There are all those both tiny and giant gestures that have transformed us deeply. That have changed us endlessly. Throughout the street. Throughout the country. Throughout the world. All of a sudden, we were not a nation, a job, a gender, an age anymore; we were humanity suffering from a lack of love and meaning, doomed by its own daemons, which, beyond all odds, grows hopes for tomorrow.