" On ne voyage pas pour se garnir d'exotisme et d'anecdotes comme un sapin de No�l, mais pour que la route vous plume, vous rince, vous essore, vous rende pareil � ces serviettes �lim�es par les lessives qu'on vous tend avec un �clat de savon dans les bordels. "
-- Nicolas Bouvier
The afternoon before I begged off goodnight on my last ever soir�e in Paris, Sophie took me aside and pulled a piece of painstakingly preserved paper from a notebook to show to me.
She'd copied the above verse onto it from a novel that she found herself reading whilst crammed in the far corner of a train corner on her way to discovering herself.
This morning she finally emailed me the author's name and a short quote so that I could go google-hunting for more about him.
Consequently, amidst the cover letters and half-hearted websearches, I've been lost in reveries of the thousand dry-cleanings that I've put my soul through in a desperate search to become something better than the false animals I grew up surrounded by.
Maybe I'm already there, or maybe as Steven says, the occasional bed and breakfast is a permissible rest on the roughing it journey that loses grades of roughness with every year that my skin loses softness.
Maybe I'm just down with the low-hanging clouds today.
Maybe I'm just perpetually wistful.
In a few minutes I'm off to see if I can learn to sing this week.
After that it's off to find new ways to climb, my sagging gut crammed into a pair of stretch pants while my self-consciousness hangs out, since the slacks I'd been wearing are beginning to get in the way.
My arms are beginning to find comfort in their perpetual soreness.
My spirit is still waiting to be less ashamed whilst clinging to a wall.