Absurd meaning, Love pursuit E-Book

Philippe Gregoire

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 441

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

It's intimate, raw, sensitive, sexual, funny. Share the adventures of a young man who dared to do what the majority will never dare, and live his daily life for more than a year from Europe to Asia, in 1990. For all those who dream of vacations in large hotels, organized group trips, lazing around on deckchairs-pool or who like crowded cruises, this book is not for you. But if you like seeing the country differently, confronting yourself with wacky, funny, crazy, sometimes torrid or downright chilling situations, then you're going to enjoy this dry and snappy style, without frills, and always with humor and sensitivity. Pages full of questioning and exposure of the author. He is like you. Aren't we all the same? You enter his heart, which is not so different from yours, with perhaps a little more courage, and a need for new spiritual answers. He gives us his intimate version of his experiences to better understand our lives. It's day by day. The adventure takes us, we are there, we travel and it goes fast! Between meditative serenity and debauchery, stupor and lust in Asia. From noisy capitals to the depths of the Thai jungle, in a Buddhist monastery surrounded by cobras where his life will take on a new spiritual impetus, he takes us on a thrilling and warm inner adventure. Extract : At the Reggae Pub, I am accosted by the prettiest Thai girl I have ever seen, very sexy, too much so perhaps. I can't tell if it's a guy or a girl because the result is amazing, I'm stunned. I'm amazed, drooling at the corners of my mouth, fine droplets beading on my temples... Immediately after the usual "What's your name", he or she offers me to have sex, because her parents are poor and she wants to get an ostrich clitoris, something like that. It was too quick anyway for her not to be a whore who whores. Well, gently, I tell her to fuck off to the smurfs and get herself another sucker, but she doesn't know smurfs. I go back to the bar. There, I meet another Thai girl, pretty, nice, not aggressive like "hello, what's your name, you want to fuck ?", so more in my idealo-romantic-obsessed state of mind. We spend the evening dancing, kissing. God, it's good to touch a woman again!

Leseprobe

PREFACE

I allow myself, from time to time in this book, to deliver my deep feelings and a more subtle vision, 30 years after this epic, with my current eyes and heart, in order to analyze and deconstruct my impulses of the time, virgin of spirituality that I was at that time.

This story will therefore be frequently interspersed with texts in italics which are my current notes and points of view, concerning the person I was at the time, after I had met - and sometimes married - precious women on my way, after training courses and seminars of personal development, after many Essene cures received with the blessing of the divine light, and especially after more maturity and physical experimentations of certain laws of the Universe, on Earth.

I wish, without pretension, to popularize concepts that are difficult or complex to grasp, such as reincarnation, our past lives, astral travel, and others that are simpler (although) such as dogmas and religions on Earth, our health, food, or our mental hygiene.

I like to exchange on themes such as unconscious patterns that repeat themselves without our knowledge, to deconstruct emotions that everyone feels without being able to find a deep meaning, in relation or not to our early youth.

All this in the end to try to better understand who we are and what we came to do in our present incarnation, because after all, aren't we all similar, with our emotions? We all live more or less the same traumas, setbacks and accidents of life from personal angles, but aren't these experiences intended to make us grow, until our final judgment, back in the light, when the time of the assessment of our life will have sounded?

These are my beliefs anyway.

Enjoy your reading.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Start, first laps of the wheel...

End of the spaghetti, the wind is blowing to Greece

Free and happy in Greece

The Gods of Olympia

The Cyclades, Ios, and life in white and blue

Mykonos, and the sale of the bike

Winter is coming to the islands

Strong as a Turk!

The Valley of the Smurfs

Istanbul

Destination Orient, Bangkok

The Golden Triangle

A descent into hell in Koh-Samui, I hit rock bottom.

Sex, alcohol and rock & roll

End of the holidays

Back to school : Thai massages

End of Thai massages

Discomfort in Malaysia

Monastery Retreat

Buddhist teachings

Dancing with the cobras

End of the monastic retreat, a new man

The dream island : Koh Pee Pee

Adam and Eve in Paradise

Krabi, Bangkok, and goodbye Thailand

The Burmese: People with a pure heart

The face of Myanmar

1. Start, first laps of the wheel...

1st day : woke up super sleazy. Slept for an hour and a half in Helena's arms after a great party with my friends.

I have to say that I've been preparing myself for this departure for more than a year and that, of course, the last evening was quite intense.

I invited all my friends, and especially all my ex-girlfriends, like the guy who wants to show off and have fun... Yep, my last seven girlfriends with whom I lived something like love, for a few nights or a few weeks, just to have a little fun and choose the one I want to spend the last crazy night of my old life with.

It will be memorable and I don't want to miss it.

Play it up a bit too. Who's going to deserve me one last time?

Proud young man that I am.

We had a great time, lots of noise, music, weed and booze, and I sorted them out one last time to see which one I wanted to cum in again. Helena won the jackpot, a package of meat soaked in alcohol, half dead. The lucky girl...

I feel fragile, like I don't really know what I'm going to do. My heart and my mind are a bit panicky. Even if all this has been carefully thought out, it's not a small thing to decide to leave everything, to go far away, to close the door of your apartment one last time, knowing that you'll never come back, and not knowing where you're going.

No more job, no more reassuring routines, no more friends nearby, end of contract at work, break of lease for my studio, announcements to the family. Tough last few weeks...

It's crumbling in my weakened brain, but it's getting through...it's holding, I have to do it and I will do it.

I'm made for it.

I close the door to my house, put the keys in the mailbox for good, and walk out onto the sidewalk with my bike and its baggage. I impress myself with what I'm doing.

I snort, squeak, unravel my skeleton, almost force myself to start the first turns of the wheels that take me away from what used to be my home, and this life so reassuring...

To understand the path that led me to accomplish this initiatory journey, you have to know where I come from.

I was born into a poor family of farmers from the Haute-Savoie region.

My mother, as a teenager, kept cows, she was a simple farmer with too little intellectual baggage to be confronted later with the vices and predation of men. She was beautiful, and what had to happen, happened. When she was twenty, she met a handsome man from the south of France who made her dream and hypnotized her. And he swept her off her feet, much to the chagrin of her parents, who had seen the predator coming and warned her off. But doesn't love make you blind? So she left her green Savoyard meadows for a small village in the south of France. There she saw the true face of her new lover and got to know the sidewalks. Not to stroll, but to work...

For her boyfriend was a pimp, and through his schemes she found herself a whore. But the little country girl that she was, was good for nothing. So they broke her in, as they used to say in the trade. Rape, punishment, humiliation, abuse, the brutal panoply of pimp exactions to shape her docile and malleable. But nothing worked.

The new little whore of the neighborhood did not bring back anything flashy and stumbling at night. So she got herself knocked up, between two exits from prison, by her lousy guy, my biological father.

And I was born a little later, a year after my sister. Nice to meet you.

I quickly discovered the pleasures of crying, abuse, humiliation, and the early loneliness of the child.

My sister and I sometimes ate from the dogs' bowls, we sometimes slept in the cellar, we were useless in this family eager for easy money, and everyone was happy that my sister would at least be good for something later, in 17 years, on the sidewalk. Meanwhile, my mother was sent to Switzerland to work. Since she was useless outside, she might as well go work there and bring back some money...

The in-laws kept us prisoners in their house, just to put pressure on my mother, so that she wouldn't screw up, and especially that she would send her salary at the end of the month.

That was the plan, and it lasted three years.

The first years without love, without a cuddly mother, without affection. Moreover, since the grandfather, who also lived under our roof, fell seriously ill with tuberculosis, we threw our young bodies into this disease... And here we were, tuberculosis patients.

And off to a preventorium 50 km from any habitation, inland, as this deadly disease was very transmissible at that time. We were five and three and a half years old respectively. My sister and I were there for 18 months. Daily injections into our flesh, all the children lined up in rows facing the wall, with the nuns coming up behind us, poking our butts like barflies playing darts. Bad memories, all that...

In short, our small and ungainly duo will have spent almost the most beautiful first years of their childhood without hugs, tenderness, kisses and love. When we know that almost the whole psyche of the child is built during this period, we can't say that we missed to have a damn beginning of incarnation in this life.

Let's continue...

When I was about five years old, my mother came to visit us at the preventorium on a beautiful summer Saturday with a man and a blue car, a beetle. And they kidnapped us. Come on, no more children! We were taken from the clutches of these in-laws and this inhospitable hospital environment to sneak back to Switzerland and start a more normal life again, all together.

The end is much happier for her because she dared to ask for a divorce and obtained it five years later.

My sister and I never knew the son of a bitch of a biological father who passed on his genetics to us.

I told you this for the following reason: to demonstrate how powerful negative emotions experienced can be transformed into a positive force for the individual.

I have always been a stutterer. I didn't start talking until I was about 21-22 years old. Deep traumas prevented me from speaking normally. Too many emotions were blocking my throat. Unless I also brought up emotional slag from a previous life in which I would have, why not, died hanging or strangled in a situation of injustice...

This is a possible way to explain my problems of verbalization.

Anyway, since I can't really express myself like everyone else without attracting mockery and hurtful taunts, I have developed a sense that allows me to read bodies. Yes, I read bodies as openly as I read a book. Nothing can be hidden in a moving body. It has allowed me all my life to see the truth behind words and actions, or the tricksters who try to cheat behind gestures. I love it, it's an infallible gift.

This beginning of life also allowed me to develop a huge compassion for all living things, and in particular for animals, as we will see later on.

It was therefore strong and fragile at the same time, from these deep wounds and invisible traumas that I decided to brave destiny, to get the lead out, to whip myself to find myself, to meet myself, to flush out deep inside who I really was.

And there was work to do!

But what few people know and have known - even my childhood friends didn't know it at the time when I left them - is that I basically left Geneva-the-Swiss-well-too-smooth for a more intimate reason than simply going on an adventure.

I wanted to go and find the one who would become my wife.

Yeah... I know, it's crazy.

I felt it unconsciously deep inside me, I was getting ready, I felt that it was time, at 29 years old, I knew I was strong enough to build something with my partner of heart. The desire to seriously get involved with a woman, and why not have a child with her, to get married, was now pressing. This destiny was calling me. The Gods were impatient to see me vegetate as I had done for too long.

Unconditional dreamer that I am, I had just spent over ten years of nightlife in all the local nightlife circles, and I had not found the one who could become my wife. I thought then, rightly, that she was certainly not here, not in this city.

So I had to go and look for her, even if I had to go to the farthest reaches of Australia...

And so I went.

But the Gods were always very playful and teasing with me...

Hard day. Train to Toulon, waiting half awake on a bench in zombie mode, getting the bike back. Great!

Installation of the bags and luggage on the bike. The front must weigh about fifteen kilos and the back about twenty. A few clothes, tools for the bike, spare parts, patches, tubes, some special light camping gear, enough to heat water, two or three kitchen utensils, not much in fact, the minimum. The bags are hanging on each side of the wheels, it's a great look! “Expedition’’ look, but without stickers and sponsors.

All on a quay.

Photo that smells like the departure...

A little proud man.

Then get in the huge steel boat. Not many people, nice staff, I have a private cabin and it's good for my luggage. I'm lame, it's 9pm and I go to bed when the bow starts to split the water.

The next day, strong swell on waking, it is the delirium at the bow of the boat! The waves exceed the deck of the ship by three to five meters. It's pitching! Most of the passengers offer their dinner to Neptune from the deck... the fish are happy.

Arrival at Porto Torres. I touch the ground of Sardinia. First contact. It's ok, the language is not too lost, you have to shake your brain a bit to get out the Italian knowledge from school. I manage.

I found a pension with a typical mamma. Or a typical boarding house with a mamma. Wandered around. Nothing to see but steep and calm cliffs. The sea is beautiful. I am relaxed.

Tomorrow, first real ride to Alghero, about 30 km south.

I take deep breaths, I'm far from home and I'm starting to realize what I'm doing.

My calves still remember the Tour of Corsica two years ago.

Once you've done that, you can do anything! In Corsica, fifteen meters from the seaside, the slope is still crazy! It's a real mental feat of strength to keep going! Not to mention the number of punctures because of those little thorns on the side of the road, typical of Corsica.

So I'm happy to be on flat ground compared to Corsica.

The same goes for the first mountain pass. When you've done it, something gets loose in your head. Because the climb is neverending, it is a succession of upward bends, wheel turns, pedal strokes, hard work, a way of the cross for a non-Catholic, strewn with "I've got to go" in the head, a real test. A test that lasts three or four hours. Yes, the first pass puts you to the test. A lot happens in your head when you pedal so hard for so long.

A bit like when you get a big tattoo... you travel through pain!

You don't know if your thighs are going to give out first or if your head is going to say: "Stop, stop! I can't take it anymore, stop Phil, I don't even know what you're doing, are you crazy or what? Do you really enjoy being in pain and suffering that much?

And by persevering, once at the top, at the pass, so satisfying!

What a long struggle! And you tell yourself that after having done that, you can do anything! The world is mine!

But for the moment I'm getting stronger, I need to sleep a lot, eat, be cool. Recover from this last week with its succession of emotional goodbyes and wild parties.

I've been preparing for this departure for over a year.

Every evening I would come home from work focused on the calm and peace I needed to find in my heart, I would lie on the couch for about an hour and a half and meditate, repeating to myself mantras I had created with short and strong phrases, like "my physical body is indestructible", "my force of action is dynamic", "my energy is unlimited", "my creativity is infinite", "my will is steel", "my mind is powerful", etc...

I repeated them over and over again, just to silence all the fears naturally lurking in my brain, which kept popping up again and again. Because it's easy to think about a huge project like this one, and even easier to give it up, beset as we can be by all sorts of negative questions.

First, think about it mentally. Will I be able to do it?

It's a long way around the world, full of unknowns, unforeseen events, surprises, fears, and perhaps terrors...

Aren't you a bit crazy Phil? Well, yes, precisely, I've always liked crazy projects. And all my friends, my family, who said to me:

"Yes, yes, of course..." with a kindly look, thinking that the sweet dreamer wouldn't do it.

Well, yes, he's on the road, Phil...

All those financial sacrifices to get there. A year ago I didn't have a penny, I blew all my wages on stupid things and motorbikes, because I was aimless. God, if I could go back... so much money spent unnecessarily!

I was able to put aside 15,000 euros for this trip.

Knowing me, that'll keep me going for a long time. I don't need much, I know that. I don't mind sleeping on a straw mattress and having very little. I've already sold everything I had to go to Ibiza seven years ago, I know I don't need much. I know I don't need much of anything, but I can't touch food. My palate is delicate and I'm a lover of the senses. So I'll never go without good food, that's impossible.

My bike is an old, strong and heavy nail, declared stolen by a friend who gave it to me. It’s nothing exceptional and that's good because in my case it's better not to attract any covetousness and to be discreet. At least I'll have less to worry about when I leave it somewhere. I tinkered with it to strengthen it a bit, installed a rack on the front and back, bought some repair tools, a patch kit, one or two wrenches, it should be fine. That's all I need.

A week before I left, I tried to sell everything. Everything I had.

Clothes, household accessories, motorbike and bike stuff, in short, all of it in a big pile in the middle of my living room, and the friends who sometimes came to see if they could find something they liked. All for 10 euros.

Well, I didn't sell much, but it's still a good way of clearing out the clutter.

It's quite something to sell everything you've got!

Day by day, the apartment empties and the feeling of freedom grows in my heart. It's an intimate feeling and it's linked to fear, itself mixed with excitement and anxiety. It's very weakening to part with everything you've acquired, to feel empty, as if impoverished. But so much freer.

Fear too, because I am not like everyone else. The duality in me is changing day by day and I always have this little guy on my right shoulder who tells me: "That's good Philippe, go for it without knowing where you're going, be cool, we're here to help you, trust us", and the other one on my left shoulder: "Aren't you a little crazy! Where are you going like that? That's not the way we should live! And your job that you quit, such a great career (you sound like my mother)".

Well yes, because I had to quit. I had a great job, very well paid, the equivalent of 6,000 euros in salary, a lot of diplomas obtained in the last few years, everything I needed materially.

But nobody understood me...

My life didn't really make sense.

I was surviving more than I was living, through routines, motorcycles and women.

I was missing something...

I longed for the intangible, the non-palpable, to feel the breath of a new wind on my face, smells, to be surprised, not knowing what will happen the next day, the unknown.

Go explain that to the rational and fearful people, those who talk about retirement and have a short vision of their future...

But I am Philippe.

And I left everything.

Following my heart and its surprising aspirations.

Believe in your dreams, have faith in yourself and keep going.

It's hard to keep believing in your dreams when you grow up, when you become an adult, when you get married, when you take on responsibilities at work.

Add to that the big slaps of Life...

There are not many people out there who talk to us about this, who push us on this path, who teach us.

So what? We must forget everything and bend to the System, to the Matrix? Even if it means getting lost in it? Erase the joy of the child, the excitement of the new?

The problem is that the System doesn't care about dreamers.

We must produce and consume. Not dream and be happy. The Matrix has no interest in this. It doesn't bring happiness. It doesn't sustain the hospital and drug system for example.

So how can we find in ourselves this different energy to dream of something else, to believe in ourselves again, in the power of the invisible, and in the little child who always sleeps in our heart?

Personally I have my method : when I fall asleep, or just before I wake up, there is always this moment when I am not yet totally in my body, when my etheric body floats above my physical body, and I become conscious again with the world. This moment is precious, it is the alpha wave of sleep/wake. We can self-program ourselves in this phase, all by ourselves.

Just imagine, for example, that the little child I once was is still there, curled up in a cozy little cave in my heart, and I can talk to him. To ask him what he wants to do, what he would like to be happy. For that little boy is me. He knows what is good for me. He will always tell me what to do to make me happy in my everyday life.

As soon as I start talking to him, I believe that I can achieve anything, that anything is possible. He knows that. He just asks that I face my fears, that I take them on the chin, that I find the courage and take the first step. Boldness, courage and temerity, he expects from me. He also knows that the Universe will react with benevolence from my first move, to show me the signs and synchronicities that I can continue.

That's how it works for me. When I get a crazy urge, when I feel something crazy in my heart and my rational mind starts fighting it, I know I'm holding a great idea...

Like the day I entered a dive shop in Thailand on a dream island, and, without ever thinking about it, came out as an instructor a year later.

A sick story that I will tell you later...

And on this adventure born from a crazy idea, the sweet madness’s only followed...

From a professional diver I became an underwater photographer and made great pictures during two years. Then I went back to France - with a baby in my wife's trunk - and decided to scan them because, on the one hand, there were strange square boxes containing Windows 3.1 on the desks, and on the other hand, the Internet was developing and one started to find on the web tutorials to create one's own animated website with lots of tips and tricks which seriously excited me.

So I wrote my first website filled with pictures that made me dream...

And guess what? I won the ‘Nets d’Or’ of Wanadoo in 2000!

Crazy, my ideas as a kid, my happy child's ideas! That's where they led me... People needed to dream at that time, I guess, and I was providing them with that through my site and these pictures.

As you can see, nothing was decided in advance when I was shooting fish underwater, but from joyful perseverance to methodical tenacity, everything happened, and even more than I could have imagined.

These are examples that show that by listening to yourself, by trusting your sweet madness, by listening to your kind and sometimes crazy little inner voice, it can give birth to a new life full of joy and love...

Believe in your dreams, act, and above all take the first steps, continue to have faith in yourself, and the doors of the Universe will open on your way!

Isn't it said in all the great dogmatic books that: "Help yourself, and heaven will help you..."?

Go forward, and trust!

The heavens and the Gods love the bold!

And I find myself at the beginning of my road that should lead me... I don't know where.

I don't really realize what is happening to me, how lucky I am to be free and at the beginning of a great adventure that many will envy me later and that should lead me to the east, several thousand kilometers away. I'm heading towards the unknown, I've already been in this situation several times and I must say I love it. I'm a discoverer. It excites me. It frightens me. It scares me and it makes me powerful.

And on the bike I must say that the feeling is even more intense.

Because you only need good calves and energy. Then comes the crazy question that we never ask ourselves in our society, when we go from point A to point B: am I going south, north or east?

The first time I asked myself this question, I never in my life felt so light and free, it's so exhilarating it makes you dizzy.

But for the moment I'm going to try and ride the 30 km to today's stage without blowing my legs off.

I feel a great calm in my head. That's it! I have begun the transmutation of my soul. The one I was waiting for all those times when, lying in the sofa of my living room, I meditated after work by visualizing this adventure.

Provided that the Gods help me, that the good spirits are with me, that I only meet interesting people. I'll take care of the rest!

I have always loved living with the invisible, the immaterial world, spirits, ghosts and entities imperceptible to our human eyes. It is part of me, I often talk to them, to the Gods.

Although I am sure that it is my energy that generates everything that happens to me, and that there is no point in relying on something else, or someone else, I like to imagine powerful spirits in the ether who watch over me, whom I can ask for help or protection.

Like in those mythological stories that made me dream so much.

I feel that I am helped in this life.

As a teenager, I was already attracted to books about aliens and UFOs in libraries. Then, about paranormal experiences, out of body experiences, astral travel, past lives... Thanks to Lobsang Rampa and his many paperback books which made me dream so much by his spiritual adventures in his Tibetan monastery. Thanks to you, Edgar Cayce, for all these testimonies on the former lives that I devoured in your books.

I have always been attracted by this world, always known that it exists, that it is really true, that crop circles are not created by young people who play with wooden boards, that other civilizations are quietly observing us and see us with the eyes of parents amused by these different children’s groups who inhabit this beautiful planet and do not even know how to control their demography, and take almost all its resources. Such children!

Dirty kids, yes, wrapped up in their egos...

This earth is an intermediate planet to strip the souls, to descale the egos, to allow the entities to refine their essence in order to progress in the higher and luminous floors of the higher consciousness, and to continue their adventures. In the 3D, the density. To experience what this dimension can bring as trials for the consciousness.

So yes, I talk to the Gods, as in ancient mythology, I imagine them playing from their clouds with humans, on the great chessboard of Life, sometimes laughing at our setbacks and always having fun with us. It makes me smile and sometimes I resent them, or I thank them, depending on what I am experiencing...

In reality I know that it is rather me that I thank. For I am part of the Whole. I am merged with everything and everyone. And it is my soul that I congratulate, as if I were giving myself a big pat on the back. "Bravo Phil, well done!".

Sunday 26 September: this morning I set sail quickly. Can't wait to start pedaling.

40 km stage. About two hours at an average of 20 km. Not bad for a start. I arrive in Alghero. I find a campsite. This time, I'm there! Unpack my stuff, beach not bad, not very interesting town but I don't care. Pitch the tent under some curious looks... Who's that guy? Where does he come from? I don't mind this feeling...

Always this duality in me. I like to go unnoticed - with the bike loaded as it is, it's impossible - but also to be looked at, admired.

Aaahhh... this eternal need of consideration because of this shitty childhood! Thanks mom.

It's in my interest to pedal as much as possible because the hours are long alone. At least when I pedal I'm doing something.

It's amazing how the Italians show off. It's in their blood. In the evening, the cars drive at a pace, one behind the other, there are crazy traffic jams, and I go round the center three times to show off my shiny Fiat and to make sure people see me. It's a ritual, a cult! They're all groomed, the lira is down, they eat potatoes but there's always enough to buy hair gel.

I met a Moroccan guy working in Italy, nice but contaminated by the show-off. Getting in the car to get a pack of cigarettes across the street, music blasting, windows open. Damn it, it's small things, but it bugs me!

On the other hand, Italian women.... "bellissime"!

27 Sept: Monday. Quite a stage!

I set off, true to myself - that is, optimistic - on the road to Bosa, about 40 km away. I make 15 km, but it starts to fucking climb!

My providence was a trucker who took me on his initiative, bike in his tipper, and I realized what my ordeal could have been: 20 good kilometers of beautiful climbing! He took me to Bosa, a small town that doesn't break anything, the most beautiful city in the world according to him. I go on, having bought some food, and I stop at the top of a hill, in a shack under construction but abandoned for a long time. I am stiff!

I'm still very lucky! And thanks to all those who love and protect me! Let me explain: before the hill, the trucker stops, that's lucky, isn't it? Then, completely exhausted, my eyes dripping with salt and my shirt soaked, I stop in front of this house under construction, it's still lucky. And do you know why? Because right now there is a huge storm! And lightning, and thunder, and rain.

The deluge...

Impossible to unpack the tent and settle down.

I'm on the first floor, on the sheltered terrace, there are no walls, no balcony, no windows, everything is open and the view on the small hillside with its pueblo in front of me is delightful. The hammock is set up in the supposed living room and my stuff is unpacked in the dining room, or what should be because there is nothing but a big can and some bricks, the walls are bare and nails are everywhere. My palace for a night!

On the menu: starter - tomato mozzarella, no oil or vinegar, salt, pepper, fork, plate. A delight! Then, for the main course, we have a good loaf of local bread, exquisite! For dessert, supreme refinement, a raw velvety banana or a crushed pear coulis.

Humm... I will come back to this relay!

And outside, it falls. I'm going to have an incredible night if it rains like this all the time!

Look, I can see my breakfast for tomorrow morning: grapes from a vineyard fifty feet away.

Tuesday, mountain stage, 30 km. Hard!

Early wake up, coffee in my special camper stove that I use for the first time, and departure to a village located at 500 meters of altitude. On the map it looks cool, on the bike it's a pain. My first pass.

Well, it's not that much, you just have to be on the right gear and push, relentlessly, without stopping...

I arrived at the top soaked. And then the descent. It's all about not getting cold. I know that my weak point is the top of my lungs. I was raised with tuberculosis. Always have the sweater around my waist and listen to my body.

It's a bad day today. I'm doing a few more kilometers but I'm fed up, I feel the rain, I'm swimming in my filthy clothes, I'll take the first hotel I find.

Empty, mortified, I found it, with a superb view on a deserted and romantic bay, and this deep blue sea. From my room I can see the whole village and the bay with its cliffs torn and molded by thousands of years of erosion.

I love this feeling of peace that is starting to settle in me. Peace, or serenity. Something has calmed down. I feel settled.

I like to feel this peace, this inner calm. My mind has been nagging me less since I started pedaling.

I am on my way.

But there is something wrong with the beginning of this journey.

Or maybe I'm not in the right place. Something that I feel is wrong, out of place... I still wanted to have some entertainment, to be able to stop in small bars along the road, to go from campsite to campsite... But here, everything is closed or closed down, a desolate image, the small bars hardly exist. The season is over. There are no more tourists except me, and some Germans on motorbikes, the campsites are closed.

I hadn't thought of that! I'm looking for peace and quiet but it makes me melancholic and puts pressure on me. I didn't want this. I'm wondering if I'm going to reconsider my plans for Greece. I wouldn't like the absolute solitude either.

Besides, the sun is shy!

I have to think about it, it's upsetting, it's not what I imagined...

Wednesday 29 Sept: Origiano. 30 km stage, quite long and, under the full moon, it seemed even longer... its influence I guess. I've decided that tomorrow I'll go to Cagliari by bus because the route leaves the seaside and I only feel good on my bike by the sea.

I find a quiet spot on a small beach, far enough away from the road not to be disturbed and I set up my tent. My own little trick:

I put four sticks around the tent, three meters apart, and joined them with fishing line to create an invisible line around the tent.

The alarm will be triggered as soon as an animal or someone approaches the tent, the wire will act as a stop and it should ring and wake me up.

I fall asleep serenely.

It's not much to do with peace of mind. A wire half a millimeter thick...

It's amazing how crazy Italians are about glasses! They all wear them. Women, girls, men, on their noses, in their hair, in their sweaters, whether it's sunny or not, inside or outside. Only me, a tourist passing through, doesn't wear one. I am quickly spotted...

1er October: two days that I am in Cagliari. I arrived by bus from Origiano directly to the tourist office which indicated me a cheap pension. I go there, it's nice. Then I visited the city, first by bike, then on foot. It's superb. Cagliari is on a mound where the old town is nestled, with its narrow, sinister alleys, but where all the artists have their shops. Sculptors, painters, welders. It is very impressive to see. And nobody in these alleys. Another striking fact is the lack of terraces outside. While the streets are teeming with people, not a single terrace. One person tells me that it is the Sardinians who prefer to gather in taverns.

The evening "passegiatta" is very colorful, people are all dressed up and stroll around quietly, passing and passing again up to five times in a quarter of an hour! The girls are all very cute, they look with insistence but they are also rather short on legs, too small for my meter eighty-eight, small cubes on legs what!

I went to get my ticket for the ship to Italy, thinking I would go through Naples, but departures to that destination are only on Wednesdays. Tonight there is a ship leaving for Civittaveccia. So, although I've never heard that name before, I take it. It's above Naples and on the other side is Ancona, the naval base for departures to Greece.

My thighs are taking shape. I never really cared about them - I always thought my legs were flabby, even skinny - but I find them beautiful! They're gaining muscle, they're getting a nice shape, I'm even finding them sexy and showing them off, like shorts that are a bit too high, sitting on a café terrace, like: "Hey, look at the work of the hamstrings and the calves, not bad eh! Look at that little ball, there, sticking out of the bone, go on... see and admire what was for too long one of my intimate contrition’s, one of my big weaknesses, those little flabby legs...".

In short, I am in good shape.

I must say that, as a teenager, I was always self-conscious. I was skinny. Far too disembodied, not "down to earth" enough, not grounded enough in matter. More like a head in the air, in the stars.

Joe-the-dreamer. I used to tread lightly and regularly on my ankles, so little attached to the ground, to the earth. They called me Iron wire-Phil because I was so skinny. The guy who hesitates to go out when there are big gusts of wind... So when I did, it was often with a pair of jogging pants under my jeans, just to furnish the container a bit.

I know, it's sad... I don't want to tell you the trouble when I was in a nightclub and I had to pee, all those layers to take out and put back on, the heat while dancing, the sweat, in short... Not cool the teenager struggles that weigh down his life and complicate it.

Once again, thank you mom.

It took me about twenty years to get rid of these complexes, to start loving myself truly, to see myself in the mirror without seeing only flaws.

By the way, do a nice and funny test: try to kiss yourself in a mirror.

In an elevator for example. You'll see, it's not as easy as you think, especially if you put your heart into it!

It took me a long time to get there.

2. End of the spaghetti, the wind is blowing to Greece

Saturday, October 2: It's amazing how sometimes our destiny - by not controlling it exactly but by staying on the highway of our birth path - can lead us to what is good for us!

I've been wanting to go to Rome for a long time, and now I'm here, for the sake of a braised octopus!

How the hell did I get there, for the sake of a fried squid?

No boat to Naples, so I took the one that went to Civitacitta.

Then, after an epic crossing where I was thrown out twice from the place where I was sleeping by guys who were in the right, I ended up sleeping outside on the deck, alone. I wasn't cold, with the full moon reflecting off the calm sea. It was great! Especially with good music in my ears.

Freshly disembarked, I jumped on a bus going to Rome, I was too eager to be there. A child's dream at two and a half hours by bus. The bike lying in the luggage compartment.

Arriving in Rome, the first hotel we found asked for the equivalent of $150! GASP! The next one, 250 $... Ouch! Finally, not wanting to go all over the city with a bag, which was itself on this pile of bones that had become Philip, which was itself on the bike, exhausted, I ask a guy to meet me and I had the best hideout in all of Rome. In this case, just at the beginning of the "big tourist crowd" center, where the pedestrian area starts, a pension on the third floor, in the kind of impressive building with its ten meters high floors and its 120 steps stairs between floors.

Imagine, on the roof... a view of all Rome!

I'm currently living in a tiny room measuring three by two meters, with a small skylight made from a piece of plexiglass placed over the opening.

Result of the races: 25 $ for two or three days, it is perfect! The pension is huge, there must be about twenty rooms and the owner, very nice, is painting in his living room. Leonardo da Vinci atmosphere... There's really a little air of Rome's fine arts from the beginning.

Armed with a map that turned out to be too small, I walked only a small part of the city, about 10 km2, not much on the map, to check the bus schedules to Ancona, Bari or Brindisi.

I walked around, got lost, bought a more detailed map, stopped on terraces and finally saw what Rome was, and its ultimate symbol: the Trevi Fountain. This great fountain with these gods trying to tame powerful horses, all on a waterfall of marble and water. Gosh, it's beautiful, dazzling!

Of course, all these alleys are full of tourists, and I take a bath in the crowd, breaststroke in one direction, crawl in the other, I like it, being social incognito soothes me.

I need to do some laundry, I'm so dirty.

It's funny, I'm starting to dream in Italian...

Last night, I went out through the skylight of my room to take a walk on the roofs. Feline and muffled atmosphere in exploration mode.

Rome, there is so much to say! It is so beautiful! And funny in this season. All these tourists, with a map in their hands, coming towards me, who don't have one, to ask me where this monument or that street is. Many weddings are held in front of all the major monuments. In front of almost all the buildings I visited, a large limousine stopped to let down the bride and groom who were going up the stairs on which dozens of tourists in search of a rest were crowded. Unusual and beautiful at the same time.

The Trevi Fountain is for me the must, I am attracted by these sculptures of strong men, with perfect bodies, pulling their horses, I could stay there for hours, spellbound.

In front of it is an esplanade with a basin of water containing thousands of coins at the bottom, the tradition being that you have to make a wish, with your back to the fountain, and throw the coin over your shoulder. Then it was a parade of people, tourists and locals, having their picture taken while performing this mythical gesture.

I witnessed an amusing scene in which a man in rags, or almost, asked a group of tourists for a coin. The tourists could not refuse because they were about to make a wish and could not throw it away because it would jeopardize their gesture of kindness. Once he had the coin in his hand, he stepped aside to let them think he was going to make his wish and do his business too, but snuck away once their backs were turned. It was only a small coin, but the way it was done taught me a lot about human cunning.

This afternoon, a visit to the Vatican.

In my humble opinion, it is the eighth wonder of the world. I climbed to the top of the dome through a maze of stairs as wide as my shoulders and never ending, to get out at the top after a quarter of an hour, exhausted like everyone else, but even more stunned by the beauty of the panorama. All of Rome at my feet.

This is the kind of sentence that Caesar must have often said to himself!

Back from the peaks, visit the Sistine Chapel, which is nothing but grandeur, marble, dazzling earthenware, grandiose sculptures, gilding, silver. What magnitude, this vault! There is not a place, not a wall that is not decorated, adorned. An atmosphere of respect, admiration, humility among everyone, all these ants walking with their noses raised on this painted or sculpted marble floor. I was amazed!

I met two interesting couples. The first had spent two weeks cycling in Italy, and I was able to speak French again, and the second were Canadian and had visited Paris and Rome before returning home. It's good to talk to people!

The next day, I took my stuff and my bike, direction the east coast. And Brindisi, goal Greece.

Cool ride, flat road, lots of traffic, I don't care, I'm going to change country soon and I'm excited about it.

Camping in the evening where I find a place.

Wednesday 6: Brindisi, located on the heel of Italy, almost in the south. Found an ordinary hotel. Nothing to see except that all the tourists, with their backpacks, are jostling for a deal with the travel agencies for Greece. In fact, in the street where I am, there is only that. Every ten meters there's an office where you can buy boat tickets to Greece.

I'm leaving for Patras tomorrow at 2pm.

I met a nice guy at the hotel, a Colombian chico and we spent the evening laughing in Spanish. What folklore to juggle with languages, I love it.

Today, with Pablo, we talked with Czechs who had nothing to eat. Czechs with no provisions.

They came here and got a job in a circus to pay for a boat ticket to Haifa, Israel. There they can work the land and earn between $1,000 and $1,200 a month. In their country, they earn the equivalent of $200! I really realized that I was lucky, that I shouldn't show that I have more money than them or that I'm going very far. It's all about philanthropy and respect for others.

Took the boat to Greece. Met two Germans travelling with their dogs. They are cool, the new "grunge" generation, they live from everything and nothing, especially from nothing, they make braids or tattoos to live. They must be 20 or 25 years old and have left for "they-don't-know-how-long". Just like me. Cool attitude.

I'll have to learn the Greek alphabet, because so far and pretty much everywhere in the world, the alphabet is the one we know.

But Greece has its own alphabet. The "R" becomes the "P", another letter forms the sound "PH", etc...

To the Gods of Olympus, I am coming!

To imagine and begin such an adventure, you have to surrender to a special state of mind: letting go.

Very difficult for most of us.

Certain astrological signs are favored for this: Pisces, because they are wanderers, dreamers and wanderers in the soul, some Scorpios, kings of I don’t care, because it helps to relativize and to let oneself live according to the winds, Aquarians also. The earth signs are not really willing to let themselves be guided by the Gods, too fixed to the ground that they are, and the fire signs are more the type to provoke the elements and to put their foot in the door rather than kneel down in front of the invisible and let themselves be carried away...

Letting go, the basic ingredient of this adventure.

Indispensable for any aspiring adventurer. So difficult to create in our brains, so structured, from civilized and material societies, used as we are to our lives of routine, stubborn habits, routines that lead us and keep us in comfort.

A sacred word that not many people talk about outside. Our comfort! Too precious that it is for all of us. Except that by basing our lives and decisions on the concern for comfort, letting go is likely to be missing. It's hard to let go of everything and open yourself to the unknown when you're swimming in comfort. Because letting go is daring to say: "Screw you all!", but also "Let it be so!" and "I open myself to the universe and to what it will bring me". To surrender to the Gods, to God, to the Creative Forces of the Universe, or to simply surrender to others, is a real personal challenge. To be able to surrender everything, or ourselves, to the All.

I even dare to claim that it is too difficult for a majority of people.

You have to have a lot of confidence in yourself or in your values to give up everything and go into the unknown.

And maybe that's the biggest obstacle for everyone: believing in yourself. Because with nothing left to hold on to, we must at least have a good, healthy and strong Self that we can rely on, right?

Letting go is also about following your instincts and therefore listening to your inner feelings, to the messages that the Over self sends you.

I must say that in thirty years of travel, every time I am on the road, out of my bearings, I have only my instinct to guard me and advise me, and every time I decide to follow it, I find interesting paths, great walks, events or people that I would never have met without the sweet folly of listening to myself.

Trust the Universe.

Three magic words! Impossible to achieve without being a yogi or an ultra-transcended being? Well no, in fact, it is very easy. All we have to do is silence the fears created by our mind and act. The key word. Act. Take the first step. Once on the road, in the action, it is impossible to lie or cheat. Each step, each gesture, each turn of the pedal in my case, comes from this confidence in ourselves, to lead us to our goal. And synchronicities happen, messages that the Universe or the Gods send us from their pedestal to show us that we are on the right track, that we can continue.

Letting go therefore contains words that are not for everyone, it is born with words like "adventure", "surprise", "unknown", "I don't know", and even "I don't care" or "whatever".

I've known people who couldn't smoke a joint or have a drink for fear of falling into that world, an unknown world that often contains and brings beautiful surprises.

3. Free and happy in Greece

Blessed be this evening when I am in Greece. I am happy. New country, new people, new language, new alphabet, new currency and new mentality. It's a country I feel good in because I've been to the Cyclades several times camping, with a girl or by myself.

The last time I was in the Cyclades was a few years ago; I had met a beautiful young Brazilian girl in Switzerland who I liked a lot. A gazelle's body that inflamed my pupils, I wanted to eat her, to devour her quietly as any hungry predator would do. So I invited her to go to the beaches in Greece with me, to the Cyclades. And off we went. But she didn't speak French, and I didn't speak Portuguese. I can't tell you how long some hours can be at the beach when we have nothing to say to each other... We were going to spend a week there, but four days later I brought her back to Geneva because we couldn't go on looking at each other for hours.