Travel: escape, discovery

I love to travel. I have a long history of travel interspersed with studies, a career managing social organizations, and shared custody of my son, who is now also on his own.

I have to say, I'm a child of the traveling world. My parents got married in Paris after a long motorcycle trip from Paris to Morocco. Their happiness is evident in the photos from those moments. They decided to get married in Paris, and I was born in Montreal eight months later. That's where things got complicated. My father was focused on his artistic career, and my mother was struggling with postpartum depression. She brought the orphanage of her childhood, where she grew up, right into our home. From primary school onward, I was living on the streets.

Travel is a delicate balance between the exhilaration of discovering the world's beauty and the escape from one's inner torments, which, whether we like it or not, follow us no matter where we go. The great travel writers were mostly suffering individuals; many committed suicide, or didn't even bother, as alcohol and other substance abuse took care of it. Consider Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac, and more recently, Anthony Bourdain. Even Sylvain Tesson nearly died after a drinking binge. All these luminaries wrote eloquently about the beauty they encountered and their passion for discovery, but they generally paid little attention to the torments that plagued them.

It has to be said that it's easier to write or talk about others than about yourself. You can always create a fictional character to make it easier, but I prefer the Annie Ernaux method—a woman by chance? But it's not easy; it takes talent and work. I'm lazy and gifted… in mathematics. But I persevere, and writing does me good by allowing me to clarify my thoughts and express what I probably wouldn't otherwise say. Then, with practice, I discovered the pleasure of rewriting, a real ordeal not so long ago.

A breakup, or rather, a complete abandonment, was the catalyst for this current series of trips. A classic, you might rightly say. It began two years ago in Iceland and Greenland; Bhutan and Santiago de Compostela followed, and now here I am, embarking on a journey around the globe. I'm treating myself, with a generous helping of icing.

Yesterday, while searching for a text I'd written on my iPad, I stumbled upon a note addressed to the woman who had pushed me down this path; at home, her ever-present shadow had become unbearable. Reading this rediscovered note brought back my grief. Grief, whether romantic or otherwise, is a pain, an attack, that comes and goes, but with time, the assaults become less frequent and less violent. I remembered that this abandonment was present from the very beginning of our relationship, where she resisted before committing. I persisted, she gave in, we flew away, and then the oyster closed for good a year later. It also reminded me of that other relationship where I completely lost it, in the sense of falling madly in love, with G., a married woman who, despite succumbing to my charm—an exception in her seemingly endless marriage—had no intention of leaving her boring husband, despite her passion for the film *The Covered Bridges of Madison County*. I could see the fear in her eyes, as well as Sylvie's in her words and actions. Two women who remained distant despite a certain intellectual infatuation and, above all, a sudden, intense erotic passion.

This distance reminds me of my mother's. We always try to overcome the challenges we couldn't resolve with our parents; that's how I see romantic passion. It's the spark that ignites the powder keg. Maturity means finding someone with whom the challenge is manageable, or even changing the record, as David, my late therapist, used to say.

Shortly before my departure, I began a relationship with a woman where there was no firestorm. Instead, there was a gentle, warm breeze, punctuated by moments of genuine connection. My departure was already planned when we met, and I've stuck to it; she'll be joining me for part of this journey. As she so aptly put it: distance strengthens meaningful relationships and destroys those without potential.

“Tell me, when will you return? Tell me, at least do you know?” Yes, I know, September 28th