Visiting those friends from another trip

Malibu, Californie

It became a habit. You travel, you meet strangers and you share details.

Nothing new, you'll say. But one doesn't need to go far back in time to find the moment where mail adresses and telephone numbers would get lost. Six months, one year... that French friend you met in New York? No news at all!

Facebook revolution! Stay in touch without any effort. Or make a relationship stronger where there was nothing special at first. So give me a break with the theories about the social medias alienating people. When one knows how to use it, it's the opposite.

So there you go! The new friend sends you a request on Facebook. Tells you you'll always be welcomed in his house, Who-Knows-Where. But the truth is you will probably be too shy to visit that new friend.

Too bad!

Two years after meeting a girl from Hong Kong, in Germany, I visited her in her country. Not only reuniting felt natural, but it felt like we had just met the past week-end. We started talking exactly where we left the conversation before. That friend, she was very enthusiast to share her culture with me. She brought me places I would never have visited otherwise.

So for my last trip, I tried it again. Spent a whole week with friends in California. It is a different way to travel. Less museums, less major attractions, more small places and villages, well kept secrets. A slower pace too. But vacations are made for that. And learning to know a friend might be more rewarding that looking at beautiful landscapes.

True, there is a risk. A risk the first impression was totally wrong and you might have nothing in common. A risk to destroy precious souvenirs from a previous trip. But there is also a chance you'll discover even more common interests and that'll make the friendship stronger. Still, being right about the first impression is already something special.

And who knows. Once you have a place to stay somewhere, it might be easier to go back. Just have to believe they mean it when they say "Anytime you come close to my town, you can stay at my house."

A week-end outside of time

My philosophy of taking each day at a time is slowly growing on me, but the road I hit to come back is still bumpy, takes some time to get better.

To release a little bit of pressure, I'm going back on the road. Leaving for a better comeback.

I'm offering myself a week-end outside of time. Suspended time. Stretched time.

The remedy for the return is probably to give ourselves some time. But also to leave again, like a progressive travel withdrawal. It is to oppose the old-me against the new-me. To find out which one will prevail.

It's to step out of the four walls which erected themselves around us to trap us in the world of before. The walls we let get closer and closer. The ones which crush us a little bit making us believe the past is just the past, and that it will never be reality again. The walls which tame the big joys of that continent, tame the badlucks of that other continent, promote the vertues of the everyday life.

I'm leaving! I'm going to New York, after an invitation, to reunite with at least two exceptionnal friendships. Friendships I didn,t search for, but that I took a whole world tour to find. Friendships I don't want to let go anymore. Because they carry in themselves some little parts of happiness I don't want to lose.

That impatience is a strange feeling. The impatience of hugging so hard people I've seen once, maybe twice, in my life. Because hugging them that hard stops time.

Those are precious friends I want to stay friends with for all my life. I adopted them in a heartbeat. Told them  they were stuck with me. They answered they're not gonna complain about it. Friends for whom I would drive for seven hours, solo, without stopping, to snatch time... from time. And I'll need to force myself to leave them for seven more hours... solo again.

Those four days with the Empire State Building looming will last forever. They will stay suspended in time. I know it. Other's world will disappear. It'll be our world... My own world.

Without a doubt, I'll come back a little sad, not being able to grab more than just little pieces of this time running by. But at least, I won't have let it go in indifference. And I'll start planning other moments out of time.