The Pursuit of 'Happyness'

overlooking Nice, France

So this is a hard one, I have so much to say, yet so little to tell because, well....my crazy mind right now.....I do need to censor from some of you, what comes out of me!

Walking alongside the Glacier d'Argentiere, France

However, I am starting to get complaint mail from a certain number of you as to why I have neglected to let you in on my 'fabulous life' of late. I apologise. For the lack of 'fabulous life'.
I find myself acknowledging my disposition by litotes, saying that it's "not bad" and that I am "not displeased" with my life situation - yet...how to say?

Chamonix, France

The pursuit of happiness, the "acute angles of lonliness that being away from the familiar brings" (Laura McCarthy, circa 2008) and that ideal of paradise that I am surrounded by in every moment....right?


Overlooking the beaches in Nice, France

In the difference of extremes of my environment recently, I ponder the idea of paradise and what that is to me. This ideal of the formidable mountainous life vs. the tropical breeze of the Riviera, I question which can bring more pleasure and why we seek what we seek as a getaway ideal. To many, the French Riviera is a Xanadu, an idyllic paradise of happiness and forgotten stresses. The scent of les lauriers roses permeates the air as soon as the morning breeze stirs the bushes outside the window of Audrey's abode in Mandelieu-La Napoule. Yes, any house here is a belvedere, as was the case with Audrey's place, when the night I arrived I was taking a shower outside in her garden, looking down to the port as fireworks lit up the sky....is this happiness? Is this finally paradise?


Hiking the Glacier d'Argentiere, France

I left the mountains for some much needed time with the sea for 4 days. To visit a new friend I met in Paris back in May, Audrey. Four days to be around some much needed estrogen in this testosterone-surrounded life in Argentiere. Four days to feel the proper heat of the sun and the since-forgotten salty smell and breeze that is at once comforting to me. Four days to gaze out...and out, and out out out upon the vast open space that is the beloved sea (oh how I miss thee!). Four days to get away from whatever funk it is that I'm harbouring so ungratefully back in the mountains, hoping to let the sun sand and sea wash me, shake me and refresh me, back to my usually bright bubbly Allie. Where has she gone? Why has she gone? Down some godforsaken rabbit hole is where and she's run into spaceman spif along the way, a bold interplanetary explorer who has spied a zarg! And yes, that zarg is me.


Main road leaving Argentiere, France (with Mont Blanc in the setting sun)

See, I'm about to head into month seven of being abroad, with no end in sight yet. (Original preview of an October return isn't quite time yet). Seven months was my last sizeable trip, and I wonder if I'm starting to feel all too strongly the effects of missing my loved ones so far away from me. Being in a place that maybe isn't really for me, around people from whom I feel no spark of energy. A bit isolated from anything of substance lately. Inspiration.

Audrey and Allie at plage le Trayas, la Cote d'Azur, France

And so I booked a ticket to the south of France; To stay with a friend whom I had only hung out with a handful of times back in May, in Paris. There are people who come into your life for only a short amount of time, who make such an impact on you and connect to your energy so beautifully, complementing you in such a way that tells you 'I need to know this person for a long time to come'. Audrey is such a girl.


Audrey and Allie on the seawall in Cannes, France

After now 2 full months in Chamonix, I cannot say the same for anyone I have met here. How do you spend so little time with some people and feel closer to them than you do with people who you are surrounded by all the time? It seems to me that it isn't necessarily time that makes a relationship profound in your heart. Sigh.
More than time, can a simple spark between 2 people, a click, be enough, that after only 2 weeks you feel you will know them forever....
Unfortunately, i have not had that spark with anyone here, and that makes me a little bit lonely. Lonely for proper friendship, connection and comfort with someone.

I am feeling too sentient for anyone here to identify with that sense...feeling all too aware and finely sensitive in my perceptions and feelings towards others, in a monotone crowd of people too concerned with their sports for anything more. Wondering where I can fit into that....




As I sit quietly on the wall of a castle bordering the Mediterranean sea, thinking these thoughts, I imagine I am on the seawall of Vancouver, West Vancouver, near the marina, looking out to the kids swimming in the evening sun, not far from their waterfront homes. It's crowded in the summers, it's the limits of the city where they swim, beaches are crowded, and I wonder where there's a corner still more secluded that I can hide. Heading home when the sun goes down and the day is ending. And am I more comfortable, in my forlorn state, imagining that maybe this is really just the same as home? That really I am on the shores of the Pacific, and things are bluer...er, greener, on the other side? Can this be one and the same?
Nope. I imagine feeling this funk back in Vancouver still. So what's the deal then?
Imagining I am indeed back home, I realize I would feel the same as that turquoise blue water, wondering what magic potion that chesire cat made me smoke, and think life would be better if i was abroad, traveling...So back to 'reality' of this tropical equivalent (well, what this window atop the steps of this castle is granting me anyway...) thinking...no. I AM on the other side, and a warm breeze carries tinges of coolness to my Alps-burned skin, and I feel....alone. Apart. Adrift, feeling a bit like a peregrine at the best of times...


It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder -- and someone with a heart simply willing to see that beauty, let it in and let it glow will likely have a great deal of beauty to behold. Hard to feel down in the midst of beauty but even negative emotions are real and need to be felt...

"you are given all the space you need to feel what ever it is you feel girl. this is perfect."

So for all those questions, has anything been answered? I don't know (or maybe I do) and I don't care to answer at this point (or maybe I do) ...what I do know is that my soul needs to be as interested in what is happening inside as what is going on outside, maybe even more so. Surrender; listen to the silence; it's time to let it be.

Mandelieu-La Napoule on the French Riviera, France


Love Allie