A project

I'm back on my feet now, if a little skinnier at least free of pain and fever and teeth marks on my tongue. And March has disappeared without me taking any notice of it, bed-ridden that I was. So now I'm confused and searching for my occupations again, but those will quickly knock on my door.

I'll be back "on the roads" from June onwards again - or at least I'll leave the city and be on farms or wherever. This time, the trip is open-ended, seeing as I've no job to force me to come back. But as much as I am eager to go back wandering up and down the roads of Europe, I felt like the aim of my trip this time was missing. Last time, I was eager to get to know collective farms, their places, their people, and find out whether I could imagine living in collective structures on the countryside.
This time... I want to go back to these places of course, as many individuals have become friends. But this isn't enough for a trip. I also want to learn a lot about strawbale and earth houses. But this still doesn't seem to be enough. I needed a Project. Something Poh-lee-tik-all.
One vague idea I had was to track down and portrait the political struggles in the places I would end up in. I meant to say, the list of places to visit is long. Way too long. It includes places in Germany, Austria, the Ukraine, Hungary, Italy, France (and as if this weren't enough, my aunt reminded me of a really interesting-sounding place in England). In any case, I tell Johannes about my vague idea and my grumble, and all of a sudden, there is A Project, and we start jumbling ideas together "that sounds cool... just finding out about the struggles will be plenty of work in itself... you make the photos... I write the texts... and we can apply for a grant... a grant? wow, yeah... and then what do we do...? a book? yeah, a book. And an exhibition? Cool ey... Butbutbut... what do we focus on..? and there are too many places, man, we need time... well whatever, if need be we'll take six months... yeah, six months... 'K! I start writing up the project!... Yeah, and I'll look up grant options!... Good! talk to you later!"

I look back to my last trip and remember that then already I would have liked to document the people I met -
Christophe, his battered face, long black hair and twig of a body, who's been living on the road for the past 15 years, wandering from farm to farm and hitch-hiking, after having liberated himself from the slavery of his job, his flat, his car (and, I should also add to be faithful to his list: his girlfriend).

Anna, who has become a close friend, shaved head of an Italian who set off about a year ago to eventually start her own collective project in Italy - but before she finds the right moment for that, also wanders from farm to farm and throws herself entirely in the work, absorbing all the knowledge she can about plants, herbs, gardening and horticulture, bees and honey, or even covering a roof as we end up on one one afternoon, and healing massages as she finds her way into an oriental healer's practice over the winter.

Morgan, genius fool hitching from Scotland to British Columbia, Canada, who learned the medicinal and nourishing properties of herbs, flowers, tree leaves and bark, pitched his hammock tent up in trees, learned how to make natural stoves, and drew portraits of all the people who took him on when hitching, getting each person's views on environmental issues by starting up conversations about the weather.

So many travelers, people who have freed themselves from conventions, external expectations, money worries, time constraints. Incarnations of freedom and radicalism, environmental and political conscience. Those would have been the portraits I would have made last year.

This year, if the two of us are traveling together, there will be less random and intense meetings of the kind - but there will be different encounters, and more work on how to place these encounters in a context. I expect, at least. And a documentation of sorts - not just a "would". It's exciting.