that agony will be our triumph,

The Ingoldsby penance. John Tenniel, from The Ingoldsby legends, by Thomas Ingoldsby (Richard H. Barham), New York, 1848.

and then the lights come on
in the middle of the night,
what should I do with my life,
how should I spend my time?
- the music of Cocorosie

Eastern France. Rallying instinct together once more. A flute teacher took me here after being approached in a reststation some 300km south of Paris saying that his car was full, that it was full of animals, that it could not possibly hold us all. Stepping in, he had to move his flute. It was his music, the giraffes, he was speaking of, you see.
After he agrees, he becomes flabbergasted that I am not completely mad. That there is a certain kindness to my voice, to my words despite my life and the way things sometimes go. That I call myself a writer if I must call myself anything at all but that I have never been published, that I could never create a product from that far inside. Instead, I write little and sometimes explode with words. I tell him all this in my second tongue and he understands and tells me that he has never been creative, has only ever followed the masters of classical orchestras. 
I tell him : one day it will rip you open, this need to create and you must follow it to the end of the world, inside yourself or out of you. 
You promise?
He smiles and tells me that I am young but old at the same time and one day he would like to read my writing.
My constant movement is my mask in front of my creativity, I say. I've not given myself the chance to sit down and let it all out of me. It was always something else. I fear I will go to my grave even if I am young now with it still inside of me. Most of all I must give hope to the darkest of times, else all is lost from my life. 
You ever think that? I ask him.
He replies in English, this time. 
Yes. Yes I do. 

Small mountains beside the river. Reading beside it, scrawling notes of upheaval : a little boy approaches me and announces 'bonjour monsieur'. Bonjour monsieur', I reply back, grinning and he flaps his arms and bounds away.
Hikes far up into the sky. Mulled wine, The Taste of Cherry, incense, lentil soup - winter. 

I get up before the sun today and walk the city as the rain coats me in song upon my skin. So far, so long, so distant. What it is to burn in the cold winter morning. Ven returning back to Bulgaria without us even having met in Denmark. It will be too much for her to travel in winter to find somewhere else. The Patisserias opening up, lifting their shutters. Freshly baked bread, the first pot of coffee at cafés, the sweeping rain painting my cheeks. Winter coming - soon, today perhaps will be the first snow. And in a day, or two, I will leave one thousand two hundred kilometres east or almost an equally journey north. My sleeping bag that is not ready for winter and now we have no place to live once more and together I do not know how to provide comfort and stability. Alone I would just go south, further and further until a town draws me in, to write in an attic all winter long and sometimes to teach. 
But it is not what I want at all. I need us but is it possible after all this, after all the instinct to it and for it? 
The old Roman thrones, men prancing down the road with long baguettes resting underneath their arms. I soften the anxiety, shut out the world and let music fill my ears. A cat watches me from a window with curiosity. The sun will begin to rise soon, I tell myself, the world is not a grave. Wandering headless into winter. You have never had much of a need for a head, I tell myself. And onwards.