{"id":4451,"date":"2023-01-14T06:15:43","date_gmt":"2023-01-14T06:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/?p=4451"},"modified":"2023-02-15T05:41:52","modified_gmt":"2023-02-15T05:41:52","slug":"it-was-a-trip-indeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/2023\/01\/it-was-a-trip-indeed\/","title":{"rendered":"It was a TRIP indeed"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>It was immediately clear that I was waiting for a flight going to France: I\u2019m in line with no one close to me and this French dude shows up and stops right behind me, speakerphone blaring, not wearing a mask, speaking loudly. I move a few inches forward and this mf just moves accordingly, staying 10 inches from me. I leave and go to another line.<\/li>\n<li>I hadn\u2019t been on a flight for a minute so they almost called HelpDesk when I failed to scan my boarding pass for 30 seconds straight.<\/li>\n<li>Aquaman in the plane was watery.<\/li>\n<li>We hit 995 km\/h at some point on that flight, which is quite fast.<\/li>\n<li>Temperature\/rain in Paris was about the same as in Los Angeles. Kind of odd.<\/li>\n<li>I couldn\u2019t wait to see my dad. Masks on. Pandemic still fucking human moments left and right.<\/li>\n<li>We rode back home rather quietly. I couldn\u2019t stop saying \u201cwow\u201d at all those changes and new buildings.<\/li>\n<li>My hometown streets felt like bicycle lanes, it\u2019s so cute.<\/li>\n<li>My sister and my mom in my arms after the antigen test went <em>\u201cYou Good\u201d<\/em>.<\/li>\n<li>Mom was so happy. Nine motherfucking years. Afghans refugees can go to Europe on foot and get to see their relatives back home faster than that.<\/li>\n<li>Realizing that many things here that I\u2019ve known my whole life will end up being sold, demolished.<\/li>\n<li>Realizing my parents mortality like I had never felt it before.<\/li>\n<li>Realizing the same for my foster mom, hitting 86 this year.<\/li>\n<li>Fuck jetlag entirely because it\u2019s really annoying.<\/li>\n<li>I\u2019m sleeping in my teenage bedroom. Outside of my frantic typing, it is dead quiet.<\/li>\n<li>My beloved <a href=\"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/2019\/07\/radiant-heating-floor\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">radiant heating floors<\/a>. Goddamn.<\/li>\n<li>Smells from my closet, my clothes, the family house, nature violently bringing memories.<\/li>\n<li>Okay, now it really feels like it\u2019s way colder here.<\/li>\n<li>Wine and stinky cheese at every possible occasion which is twice a day at the very least.<\/li>\n<li>My foster mom almost passed out when I showed up at 7 in the morning at her door.<\/li>\n<li>We\u2019ve been talking for hours. I mean, she is and I nod back.<\/li>\n<li>Nothing has much changed in this little village. There\u2019s something soothing about the consistency of that fact through decades.<\/li>\n<li>Gossips and alcohol are ruining everything, families, situations, futures.<\/li>\n<li>I haven\u2019t seen the sun since leaving L.A.<\/li>\n<li>The road back to the family home was basically a river that I was at 75 mph on, passing trucks every 5 mn. Definitely tiring.<\/li>\n<li>I drive my dad\u2019s Toyota RAV4 which feels like a Hummer on these tiny ass suburb streets.<\/li>\n<li>Quiche aux lardons so good.<\/li>\n<li>First normal night from 10pm to 7am, awake by street car so loud I thought there was a spaceship rapture-like event going on. It cleans the streets once a month?<\/li>\n<li>Went to Vincennes to go to my favorite little hat shop to get a new one.<\/li>\n<li>Traffic everywhere, so much construction I want to barf. It\u2019s so dense it\u2019s not possible to be denser. I can\u2019t fucking stand it.<\/li>\n<li>More homelessness than I have ever seen on the periph\u2019.<\/li>\n<li>Mom\u2019s pot au feu soothes me a bit. Simple, tasty food FTW.<\/li>\n<li>Going through my boxes smelling exactly like when I left my apartment, I have to suppress memories if I want to make progress. Nine fucking years.<\/li>\n<li>I can wear everything I\u2019ve been wearing since 1998.<\/li>\n<li>Joy of finding old items from my beautiful cream Stratocaster to shirts I loved to death and cassettes. All coming with me.<\/li>\n<li>The sun has been out for five minutes. Sort of.<\/li>\n<li>This constant thinly veiled French racist attitude, lol. Well, I had forgotten about it.<\/li>\n<li>Last supper is rabbit and a little parfait au chocolat.<\/li>\n<li>Dad has become addicted to chocolate, he tries to sling some to me at every occasion.<\/li>\n<li>I already have to get back to Cali. I barely sleep.<\/li>\n<li>I give my parents a kiss on the cheek for breakfast, we\u2019re happy and sad. My presents drying on the rack in the other room.<\/li>\n<li>I say goodbye to mom and we head back to CDG with dad.<\/li>\n<li>7am, crazy traffic, pitch black sky.<\/li>\n<li>We know CDG pretty well and still getting confused where to go.<\/li>\n<li>Dad drops me off at the curb. I want this moment when we hug and hold each other\u2019s face to last forever. I feel his nicely trimmed, white facial hair over my fingers and try to absorb this moment as much as I can.<\/li>\n<li>He\u2019s gone. I\u2019m about to.<\/li>\n<li>CDG. Such a mess it deserves its own post. Or not.<\/li>\n<li>We take off, 45 seconds later I see the sun. I missed you, boi.<\/li>\n<li>I sleep the entire flight minus the last hour.<\/li>\n<li>We land. Los Angeles, its sun, its beautiful mountains covered in snow.<\/li>\n<li>Everything\u2019s a breeze at LAX. I\u2019m quickly back to my car. Robert Glasper playing J-DILLA starts playing and I start crying uncontrollably. It\u2019s all good.<\/li>\n<li>The sensation that I just had a very vivid dream starts, but I know it was real.<\/li>\n<li>Back to my routines. I\u2019m up at 6am the next day and shooting my basketball at 7am, before work.<\/li>\n<li>As always, I finish my session with a swish 3.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You know what love is? It\u2019s effort. It\u2019s focus. And I\u2019m good at it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was immediately clear that I was waiting for a flight going to France: I\u2019m in line with no one close to me and this French dude shows up and stops right behind me, speakerphone blaring, not wearing a mask, speaking loudly. I move a few inches forward and this mf just moves accordingly, staying [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4451"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4451"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4487,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4451\/revisions\/4487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/har0ld.com\/playground\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}