#im trying to remember if i got into this very much during grapevine..... i don't think so tho.......

[honeydots]

Any headcanons for Forrest relationship with Uncle Xander and Laslow? I like to think Xander is quietly supportive of Forrest, but it is such a shame Forrest doesn’t get to support with his Uncle.

hehe i think they'd love him! i mean of course, they're his uncles, but still. xander'd come across (as he does, as he is) as a pretty stern uncle--but forrest is good at not defining people based on their appearance, so i can imagine him being the type to be like "my uncle is actually VERY kind and thoughtful and sweet and--" *proceeds to stretch the truth* gusjfjsfb but i think part of this comes from that xander really does dote on forrest, similarly to how he treats elise.

laslow i think, at first, would be just really excited there's another baby around hahaha i think he'd love to visit tiny forrest! but as he gets older, well--forrest looks a lot like maribelle! i don't think this would go unnoticed by laslow, though i think he'd find that really charming, too. laslow knows a lot of precious and darling little tea shops around that i think he'd have fun visiting with forrest ("how do you know all these places?" "ah, well--"), and tbh. i think they'd lightly tease leo together LOL not to his face, just kind of gossiping quietly about him (with love ofc)

[thevagabondlog]

Ive been staring at this blank page for an hour now. I haven’t written a shred of anything in close to a year, but I feel like the current set of circumstances right now dictate it. Hermes guides me. I haven’t even written a draft by hand like I normally do, Im just letting this come out and it feels great.

The last two, maybe even three years of my strange trip on this planet have been such a surreal high paced blur. Ive come to realize that I do too much in too short a time, too many places visited, people met, things done in the dead of night and the overwhelming heat of the day. A few strings busted, a few hearts broken. Nothing out of the ordinary except the fact that my address is still changing every month and I’m still getting lost daily, both in reality and in my mind. Not that I’d change it for the world. I don’t even know who exactly reads this garbage but if you still are, know this is going to be a long one. Ive got a lot on my mind, time is on my side and there’s nowhere I need to be.

Everyday in the Caribbean is incredibly hot and sticky. Every night is mysterious and romantic.

Writing this is simultaneously difficult and surprisingly easy. Its difficult to explain whats been shredding through my head the last few months or however bloody long. Since I last attempted to write, if you can call it that, Ive since been through a serious and drama filled breakup with my long term girlfriend back home, been to seven countries including South Africa ( more on that later ), morphed back into the older Joshua Palmer and basically been running a permanent anarchic riot around the world. As I write now, its once again a hot day in the Bahamas and my head is still swirling with Ricardo Black Rum from the previous night. Special Edition, of course.

Church of the Open Sky.

April 5 - April 26, three weeks back in the motherland after more than a year and a half overseas. A lot of expectations held, almost none of them met. Im not quite sure why, but looking back now in June I realize i didn’t enjoy my stay there at all. Highlights include seeing my parents again (they wept) and one or two close friends who I’m not even sure are still friends at this stage. I came to realize I hate most of the people that fill up my tiny coastal hometown, largely due to the fact that they’re all hypocritical judgmental small minded people who have never been anywhere farther than the gas station in the next town. Keep in mind that these are the same people that said I’d never amount to anything and Id be back home after a month of failed traveling searching for a job running a yacht. Choke on your words. Anyhow, I also got told numerous times that I’d changed completely, becoming much more ‘arrogant’, ‘rude’, ‘insensitive’ etc to the people around me. I suppose in a way I was, but then everyone back in that place is easily offended and so narrow minded it makes me want to shoot myself. I suppose Im much happier over here, on my own and fending for myself, in foreign countries where I don’t know anyone, and all I know is where North-East is. The entire time I was back there, I couldn’t wait to come back to the West Indies. It feels good getting these thoughts down, they’ve been bouncing around my head for too long now.

I was dancing with some girl in a club a month or two ago and in-between reggaetron and soca she asked me a question no one has ever asked before: “Where do you consider home?” I really don’t know. Definitely not back in my hometown, I don’t plan on setting foot in that place for another twenty years at least. Its not on the boat either, nor on any of the islands. Id have to say home is wherever I feel alive the most. Which just so happens to be fifteen feet underwater looking up.

May 4 - Twentieth birthday in Georgetown, Exumas, Bahamas. Largely uneventful, frankly boring and unsatisfying. Mind you I was working at the time so of course the celebrations were minimal to non existent.

January 2017 - Current.

Adopted really strange sleeping patterns similar to a Russian insomniac writer fighting his bouts of suicidal depression with vodka and pharmaceuticals. I don’t know what this stems from other than my erratic lifestyle of mainly working onboard the entire day and still getting drunk at local bars into the early hours of every new day.

Right now its summer and every heat wave day is longer than the last.

I have lost interest in a lot of people who I once thought important. I do not know if this is selfish on my part or all just part of moving around constantly, or just one of those things you deal with as you get older. I have been told numerous times that I’m not going to make it past thirty, and for some reason or other I’m embracing the thought. Go out in a strange and mysterious accident of sorts somewhere out at sea, that place that once gave birth to me. Ill let you know.

For the past few weeks I have also had these increasingly frequent urges to just pack up, delete my Facebook and go completely off the grid, getting lost in strange and exotic foreign places. Lawrence of Arabia in Morocco. Not knowing the unknown is turning me on more and more everyday, as well as the idea of just giving the finger to all the people back home who are getting married young, stuck in nine-to-fives that they hate, and coming home to deal with the mortgage and car insurance people. I left the country the first time with no actual plan, one bag and sixty dollars in my pocket and I don’t regret a single moment. And I don't mean all those cliche travel pictures and utter bullshit you see on social media telling you to just ‘pack up and go’, I mean actually deserting myself. Exile on Main St. Highway Child. Midnight Rambler.

The lust for this has never been greater. I keep asking myself just what is holding me back?

My biggest fear is living a life just like everyone else, a life that no one remembers. Why should I listen to any authority or second guess myself? Time will tell and hopefully sooner or later. And if I’m not mistaken, and I surely hope not, I may have found someone to do it with. A woman unlike anyone else Ive met or ever known before. A woman who, somehow exceeds everything I think about her constantly and is basically the exact fibre of my dream girl since I was fifteen. Physically outrageous, a beautiful figure. Mentally, she keeps me on my toes only because I hope to somehow match her standards. Well travelled and with such an eerily alike mind to my own its more than possible we were once together in an earlier life. My best efforts of a description is a glorious hybrid of a gypsy, voodoo witch, mermaid, and the Goddess Aphrodite all in one. With a sprinkling of a rebellious 1960’s mindset which only turns me on further. Making love to her only broke my mind in two and made me question everything. She’s everything I ever wanted from every rock and roll song Ive listened to, and she’s in all of them. And believe it or not I only knew her for three days before she flew off again, once more traveling. While Im starting to feel a little stuck in this place. Most would say Im crazy, but I already knew that.

I do wonder what, and how exactly she’s had such an effect on me. It makes me look back at every other girl I’ve ever been with and realize that they do not even come close to her or the psycho-electric effect she has on me. And if you know me, you’d know I dont feel like this to anyone, ever. She’s touched me deep down, and the next few months or years or whatever only promise to be very exciting.

Im trying, and not succeeding very well, to look back at everything over the past few months and years, if you couldn’t tell by now. How many people did I meet for five minutes and never see again? Friends or lovers for one night and then gone the next day never to be seen? I look at what all my ‘friends’ are doing back home, studying in their first or second year. My best friend living with his fiancee and hating every second, constant fighting and the such but too scared to leave because he believes he loves her and well, believes he cant do any better. In love with the security and constant hard work I suppose. A friend through the grapevine told me recently that he has lost respect for me and hates the lifestyle I live. I wont lie and tell you I wasn’t hurt or taken aback. We’ve spent four years together, done much, and always confided in one another. Is he jealous of the knowledge that Im traveling the world, free and easy, able to go to the bar every night and dance with exotic girls while he is forced to come home after work to a nagging unloving bitch that makes his life hell? He would never admit that. Im not scared to tell it exactly how it is though. Another trait passed on to me from my father, whom I miss so.

If I had never made the decision to leave all those months ago would I be in the same position as my friend right now? Maybe. More than likely, I was in a long term relationship with someone I thought I loved, about to get sucked into that domesticated world before I jumped ship. Haven’t seen her since actually. Thanks for the memories girl, but you weren’t for me.

Life would be very different and it would bore me to death. I prefer dying in other ways in places where no one understands English.

Now my thoughts go back to my unbiological sister, we once were very close. Always looking after one another, often mistaken to be a couple but not. I thought I was in love with her too, but she’s changed so dramatically in the time I was away I hardly recognized her anymore during my homecoming visit. She lied to me many times in those three weeks, thinking I wouldn’t find out, and probably still thinking Im ignorant. Makes me wonder why we are like we are. She told me I changed a lot too and I’m no longer the Josh she knew, that I’ve grown cold and distant. Well look at yourself babe, can you really blame me? Its only further cemented my belief that you need to keep moving forward in such a way that they will never trap you or hold you down, until finally you find someone that you want to be trapped with. You know who you are.

“I thought you needed my lovin’, But it’s my heart that you stole. I thought you wanted my money, But you plundered my soul.”