Day 67: Paspébiac to Carleton-sur-Mer

This blog post is somewhat of a rant as I wait for the people to disappear from the beach in Carleton-sur-Mer so I can stealth camp. I don’t know how long people will be here or will they care if I set up my tent on the beach, but I’ve been looking up at the sky for too long and thinking about life.

Today, I rode 54.8 miles to this beach, which is right by the Camping de Carleton-sur-Mer campground. I decided to not pay for a campsite and try stealth camping since I’ve been spending too much money on housing lately. Though I did pay CA$1 for a shower at the campground.

As I rode my bicycle for the past few days I’ve been ruminating about imaginary conversations, mostly between me and my mom, some about Pat the Trumper, and maybe a few others. I guess I’m trying to work some things out in my head and being my own therapist.

For some reason, I kept thinking about my mom and how it infuriates me every time I think about her. In my life, she never had anything profound to say to me. No life changing advice. No life advice in general. But she said a lot of negative things to me.

I remember one day she walked into my room and told me that I’m the most boring person she knows, then left. It was all she said. I still don’t understand why she said that.

I also remember one time when we were taking a walk in the neighborhood and she told me that my photography sucks, at the time when I was trying to become a fine art photographer. What a great motivator she was.

The worst was around Thanksgiving one year and she told me I’m not her son after I had returned some mismatched bed sheets to her and she wanted to throw them out because they were not a set. A couple of years later when I confronted her about that incident, expecting an apology. She told me she didn’t remember saying it. No wonder I haven’t been to any of the Thanksgivings after that.

I also remember the huge fight we had when I quit my job in March of 2023. She told me I was not “xiao shun,” which is a Chinese word for filial piety. All because I had decided to quit a job that was giving me a lot of stress and wanted to travel the world.

Talk about traveling. When I first traveled around the US for 45 days in the summer of 2003, my mom and my grandma were not happy about me leaving. When I went anyway and came back in one piece, my mom said in a disparaging way that I only scratched the surface of the places I went to, like what I did was nothing special.

My mom, along with my grandma, failed to see that what I want to do in life is to travel the world. Every time I mentioned traveling, they think I should be more serious. They never see the education in traveling. Perhaps they mistaken traveling for vacationing.

So as I watched the clouds in the sky above me, I thought about why was I even born. I was never asked to be born, let alone to be born to a toxic mother. I bet nobody was asked to be born in a conscious way. As far as I can see, it just happened that I was born in China, in the mid-1980s, to a set of parents whom I had no choice in choosing.

But I was lucky that I was raised by my grandma, who was the most benevolent person I had ever met. And by my step-grandpa, who was not related to me by blood, but was a wonderful grandpa. I still remember the time when he sat beside the bed the whole night when I was sick with a fever as a young child. It pains me to say it, but I’ll say it anyway. I got lucky that I wasn’t raised by my biological parents. Again, I had no choice in choosing in regard to my upbringing.

The clouds change with the wind and so are my thoughts.

I thought about Trump and the Americans who support him. I thought about Pat the Trumper, whom I had lunch with in Bethlehem, PA, earlier in my trip. He had told me about his Latino friend who always smiled like the Buddha. I wonder what would Pat think if his friend got deported by ICE.

When I told Pat about global warming, he told me weather changes all the time. As if the weather is the same as the climate.

I wondered why Pat, who has worked all this adult life for one company, is in a union, already saved $1.6 million for retirement, can’t find a wife, and wants to go to Thailand to have sex with Thai women. When I told him don’t be that creepy white guy, his response was “it’s not creepy if you have money.”

I wondered what made Pat vote for Trump three times over, and will he vote for him again if Trump runs for a third term.

I should really stop wondering, to be honest.

So yeah, these are some of my thoughts as I bicycled. They ruminated like they wanted to be written down so I can be alleviated.

One last thing. I remembered looking out into the sky and into the universe, thinking that if I died I would be very happy. Because what I’ve done so far in my life has been more than what most people have done in a lifetime. Maybe I should look into the sky a bit more sometimes.

The sun has just set and there are still people on the beach. It takes me about 30 minutes to set up my tent. Maybe I should get moving.

Love riding by the water

Cool sculpture by a rest stop

Road side attraction

More hills

First Nation native land

Looking at Carleton-sur-Mer

Another cool sculpture, by the light house

The beach

Beautiful scenery

Comments

  1. Great rant. Some people are straight up sadistic. Eric Fromm has a lot to say about them.

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  2. Love you Hiatt. Miss you but happy for you. Thanks for sharing this special post. Love this in particular: “The clouds change with the wind and so are my thoughts.” Reminds me of the goals of meditation: not necessarily to empty ourselves of all thought(s), but rather to acknowledge them as they come up and let them pass along without trying to hold on to them. An exercise that is personally much easier to accomplish when my body is in motion (on a long hike, bike ride, at a busy job that doesn’t grant me lots of idle time).

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    Replies
    1. Meditation is a great exercise. I try to meditate every moment by paying attention

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