That’s where I live now, in France. But I spent nearly 5 years in prison in Missouri beginning in 2013, when my life had spiraled out of control, taking me very far away from the academic path in philosophy I had originally set out for myself. I’ve been out of prison since August of 2018 and deported back to France. I’m nearly 64 and it’s time for me to come to terms with what happened. I also need to make a living since my options have become extremely limited. I have a permanent presence on google as a sex offender, and despite being in France where, technically, I have “the right to be forgotten”, the all-seeing eye of Sauron that is google and Bing, and all the rest of it, will never forgive and never forget. I kept a diary throughout my time in prison, especially in the beginning when I tried to keep track of everything. The diary eventually found its way back to me after I was deported, but I put it away for two years because I could not bear to be reminded. I had restarted my life in France, and after a year, I was well on my way towards a new life; but the past came back to haunt me 6 months ago in the form of an unwelcome google search that exposed my past. So it became time to reexamine my diary and see what I have to say. This is an evolving project that I have been ruminating about for months now, and I don’t really know where it’s going. But it seems now that in order to move forward in my life, I first need to look back and see where I’ve been.

To put things in perspective, this is a summary view of 50+ years of my life … prison was but 5 years of that life, but arguably the most important …

The intention is to give some background on how we came to be in the US in 1968, and what path I took over the years, and what led me back to France half a century later. Sometimes I think I understand what happened, but sometimes I don’t. Seeing clearly through things is not easy and self-understanding often elusive, like this poem by Robert Frost.

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