second intimate walk with Min

I did a second walk with Min on our day off before going to the swimming pool. We had slept in and most people had gone to Reims in the morning to inspect the theaters there. It was Thursday but felt like a Sunday. We talked about the possibility of Min visiting me in Switzerland during the X-mas break. But since I will be working on our new piece "enter my bubble" in a residency in Bern, we thought maybe it would be too stressful and not the right time for a visit. I'm really happy that I have so many great working opportunities this coming year. But on the other hand it frightens me a bit thinking that the schedule will be so packed and there's not even space to spend some days with a visiting friend. This is exactly the conflict I know so well: Do I place ambition before friendship, discipline before emotional needs, professional responsibility before relationships? This conflict also plays a role in this intimacy research. To what extent do I follow my desire? To what degree can I stay professionally detached in my approach to searching for intimacy? Do I want to stay detached, in control, objective?
No for sure not. What I write here is very much filtered through my own subjective experience. I cannot and do not want to document my intimate activities from the neutral and cold perspective of a scientist. But I am aware that writing about and thus exposing the intimate encounters with real people is stepping on delicate ground. In a talk I had with Lucie she was wondering how much I give back to the guinea pigs who volunteer to participate in my research. Am I using them for my own selfish purposes? Is it ethically correct to extract intimate confessions from my victims/volunteers on our walks or in bed and then expose them the next day on the blog? Is it o.k. to create this setting of trust and intimate complicity without a longterm commitment to protect and take care of what has been built during the encounter? Most people who have participated so far in my research have told me they trust me. They feel that my motivation for this research stems from a genuine interest and desire to connect with people and learn more about myself in the process. So what precautionary measures must I take not to betray this trust? Is there something wrong with using people for my own purposes, as long as these purposes have an aim bigger than myself? I am thinking of an idiom or expression by some philosopher now who said something quite important and universal on this subject. But I don't remember the exact words nor who said it.
Antonio told me I should be a professional hustler. But who is actually the prostitute here? Is it me or the people I sleep and walk with? What do these people get out of sleeping and walking with me?
This is the last week of our residency at PAF and the general atmosphere is one of stress and last minute rehearsals and preparations to get ready for the presentations in Reims. I have been less enthusiastic to propose my intimate activities to people these last days because there doesn't seem to be the time and space for it. I'm not exactly stressed about presentations in Reims but the general atmosphere has an effect on me nonetheless. I get tired and frustrated by lengthy, drawn-out discussions about the organization and future of this group. As a result I feel less available an willing to be intimate with people. Because what I am quite sure of for now is that intimacy requires a certain openness and availability for the other. When I don't feel I can provide this I am very reluctant to go on my search for intimacy. In fact it feels wrong and preposterous to go for an intimate encounter when I am not available for it.
I have gone off on an intellectual tangent. Let's get back to the tangible, simple encounter: Min and I walked on the paved road towards the horizon. The sky was black. We felt tired and lazy but happy to be outside in the open. It was going to rain. We took a field path and arrived to a picturesque picnic spot surrounded by some trees and bushes. In front of us there was a hilly meadow for horses. We decided to sit down. We took off our shoes. It started to drizzle. We took off our shirts. Min asked me if I had ever taken a shower in the rain, a natural shower. I remembered a heavy, warm rainfall during a youth camp when we all danced and jumped around in puddles in a pine forest in southern Switzerland. Min and I stripped to our underwear and sat for a moment in meditation pose. The light rain opened up our pores and I imagined my skin in osmosis with the world around me. Pretty soon I developed goose bumps.
We got up and ran barefoot into the meadow through the long grass like horses. It felt like in a movie, a National Geographic documentary on wild horses. It felt great. We galloped uphill and started breathing hard, our lungs expanding. We arrived on top of the hill. The horizon opened up in front of us. This world belonged to us. We were on top of the world, in the middle of the universe. The grass tickled our legs as we ran back to the picnic spot. I felt alive and powerful. Embodying a horse is an empowering experience. When I think about it now this horse episode feels so surreal like in a dream. In the moment it was all we needed to know. Where we were is what we needed.