Posts Tagged ‘lifejourney’

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Seule, elle touche le vent

26 mars 2020

Par la fenêtre, elle touche le vent. La rue vide résonne de silence, de lumière. Pieds et fesses sur son assise, les bras autour des genoux, la tête penchée vers le haut et reposant contre la vitre de sa fenêtre ouverte.

Il faut chercher en étirant les yeux, un coin de ciel bleu vers lequel se perdre.

Il est six heure du matin, le monde immobile dort encore. En bas les trottoirs abandonnés, les fenêtres des immeubles désespérément désertées. L’humanité terrée… Chaque bruit rassure et étonne, interroge et met en alerte. Seuls, les uns entassés sur les autres à une distance nécessaire des autres.

En opposition à son corps enfermé dans ses maigres mètres carrés, son esprit se libère et s’évade.

L’odeur de l’herbe juste coupée, sa fraicheur un peu piquante sous les pieds. Les reflets sur l’eau et les péniches du canal admirées lors des ballades dominicales. L’odeurs des gaufres sucrées disponibles au coin de la rue… les conversations simples et spontanées dans l’ascenseur. Il faut se souvenir, faire l’exercice mental d’une normalité temporairement oubliée.

Elle se raccroche au bleu au-dessus d’elle et inspire… tant que tu respires, que tes poumons se gonflent et s’enivrent, que tu ne tousses pas et que les migraines restent invisibles et les allergies au loin, tant que les symptômes s’effacent, goût, odorat, alors tout va bien, je vais bien, on va tous s’en sortir, mentalement je rembobine, la dernière poignée de porte touchée, les boutons dans l’ascenseur, les lavages de mains et les désinfections au gel hydromachin, ai-je salué mon voisin d’assez loin… il faut décompter ses malades dont les noms s’empilent et encombrent son téléphone, valider le nombre de jours entre nous, la période d’incubation c’est combien déjà, la maladie dans la solitude, ça se gère comment?

Sur les réseaux il y a ceux qui s’affolent, ceux dont les memes prennent tout l’espace et ceux qui ne répondent plus, dont on ne sait s’ils restent pudiquement dans l’ombre ou si leur voix plus jamais ne s’élèveront. Son téléphone reste son dernier lien social, il la relie au monde comme un cordon ombilical oscillant entre réconfort et névrose, rompant la nuit, épuisant le jour, il faudrait le poser peut-être, retrouver l’instant et oser accepter l’attente.

Il faut gérer ses placards, « rationaliser les ressources » pour « optimiser ses sorties ». Entre courses virtuelles ou IRL l’obsession est la même, le risque de contamination par la boite de lentille devient une menace omniprésente, le contact avec l’autre est passé de convivial à dangereux, je reste loin de toi, tu restes loin de moi, la distance de toi vers moi, de moi vers toi, le risque qu’on s’entre-contamine, ne me croise pas et ne me touche pas.

Elle s’imprègne de bleu, par la fenêtre elle touche le vent. Paisiblement, elle ferme les yeux, s’apaise et respire.

Publicité
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Inspiration

22 février 2020

Elle oublie le temps, avant demain, restent la chaleur du cœur qui bat contre elle, les secondes immobiles, les draps froissés en enveloppements. Il garde son bras dans un creux ondulant, respire sa nuque dégagée.

Le présent est simple. De leur abandon elle puise ses forces.

Le soleil voyage derrière les arbres du jardin qui lancent leurs feuilles en marionnettes d’ombres sur le mur, face à la fenêtre.

Leur réveil est immobile, attentif. A lui, elle, aux signes de retour des enfants. Il la serre doucement, elle grave en elle cette plénitude, ils inspirent.

Il faut malgré tout se lever, se déplier en lente inspiration, retrouver la pesanteur du présent. Elle dompte ses lourdes boucles sombres, ses bras en ballerine gracieuse précise s’agitent alors qu’elle arpente silencieusement leur chambre à la recherche de ses vêtements. Il s’installe à la fenêtre et vagabonde.

Il prolonge l’instant, elle retarde le retour au quotidien.

Des rires s’élèvent dans leur vaste cage d’escalier, traverse de l’entrée au jardin, une course furieuse s’engage sur la pelouse : il fait si chaud, se joue la guerre de l’eau.

Un dernier regard, ses pupilles aimantées au siennes et il s’élance pour les rejoindre. Transformé en général, il ordonne la troupe de leurs enfants et voisins, les embuscades s’organisent, les alliances se forment, un calme trompeur s’installe.

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Compass

8 octobre 2019

I had sworn we never would, but here we are, back in the same space together, trapped. Together and apart, breathing in in spite of ourselves, tied to the same fate like cursed Siamese, pulling in and away. Here I am, here you are, saving face, reluctantly running and standing still.

As long as your work is unfinished, as long as pathos gets in the way, your steps are retracing themselves in a repetitive and inescapable circle.

All I can is to watch you, I stand at the center like the point of a compass, only instead of pointing the way I have become an anchor.

If I close my eyes I will still know where you are – not very far, not really close, getting uselessly breathless.

My words are not welcome, I am not doing anything other than waiting, and yet, I am tired.

There should be a way forward. For both of us. By steadying you, have lost myself. Where is my path, the one that led me here – where are my choices? The wind of time and doubts has erased my past and thus I know not which way to face in order to find myself again.

Yet there is no despair, only hope and the certainty of a better way. I watch you running to exhaustion, pulling forward and shielding away. Waiting for the spark, the trigger that will derail you from his useless quests. A spark that is not I. Once you can fly away, where will I be?

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Letter from the Other Beyond

30 janvier 2017

From Darkness I have woken, an imperceptible sight all my body could muster, a breath. Amidst time’s interstice for centuries I laid, crushed under World’s Worries and Burdens, falling far and deeper in my own self’s oblivion, greyness and dust, as I welded myself in rock, my body my tomb crushing light and tomorrows, my other self a Timekeeper forcing me into healing nothingness.

A million puzzle pieces, and who am I.

A million tears and eternal sorrow as the Circle of Things retraces its own steps, two walls guarding its path on each side.
Words burning the sky and engraving my soul – everything has happened before and will happen again – are we condemned? Our angels grieve with poignant compassion and our soil cries her children’s blood… each and every time Humanity’s Nevermores became Oncemores, each and every mistake an atrocity.

I feel so tired. Why should I ever resurface.

Yet from Darkness I have woken, an imperceptible sight all my body could muster, a second breath. My body so heavy, I don’t have the strength. My eyes won’t open, I don’t want to see, I don’t want to move nor do I want to be. I will myself to Nothing or else my heart will break a million times again, should I let Reality be, World, you are exhausting me.
History tells us all, if only we were listening, but we keep on our ways, Arrogant Youth never parting from the Circle, religiously reenacting the same scenario and retracing human errors again and again.
Quiet the Worrier, shut up Cassandre, this time it will be different. I know.
Alas, aren’t we so small and insignificant, shouldn’t we be humbled.

It hurts. To breathe and to be alive. To hope and to risk everything.

How terrifying let your gard down to love and believe in others. And yet, what if we were to belong in a herd of journeyers, our steps joining an adjacent path creating new possibilities. Once upon a time, what if we weren’t hopeless. We may be nothing alone, but together wouldn’t we be an army guided with Knowledge and Light?

I can’t lay still for much longer now, a decision must be made.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
Desmond Tutu

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I mean you no harm

19 juillet 2016

I mean you no harm

As I walk the path

As I find my way

 

I mean you no harm

As I look back

And see others

Breathe where I exhaled

 

I mean you no harm

As I try, as I stumble,

As I preserve my light.

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After the long morrow

16 novembre 2015

The days have gone by one by one, faded dawns replacing it’s preceding sisters, each morrow so long and sad, a tern succession of blurred obligations fulfilled in a dizzy automated stance, any excuse being good enough, fears chasing time, filling every hour with noise because in stillness were thoughts, the cold harsh reality of things that are.

Because the dark had gone and light was too violent, because I needed the protections of shadows, of compromise, because I wasn’t strong enough to face today, because there is always the promise of the day after tomorrow.

And so, here we are.
What I did not know of your games, I could guess.
I know all your changing stories, all your conflicting truths, the cold calculation of your smile paired with your eyes lacking warmth, the deliberate choices that brought us where we were, where we are. I have fought the winds of flux, the unease of wanting to avoid the inevitable, I so desperately wanted to think that something redeemable lies dormant in everyone.
Isn’t everything about waking up.

There is no sadness, no pity, I do not hurt. I will not miss you.
It took a while before the curtain lifted high enough, before the light around me had so grown that I could not remain blind any longer. Even then… I was in no hurry to confront the chess game I knew existed beneath my feet, the arena at the center of which you had made me piece of.

Why doesn’t matter. I knew.

Because I didn’t want to see for so long, I enabled the slow  and inevitable erosion of my will, because I let it go once, then twice and thrice, because I didn’t take a stand, I locked myself in a pattern.

There is nothing in what you did to me that I didn’t let you do.

Until I was in tomorrow and the day after, until things could be no more. Until I let you go.
I thought the fire had gone, too, I felt so cold, I thought I would need to climb mountains to find myself again… I had lost faith in the sparkle that will always dance in my heart, in the love that my kindreds will always give to me unconditionally. In the gardians that look over my shoulder and protect me in the strangest of ways.

I am loved and I have worth, I didn’t need to manipulate or walk on anyone to get where I am: I do not have anything to prove, my path is walked on my own terms and today, I get to decide where I want to go, and who I will go there with.

Good bye you, all of you, my dark shadows, my drains, you who held power over me and missused it knowingly, you who thought you could make me into something I’m not.

I am me, I am free, and I’m definitely enjoying the ride.

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I have switched to the other side: it’s peaceful there

11 mai 2015

In the land of remembrance, there’s a song whispering in my ear. In the forgotten memories, there’s light, love, loss, tears, there’s life.

There’s a taste of bitter, sweet… today I know all the answers to yesterday’s angst, today I know to let go of the past and to look forward to the best from the future, yet all the while knowing that the worst may still come.

Let it be. I will survive.

Today there are regrets of things undone, of things unlived, today I can say that I should have ran, I should have escaladed barriers and jumped over cliffs. I still can, it’s not too late. Today I can look forward to tomorrow.

Today I know that there’s a true meaning to clichés, they didn’t create themselves out of thin air in someone’s overflowing’s imagination, clichés have their reasons to be and yes, we only have one life, so, what are you going to do with yours ?

There’s no point in looking back except for strength, in order to find the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be changed, and the wisdom to know the one from the other. We need to climb our own mountains; we have to tear down our private walls, and we shall overcome if we believe in ourselves.

 

We truly and always have held all the answers within ourselves.

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Mute #JesuisCharlie

22 janvier 2015

je-suis-charlieEveryday’s routine, it goes on…

Time hasn’t stopped. Nothing’s changed and yet everything is different.

It’s the same winter cold hurting your hands and preventing the blood to flow, the same people tapping their feet in the bleak morning, waiting for the train to pull up, trying to wake up, trying to figure out reality from their dreams, the same clock telling you to get up, you sleep walk through the routine, you close your eyes under the water beating down your neck, your back, your face, you stand in front of your closet trying to figure out what to wear, cursing yourself for not planning ahead, yesterday you should have thought about tomorrow. You should have known. Someone should have known.

You’re not hungry. You never are before you leave but now your stomach hurts.

Nothing seems real anymore, everything hurts, even more than usual, if you wake up the numbness will stop and it can’t, how can you go on, how can you accept the routine, the minutes, the days, how can life go on… If you wake up you will start feeling and anger will rush in, with frustration and the deafening noise of things left unsaid.

Please tell me… how to look down in my child’s innocent eyes and explain.

Something happened.

You can’t wrap up your mind around it.

Somewhere in your head, there’s a young girl screaming that this isn’t right. If someone came into your home, if someone pushed the door and walked and spread terror, what then, how would you go on… You often get angry when your kids don’t lock the door, they feel so safe and confident, probably thanks to you, they are very curious and unafraid, you and your inner barriers admire that in them. Look, all these people dead Maman, look at those mad men, why Maman, can’t they take a joke? Poor them then. The adults are so intense and weird. It’s a pretty harsh way to disagree over a bad joke.

They bend their head solemnly; somehow they got it quicker than you.

This is what it feels like. This is what happened

Someone walked into your home and killed people you had never met, even though you knew all their names and faces, even thought you had read their work, laughed at some of their jokes and frowned over others. Some one walked over your soul and reminded you that nothing is forever, they showed you how hard it is to remain true to freedom, how much courage it takes to unabashly laugh in spite of or because of how absurd our world is.

You who won’t speak, you who knows so well how to love and embrace the present, today you can’t cry over what is nor over what will never be. You are mourning in silence, knowing things must change but not quite sure where to start.

They had so much joy and irony in them, still, they had so much to do, to draw, to speak of.

They have been robbed of a future and you feel like you have been robbed too, that something that wasn’t quite yours but that you felt you could claim as yours was ripped away.

Today’s routine is about whys an why nots, it’s about never knowing when you will be home, where exactly will people be so afraid that they will call in a bomb scare, the threat is unreal and only exists in themselves, to you everyone is a potential companion whether is be for 5 minutes or a lifetime, today is about trains going backwards and people trapped and scared, today is about walking endless hallways and finding a way home… and when you forget your phone, you are truly even more peacefully alone than usual.

Life will go on. People will heal, they will forget, blindness is so much more comfortable. There will only be a few, like you, waking up in the middle of the night to wonder and cry for the lost ones and the darkness in the ennemy’s souls, for, so you think, they must have endured hell on earth to hate so much that the only answer would be to walk into someone else’s home, cross the sacred threshold and shed blood. There is no redemption, there is no going back and you have no answer and so, in your own innocent loneliness, all you can do is walk the hallways in the cold and find your way home to hold your children.

And when you arrive, they will look at you and say:

– They are not lost, they are dicks.

And they will be right.

 

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Battement d’une larme au sein d’un coeur fêlé

18 décembre 2014

Il faut recommencer, réapprendre, les doigts qui se délient, les espoirs qui renaissent, le corps secoué par la mort et réveillé à nouveau vers la vie, réconcilié de sa souffrance quotidienne tandis que l’oxygène se fraye en force des étranglements quotidiens et explose les poumons, le cœur, les cernes, l’âme déployée en attente d’infini, il faut oser, croire, avancer, se libérer de ses propres barrières et donc oser croire, surtout, en soi, en l’impossible, en la force de la lumière sortant de l’ombre, en la possibilité d’un lendemain ; il faut fouette cocher, il faut serrer le mors et s’élancer, s’autoriser des pas en étourdissements et en étonnements d’être encore là, ici, le chemin existe toujours devant, le brouillard des jours, des mois et des années se perce enfin des rayons chauds d’un astre bienveillant et immense, alors que les larmes des disparus n’ont pas encore séché et que la terre fraîche reste à creuser ; il faut se souvenir gravement et tendrement des jours passés, des pas côtes à côtes le long de la rive, entourés de bleu et de vent humide – chérir ce qui fut et ne pourrait être – il faut croire qu’on peut oser s’élancer et s’autoriser un bonheur en peine des absents avec au cœur un feu brûlant de les avoir connus, cette sagesse solennelle caressée d’une brise en sourire léger de savoir que sans eux nous ne serions qu’une ombre, qu’ils nous ont révélé à la lumière, nous ont donné chair et résonance, nous ont positivement marqué au fer au point que chaque palpitation manque de défaillir en vertige de leur départ et que nos mains se rattrapent et nous raccrochent au présent sans parvenir à combler les manques…

Tournoie autour de nous la joie permanente dont ils ont imprégné nos êtres, même s’ils nous ont quittés et que leurs noms résonnent au dessus des vagues d’une mer constante et imprévisible : quel que soit leur nom, quel que soit leur âge, quel que soit le temps dont ils ont fait grâce à la terre, quel que soit l’apaisement ou la violence de leur arrachement, nos cœurs sont des rescapés, des survivants, agenouillés et en faille sur le sable salé, debout face à une falaise hurlante à invoquer le ciel, chaque respiration dépouillée de leur présence, de la certitude qu’il existe une cohérence, une raison, chaque apport d’oxygène nous rappelle à l’humilité face à l’Immense et nous enveloppe du sentiment béni d’avoir frôlé l’indicible et d‘avoir été aussi entièrement Aimé.

Il n’y a pas de mots, il n’y a pas d’explication, les mesures de la faille en nous n’a pas d’importance, nous avons été aimé, et cet amour ne saurait disparaître quelles que soient les circonstances.

Nous avons le droit de pleurer, d’être en colère et de ne vouloir tolérer les règles d’un jeu pipé à l’issue inéluctable – nous sommes dans l’arène particulière de notre propre Hunger Game, chaque seconde éloigne notre curseur du début pour le rapprocher de la fin et nous ne connaissons pas la distance à parcourir… et pourtant, et pourtant, nous continuons, nous vivons, nous aimons, chaque battement de cœur est souffrance et rappel, chaque regard ou sourire en célébration d’un instant arrêté, d’un chant éblouissant apaisant nos blessures, glissant le long de nos cicatrices pour soutenir les jours à venir car il faut recommencer, il faut s’élancer librement vers l’espoir de la vie, forts d’une armée de souvenirs bardés d’amour et de lumière, il faut oser vouloir tout, maintenant, avant que la marée ne remue le sable et n’efface tout.

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Sitting on a bench, looking at the sky

22 juin 2011
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It’s been such a long forth week… You sit on the bench, too tired to go on, your body resting on the cold green wood, you close your eyes long enough to relax and at last you breathe. You are lost where you should be, it’s taken so long – your whole life – that a few more minutes or days even won’t matter.

It is all right

Maybe you’re going to stay there for a little while, in this foreign silent street you never knew existed. Just for a little while, just long enough to look up at the sky and dream with the clouds. When you were little, you thought they were made with sugar and that living there would be so exciting. To look down on the world, to travel from North to South as carefree as the wind…

The sky today is beautiful; maybe you could lie down and truly look at it. T'is the middle of the day and the street is empty, no one would see you – a man as old as you looking up at nothing, how silly. It is achingly whole and refuses to choose between the deep blue partly hiding behind white growing clouds. Far from spreading darkness, they are infusing light throughout and it is an odd breathtaking sight. And yet you breathe and it is your heart that’s requiring repairs.

For years your heart bled for a train you never took, everyday for eleven months you didn’t take that train, over and over, and when you looked back you had regrets and realized this was worse than feeling remorse.

One day, who knows why, you did stop overthinking and followed your instincts, but it was too late. Her patience had worn thin, she was gone. There was no one waiting for you at the end of your journey. Perhaps she didn’t love you enough, you thought bitterly, but you knew you were wrong.

Since then, never again, you forgot to be afraid and you lived. You took risks and you won, you travelled from North to South as carefree as the wind, you never looked back and nevermore had regrets, and even forgot about remorse. Of course what you built lacked stability, how could you on thin air, and what was the point. There was an eventual wife, children, women on the side, some thriving business ventures you sold when you grew restless as you always do.

Until two weeks ago and an envelope in the mail.

It looked as all mail does, uninteresting, and yet after reading it you didn’t know whether to feel drowned or saved. You learned of this street you never knew existed, you learned of silent words that had never reached you. There is hope you think, decisions to be made. You have a few days before you, enough time to think, to take the time. You probably already have the answers – for when did you not?

You look at the sky again… The wind is changing.

At last you get up and you walk away: you will come back tomorrow.

Maybe.