Rooting

 

"Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life."

Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim (1900)

 

Nouvelles / News

Vous avez sûrement remarqué un déclin certain dans les publications ces derniers temps. La raison est à la fois simple et complexe : je mets la dernière patte à mon roman. Pas mon premier roman écrit, mais peut-être le premier roman publié. À grands coups de théières fumantes, je traque les espaces en trop, les virgules qui se sont fait la malle et autres redondances. Ensuite, je vais devoir m'attaquer à la structure de la première partie qui pose problème. Il y aura une énième relecture, peut-être une autre soumission à de fidèl(e)s lecteurs(trices) -  que je salue au passage. Ce n'est qu'après tout ceci que je pourrais enfin l'imprimer et l'envoyer aux diverses maisons d'éditions que j'ai pris soin de sélectionner. En parallèle, je travaille sur un recueil de poèmes et un autre de nouvelles (tout ces travaux sont en français).
Voilà pourquoi vous voudrez bien excuser l'absence de constance dans les posts...en espérant pouvoir vous annoncer une bonne nouvelle prochainement !
Prenez soin de vous et à très bientôt.

You must have noticed a certain decline in the recent publications. The reason is both simple and complex: I am finishing my novel. it is not the first novel I wrote, but perhaps it will be the first novel I'll publish. Propped by steaming pots of tea, I am on the hunt for double spaces, for on-the-loose commas and other redundancies. Then I will have to tackle the structure of the first part which is problematic. An umpteenth reading shall be done, perhaps another submission to trusted (proof)readers - whom I thank in passing. Only then shall I be in the capacity to print it out and send it to the publishers I have carefully selected. I am also working on a collection of poems and another of short stories (all of the above is in French).
This is why you'll have to be kind enough to excuse the absence of regularity in the posts...I hope I can announce something good in the near future!
Take care and see you very soon.

γνῶθι σεαυτόν

γνῶθι σεαυτόν (gnōthi seauton)


Nosce te ipsum


Connais-toi toi-même


Know thyself


Conócete a ti mismo


Conosci te stesso


Erkenne dich selbst


汝自身を知れ




I live by a handful of axioms, this is one of them. Back in the days, this aphorism was sometimes used to warn people who boasted unnecessarily and not to pay heed to the opinion of other people. It was written on the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, Greece, according to Pausanias, the great traveller. I take it now as a maieutic process (the giving birth concept developed by Socrates, without the irony) that enables me to walk further down the road. Socrates also 'said' (all of these via Plato): ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα. I don't know the translation in Roman alphabet, but it reads: "I know that I know nothing." The road is long and winding, and crossroads abound. Better be humble considering the task to be done. And learn, always. From your achievements as much as from your mistakes. From others, great and small.


I don't quite know why I am posting this, what triggered this sudden outburst. I am not giving any lesson, far from me the idea of giving lessons. I'd rather prefer saying that I'm giving my point of view.

Nietzsche-bis!

"One must pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while still alive."


Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900) 


Quoting Nietzsche twice in a month...Is it viral?

Words

Words are timeless. You should utter them or write them with a knowledge of their timelessness.


Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, artist (1883-1931)

Un p'tit site

Je sais que j'ai déjà fait la pub, mais parce qu'une piquouze de rappel fait toujours du bien et parce que le talent, et quand y'en a autant, ben on se doit de le diffuser à autant de monde que possible, voici le site de ma grande amie Chabada.

Elle dessine et peint plein de trucs bien, prend des commandes et vous fait du sur-mesure, de pied en cap et du sol au plafond. En plus, elle est gentille. Et pis, avec un peu de chance, on pourrait même finir notre projet d'album jeunesse (humhum)...même si c'est juste pour le fun !

Bon visionnage à tou(te)s !

Gabriel Cornelius Ritter von Max (1840-1915)

The Anatomist - Der Anatom (1869)

Gustav-Adolf Mossa (1883-1971)

Tout le monde ne le connaît pas. Et c'est bien dommage. Un jour, il y a peu, je suis tombé sur ce tableau.

Here's someone who isn't so famous. Shame. One day, not so long ago, I stumbled across this painting.

J'ai eu un choc. Voilà quelqu'un qui a compris quelque chose à la nature humaine. Pas étonnant, me diraient certains. Mossa était un peintre (d'origine Niçoise) inscrit dans la mouvance symboliste, mais très influencé par Baudelaire, Huysmans, les Préraphaélites, Mallarmé, l'Art Nouveau entre autres. Ses peintures et ses écrits sont imprégnés de ses lectures et de sa vision assez lucide de l'art de son époque.
Voici un lien qui regroupe un nombre certain de ses oeuvres picturales.

I had a shock. Here was someone who understood something about human nature. This isn't surprising, some may tell me. Mossa was a French Symbolist painter from Nice who was clearly influenced by Baudelaire, Huysmans, the Preraphaelites, Mallarmé and by the Art Nouveau, amongst others. His paintings and writings are steeped in his reading and his quite lucid vision of the art of his time.
Here is a link which gathers a fair number of his paintings.

J'espère vraiment que vous aimerez ce peintre aux oeuvres mésestimées.
I really hope you'll like this painter and his undervalued masterpieces.

Radiohead/OK COmputer - 04 Exit Music (For a Film)

Hyperkundrium

It all started when I first put on a woollen hat in the middle of Summer. Dunno why – I just felt like it. Middle of June, but I'm losing my marbles. Could've been May.

Then I started pulling all of my grey hair from my eyebrows – they were bush-like. They mightn't have been all grey and perhaps I did pull one hair too many.

People started glaring at me, me who never had a single glance from anyone before. From the murky cranny of ignorance to the glaring blaring lights of onstage sympathy.

One day I felt like cutting my hair, they were neanderthal-like. And seeing how the clipper literally ate through the blackish mass felt exhilarating I had to shave my head.

It also coincided with me starting losing weight. I had stopped junk food first thing when I read in a magazine that there was so many cancer-prone things in it, then food altogether. Because you never know and then it was all so bland. Fruits and veggies tasted like water, meat had the consistency of rubber. The only thing that had taste left was soy milk. Boy I love soy milk. I used to drink gallons of soy milk a day.

Then I guess I thought I felt I became photosensitive. I shunned the sun and the day altogether and started living at night. So I had to have an ex-colleague of mine buy the soy milk and deliver it to me. I think she got scared shitless when she discovered the bags under my eyes. Or perhaps it was my face, she didn't say and I didn't have the opportunity to ask. But man, there's nothing like the night to soothe you, to take your time to listen to your own heartbeats and try and slow them down to a trickle.

Come to think of it, all of this must have happened during the same week or the following weeks. I lost track of time. Anyway.

People never said anything and I never said anything but I think they must have thought I had a cancer or something because they did look at me with pity in their eyes. It was kind of fun so I played along, just for a bit. And Good Lord Almighty it WAS fun. At least I got the attention I always wanted. People are way nicer when they see you dying – and even more so when they realise it's not contagious.

Eventually I had to take to my bed because my life was shit-like, dealing with joint pains and diarrheas and constipation and fever and delirium and blood transfusions and because of all the meds I started taking and I weigh now less than 40kg and doctors say I have acute and never-diagnosed-before and spontaneous forms of pancreatic cancer, leukaemia, lupus and lymphoma and something else but I forgot, all stemming from something they called hyperkundrium or something like that. Tomorrow, at best, I'll be dead.