Gravity

I might look back too much but strangely I've found the view becomes clearer with distance. All these hours spent staring at my insides trying to make sense of them... I wish I could stretch out a hand to that faceless disembodied creature, caught in an insane contemplation, tell her it is ok not to understand and to be different, and that relief will come with age and much stumbling in the dark. There is no cure, only resilience. 

 

Epiphanie

Au loin la forme molle d'un arc-en-ciel s'étire

Au dessus d'un immense champ de colza

Qui pique les yeux comme du jus de citron

Le soleil déjà haut perché baisse des yeux

Toujours indifférents au meilleur comme au pire

Sur mon épaule nue et me répète encore

Le bonheur n'est pas loin, il était juste là.  

The Meaning of my Life

As I have grown older and wiser and tamer, my cynicism and objectivity seem to have kept the monster quiet. Maybe it is dead, starved from the various raw emotional and intellectual vomit I used to feed it every day. Have I grown numb? I now struggle to remember how I used to feel and think. Has it really happened to me (too)? All this time the old used to say, "when you're older, you'll see"... And I do. I do see things and they make more sense or the nonsense that they are simply rings true and final. No pondering. God doesn't exist and is an aberration in our evolutionary trajectory. We are not special, just animals with a more developed brain which gives us no advantage when the end comes. We will die like the ant, the whale or the robin. There is no meaning to our trajectory, and so the quest for meaning is vain and doomed. Accepting this makes for a more peaceful life, freed from the agonies of uncertainty and the heart-wrenching need to "do something about it". I am not special in the scale of the universe or even human history. I can only be special to a handful of mortals I'm sharing this curious state of existence with. And this should be my only comfort, my only desire, my only goal. Is this happiness? Renouncing. Accepting. Laying down the arms and rolling over submissively and contented.
How far I have come since the days where I couldn't live hard enough, bursting at the seams with the need to mean something, to transcend our condition, to understand it all. I felt alive in a passionately but highly destructive way. And now it feels like I've wasted precious years forever, lost in the refusal to surrender. A betrayal to what we could be, what I could feel I could be... But no one's done it. Many have skinned their knees and bled their heart and wasted their mind away. They still just died as the ant, the whale or the robin. They may have said beautiful things, but they hurt like the promise of some great meaning for our lives, which is never held. It was my religion. And growing older has made me kill that God too.

So now it's just little me, some others and the whole universe.

I Don't Forget

The past is not a weight to haul and struggle under
But a tidal wave lifting and pushing you on
Towards the light and warmth of the shores of the living
And a welcoming embrace when the time comes
To crawl back into the sea of the original sleep.

Remember Your Place

No time to stop and stare.

Life must carry on without worrying about the dead

For it is too transient and brief a state

After and before the infinity

Of non-existence.

We will join them soon

All the ones who are spent.

Death is not the aberration to ponder

But instead the inexplicable spark

Which occasionally runs through it

So brief so wild

There is no plot, no great design

No time to stop and despair

Just enough to be bright.

Feathers

A shiver

Of feathers

In the hollow of your hand

The remainder

Reminder

Of that small beautiful nonsense

A whisper

And flutter

Our so temporary existence.

Rien à faire

Il n'y a rien de beau
A trouver chez l'Hiver
Les tallus dépeuplés
La nature aplatie
De couleurs mélangées
Comme dans le goblet
D'un artiste douteux
Où tout est brun et gris
Et khaki et boueux

Je n'ai pas vu mon ombre
Depuis trop longtemps
Je n'ai pas vu de mouches
Même elles me manquent
J'oublie l'odeur du monde
Et la voix du soleil
Il n'y a rien de beau
Il n'y a rien à faire

Je ne peux rien trouver
A aimer chez l'Hiver.

Letter to Sophie

Oh I will be back but you will not know me
For I will have traveled in space and in time
Over boundaries so distant to our naive eyes
Who thought our place was defined forever
As the lucky ones who can waste and linger
I have moved over to the next generation
Now I can look back and truly remember
And looking ahead seems to rush fast towards me
No longer a vague and faraway dream
Oh I will be back and you will not know me
And so will I look back and not know you
For against our feelings we were not immune
For against our belief we now are old too.

Wintry Night

The night brushed my face with its cold humid wing
Heavy and slow, dragging itself over the world
Leaving there a tear the size of this year,
This age to live through till it turns into a wren
Again and floats away light and bright like a smile
Like the laughter of children running as fast as they can
Dropping colours and flowers from their wide open arms.

Moonlight Interlude

I went to talk to the moon

And the sun doesn't know

Because I needed to warm my wounds

And he'd left me so long ago

She never said a word to me

But her glow was like a fire

The grey loneliness of the days

The cold emptiness of the skies

Forgotten but for an hour

I went to sit down by the moon

And the sun doesn't know

But I needed a silent friend

To see my blood through my eyelids

To feel some light upon my face

To dream of an impending bloom

Remember you'll be back again

Just like the sun to warm my heart.

The Unbearable Loneliness of the Conscious Being

A shell never to be cracked

The treasure inside 

Never to be seen

Never to be touched

The eternal mystery 

I will remain.

And when the walls finally fall

I will be long gone

Blown back into the infinite anonymity of oblivion

A breath in the wind

A secret never revealed.

And all this time wasted

Staring

Pounding

Screaming

So alone under my skin.

So much

Wasted

Inside.

The mess I am

I found this picture amongst other old drawings I did when I was younger. This one was done in my art class when I was 12 or less I think. We had to draw something out of the outline of our own profile. The result very much reflects how I've felt most of my life...
I remember that day. I was very self conscious as a young teenager and having to do something out of my own body image was a terrible task. I was very much an applied and aesthetically-orientated artist at the time, doing mostly delicate, representative or idealised graphical work. What I did during the session was quite unlike my usual work. The result of this lesson didn't bring anything up to my Conscious at the time. It was a disappointing session as far as I was concerned.
It's only 20 years later that this suddenly strikes me with a very poignant and moving strength. This drawing is such an honest representation of what I was soon going to experience. So maybe it had started already?
I feel so sad for this little girl, whose mind melts in a gory mess, so empty and hollow inside. An omen of what was to come. A snapshot of lucidity.

Enfance

Donne-moi la main

Sautons à reculons

Jusqu'au fossé

De notre mémoire.

Dans ces jours dorés

A regarder le soleil

Derrière les rideaux

A manger des tartines

Les yeux pleins du cadeau

Tout ce temps devant nous

Notre peau un peu trop grande

A remplir peu à peu

Des bosses que donne l'âge

Mais tout cela si loin

Maintenant juste rire

Penser au père Noël

Ecouter des chansons

Et dépenser nos vies

De la meilleure des manières

Heureux et insouciants.

Nous Etions Là (pour le projet "I Was Here")

Assise sur le rebord de la table
J’écouterai les moineaux et la touterelle

L’absence comme un diaporama
Le passé étalé comme du beurre sur une tartine

A relire comme ses paumes erraflées
A remonter de l’eau comme un poisson qui mord

Un sourire, un frisson,
L’empreinte chaude d’une vieille main dans la nôtre

Attends encore un peu
Cela revient

Les jours se mêleront dans une grande embrassade
Et la lumière viendra cueillir le silence sur les meubles

Et je vous reverrai dans chacun de ces objets
Qui racontent les gestes, le mouvement des vivants

Je reverrai vos coeurs dans chacun de ces objets
Qui racontent les goûts insensés des vivants

Je parlerai de vous avec chaque photo
Vous tirerai de la sourde ouatte de l’oubli

Je répèterai vos noms
Debout là comme une preuve

Que vous étiez
Que nous étions tous là.

The art of being alive

The art of being alive

The fear of the blank page

To be started in screams and tears

The chaotic fight of becoming one.

Understanding what it is to be human

And accept the curse of knowledge.

Remain humble amongst the creatures of this pageant.

Push our rock uphill

Over and over again.

Looking for the elusive other

Understanding what it is to be human

And accept the incurable loneliness

Hang on to a stranger's hand

To share the load uphill

Over and over again.

It's really just a work of labour,

Tears, fear and a lot of love

The art of being alive

The art of being human.

Fog

A godly sight
As I look down
Cold witness of a ghostly world
Caught in the mouth of the monster
The nothingness before
The nothingness after

A pale absence covering all things
Canceling contours and erasing hills
Taking away all substance
From this world clinging on
To its transient reality.
A floating wisp resisting the annihilation
Just like a fading memory.

Universe

The whole of the sky
Is looking at you
The ancient oceans
Keep rolling their waves
Upon silent shores
Of star-born pebbles
And of consumed bones.

The echo of the hills
Stretching up and lying down
On the horizon line
The soil and dust and sand
The water and the wind
The stillness of the ages
Through the dance of the tides
The ocean machine
The heartbeat of a God.
 

The mad waltz of the Moon
Around our little rock
Our little home spinning
Shaking and tipping us at times
Into the darkness and the frost
Of an unknown infinity
Another trip around the Sun
Mere unrecordable
Celestial brevity.
   
All this going on around you
Your little dramas and sorrows
And to the day you join it all
Again
Your puny spark of selfishness
And desperate individuality
Finally blown away

So you can humbly return
To be a part of
The universe.

Hold Me

Hold me.
Like some driftwood after the wreck
Like a parachute
A candle in darkness.

Hold me.
Like a balloon on your birthday
Like a promise to a child
A promise to the dead.

Hold me.
Close enough for our hearts to touch

And hum and sing to the same song
And silence our enemies Time and Space...

Hold on.

 

Please just hold on to love.

Insects

Weigh your worth before the eternal beauty of the Universe
Bow and kneel and beg to let you exist a little longer
Insignificant speck of stardust, barely a breath
In the scale of Time and Space and other things bigger
Than our puny little minds and desperate little gestures.

Horizon

Some bones are better left quiet
Untouched by noisy memories
Unshaken by our pining life
Just to be forgotten

Because soon we'll be dust clouds
Undressed of our skin and scars
And heavy brain and leaking heart
Ashes somewhere unseen

In silence
Joining the layers
Making up the line
Of the horizon.