Les Travailleurs de la mer

Lazaret:Du latin lazarus, <>: lieu réservé dans les ports a la désinfection des marins de retour d'une région ou sévit une maladie contagieuse. Victor Hugo.

Strange Fruit

The shame of being human sometimes is overwhelming.

The hypocrisy of the word humane makes my stomach turn.

 Our savagery is sustained by a flag of rotten ideals.

 

But how to distinguish which ideals are rotten

Which ideals are beginning to rot

Which ideals will surely expire before we notice any smell emanating.

Which ideals will go from a fragrant fruit to rotten flesh...

Strange Fruit

Southern trees bear strange fruit,

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,

Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,

Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh!

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

 

(Strange Fruit is a Poem by Abel Meeropol and sang by Billie Holiday)

Scared to Dream

To die, to sleep...
To sleep—perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub!
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.

 

Sisyphe-Kafka

Ceux mêmes qui l'entourent [Arpenteur K.] ne peut imaginer un autre souci que celui qui le ronge. Ceux mêmes qui l'entourent s'éprennent de ce vide et ce douleur qui n'a pas de nom, comme si la souffrance revêtait ici un visage privilégie. Camus parlant de Kafka.

But perhaps there is a privilege to understand: to understand and not become fully lost to which is observed and experienced... : The great patrimony of  existentialism.

La Vie Dans les Plis

Souvent il arrive que je me jette en avant 

comme la mer sur la plage. Mais je ne sais encore que faire. 

Je me jette en avant, je reviens en arrière, 

 je me jette à nouveau en avant.  H. M.

We know what to do: our timidity takes control and we end up oppressed by the shore.

Egestatem et Potestatem

Does it really make a difference if we give out a hand without asking anything in return.?

It does not help, in fact is useless.

Poverty will always exist, misery will always be part of us and *we* not changing anything.

We do it anyway knowingly we are not changing anything at all.

Nothing.

Perhaps the reason we help those under the wrath of misfortune is because we do look for something in return.

We look to learn something about them and also about us.

We are helping to learn about us: to learn about pain and desperately control it.

Control it on us... control it on others.

By "helping" them, we hope to help us.

It is them who are helping us.

It is them who are lending a hand.

At least this is what i think when I extend my arm.

To Bleed

There is nothing to painting [writing],
All you do is sit down at a canvas [typewriter] and bleed.

Incurable disease.

C'est une de maladie incurable que je porte, qui s'appelle lucidité.
Parce que je ne vois aucune raison pour être optimiste dans le monde ou nous sommes.
Aucune raison. 

Dying in Paris

Being in a large city filled with people which seem to bubble from the ground like ants makes it easier to get lost.
Easier to die within.
Easier to kill the soul while the body still moves and breaths.

So is the case of a friend of mine.
He left this world a long time ago, and everytime I see him, I know he is no longer here.

His body is still here. He tries from time to time to acknowledge I am in front of him, but the effort to acknowledge others existence causes him extreme pain.

I know, but he likes me so he tries and usually falls to a chaotic and repetitive conversation loop.
You have to know him to realize he is repeating over and over and getting lost in his thoughts and tears.
Sometimes he can look at me  with his lost eyes and just start crying.
I do not think he looks at me, I just happened to be in the direction of his memories.
I am probably blocking them for an instant then they come rushing in inundating his eyes.

When I first met him, his body was still responding, he walked and even insisted in cooking for me from time to time...
 but as of lately even his body is giving signals of abandon.

Every time I look at him I wonder when his suffering will end.
I too suffer seeing him in so much pain.
It is to me a clear example of a  body separated from its  soul to never come back.
Just like ORLY from J. Brel.

The body stays alone after the soul has long left causing anguish and pain...

Yesterday he was found in the streets unable to move and talk and taken to some hospital.
It is april 10, 2011.  I am today in my 30's while he is in his 70's.

I can hear the bells  from the church at Saint-Germain-des-Prés singing, reminding me to stop writing, get up and look for him.

I will now call hospitals to find out where has him been taken. I hope to find him...

Perhaps his pain will soon will end. I care about him very much.  I would like him to find peace. This peace will not be found here, not in this earth, not in Paris, not in his frail body and certainly not in my company, although I have held his hand a few times in my attempt to give him comfort.
At the end my presence is useless  as there is nothing I can do except be filled with melancholy.

....•°°•.¸.•°°•.¸.•°°•.¸....

Et maintenant ils pleurent 
Je veux dire tous les deux 
Tout à l`heure c`était lui 
Lorsque je disais il 
Tout encastrés qu`ils sont 
Ils n`entendent plus rien 
Que les sanglots de l`autre 
Et puis infiniment 
Comme deux corps qui prient 
Infiniment lentement ces deux corps 
Se séparent et en se séparant 
Ces deux corps se déchirent 
Et je vous jure qu`ils crient 
Et puis ils se reprennent 
Redeviennent un seul 
Redeviennent le feu 
Et puis se redéchirent 
Se tiennent par les yeux 
Et puis en reculant 
Comme la mer se retire 
Ils consomment l`adieu 
Ils bavent quelques mots 
Agitent une vague main 
Et brusquement ils fuient 
Fuient sans se retourner Et puis il disparaît 
Bouffé par l`escalier  

la peste

C'est au moment du malheur qu'on s'habitue à la vérité, c'est-à-dire au silence.

...and....as brittle as silence...truth slowly falls apart.

Camille

"Ce n'est pas ma place au milieu de tout cela, il faut me retirer de ce milieu, après quatorze ans, aujourd'hui d'une vie pareille, je réclame la liberté à grands cris."


There are multiple ways of being "institutionnalisée" some people don't even realized it has happened (to them.)

Peut être que la liberté n'existe pas...nos cris sont assourdis par notre cécité.

Obsession

Joan of Arc is coming back for more

Une saison en enfer

La vie est la farce à mener par tous...

Suppôts et supplications

S'il est difficile de vivre, il devient de plus en plus impossible et inefficace de mourir.

Sustained Incoherence

"Thought runs you. Thought, however, gives false info that you are running it, that you are the one who controls thought. Whereas actually thought is the one which controls each one of us. Thought is creating divisions out of itself and then saying that they are there naturally. This is another major feature of thought: Thought doesn't know it is doing something and then it struggles against what it is doing. It doesn't want to know that it is doing it. And thought struggles against the results, trying to avoid those unpleasant results while keeping on with that way of thinking. D. B."

I got the spirit, but loose the feeling

Courage is for those who stay.

I am not so sure anything is worth it at the end except on our delusional minds

ou pour ceux qui sont née avec une cuillère d'or... pendant  l’été...