“Staggering State” & Observation Amusée du Chaos

Amused Observation of Chaos is an attitude, sometimes the only one you can use. It appears when :

• You realize you have no more way to fix anything. Or you don’t want to.
• You probably warned who is in charge, who did not believe you. Whatever.
• The staggering state needs you to take back control, and you have NO control on the situation, so you begin to smile (well, you can cry, but WTF).
• It works for a short moment. Chaos and confusion are exhausting. Go away and nap.

 

Bonne journée ! Thanks for reading!

 

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3 Novels about Waiting for the Enemy

Dino Buzzati The Tartar Steppe (Italy 1940)

Julien Gracq The Opposing Shore (France 1951)

Ernst Jünger On the Marble Cliffs (Germany 1939)

I won’t do it here in my little blog, but if you dare, it’s a great thing to study. Each novel shows people (in a fortress for the two first), waiting for an enemy, and invisible and frightening danger. Each novel is great! This is a triple door to many questions :

• What does the author want to say? Is it about life (we fear things, we wait for something)?, politics (Jünger about the nazis?)? You just read and find your interpretation. And it’s maybe not what you think!
• What can we do against a rising peril? Flee? Resist? Wait? Be impassible? What else?
• What if this danger was not real, invented (by who? You? Someone else? What for?)? Maybe that “attack” will never occur? Maybe it will happen JUST because you triggered it with your army? What about “You get what you expect”?
• Where and why should you invent an enemy? To regroup? To get stronger? To keep yourself busy?

Have fun! Thanks for reading!

 

 

Unconditional Friendship

“Unconditional love” is a beautiful romantic story, and the idea of marriage will fascinate me forever. I am casual for so many things… I do think that some commitments need some solemnity, though.

There’s unconditional love in other places : a mother and a child, for example.

In this little text I imagine an unconditional friendship. In a life, it’s possible to meet a person so important, as a friend, that you could imagine something like a high range commitment, a bond, something so strong that it gives each other a strength – yes, it’s like a spouse who you know is here standing next to you, whatever happens.

Your believes differ? You take a big decision? You fight around ideas? Good! You can fix everything, and you will, because you know that you both dance with this strong and respectful “engagement” – you just invent it everyday, with absolute freedom, and no cage ever, inner or real.

Thanks for reading!

Obedient “to the finger and the eye” is the French “beck and call”

“Obéir au doigt et à l’œil” (“to obey the finger and the eye”) is the French way to say that you’re at somebody’s beck and call.

I found out that it comes from “beckon call”, which makes sense, right? By the way, I learned a word : Beckon – “gesture to come”. 

How do you say that in your language? In common use, what’s the radioactivity of “beckon”? Is it neutral like “to call over”? Or does in imply a little slice of servitude? What are the differences between to yield, to comply, to obey, to submit?

What are the dials and levers here? If you’re at somebody’s beck and call, what does it show? Is it about fear? Power? Is it about persons, or systems, companies?

What about the beckoning person? How come this person expects you to act this way? Has he enough power to get you back in “the right track”? Or does he have to understand that “people are not all obedient”? What a shock!

What happens, in a situation where you’re supposed to comply and you don’t? Failure to comply, disobedience, rebelliousness? Why would you? A frontier has been crossed? Did you change? Did you grow up? Has the whole system changed? Did you change your mind? Why?

In what territory to study this? Kingdom? Management? Spouses? Clients/employees? Politics? Parenting? What are the limits of beck and calling?

 

Overthinking Ways

The memory is cursed with what hasn’t happened, says Marguerite Duras, and that’s a good example of overthinking. In fact, it’s the seed of a whole tree!

What are ways of overthinking? What are the subjects? The past (what it’s been, what it could have been). The future(s). About what you did or will do (or say). And I’ll stop it here : you perfectly know your ways of overthinking!

What are the ways OUT of this curse (which it is, right?). Most books show these paths :

1. Mindfulness
2. Dare and do something

Voilà! You just saved a bunch of money! Put these books back in the shelves!

1 Mindfulness is a way to focus on the now (let the past sleep/just enable the future) – well, you can try!

2 Acting-Doing has many good effects, from “keeping you busy” to “stop thinking a bit”, by way of “changing what I can”… instead of thinking about it.

Tool :

Of course you can use another path, which could be “smart overthinking”, taking a wheel (if you find it) to drive it somewhere else, to tame it, to use it, to link it with others – or with books (which is the same), to divide it up like a sheaf, to make it a dance, to fight it, to… What about you?

You go girl! Merci et bonne route! Thanks for reading.

 

 

Seeking Approval as a source of energy?

Just google “seeking approval” to discover what you already know : this is baaad, and shame on you!

To be a normal adult shouldn’t be about doing things “just to get approved”, right? Nevertheless, some of us… do what they can.

Many Internet activities use this seek of approval motivation we all have in us, from the Facebook “likes” to the number-of-followers you are happy to have on Instagram, or on your blog.

OK, this is bad and childish and narcissistic, but it’s also incurable, deal with it! Therefore what can you do? Use it, and try to keep a little dignity. Keep your seekness invisible, or you’ll look like a duck-face “love my selfie” chick…

Seeking approval can be a source of motivation. If you work well partly because of this need, good for you! Be guilty, but not too much. Voilà!

But…

What’s the best : a bunch of thoughtless empty “likes” from unknown people, or one smartcunning criticism from an intelligent person you love? 

Thanks for reading! Follow my blog 🙂

Instagram : noamfrost

 

 

 

In French, we add “ette” to a word, to say it’s small and cute…

Imagine a little bedroom would be called “bedroomette“, and a little hotel soap would be a “soapette“. A little suitcase would sound “suitcasette“. Would be cute, right?

This is what we do in France. A little soap (savon) is a savonnette, and fleurette is a little flower (fleur).

Of course, you can imagine that other words with a final “ette” sounds cute and small… with no need of a “non-ette” word. For example a dînette – small dishes for kids, and a buvette is a small place (along a beach or on a place) where you can have a drink.

We can also add “ette” to words, just to make them sound “so cute” and tiny for fun. Some cats are named Tigrette (little Tiger, of course).

French can use an English word to make another one : we often say “kitchenette” for… guess for what.

We alse can double the concept. A beard (une barbe) can become barbiche (small beard) and then une barbichette (tiny beard). Imagine a beardichette? Oui!

But… you have this in English too : a wavelet is a little wave, right?

Awwweeee!

Bonne journée ! Have a nice week end!

Something is lacking

It’s just a little dial. Something is lacking. And then you ask questions just to pull out things :

• Where? In your life? In a recipe? In the way you do something? In your job?
• How much is lacking? From complete change to “just a little thing”…
• How did you realize? Comparison? Thinking? Someone told you?
• What can you do? A movement (what kind?)? An inner change? Adding something?

But there are many “shades” of that.

1. Something is lacking : just add it, and problem solved!
2. Something is lacking, you know it, but you don’t know what it is lacking. You have to search, to explore and compare.
3. You have the feeling that something is lacking, but no clue about the nature of it and even if it’s true! It’s called incompleteness.

So what? I don’t know! You maybe just have to let it go!

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : danurben

 

 

#lille #france

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About ze #French accent

OK I’m French, and my English is complètement full of erreurs.

It’s not that I don’t give a frog’s fat ass (an elegant idiom I learned about yesterday) : when I began this blog, I asked a friend to fix my mistakes, and she said that she could almost HEAR mon accent Français in the text!

But yesterday I had un choc. I watched un documentaire HBO about Vogue (ze magazine). One of the French fashion lady was from France…

I’m pretty sûr that she lives in America since years, but she visiblement had pleasure to “spik like ZAT”, like with a level 7 French casualness.

However, it’s really not hard to say “a dress” instead of “a drrress”, like we “R” the “Rs” in Frrrance, as you know. No effort here…

Yes it’s like… charming, right? Yet I wonder : what should I do if I one day come to the USA? Do I try to speak like American people, or do I lower my tonguework to casually stay “morrre French”?

Thanks for reading! Bonne journée !

 

An American Z Traveling Fantasy

I’m French, and I’d like to visit the USA – noooo not the Route 66, come on : everybody goes there, thus I don’t and won’t.

Then I had the idea to cross is from San Francisco to New York : Interstate 80, but a friend of mine told me that I will miss the South (oh Faulkner) so much that it would be stupid.

So I’d like to make a Z.

1 From New York to Houston, Richmond, Atlanta and Nouvelle-Orléans.

2 From Houston Texas to North, crossing this “pile” of States : Oklahoma Kansas then, well, Iowa & Minnesota.

3 North Dakota to Salt Lake City and San Francisco

Maybe I’d like to add a SLC to Seattle then South to Frisco?…

What do you think?

 

Instagram : viaurelia

 

 

Giberrishing management and other relationships

Erving Goffman explored it a long time ago in books like The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. I copy paste wikipedia :

Goffman believes that all participants in social interactions are engaged in certain practices to avoid being embarrassed or embarrassing others. This led to Goffman’s dramaturgical analysis. Goffman saw a connection between the kinds of acts that people put on in their daily life and theatrical performances.

So : life in society is a theater.

In relationships, there’s often a gap between an ideal and… reality. It can lead to drama, or to theater : wear a mask. Acting like you are supposed to do.

In management, it’s the same! One day you realize that your manager is managing as if he was believing his sh*t. And if YOU are the manager, well…

Where else?

Everything is fine, right?

Dials :

So what? It can be useful, to be “in peace”!

Where is our theater? What happens when masks fall, and why? Anger? Steam? Change?

Why and how can we become ourselves suddenly, and what would be the consequences?

 

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : myivoryroot

The “So What” Disillusion

Well that’s a fact that we all partly grow up with disillusion. What you chose is NOT that easy, nor simple, etc.

When you see younger people taking the path of “This will be perfect for me, easy and simple”, you sometime want to poke them, but you don’t, because, obviously, they have to experiment it.

The “So What” disillusion, as you can guess, is when you succeed to live your dream (to publish your book, to make your first movie, to work for “this” company, to find a lover, to get this job), and you realize that you absolutely f*cking don’t care.

Dial : How is it possible to be so lured by ourselves? 

So what?
Probably let go. Your brain will also find another rabbit to chase, right?

Instagram : aykutmaykut

“Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.” Alejandro Jodorowsky

“Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky

Instagram : josephtenni_

 

When to NOT pay attention is an Art for decision making

Alain, a French philosopher, says that to pay attention is an noble art, and that to NOT pay attention is a royal art. What does that mean?

All our senses swallow the world around us, continuously. We are besieged! We try to make decisions with an army of thoughts. But the man who slept, says Alain, awakes as a new man, and is ready to decide in a second.

Daniel Kahneman asks himself in his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” : How works intuition? What is fast or slow when we have to decide something? Do we have to be rational all the time?

Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote a few books which can enrich that research. Again it’s about decision making. What is luck, and how to use it? How to adapt? What is the “illusion of control”? What if you decide things in half a second, and how could it be the best choice?

This article is just a way of adding a few bricks to this pattern, this “dial” I exposed in this blog : the dance or weaving with opposite forces, the need to consider what could seem illogical (even the “if you hesitate between two things, choose both”), the oblique way of decision making, to use the propensity of things, or to be a more complete person when you use your both sides. Even casually, yes.

The champion golf player, does he analyse and measure things like a computer, or does he simply become empty, ready, and hit? Where is the Royal Art of suddenly not paying attention?

Thanks for reading!

 

#wittgenstein

«the solution of the problem you see in life is a way of living which makes what is problematic disappear»

“La solution du problème que tu vois dans la vie, c’est une manière de vivre qui fasse disparaître le problème”

Wittgenstein

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French Flag?

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Fruitful Constraints & Creativity

It’s an old tool many artists know : many constraints are fruitful. Mainly because a constraint is a problem calling for a solution, therefore you have to move, to be creative.

All jobs and activities have constraints : budget, environment, other people, time, space, your skills, your tools.

If it’s too loose, though, you feel a freedom, which can be messy. You can not catch anything. Stuck. You maybe need to tight something up, to find “your” freedom within a new frame.

Brian Eno invented the Oblique Strategies (mainly for musicians) as a card game. You pick a card and you have to obey (sometimes it’s terrible!). Some directors are well known to tell the actors to follow precisely something (the dialogs, or the places they have to move on the set, etc) before shooting. Some digital artists sometimes go out in a park with a pencil and a notebook. A photographer can go outside with the limit of 20 pictures taken, not much. And G. Perec wrote an entire book without the letter “e”.

Constraints are fruitful. You probably have many disposable levers for these. A poet can obey : write something in alexandrine; without any letter “p”, in less than 5 minutes. You may have to present a project in ONE minute only, and… with no words. What are your levers?

You can pull a lever to Zero, it’s the Total Constraint. For example, you’re a photographer and you go out without any camera. Just your eye. You’ll feel the need, you’ll feel your brain simmering. As you can only watch and… think, you’ll maybe have bursts of ideas (instead of taking pictures).

Of course it’s an example of “Amor Fati”, being content with what happens to you, even if it seems bad. Embracing fate : every constraint, if you can’t avoid it, should (and will have to) be danced with.

Thanks for reading!

Instagram : f_pilvi

#Geek #Marketing : Cattle Displacement

Marketing, it is what it is.

But Geek Marketing is like more terrible to watch (why?). You see human beings “happy to buy” this “mainstream but no-mainstream” shit, from Funko Pop to Walking Dead comics (162 issues today), from Goth subculture clothes & things from the Star (Wars or Trek?). Eeeeeekkkk!

They never finish to gather to… say they’re different. Well, they’re moved : cattle displacement. Buy buy buy.

Tool : Obey : buy this Jack Skellington Pop, this Hello Kitty purse, and this 700$ Falcon Millenium Lego. Obey (all these things are very cool).

Or not!

Have a nice day!

Instagram : natgeo

 

The Splendid Paradox of #Divorce

I never married, and I will never understand the idea of divorce, it’s like a loop in my head. Why would you ever consider to divorce… since you are married??! Isn’t marriage a commitment? Then, well, it’s exactly it : when you meet a problem, some difficulties, betrayal, whatever, you’re supposed to work on it, right? Because, well, you’re MARRIED! So yes, I realize that I’m much more solemn than I should be. Or not : I never married, after all. Voilà!

Tool : what is a commitment? As it IS a commitment, what can it bring to you? What if you feel prisoner, in a cage? What if a commitment was REALLY a commitment, which means that you can’t even have the possibility to consider there’s a way to change or cut it? Can this happen in friendship, like the “Best Friends Forever” you hear in teens’ mouths? What if it was a real commitment?

Instagram : ___bodylanguage___