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Month: June 2017
#wheat

Unsteadiness, Propositions & Expectations : Life!
I’ve known someone who expected people around her to be :
- Steady
- Without any pressure
- Without expectations
It was really like an Instruction Manual!
I explain her… expectations :
- If you say you’ll doing something, you HAVE to do it. Steady. You have no right to change your mind, or to adapt to events, desires or possibilities. STEADY like a sh*t in the fridge.
- It is forbidden to ask. Propositions are considered nasty. Because it’s “pressure“.
- Don’t have any expectations (which are “pressure”, of course). You own brain is considered useless, or boring, and therefore will not be considered.
So I’ve have been a complete mess next to this person! Because :
- I’m not steady and I will never be. I make mistakes, I change my mind, I meet other people with desires. Things happen. Reality is complex and moving. I adapt. I am not steady.
- I have a brain and I use it, so I love propositions! If I feel close to someone, I feel free to tell what I think. I expect a dialog, and a person able to say “no”, but also “yes”.
- I – of course – have plenty of expectations, because I’m alive. I am not a king, but there’s no queen around either. Equality is interesting. In certain situations, I expect something, yes. I don’t understand why I shouldn’t, too!
A few dials :
- In fact, I don’t even know what pressure is… Human beings I’m in relation with, have questions, propositions, ideas. I dance with them. Or not.
- The idea of pressure means you COULD be pressured. Which is absurd, between adults. Unless you feel weak, nobody should be able to pressure you (exception : your manager, and the law).
- If you’re used to obedience, any living human interaction will harm you.
What, or who is really like this? :
- Steady
- Without any pressure
- Without expectations
A zombie, a robot, a valet, or a dog. With communication skills, but in a certain way only : obedience (and understanding what you’re asked). There’s an instruction manual, right? Just follow. Be strong. Or run.
Thanks for reading!
#chardonnay #wine

#blackandwhite #photography

My Secret for Abandonment Syndrome
Abandonment issues are so common that I wonder why it’s not studied at school !
Well, you know it by heart : “I constantly feel frightened that people I love will leave me”.
And well… they do!
Lovers or friends, they leave you. Their choice!
That’s life, but you’re destroyed, angry, and in panic. At some point, it’s almost ridiculous, right?
Lise Bourbeau wrote a book about this wound and other wounds from childhood. She says that abandonnic people (“les abandonniques”, this is the way we call this tribe in France) protect themselves with any kind of dependency (addictions, difficulties to be alone, need of approval, etc).
You already know what is abandonment (or else Google will help you). What I want to share today is a secret a good friend of mine (she’s 60) told me one day.
She said to me that after each break-up she was so dying sick that she decided one day to see a therapist.
After a year she said to him that she was OK. He smiled and answered “No you’re not!”.
She needed three more years to get it, to understand the secret in the deepest of her mind. She said to me something like :
“Abandonment is a scar, a wound so deep that you never heal, you will never heal, ever. So… when I’m into the turmoil of a break-up, I just watch how the pain invades me, how it burns inside my chest. I recognize it. I say “Hello, pain! Do your stuff, I know you”. It burns you, just feel it. There’s nothing you can do, little man, nothing”.
Four years therapy to understand this. This is Ninja!
Bonne journée !
Fuir -> To Flee/To Leak – a #Deleuze word game
Fuir is a French verb, well, TWO French verbs, which are homonyms :
- Fuir : To flee
- Fuir : To leak
Therefore, it’s the same for “la fuite”, two homonyms :
- Fuite : a flight, an escape
- Fuite : a leak
So I suppose you understand it’s a bit “weaved” in our French brain. And if I ask “Fuite” in http://www.wordreference.com/, I find interesting things to prove it :
- Fuite de capitaux : Capital flight (a leak, a flee)
- Fuite des cerveaux : Brain drain (idem)
- Ligne de fuite : Convergence line (in French, so, more like “a lign of flight”)
Gilles Deleuze is a playful philosopher. He likes to play with concepts to make tools.
He notices that to flee is NOT to renounce, or to give up, it’s a real action. To fly away is going on a line which stays like a symbol. It’s fuir (to flee) but also faire fuir (to “make a leak”). To run away is sometimes like to puncture the place you leave. You leave a hole, maybe… Therefore, a leak…
Fuir/Fuir : Flee/Leak.
Yeah I know, it’s a game of words, but it can give birth to ideas, right?
I like this idea too : to run away is to draw a line. Where you ran away, you have to do something else, the place you “leaved” (OK, left) does something else too. Flee as a disturbance. Each of them draws new lines, more lines. It’s like inventing new maps. To flee is quitting a territory A to go to another territory (B). Is it a “go back”? A flee & discovery? If there’s a leak on B, what is its nature? What happens, then? Can the runaway bird be replaced? By what? If you fly away, are you forced by something, pushed away, is it a choice?
More Territories games : you can see here.
Have a good day!
#Gifted Adults are not always “gifted”, they just operate differently
The problem with words : they put labels on you. If you’ve been “gifted” in your childhood, you’re pretty sure that you’re “gifted”. But are you really? Where and how?
There are plenty of colors, nuances, gradations, in many directions, in your gifted personality.
No you don’t find “two types of humans : the gifted and the non gifted”, right? It NOT only a IQ thing…
Take the whole brain engine, get closer, watch it. Gifted people can be :
- Funnier or darker.
- Faster or slower-deeper.
- More sophisticated or simply shining.
- Craving conversations with other gifted, or isolated.
- Big picture or mini-details seekers.
- Learn differently, exploring or thinking.
- Artistic or not at all.
- Intense or lost.
- Introvert or the contrary.
- Independent or leaders.
- Controlling or easy.
- Lazy or big workaholics.
- Anxious or happy.
- Successful or in living in ideas and patterns.
- Organized or messy-messy.
- Etc. Etc.
Almost each of these lines could become an article !
I like to think that gifted adults can be “more intelligent”, but it’s not necessary. They are all different! They… operate differently, that’s for sure. And they evolve, too.
It can really be a problem in society, sometimes. I remember this example in a company, given in a French book written by B. Millêtre (“Petit guide à l’usage des gens intelligents qui ne se trouvent pas très doués” – “Little guide for intelligent people who find they’re not that skilled”).
A big meeting : a new big project is exposed. 95% of the audience who consider things in terms of causes and consequences – “If this, then that” – will nod (or they are angry if it’s more work for them, haha). But there’s always one or two guys who will raise a hand because they immediately detected the flaws in the new organization. They see patterns, structures, they can almost “feel” the forces in play : the Big Picture. And of course, they will be taken for a pain in the neck.
Gifted is not necessarily socially gifted, right?
Have a nice day!
JP
Instagram : ___bodylanguage___
The Giving up & Parking Life Temptation
When you hear break-up stories and broken hearts from teens and young people, you smile, right? We’ve all been there, and we all know it’s time for grief, and then one day the sun rises again, and a marvelous man/woman enters the room, and here we go again!
Smile. Moving forward. Find your silver lining. Plenty of fishes in the sea, right?
Comes an age when you begin to smile less. You got a cancer, or your husband died stupidly in a car accident, or the woman you wanted to marry chose an Egyptian flea circus trainer – not you!
You’ve been through shit-hits-the-fan tempests before, you know that another dawn will come. Well, you hope it will. Or you don’t know any more…
Giving up is a possibility, and I see so many sixty years old (mainly women, OK) who decided to park their love life that I’m questioning myself. Why not, after all?
Many people will say you’re complaisant – they think of you like you were a teenager, happy clap-your-hands two days after a boyfriend text-break-up. You consider to not even answer : when this happens to you at mid-life, it hurts much, much more. Your capacity of comprehension is much bigger, and this is exactly why you lost your smile : Big Shit happened, your vessel has stopped, all sails tornripped. Your game is on the ground like a dirty puzzle. You’re fucking wounded!
Parking your life is a way to heal, you’re right. Just this : you have to know that you will maybeventually stay there. Healed, but full of ugly scars. Haunted by a hand in your hair…
Have a nice day!
Stéphanie Riquois, #photographer
Consider all the shades of reactions you have in front of Instagram pictures. From boredom to enthusiasm.
- If you see a good pict you are tempted to explore a little of the photographer’s work.
- From time to time you hesitate to follow.
- Then you see two bad photos and goodbye.
- Or the talent seems to insist. OK you follow.
- More rare : you activate the “Tell me when there’s a new pic” process…
- It’s where is Stéphanie : every picture is… well, she has it, right? The eye.
https://www.instagram.com/studioriquois/
Here are 15 pictures I chose (from more than 800). It was a mess, because, well, they are all great!
Use a baaad feeling as gasoline to write?
GRRRRRrrr !
Use anger to write? It’s an advice I got from a good friend, one day. Why not?
Let’s think about it…
Find a subject which makes you angry. Politics? An artist you dislike? An enemy? Oh, better : a bad moment of the past. And then you go girl!
Use bitterness to write? Use problems to write? Sorrow? Jealousy? Hopelessness? Disappointment? Frustration? Why not?
William Boyd (or maybe it’s David Lodge, I can’t remember) answers NO. He says one doesn’t need to be in despair, drunk or bored to write a novel. He says he strongly needs calm, coffee and his slippers, in a warm home, to write. Well… Good to him, right?
We all know that we write to be loved, it’s the undercurrent. Then, you have the things we say (see this article about bloggers motivations) : “I write” – to share, to explain, to express myself, to make money, to meet people…
Many of us write to stay busy, to stand up, to do something else than overthinking. Our brain needs a bone to gnaw on, oui? Therefore I consider OK to use bad feelings to write.
The reader will know, probably. He’ll read the unsaid. He’ll feel your tone. He’ll try to guess what happened “in broad strokes”. Let’s hope he’ll smile. “Hey, he’s been offended or what?”, or “Woah, this person has been betrayed!”.
The reader… he’ll forgive you.
Ok, you go.
Thanks for reading!
“To be sovereign is to choose what will you be overwhelmed with”
“Etre souverain, c’est choisir par quoi on se laisse submerger”
“To be sovereign is to choose what will you be overwhelmed with”
(This is lovely – but bloody hard to translated!)
Sloterdijk is a German philosopher. I’m not a scholar and I don’t understand his work, but I’m awere he is interesting. For example on his Wikipedia I find this :
“Sloterdijk rejects the existence of dualisms—body and soul, subject and object, culture and nature, etc.—since their interactions, “spaces of coexistence”, and common technological advancement create hybrid realities (…) and seek to integrate different components that have been, in his opinion, erroneously considered detached from each other.”
Which is delightful, right?
So when I see his name somewhere, my eyebrow climbs a bit.
Today I found “To be sovereign is to choose what will you be overwhelmed with”, which has the power to plunge me in this bliss made of questions, tools, paradoxes, and a urge desire to talk about this subject with any Kansas girl available.
Here are branches (this is a mind-mapping game without any needs of drawing, you follow me?) :
- To be sovereign means a lot. It’s to be strong, smart, autonomous : a King.
- It’s about a choice. You decide what will overwhelm you. You decide where and how and by what you will lose control.
- There’s a paradox in wanting to be sovereign AND to be overwhelmed.
- There is, therefore, probably a need to the unknown, to a force which you can’t control.
Olathe means “Beautiful” – My Ouisconsin Toponymy Bliss
France is smaller than Texas alone, but like everywhere, it’s divided into regions, with different cultures, crowded (Paris region) or not (l’Auvergne), near the sea (Bretagne) or near Germany (l’Alsace).
Some regions have city names with the same suffix. Next to Lille (North of France), we have many towns finishing by “in” : Carvin, Camphin, Phalempin, Wavrin…
In Normandy you find many “ville” : Dauville, Trouville…
In Brittany : Bannalec, Carnac, Le Drennec, Glénac, Iffendic…
You know that I’m a little obsessed with America, and I often wander on the USA map, trying to find the origins of the cities. Indian native, or English, French, Spanish? I check on Wikipedia…
For example, there’s a List_of_Swedish_place_names_in_the_United_States
More interesting : List_of_non-US_cities_with_a_US_namesake, where I find a Chantilly, Missouri (Aawweeeeeeee) or a Versailles, Kentucky (oh really?). Paris, Texas, remember?
22 American city names comes from Norway! (Drammen, Wisconsin, OMG).
So, let’s see the States names. Alabama is Choctaw. Arizona means “The Good Oak” in Basque (South-West of France), Nevada means “snow-covered” in Spanish, and OMG, Wisconsin : “Originally spelled Mescousing by the French, and later corrupted to Ouisconsin” : That’s cute, n’est-ce pas?
For each city, you can open this little box of shells. I chose Olathe, Kansas, gives :
Olathe was founded by Dr. John T. Barton in the spring of 1857. He rode to the center of Johnson County, Kansas, and staked two quarter sections of land as the town site. He later described his ride to friends: “…the prairie was covered with verbena and other wild flowers. I kept thinking the land was beautiful and that I should name the town Beautiful.” Purportedly, Barton asked a Shawnee interpreter how to say “Beautiful” in his native language. The interpreter responded, “Olathe.”
I knowww, I will never be cured 🙂
Good day !
JS Bach’s Cantata is confusing about Joy & Ordeal
This article is about the meaning of a sentence in Bach’s Cantata, and the different ways it is translated (from German to French or English), and what it can bring us about how the ways we deal with life.
I woke up a little disoriented by an obsessive, dense nightmare telling me in details that my life was really losing its cohesion. A mess like “having books but not knowing why any more”, “fearing the loss of purpose”, “falling sick but this time it won’t end well”, or “I’ll have to work a lot, without being sure it’s useful, to understand the fragments, the scales of my life” : terrible!
I sat on my bed, in need of a big coffee, happy to realize it was only a nightmare, watching a grey quiet queasy luminous sky, thinking about this little irony of life we all know :
When you work, it’s sunny, when you’re off, it rains.
We all have this feeling of the irony of life, with all the shades. Murphy’s Laws (“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”) are often hilarious to read. If France we sometime call it “LEM”, La Loi de l’Emmerdement Maximum, or “The Law of the Maximum Merdation”, which will make sense to everyone, oui?
But eventually it begins to hit harder. It deals with failure, love break-ups, losing job, or even death. I’ll tell you this true story.
Before WWII, a young upper class lady fell in love in France with a simple employee. Her family prevented her to marry the young man and arranged a more “proper” marriage. She had to accept it, I suppose. But decades later, in the 80s, her husband died, and then the unwealthy guy’s wife too. They were old, but happy : they fell back in love, lived this love, got married… and he died very soon.
I remembered this story because every member of her family kept telling her “Stop crying, you had a great life!”. So she stopped crying. And a week later was in hospital in emergency : her legs had tripled volume. Diagnostic : “Water Retention”.
For the next part of this article I have to say that I’m don’t believe in any “God”. Nevertheless, faith inspired humans some great Art, right?
Johann Sebastian Bach wrote a Cantata “for the Feast of Visitation of Mary” (BWV 147) which is well known for the end : “Jesus bleibet meine Freude“.
This last part is very well known by the title “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” – I just added the YouTube link under this paragraph – but it’s been translated to “sound better” : “Jesus bleibet meine Freude” is more like : “Jesus shall remain my gladness“.
(I found also : Jesus remains my joy, Jesus stays my source of gladness, Jesus shall remain my joy).
Here’s the paragraph :
Jesus remains my joy,
the comfort and life’s blood of my heart,
Jesus defends me against all sorrows,
he is my life’s strength,
Why?
Bach, the year he composed the music, suffered the loss of two of his children. Johann August Abraham died the day after he was born, and a bit later Regina Johanne, who was 4 years old, died too.
I suppose that in the XVIIIth Century even more than now, you really can write things like “Jesus remains my joy”. The use of “remains” tells something about “I have to stay strong, I decide to be”.
The French translation is wrong too. We say here : “Jésus, que ma joie demeure”, which means something a bit different : “Jesus, may my joy remains”.
- The English and German are a statement : “Jesus remains my joy”
- The French is a prayer, a supplication : “Jesus, may my joy remains”
You’ll notice that it is not either “Jesus, give me joy”, or even “help me”, but more “Allow my joy to keep existing”…
This difference between a statement and a plea in the form of “Please allow” is fascinating enough to keep some of us thinking for a day. It’s different, but also so similar. Both tell us about the will to stay strong…
I’d summerize this all with this question :
What do we do against ordeal?
This is the longest article I ever wrote! Thanks for reading my Frenchy English!
Jean-Pascal
PS : You can maybe, also, read this : Amor Fati (and Sequere Deum).
Amazement & Learning : Chronicle 12
It is when you have tried and failed that you are truly able to surrender. Though you fail time and again, you continue to try until, finally, there comes a point when you accept your failure; you fully experience and understand your incapacity to move forward. It is at that point that you surrender. So keep trying. That ultimate sense of failure must come to everyone, either today or tomorrow.”
Sri Mata Anandamayi
I love this quote, which seems to say that this “surrender” is, in fact, the answer : once you reached this, you surrender, you let go : you can go on another path. Try another thing, of another “nature”.
There’s an article to write, here. “Insist until you know your fail, until you’re done”. On purpose. Then consider your other options. Which are awaiting, probably.
I remember a great conversation about teaching. This activity is VERY interesting to think about. There are so many questions you can ask a new teacher!
Flipped classrooms, Theory of multiple intelligences, of course, but also about discipline, how you “hold” a classroom, how you watch kids, what are the differences between countries. And this : do you sometimes use “amazement” to get kids to understand, or just keep following you?
There are some letters… I find it wise not to send them.
Gide in his diary tells about drunk people arguing :
– “I tell you I don’t need you.”
– “Perhaps not… But you need… not to need… me.”
Thanks for reading!
Ways of evolving
C’est très intéressant, l’idée du développement de l’enfant (see, you almost can read French!). Child development is interesting to study :
- Physical growth
- Motor
- Cognitive/intellectual
- Social-emotional
- Language and communication
In fact, when you have a baby and you see his/her evolution, it’s really like you could notice the upgrades!
When we grow adult, there are phases when we develop too. Most of them are inevitable, linked to aging, divorce or bereavement. The loss puts you forward, to evolve.
But there are also more positive, inner development processes. Stages of life, meeting interesting personalities, love, new hobbies : we grow, even at 40, at 50, etc.
How to evolve? You can, like a tree :
- Develop an aspect of yourself you already know, like growing a new branch on the tree.
- Rotate, make a more complete change.
- Invent a branch, or a root in the soil.
- Displacement, like changing country.
- Discover an atrophied part of you which needs care, a Face B.
- Find your “big less“, find something you won’t do any more.
What does it mean? Can it be frightening? If you change too much, what about the system you live in (family)? What are the resistance to change (in you/outside)?
What will you do?
What are the verbs you need? Insist? Dare? Cut? Listen?
Thanks for reading!
Outwit Methods for Spleen
“Spleen” is a poem by Baudelaire, French poet :
Spleen
When the low, heavy sky weighs like a lid
On the groaning spirit, victim of long ennui,
And from the all-encircling horizon
Spreads over us a day gloomier than the night;
What is spleen? Melancholy? Boredom? Both? Sadness? Troth? (I don’t know how to say both for three things).
We have an expression here, “tromper son ennui”, which is literaly : “to outwit one’s boredom” – which leads us to my purpose :
What do you do against spleen, how do you outwit this bug?
I think we would all agree to say that you can’t “fix” spleen. It’s a saudade vague state on sadness and… oh… sorry : there IS a way.
- Sleep.
- You can listen to happy music, but it’s sadder, right?
- Try sad music. Put your forehead against the rainy window and wait.
- You can wear it out with little things. Walk, talk, movies.
- You can mock your spleen, write a sarcastic diary about how sad you are.
- You can use it (to write a sad poem/song – “take a sad song and make it better”)
- You can define it. Knowing things are always good. Weave a poem to explain subtilities.
- Become happy stupid. Be SURE you’re happy and read motivational quotes.
- Let the spleen subengulfmerge you.
- Cigarettes, liquors and other substances.
- Chocolate.
- Wine and cheese (both French, silly).
- Sex (spleeny sex?).
- Buster Keaton.
- Read biographies of people with worse lives.
- Friends?
- Become angry.
- Yi-Ching
- Do something unusual.
- Flee.
What do YOU do?
Spleen
Quand le ciel bas et lourd pèse comme un couvercle
Sur l’esprit gémissant en proie aux longs ennuis,
Et que de l’horizon embrassant tout le cercle
Il nous verse un jour noir plus triste que les nuits ;
Quand la terre est changée en un cachot humide,
Où l’Espérance, comme une chauve-souris,
S’en va battant les murs de son aile timide
Et se cognant la tête à des plafonds pourris ;
Quand la pluie étalant ses immenses traînées
D’une vaste prison imite les barreaux,
Et qu’un peuple muet d’infâmes araignées
Vient tendre ses filets au fond de nos cerveaux,
Des cloches tout à coup sautent avec furie
Et lancent vers le ciel un affreux hurlement,
Ainsi que des esprits errants et sans patrie
Qui se mettent à geindre opiniâtrement.
– Et de longs corbillards, sans tambours ni musique,
Défilent lentement dans mon âme ; l’Espoir,
Vaincu, pleure, et l’Angoisse atroce, despotique,
Sur mon crâne incliné plante son drapeau noir.
When you deeply desire a hard-working loneliness – but
We all of us have been there, even you, bloggers, right? :
You are busy at work, or you’re at a party, or you’re on a date.
You would LOVE to be totally wise & oriental and “fully live the moment”. But you are not.
You have things to do, but you deeply desire a hard-working loneliness, well you will at least have all the time necessary to : write your article, explore your ideas, paint, or begin your first novel.
Yeah, you see me coming : When you have the chance to be in this moment, alone, quiet, with a few hours free, you… do nothing. You procrastinate. You wander, take a nap, have a lazy poolsplash, you don’t even try to begin (or if you do, your hand stays in the air holding its pencil while daydreaming about elephants or printers. Strange statue!).
And therefore you are a bit angry against yourself because you spoil your time, and you feel this ugly emptiness I would call self-wtf.
Dial/Lever : What does that mean? Are we strong inside but lazy in action? What could we do to fix that? Discipline? Daily same-hour schedules, like Stephen King and other writers? What if we decided to stop everything “at once” when we wish to have time. Abandon job? Date goodbyeing? Party flight? Just to write at once? Why not. What are YOUR solutions?
Thanks for reading!
Instagram : itspeteski
“Alaric claimed that a “demon” drove him against Rome. Every exhausted civilization awaits its barbarian, and every barbarian awaits his demon”. #Cioran #Quote
Emil Cioran (1911-1995), De l’inconvénient d’être né, part VIII :
Alaric claimed that a “demon” drove him against Rome. Every exhausted civilization awaits its barbarian, and every barbarian awaits his demon.
Typically Cioranesque : Two lines, irrevocable, interesting.
This quote contains two things, right? Today I’ll let got the second one, to focus on this :
Every exhausted civilization awaits its barbarian
I think it’s true. I think also it’s a pattern, a dial you can apply on other fields : couple and marriage, companies, partnership.
When this “structure” is done, tired, exhausted, rotten or worn out, many things can happen. The simplest one is to decide to destroy it. But many times – it’s so human – nobody can decide. It just goes wrong, more and more.
Awaiting a barbarian is awaiting an external element, who is new, and has this barbaric quality : he dares, he brings some chaos, or at least some fracture. He disturbs.
Then you extend the possibilities : rebuild Rome or not. Some windows were opened, some doors. You can mutate. You can be lost, cut from the rest, you can dance with the barbarian, you can kill him and insist on the past.
Awaiting another revealer?
Thanks for reading!
Instagram : littlemessofpetals
When you hate someone and 3 mn later you deeply love this person
“When you hate someone and 3 minutes later you deeply love this person”, makes me think of some 2 French idioms :
Avoir du répondant : “To have some answering”. You have in English “To have an answer for everything”, but the French one is VERY different. It’s much more positive, it’s a skill, a happy skill. It’s great to have a friend or a partner who “have some answering”. It means you can fight without anger, like a conversation game : you know that the other is strong enough to play with you, to say “No I disagree” without anger. “Avoir du répondant” is to be smart, fast, effective and strong in conversation. I would add “joyful” to the list.
In conversation, or in sex, or in dance (tango!), or in creativity. You need nerve, decisions, propositions and muscles on your side, right?
Ni avec toi, ni sans toi : “Nor with you, nor without you”. It’s a quirky dance. You cannot stand to be with someone : both will be torn apart quickly. “I hate you, demon!. But you cannot stand to be without this personne more than 3 minutes. Because she/he has some answering : Cette personne a du répondant. It’s great to talk. You’re alive. There’s gold, a bond. Come on… “I’ll love you forever whatever”…
What a strange loop!
Thanks for reading!