To be scolded against confitation

ONE

First, I had to search for the correct translation of the French “houspiller” – se faire houspiller : to be scolded, heckled. Okey!

But it does not work. To scold is to censure usually severely or angrily. To heckle is to harass and try to disconcert with questions, challenges, or gibes. Then what about to badger (to harass or annoy persistently), or to rebuke (to criticize sharply)? There’s also “to reprimand“.

The French “houspiller” is all of that, but it contains, I think, “constantly”, and also a slight of positive energy…

It contains : “Big friends or lovers constantly se houspillent”. It contains : they like it, they need it, it’s a game, a stimulating game. Old couples, they love each other but they se houspillent all the time.

“You have too many flaws and you’re a pain in the ass, and I love you!”

TWO

These weeks I read a lot about musicians. One secret of the Beatles seemed linked to the couple Lennon/McCartney, who were clear opposites. And later someone was surprised how McCartney and his one-legged wife were arguing, told it, was heared (oops) by Macca, who winked : “I love them tough!”.

The best album of this guy (2005 – Chaos and Creation in the Backyard) had a “real producer” (Nigel Godrich, who worked with Radiohead) who disturbed him, took some lead and suggestions.

“Nigel… refused to allow me to sing songs that he didn’t like, which was very cheeky of him.”

Although initially taken aback, McCartney appreciated Godrich’s tenacity and honesty.

Bono was asked by a friend “You seem to like to be scolded”, and answered it was cultural (Dublin seems very, very harsh!), that the group (U2) and him were often arguing, that his children were cheeky, and his wife very smart shrewd! And he likes all that!

Bono says that Prince was a genious who probably needed a strong collaborator who’d say to him “this is not good enough”, or “you’re wrong”, to make him fight! He talks about Mick Jagger/Keith Richards who were constantly arguing like children.

The real problem in a relation is not to argue, it’s when you stop arguing! The awkward silence…

THREE

So, what’s my verb? What’s that lovely thing when someone is there and never ceases, when needed, to heckle you or the relation or the work you do together as a “living team”?

Who’s this person?

What’s the word when we don’t have it? Comfy or confit? Confit like marinated comfortable and immobile in delicious well seasoned goose fat certainties?

What’s the words when we do have it, when we’re heckled, fighting, laughing, surprised, bothered, talked and tickled and, well, alive?

When? Why ? How?

Thanks for reading!

Ze French Coronavirus Chronicles, 8

Ze French Coronavirus Chronicles, 8

Reckless ou irresponsible?

Confinement makes us TRY to understand others. I can really get that some guys become crazy without running everyday. In some parts of France (like in Paris), it’s forbidden to jog from 10 AM to 7 PM – to provide some quietness for the rare people who have to go outside to refill the fridge. So, well, they run before, and after. Good.

I never understood runners, though I tried. Is it just a way to get outside, get some air and some change? Or a goal for health (“I’m bored running like an idiot but it’s good for my body”)? Or a drug thing : waiting for the “after” moment, when one slops down in their sofa, drowned in pleasure endorphins?

Out on the plain, running like hell

Or stupid questions about exploding domestic violence in confinement times : “How come people marry violent men? Was this inner trait really invisible at the time?”. Yeah, I suppose, and I shut up.

Questions, questions. What about these three Types?

• The first is the proud strong halfwit hammerhead, standing on “Nobody tells me what to do!”.
• The two is the young moronic featherhead, vaguely laughing, partying all night in crowds.
• The three is the exhilarated religious boss, “God protects us from coronavirus” (with the help of certain psalms, probably). Churchurlishness…

Then death comes around. With this disease, you just drown, suffocated. It’s the sad concept of “too late regret”. It’s universal, in all countries.

Empathically, trying to understand people. It’s a discipline!

***

To write this I had big laughs with the English synonyms of “idiot” (adjective or noun). I get the nuances (in violence or funnyness), but I really don’t know about chucklehead, goon, halfwit or schmuck. I guessed about the rustic countryside colors of oaf, yokel, lout. But what about bungler, klutz, simpleton or churl? Words are linked with bad manners, others with ungainliness or ways of sitting.

When one ESL like me begins to dig into a vocabulary field, even a funny field like this one, there’s a feeling of terrible loss : I know nothing!

***

Yesterday I watched Episode 2 of Carnival Row, with pen and paper – in English with English subs. In less than an hour, I wrote unknown nuggets : aught, lively, hoof, ghastly, quackery, snug, squander, shuddering, passerby, beget, shrine, pall, to preen.

Pfff !

Then I search : aught in “For aught I know!”, lively in an order : “Now go!”, hoof for the foot of horse but also as a verb (the GREAT “She had a flat tire, she had to hoof it to work”), and if ghastly is dreadful or horrible, what’s the difference?, and is snug comfortable or tight-fitting (positive or negative radioactivity?), and squander and waste? Is a pall a coffin? What’s that interesting verb, to pall (a domain, a person?), or to cast a pall over? Etc, etc.

I love it, but it’s exhausting!

***

I watched Underwater (2020) – a group of scientists at the bottom of the ocean encounters creatures after an earthquake destroys their laboratory. Everybody seems to hate this movie (because it looks like Alien, or because many people hate Kristen Stewart). Stewart is great, the beginning is surprising, the monster is Cthulhu-esque, and it’s very stressful. Cons? Some strange ellipses, a so-so sense of locations, scrambled lights at times. The characters (and the way we meet them, the way they talk) are strangely realistic, it’s also a problem (we don’t know them enough, maybe). I’d give a 6/10.

***

If you’re alone and not allowed to go, you have to find something to explore. Today let’s think about battles.

Interesting battles, what are they? You have to choose one, which IS an activity.

You can choose a star, like the D-Day, Austerlitz or Gettysburg. I’d choose elsewhere. Antietam or Wagram.

Then begins your researches. What’s history around? Who are the generals? The opposing forces? What about the battlefield, the terrain? Phases? Prelude? Ending? Events? Aftermath?

But also : where to find maps? What books to read? History? Remembrances (of whom : officers or soldiers?)? Where is the place today? Is there a way to go visit it? Is there a forum on the Web, where people who know this battle could help you?

There’s an editor I know : https://ospreypublishing.com/ – they have numerous leaflets about many battles.

It should get you busy for a few days…

Thanks for reading! Sorry for my English…

Stay safe!

The Reader

I took this picture around 1990. I suppose I vicariously felt like this guy, reading alone in summer. Digital photography didn’t exist at this time. I “burnt” the whites on purpose : I love this error-effect…

Luxury is insular, said Jünger…

 

Have a nice day!

Irrelevant Fishes & Tetris Moods : Humans as Problems to Solve?

My previous article quoted S. Shore about photography :

“A photographer solves a picture, more than composes one.”

 

At first you want to think that it’s wrong – or at least “too easy”, but you have to admit there’s something intriguing here. To “solve” a picture… To find its balance, maybe? It’s stayed as a seed in my brain.

 

In the eighties I was in University and a friend of mine told me this story :

“I played so much Tetris these last days that this morning, as I was interviewed by a guy for a job, I saw all of his questions like Tetris tetrapods : I just had to move them, rotate them until they fit into my brain”.

 

OK, this is a puzzle. Here are some pieces :

1. The idea of “solving” a photography
2. Communication from another human being seen as a Tetris game (four square blocks geometric tiles moved sideways and rotated until it fits with no “gaps”)
3. Marcus Aurelius’ constant pattern telling that the problem is not reality (therefore “the others”) but the way we react or not – which depends on us only
4. The third Toltec Agreement : “Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering…”

 

See my workshop table? Some of you will get me, will see me coming. Recenter. You decide. Logic against feelings. The limits of all this. Watching/listening to others. Empathy. Etc.

I’ll have to write a bit more to sort all of it.

Some say that to blog is a way to learn things, right?

The 3rd Agreement risk is to consider others like irrelevant fishes in an aquarium, or something like “the weather” – but it can be an asset. Could be.

(to be continued)

 

Have a nice day!

Instagram : itspeteski

The Happy Lonely Christmas Liars

“Tonight then, I Christmas eve dinner alone and I know you will believe me if I say you that this “freedom” brings me a pretty much voluptuous feeling. Music reading silence peace.”

This phrase can makes us think about the state of life where you need it – and need to write about it.

It’s maybe next to another state (when you have a family, you mostly want to be with them, right? Oh but maybe you are… and wish for quiet instead). It can be after it. Before it. Because of remoteness (your lover lives in another part of the planet). Well : circumstances…

But also : a real love for this state. “Music reading silence peace” lovers, call them introverts or quiet people, those who like silence and know that their own head is good company. Some days, you love or you need to be apart, apart from the people & parties.

Sipping moods in summer nights, the “outside the party” Type…

This friend also wrote me this :

“Yesterday evening I was invited to dinner with X and a few of her friends. It’s been like a trial :

• Why do you always wear black
• Why don’t you talk much
• Why don’t you go out
• Why a quiet face and nervous hands
• I know well that you are like this
• I know well that you are like that
• You are one of those women who this
• You are one of of those women who that”

 

Horror, she wrote.

Hmm?

Have a nice day!

Instagram : _bodylanguage_

Abandonment is a wound you’ll never heal up of

Wound you’ll never heal up of

heal up of? Really? We French have problems with these suffixes, you know? We don’t have these. So… I hope you understand my wobblenglish!

I have a friend – she’s 10 years older than me.

She told me one day she had to see a therapist. Because after a break-up, she was… destroyed inside, devastated for months, for years!

She needed FOUR years of therapy to understand this :

There is NO WAY you can be healed of this “abandonment syndrome”.

Then she told me that when she was confronted with this horrible pain, she just learned to recognize it, and like “talking to the pain” :

“Welcome, you silly devil! Do your stuff, will you? Hurt me. Tear me up. Watch me cry. It’s your job. I don’t care”.

Of course, she cared, in an “as if” pridy mood, like a cow-boy in Arizona “watching the sea”… but she’s aware, now. Maybe it’s the secret : to be aware of her own disastrous pain…

…

Mind specialists are very found of these theories, as you know. They say you’re devastated “because it resonates with your childhood”, right? Abandonic people, as they say. “You’ll make it, you see”. Acceptance of the pain…

Well. OK. But isn’t it too easy?

Maybe my friend was wounded to the deepest and destroyed inside, not “because she felt like abandoned-by-her-mother as a baby”, but maybe because it’s just terrible to be left by a person you loved, that gave you this feeling of being special, of being alive, and who then changed his mind. Because it’s awful to be rejected like that. Because it’s very strange to see your own brain drowning in “this” loneliness when you lose your sidekick, your soulmate, the man you wanted to marry, the guy who danced with your mind. Because it’s weird to see your life broken, thrown to the ground like dustshit, then being treated with contempt…

Well, etc, right? Everybody’s been there. You don’t count (mean?) anymore. You can park. You can record the big desert you have in you now. You can agree will all theories who say you don’t “need” someone else to be happy. Yeah yeah yeah! You’re just hurt, and alone. Talk to your pain :

“Welcome, you silly devil! Do your stuff, will you? Hurt me. Tear me up. Watch me cry. It’s your job. I don’t care”.

Close your eyes. You’ll never, ever heal. Grab these simple theories (or not). But acceptance is the way. “Shattered by experience and memory”…

 

Thanks for reading!

 

“To Eat Alone”

Some recent events in my life made me a lonely man, and therefore a lonely eater.

When I was a father in a family, I was really happy to have dinner-togetherness, to cook for my tribe, to talk, listen, laugh, and feel the family’s energy around the table.

I’ve been very skeptical when I read about how Americans were losing these daily gatherings of all the big cats around the table. “Everyone is having snacks when they want, everybody’s picking things in the fridge, watch TV or eat in bedrooms”, they said. My feelings were like between “it’s not true, it’s impossible” and “oh these Americans!”.

When my daughters were little, some days I went home late, it was almost time to go to bed : I told them stories, kissed them goodnight, then I was happy to have dinner with their mother, but also alone.

I remember good summer evenings. Two cat babies sleeping, mother cat watching a movie, and me papa cat, with a cassoulet, two slices of bread and half of a bottle of Bergerac wine, eating on a tray, on my bed, in front of a wide open double-window (or should I say “French door”, really?), watching and listening birds and trees in the dusk, sshhh.

Not working on thursdays, I remember I was happy to have meal time alone, eating in silence in the kitchen, listening to the rain outside. On my table : a candle, a corner lamp, and a magazine (about movies). Maybe some Brahms chamber music too. Bliss!

Now I eat alone, but I don’t snack. I never snack, and I’m always questioning my snacking friends in America, opening different little colored bags to crinch crunch and croonch while we Skype. I’m like “Where’s your plate, dear?”. They know I eat alone, thus they’re somewhat amazed by HOW I’m eating alone. Well, that’s nothing special, but I… I’m sorry… I can’t snack. It would kill me under a blanket of depression. It’s almost : “I’m French therefore I need a plate”.

I know better, OK : I have more time, in France. We work less, we move less (distances are… different here – I go to work by bike), and… errr… I think we think that food time is worth it, too : I eat alone but it’s cooked, sliced, prepared, organized. Just a bit. I need it.

Awweee sorry for my bad English. I’m wobbling, I know it. Pardonnez-moi !

Have a nice day! Bon appétit !

 

 

 

 

Proust & les Hirondelles : Chronicle 4

Absolutely no cunning could prevent a man
from being smashed against his dreams

 

I’m French, I’m sorry : my english is clumsy these days…

Have you ever visited the school you were in as a very little child, now you’re an adult? Among all the memories and the heartbeats you feel, you also find that… everything around is very little, right? You’re taller, now… you’re different. Perspective.

Today is the “braderie” in the city of La Madeleine. We love braderies in the North of France. It’s like your US garage sales, all along some streets : today was about 1.200 exhibitors (or displayers, how to say that?). I took a cool picture of motorbikes toys, you like it?

I’ve been asked one day about my “goals in life“. I have been very disturbed by this question, which is so… all about efficiency. I couldn’t think of a goal, even one. I feel like Cioran, in shock and in anger, after being asked about what he was “preparing”. If a French says he has “goals” in life, he sounds ridiculously Action Man, that’s it. The idea itself is a nightmare – at least when you’re more than 22 years old. I don’t want to be efficient, I just try to live, right? Dreams, maybe… Dreams, OK.

Absolutely no cunning could… etc…

I’m too lazy to find it, but the stupidest quote ever is something like “Give yourself a very high goal, then maybe you’ll reach a lower but good stage”. Of course there’s a more accurate one, saying that while you try to do that, you fail choosing the right path to achievement, you stay blind to feedbacks, etc. Typical Wrong Way Up. Well yes, these are words only, I know.

I have no goal, not one. It could be “to be happy” or “to be creative” or “to be a better human” or “to help others”, but I already failed in all these fields, obviously! And who will feed my cat, while I John Wayne?

If you want some fun, though, Google Image “Goals Quotes”. Plenty of orders in capitals. Like : <<DON’T LET ANYTHING STOP YOU FROM REACHING YOUR GOAL>>. Ohlalalaa, my French eyes are hurt! I need a beer, I think.

So I found a goal : stay zen in front of bullsh*t 🙂

It’s when the weather change (warmer air, higher sun, sudden showers) than you can have a rush of childhood memories. Or teenhood, say. Suddenly it’s HERE, you feel the same feeling you had in your mother’s arms, or at school when you were loving some shy redhead in silence, or when you were gathering interesting rocks under open sky. The idea of memories in Madeleines de Proust come from the food, but also from a smell (freshly cut grass, chocolate cake baking, little pot of white glue in kindergarten) or a sound (of swallows flying hunting between streets, or the familiar engine’s roar of you’re father’s car), but also from the light in the air, the clouds, a coming thunderstorm…

Marguerite Duras says somewhere that she can NOT write if the bed is not made. Strange thing is : I never forgot that, because… that’s true.

I bought a Raymond Carver book, “The American Chekhov”, as they say. I know Carver’s work pretty well, but I never read him in English. Good exercise. I can’t resist to a blurb on a book saying “The (Italian, Canadian, whatever country you choose) Chekhov”…

They have something in common, that’s right : they watch meticulously our little renunciations, our microscopic failures, our rushes never said, our words, spoken and immediately regretted, our love silliness, our boredom. But it’s not “laments”. It’s more like : “This is it, brother human, and it not even THAT dramatic”.

I found a rose, there. Is a rose, is a rose, Mrs Stein. Look where she is (“une rose”) :

In the shades of break-up moods, you have the yellow poison of jealousy, the dark corners of loneliness, the twinge of uncertainty and many more. The invisible bitterness of “having being loved and then not” is sometimes like swimming against the cold current of a long deep river.

In the shades of illness… Oh, another time, OK?

You can read books (or see a therapist, it depends on how you’re made), self help or philosophy : you’ll read everywhere that you have to find your happiness inside you, right? Again? I “have to”? The capitalized ORDER quote is <<BE HAPPY AND SMILE>>. Yes, each time, you want to punch the author in the face! Bim! Paf! Pouf!

Give birth to a dancing star from the chaos you have within

Strange star, but that could be my Nietzsche goal, maybe… Well, see?

Thanks for reading! Merci!

Marguerite Duras – #quote

“Soudain, tout d’un coup, elle sait, elle sait qu’il ne la comprendra jamais, qu’il lui manque la capacité de comprendre une telle perversité. Et il ne pourra jamais aller assez vite pour l’attraper”.

 

“Suddenly, all at once, she knows, knows that he doesn’t understand her, that he never will, that he lacks the power to understand such perverseness. And that he can never move fast enough to catch her”.

 

Marguerite Duras

Festivities your are not invited to

OK I’m french. My english is a frenglish, it’s rusty and wobbly, et voilà. Try me, though. I’ll do my best. I promise. If sometimes it’s too bad, just laugh at me or roll you eyes.

Rats !

Vous n’êtes pas invité ? So there !

After all, do you really like… “festivities” ? Parties ? Really ?

Why aren’t you invited ? You’re a boring person ? People know that you don’t like to party on schedule, when ordered to ?

Well, if invited, you would have say : “Non merci”. Don’t you ?

OK. Maybe it’s just sarcasm. Now you sulk. You would have liked to be invited, so you say you don’t, because you’re proud. You are NOT invited. Maybe it’s a mistake, but maybe it’s on purpose. Efff…

No. Happy alone. Listen to some opera. Read some French book (Giono ? Colette ?).

Rats !