There are three categories of beings on this beautiful planet, says Lewis Trondheim. The living, the dead and the invisible. This is one of the first truths that can be found in a comic book. But yes. The ninth art is a source of light like laughter. And Trondheim knows how to mix the two.
Deoxyribo Nucleic Acid
We share two-thirds of our DNA with… a banana! Can you believe that? A banana scientist? just said it on TV. All living beings are connected. You have to wake up. With the Flying Wolves, I practice grouped astral flight. It’s not easy. You have to row to find the memory. It’s not our natural environment. It’s the dead and the invisible. They evolve there effortlessly, consciously, all the time. In astral they are at home. Our reality is inaccessible only to the dead who remain astral or elsewhere, I do not know where.
The invisible go everywhere. And I doubt they share so little of our DNA. Yet they do, for sure. Subtle DNA. As inhabitants of the Earth, they are our brothers. We are not alone. We have to wake up.
Between nour and orgasm
Between dog and wolf, at this moment that the Tibetans call the time of the Gueks, we can see the invisible. At this hour, says Juan Matus, there is no wind, no animal screams. There is only power. All the traditional cultures of the first peoples have a special respect for this time of day. Or night? Because it is a time of high magic. That is why it is separate. Neither of the day, nor of the night. It would rather be the nanny. Or the enjoys.
I lived the day of wonders
You and I remember
And I have crossed the wall of years
Miracles in your ears
Our universe is not the same
I lived the day of wonders
Full is the moon
On the night of the full moon, on your birthday, you can see them too. And if you see all the time, know that you are part of the Little People. One day in the forest of Brocéliande I met a leprechaun. By far you would have said a man. He was taller than three apples, and a musician — you had to see like! All the ways to Rome he became my friend. And my half-mate — may his sins be forgiven him.
The Invisible are not supposed to be able to touch us. Yet, on a full moon night, a hand brushed my shoulder in the dark. I got a jump.
No one behind me. Koala was standing to my right: – Xavier? What is it?
“Did you touch my left shoulder?”
“How could I?”
Right. She was too far away to reach me — unless she had the arms of Elasto. Tiramolla, Élastoc in the French version, «the son of stick and rubber» is a hero of the Italian BDzine PIPO, published in the 1950s. As its name suggests, Elasto is elastic: it can lengthen its limbs and body almost without limit.
Your death follows you
Who touched me? Maybe my death. Juan Matus explains to his apprentice that his death follows him like a shadow, some distance behind his left shoulder.
In any case, I was touched by an invisible person. They can also carry objects. They are immaterial, but can become so when it suits them. I think they are interplans, beings who can come in this plan but are not part of it. Or they are. They are home.
That night, I disturbed him. He wanted to scare me, freak me out to get me out of his house, who knows? I had trampled on his beds or something like that. But too late. Fear no longer touched me from his black wing. I had already lost the human form. I was still in the world, but I was no longer in the world.
That was 30 years ago. I’m still far out and don’t want to change my favourite housing.
Death? What death?
The dead do not leave this world as soon as they die. Some do not know that they are dead, as life after death resembles this one. The other morning I woke up in the middle of a dream. Mom passed away years ago. Yet she spoke to me, loud and clear, in my head or in my body. She was in the middle of a conversation when the sound of her voice woke me up. I imagine she was trying to reassure me about life after life. “We’re not dead!” she exclaimed.
I am convinced of that. Dead, alive, we remain who we are: immortal spirits. Uncreated. The former gods created only our physical bodies. A vehicle like any other. But I can tell you that living outside the body is much more awesome. I’ve grown so fond of it that physical life weighs on me horribly.
Old body
My old body tugs at me, locks up, pulls at me, breaks, hurts and ahane — a young body doesn’t have those old-age worries. He wants to live in his body, experience, feel, enjoy, give himself, spend himself — things that I do much better in astral. A time for everything…
There are deaths lingering here below. I can see them. A film shows this child who saw the dead. Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense. Released on the screens 23 years ago. I live with my time, as Simone Signoret said. Sixth Sense. A kid named Osment or Ossement who sees the dead. I was surprised like everyone else, yet the thing is no surprise: I saw them since I was very young and I still do. I speak to them like child Osment. I comfort the dead — many need it.
On the other side
So I take refuge on the other side of life, the one I call the astral. We see the dead, the invisible and even the living. Witness the adventure that happened to me with a little guy from Helvetia, one summer evening, at the time of the geks, for the Tibetans! To better understand it, I must first tell you an old legend, famous, of my country of Armor. The legend of Yann an Aod which for me came to life a few years ago.
Yann An Aod, Jean du Rivage,John of the Shore is a tenacious legend of the Armorican peninsula. Some cities have wanted to appropriate this tale which is not one, and which belongs, not only to all Brittany, but to all the lands on the seashore on the five continents.
Legend of Plomelin
Yann an Aod was one of those evil spirits who roamed the woods at late hours. Accustomed to imitating a cry familiar to peasants, he rushed in an instant on his victim and made her pass from life to death if she dared to answer him. A young Plomelinois experienced it one day: taking cider, he gave the reply to the evil genius. Immediately the grim cry was heard so close to the reckless young man that he fled to his farm. When he opened the door, he received a masterful blow on the back of his self. If his punishment stopped there, he had to rub his kidneys and moan and drag himself around in half for a long month! (source)
This is how an initiatory tale is transformed by ignorance. The result is a rather moronic scramble that makes children laugh. The origin of the legend is of a very different nature. No ridicule in it, or anything laughable, as you will see. It is a question of staging an ancient Celtic tradition: the meeting of the two worlds. By the grace of Yann, the night marries the day. From these improbable nuptials, so different are the spouses, an intermediate world arises, which owes neither to the one nor to the other.
Crazy hour
At the time of dusk, when the day is gone and the night comes, in this no man’s land that covers everything, only the imprudent venture. This is gek time for Tibetans! This is invisible time.
Gek time is a traditional expression of Tibet that expressly refers to twilight, as we say between dog and wolf. It happens that the same word gek means something crazy in Dutch. Ik ben gek, literally “I’m crazy”. Gek time is also crazy time.
Old people know it’s not a good thing to risk. Everything can take on another form, another force, another appearance. the reality of the great day is dead. The dark night empire is not yet born. Anything can happen. At this hour, nature is silent.
The world of the day is no longer, the world of the night is not yet. We do not hear or see any animals, whether they are diurnal or nocturnal. At dusk, said Don Juan Matus, there is no wind, no bird calls, no silhouette in the distance. At that time, there is only power. Neither dog nor wolf at the time of the madmen. But spirits prowl at the time of power. Life is in suspense. Death is on the horizon.
It is the hour of the Ankou, sinister old man wearing the false and rattlesnake ringer. He brings death in the loose folds of his black dress. He sows desolation and fear around him. I don’t like him very much. We don’t belong to the same cycle, he and I. Former seer — Castaneda’s empty viejo — the Ankou comes from the mists of a distant past — too far away for one to feel comfortable in — not far enough away for its dark purposes, its spells, and its spells to cease to haunt the collective unconscious. If the Ankou is not Satan, it is also disturbing. In Celtic land there are two princes of darkness. Or more?
I adore amor
I abhor death
Milin Ar Mor
I met him. Not the Ankou, he doesn’t care. Yann An Aod. Jean du Rivage. Unless it’s the Bugul Noz.
The Bugul-noz, or bugel-noz, “child of the night” or “shepherd of the night”, is a nocturnal creature of the legendary Breton, CLOSE to the elf and the werewolf, and known to present itself as a shepherd shape-shifter wearing a broad hat. (source)
Regardless of the name, the person came to me. That’s all that matters to me. Milin Ar Mor, at the Moulin de la Mer in Côtes d’Armor near a town called Matignon, one evening before the storm. A thunderstorm that is slow to burst and saturates the sea air with electric impulses. The night falls steeply and chills come. Not of cold, but of fear. No fear altogether, let’s just say a discomfort.
I accompany a young Swiss Franc who wants to see this site at night. Funny idea really. I’ve never done it, but I’ve criss-crossed so many powerful places under the moon with wolves! I’m in. We’ll laugh. The full moon should illuminate us as in daylight, but it prefers to hide behind the black clouds.
After the walk in the last light of the sunset, here are the dark ruined buildings of the Mill. Sinister. We’ll not laugh that much. Frank pulls out his guimbarde, I insert my harmonica, but the heart is not there. Stop the zique. The shadows rise towards us like the tide. The night black water makes its regular chop sound in the distance. When it withdraws, it makes the gravel of the foreshore, like a marine rattle, whisper.
The decor is perfect to suggest horror. By day he is so laughing! Sensitive to the atmosphere, we keep silent. Punctuated by the rattle of the surf, the silence is unreal, absolute. Steps on the way! Someone comes from the beach!
A panic seizes the teenager. Contagious. And here we see him passing. Wide-brimmed hat, all dressed in black, accompanied by two large black dogs like him. Close by, touching us, he passed without looking at us, without a word. We both remain nailed to the wall where we were sitting.
As soon as the apparition fades away, we run to lose breath to the car — a mile-long trot that looks like a hundred yards. Did we dream all this? The atmosphere of the place, the night, the solitude of the place? Was it enough for a silent walker to plunge us both into this panic without real cause?
Such a thing, in any case, had never happened to me… and I doubt it will happen again.
Let it be so!