Wherever I look, suffering hugs me. This world is suffering, said Buddha. He was right. Pain to give birth, pain to be born, pain to grow, pain to live, horrible pain to survive, pain again to die. Suffering dog, suffering for nothing. In the end we realize that we are always alone in the world.
I wanted, oh my, how idiot, to give all I could to help love, but love does not help me. How to alleviate suffering, how to revive the gift and the tenderness? I tried to share the joy of living and I did not succeed. I probably did not have enough. Or the task was too hard. Too much suffering, too much terror, too much harm in an ocean of emptiness, throbbing, sparkling, but empty. Desperately.
What pride of madness animated me! Can we help anyone? Brothers and sisters in misfortune, friends whom I love, our fate is the same, not our difficulties. We each have our own furrow to dig on this earth. The path is often hard, sometimes terrible, and the goal remains uncertain. But we cling, without knowing what or why. We are fighting against everything.
I wanted to help you, I was wrong. It’s up to you to do it. And to you all too. Everyone takes charge, each his own guide. No one needs help. To seek help is to doubt oneself, one’s own strength, and thus put one foot in the grave. I had the heart to love. I wanted you.
To return from everything I felt nothing. I was in the desert that I had desired. I suffered, but most of all, I felt sorry for everything. And I accused the race or the time in my place. On long lonely roads, I saw myself dead quite often. I even waited in my days so much the pain of loneliness weighed me, so much the feeling of my own uselessness crushed me.
I’m here, empty-handed, my heart full of bitterness, why does it take so much suffering if in the end we lived for nothing? Everyone is doing what he can to get out of the game. The pin is rusty. Then it’s a dupe game. And what is it? A stained being who got wet for nothing. You live little, you laugh as you can, comes death. Sad fate. It is ours to all, poor humans, tragic rejects who do not understand anything.
Why are they here? What purpose ? What desire? Earn money ? Unhappy, they forget that a shroud has no pocket. What will they do with their change when they are in the next world? She is no longer there. And besides, who says to them that after death, they will live again? Nobody came back to reassure us.
I see them dragging around, caressing each other, sowing themselves and struggling. I see them holding back, learning and by the hand I take them. I see them coming back. Innocent hands full. But I do not have the heart to laugh at their misfortune, because I know that in the end they will be nothing. This is so, everything is said, and yet I pity them. Sad ending. They played the finest, they thought themselves clever, but they pamped one by one at the devil and his train.
Suffer yes, if it is to grow. But why grow if it is to die? This game with the con must amuse others. Our gods are good apostles, we pay for their faults. They have nothing to offer, and we have nothing to choose from. Everything depends on the plan, had to know before. No need to cry. You did not have to go.
You did not ask anything? It’s the beauty of the thing. You can’t always get what you want but you get what you need. (Rolling Stones)
The mistake is right. There is nothing unfair. Nothing absurd, nothing cruel. There is love. To live it, to receive it, to give it, to give it again. It’s the beauty of the thing. The love we give comes back to us a hundredfold. I received so much mail, so many desperate people told me their pain, and I could do nothing for them, but listen to them. I did it so much and more, gently, without judging them ever. Perhaps the only thing they really need is to be listened?
A day on the beach, dreaming. There was a child who spent a long time building a castle, slender, facing the waves. And the sea has gone up. The castle wants to stay, but the spell is cast, nothing can withstand the onslaught of tides. The castle fell.
Piece by piece, towers by towers, it slipped into the water that drank and dump from the moat to the dungeon. The brave dungeon was sand polished, reinforced at its base by pretty pebbles. It held on, it cracked down, he caught water blows. It was cute, here is a stump, here is a breast, here is nothing. It passed over. The tide has vanquished.
But most amazing: the child has not lost anything. He was moved a little, at first. Then he was animated. Then he stamped. When everything had disappeared, he jumped to his feet, exulting, liberated. Instead of a defeat, I saw him win. This child offered it to the sea. He gave himself up. He donated to the time an instant castle.
And what if the common lot was to dissolve and get lost? I do not accept it. If there is a chance, just one, to escape the Eagle, I want to run it to avoid dying. I want to fight. Non-violent height: a post mortem fight.
I was sitting on a bench in a public garden, a disabled person arrived in his wheelchair. Luxury model, big tires, electric motor. Silence and recovery. I admire his beautiful mechanics. The guy was open, I return his smile.
Within minutes, he made me dive head first in the ocean of troubles and pains that he must cross every day. I do not want – can I? – echoing such grief. The machine to crush lives rotates relentlessly, stuffs and destroys. Death rejoices.
Here I am reduced to what I am. An insignificant fold in the infinite, the infinitely large or the small, the infinitely long or the flash that flees, without noise, far from the living, far from the friends, far from the panting time where you told me I t ‘love.
Leave, yes, because you have to. From grace, class, take my place behind the ice. And gently, in the vapors of eternity, to erase myself, to flee, to melt in the sea water like the fine sand of which my body is made.
Already the stone think where your name are carved
Already you are just a golden word on public squares
Already the memory of your loves is fading away
Already you are but for having perished.
(Louis Aragon, music by Leo Ferre)
