Month: February 2021

An afternoon trip to Bendigo.

Comme une goutte d’eau sur une feuille de songe.

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J’ai acheté récemment et par hasard un specimen de Colocasia esculenta, ou Taro elephants ear, comme on l’appelle ici.

Ci-dessous des extraits de la page Wikipedia consacrée au taro.

“Le taro, aussi appelé songe, madère, racine madère, chou chine ou dachine, est un tubercule alimentaire (légume-racine) des régions tropicales produit par des plantes de la famille des Aracées, le plus souvent de la sous-famille des Aroideae.

(…)

“Kom un gout lo su un fèye sonz” ou en français « Comme une goutte d’eau sur une feuille de songe » : expression populaire créole, à la Réunion notamment, signifiant qu’une chose ne nous atteint pas quand quelqu’un nous est désagréable.

Cette expression peut être comparée à celle utilisée en métropole française « glisser comme l’eau sur les plumes (ou le dos) d’un canard » pour exprimer la même chose.

Les feuilles de Colocasia esculenta possèdent en effet un bon effet lotus.”

Les détours et confluences d’internet et du jardinage delivrent toutes sortes de messages…

The room of discord.

He says it’s safe.
She says it’s not.
She says I’m worried,
Would you please put on a lock?

In a place where hearts and lives begin to mend, conflicts easily flare.

A mother thinks safety and control.
A father thinks power and scare.

The dialog hesitant,
The wounds exposed bare.

In the room of discord a child can sleep, blissfully unaware.

Time will heal.
Reveal the stakes.
Resolution not being immediacy,
Modulation is the end game.

mod·u·la·tion  (mŏj′ə-lā′shən)
n.

1. The act or process of modulating.
2. The state of being modulated.
3. Music
   a. A passing or transition from one key or tonality to another.
   b. The result of such a transition.
4. 
   a. A change in stress, pitch, loudness, or tone of the voice; an inflection of the voice.
   b. An instance of such a change or an inflection.
5. The harmonious use of language, as in poetry or prose.
6. The act of modifying or adjusting according to due measure and proportion (as with regard to artistic effect)
7. Electronics The variation of a property of an electromagnetic wave or signal, such as its amplitude, frequency, or phase.

Certains Dimanches je disparais deux fois. À l’aube, pendant que les enfants dorment, je disparais furtivement de la maison, et part au travail pour quelques heures.

Ce sont des heures paisibles, solitaires. Pendant que le jour se lève, j’enfourne, je mets en place, je glace, je nappe, je coupe. Le système est bien rodé, le plan concocté dans la semaine se déroule en général sans accrocs. Satisfying.

Quand le jour est levé, et peu de temps avant ou après l’ouverture du café, je m’esquive à nouveau, disparais du travail, et retourne chez moi pour trouver les enfants juste réveillés, occupés à explorer leurs univers respectifs, paisibles.

La journée peut alors recommencer.

Avec, bien entendu, a carrot for breakfast. C’est de saison.

Been binge watching this (french) TV Show. One season, 8 episodes. Sublime.

On SBS on demand in Australia. En France, je ne sais pas, mais c’est sublime!

Some fragments. And a breakfast carrot.

frag•ment (n. ˈfræg mənt; v. ˈfræg mənt, -mɛnt, frægˈmɛnt)

n.

1. a part broken off or detached.
2. an isolated part.
3. an odd piece; scrap.
   v.i.
4. to collapse or break into fragments.
   v.t.
5. to break (something) into pieces or fragments.
6. to divide into fragments; disunify.
7. [1375–1425; late Middle English < Latin fragmentum a broken piece, remnant, derivative of fra(n)g(ere) to break]

Ouverture/ fermeture.

Après cinq jours de confinement, un test de Covid négatif, beaucoup de questions posées et beaucoup de bruit dans les médias, le enfants sont à l’école, les parents au travail, et les piscines sont ouvertes.

Just a temporary time lapse.

Ce sont les derniers jours de l’été, cette année assez tempéré. L’automne est toujours sensationnel ici, et la nouvelle normalité, l’ouverture/fermeture, ne semble pas changer cet aspect essentiel.

Jean a trouvé une libellule dans l’eau et l’a apprivoisée.

Pour ceux qui n’en ont pas reçu , voici à quoi ressemble chez nous un avis de Covid négatif.

On était 40 000 ce jour là, à être testé. On était le même nombre, exactement, un jour/un jour et demi après, à recevoir le même message.

Zéro nouveaux cas. La troisième vague attendra. Jusqu’à la prochaine fois.

Il y a toujours un something, somewhere, sometimes, qui reviendra, et on refermera.

“To speak of certain government and establishment institutions as “the system” is to speak correctly, since these organizations are founded upon the same structural conceptual relationships as a motorcycle. They are sustained by structural relationships even when they have lost all other meaning and purpose. People arrive at a factory and perform a totally meaningless task from eight to five without question because the structure demands that it be that way. There’s no villain, no “mean guy” who wants them to live meaningless lives, it’s just that the structure, the system demands it and no one is willing to take on the formidable task of changing the structure just because it is meaningless.

But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.

That’s all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel. There’s no part in it, no shape in it, that is not out of someone’s mind…

I’ve noticed that people who have never worked with steel have trouble seeing this—that the motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon. They associate metal with given shapes—pipes, rods, girders, tools, parts—all of them fixed and inviolable, and think of it as primarily physical. But a person who does machining or foundry work or forge work or welding sees “steel” as having no shape at all. Steel can be any shape you want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you are not. Shapes, like this tappet, are what you arrive at, what you give to the steel. Steel has no more shape than this old pile of dirt on the engine here. These shapes are all out of someone’s mind. That’s important to see. The steel? Hell, even the steel is out of someone’s mind. There’s no steel in nature. Anyone from the Bronze Age could have told you that. All nature has is a potential for steel. There’s nothing else there. But what’s “potential”? That’s also in someone’s mind!”

Robert M. Pirsig, Zen & the art of motorcycle maintenance

Getting tested.

A runny nose, a sore throat, a global pandemic, a state wide lockdown, made me call the hospital to book a Covid test. It was organised within two hours.

Followed the instructions. Drove to the local hospital. Parked in the loading zone. Gave the call to the nurse. Waited in the car.

Watched tennis on my phone. Ash Barty “reigning supreme in a tactical masterclass”, channel 9 commented.

Within twenty minutes, covered with many layers of PPE, Elsa had arrived. Explained me the process. The throat. The nose. The self isolation. The result. Within 24 hours, through a call. Or maybe a text.

So here we were. Two migrants, briefly meeting  on a hospital car park, one from the Indian subcontinent, one from France, one testing, one being tested, and it occurred to me that so many of the frontline workers are migrants.

The nurses, the quarantine hotel workers, all ready and accepting. To be on the front line. Get the blame when things go wrong. Little or no reward for all that goes right.

As for me, l was left feeling very grateful for the very low numbers and the different levels of society that produced them.

Waiting now for the probably negative result, I will settle myself at home.

And hope I am not the one migrant that brought Covid into town.

Lectures de confinement.

Au détour d’un roman policier, un autre livre, Le zen et l’art de la maintenance des motos, était mentioné.

Quelques extraits ci-dessous. More to come, probablement…

Quant au roman policier? Le dernier tome de la série Harry Hole de Jo Nesbø. Recommandé aux amateurs de nordic noir.

“She seems so depressed sometimes by the monotony and boredom of her city life, I thought maybe in this endless grass and wind she would see a thing that sometimes comes when monotony and boredom are accepted. It’s here, but I have no names for it.”

“If someone’s ungrateful and you tell him he’s ungrateful, okay, you’ve called him a name. You haven’t solved anything.”

“At first this difference seemed fairly minor, but then it grew…and grew…and grew …until I began to see why I missed it. Some things you miss because they’re so tiny you overlook them. But some things you don’t see because they’re so huge. We were both looking at the same thing, seeing the same thing, talking about the same thing, thinking about the same thing, except he was looking, seeing, talking and thinking from a completely different dimension.”

Confinés.

As of tonight, we entered stage 4 restriction. For 5 days. The state goes in lockdown, and we are locked up. Down. Up. Stage 4. Days 5.

So for the next little while, close contacts will self isolate, tracers will trace, we will do all we can, at home, mostly laying down, being locked up.

Zsuzsa just back from a school camp, everyone 2 weeks in a new school year, routines just starting to be established and so unready to be disturbed.

Yet somewhat we feel ready. 5 days. If we’re lucky. En attendant la suite.

In Melbourne, tennis players still play tennis. Nothing stops the sports caravan. Professional athletes, for the next 5 days, are essential workers.

We just watch. And observe. Up and down, back and forth, laying down, this dystopian feeling of 2020 playing over, and unfold in 2021. Again and again.

Somewhat scary, somewhat profound, a testing of our own peacefulness.

Un album écouté en boucle récemment. Food for the soul. Une musique qui calme, transporte, accompagne & supporte, intégrale.

Le morceau Haiti, avec les paroles.

“I do not know what the cause is.”

Around sunsets and a few chats, a few new decisions appear. A new project, this blog, as a more ethical and meaningful manner to share and engage my environment.

“Action brings good fortune”, it’s a line on a song in Pink Floyd’s a piper at the gate of dawn. It did feel that way around this specific sunset.

Some new plants too, instead of more beers.

A laptop coming soon?

New trial, new dawn, new day.

Nous avons cueilli des mûres aujourd’hui. Souvenirs de Brigné sur Layon, anyone?