Month: May 2021

Allégories de cavernes

More morning shadows.

Jean, lockdown 4.0, night of day 2.

Le bonheur, c’est simple comme un canapé-lit.

30 seconds of Rayman

Remote learning, episode IV.

A new hope?

The law of the instrument.

“When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

A Jean close up

👁️

👃

👄

Daryl, 64 ans.

Mon collegue chef cuisinier depuis cinq ans, ou six, le temps passe vite. On s’est vu évoluer au quotidien, les hauts et les bas. Tous les jours ou presque. Au travail. Rarement en dehors.

Ce samedi, alors que Melbourne hésite à tout fermer, parece que l’épidémie de Covid est revenue hier, et que personne ne connaît exactement l’ampleur de cet outbreak, Daryl va épouser Jeremy.

Ça méritait une visite, et un bouquet.

Dimanche au balcon

A new message on the back door, morning shadows of the lemon tree and passion fruit vines on the laundry door, and two very beautiful songs to start the day.

Sidney’s duck/pig, with a moustache

L’amour breton.

❤️❤️❤️

On love.

Love isn’t a dirty word. It isn’t a magical one either.

It is triggered by things, situations, persons and ideas that connect with your inner self. It describes feelings that can be assessed, processed, thought of and scaled to their right measures. Love relates to a whole range of emotions, and casts a wide net over our everyday life.

I love my children. I love my brothers and sister. I love my parents. I love spaghetti carbonara. I love football. I love the feeling I get after a good workout. After cleaning my house. I love my friends, and I love my employers and my workmates. I love working and I love being home. I love watching sports on television. I love the Paris St Germain and the Melbourne football clubs. I love music, and I love written words and I love numbers. I love dark spaces, and I love bright lights. I love depth and connections, and quiet understandings.

I love Claire.

Talking and writing about love after a separation feels like putting myself, eyes wide open, in the headlights of a fast moving big vehicle. But it isn’t. No one will die here. There is no weakness in acknowledging love after a separation, and there must be no shame in there either. On the contrary it seems to be an essential, and rather profound step on my recovery journey.

I need to accept that part of me that still loves Claire, for it is that part of me that needs understanding, compassion and healing. There won’t be peace until I stop fighting with myself.

I was in love with you. I’m not in love with you anymore. I still love you.

There is a great paradox in love.

Train portraits

Home

Pause café.

Tonight is budget night in Australia, the local equivalent to the president speech on new year in France, or the prime minister speech to the queen in England.

A celebration of the great national achievements – allowing women to protests without being shot and all those things, alongside speech writing chest beating in a chorus of approving hear hears.

And the oh so important business of redistributing tax payers money in a way or another.

Tonight I still have the vivid memory of witnessing Archie Roach, and I will not spoil that privilege with nonsense.

For those with a Spotify account, I made a playlist that pretty much retraces the two sets he sang on that night.

Tonight is a night for beating my own drum, and celebrating myself.

Archie Roach and mothers day weekend have taught me very important lessons.

I have a new exercise routine, that involves swimming laps, a spa, and a sauna.

I watched the sun set over Leanganook.

Small steps.

“Archie aren’t you tired of singing this song? Hey not really because every time I sing it a little more of the pain is taken away.”

Archie Roach has this incredibly generous and powerful gift. Some survivors have that, sometimes.

Of describing the pain and the joy, the grief and the loss, the hope, the healing and the beauty of life, touching your heart all along the way.

Of unveiling the universal while recounting his own experiences and quite incredibly allowing you to meet him there.

It feels like a rare privilege.

He talks Ruby, and Ruby very soon becomes more. She becomes the past love every person in the room ever had, whose absence comforts and pains all at once.

“It’s not just about you, Archie Roach”, she told him, and those words convinced him to record his first album.

I cried. I laughed. I cried again.

We all did.

Nine songs. Many stories. Two sets. A sold out theatre. A long and grateful standing ovation.

I cried again when I left. There were so many red eyes.

Set 1

Charcoal lane
Took the children away
Tell me why
Open up your eyes

Set 2

Down city streets
Nopun Kurongk
The old days
I will always be there
The summer of my life

Another game, another selfie

(may the sun shine forever)

Some recent epiphanies.

.

#1

What really aches is the memory of past hurts.

Unattended past hurts need attention. It is a slow and self dedicated process. If attended regularly, healing eventually will take place.

Past and present pain can be confusing, sharing the same level of intensity, and often triggered in patterns. Only present call for immediacy.

By dissociating the memory of past hurts from the actual ripples of present actions and events, we can recognize that the present hurt, if acknowledged, is often less acute than it first appear, and less overwhelming.

“When we deny our stories, they define us.

When we run from struggle, we are never free.”

Brene Brown

.

.

#2

Some talks, encounters and events accidentally shift your ways.

By revealing your place on a bigger picture, by shining a new light on an issue, by uncovering a state of your mind that you didn’t know yet.

For this to happen some conditions need to be met: being open to it, and honest enough with yourself during before and after to face it.

“Showing up is our power.”

Brene Brown

Fier de mes vers de terre.

Il y a un an, un peu paniqué à l’idée de composter sur un espace de moins de 10 hectares, j’ai acheté un système bokashi.

Il y avait un seau.

Une poudre magique.

Et un sabot

Aujourd’hui j’ai préparé la plantation des Feijoa achetés Dimanche.

Au fond de chaque trou, il y avait ça.

Small steps.

Hanging home

Few things I learnt today, and a selfie.

.

There seems to be a mercy rule in junior football. No goal can increase a ten goals lead. They will not be recorded, only behinds will.

.

There doesn’t seem to be such a rule in netball.

.

Flag people at the opposite side of the football oval wave flag at each other after every single score, goal or behind.

.

The Carisbrook Redbacks junior football and netball team play extremely well at every level.

.