You create time. Every day. From the get go, you decide when your day start and when it ends. You decide its pauses and rhythms. Your time is not everyone’s. It is yours. Worst punishment you can inflict on someone? Steal from that person the ability to decide on her/his time. This miracle can only exist because of your perceptions, your mind, your decisions. It is quite simply the paradox that fascinates me most.
Albertville. A flow of humanity, trucks and animals all running to or from the water in a cloud of diesel smokes and dust. She starts retreating towards the hotel. The humidity is cloying. Rising from the Lake, it mixes with laterite dust to pulverise into an airborne mist, and dissolves…
40 years ago, Claviers in the South of France. Suzanne sits in her chair in the living room. She sits straight upright. As always, as proper. 90 degree angle between spine and thighs, that is what Mother has said. No slouching. That is not ladylike! Rather more frighteningly, this is…
Doom diving from on high, whooshing past the balcony. Adjusting angle and speed for the perfect hit. No hesitation, no brakes, terminal velocity. Darting to and fro, like a loony woodpecker. Hovering an instant, blinking out of existence the next. Gravity? Flight envelope? Nah, one last wink over its shoulder...
Bed Wall Desk I lie. I stare. I read. Nothing in Nature is unbeautiful – Tennyson Desk Wall Bed I lie, eyes open. I stare, eyes open. I read. Eyes open. No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. – Kipling Bed Balcony Desk I sit. I...
I was born Here. That’s what I was repeatedly being told. Also, I lived Here because Here was best for everything. Primarily because the schools were really good. Of course, Elsewhere, it was warmer, nicer, cheaper, more colourful, and definitely more exciting, more interesting. Elsewhere was, in one word, better. That is...
“You never enter the same river twice” ~ Heraclitus the Obscure aka Heraclitus of Smyrna That was tradition. It was their tradition. Theirs. They just knew each other’s exact thoughts as they happened: glimpses of Zanzibar, Dar-Es-Salam, Conakry… So many harbours, so many colours, so many times. They were standing side...
My grandparents thought Christmas was too commercial. Their parents did too. How did they say it? With the story of the Orange on the Dresser. A European trope. It goes something like this: “We used to get only one orange on the 25th, you know, and we were grateful for...
3 years later and I still miss smoking every single day. I miss the comforting little boundary of me-space that a cloud of smoke creates. Every now and then, I am asked why I stopped, why I did not stop earlier, or why I ever smoked in the first place....
Standing Stone. Aka menhir. A word that evokes moors, moss, lichen and mottled rock. Alone, in a line or in a circle. Standing in a clearing, hidden in a forest, or lying by a road, menhirs are everywhere in the world. Since centuries? No, for millennia. They are history, timelessness. Still,...
The Past used to be carefully curated, enshrined, slightly dusty gallery of exhibits. While we tend to mesh timelines, it is more and more an open-air mine of ideas, choices, opportunities. Wrongly done, it could become a sterile endless loop of recycled ideas, done right, we can create new elements by recombining the essence of the best of it. The Past could be the new future.
August 16, 2024
My Heritage | Travel Trunks and Suitcases
August 2, 2024
August 9, 2024
August 30, 2024
From Ghent to Likasi, the Heart of Darkness
September 20, 2024
November 15, 2024
WWI in Soissons, Henri Penotet and the Big Bomb
November 8, 2024
November 29, 2024
December 6, 2024
My Heritage | The Story Starts with Africa
July 26, 2024