In Search of Lost Time

 

 

Should we read the masterpiece of Marcel Proust?

Should we read seven volumes and three thousand pages????

Certainly!

You have to read it to escape the stress of a life totally devoted to the future!! Proust reminds us that sometimes and very often It is particularly important to accept silence, but we have to be present in a world and learn how to appreciate it.

This morning I was looking at old manuscripts and I found the following text I wrote a few years ago:

 

I am floating in the ocean here in Miami and millions of images are invading me... I was recently told that in September I will be honored by a foundation for lifetime achievements... 
Achievements? I really and honestly hope that I deserve such a wonderful prize!

Did I really achieve anything? 

What does achievement really mean? Is it to be recognized for what we have done?

Enough with questions about life and what I have done or not done, let us forget all this and enjoy the day….

This morning the ocean is incredibly ideal, ideal temperature, no waves, no seeds, 

No JELLYFISH...and NOBODY around! Che Pace!!!!

Or maybe because it is six in the morning, and everybody continues to be asleep missing some especially important moments of life (smiling)...            I walk in the water, and I swim, and I float, and I dream...

And I think and I remember...all the oceans and seas I have plunged my body at one time when I was young and strong and full of hopes and plans for the future…

The Mediterranean Sea in Carthage near Tunis the city of my birth, the ocean in Martinique, the sea in Madagascar and Reunion Island where I was touring with a theater company,  and the red sea and the Caspian Sea and the Caribbean Sea or the beaches of Dar Es Salaam or South Africa or Sweden or ten other seas all over the world…. The time of my youth when I was dreaming of becoming Marlon Brando.

Yes, I remember I wrote this a few years ago about my young age trying to be.

 

 

And then this morning, putting my 78 years old out of my bed at 5 30 am like every morning, I opened a drawer , went through some manuscripts, and found a lot of material about Brecht, material accumulated when I was directing Mother Courage with my theater company. I found  the following text :

“This is the year which people will talk about.

This is the year which people will be silent about.

The old see the young die.

The foolish see the wise die.

The earth no longer produces, it devours. The sky hurls down no rain, only iron.“
   Bertolt Brecht

 

Strangely enough Brecht wrote this more than 70 years ago, and soon after when I was young and discovering with beatitude the world, I was trying to create a new life for myself and spending my time dunking my ignorance in the seas of the planet.

So, at the same time I and many others around me lived in beatitude and false creativity, while some lived in fear and contemplation of a destroyed world… While “ The old see the young die.

The foolish see the wise die. “I was in a beautiful sea  somewhere in the world, believing that I was special, travelling alone all over and wanting to discover and to learn about life, about others, about my rights….

 Believing that I had paid my dues, I had been punished enough by life, and the time just to be happy and enjoy every moment was now with me, so let us do it…                                                               

 

Maybe the few months I spent in Nepal in this Temple should have opened my eyes. In Nepal I had learned that the world is not what we decide and has not been created only for our well-being. We have to worship mother nature, the sun, the moon, the wind, and the fire….We cannot spend our time ignoring the real facts.

Oh Really????                  

 

How can we so often live in our so-called happiness and ignore the incredibly dramatic life of others? How can we continue to believe we are creating ‘ART’ or what we believe is ‘ART’ when so many are dying of hunger, poverty, terrible wars, and political restrictions.

The first time it is reported that some people were being butchered we had a scream of horror. Then a hundred were butchered and we commented on it.. And when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, we found refuge in total silence. When the world falls in the hands of the devil, nobody even says: NO, enough.

I lived most of the beginning of my adult age ignoring all this, continuing to look for MY WELL BEING, IGNORING THE SUFFERING OF OTHERS, and believing that I was special since I had suffered enough, and certainly ready for life and deserving a great future… Yes, I was special in my selfishness, and time went on and life went on , and suffering went on…Now I am in admiration of the ones who spend their life helping others and trying to make life of others bearable.

Unfortunately, it is more and more difficult because today we live in a complete change of ways of leading a life, it is not choice anymore but obligations… Yes, the time of having choices is gone, we have to do what people expect, we have to be according to new rules,  we have to function the way the new world decides and needs us to function.

 

It is increasingly hard to adapt to the new world … I do not know if it is my advanced age or the fact that everything changes every day, but it is increasingly difficult not to say impossible to follow the trends and the new ways of thinking. Approaching questions or even looking at the world with sanity and innocence is becoming impossible. It is unfortunate, and it is really tragic…. But I have to go on and to continue to try…

 

 Another quote from Brecht

 “In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.”

Are we going to continue to accept this masquerade of life? What can we do? It seems that others impose on us who we are, what we do, how to think and what to think of others!!  And we do all this to each other!!! 

 

Of course Fate and Destiny have a role to play, and life is often a lottery, but we should not believe that fate and destiny are the only determining factors, we have to believe that we can change the world or our world by shaping it, by interpreting it, by looking at it in a different way…AND BY REFUSING TO FOLLOW THE ONLY WAY KNOWN TOO OFTEN AS THE TREND.

Yes, sure, why not? I am dreaming again and If I think that way, soon I am going to believe I am somebody else…                                                             

The reality is: We cannot say anything to anybody anymore; everybody has good reasons to be who he is, to believe what he wants, to act following his desires…so why should we expect anything from anybody? Why should we believe that we know something?

 

I have the feeling I am not in touch with most of everything …

In public, in our work, even with our friends we cannot address what we really feel about this one or that one, about an aspect of life without taking the risk to be seen as a strange person in the best case or an agitator and may be mental in other cases 

I thought that to be good to some people deserved some recognition?

 

After all these years navigating all over, I still did not get that I have to accept that to do nothing means to open the door to everything… expect nothing from anybody…do not ask anything…do not try to create anything…wait for things to happen, for the world to guide you, for other like you to tell you what to do when they finally look at you…Right? Guess what? NO, NO… I refuse, life would be a torture and a total boredom.

 

“The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What is left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.”

Brecht