TEARS

I just came back from Detroit for David DiChiera’ funeral service… 

It was emotional and beautiful, full of tears, memories of great times and great moments of creativity. But also, for many of us memories of pain, anguish about time passing and life sometimes escaping us.

Most of the time, because of David,   there were feelings of joy that sometimes we had achieved a full life, met great people and created great friendship.

Yes, David is leaving us, I wanted to scream in the theater:                      ” No please David do not go!  You are not going, you will never go away in our hearts and our minds: you will be a perpetual and strong presence in whatever is left in our life, an example of how to be.”

You were, and you are, the reason why we became the artists we believe we can sometimes be.

 You were the one who believed in us and gave us chances and opportunities. You were the one who was always present in our life and you will be forever part of us…

David you were the father and the brother I lost at a young age and often alone in the world of so many different foreign countries where I had to build a new life without the possibility of replacing them …

BUT THEN I met you in 1982… It was like a thunder in my life, you believed in me and gave me the chances that nobody did before in my lonely, adventurous and turbulent life.

I was already 38 and trying to make a life and a career in the world of opera,which was for me a total new world..AGAIN…

                                                                                                             You took the risk to trust me with a great opportunity and continued to believe in me for 35 years regularly giving me new challenges in your opera company…                                                                    

Of course, our CYRANO will be part of our common history forever… You as the composer and I as the librettist working closely together to achieve what I believe is a musical masterpiece that the future generations will recognize.

But as I told you many times, it is difficult to be part of the trend when we are not part of the trend.                           

But time will be in your favor and will honor your work.

When I was in the theater this weekend honoring you, your picture was projected on a screen, and I could not stop crying looking at you…

Your gentleness, your comprehension of human dilemmas, your serenity about life. Your constant love for all of us were present…

And how, could I not think about our dear Mark Flint, our friend of so many years who left us in 2012, his intense participation in Cyrano….                                                                

YES MARK AND DAVID ARE GONE, MY TWO BROTHERS ARE GONE AGAIN… Are life and its pains a perpetual resumption?

David we will miss you forever, not that is not enough, to follow your message and be worthy of your heritage we will continue to function, and we will be present to honor you and your memory.

On my way to Detroit, in the plane, I chose to watch a movie called DISOBEDIENCE,

Fate? Coincidence? This movie brought back to me so many memories of my childhood….   It is set in a Jewish surrounding in London and deals with choices in life…

Memories of my young life with a brother and a father who disappeared very soon from my world, memories of a Jewish tradition that I never had the opportunity to practice after the age of 16, memories of what could have been a life!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was ready to acknowledge David Dichiera input in my life… And watching this movie, so many memories were aggressing me in the plane, all my childhood, all my attempt to be, to try to become somebody later, with never any help but actually most of the time having to deal with the contempt of people for the strange one around them… I was always the stranger, the different one, the question mark.

NO WONDER I DECIDED TO BECOME AN ARTIST or at least to tempt to be an artist, at least I had an excuse or a reason to be different.

 And unfortunately, this followed me all my life…I was always everywhere the stranger, the different one, and I have to say more in this country than in France coming from Tunisia, even if this country is my country now and I am proud to be part of it, a country I love and that gave me all possible chances.

Wherever I am, I went, or I was, … people make me feel different…I have an accent everywhere, most of the time people do not know where to place me…. More than 55 years of being seen as different  is exhausting.

Do people understand that there are other ways of thinking? Other ways of being? Other ways of anything?

I arrived in Detroit full of all these memories and all these pains inside me.

 I walked to the theater and sat by myself on the third row, I was probably the third person to arrive there, in front of me was David’s picture looking at us and then for me the entire theater went to dark, it was only David looking at me… David was invading my thoughts, my heart and my memories…

His gentleness, his comprehension of human behavior, his incredible humanity went thru me again and made me feel more peaceful while tears were running on my cheeks.                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

During the time in the theater honoring you David, everybody was in TEARS thinking of you and I was myself overwhelmed by the showing of so many people coming to me and expressing feelings towards me, knowing my relationship with you and the recent events in my life…

So many testimonies and proofs of affection from Men and Women who were totally comforting in ANOTHER DIFFICULT TIME IN MY LIFE…

But David do not worry about me, this difficult time, while destroying my reputation, is not destroying my strength, unfortunately or fortunately I have seen much worse in my life..And real facts or absence of real facts will one day emerge….and the people responsible for that, will……

On my way back from Detroit, I was watching the second half of the movie DISOBEDIENCE.

I was still overwhelmed by sorrow to have lost my dear friend, and also overwhelmed by proofs of friendship to me by so many people, and testimonies of real worries about me and my next step in life, yes next step, life is never finished. 
Even if between us, I do not think about the next step of my life, I am more concerned about the worries of people around me and so dear to me.                                                                                                                               

The second half of DISOBEDIENCE was in the David Dichiara way of being, of thinking, of feeling…,                                        

 It was all about compassion , forgiveness, love, AND FREEDOM TO CHOOSE…

Yes, can we be strong enough to forgive? Strong enough to have compassion? Strong enough to try to love? Even for the people who have been so trying to judge us, to negate us, to destroy us?

Tears are part of life and often are the way to deal with painful realities, but tears should not prevent us to go ahead, we every day have new responsibilities and we must go for it…Tears and feelings should be the background of our soul but not the engine of our actions. Tears can be sometimes the revelation of a next step, the beginning of new thoughts and new decisions.

Since 1982 I do not remember one person talking negatively about David, did he succeed in this way of being?

                                                                                                        Life is a constant attempt to acquire knowledge, knowledge of the passed thru history, and knowledge of the present thru experience….                                                                                      These days are very difficult because we must acquire new ways very fast and too many times to apply it even if it is not digested totally and it creates mistakes…

This past weekend has been another opportunity to learn, to feel. to go back to the past, to have more thoughts about experiences, and to try, even if it is difficult, to new ways of being alive.

But David and his way of being, his understanding of the world and human relations, his artistic genius, will always be a model.

David, you have been an example, David we will always love you.

                                                                                                                                                                

EXCESS? … CREATIVITY?

Excess or creativity?

Are artists or people who are creating new styles, new ways of thinking, and new ideas always excessive people?                                                                    

 I recently watched the movie about the designer McQueen which dealt with his creativity and his life, His life was certainly fascinating and his approach to life was a daily adventure and very excessive ….                     

YET, Excessive according to what? To the average way of living? Excessive according to the standards of the period?                                                            

Are creators, inventors, innovators, artists, great performers who really have the power to touch us, excessive in their lives and in their ways of creativity? 

Is their excessive personality a function of genetics? A function of upbringing? A result of education?

Is there a way to find a balance between the great moments of creativity which can be excessive and the reality of each single moment of life?

 A few years ago, I wrote at the beginning of this blog my first encounter with acting in the class of Tania Balachova… I went with a friend to a small theater in Paris called " theatre de l' épée de bois":

Here is what I wrote:

“Already the name of the theater made me grin, so full of lies, Theater of the wooden sword, come on! A wooden sword? Why not a wooden life, a wooden emotion, a wooden anger, a wooden anything.

I arrive and sit in the back seats of the small theater .............................................................................

Madame Balachova is walking up and down the aisle giving indication to a young girl who was trying to be Ophelia in Shakespeare Hamlet

The girl could not really follow the indications of Tania, but Tania was insisting, pushing her verbally, calling her names, asking her to be the little girl of her childhood, to think about her mother, to REALLY go back to the time where she was alone and desperate, Making her repeat the same line again and again, whispering to her what the words meant, prompting her with other words , the words which are not said in a text but are thought, AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN...Going into her head and body , asking questions about her life , about her past , about her dreams .

The girl suddenly burst into tears and delivered the lines with so much truth, so much emotion, so much tenderness and passion.  

She was suddenly herself and not a caricature of herself, she looked suddenly like another person, like she had been invaded by herself.                                                       I felt tears running on my cheeks... I had not cried in months, in hundreds of years, in my entire life, I was feeling what I had never felt ... And it lasted 15 minutes, 20 minutes, an eternity.

Tania told the girl enough for today...

- Who is next?

Some students raised their hands, she turned to me:

- Who are you? I have never seen you here? What are you doing here?

- I came to watch with a friend

- To watch? Nobody watches here, everybody is part of it ... Go on the stage

- No, I have nothing to say, nothing to do, I am not an actor but a doctorate student at the university

- You look very young to be a university student, go on stage and tell me about you. I said GO ON STAGE, DO YOU HEAR ME?

I almost told her to get lost and left but her face looking at me was so full of strength and of honesty and at the same time of gentleness that I decided to go on stage.

- Talk to me about you, you want to be an actor?

- No

- What do you want to be?

- I don't know

- You don't know?

- No

- Read this

She gave me a book.

-Open the book page 15

- Why?

-OPEN THE BOOK

I did ... It was the monologue of Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky

-Read, READ

I started to read it

- Louder...Do you know Raskolnikov? do you know Dostoyevsky?

- Yes, I read the novel.

- DO YOU KNOW HIM?

- I read the novel

- So you believe you know him because you read the novel? READ AGAIN

………………………………………………….

-Now, I want you to think about your father while you read

- My father is dead

- Think of him

……………………………………..

- Now think about your family, your brothers and sisters

- I do not have any, I had a brother, he died

- Think of him

……………….. I read and read and read

   

- Start again from the beginning but before, tell me:

Are you from the eastern countries or are you Jewish?

- I am Jewish, why?

- Because you have a pain inside you that you need to use, to control…

Read Raskolnikov and let him be you with your own pains, your own story.

I read and read and read , I could not stop  and she did not stop me, images of my childhood were invading me, images of my brother and all the dead invading me, they were alive again, talking to me, telling me to take care of me, to take care of my mother... and Raskolnikov I was reading became my words , my life , my Pain... I could not stop. I started to walk while reading and I was alive.

After a long time, who seems to be a few minutes, she said:

- Enough for today, come back tomorrow, you are now my student.

- I cannot pay.

- Who is asking you to pay anything, be here tomorrow at 11 am precisely.

I left the theater, swearing that I will never be back…

I walked thru the streets, I felt good, I felt free for the first time in years, I looked at people and smiled at them, I did not hate anybody, my heart was full of good feelings, I even help an old lady cross the street.

I was there the following day at 10 am and waited an hour in the street for the theater to open

I had memorized Raskolnikov,  

Theater was invading me and changed my life”

Certainly, Tania Balachova method, thoughts and actions will not today be accepted by a large group of people mentioning that it is an attack against personality and freedom.                                                                                   Was it abuse of power, and EXCESS to find Creativity?

Is Stanislavski method not possible anymore?

Last week I heard about a very strange event… At an audition, among many other artists, a singer proposed to sing a specific aria and was told that since the aria had been heard many times that day that it would be preferable for the singer to sing something else… The following day the artist wrote on social medias that this audition had destroyed his confidence, and that the judges had no right to ask for that and it was also mentioned that probably it will take a long time to recuperate from this very painful experience…

Was his reaction excessive without being creative?

The following day, a young director called me to ask for my opinion.

He was directing somewhere and was reprimanded by the company director because he was described by a singer as difficult and having an uncontrollable attitude…I asked him

-What happened?

He said;

-Yesterday at the rehearsal of Traviata, traditional production, the tenor came to rehearse in a short, tee shirt and flip flops…

I (the director) told him that he should wear something more adequate/appropriate for the rehearsals to be able to work on the character.

The answer was:” I can wear whatever I want, and you have no right whatsoever to talk like this…”

I gave the young director my opinion….

It reminded me of the time when I asked an artist to dig into his personal life to find an equivalent for a dramatic moment by calling upon an emotional memory and the answer was:

-I am here to sing, not to reveal who I am to people who are just colleagues.

Yes, I know, times, styles, and methods have changed.

I often take the example of Faust calling for Satan when he cannot find answers to his questions about the world and the torments in his soul.

Can we say we have to try Satan and possible excesses to create or even to continue to be?

Of course, we will use a new way of calling Satan…Reinvent everything? Recast the basics of our world, recreate human relations, political order, artistic values? Is the period we are living just a transition to another world?

Can creativity exist without excess? All revolutions fell into excess, but how long should this excess be predominant? What about the victims of this excess? Can we accept that they are part of the sacrifice we must go through for the new creativity?

Do we need to try to live in the new world and the new laws of society? Or do we have to lie or fake or disguise ourselves in order not to be transparent?

Until when can we ask questions about everything because we are not part of the new rules of society?

Can creativity exist without excess?                                                      Certainly!                                                                                                   Generations of artists, philosophers, writers, inventors were creating and functioning without any kind of excess in their art or private life and are recognized as masters… Or were they excessive in their lack of excess?????

Yes, the dangers of any kind of excesses are very present and ACTUALLY EXCESSSIVE EXCESS WILL PREVENT CREATIVITY!!!!!!!!

So, what do we do? Were do we belong? Can we really find the kind of person we are? Can we be a wonderfully touching Ophelia without any kind of research into our soul and using it? Can we be a total artist without trying to give all of ourselves?

I let you decide.

IS IT TIME………………??????

 Through most of our lives we should be asking ourselves this basic question: IS IT TIME?? But most of the time this question is ignored, too often the challenge of defining our destiny, our fate, our next step in the search for happiness, fulfillment, balance and limitless options is not really seen with urgency, discernment or even acuity.

It starts from the beginning of life, if not the dawn of time.

When IS IT TIME during adolescence under the supervision of parents, if we are lucky enough to have them around, to choose new friends or new schools or to start to uphold our responsibilities towards our families and society at large.

 It is obviously not so simple since adolescence is the age of questioning and too often not enough of the necessary points of comparisons have been experienced in our adolescence.   However, we all have a duty to raise these questions to young people and advise them in their search for the answer.

Some of us unfortunately must answer the very painful question:

IS IT TIME to emigrate from my homeland due to unstable political climate?

Or is it time to emigrate out of the necessity to survive and in hopes of finding a better life elsewhere where more respect will be shown to human beings. How long can I endure the suffering of some while I have no possibilities to be an agent of changes?

 But by leaving my country, can I really survive in a new world? Will I be able to adapt to new ways? Do I really have a choice? BUT It is time to know, make a decision and take chances.

IS IT TIME to go in another direction in our profession? How long can we believe that it is still possible to find success or at least some kind of achievement or recognition? If that definition of success is not visible on the horizon, should we change our ways, or should we change our aims?

Is it time to face reality and plunge into another adventure or another dimension to find the balance between our dreams and the reality of where we belong.

At what point should we disguise the real facts with superficial changes to certain aspects of our profession.

Will we have the courage to confront our dreams and realize they are not reality?  

To acknowledge that, while we can continue to dream, it is time to build our professional life to a more consistent possibility. The sacrifice can be very hurtful for a time, but we have to try to achieve some peace in our heart and soul with the new choice of destiny.

IS IT TIME to ascend to a higher level of knowledge? To continue to learn through others, through the geniuses of history, by reading, by listening, by thinking?

 It is time to accept that we still need to feed our souls, our intellects, our views of the world and society with more research, more thoughts, more work. It is time to grow up and broaden our horizons.                                                                                                     

It seems that these days, most of our learning is through the internet and social medias…These channels certainly have some values but maybe it is time to spend some TIME with the basics of culture and be enriched by the masters of our civilization, masters of Philosophy, Literature, Music, and all art forms. 

Yes, it should be time to read Descartes, Dante, Malaparte, Dostoyevsky, Virginia Wolf, Gabriel Garcia Marquez....

  and one hundred others.                  

Of course, this higher level of knowledge does not solely pertain to those of us in the arts.

There are certainly higher levels of knowledge in every profession, scientific or otherwise.

The acquisition of knowledge does not occur by miraculous happenstance, it is the result of devotion and assiduity.

IS IT TIME to make basic choices about what life has to offer?

I know that these days are difficult because an increasing number of possibilities is offered to us every day, so how can we discern what is the best for us? Even if we should have the rights to choose other paths and other opportunities offered to us, should we keep in mind that it is time for some basic choices. Yes, the world for ever offer new attractive adventures, perhaps  it is time to be ready for those adventures and concentrate of the open doors offered to us.

IS IT TIME to renew a relationship with former friends that distance, time or new interests have set a climate of ignorance for each other? IS IT TIME to call, to send a message, to try to reach?  Real friends are not given to us perpetually, and they should be cherished and cultivated, Of course, life offers to us many opportunities to meet new people and to install new friendships  but....Real friends should be stay present always in our life or at least our mind. We should continue to relate with this person or these people who at one point were considered as friends and who for reasons we sometimes ignore disappeared in the waves of life.

Considered as friends? What is a friend? How can we define the notion of friendship?     IS IT TIME for each of us to try to know what we call friendship? Is a friend somebody with whom we like to go out, socialize over drinks, HAVE A GOOD TIME? Is a friend a person in whom we have total confidence, who will never betray us, who will never try to hurt us? Is a friend somebody with whom we like to exchange ideas, hopes, stories, adventures? OR MAY BE THE DEFINITION of a friend is someone who is all the above…In that case, good luck, they are not so easy to find.

Anuway, each of us should decide about a definition, but IT IS TIME.

IS IT TIME to stop using all these PRODUCTS which make us believe that they relax us or make us more interesting, freer, and more attractive in society or in a group of so called friends? You know I am speaking of the pills sometimes prescribed by doctors, and the incredible abuse of alcohol with disastrous consequences later in life?                                                              It is time to know when to stop, when to be yourself without the perpetual help of chemical products! We must discover who we are inside, who is the real MOI, read Carl Jung and learn about yourself…                                                                                          I know that sometimes these abuses are a consequence of a life becoming too tense in the race for success and survival, or the result of a tense relationship but IT IS TIME to practice moderation in the use of artificial crutches before it is too late.

IS IT TIME to try to build a society based on equal rights, equal opportunities, equal roles in the possible new directions that evolution of times dictate? A society in which people respect each other?                                                                            

Rules have an evolution based on the progress of the human spirit and the recognition of new needs, new discoveries. Yes, we must defend causes with no restrictions, we must believe in new ways of society, we must continue to fight for an equal society where all tights are respected but not at the detriment of truth or seeing all sides.

 It is time to go back to a decent society in which people respect each other...Yes, we must defend causes if these causes can advance our world.

IS IT TIME at one point of life to decide to go away because the new world is too difficult to understand? Each generation has its new rules, its new way of living, its new understanding of what to do and not to do and that should be totally respected…  

Just it is time to be careful of how we want to implement these new rules! I know the French revolution to find LIBERTE, EGALITE, FRATERNITE went very often too far in the implementation of the new world… We must learn the lessons taught by history and try to be more cautious.

No. it is not time to go away, it should never be time to go away, it is time to look elsewhere, may be, and start a new adventure in life...There is no age limit on adventure.There are always possibilities when we remain vigilant and curious

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD

I have been silent for a few months basically because I have been overwhelmed… Unfortunately, not overwhelmed by work, I am used to that, but overwhelmed by the wonderful world we are living in. 

I thought that in my life I had lived and survived the worst conditions, possibilities and bad times that I could realistically go through without losing my mind. My parents went through the holocaust, I had to leave my birth country as a refugee, I lost a brother and a father at a young age and more recently I defeated cancer etc.…. But you know all this and more, so no need to rehash…

YES, so many years of struggle and pain and sorrow but also incredible and intense adventures and challenges…. Never during these years have I felt powerless or cornered in a dark room. I was always ready to look at the next closed door, ready to break in, to fight, to overcome fate, to win and go to the next stage of life.                                                                                                              

SO WHY OVERWHELMED NOW? IS IT OLD AGE TAKING POSSESSION OF MY MIND, MY VITALITY, MY STRENGHTH? IS IT JUST WISDOM TELLING ME TO CALM DOWN AND TO CONSIDER THE LAST FEW YEARS WITH SERENITY??? MAY BE IT IS ONLY DIFFICULTIES TO ADAPT TO NEW WAYS OR COMPREHEND THE NEW WORLD?

I believed that I had reached a stage of life where I could rest on my laurels and go through the last chapter with smiles, trust in others or at least some of them, peace and confidence in a wonderful world…  But, this last chapter is darker every day, and the darkness denser every day makes any action almost impossible, and even thoughts are impaired.

                                                                                                                                                

Life goes so fast that it seems I was twenty years old YESTERDAY and caressing time….

I was playing with life but always consistently prepared for the new challenge, I made so many plans, every day thinking of my next adventure, of my next chapter but always trying to be in control of it, preparing myself extensively ... Reading, studying,  learning from the Masters of the past, finding perpetual new knowledge...
I ran all over the world forever and was learning from every possibility, every encounter, trying new ways of being, knowing that each experience would bring me to a step further towards the discovery of who I was.

Unfortunately, times have changed drastically and continue to change at an incredible speed, never in human history have basics of life changed so fast.

It seems that today, knowledge is not important anymore, to know is to know what button to push to have a fast answer! Amateurism is king, the notion of real art based on talent, work and knowledge is disappearing. 

I know that every generation has different goals, different lifestyles, different beliefs but are there still possibilities for the younger generation to go through their strong years with a life based on humanity and feelings?

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD

It seems that today everything is based on superficiality, on social medias detailing every moment of today’s life, most of the time not very interesting. I walk in the streets and rarely I see a person who does not have a cell phone in his hands or attached to his ears… The world of Instagram is now the new world for a majority of people and reaches all levels of society.

Sometimes I would like to be born again knowing what I know now. Being young again KNOWING….                                                                                                                            Is that what the old Faust really wanted? Why did nobody bring to the young Faust the wisdom of the old Faust.                                                                                

 WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD. 

                                                                                                                           I am not capable anymore of distinguishing the meaning of truth in the non-sense of today’s life. My creative strengths are disappearing, are wilting, are lost in the present society and its new rules, its new approaches to human relations or absence of relations. It seems that I do not belong anywhere, I do not know what words to use since it is too often taken the wrong way or with a different interpretation than my intention, I do not even know what to say or not to say to most people, and I am consistently always being reminded to be careful about what I do, what I think.

 Unfortunately, we live in a time where the old conflicts of life, the pains we endured are nothing compared to the mood that we have created in this society. I am almost regretting the times of tragedies we all go through in our life when I contemplate the wonderful world we are living in.

Everybody deserves everything, everybody has strong and definite opinions about everything. Everybody can flaunt his definite ideas and expose his occupations as if it is the center of the world and the center of everybody’s life BUT IN THE SAME TIME EVERY THOUGHT IS SEEN AS AN ATTACK TO SOMEBODY OR SOMETHING AND WE ARE ACCUSED TO BE … I cannot even mention the names. It would be improper on today’s rules.

But of course, let’s not forget to flaunt pictures of the last dinner, the last party, the last street we walked in, the last whatever, it is the most important way of showing that we exist and have a voice in today’s world. A world of self-importance, a world of gossips, a society based on mistrust, accusations, unprofessional attitudes and dehumanized life.

Wooden boxes, paper boxes, empty boxes are more real.

Everything seems to be rehearsed, organized, rehashed but according to strange new rules, and nothing is true, nothing is really Real.

Where is the time before this wonderful world when we were fighting for lost and even ridiculous causes? 

I thought we had reached a time when we could talk freely about feelings and tastes and directions of life and even different ways of looking at relationships.

What happened to our dreams of happiness for a society full of clemency, forgiveness, understanding? The time where we were building the tomorrow full of hopes and trust?

Everybody believes he has the right, under the anonymity, to cover somebody in mud with accusations about behavior, tastes, attitudes, fake adventures, and with words thrown in a specific situation…Everybody with no real responsibility HAS THE RIGHT to print what he wants for the benefit of the entire population hungry for dirt and tattles, and in consequence, tarnish or in certain cases, ruin a life.

 Even I, would not dare to do that, but people have no shame? The most surprising is that I am still asking this question, I had the answer a very long time ago...Shame is an invention of religion, it is not part of our basic psyche, we don’t know shame, some are just afraid to be caught or exposed or shown, so they are ashamed...

Makes me laugh or grin... No, actually grin.

The shattered sky has changed its sky…It is not Shattered anymore, it is in pieces, it is in disarray, it is an unrecognizable sky. I look at the young man of my youth (Julien) and

I wonder how he would function in this wonderful world… I forgive him, he was right to be this child full of anger, he had a premonition of the present WONDERFUL WORLD. He would not need to murder truth anymore, there is no truth …

Should we still try to find some truth in life? But the truth of what? The truth of the lies of a fertile imagination? The truth of the unfinished fantasies?  Of the last APP, of the last desire to harm, of the need of revenge using tools of the everyday new technology?                                    

A long life has passed, and wisdom took possession of Julien.

Wisdom???? Really wisdom? Today, wisdom is not considered as knowledge but as living in another century, another world, another dimension.

Are we at the end of a civilization or at the beginning of a new one. Should we hope that we are at a turning point and soon we will be in the next stage and find new truth and new humanity?

For the moment

WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD

AND PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME A COMMENT SAYING “ YES BERNARD YOU ARE GETTING OLD”

THE GIFTS OF LIFE

Yesterday, very early in the morning, I walked the streets of Manhattan for more than 3 hours…not really going anywhere just walking with no real destination or purpose, just another illustration of everyday life. 

But quickly, and for no apparent reason, it became a fascinating plunge into the memories of my time in Paris in the early sixties when I walked and walked and walked, incessantly, every day for most of the day, discovering the city and many different neighborhoods of varying cultures, trying to understand the people in this new country, trying to be part of it, trying to feel like I belonged to the strange and sometimes negative world it was for me.

I was very young and already my head was spinning and my mind was confused by the mixed memories of the dramatic recent past years and this new way of living. I learned so many things in these walking adventures close to madness, just watching and wondering about where I would be in this new life with no real links to the real world.

Will I belong to it? Will I understand it? It was an incredible change for me, like a nightmare or maybe sometimes the impossible dream of a new life.                          

Then in the subsequent years, I continued to learn in my crazy travelling all over the world, discovering complete new civilizations and who I could maybe become outside of ME and MY SELF-CENTERED WAY OF LIFE.                                                                                                     

More than fifties years have passed and here I am walking in the streets of Manhattan, wondering and wandering, with memories again assaulting me and I became more and more aware during these 3 hours, how lucky I have been in my now long life…

I started to smile at my good fortune and then whistle and even sing loudly, some people looked at me thinking I had lost it.

Yes, lucky to meet during my life all these incredibly interesting and fascinating people who brought me so much in knowledge, in feelings, in the attempt to comprehend the world and to accept other’s behavior, understanding that we all function in our own ways, or at least we should….

Yes, lucky to understand with the help of others, that judging actions or behavior of others is not always justified.

Lucky to have kept eyes open to discover new worlds and lucky to have been opened by others to look and try to understand new minds and new ways….

Maybe this openness was due to my education or a lack of specific education -always being a foreigner or perceived as a different mind - forced me to find ways to adapt to others.

Sometimes it was difficult and even painful since new encounters and new relationships are not always fulfilling and sometimes create wounds or can even be destructive. Encounters that left me with a bad taste but were always an experience of life, a lesson and a better knowledge of human nature. 

         

Lucky to have been offered new adventures by fate or destiny, lucky to have gone through all these changes, the addition of responsibilities in my professional life with the desire to achieve, always attempting to grow in these different paths of life, adding more colors in everyday life and creating new challenges in order to still BE AND GROW.

Lucky to have met (and still meeting) so many people who believed in me, in my possibilities, and who gave me the tools to advance and to persevere in sometimes difficult situations. They were taking risks and I owe them everything, and these people are always present in my mind when it is my turn to try to help young people- I believe in- to achieve their dreams.

Yes, Luck has been on my side…Yes, very giving people have been on my side… Giving their time, their energy, their knowledge. Sometimes and even most of the time, giving to me without any expectation for me to give back. Did I ever realize it?  Was I conscious of all these gifts handed to me by others and was I really aware of this luck given to me?

Most of the time I did not realize it or perceive it… Was I just thinking in my world of constant need and denial that it was owed to me because I was special and more deserving than the big majority of people around me? Was I blinded by my own image?

Life has been an incredible gift, an incredible source of discovery and an incredible perpetual travel to the next stage, the next adventure, the next encounter.

Was I too busy, too selfish, too obsessed with power to realize the gifts of life? Or maybe I still am but I am going through a moment of clarity in the cloudy sky of life? Was the sky shattered forever?  I know it was not, I love the new sky and I am thankful for the gifts of life and still expecting other ones.

THANK YOU LIFE

I promised myself in the past few years and even more today, never to turn my back or ignore the ones who have been given to me, they are part of who I was, who I am, who I will be… for the years to come.

I was walking in the streets of Manhattan, and each store was bringing images to me, each coffee shop was talking to me with stories of the past…. Of course, we need some kind of imagination to look at a STARBUCKS and be reminded of a bar called “CHEZ FERNAND” fifty years before.                                                        But imagination authorizes the stories of the past to be present and real and beautiful. Imagination is the engine of creativity and sometimes can be the engine of happiness.

In Paris, at the beginning of time, after a long walk, I had to stop in a bar and ask for a glass of water to deal with my thirst and most of the time it was denied with impatience, a gesture of disdain and I was asked to leave the bar.

I sat in the street on the sidewalk and was thinking of what just happened, I decided to go to the next bar and then the next and the next one until a generous soul was finally pouring water (with no ice) in a glass.  I am still drinking water with no ice…maybe the unconscious memory. To almost beg for water was not depressing, it was an act of survival, and will be a lesson for all my life.                          

But now I can think “I made it” I do not need to beg for a glass of water… I can buy it and even more I can afford to buy a coca cola if I want… And yes, before you say it or even think it, I know that to “make it” is not only based on the power of money, but also on a million of other things…                                                      Achieving a balance between the positive and the negative aspects and events of life, finding some kind of peace within ourselves, contemplating the past with acquired serenity, looking at the future with assurance and bringing elements of our acquired knowledge and digested feelings and thoughts to as many  people as possible.

We have to go through life with open eyes on all the chances given to us, and be open to the new discoveries and the encounters who are incessantly presented to us…

Let’s be open to the gifts of life, because too often, we are and can be blinded by self-consciousness, self-importance, by education and sometimes because we have been spoiled in our adolescence or young adult age by the rest of the world.

When I was living in different countries than the US, the reputation of Americans was that they are happier, more innocent, more open to new ideas than we were… Please let’s be sure to go on and make this reputation a reality of everyday, it is a gift of life, it is the only way to go on with our mission… We do not need the fake gifts of substitutes presented to us, believing that they will help us to stay ourselves in search of success!