WITH TIME….

We are living difficult times but with time things will fall in place and we will dream again.

Yes, we are living exceedingly difficult times… The pandemic not under control and even expanding dramatically…Vaccination not available for too many of us...The incredible political situation and the terrible consequences on everyday life and the future of the country…A country we  love, where we came full of hopes for a better life than the one experienced in the other countries some of us lived in...

 For many people, a life of tragic events and fighting constantly to be accepted by others, to make their dreams become reality but it seems now that everybody is in the same terribly difficult situation and it is very painful, filling all of us with constant fear…

Yes, time and life go on, the parents of the young ones are wondering how to approach life and what will happen to their children, life in the beginning of adult age is a total mystery, the middle age people are going through a very dramatic period, and the elderly are very sad to finish their life in these conditions.                                                                                                                                                                                                           With time all goes away, yes all goes away ….  How many times in my life I thought I was living the last possible chapter, but I went on…Yes, even during the worst events of our life, we must continue to be, to survive, to think, to love and to create… Even if we are wounded by events, even if our heart does not beat regularly anymore, we must go on and look further and expect the next positive train AND TAKE IT…                  

 With time all goes away, but memories are still with us, the beautiful memories, and the ones we loved: we were looking for them under the rain, we could even recognize them at night in a dark corner in a street, yes with time not everything disappears… Let us remember the ones for whom we would have sold our soul, and for whom we were so worried because they had caught a cold…In the difficult times we cannot erase or forget our passions and the voices of the loved ones telling us: “be careful do not catch a cold, do not come home too late…”Even if we feel exhausted and powerless, betrayed by the lost times we must go on and cherish the beautiful memories…           

And please let us not make a big tragedy of little events in our life, let us not fall in the trap of what is” a la mode “and become part of the social medias. Most of us, these days, are constantly aggressed by others, by people who need to have their names printed on a newspaper or Facebook to feel that they exist… Can we forgive them? Depending on the gravity of the aggression, I will let you decide…

Winter is here now, and dead leaves are cracking on the ground and we wander in the streets by ourselves, alone, among a crowd of faces hidden behind a mask, like an old horror movie… Sitting in an outdoor restaurant place trying to believe that life is back… And we thought that we loved horror movies…

Many days, many nights have passed and we have to believe all the time that it will be the last sinking, and with spring coming, it will be fine… we will be again be permitted to talk about love and our passions, we will be again authorized to walk in the gardens full of flowers, and our distraught hearts will be in peace again…Is it true that lost time does not come back, may be, but another time will come…

With time things fall in place. With time we will dream again… We will go and heat ourselves in the sun again and be totally devoted to make our existence and other people’s life wonderful again…With time we will not fall into despair. Our life these days could look like the life of weaponless soldiers trying to tell the enemy to go away, please go away, go away… and the enemy just smiles full of despise. But new times are waiting for us, and the enemy will disappear in the fog of history, and we will be ourselves again not wearing a yellow star.

 It is not too late to learn how to live a different life, we have to be waiting for peace to come back and let the memories of this nightmarish time fade away in the sun rising of a new day…We must be ready to open the door to a better tomorrow and dismiss the painful memory of today…Generations before us have done it, and it is our duty to do it, to have them as an example of staying strong in front of adversity.                                                                                                                                                                                     

Nothing is given to us, not our strength, not our weakness, not our heart, and sometimes when we believe we can open our arms we are drawing a cross and our life can be a strange and painful negation of who we believe we are, but we have to find again  a shore where we will smile  and have the wind drying our tears and then we will be liberated of these chains…Chains are always breakable, let’s find the courage and the desire to go to the next step and break these chains.

Yes, these days our freedom can be destroyed or wounded, and our freedom cannot anymore find entity, but our freedom has again to take the path of hope, yes, with time we will again be able to love our life and even our loneliness…And we will remember that we were dozens, hundreds, thousands of people shaking and fearful believing that we were humans living a nightmare…                                                                                 But with time we will be able to dominate our fear and we will not be the shadow of a shadow anymore….                                                                                                                    

Too many of us will not arrive to the end of the journey and we will not forget them, they are and will be present in our thoughts and our affection forever… Yes, too many are gone, and the death of friends does not disappear from our memory …Recently, many, too many of my friends are gone and I can see them in my thoughts talking to me, laughing with me, sharing new ways to build a new world. They were part of me, of who I am, who I become and now they are gone forever…                                                    I am wondering: why did they disappear? Was it fate? And I am questioning what is the meaning of fate? What is destiny? 

My father, when confronted with a tragic event in his life was always saying: IT WAS WRITTEN… He left his country at the age of 59 years old, the country where his ancestors were for hundreds of years, arrive in France with nothing and tried to start a new life, his son, my brother died in a car accident at the age of 26, my father heartbroken died a year later…                                                                                          THAT WAS WRITTEN??? Written? BY WHOM?                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Should we accept all this because it is written? Are we capable of going to another chapter after living such tragedy?                                                                                        Let us be realistic, we have no choice, we must go further, we must wait for better times, and WRITTEN OR NOT, we must think about tomorrow but always keeping in us the loss of the ones we loved…. My father and brother died more than 50 years ago, but they are present in me, and often I am talking to them, asking: where are you? What are you doing?

With time all goes away, yes all goes away …. In a few years, we must describe these times with a new peace of mind, finding the courage to accept a new chapter, and almost proud to have been capable to have overcome this painful period of life… So, everybody, you must stay strong, people around you need you. Think about the next sunrise, the next episode of your life, the people you took care of and the ones you will take care of, life goes on, and we need you. With time you will win if you do.

 

AND NOW????

For more than a year we are all in this incomprehensible chaos, is it a dream? No, it is a nightmare! How could we have thought about the horror falling on all of us? And we want to imagine that we will wake up suddenly in another world with no pain and surrounded by loving friends, but it does not happen. I tried first to fight it, without any kind of dissimulation, without being careful, I was impatient and sometimes incredulous, but then knowing that my efforts were useless I decided to submit myself to the times and I tried to find some peace and some acceptation, but it did not work either … I took the decision to think about tomorrow, the future, and the next episode… No real changes….                                                                                                  Many, many days passed without new thoughts and the confirmation that nothing can really attenuate the pains we are suffering…Is all finished for most of us? Can we still hope for the end of the tragedy of this world? Are we just on a foreign planet where we live only painful moments? What have we done to deserve it? Are we all alone looking for peace and comfort and trying to forget?

AND NOW A NEW VIRUS IS THERE WAITING FOR US!!!!

And now what should we do of all the time that our life will be? And for how long? One month? Three months? One year? Eternity? What should we do of all these nights deprived of sleep and these mornings coming back with no changes and haunting us? Still listening to the news trying to bring us possible solutions when we know that we cannot do anything!! Do we really have nothing left?  Will everything become a question mark with a negative possible answer? 

Everything goes on like we do not even exist!!! The world wants us to stop thinking, creating, even being… We should be sitting all day in an armchair and look through the window at the emptiness of our condition…We should accept the nonsense of a new imposed life; we should accept the denial of our existence?                                           We can only talk about the death or the disease of others to prove that we have feelings, that we have a soul, that we are capable to have emotions…  

NO…NO…NO… I REFUSE THIS FATE

I will not go away without having said everything inside me, and I hope that some friends will travel with me, friends who will still be able to smile when looking at a young child or a cloud in the sky…We should not be afraid of dying when we had the opportunity to contemplate life and tender moments of life…Despite injustice and devastation of our heart, despite incredibly hard times, despite cursed times, despite nights with no end looking at terror, we should still believe that life is still worth it and beautiful…

Too many times most people deny the possible death about people they love. And they continue to live the same way, until it is too late, and they stay remorseful and powerless…

Most of us do not know how to show to some people how are important they are in our existence, our being, and when finally, we realize it, it is too late and someone goes without us having said: thank you for being you, thank you for your love, thank you for your friendship, thank you for sharing your knowledge.

Time goes so fast that we wake up and we discover that 3 or 4 weeks have passed, and we have given no news to the dear ones.  How sad, how disappointing of us, how bizarre it is…But the thoughts should stay the same, the feelings too …We should always express to each other our feelings, our joys, our sorrows, our failures and sometimes our disappointments about our life.

 So, I want to wish to everybody everything …everything possible...Everything…they deserve…  Everything they desire… 

 NO...NO...NO…   

We will not accept to be enclosed in the silence of a semi-death, we must have the strength to tame life, we HAVE the desire to be AND WE SHOULD PURSUE a creating knowledge … 

Everybody has good reasons to be who he is, to believe what he wants, to act according to his desires…so, why should we expect anything from others?  Why should we believe that we know more about emotions? 

What we know is more important? No, it is not… 

Should we be waiting for people to have gratitude for what we did for them? No, we should not…

I remember one of my best friend Mark Flint who died a few years ago…He was more than a friend, he was more than our family, he was part of our being. While he was sick and in the hospital for months, I was traveling, I wrote to him almost every day. I sent him my thoughts about life, about the business, about my adventures... The title of my messages was: TO MAKE YOU SMILE

I was calling him MARCUS FLINTUS

 

One day I wrote to him:

My dear Marcus Flintus

These days I am thinking a lot of the past few years and how much time I wasted to fight and struggle for lost causes, causes sometimes useless and even ridiculous. I would love to be born again knowing what I know now, I know you must be thinking the same way, right?

To become Young again KNOWING… Is That what the old Faust desire ?

I am now in the antechamber of knowledge, in the waiting room of wisdom...Too many people look at me like I am a sorcerer, when I am not even a sorcerer’s apprentice. I want to be the big man that everybody reveres, and I am only an imitation of the real ME, an approximation of my intellect…You must be smiling because you must feel very often what I am recalling. How YOU cannot be wise after all these years of creativity and thoughts? Your experience of life and humanity gave you the incredible strength to go through what you are living now. It is true, the beginning of old age gives us time to think but my dear Mark, even at the beginning of our friendship I knew that we had complicity and the same ways of thinking and we could understand each other very fast…Too many people believe that life is what it is…we both do not…we do not believe in fate, we believe that we can change it by living it with a different interpretation, YES MARK, you will be victorious, soon you will be back to life, soon we will again laugh about silly things, soon we will be again talking about music, and singers, and of course about  the ones who do not understand us…Diana will be cooking for you your favorite meal and we will sit on the porch of the house contemplating the beauty of the evening, totally gaga …So continue to be strong, I did not hear you complaining once about anything, you are my hero, you are an example for all of us.. Hurry home, we are waiting for you, we need you…

 Your brother          

 Bernard

That was my last message, he died a few days later…

 

This message to my friend was like an announcement of what we are living these days… AND NOW… The end can be soon and final, but until then Life goes on, so let us continue to be strong, be an example for each other and not be overwhelmed and falling in despair and depression. We must be generous with others, understanding of the ones calling themselves enemies since they also go through HELL. We must take care of the ones around us. Are we still capable of seeing the sky and what it has to offer? Yes, years go by, and we must find answers or elements of answers to continue our path to peace…

                                                                                

Difficult moments always give a meaning to life. Yes, we will be victorious at the end and together we will laugh again about silly things and we will be contemplating the stars in the sky…  Let us be sure to see each other and rebuild the world and life, the present and the future.

 

   

                                                                

 

                                                                 

 

GHOSTS

  

The past few months have been incredibly painful and challenging for all of us, and I believed I had seen everything in my long and strenuous life? The past two years have demonstrated that there is no final pain in our existence something worse can always happen...

 For the past seventy years I always had nightmares and sometimes dreams but these days ghosts of all kind are invading me, ghosts of the past, ghosts of the present, and the future ghosts.    Every night for the past two months, I wake up around 2 am and see walking around in the room an apparition, then it comes closer to my bed and whispers in my ears… It whispers stories, stories that I know very well, or unfamiliar stories, but these days always painful stories…

   APPARITION, WHO ARE YOU???                                                                                                                     

And the answer is always the same even if the apparition looks different…

-I am a ghost!

 Really? a ghost? What is a ghost? Is it the soul of a dead person? An immaterial spirit created usually as a vague, gloomy, and cunning form? wandering among and haunting living persons. The ghost is whispering in my ear:                  

-Tell me, tell me more about your life, I left you when you were still young and full of desires, you wanted to be an actor and then decided to go to the US, tell me, tell me more.....You stay silent?                                                        

The ghost is smiling and adds: 

-Remember you were ready to make the sky explode, and your strength was huge, and you wanted everything and were ready for anything... what happened? You are now waiting for …not even Godot… You have no idea for what you are waiting for... Ah, I see… you are going to complain again about your difficult life? Do you sometimes think about your luck? Do you realize how many of your very good friends died the past 2 years? Every day you hear about the death of somebody you called a friend… so, stop being self-centered, stop bringing up your dramas…… See life, see life, see your luck…       

GO AWAY GHOST

I do not suppose you have to believe in ghosts to know that we are all haunted, yes all of us, by things we can see and feel and guess, even if sometimes we do not realize it. We are all ghosts. We all carry, inside us, people who came before us. May be before we die, it is our ghosts we see. Ghosts do not really invade us, no they do not, they are with us because we need them, they are part of us...And even dreams are filled with ghosts, the dreams full of desires are chased by ghosts and they disappear in the morning when we wake up to what we believe is real life.

In the morning, I wake up in the city I am living in

, New York...

And these days New York in the morning is painful to look at, sad enough that you want to go back to the nightmare and talk to more ghosts. ..The ghosts will look at the  people who have no idea of who they really are, where they are going, why they are even alive and walk very fast with their phone in front of their face to a place that they know superficially. And the ghosts will say:

-Do not believe in fate, do not believe in destiny, believe that you can change the world…

OH REALLY????  

Every city is a ghost...New York with construction all over, the scaffolding hiding the original structure and sometimes you can guess the creativity of the original, but since too many ghosts have been around imposing new ways of thinking, it looks like nothing... OR may be it was a park before? But in my present state of mind there is not a lot to look at, very little to discover, and it seems that I can only see the surrounding mediocrity, the poverty; the fact that everybody seems to be walking around with no real destination, without knowing who they are and what they want.. and now most of cities live in fear! Fear of others, fear of the unknown, fear of being scared!

GO AWAY GHOST BUT BEFORE TELL ME YOUR NAME  

-MY NAME IS PASSED REALITY

 Another ghost dressed in red approaches me, it is the color of a cherry or of blood… My blood?  He screams in my ear…

-What do you want to look at? You cannot see anything, you became blind to the outside world, only preoccupied by your owns thoughts, and what you believe is the center of the world… YOU, YOU AND AGAIN YOU!!!

The ghost laughing loudly, says …go ahead, talk, talk…make me smile…

GHOST LISTEN TO ME  

 

 -We live in a bizarre world where it seems that the abyss between people is much deeper that it had never been in the past... It seems sometimes that we are living side by side and not in the same world, a multitude of parallel worlds with opposed rules, almost opposed expectations. The accumulated knowledge of superficial matters and the desire to go on fighting for choices concerning only us!!!!

Ghost: Oh, that is impressive, I am honored to be next to you… Ah! Ah! Ah! Go on silly man…

 

-The meaning of truth at the dusk of life is escaping me, this dusk every day darker, thicker, more somber. I am not capable anymore to distinguish what is real or even the meaning of real, I can only see the nonsense of everyday life... I try to hook myself to lost moments who cannot be alive anymore and cannot be found, I feel my creativity fading and losing its face in the pathetic routine of everyday life.... Why do I believe that everything can or should last forever...hours, days, years go without looking the same but are the same...

The ghost is laughing very loudly: -Go on, say more, empty your soul…

 

-And today we look at each other with disdain, with sometimes jealousy, with non-acceptation of their needs, with the refusal of the new freedom in so many aspects of life. Pretending all the time that most people know nothing, have nothing, believe nothing, and are just the product of the internet and social media.

They are only interested in their phone, their silly music, the image they project on others, and the insistence of having everything as fast as possible without really deserving it. BLA, BLA, BLA…

 

 

THE GHOST IS NOW WHISPERING TO ME:  -Are you saying that today there is no culture, no morality, no sense of belonging, no tradition, people refuse the basic way of honor, they think only about money and adventures, only about superficial and easy success.

 

-GO AWAY GHOST BUT BEFORE TELL ME YOUR NAME

 

-MY NAME IS PRESENT REALITY

I open my eyes in the dark room, another long night, full of visions and thoughts…My friends, where are you? Why are you gone? Even if I have not seen you for a long time., I need you, I am full of memories of our adventures together and I still want to share it with you…Come back friends… I am sure we can still share ideas, and dreams, and laughs together, why are you gone…FRIENDS where are you? My lost friends, you will become ghosts inside me, and I will keep you alive and present forever…Yes, my friends, forever…

A huge ghost is now approaching me.

-You are pathetic! What happened? Where are you? How old are you now?

-I am 75, and tired; tired of talking, tired of people, tired of.... life...

- I thought you were a creative man, what happened?

-The creativity can be sometimes the result of Ghosts, and sometimes it is not worth anymore, the dreams are too invaded by ghosts and give a false reality…

Sometimes I am haunted by the ghosts of my own feelings, and too many times it influences my thoughts and my writing, and it is not reality anymore.

-Since when reality was the benchmark of your life and your creativity?

You should be delivering to others the human soul, the passionate feelings, and sometimes the weakness of being you.

 

-Ghost will you help me? Will you come often in my sleepless nights and prompt me about my next duty?

- I will if you promise that you will follow my advice for ways to look at life, to understand that there should be new ways to look at life, and to learn how to take care of all your friends.

- And I will find some peace? And I will be able to take care of the people I cherish? Will you really do that for me?

- I will if you promise.

- Ghost, I promise, I promise… Please tell me your name.

MY NAME IS FUTURE REALITY

 

I wake up smiling and ready

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

  

 

 SHADOW OF A SHADOW

A few days ago I was walking in the street like every morning since the beginning of the pandemic crisis, walking for an hour everyday makes me believe that I am still active, very funny! We do not know what to invent anymore to continue to hope for another life or another time...But I am very clever and inventive because i have 3 or 4 different routes and doing so I can have the feeling that I am creating something new every few days, I always want to be on top of things, what a joke!...

But something different happened, suddenly i saw, in front of myself, my shadow on the sidewalk, my full shadow, yes, it was me! I immediately took a picture of it for posterity and now I have the proof that I still exist.

Here it is...

Looking at the picture, it comes to my mind many quotes from many different writers and thinkers:

'' The brightest flame casts the darkest shadow.'' George R.R Martin

''Some people seemed to get all sunshine, and some all shadow'' Louisa May Alcott

''What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body but is the body of the soul'' Oscar Wilde

''So do not be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you and remember that life has not forgotten you; It holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness , any pain, any depression, since you don't know what work they are accomplishing within you?'' Rainer Maria Rilke.

''Come back even as a shadow , even as a dream.''                           "Not for the first time i find our lives are a shadow, and I am not afraid to say that people who think they have figured out and are masters of logic- they are responsible for the greatest folly. No human being is happy. Strike it rich and you are luckier than your neighbor- but happy, never.'' Euripides.

"There is strong shadow where there is much light." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

'' I love the shade and the shadow and would be alone with my thoughts when I may.'' Bram Stoker, Dracula.

''But the shadow is merely somewhat inferior, primitive, unadopted, and awkward; not wholly bad. It even contains childish or primitive qualities which would in a way vitalize and embellish human existence, but convention for bids!'' Carl G. Jung

''No matter how hard you fight the darkness, every light casts a shadow, and the closer you get to the light, the darker the shadow becomes.'' Plato  

 ''Moi je ne suis qu'une ombre et vous une clarté"                                    ''Tu marcheras, j'irai dand l'ombre à ton côté; Je serai ton esprit, tu seras ma beauté.'' Edmond Rostand, Cyrano

Are we now totally becoming this shadow? Or even a shadow of this shadow? It is true that the shadow of age gives us time to think, especially in a time like the one we are living now, we tried in our life to live intensely, to accomplish the most possible and now life imposes to us that we have to think and to find the link between the inside and the outside... Years pass and we are still trying to find the meaning of most of it, and sometimes the hazard of things, the invincible law of fate gives a few answers, or more exactly some elements of answers pushing us to think and to try to be generous with others, understanding of our enemies, protector of the ones we love...                                                                                                         Yes, but now we are dealing with the shadow of our shadow, pushing us to be questioning our existence more deeply than ever...                                                                                         Time goes so fast, we wake up and discover that 3, 4, 5 weeks and sometimes months have passed and we did not give news to people who are dear to us and in the same time people who do not like us continue after many years to perpetuate their hate with the internet...How sad, how bizarre, how disappointing of who we are...but are our thoughts and our feelings the same?.. Do we continue to wish them everything possible...everything they deserve, everything they desire... Or is the invading shade taking over and we are becoming mute and powerless...

Is the shadow of my shadow taking over or did the meaning of life change since my youth? It seems that i do not really understand it anymore...all has to be acquired immediately, without real sacrifice. We believe that we deserve the best right away, the world has replaces knowledge of humanity by knowledge of pushing buttons...We are so afraid of sharing emotions, to be vulnerable, to have feelings.                                                                                           But an artist should be delivering to others the human soul, the feelings, and the weakness of being one... all this acquired by life experiences or by acquiring it thru the study of the ones who knew and are ready to share.             Yes, I know, some people have this talent of knowing at birth, they are the lucky ones, they are the chosen, and they are and example and a gift to us.

In these times of intense shadow is the meaning of truth escaping us? This shadow everyday darker, thicker, more somber. Are we still capable to distinguish what is real or even the meaning of what we believe is real, or is the shadow covering everything... THE SHADOW BECOMING THE SHADOW OF A SHADOW...

Should we hook ourselves to lost moments who cannot be real anymore or cannot be found? Do we feel our creativity fading and losing its face in the pathetic shade of this new life?

Are we still looking for a possible truth? They always want to know about my novel ( THE SHATTERED SKY), is this all truth? Your life? Is it TRUE? TRUE?                                                                             What does that mean TRUE?                                                                  Everything is true... everything is invented,,, All is part of us...what we think, what we believe, what we feel become part of OUR TRUTH!!!!!There is only one truth , the one we want to be...

Does possible happiness these days belong to Fairy tales? I look around me, and I see only people with the disease of our time, THE ABSENCE OF HAPPINESS.. Was it like that 20 or 30 years ago? I do not remember.. or may be I was not aware of it... Is the shadow covering desperation, hidden life, artificial behavior, and even the masks of a disguises truth?

Ok, enough with these groans, enough with these moans of a spoiled brat, enough with this perpetual contemplation of a non existing misfortune...It is an insult to the ones really suffering, a lack of consideration for the ones really courageous, a slap in the face to the ones who have nothing. 

Too many people believe that life is what it is, even with the shade and the shadows...We should not believe it, we should not believe in a definite fate, we should still believe that we can change the world by interpreting it, by looking at it in a different way... Yes sure, why not? If I go on, I am going to believe I am somebody else... 

Is the shadow of a shadow really what we became? It seems that most of people cannot talk to anybody anymore, everybody has good reasons to be what he is, to believe what he wants, to act according to his desires.. We believe too often that people should be thankful for what we did for them and we are expecting a return... we do not understand that in this world of shades it means nothing. And we cannot demand anything...                          But we cannot go on as if we were already in the other dimension...we cannot renounce and lock us up in the silence of acceptation...we have to continue to think, to create, to exist...We should still have the strength to control part of our life, to have creating knowledge, to be there for the ones who need us... WE WERE AND WE STILL ARE..                                                                                Let us look at the shadow and decide that it is only a reflection of a million possibilities buried in our humanity, and and our duty is to dig the shadows and exploit these possibilities...

The Shadows have to be controlled as much as we can, and we have to believe it is possible and help the ones who cannot go beyond their shade.

HALF A CENTURY

Already 50 years have passed, fifty years in this country, now my country….In 1961 from Tunisia to one year in the south of France , then Paris, the university,  and my travels all over the world (hitchhiking) searching for an identity, but did I really find it? I was always going back to Paris, not richer in money but so much richer in experiences acquired in meeting so many different people of so many different ethnicities … One day , I will write about my travels in Africa, in Asia ( Especially in Nepal and Afghanistan),  in all Europe.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

In 1963 while a student (I was 19),  I had some experiences as an actor in a few  theaters like ‘’LE THEATRE DES AMANDIERS “ in Nanterre where my university was located . With theater I found the best way to find myself as a person and for the next few  years persisted in this adventure...                                           Yes, to act was the only way to find myself and to know really who I was! To be inside the life of a fictional persona was the only time when I did not need to act, protected by the character I could be myself and be totally involved, while in life I had to act to exist and to be somebody , I had to protect myself by never giving the real MOI, afraid of the possible negative consequences.                                              In being a character in a play, on stage,  I used my personal experiences, my personal traumas, my personal victories, and defeats…. Yes, I had an equivalent in my life for all the situations in the play, and using it was  the best way to find some peace, to find some balance, to BE…                                                                                                                                               

Actually I realize that this way has been present all my life and even when I replaced the acting by the directing I was still using my life, my personal memories, my relations with others… Even if sometimes , I was considered as too demanding or difficult.

Yes, 50 years ago in September 1970, I am an actor in Paris , or more exactly I need to be an actor to exist, to find my truth  and make sense of my life… For the past few years I have been haunting the casting television studios and go to every audition possible in all the theaters in Paris, sometimes I have luck and I am cast. After dreaming of becoming a great famous actor in France, I actually became a young one like thousands of them, a dreamer who tried to behave like an adult with a sense of responsibilities and who actually is searching for a possible truth… I had the fortune to work as an actor with very famous theater masters like Jean Louis Barrault and Tania Balachova… Very soon I became a member of the professional acting studio of Tania Balachova in Paris where I became her assistant and started to direct . For the next few years  I performed many, many roles in plays by Chekov, Moliere, Musset, Pirandello, Beckett, Ionesco, Sartre, Camus, Pinter, Brecht, Arrabal,   in different theaters in Paris and on tour all over France and even foreign countries… I was also dubbing foreign movies.…                                                                                                                                                                 

I am 26 years old and one day, while wandering in Montparnasse, I meet my old friend from the university Robert … I have not seen him in many years since he is now living in New York, he his half American, his father is an American Jew who does not want to be that, and his mother an Italian catholic who wants to be it… He was born in Morocco since his father was a lawyer  for the American army there, then they came to live in Paris and finally  his entire family went back to live in the states. My dear friend Robert who died 2 years ago, how much I miss you and your humor and your generosity…. You were one of the few who knew Bernard the man and Bernard the actor…                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  We meet in the street and see each other , with so much joy, so much affection, we rush to sit at a café and talk about the last few years of our life….He was going every summer to Middlebury college in Vermont to finish his PhD. in French…and loved the place…

-Bernard  you should come to the states and teach in Vermont.

- Teach? Teach what?

-Theater, literature, whatever you want.

- But Robert, I never taught before except for 6 months in a school of delinquents because it was near the television studio and also because I could deal with the delinquents.

- But Bernard, you have the credentials and you should apply, they hire every summer somebody to teach literature and to direct plays with the students…I promised to you, they will hire you, you are exactly what they want and like.

-Robert, I am not sure I can do that.

-Bernard, did you change??? What happened to you? Is the loss of your father and your brother a few years ago creating a new Bernard?

-What do you mean? I answered.

- I remember when we were students, you taught me that life is a perpetual challenge, and sometimes when opportunities are presented to us, we have to go for it with no hesitation, you called that “TRAINS ARE PASSING” and you added  when trains are given to us, we cannot let them go… So, did you change? A beautiful train is passing for you, go for it!

- Robert, you are right, no, I have not changed, I still take the passing trains , and even sometimes with no sense of possible bad consequences, I still do it… I have done it all my life and did not change… What is the name of the person I have to be in touch with??

He gave me the name, and I called and I took an appointment and met with the director of the school … I was hired on the spot to go for the following  summer to direct plays with students and to teach French literature. I took the train and Middlebury college summer school started a new life , I went back for 11 summers, and also accepted teaching positions at Wellesley college, Sarah Laurence college, and Mount Holyoke…

In 1973, the French consul was visiting Middlebury school and convinced me to try a  French theater company in the USA.  The following fall I arrived in Boston with a valise and created the French theater in Boston which became after 2 years the French Theater in America. Some of my French friends join me in Boston, we were giving around 100 performances a year and I was the director, the leading actor, the administrator, the driver of the van, the lighting designer, the guy who picks up the programs in the intermission to re-use them and save money, etc....that FOLIE went on until 1981...

A very important train.

In the fall of 1981, Sarah Caldwell director of Opera Boston was producing Faust by Gounod with original dialogues in French and she invited me to direct the dialogues scenes, after a few days , she asked me if I could help to stage the entire production and I said yes... I had never been to an opera in my life and did not read music... but I LOVED IT...

A very important train.

After that experience I  was asked to direct Pagliacci for the Lake George Festival. In the summer 82, I learned how to read a vocal score! A few months later I directed for Detroit , Philadelphia etc...

So in 1982/83 season I directed 5 productions and soon I became totally involved in opera and stopped the French theater in America.

Very important trains.

Many more trains were passing in the following years, some incredibly appealing! Tulsa opera, Montreal opera offering me to become general and artistic director of the company when I had been in the business of opera for only 4 and 5 years and knew really very little about it! And it went on for the years to come…. Yes, I know, I had been lucky to have these trains passing, and to be able to guess that I could take them and even more to have the people in charge of the trains believing in my possibilities… Sometimes, we do not recognize the train , or we are not aware of it, so, we have to be vigilant and keep our mind open to all potentialities…

Some people can call that way to be an opportunist, here is a definition of opportunism: the art, policy, or practice of taking advantage of opportunities or circumstances often with little regard for principles or consequences.                                                                                                                                                                    We have to be careful and continue to have regard for principles and consequences, especially if we are looking for trains in everyday life and not only for our profession… Yes, trains are passing for all aspects of human relations, and even for our choices in friendship and life companions…   

And what if we take a wrong train?  A train going in the opposite direction that our aim in life! Yes that can happen , we have to keep our mind open and always be ready to jump of it, and continue the search…Even  bad train can bring good memories and a very important item: experience of what is bad for us…                                                                                                                                               Fifty incredible years, full of adventures, of encounters, of achievements…. Thank you theater, you made me happy…