The opening shot a déjà vu feeling. In film and in reality.
The famous crane shot in Gone with the Wind and its merciless exposition of the destruction of Atlanta (and the South and its army).
The rubble of countless contemporary cities in the wake of war and ethnic/religious conflict.
A sequence mediated by familiar images of recent news coverage. An uncanny moment of recognition.
The lingering uneasiness left by the contemplation of ruins—real and metaphorical—in our current holiday context two years in a pandemic that has exploded our comfort zones.

EARTH DAY 2019

Of SHAPES, DESIGNS AND (OTHER) JIGSAW PUZZLES

The cascade above the gorges.
You approach the fence. You have not been there in years.
Suddenly the memory emerges, takes shape, tunes in. You are jolted into a poetry of mental designs. You can match today’s vista and vision with another equally pleasing image. Like a jigsaw puzzle, the pattern falls into place—the design of happiness.

Ithaca gorges!

The former and original agenda for happiness rejoins the current one.
Longing for a temporal home that has been lost;
Retrieving it, perhaps, in the light that hovers over the landscape, in its promise of warmth and clarity.

You see the other trail below. The eye looking for exactitude, the mind seeking for precision.
You decide to pay the emerging path a visit. The cows are long gone, and have not been replaced. The bridge looks new, though. And so is your emotion.
You are surprised at not feeling the bitterness that would inevitably accompany this kind of revisiting. Enjoying the view as if for the first time. You focus on the sound of the wind in the leaves
You register the slow-paced steadiness of joy and peace.

And, instead of musing over lost time, you rejoice over given time, like another expenditure of life.

Marie Liénard-Yeterian

THE LETHARGIC MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH: THE ORDINARY DEATH OF HUMANITY

And now was Humanity indeed beyond the wretchedness of Kharon’s bark. Newly deceased, she wandered through ravens scavenging her limbs and scabious rats devouring the Masque of the Red Death. The blood which concealed her visage slowly possessed them. They acted with the fury of a promethean demon, a lost fragment of human sins, and began to crawl over the white room. The sockets of her lost eyes withered upon the dark blazing dusk.

Beneath the pressure of abominations that overcrowded her narcissism, the rats merged into an ox-like shape, blurred and faceless, wreaking havoc and defeating every pure atom that still existed in life. The sky-no-more collapsed and the white room lost its unblemished innocence. Evil thoughts became its sole intimates. Although Humanity longed to destroy herself countless times, she had not perceived that absolute dread of the Death. The word « monstruous » could not incarnate the void that cristallized her decadent form.

It was then, however, that Humanity mimicked an ashamed prayer. A wild stance that evoked the fear of absolute punishment. It was a sharp cry which fractured the night’s debauch and damnable silence. The unfathomable longing of her soul suffered once and it crushed the infinite mercy of the world, as if Atlas had shrugged. The melancholic waters dried long ago from her sad mind and her heart fell like the liveless corpse of a snake squashed by the fangs of a reddened tyger.

And the switch from which life triggered indefatigable promises melted inside Humanity’s overripe belly. She changed into an unvalued component of life. She died from exhaustion in her typical manner, exaggerating the decay of emotion. And then, Silence spoke, in pristine loneliness, trying to summon an ounce of dolefulness.

Olivier DUPIRE
(MA student at the University Nice Sophia Antipolis/University of Nice Côte d’Azur)
Reading to Understand.

Récoltes. Temps des.
Temps de le prendre. Moment suspendu.
Attente. Un temps.
Temps de l’attente. De l’ennui aussi.
De l’insouciance certaine que le pire est passé.
De l’abondance et du calcul.
De la préparation de ce qui vient.
Redouté, anticipé, désiré.
De la protection et des murailles.
Des orages au loin ou bien très proches.
De l’aire, du fléau, des ânes en cercle, du silo.
De la graine désirée, priée, célébrée.
De son attente, des chants, des danses.

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SUMMER HARVEST

Some poem comes to mind
Life in the making, constant work in progress
The decision-making
The reiteration of a commitment made long ago
The idealized vision of what could be
The undertow of fear and longings, imaginary belongings
Rupturing and breaking
Fixing and repairing.

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UN ROMAN EN DEVENIR/FICTION INTERLUDE

CASTING THE NET

A visitor in this strange city. Lost in cultural translation. And geographical shifts.
Glistening water. The pebbles hissing. Nothing left of the summer restaurants.

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(Reading a poem, going for a drive in the imagination, riding the wave of memory)

Light shadows, harsh light, as if from some unknown stage
Unusual light, never seen before, ghostly and ghastly
Spelling out some oracle that cannot be deciphered
No matter how hard we try
How hard we peer through the puzzling texture around us, in the sky and on the ground
Shroud or cover, mist or veil, fog or fine snow
In between-ness of Nature’s postures
Twilight of human reasoning and endurance.

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Je veux les lumières des anciens feux et l’obscurité solitaire de la nuit.
La marche infinie vers un monde que tous ignorent, la fuite au-delà de tout, le silence et la peur.
Je veux les jours passés à acculer la bête effrayante et la joie du succès.
Je veux la violence et la douleur, la pluie sur le sol sablonneux et le vent chargé d’inconnu.
Autour de moi le monde empli de vie et de mystères sacrés, d’ordre et de règles.
Le son des tambours et les ombres sur les parois folles.
Notre vie à marcher.
Les rencontres avec ceux qui nous ressemblent, les batailles et les fêtes.
Je veux l’univers à lire et la mort à dévorer.

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Billows lapping against the shore. Faraway yet distinct.
Imaginative leap provides the sound, the smell, the feeling. The story and its characters.
Including you, sitting on the beach, listening to the waves lashing out against the rocks.

Brooding. Gazing. Musing.

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Remembering your words about this particular beach being a place where you would/could take vows—swear eternal love. Self-fulfilling prophesy: a couple taking wedding pictures, giving flesh and blood to a mere idea, a pleasant memory, a poetic vision.

Wind and sea in amorous embrace bristling with a thousand lights, resounding a thousand notes.

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