“Je veux bien que les saisons m’usent.
À toi, Nature, je me rends;
Et ma faim et toute ma soif.
Et, s’il te plaît, nourris, abreuve.
Rien de rien ne m’illusionne;
C’est rire aux parents, qu’au soleil,
Mais moi je ne veux rire à rien;
Et libre soit cette infortune.”
Life is motion,
motion of feelings,
motion of those common details,
motion of our very own memories,
motion of expectations.
A motion of told and untold stories.
—
Florence, 2017.
“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend.
Albert Camus.
Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but 'steal' some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.
— Albert Camus.
Paris, 2016.
We have found it again.
What? Time without end.
'Tis the ocean gone
For a walk with the sun.
Soul, you sentinel,
Murmur and confess,
Day is fiery hell,
Night is nothingness.
From the common urges,
From the human highest
Far thy path diverges:
Following thou fliest…
No expectancy,
No orietur,
Science patiently;
Punishment is sure.
From your blaze alone,
Satin flames of force,
Duty's breath is blown;
No one says : of course.
We have found it again.
What? Time without end.
'Tis the ocean gone
For a walk with the sun.
—-
Arthur Rimbaud, Time Without End.
Remembering our past, carrying it around with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of the self. To ensure that the self doesn’t shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends. They are our mirror; our memory; we ask nothing of them but that they polish the mirror from time to time so we can look at ourselves in it.
— Milan Kundera.
Paris, 2017.