Author: Olivier Panhuys

 

Seasons Holidays has always been time of sadness for me. One more year I will pass this period alone with no taste for celebration. I took me years of introspection to understand reasons for ‘Seasons Grievings’..

You called me ‘Boomer’, the boom is not on me: I have been landed by parents breaking up with traditions of Bourgeoisie and finding in post WWII resolution, not only freedom but ‘Party time’. They jumped over the hedge and made children as my stubborn cat is doing. They did not jump one time, getting ‘no Satisfaction, and trying, and trying’…

I still can watch “Home Alone 1”,  with pleasure, not because of the story line but because it crystalizes this snowy polarized warm and comfortable family shell I never got.

As a fate, I could not give comfort to those I love, I left behind me a trail of affective failures and disability to express my feelings. I still thrive to keep intimacy with my son.

Never ‘spoiled Brat’ have been so appropriate: wasted childhood, unbalanced teen ages and unaccomplished journey as rebellious escape to digust I kept for a world that did not accept me.

I keep my heart warm with a Fairy Tale starring my Mum and her father; I like this picture taken before I born sharing something that they have been unable to transmit.

…just saying…I have no regrets, I accept my fate.

 

 

When winter comes, I always feel missing Noordzee. Is it childhood or something else? I saw many seas and oceans, this one is strorming in my heart.; so close to verses of Charles Baudelaire with whom I share so many feelings.

Here from Les Fleurs du mal (Flowers of Evil):

‘L’Homme et la Mer”

‘Homme libre, toujours tu chériras la mer!
La mer est ton miroir; tu contemples ton âme
Dans le déroulement infini de sa lame,
Et ton esprit n’est pas un gouffre moins amer.
Tu te plais à plonger au sein de ton image;
Tu l’embrasses des yeux et des bras, et ton coeur
Se distrait quelquefois de sa propre rumeur
Au bruit de cette plainte indomptable et sauvage.
Vous êtes tous les deux ténébreux et discrets:
Homme, nul n’a sondé le fond de tes abîmes;
Ô mer, nul ne connaît tes richesses intimes,
Tant vous êtes jaloux de garder vos secrets!
Et cependant voilà des siècles innombrables
Que vous vous combattez sans pitié ni remords,
Tellement vous aimez le carnage et la mort,
Ô lutteurs éternels, ô frères implacables!’

 

‘Free man, you shall forever cherish the vast sea,
The sea, that image where you contemplate your soul
As everlastingly its mighty waves unroll.
Your mind a yawning gulf seasoned as bitterly.

You love to plunge into your image to the core,
Embracing it with eyes and arms; your very heart
Sometimes finds a distraction from its urgent smart
In the wild sea’s untamable and plaintive roar.

Both of you live in darkness and in mystery:
Man, who has ever plumbed the far depths of your being?
O Sea, who knows your private hidden riches, seeing
How strange the secrets you preserve so jealously?

And yet for countless ages you have fought each other
With hands unsparing and with unforbearing breath,
Each an eternal foe to his relentless brother,
So avid are you both of slaughter and of death.’

Translation: Jacques LeClercq, Flowers of Evil

Je viens de lire qu’Alain est parti…Nous avons partage beaucoup de choses et surtout fait beaucoup de choses ensemble…. j’ai pas de mots…

This written: “In the Beginning was the Word.”

Here am I balked: who, now can help afford?

The Word? —impossible so high to rate it;

And otherwise must I translate it.

If by the Spirit I am truly taught.

Then thus: “In the Beginning was the Thought”

This first line let me weigh completely,

Lest my impatient pen proceed too fleetly.

Is it the Thought which works, creates, indeed?

“In the Beginning was the Power,” I read.

Yet, as I write, a warning is suggested,

That I the sense may not have fairly tested.

The Spirit aids me: now I see the light!

“In the Beginning was the Act,” I write.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – FAUST

Saudi Arabia first  perception is about infinite sand dunes; indeed most beautiful dunes are on this land…but not not only..

This “mineral” approach could make you miss the Arabian People.