• 

 I had left Nadia with neighbors who lived upstairs housing estate and I arrived at the clinic just to see you born. Placed on your mom's chest, you were breathing hard, the belly swollen by a large malignant tumor attached to the spine.

Your life was beginning.

You were three or four years old. It happened in the alley separating our residential building from the garages on rue Nicolas Nicole. You walked on a pendulum with your little wooden trestles at the end of arms. Your body was stiffened by a plaster that covered you from feet to thorax. You were smiling, you the great Bédé as I called you, and you urged me to take a step back to show me how well you were walking. And I took you in the arms and lifted you up.

You came to see us in Marcillat. We had picked you up at Clermont-Ferrand airport from Marseille. You gave me this enamelled clay sculpture, a heavy ball with a black excavation – encouragement to dig deeper into the depths of things not say, and rough edges to defend against possible predators. I took this object as a symbol of your suffering that you managed no matter what and wondered to share. Since then this ball has been accompanying me as a link between you and me. You were twenty years old.

Forest of Tronçais in Allier. I dropped you off in an armchair in a wide alley magnified by tall trees. We had made several hundred meters then I left in front leaving you alone as you suggested to me. Retracing my steps … you were no longer the ! I called you for long minutes. You weren't answering. Worried, I looked for you to finally see you motionless in a small path not far of the. There was a long silence. Smells of humus danced all around from U.S. The wind interacted with a layer of successive waves. We are held by the hand in the drapery of the things felt. I knew from then on that we were on the same side, brothers, A father and his son, listening and welcome to what is.

Of these last years come back to me the long ones telephone conversations we had, you my son Sylvain and me dad Gaël as you called me. It was about what you were going through at the moment and some flashes of the past that you evoked with relish. That good memories. I still hear your heavy drawling voice from those long nights. There were never ready-made sentences. You were looking expression so that speaking precisely and clearly says the essential. And if sometimes certain words went beyond your thought to find themselves in balance unstable between beauty and nonsense compared to what came before, it was for a good cause, that of innovation compared to where you were, you the esthete of what is happening. And you were like that, often forward, you who physically did not work. I remember certain themes that kept coming back in our conversations such as those of creation, the artist's posture but also friendship and love – love of bodies, love of beings. You loved people. You rarely complained and it was always me who cut short the conversation that could have lasted for hours and hours.

And if you left on that night of 18 at 19 October, it is to escape your physical condition as a suffering man whose health was getting worse, but it is also to continue your work in beyond here, you the seeker of the absolute and of truth commissioned by a force much stronger than you, an imperious call that you sensed. You were amused, curious, interested in the subjects that I could bring up, subjects relating to aesthetics, to psychology and spirituality. You had a humor sometimes circumstantial, sometimes devastating, you the charming dandy who cultivated the right word wisely and never to hurt. You lover of life in despair of this body that made you suffer so much, your piercing gaze with almond eyes and your slightly ironic smile nailed me to the barn door to glimpse your soul at work towards the redemption of those who are strangely normal in their conformity did not live.

Soul to soul you are by my side. When you were delivered from your skin tunic it was a few hours after the phone call that we had spent you so that you were associated with the funeral of your grandfather.

One last word : “pardon”. Know that I beg your pardon for not having been there more often.

Goodbye Grand Bédé, my son, Sylvain .

171

 My daddy is dead
 and can't hold back my sorrow.
 The rosary of memories together
 sparks in insomnia .

 The little boy in the attic
 puts away its capsules and its Tour de France riders. 

 The " gargoyle " childhood laundry
 is nothing more than a rusty basin
 " Frugères - my loves " crumples in the mists
 with an autumn look .

 A new day will dawn
 the spider web adorned with dew beads.

 Footsteps creaking the floor
 are the last passage of your presence .

 Nous ne retournerons plus les crêpes
 accompanied by the joyful cries of the youngest .

 The flight of wild geese
 will no longer be expected like the first time.

 The " four horses " Renault
 will no longer be wearing our bikes .
 
The trumpet will be killed
 behind the bedroom door  .

 A page is turned
 now there is life .

 Heat the vegetable and the mineral in the oven
 for the candles of the essential to rise .

 Crossing the ford is worth it
 for vulnerability to happen .

 Take hold of the stump of memory
 and that without haste the drawer closes .

 Let us become light and luminous mind
 so that hands clasped .

 Wise and open to what comes
 let's be beauty smugglers .

 Downright offered to what is let's be the throat 
and the language of new foods .

 Sing in the cool spring wind
 the andante of a free breath .

 Welcome with ready hearts
 the energies of a mystery hatched world .

 Passenger of time and bird of truth
 I am addressing you .

 Those who follow, my children ,
 let's unwind our ball of life and walk  .

 Without fear, the heart surrounded by the joy of the righteous
 let us be the straw and the grain of the harvests to come  .


 170 

• 

The room was warm. A rust-colored carpet lay on the floor. We had removed our shoes. My brother and I designed this timber construction and space. There were multiple compartments.

Characters quickly found their places. Some have regrouped into phratries and others in couples. I found myself alone I don't know why. A light wind crossed the room. It was then that I was flying over towns and campaigns. Sitting on a height I contemplated our work. It was all there. And it took this distance to realize that my life was inscribed as in advance, there in front of me. I was thinking then what he might happen to me. So in order for me to come in and design it all I had to let me know the cause. And I was looking for, and I was looking, … until hear myself say these words that seemed to me to be breathed by a spirit mysterious. … He was causing me. … It was so simply expressed and so obvious that I took the time to write down these few sentences.

Take care of our parents

have compassion

support each other

to enjoy life

to be happy, pleasant, happy

to be spontaneous and natural in love

to be detached, the most possible, bonds and goods

to be generous

behave ethically

produce the right action

take care of each other

manage your emotions

constantly perceive the states of our mind

and when the thought arises

send this message to our children .

169

• 

Adult education .

Live in the present .

Tame the dead .

Watch from high .

To be creator of cultures .

Live in awareness the process of knowing : perception – sensation – thought (image, idea) – attachment – reproduction ;  resulting in pleasure or frustration therefore to suffering, hence the need for work on pain .

Exercise the “penetrating vision”, instant perception of what is .

To be located in the joy of being in the world, in the ” dialogical ” between knowledge pluralities and experiential self-knowledge, endless dialogic, without foreseeing the goal and the hazards .

Countering the withdrawal on oneself .

Be in a fair relation to the cosmos .

Be a citizen of world .

Be wise, adjust his way of thinking, to be of service to others, be a part of world .

Watch the world like seeing it for the first time .

Be in a attitude of not knowing .

Know that the philosophy is effaced in front of the activity of philosophizing .

Take a look lucid about the nature of thought .

Give birth in others the ” think for yourself ” .

Be in the dialogue and creative adjustment to the other .

Be the custodian of all the thinking that has taken place in the past .

To be aware, coherent and rational .

Be humble in front of what is said or written .

In front of language ask yourself what he means, what to say and what to say say .

Be tolerant and defend the freedom to think .

Penetrate the oceanic feeling by behaving like René Char for whom : ” To each collapse of evidence the poet responds with a salvo of the future ” .

168

• 

 I don't know who gave birth to me
 nor what this world is
 nor who I am .

 I see these light years around me
 and find me quiet
 at a point of this immensity
 without knowing why I am here rather than elsewhere .

 I don't know why this little time that is given to me to live
 is here at my feet
 enshrined from all eternity
 in what preceded me
 and in what will follow me .

 I only see infinities
 from all sides
 like dust fluttering in the ray of sun
 as form erased by the following form .

 What I know
 is that I must die
 but what I don't know
 is this very death that I cannot avoid
 and who summons me to life
 like the prodigal son
 in the arms of the father
 in this world of mystery
 where the fracture of the promises
 summons us to be what we have always been
 in the bridal chamber of beginnings
 the shadow of your shadow
 my destiny .


 167 

• 

The human being is ternary. He is body, psyche and spirit.

The body, this is what we see of us, he is weak and perishable.

The psychic is the middle floor. He is the movement, the emotional and the mental. It is fluctuating. We can't build on him. The psychological clears things away. It removes obstacles and can make available to elements of self-knowledge but not to our awakening, to this state of well-being and unification with what is, in the end fulfillment in the unfathomable mystery of what drives us deep down of our being, this momentum, this “viridity” working, such as the designs Hildegarde de Bingen.

The spirit or fine point of the soul, or the heart, is what is near and communicates with the higher worlds. The mind is recognizes that he is indestructible. It is huge, bright and happy.

The human being is like an oil lamp including the lamp body, the oil and the wick would be its three floors. The body would be the terracotta object of the lamp, the fragile container and necessary otherwise the process of self-growth would not start. The psychic or psychological would be the oil, metaphor of movement, of emotions, of the riches and the beauty of being, of what nourishes. The wick would be the spirit, the very place that can ignite with divine fire.

All these components form the human being in search for harmony with, however, a hierarchy between them, the wick spiritual being the pinnacle of our quest.

The mind is this place extended to infinity, this light, this joy that dominates the inclemencies of existence and all the pains of being to guide it towards its realization.

166

( Text freely inspired by Jacqueline Kelen )