LifeAfter

A Small Nothing/Un Petit Rien 003

Posted by piermarton on March 9, 2013
Posted in: Insights, LifeAfter, Tips.

Everything depends on you.
I have mentioned this earlier, but without realizing this “within your bones,” there is no way to proceed. We may or many not be surrounded by loving individuals but anything that counts, anything that will ever take place and make a huge difference comes from you.
It should not be tainted by sadness or joy but should be seen as a fact.
Life is much simpler once we deal with facts, not that complexity ever leaves us.

A corollary:
Everything that counts has to be discovered alone.
The more alone and the more shapeless and unfiltered the experience,
the more unable to catalog it…
the more it will have a chance to remain anchored inside you.

A Small Nothing/Un Petit Rien 002

Posted by piermarton on March 9, 2013
Posted in: Insights, LifeAfter, Tips.

On mesure la richesse de l’homme à ce dont ‘il peut se passer. Proverbe Zen cité par Michel Vaujour
One measures the richness of a human being through what he/she can live without. Zen proverb mentioned by Michel Vaujour

Everything is always about everything… And in the deepest sense, everything is a reflection of nothing.
If this fact emerges as a reality, these words which seem to belong to the realm of thinking probably engage resistance, and thus defeat my purpose.
What I say here is unrelated to mysticism, philosophy, and nihilism.

The world of ideas is not my domain; these are not elements to be discussed or argued with.
Actual silence or your own death could help me, but you would misunderstand these suggestions.
Words seem only one way to reconcile what I know.

A Small Nothing/Un Petit Rien 001

Posted by piermarton on November 28, 2012
Posted in: Insights, LifeAfter, Tips.

How can you lose something which you don’t have. U.G. Krishnamurti

Ne parle que des choses heureuses. Pour ce qui est de la peine, pas la peine d’en parler.
Don’t speak of unhappy things. As far as pain is concerned, not worth the pain to speak of that.
 Prévert

Post-Mortem
I used to said that the avant-garde was death…
Whenever I approach THE topic – the only one, besides health and survival, with any gravitas – eyes glaze over, urgently begging me to get back to more mundane topics.
No one is interested in going to the edge, where I was and where I still reside, if such estrangement can be considered a residence.

What I may say may, yes, challenge everything that is considered part of life.

(to be continued in small segments – to be ultimately edited)

Jacques Brel: On N’Oublie Rien, On S’Habitue/We Forget Nothing, We Get Used To It

Posted by piermarton on October 7, 2012
Posted in: BrainScience, LifeAfter, TheBodyChallenge, TheMindChallenge.

My response to someone asking me whether I was healed.
Ma réponse à quelqu’un qui me demandait si j’étais guéri.

(use Google Translate for a quick translation)

On n’oublie rien de rien
On n’oublie rien du tout
On n’oublie rien de rien
On s’habitue, c’est tout

Ni ces départs, ni ces navires
Ni ces voyages qui nous chavirent
De paysages en paysages
Et de visages en visages
Ni tous ces ports, ni tous ces bars
Ni tous ces attrape-cafards
Où l’on attend le matin gris
Au cinéma de son whisky
Ni tout cela, ni rien au monde
Ne sait pas nous faire oublier
Ne peut pas nous faire oublier
Qu’aussi vrai que la terre est ronde.

On n’oublie rien de rien
On n’oublie rien du tout
On n’oublie rien de rien
On s’habitue, c’est tout

Ni ces jamais ni ces toujours
Ni ces je t’aime ni ces amours
Que l’on poursuit à travers coeurs
De gris en gris de pleurs en pleurs
Ni ces bras blancs d’une seule nuit
Collier de femme pour notre ennui
Que l’on dénoue au petit jour
Par des promesses de retour
Ni tout cela ni rien au monde
Ne sait pas nous faire oublier
Ne peut pas nous faire oublier
Qu’aussi vrai que la terre est ronde

On n’oublie rien de rien
On n’oublie rien du tout
On n’oublie rien de rien
On s’habitue, c’est tout

Ni même ce temps où j’aurais fait
Mille chansons de mes regrets
Ni même ce temps où mes souvenirs
Prendront mes rides pour un sourire
Ni ce grand lit où mes remords
Ont rendez-vous avec la mort
Ni ce grand lit que je souhaite
A certains jours comme une fête
Ni tout cela ni rien au monde
Ne sait pas nous faire oublier
Ne peut pas nous faire oublier
Qu’aussi vrai que la terre est ronde

On n’oublie rien de rien
On n’oublie rien du tout
On n’oublie rien de rien
On s’habitue, c’est tout

Beyond Speech & Language (Au delà du language)

Posted by piermarton on July 28, 2012
Posted in: Books, Insights, LifeAfter, TheMindChallenge.

Even if some of us are lucky enough to be able to speak and be understood, silence looms over all of us.

In that sense the words of Fernand Deligny, the French writer/educator who specialized in autistic children and was read attentively by Deleuze, have a particular resonance:

Le language nest pas innocent. Le moindre mot a une densité idéologique dont on ne se rends même pas compte quand on l’emploie.
Il nous enferme dans une convention dont l’histoire-même nous échappe et qui nous semble toute naturelle.
Le language tends a prendre sans cesse le pouvoir absolu.
L’humain est ce qui échappe au language.

Language is not innocent. The smallest word has an ideological density that hides itself as it is used.
It traps us into a convention whose history escapes us and appears completely natural.
Language has a relentless tendency to seek absolute power.
The human is what escapes language.
(my translation)

Static & Frozen Movement

Posted by piermarton on July 16, 2012
Posted in: Death, Insights, LifeAfter, Rehab, TheBodyChallenge, TheMindChallenge.

Most people, when things are not perfect, would love for a change to take place. Unfortunately for many of us, the changes are minimal to the point of appearing non-existent.  In French we use the expression”faire du surplace” – moving without creating any change.

It is in that spirit – and that of the film L’Amour à Mort (Love Unto Death) by Resnais – that I hope to write a short text to be called On n’en revient pas (a French expression meaning both “from there one does not come back,” and “hard to believe”).

A Challenged Self Hears U.G. Krishnamurti

Posted by piermarton on February 22, 2012
Posted in: Books, BrainScience, Insights, LifeAfter, LifeBefore, TheMindChallenge.

What U.G. Krishnamurti (not the famous one) said over and over in his books already made a lot of sense before my surgery.

Now, would anyone be able to hear what he said, it would save a lot of my efforts in explaining the particular distance I started describing in my earlier posts (Brecht, Herzog…).

If you are willing to enter his realm – not a matter of arguing with him – there are many texts/sites that could challenge your self.
U.G.
The two main sites:

U.G.Krishnamurti.org
&
U.G.Krishnamurti.Net

And books (composed primarily of interviews):

My teaching, if that is the word you want to use, has no copyright. You are free to reproduce, distribute, interpret, misinterpret, distort, garble, do what you like, even claim authorship, without my consent or the permission of anybody.
–U.G.


Submerged Off the Map (I.C.U. 001)

Posted by piermarton on February 17, 2012
Posted in: Death, Graphics, ICU, Insights, LifeAfter, Post-Op, TheHospital.

We’re not in Kansas anymore…

The weeks spent in I.C.U. were like an eternity in hell (more in another entry).
Later in rehab I was shown “Encounters at the End of the World,” Werner Herzog’s masterpiece. To my amazement, it was as if someone was describing the universe I had barely escaped from.
Just like those divers going through massive layers of ice with only one hole to come back to the surface,

while it had been all about life or death, there had been absolutely no road map.

I had been submerged too and was still gasping for air.

The Invisible Distance (and Fatigue) Towards The Fluff & The “Too Much”

Posted by piermarton on February 17, 2012
Posted in: Insights, LifeAfter, Post-Rehab, TheBodyChallenge, TheMindChallenge, Tips.

APPEARANCES
Because I can speak and interact normally*, most people assume that I have made a complete recovery… but the exhaustion endures (hands or knees shake at times) and very often there is a fog to be pierced through to interact with others.
The best way to express this is to say that my eyeballs don’t feel completely aligned with my eye sockets. I can look but am I looking, am I seeing?
Taking a warm shower or sitting in a hot-tub seem to help this discomfort – this simple trick provided my first sense of relief from feeling utterly “out of it.”
Similarly, if I move my head upward/downward or sideways too fast, everything spins around me. Doctors and rehab personnel have called this symptom a vestibular issue and tried in vain to manipulate my inner ear crystals.

DISTANCE
Earlier I have brought up my sense that much of life seem to be populated by “stuff” (as if I were floating in the intergalatic space described in the classic film “The Powers of Ten” [a link]).
There is also my persistent way of being disconnected from the (mundane) busyness of regular life.
As a doctor remarked astutely:

just to be there, present interacting with eyes, ears and one’s body and mind, IS a lot of work.

Normal sound and visual stimulation, even in their more quiet forms, are plenty to process. Handling the intensity of  a sunny day with the wind bristling through the leaves, or an excited crowd, is too much.

I used to value the distanciation/alienation (“Verfremdung” in German) that Brecht had advised for his epic theater. I had looked for it in theater, film and art.
Now I live with this distance on a daily basis. Even if I decried fluff in past writing, now fluff surrounds me everywhere (cf. Resnais’s film mentioned earlier).

And so, the small, the quiet, are much more appealing… I am reminded of this “Auto-Interview” by Primo Levi which I had always appreciated:

… we must be cautious about delegating to others our judgment and our will. Since it is difficult to distinguish true prophets from false, it is as well to regard all prophets with suspicion. It is better to renounce revealed truths, even if they exalt us by their simplicity and their splendor, or if we find them convenient because we can acquire them gratis.

It is better to content oneself with other more modest and less exciting truths, those one acquires painfully, little by little and without shortcuts, with study, discussion and reasoning, those that can be verified and demonstrated.

*more about that later