photo: only a boat is missing (the books are in the trees), Pohara, indigenous forest.
it was in our thoughts
or maybe in our dreams
the green boat, or was it an arch (of Noah?)
leaving the shore
full of books
also green
with words we might read
in quiet disarray
on our way to the salted water
photo : it is the background I like in this photo, as the shadows seem to hover over the foreground, a bit like our unconscious dominates us in a way we hardly suspect.
In the quiet recesses of the mind, the unconscious /
the contours of which are traced with delicate touches of trembling memories/
is quietly agitatting in order to invade the soul/
thoughts are emerging like fragile icicles/
The cold seeps through the light/
What secrets are hidden here? Half-formed thoughts/
elusive and dancing at the edge of reason.
I read a lot of articles about overconsumption, the environment, fast fashion, the future of the planet and I can feel a desire to change things in an abstract way. That being said, with the holidays approaching, despite all the recipes for an environmentally-sustainable or modest Christmas meal making headlines, a reminder that charity shops are full of goods that would be glad to extend their life, that interest rates will continue to rise next year and thus endanger buyers who have gone to the limits of their means, the statistics tell us that we are spending more and more. It makes me want to go spend Christmas in a desert. There are none nearby, so this year I will be at the beach.
Photo: Santa Teresa Gallura, Sardinia
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940). There are already many scholarly reviews of this book by Hemingway, considered by some to be his best, strongly inspired by his work as a journalist during the Spanish Civil War, atmosphere of which he recreates with great conviction. I will content myself with sharing my impressions of Robert Jordan, an American university professor, joining the International Brigades, on a mission to blow up a bridge. We follow him for three days as he lives with a group of anti-fascist supporters to prepare for his offensive, falls in love with Maria and does not survive the attack.
It took me a long time to finish this book, I could only read a few pages at a time, probably because of its density. I was interested in learning more about Hemingway's "iceberg" style, where one mentions only a small part of one's characters, while one must, according to Hemingway, know them thoroughly. His advice suggests that the quality of a book comes from the capacity of its author to cut long passages, which he definitely did not hesitate to do, with great success. I feel like I know Robert Jordan, Maria and the others, even if the author only introduces us to certain aspects of their lives. I did not ask myself, while reading this book, as I have often enough in my recent readings, why the editor had not suggested cutting certain passages (must one nowadays have enough pages for one's money? am I wondering). Despite what one might call, a lack of detail, I found a lot of humanity, love, suffering, pain, violence, as well as reflections on the value of life and death, deep questions that touched me a lot.
Obviously, there will surely be someone, somewhere, who will find, sooner or later, that this book is too much this or not enough that, that it does not reflect our times, because the words or the story do not suit our way of thinking, to which I would reply that therein lies the interest of the book, because it allows us to paint an era, to which we can compare ourselves to measure the progress made, the evolution (or lack of it, for that matter) of values and more. Words, stories that were written at a certain time, reflect the mentality of the time and that's it. There is nothing to add or take away, and changing a story to appeal to today's readership, as some editors have done recently, seems unacceptable to me.
at the end of the beach
the rock has reclaimed its rights
and appeased my thoughts