Crazy Life Stories

"I am sorry, I didn't have enough time to be brief." I remember Jean-Charles making a speech for his brother in law's birthday. This was his leitmotiv: "I am sorry, I didn't have enough time to be brief." Marcel Proust wrote these words at the end of a letter to a friend. Jean-Charles kept repeating them as he conspicuously enjoyed speaking at length about the art of being brief.  Jean-Charles' and Marcel Proust's star sign was Cancer (as is my rising sign) I don't know why the sign "Cancer" is not straightforwardly called "crab" given that it is symbolized by a crab, which is a creature that walks sideways. A crab is a typical rambler, as Jean-Charles and Marcel Proust were, with great talent. (Jean-Charles, by the way, was the husband of my ex-partner's aunt, on her mother's side, and he was making this speech for his wife's sister's husband, but this husband of my ex partner's mother, even tho...

Dear unknown friend, Where were you? I was a little boy, maybe 8 years old. I had a great admiration for my uncle Raymond. He always arrived late for Sunday lunches when the family was gathering at my grandparents. Instead of wearing dull and stiff Sunday clothing, he turned up in sportswear, sweating and went for a shower. From the point of view of a little boy who would be sternly told off for being two minutes late this meant great freedom. Raymond was a fisherman. I was fascinated looking at the big fish he brought and left to die a slow and distressing death on the kitchen sink. They were barbels and so full of bones that my grandmother never prepared them. It takes hours for a fish to die. Paying close attention I could feel the exhaustion that squashed them and kept them quiet whilst the agony of being out of the water slowly built up enough strength for just another hopeless spasm… Flap! Flap flap! …. And they were quiet again, though I knew they weren’t dead and I somehow...

Zonka was a little village in the mountains  in Italy, not far from the Swiss border. Most houses were empty. They were beautiful, magnificent, huge stone houses with wooden balconies running around them,    facing the steep slopes covered with trees. Impression of dense power surrounded by immensity. The rooves  were thick slates, as grey as the walls. One of these houses belonged to Karunesh, the guy with the grey hair and beard who was leaning over me when I was shouting to God and the ceiling, the first time I took Ayahuasca… I found myself entrusted with the noble task of picking up flowers to ornate the room where the ceremony would take place in the evening. That’s a really enjoyable activity if you forget the boy code. Normally, men are not supposed to go about the meadows picking up flowers and enjoy it. There were loads of beautiful mountain flowers, like in the ancient times, before excessive mechanisation and chemical industry turned the coun...

The first time I took Ayahuasca was in France, with people belonging to the Church of Santo Daime. (At that time, there was no legislation on this plant). The Church of Santo Daime was born in the Amazon in the 19th century, when Portuguese missionaries were converted to the shamanic practice of drinking Ayuhuasca (the vine of the dead) However, they added very Catholic songs to the rituals. I met people belonging to this "church" and decided to experiment, even though I didn't really know what to expect. Ayahuasca is a very, very, very bitter beverage. This is how I found myself dancing - two steps to the right, two steps to the left and again and again - among French and Italian people. Imagine the sound of maracas, guitars, lyrics in Portuguese... I started to find I was very ridiculous when I started to feel sick. I felt a little bit like when you have ea ten and drunk far too much, and your liver isn't happy at all, but you still hope you won't have to throw...

This is the narration of one of the most powerful Ayahuasca session of my life… The group officially called “Association for the protection of the Rainforest” was settling for a prolonged weekend of Ayahuasca rituals in an isolated farm in the middle of the countryside. It belonged to the family of one of our members, nobody else was around, we were between ourselves, in the middle of vineyards in the South of France… Emma smiled when I arrived. Emma was the kind of girl many men fall in love at first sight with. She seemed to enjoy being endowed with Aphrodite’s powers. She had a Yorkshire Terrier, Renoir would have loved painting her. She was also a kind and sensitive soul. She had a disease, which I don’t remember the name of. She needed a crutch to walk. This was a kind of incurable slow evolving thing that has the power to get even an Aphrodite’s daughters to focus on non erotic issues such as the meaning of life. Emma offered me to draw a card from a new deck ...