Crazy Life Stories

Dear unknown friend, I hope this letter finds you well, relaxed and happy to be who you are... This morning, on my way to the coffee shop I noticed that I was walking a little bit too quickly for a Saturday. It occurred to me that I have made my life a race, which I want to win, because the prize is something I value and desire a lot, which is: a life without racing. It's crazy isn't it? Normally, if the end of the race is the prize, I should be able to win straight away, just by stopping right now. Why am I racing? Do I need more love? I am loved and I can feel it, when I see my parents, my siblings, my friends... I am quite happy to be myself, in spite of the dark bits I haven't dissolve yet; life loves me, the Great Spirit makes me grow like a desired plant in a corner of the earth... Why am I still racing then? Before it was different. I felt so bad in my own skin, I had so much to prove to myself before I could allow a little bit of self esteem and self love in...

Dear  friend, Do you how antivenom is made? Venom is collected from snakes; horses are injected with it. The horses fight the venom. Then the human draw blood from the horses, the antivenom is in it. This is literally true, and this is also a metaphor. Dear friend, maybe you are a "horse" as well... It's our job to be poisoned and fight within our own souls. Whether we know it or not, we are useful. The suffering is more bearable when it makes sense though. We are making antivenom for ourselves and others... A famous verse of the Emerald Table goes like this: "That which is below is like that which is above & that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing" A way to understand what it means is to see anything that exists in the material world as a reflection of something that exists in the invisible planes, that is the psychological and spiritual planes... If some beings, in our case horses, do make antiveno...

One day of  autumn, I was on a bus in London, on my way back from a gardening job. Two seats in front of me were three boys in their school uniforms. Two of them were sitting and one was standing in front of them, in the area near the bus doors. The two sitting ones were playing with him. The game was not friendly. He let them do, though. He didn't try to put some distance between himself and them. One grabbed him by the tie and pulled, throwing him out of balance... but they kept talking together, like school mates do. Then the other sitting boy grabbed his hands and twisted them, until the poor boy asked, in a low voice... "please...." Later, the first bully took the boy's hat. He tried to get it back but the bully didn't let him. He claimed he would throw the hat through the window at the next stop to see the boy getting off the bus, picking his hat and getting back on the bus before the doors closed...if he had time. The bully kept pretending he would do it....

I was 22. I was playing bad guitar in front of my tent. It was very hot. It was nap time on the campsite. All I was interested in at that time was to learn how to play the guitar but I was quite bad at it. I did not realise that my approach to music was entirely wrong. I wasn't playing music. I was just desperately fighting for self worth.  I didn't know how to learn. I wouldn't have trusted a teacher. I wouldn't have trusted anybody for anything. I was doing my little things when I heard a loud male voice. "Stop it!" I instantly put the guitar down and looked around. Nobody was there. No angry beard nothing... I was not sure I had really heard. It must have been in my head. Then a little boy came up to me. He was about 3 years old. He laughed and told me: "I told you to stop!" I looked at him, I found nothing to say, and he went....

"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...

Italy, not far from the Swiss border. Zonka, a little village in the mountains. Huge stone houses with wooden balconies running around them, facing the steep slopes covered with trees. Most were empty. The rooves were thick slates, as grey as the walls. Magnificient. One of these houses belonged to K, 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. Ayahuasca. We called it Daime. Santo Daime. The room was big and wide. We were thirty or forty people feeling at ease, forming the circle. There were no wallpaper, no plaster, just stone and wood. To go to the toilets, we had to get onto the wooden balcony, walk up to its extreme end, and sit facing the mountains. When your poo was done, it dropped 20 meters below, between the trees. Better not to feel dizzy. It is no...