Posted yesterday at 1:00 p.m.
Activists throw soup on a Van Gogh in front of the indecency of his value. Saudi Arabia finances Ukraine. The meat substitute industry is losing its feathers. The La Fontaine tunnel will be a parking lot (even more, should we rather say) for three years. COVID is making a comeback. So here is a bit of quiet poetry to soften the morals.
A beautiful fall this year. I planted garlic this week. A few days before losing their leaves, the sugar maples are on fire. Thousands of ladybugs everywhere. And still thousands of caterpillars crossing the roads, more or less unscathed. There are leeks, celery, a single cabbage and herbs left in the vegetable garden.
I also slaughtered a pig, to spend the winter. A boar who “gait” a female. You have to gauge the males well; on the one hand, we want them to do their “job” and on the other, if we wait too long, their hormones end up affecting their value. In industry, the meat of a mature male is worth three times less and is used almost exclusively for sausages. This thought came back to me, watching my knife remove Mr Pig’s balls earlier this week. I encourage you to rhyme this with the news of your choice!
But that’s not where I wanted to go today. I wanted to talk about poetry. So no link, and nothing to read between the lines, in what follows. Or so little…
I have been mentoring, in a university program, for a few years. One day, it is no longer a year of birth that tells us that time is passing, but the world around us; have become, to my great surprise and despite my efforts at denial, a kind of authority (I smile). This year it is a graduate student of Fine Arts, whom I accompany for a year. “L”, a gifted artist, who came from Iran (with a study visa) four years ago to try to live something other than a life mapped out in advance and escape her prison origins a little. She returned there in mid-September to go to the bedside of a sick loved one. Radio silence for almost four weeks. Apart from one:
” Hello how are you ? to which she replied:
— Hello Marc, I don’t know if this message will reach you, but yes, I’m trying to come back to Canada.
“How are people in Iran?”
“We all hope that the situation will change for the benefit of our people. It is terrifying to think that the mullahs will remain in power after these bloody days. »
No internet, or very little with VPNs. It was only once in an airport in Germany that she was able to find the network. Can we imagine living without being connected to our comfort, even for a few days?
The most beautiful thing of the year, by far, no offense to the dais of politics and a new council of ministers, is the one that quietly promises a little light: this is what is happening in Iran since the end of the summer.
First set in motion by women, a revolution is taking shape, a real one. And it must continue. Even if it upsets paradoxes about the freedom of a veil here and there, the fabric is not a choice that advances women’s rights.
We should rejoice to learn that time is not always right; just because an ideological system survives for 40 years or millennia doesn’t mean it’s right. And while elsewhere (closer to us), the right of women to abortion is questioned, I allow myself to dream of an insurrection, one that reassures about human nature.
One step back, one step forward. It is in this interval that we can measure the length of our chains. And dream of breaking them.
I was about to forget. I announced poetry today. Here are two books that I promised myself to give to “L”, so that she could learn a little French, of course, but above all to understand what the freedom of which she had been dreaming awake for a few weeks had offered. pass the winterby Kateri Lemmens (2020, Le Noroît), and I would like to fall there, by Madeleine Lefebvre (2022, Quartz). Two magnificent collections, among the fine ones published here for many years, which reconcile a crooked world with a bit of beauty. When we can say it and we exist a little bit.
Went to carry the guts and balls of the pig to the end of the field. To feed scavengers.