Introspection

Love is the only way, others are just detours.

This is an interesting introspection exercise, although I have always some reluctance to speak about me.

I am 64 and began to write at 15 when I met a girl I was in love with. One year after, I discovered the surrealist poets: mainly André Breton. It was a shock. With a friend, we played to write exquisite corpses or automatic writing, listening to rock vinyls, and wrote many poems. During these teenager years, I met the writers I would cherish: Lovecraft, Prokosch, Dostoevsky, Poe, Nerval, Borges, Rimbaud, Michaud, Holderlin, Rilke, Alain-Fournier. I was very eager to read any book and still am. I can't name every band we listened to, but The Doors, and later on, Patti Smith, made a deep and lasting impression upon me. Then I did jobs for food, still writing bits of lines, beginning writing numerous books without finishing any. I had a short thriller edited in a literary magazine. I met Hélène in 1983, she was a classics teacher and a writer. She knew so many languages (French, Provençal, Latin and Greek, modern Greek, Russian and some more). She taught me, along the years I lived with her, how to write better. My mother tongue is French but I managed to speak English, Spanish and Breton. For me, speaking languages allow us to embrace multiple points of views and to have several personalities, languages alter personality in a good sense. Being monolingual would be, for me, a handicap. When I write in English, I use AI to translate or I write directly, but anyway I spend a lot of time to reread and check up everything. It is a blessing because I remove layers in order to be clear. I hunt down what does not nourish the clarity. I won't write intellectual texts because I am not able to do it in English although I have had a period, I succumbed to that sin, in French. As you know the French language can be very abstract and sometimes abstruse. The feminine side is important to me. In my natal sky chart, Moon has a better place, a power place. Dream, reverie, sensitivity. Much air, water and fire. I have the happiness to live with my wife Sylvie who is very well-grounded.

Sylvie, my wife has the responsibility and privilege to veto before publishing. She dislikes photos of herself. She allowed me to live a decent life with strategies that worked. Her family is from West Indies Martinique, she's my soul mate. We have a daughter, Rachel, we adopted from Haiti, she’ s 20 years old. Art, connection to invisible, other life forms are important to me. We live in a small paradise near the city where I work as an IT specialist in a network of libraries. I have always been between art and technology. I have created many websites.

I come from Brittany, a Celtic country. France is not a hot supporter of diversity within its borders. Our language, identity and pride have been methodically destroyed. Hence, many social problems: violence, suicides, alcoholism… But we got advantages from France, we are warriors, inventors, artists, entrepreneurs. Brittany is as big as Denmark and is a pier in the Atlantic Ocean. Bretons live all over the world. For me, it has been a breath of fresh air to be able to speak English and communicate outside France. In my inner life, there have been some key moments like reading Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, then spreading the word about the World Healing Day in 1986 and after, the 31st of December. Then in 1994, the internet was what I was waiting for and I discovered so much diversity. I discovered Shamanism, being able to become an eagle, flying along the cliffs of Les Andelys, feeling the air rustling on my pens. Then I met Jasmuheen and we did with my wife a process of not eating for 29 days, I don’t recommend it to anybody. We learned a lot, mainly to conquer fear and discover the power of spirit. Now I am practising Druidry connecting with the whole creation, visible or invisible to our eyes.

As said Flannery O'Connor, I write to discover what I know. It is my spiritual path, the way I receive my life lessons. We have the privilege to live on this beautiful planet with constraints that teach us about who we really are.

We moved away from Paris to Pau, near the Pyrenees and we bought here a small paradise in what is called the Happy Valley, near an organic vine. With 6000 square meters, I planted trees for bees mainly and fruit trees, did some beekeeping. We have a lot of biodiversity with many mammals, birds and insects, including fungi. The house was built in 1738 with thick walls, we don't need any air conditioner. Here in Bearn, there are nice links between people although we are far from my beloved Brittany, I love our location.

I am a passionate kayaker, we have the privilege to go kayaking in Pyrenees torrents. You learn to be attentive and to anticipate the flow, so that you can change your direction according to the circumstances, without ever fighting head-on. Mindfulness in action. I think we are living an accelerated transition toward balance with our feminine powers. Being a man or a woman is about our body and our ego, but we all have a feminine and masculine side, even in our brain. We need to synchronize those two sides otherwise this planet and humanity are in danger.

I just came on Medium to read stories in April last year, I did no think I was able to write in English till 2020.

I want here to thank chronologically Simran Kankas, Elle Beau ❇︎, Dennett, Thomas Gaudex, and recently Dr Mehmet Yildiz, respectively founders of The Spiritual Tree, Sensual Enchantment, Weeds & Wildflowers, Scribe and ILLUMINATION. They welcomed me with kindness in their publication, they are so generous of their time and work. Thank you to Dr Mehmet Yildiz to propose every writer to introduce oneself. Here I can’t name everyone who impressed me with wonder, I express a lot in comments and made them know it. Alone, we are nothing, we are the fruit of community interaction. We are one Spirit acting under a diversity of forms.

Here some of my works :

What is the reality?

Some other aspects of my life :

My new series about Dreamtime :

A last one for our walking conversation :

Two writers here changed my deep vision, although I could name many more :

I feel much gratitude to you readers, and you editors.