Wednesday, I (we) invited Millicent Brown for lunch. The purpose is to expose to her my dilemma with ‘a Tale of Charleston’ and it’s relevance.

This morning, as I was answering a mail from Jean-Pierre, I launched into explaining why I may not go to France with Gwylène in January. Here is a relevant excerpt of the mail and a quick translation! All of a sudden,I was having clear thoughts about the Tale quandary!

Je n’aime plus la France sous le régime présent. Mon travail me rend de plus en plus conscient de l’insupportable précarité légale des citoyens soumis aux incohérences du corps politique. J’ai appris mes leçons. Je déteste l’arbitraire. La corruption me déconfit! Que ce soit ici ou là-bas.

J’en suis, dans mon boulot en cours, à écrire un conte, une fable en trois dimensions sur le futur de Charleston … alors qu’il a déjà été déterminé, dessiné, chiffré et mis entre les mains de développeurs immobiliers! Ce nest pas de la désillusion. Ni de la dépression. Ni de la démission. Pas du tout. C’est de la mise en poésie! Mais c’est aussi un nouveau métier que j’ai du mal à apprendre.

I don’t like France under the present regime anymore. My work makes me more and more aware of the unbearable legal precariousness of citizens subjected to the incoherences of the body politic. I have learned my lessons. I hate arbitrariness.

Corruption defeats me. Whether here or there.

I am at the point where, in my present work, I am writing a fable, a three-dimensional Tale on the future of Charleston … knowing full well that it has already been determined, designed, evaluated and placed in the hands of developers! This is not disillusion. Nor is it depression or demission. Not at all. It is a transition to poetry! But it is also a new trade which I have a hard time learning.

… a transition to poetry – a translation into poetry … couldn’t do better than this so far. It will bug me until I find a more accurate way of saying, in two words, how to transform the actual, yet invisible reality into a visible, poetic unreality.

Obviously, I am preparing myself for the lunch with Millecent!

An interesting detail: at the burial of Auzheal, last Saturday, who was there, among the thirty people present? Millicent! We shook hands but did not exchange a word! It was freezing. Our jaws were frozen shut!

Also, I just purchases a book by Kim Stanley Robinson, the Ministry of the Future, where this famous climate-science fiction writer seems to foresee a better world! Worth trying, no?