Best Days of Our Lives

So how is it like in New York city,
Where student’s fresh minds run desp’rately free?
So how is it like in your Manhattan
Where mighty pages are being written?

In your own time, in your own time
You are coming to age, I witness that.

Did we ever see on those days,
How fast beauty was fading away?

Why didn’t we know, playing with their knives,

We were spending the best days of our lives?

It does not matter anymore nore does it make a difference:
We are aware now time is passing by and softens our senses.

In your own time, in your own time
You are starting changes, I witness that.

Take it slow-ly and turn things around steadi-ly, our way.
Do you know and do you feel all these people watching you?
Like we used to follow shining stars; these miracles we glazed at.

“Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.”

G. B. Shaw

De retour à Paris

Alors qu’est-ce que ça fait de rentrer à Paris?

Hm, je ne sais pas trop en tous cas il y a des choses qui m’ont manqué et que je retrouve avec joie aujourd’hui ici. Des choses personnelles et puis d’autres comme la culture. Je me souviens de ses gens d’Afrique du Sud incrédules qui ne comprennait pas que cela puisse etre si important.

Ca l’est. Et j’étais comblé hier que se tienne la nuit des musées, à laquelle j’ai participé pour la première fois.

Cet après midi, expo Dave LaChapelle et ses photos à carractère sex trach et acidulés; un peu decevant: rien de nouveau et peux d’oeuvres.

Qu’à cela ne tienne, ce sera bientôt peut être notre tour.

The Breath of Panam

Chop chop sharp boy. It’s been 64 years today since the end of the second world war. Let’s celebrate, karaoke, ok. Korean style.

8:30pm let’s meet and let Min-Sik sing for a while. You, larynx Creep! There was Billy Jean etc baby, you sing it like you can, until the clock says stop. Top notch venue. Let have something to eat, ok: Karaoke. Korean style. We’ll share a soup shall we not, asks Min-Sik. Why do you ask?

Clock says stop and we all end up in Boulogne, Boulouloubi would say Marwan,  on the balcony of a first floor flat looking into a  dark neat night. So what did you say about your holiday in Baly? So what did you say about South Africa? I sing it like I can.  And it all disapears in the wind like a puff of  smoke. We ride back to our houses sliding on the thick grey ribbon, we fall back suddenly into our lives. Doesn’t it feel great?

Eat

For my one but last evening in Johannesburg, people I knew were all busy. I was hungry and did not feel like cooking so I curiously decided to get to my favourite restaurant on my own. I took a book and went off for my first time alone-at-the-restaurant experience.

It was much easier than I though, may be I have grown in maturity, I did quite enjoyed it; reading my book, drinking wine and ordering quickly. In the middle of the evening I started to get much more pleasure from that situation than I would have expected, the mood and the music were soft and smooth, easy to glide on.

In the end I decided to stay a little longer than planned – event though I had to meet people afterward – and spoiled myself with a little cake. When it landed on my table I was reading; I continued while eating the raspberry jam on the side. Against my tong I felt an awkward sensation like a leaf in the middle of the sugary cold jelly. I pulled it out of my mouth and laid it on the side of the plate to notice very surprised that it was a dead cockroach. I stared at it a short while.

I called the waiter and kindly required him to take the plate away while asking for the bill. I didn’t say any thing, as you are not supposed to say that word over there – Taboo! – but he nodded comprehensively, he was embarrassed. I paid and left, not too unhappy about that evening after all.

But don’t you think it is ironic that for my last restaurant in South Africa, for my last ordered course, it was the first time I found a cockroach in my food. It is as if something was saying, well if you leave, leave with a bad taste in your mouth. But I don’t. I know better.

So farewell my lady and see you later maybe. Papa’s flying back home, for good.

Be Eaten

So this is it: my last weekend here, another three-day break to enjoy the south-african funfair. It didn’t take me long to decide what I should do to close this memorable chapter of my life: one trip with the beautiful freaks, a tour in real life for a taste of how bad things can get. Kruger here I am; Wam Bam!

So I look for a nice lodge and book a big room for a spoiled boy right next to the park. We arrive Saturday, a little after lunch and take our time to slowly immerge ourselves into the deep thick sent of the wild. We sit next to the pool until the sun gets red and that zebras and warthogs come nearby to sip water before the night. We leave the lodge just before sunset for a night-game-drive in the park. We look for beasts hidden in the dark; apart from lions eating a giraffe in the distance and night insects big like your hand we did not see much more than the usual herbivores.

Before sunrise, the following day, we are already driving to the park with our ranger Heinrich, and his 2.7 tones four-wheel drive. We ride around in the clear light and fresh air with tea and much expectation. Our guide knows a lot and sees so far away it feels he could foresee the future. We quickly start to spot all kinds of odd looking animals (wildebeests, rhinos, giraffes…). I have seen them times and times before but this time it is different, this times it is goodbye.

We drove for twelve hours, stopped a few times for breakfast cooked camping-style – hanks Heinrich – on top of a mountain overlooking a flat field as wide as Manhattan, split in half by a large river where hippos rest and kudus come drink fearfully. We have seen many things that day, a lot that I will not remember, but that’s how things go. I will mostly keep in mind an encounter with a huge alpha male elephant walking on the road. Our guide wanted to get him off of it so he parked the 4×4 in the middle of the road. The beast walked around the vehicle at every try, until finally it got fed up, stopped and looked at us. Although we were sitting in that nearly 3 tones jeep, 2m above the road, the animal still looked huge to us. The words of our driver were echoing in the back of my mind: “We weigh 3 tones in this car, an average elephant weighs 7 tones; for him flipping the car his as easy as tossing a water bucket”. This was no average male.

That’s how it is over there: the stronger is always right. We human are little useless things with no natural defence against nature’s most basic threats. Over there we have just a little more resistance than green grass and harmless-insects. It is difficult to feel how powerful nature is until you get next to it, into it. These animals we usually see on TV or at the zoo have powers far beyond what I could have imagined. Any of them running one a half time quicker the fastest human – you cannot understand unless you have seen it in reel; any predator able to cut through bones like us through carrots human – you cannot understand unless you have seen it in reel; Sight, smell, claws, poison, weight, stamina, you name it it’s all very impressive to the point that even in the biggest car with the best gun you still feel powerless. But wait. Why do we want to know about all that? Why do we need to hear stories about people getting killed and what horrible things hyenas and hippos will do to you if they can? Why does humankind need to be in touch with such violence?

For the last day we wanted to do a morning game-walk but unfortunately all of them were canceled as a hippo had attacked a group the previous week. A woman nearly died and several were injured. Instead we stayed at the lodge surrounded by zebras, and monkeys eating bananas.

And that was it, as fast as it came it was gone. I closed this window on life and came back to our reality.

Elephant in Kruger Park from damien.ldp on Vimeo.

Fear facts:

• A hyenas will eat you alive, no time to kill you. With a group of four/five beasts they will just rip your arms legs apart for each of hem to eat in their corner.
• Hippos are the animals inflicting the most casualties upon humans in Africa, even though they do not eat meat. There are just bad tempered animals.
• A buffalo has so much adrenaline that it seems impossible to kill. Lions (200kg) would need to be five or six together to take one down; that is why a old male buffalos have usually faced and survived several lions attack. A bullet would typically not stop a buffalo unless it hits the brain or the spine.