In a time where every minute of every day is filled with chatter and noise, solitude and silence do seem like an endearing thing. And while silence and solitude are bound to connect us much more deeply to ourselves and the things that haunt us, work on us, make us laugh or cry, they - just as anything else - can be the most oppressive and terrible things.
Being alone, lonely… maybe it’s for that reason that these expressions have become tinged with the sense of something negative. Or maybe it’s just our society that is suggesting that the more people you have around you that keep you from being alone, the more successful, more cherished, loved and popular you are. After all, who actually likes to be alone? Isn’t it rather the mark of a socially inept person to be alone, to seek loneliness, to find silence?

Another tradition runs against this. In it men and women have chosen solitude and silence as a way to holiness. For it is in the silence and solitude that we hear our inner selves proclaimed. It is in these lonely hours between the waking and the morning that we truly have to accept our own limits, our own fear and our own hardships that do not come from the world that surrounds us, but from the world that lives in us. But if holiness is found in solitude, why do we shy away from it?

Getting to know oneself is the challenge of a lifetime and some say that you can never achieve it until you’ve drawn your last breath. Be that as it may, it still is a hard task for sure. There never is a moment where we do not either surprise ourselves or are scared by our own darkness, meanness and gratious hardness towards either ourselves or the people that depend on us. Listening, hearing and accepting those limitations of our own being, of ultimately what makes us be the humans that we are… will break us or make us.

And thus solitude becomes a catalyst, a primer, a moment of hesitations before we launch ourselves back at the world to change it.

This is a tease post in a series of short essays or meditations that will sooner or later be published alongside with my poetry.

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Te voir, te regarder.
Construire chaque jour,
chaque heure,
chaque minute,
comme une cathédrale,
menée par un savoir arcane,
perdu il y a des ères,
tombé dans le fonds
de toute chose.

Te regarder, te voir.
Voué par l’heure,
tendu pour rire,
chambre après chambre,
d’une maison indissoluble
par le temps,
solidifiée par le passé,
illuminée par les étincelles
d’un futur
construit jour par jour,
heure par heure,
minute par minute.

Un cathédrale de lumières et de rires éternels.

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Rallume mon coeur de milles morts,
quand le moment sera opportun,
quand le jour sera bien,
quand je ne serais plus qu’une goutte,
plus qu’une mémoire,
une brillance
de tout ce qui aurait dû être,
tout ce que nous aurions dû voir
et tout ce qui aurait pu me faire vivre.

Rallume mon coeur de mille mots,
comme des étincelles,
dans une feu trop brûlant,
des pierres blanches
dans une rivière trop profonde.

Qu’aurons-nous fait de nous,
un jour dans ce future qui jamais
ne franchira la dernière frontière
entre ici, maintenant et une fois, là?

Qu’aurons-nous dit
à ceux qui autrefois nous demandèrent,
et maintenant se taisent?

Aurons-nous eu assez de tout et de rien?

Rallume mon coeur
qui finalement a fini de battre dans tes mains nues.
Après tant de peurs et tant de pleurs.
Après le dernière mot et la dernière larme.

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When do we really dare to know, dare to care?
There is a silent whisper whenever the clouds separate themselves,

torn apart by insensitive finger of windy heights,
blown to the extremes of this world,

a whisper that prolonged and minded, speaks of eternity.

With words that no language can bear nor hold,
a symphony of continuous harmony,
creating ever on, like the waves that continue to roll

one after the other, into and onto this land,
into my heart and your eyes.

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