Titre

Much of what happens to us in life is nameless because our vocabulary is too poor. Most stories get told out loud because the storyteller hopes that the telling of the story can transform a nameless event into a familiar or intimate one. We tend to associate intimacy with closeness and closeness with a certain sum of shared experiences. Yet every day total strangers, who will never say a single word to one another, can share an intimacy. An intimacy contained in the exchange of a glance, a nod of the head, a smile, a shrug of a shoulder. A closeness which lasts for a second or for the duration of a song being sung and listened to together. An agreement about life. An agreement without clauses. A conclusion spontaneously shared between the untold stories gathered around the song.

I wish you an endless list of dreams, and the furious desire to make some of them come true. I wish you to love what must be loved and to forget what must be forgotten. I wish you passions, I wish you silences. I wish you bird songs at dawn and chidren’s laughter. I wish you to respect people’s differences, because the value and merit of each often remains to be discovered. I wish you to refuse a stalemate, or the indifference and negative vertues of our time. And I wish you never to renounce the search, adventure, life, love, because life is an incredible adventure and no reasonable human being must renounce it without putting up a tough fight. I wish you most of all to be yourself, proud and happy, because happiness is our true destiny.

December's language is imprecise grief

“Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.”