A Penny for Your Thoughts

Sometimes I find that text makes you see and feel things more accurately than pictures, because I make you see it through my eyes and mind, my heart and soul, and through the stardust we're all made of. Sometimes I find that pictures lose the magic of the moment, and that only the magic of words can work to bring it back. Do you?

Oh, The Places You'll Go !

Oh, The Places You'll Go ! Take my hand, and I'll show you a place where skeletons play the saxophone ! I'll take you to the sea-shore, where we'll watch mountains disappear, travelling to imaginary lands between the ocean and the fog. Together, we'll climb the never-ending sand-dunes that eat your feet away and burn your skin, until you make it to the top, and there - oh, there ! - you will see the world at your feet, like a map ready to be marked, like a patchwork of fantastic lands and unknown territories. You'll blend its colors together, and you'll take your hiking gear and create your own path. What a beautiful, dangerous, inspiring, intense path it will be !

Oh, The Things You Will See ! The dozens of dolphins playing around the submarine, the rainbow flags dancing together in a hidden meadow, the cougar roaming in the local park, the dancing bearcat and the curious puppy, the sunset deer at the fork in the woods, the vanilla swirl, the real Lucius Malfoy, the welcome of the chaplain, the buffalos all around, the ghost in the mirror, the sky so wide above the clock tower, and the candles floating on the river !

Oh, The People You'll Meet ! Dozens of escapees from Alcatraz reaching the shore under your eyes, one grumpy man on the Golden Gate Bridge, one ever-happy librarian, one character from a show you like and a fake doppelganger! Just go on, go on, and on your journey you'll also find the evil Master of Campus Life, the excited and fragile freshmen, the little girl shouting "I win! I win! I win!" and the magic of dancing!

And this is just the beginning, but all of these are already there for you, for your eyes and for your mind, for your heart and for your soul, all in one place at the same exact time on the same precise date, so welcome everyone, welcome to Willamette University...

Singing in the Wind

San Francisco se lève... En fait, San Francisco se coucherait maintenant, si San Francisco était du genre à se coucher la nuit. Les néons flashent, la culture beatnik est tout autour, Chinatown est à deux pas, et la capitale LGBT mondiale à trois pas et demi. Beaucoup de choses à raconter, à présenter, à découvrir, et j'essaierai de ne rien oublier quand je m'installerai à mon ordinateur dans une petite semaine pour mieux contribuer à ce blog. En attendant, je me remplis la tête de trésors de vie.

En entrée ("appetizer"), une anecdote bostonienne. Attente à un feu, pour traverser, près du port et de Columbus Parc, soudain une voix s'élève, c'est une jeune femme qui chante. Dans la foule en face, une deuxième voix lui répond, reprenant à l'unisson la même chanson. Puis, quand le feu passe au vert et que je traverse la route, ce sont une trentaine de personnes, un peu partout dans la foule qui traverse à mes côtés ou en face de moi, qui chantent "We Are The World". Pendant deux minutes trente, ma vie était devenue une comédie musicale.

The Golden Thread

Come again, ladies and gentlemen, please come on board, don’t be shy. A new epic adventure, maybe, lots of hidden treasures to discover, hopefully humor and wit along the way, hope looming on the horizon, come and walk under the radiant sun of a new continent and meet a new ocean of souls! Come and meet the immigration officer who was unlucky enough to fall in love, the paranoid policeman, the bus driver who is also a superhero – Superbus -, the crazy talented artists of Berklee school music, the hipsters hanging out in the streets, the barrel-bellied guys with golden chains, and John the burger grinder!

Come and meet the swinging kids for whom life is a permanent rocking boat, the lovers kissing in the grass next to the squirrel-hunter, the starling who was scared of pigeons, please step forward but be careful! For here comes the man with eyes so blue you could fall in, and once you do, there’s no hope left. He has a big black bag, the size of his dreams, to carry around his blueberry dollars – oh, he loves blueberries, and he’ll tell you his dreams are larger and not as dark as the bag, so help him out, give him a couple bucks, or at least a round of applause, ladies and gentlemen!

Follow us, and meet Shakespeare in the park, meditating on virginity with his back turned on the giant swans hovering above the lake! See the boy who juggles with swords and chose the wrong shorts to climb on your shoulder, and that other boy, the one who’s so handsome that the girls stop and follow him in the streets, completely bewitched by his looks. Come and get bewitched by the marvels of traveling, run across the corridors of a shop in ruins while Amy Winehouse whispers to your ears that she said “no, no, no”… Or just dance in the streets among a thousand flags and colors, meet the smiles of Boston, so different in summer, dive in 3D and get a bite of a barking crab.

Take one more step forward, ladies and gentlemen, and hear your own language spoken with an accent that makes it utterly impossible to understand (“méouskelèmapotadin?”), meet people you could have met before (“what were you doing in Muar?”), find Dobby in the museum at Harvard, listen to Averell Dalton singing about the South, discover a land where wearing Tom Selleck’s moustache is fashionable, enjoy the sad songs of a mariachi at dusk and the happy tones of a one-man band under the afternoon sun. Are you still with us, ladies and gentlemen? Then put your seatbelts on, because we’re only just starting.