Wednesday November 6.
I got up early, as I often do. It was dark, calm, I could hear the sheep's bells in the field next door. And then I remembered what day it was.
Lately, I've been avoiding morning shows on the radio. It screams too much, the feeling of the same springs in a loop, the same errors, and then it interferes with the writing of my novel. But this morning, exceptionally, I turned on France Culture live from Washington. Then, as it seemed slow to me, I switched to France Inter, special program and « plateau XXL ». All this while reading the latest articles from Mediapart and the titles of Mondean eye on social networks where quotes from Jack London or The Scarlet Handmaid [roman de science-fiction dystopique] the Margaret Atwood.
Because have you noticed, when the story stutters and gets carried away, we often feel the need to draw on words already written, weighed and tested. Indeed, what to say directly, what to say above all new, on all these subjects that have been mixed up since the last century: democracy, ecology, immigration, politics, misogyny, obscurantism, inflation, Gaza , Ukraine, the right to abortion, what can be said that hasn’t already been said ? I almost posted Romain Gary or Walter Benjamin (on « the silence of those who think and who, precisely because they think, can hardly consider themselves as those who know ») and then finally gave up, what's the point.
Who still cares about the rules ?
I turned off the radio when Pennsylvania flipped. Donald Trump was elected. Not just elected: with the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Supreme Court, he had full powers.
Pennsylvania. Two days ago I watched Apocalypse Now. These three steel workers, their incandescent youth, their carefree savagery, massacred in Vietnam, have anchored themselves in my retina. Yesterday, an edifying report on Arte, “ Radical right, the conquest of Washington », where the last forty years of ideological offensives, on the Republican Party then on the United States of America, are admirably analyzed by historians. The Tea Party, Libertarian money, Fox News, the remake of KKK in Charlottesville, the assault on the Capitol, the capitulation of moderate Republicans, and a candidate trained from childhood to win, to succeed ruthlessly, trained to trample all the rules of decency, with success. Forty years and the plan worked.
I opened, hesitated then closed my computer, didn't want to work, almost went to plant some newly purchased tulip bulbs, abandoned the idea of going for a walk in the mud in the forest or catching up on the umpteenth missed yoga class, I was on the verge of going back to bed.
Finally, I started a fire, took out Mona Chollet's latest book and lit my fourth cigarette of the day. As long as I was there, with a can of coffee. To hell with the future, cancer and measurement. Who still cares about the rules ?
There is honor in fighting a losing battle
And then, just before turning off my phone, I receive a text from Gaspard d'Allens, from Reporterreasking me for an intimate and sensitive text, something about the dignity of the present, the way to face contrary winds, something to avoid immediately fleeing into the forest in your wild place.
So I changed my mind. Turned my computer back on and made some tea.
Because yes, I wrote about the dignity of the present, the safest thing we have left when future victories seem more and more hypothetical in a sinking world. Says that there is always a tenth of a degree, a hectare of biodiversity, a gesture of solidarity, a life, a smile to save. That there is honor in fighting a losing battle. And like everything we write, it obliges me.
Because I also wrote about the refusal to succeed and that the journey of Donald Trump, put in competition with his brother to become the heir to the family empire, fiercely convinced that his social status could only come from a gigantic golden tower, going so far as to invent floors that do not exist there to display more than its neighbors, because what Donald Trump represents is probably what can be located at the most opposite extreme.
When my man came home from the market, the text hadn't arrived yet, I was slumped on the couch and he reminded me that I had also written about militant stoicism and that there was no point in undermining me for events over which I had no control. And Rosa Luxemburg got involved, too, who reminded me that it « you have to work and do what you can, and for the rest, take everything lightly and with good humor. You don't make your life better by being bitter ».
Solidarity networks
Good. Lightness and good humor, honestly, I'm not sure I know how to do it. But resist the temptation of the savage, this time again, I will try. Without bitterness, but with lucidity. Because whether we take it or not, this feeling of a world heading towards the abyss, it is not a question of ignoring it, but of not letting it undermine everything. Because the day we stop seeing the beauty in the world, then there will be no reason to continue.
So finally, I'm going to go plant these tulips. And then I'll tune in as planned for this activist video, ignoring the little inner voice that tells me that it's in vain.
It is never in vain to intervene, to slow down the disaster, to weave networks of solidarity: if we have failed to avoid the unmanageable, perhaps there is still time to manage the inevitable and to exercise with renewed vigor to live « without state, without oil and without electricity ».
To conclude, finally, from Romain Gary [1] anyway : « The happy medium. Somewhere between not giving a damn and dying. Between locking yourself in and letting the whole world in. Don't harden yourself but don't let yourself be destroyed either. Very difficult. »
legend
