Telling the truth

To tell you the truth, I don’t know what «the truth» is. It might be something for me and something different – even totally different – for you.

To tell you the truth, I don’t care that much about the Truth. Write something with big letters and I get angry and, so to say, contrary.

Is this 2006 self portrait of mine, the truth? (since, let’s face it, almost all we are interested in is about us, our family, our opinions, our something...) Well, I would tell you that it was, somehow, truthfull, at the moment I did paint it. That angry little fellow, with visible (and much more ferocious teeth that the real, dangling, ones…) was me, too…

It is the truth, now? No way! For once, my teeth are dangling much more (no dental plan for poor artists) and I’m not that angry any more… I’ve accepted a lot of things: that I will die, too, along with my parents, my children, wife etc. No big deal. That I’m no Van Gogh – I never really believed I was something like Vincent because nobody IS somebody else… I accepted even that – if you are to believe some contemporary testimonies of some young French dandy – maybe Vincent was also the poor, lame guy, jerking off in the bushes, looking at what some more apt and more , maybe, lucky, fellows were doing in Arles’ parks, with their girlfriends…

I think you can be both: a sad jerkoff and a genius. One thing doesn’t eliminate the possibility of the other… Francois Villon was probably a cut-throat bandit AND one of the greatest POETS in French. And were Rimbaud or Verlaine better?

This too, doesn’t really matter. Just as it doesn’t matter much all this enourmous verbal diarrheea called Internet (don’t blame me! I just saw Untraceable, the movie with Diane Lane as a FBI agent trying to catch the Internet Killer; but it wasn`t really him who killed – he just made it possible – the real killer were guys like me and you (female guys included, of course) whom did opened the Killwithme site…)

To tell you the truth, I don’t know very much who I am anymore…what I will become… or what anyone else is or will become… Things aren’t looking too good for any of us…

But then: sometimes the sun is shining, the air – at least here in Quebec, where I live – is still respirable and sweet. Squirrels make a fuss every time temperature is lower than minus 5 Celsius. A skunk – for which I feel a irrepresible amitie – friendship (please! Do not psychanalise me and my skunks liking!) passes almost every night before my window. Sometimes, we look at each other and I try to convey to  him (or her) my sympathy. It seems to work since he (or she) did not, even once, rise his (or hers) tail…

And, for no reason at all, I’m happy. But then again: why do we need a reason to be happy?

I know I will continue to draw and to paint, maybe to write too. Because it gives me pleasure. (Bloody epicurean!) Maybe I will even finish my novel called Avatars, I do write in French for some time… Who knows? I might even win the bloody lottery tonight. No big deal there, either… I would  just gain some more latitude to travel and do things…

Lao-Tsu, more than 2500 years ago said (I think… they say...)  some very wise  things (somewhat obscure, although…).

One of them was that: “Those who know do not talk; those who talk, do not know.”
Well then, I’ve just proved to you I do not know, eh? (I adore this canadian “eh”! Just like I adore, without knowing very well why, the skunks…)