Spared life

In the first years of my childhood, I had on two occasions a narrow escape from a violent death, and each time the circumstances were similar. I don't remember which emotions I may have felt at those moments, but I certainly have felt something, since images of those events remain in my memory.

The first time, as I was coming back with my brother from the bank of the river near our home, I started suddenly to run down the levee and stopped dead on the side of the road: a car flashed straight past me.

The second time, I ran through the gate of our garden and stopped dead on the side of the street: the driver of a tipper truck which was going down the street slammed on the brakes, and I remember the rear wheels hitting the opposite kerb, then the one on my side. The opposite neighbour, a woman, and the driver shouted at me, but I don't remember their words.

On two occasions I thus have been saved from a certain death.

Someone, maybe a medium, told me a day that I were enjoying a “supernatural” protection; when I remember those events, I am inclined to believe it, and I feel myself full of gratitude, and totally secure.

If it is true that in an other-world beings are watching over me, I want to return their friendship. I am ready for everything they may expect of me.

Kannon and Kinjika

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Kannon, at Daien-in temple (Mt. Koya, Japan) 大圓院の観音（高野山） Thanks to Jpatokal and Wikipedia for the peaceful and radiant smile of Kannon - Avalokiteshvara.	.	The Golden Stag, radiant and benevolent guardian 「kinjika」は私の心の守り神です。 金の鹿は輝いていて好意的な神です。

Medium

This is what the medium said to me, and the inspiration I draw fom it:

“

“I stride along, straight forward, for I'll have allways my whole life to live.

I am faithful, that is, I am in perfect harmony with myself, with the other-world, with the whole life.

I don't look backwards, for the past is past.

I don't doubt, so that nothing be lost.

I follow my instinct, my intuition, my imagination, my foolishness.

Life provides me with many tools for me to forge ahead.

It plunges a sword into my brow, it pushes a sword into my breast: life opens all my canals.

A lofty myself hoists me up towards him; a lowly myself asks me to hoist him up towards me.

I offer all that life offers to me; I am its willing medium.

For life is beautiful, life is worth living.”

The Voice

Charles Baudelaire, Scraps (Les Épaves) (1866), XVII - La Voix, translated by William Aggeler.

Source:

“

The Voice

The back of my crib was against the library,
That gloomy Babel, where novels, science, fabliaux,
Everything, Latin ashes and Greek dust,
Were mingled. I was no taller than a folio.
Two voices used to speak to me. One, sly and firm,
Would say: “The Earth's a cake full of sweetness;
I can (and then there'd be no end to your pleasure!)
Give you an appetite of equal size.”
And the other: “Come travel in dreams
Beyond the possible, beyond the known!”
And it would sing like the wind on the strand,
That wailing ghost, one knows not whence it comes,
That caresses the ear and withal frightens it.
I answered you: “Yes! gentle voice!” It's from that time
That dates what may be called alas! my wound
And my fatality. Behind the scenes
Of life's vastness, in the abyss' darkest corner
I see distinctly bizarre worlds,
And ecstatic victim of my own clairvoyance,
I drag along with me, serpents that bite my shoes.
And it's since that time that, like the prophets,
I love so tenderly the desert and the sea;
That I laugh at funerals and weep at festivals
And find a pleasant taste in the most bitter wine;
That very often I take facts for lies
And that, my eyes raised heavenward, I fall in holes.
But the Voice consoles me and it says: “Keep your dreams;
Wise men do not have such beautiful ones as fools!”

Brotherly affection

Étienne de la Boétie (1530-1563): Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, rendered into English by: Harry Kurz

“

Yet surely if there is anything in this world clear and obvious, to which one cannot close one's eyes, it is the fact that nature, handmaiden of God, governess of men, has cast us all in the same mold in order that we may behold in one another companions, or rather brothers.
If in distributing her gifts nature has favored some more than others with respect to body or spirit, she has nevertheless not planned to place us within this world as if it were a field of battle, and has not endowed the stronger or the cleverer in order that they may act like armed brigands in a forest and attack the weaker.
One should rather conclude that in distributing larger shares to some and smaller shares to others, nature has intended to give occasion for brotherly affection to become manifest, some of us having the strength to give help to others who are in need of it.
Hence, since this kind mother has given us the whole world as a dwelling place, has lodged us in the same house, has fashioned us according to the same model so that in beholding one another we might almost recognize ourselves; since she has bestowed upon us all the great gift of voice and speech for fraternal relationship, thus achieving by the common and mutual statement of our thoughts a communion of our wills; and since she has tried in every way to narrow and tighten the bond of our union and kinship; since she has revealed in every possible manner her intention, not so much to associate us as to make us one organic whole, there can be no further doubt that we are all naturally free, inasmuch as we are all comrades.
Accordingly it should not enter the mind of anyone that nature has placed some of us in slavery, since she has actually created us all in one likeness.