Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

ROBERT H. ASHER, MD – THE REAL ABCs, ACHIEVEMENT, BALANCE, CONTENTMENT – A SURGEON’S ANALYSIS AND A FATHER’S LEGACY – SELF-PUBLISHED – 2009

A great ophthalmologist surgeon who dedicated his life to improving the sight of people and who when a cancer appears finds the energy to write down his credo about life. As he says life is all the more valuable when death approaches.

His very Christian vision is summarized in chapter twenty-five with ten final thoughts or lessons from life itself.

1- “Prioritize.” I could not agree more. Success in life is the result of a good perspective created by such prioritization of objectives week after week, day after day and year after year. Everything has to be set in a timeline of your immediate future: what has to be done today, tomorrow, at the end of the week, at the end of next week, at the end of the month, etc. And you have to stick to this schedule, provided you always keep some leeway to accommodate an emergency or something that had not been foreseen or planned like an urgent order from some new horizon.

2- “Don’t procrastinate.” In other words do right now what has to be done right now and don’t postpone to tomorrow what you can do today. No need to wait if you can do something. Only wait if you can’t do it. I don’t say if you do not feel like doing it. Not to be able to do something is a material obstacle and not a mental weakness. You need to be strong in your determination, and yet not blind to obstacles and difficulties. But that must not negate your planned schedule, though it may modify it.

3- “Prepare to success by successful preparation.” The first preparation is your timeline of your coming work. The second preparation is your determination to reach out and do what you have to do to achieve your goal.

4- “Relish your work.” Without being a workaholic you have to enjoy work as such and your work in particular. Success cannot come if you do things reluctantly because you do not find any pleasure, motivation and reward in the work you are doing or supposed to be doing. If you do not enjoy swimming, just don’t swim and look for another sport knowing that sports are essential for your success and health, but only sports you like, even if it is difficult. You have to like the difficulties of the sports your practice because you love that sport.

5- “Establish balance in your life.” No matter what the various parts or segments or vectors you consider in your life, all of them must be balanced, which means have equal value and power. Do not do something that is bringing to you no reward or satisfaction. You can very well enjoy some relaxed DVD watching that also provides you with some good experience. If you like music, listen to music for relaxation as much as you listen to music for your own work, be it musician, reviewer, critic, scholar or whatever, even plain audience. Balance means that in your life you have to have diversity and a subtle and stable equilibrium between the various shades of your experience.

6- “Be ready to bounce back as life is full of lumps and bumps.” To bounce back is the only solution when something you do does not meet with success or acceptation; No obstinacy or stubbornness against obstacles, but negotiation around them or just a change of direction or method. The best way to bounce back is to keep open to compromise: take into account what others have to say and always try to find a common point, a common ground, a way out of a jam without losing partners or your own faith.

7- “Cherish friends and family.” To cherish them is essential because like is empathy and because empathy is mirror neurons and because mirror neurons is sharing emotions with other people in both directions. At the same time you must not ossify such friends or family ties. That’s where things get tricky. When love is at stake, real love will be able to step over and beyond a conflict, a confrontation, and real friends, real loving partners of any kind will find the proper terms to solve the division and negotiate the divide.

8- “Take advantage of nature and God’s incredible playground.” Nature is our nest and we are a clean species. We thus have to keep that nature alive and unsoiled. We have to make a great effort right now to be in line with our oldest ancestors, Homo Sapiens when it appeared in Africa: never waste, never spoil, never destroy. Always use without devastating nor exhausting nor endangering. As for God, that’s up to you. The cosmos is there to dictate the future too and no one has said that the present phase of the Earth’s geological and cosmic history is to last forever. Be ready to change along with it and try not to cause a negative change, but change it will and change it must. The cosmos is not so much a playground as an enormously complex system of millions of balanced and evolving factors and parameters “managing” or “determining” the outcome of any moment. Who or what is behind this enormous machine is not here the main question.

9- “Redefine and strengthen your own value system.” And make sure that the first value of that personal value system is the basically human and humane principle that there is no final truth, no final value except the fact that diversity is our destiny, fate, future. To refuse an open personal value system is a form of fundamentalism. No one can be absolutely true and there is some truth in the values of all human beings, civilizations and cultures. This principle is far from being accepted universally in the world, in our countries, in our cities and in our neighborhoods. Let that diversity within human values be our first cardinal point.

10- “Tell those close to you that you love them.” But be careful with some people, with some languages, with some cultures, particularly those who or which have only one word for love and sex because these find it very difficult to imagine love without carnal intercourse. Love is an emotion, a mental emotion that can find some carnal realization but has in no way the obligation to do so, just as sex has in no way the obligation to develop into love or to presuppose love.

I can only encourage you to read the twenty-five chapters and see all the rich perspectives each one of them opens to a human mind that can think and wants to feel empathy and experience human and humane emotions.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

JUDITH FOREST – BICHROMIS CECILIA DOS SANTOS – 1H25 – LA CINQUIEME COUCHE, BRUXELLES – 2009

Ne vous y trompez pas. Ce n’est pas une autobiographie, ni même un récit autobiographique, mais bien un roman mis en images bicolores. Ce n’est pas non plus une BD, du moins si on considère que le texte de la BD est à l’intérieur du dessin. Ici rien de cela. Le texte est toujours sur le côté, extérieur comme une voix off dans un film.

Le personnage est une jeune fille qui, de Paris à Bruxelles et plusieurs aller-retour et voyage dont un à Angoulème, nous raconte son histoire De l’étudiante aux Beaux Arts de Paris à son projet de livre d’images ou carnet de notes racontant son périple qui l’amène à zoner à Bruxelles et à descendre au plus profond de la drogue et de la prostitution quasiment mondaine. C’est pathétique, touchant, troublant un peu et surtout totalement artificiel pour nous raconter le monde tel que certains jeunes de la génération dite Mitterrand bien que presque post-Mitterrand vivent dans ce monde qui leur échappe.

Il ne s’agit pas d’une marge sociale à l’ancienne, mais d’une marge mentale avec soi-même. Le personnage est dans la marge de sa propre existence, de sa propre conscience, de sa propre surface simulacre d’une absence de profondeur. Il ne reste plus alors que de se raconter des histoires sur le monde et la sorte de fétu de paille que l’individu est dans ce flot plus ou moins agité.

Dans la tradition ancienne fortement marxisée on croyait que l’homme faisait l’histoire, ou que les masses faisaient l’histoire. On sait aujourd’hui que c’est une gageure et un mensonge. Alors on vous invente une théorie pour couvrir le fait que rien cependant n’est vraiment accidentel et que tout cependant semble bien suivre une trajectoire. C’est la théorie du complot. Personne n’est capable de dire qui est le comploteur, mais ce complot-là marche tout seul.

Aux Beaux Arts de Paris on vous ajoute même que l’artiste est un tel comploteur et que sa resucée répétée et bien sûr simulacre est en fait la force qui permet à l’histoire d’être et d’avancer. L’artiste fait l’histoire. Pourquoi pas ? C’est plus matériel que Dieu, même si c’est encore plus illusoire. Un brin de Baudrillard et de sa théorie des simulacres pour cimenter cette alliance que je considère contre nature entre l’art et l’histoire, et le tour de passe-passe du magicien du cirque Fol-Amour est un immédiat succès. C’est que tout ce qui est simulacre plait.

Il suffira d’un pas de chat pour atteindre une esthétique du complot et vous aurez alors découvert la Terre Promise.

Ceci mis à part, le dessin bichromique est ce qui tient le récit en lui donnant du corps car autrement le texte lui-même n’est qu’un manège décentré. C’est un peu dommage car cette histoire aurait pu sortir des canons de la banalité d’une mère pleurnichante, d’un père fuyant et voyageant le plus loin possible, d’une fille qui s’obstine à regarder les garçons d’un œil concupiscent et ensuite fait tout ce qui est en son pouvoir – pas grand-chose d’ailleurs – pour les repousser, ce qui mène page après page à des viols mutuellement consensuels. La drogue dans l’affaire n’est que le sel de la soupe et le sucre du dessert.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

ALEXIA ZUBERER – DOUBLE ASCENSION A L’EVEREST – NEVICATA – 2008

Le livre vous donnera froid dans le dos par ses images pourtant chaudes de courage et d’humanité. Les longs récits des deux ascensions doivent vous laisser admiratifs mais en même temps frigorifiés de peur et d’anxiété. La recherche de l’extrême fascine mais une personne sur un million s’y soumettra.

Pourtant l’essentiel est le goût de l’exploit des participants, l’odeur de l’impossible qui s’échappe d’entre les lignes, le plaisir de l’accompli qui remugle entre les paragraphes, car en plus ces gens-là réussissent à faire ce qu’ils entreprennent. Il est vrai que s’ils n’avaient pas réussi il n’auraient rien dit.

Alors pourquoi avez-vous peur comme quand un sherpa manque à l’appel ? Mais si vous voulez vraiment savoir ce que c’est que manquer d’oxygène à ces altitudes et souffrir du froid dans ces glaces il vous faudra y aller. Aucun mot et aucune image ne peuvent remplacer l’expérience réelle. Cela est vrai de toutes les aventures.

Cela devrait agiter Baudrillard dans son tombeau mental car ce livre n’est, c’est sûr, qu’un simulacre de la véritable ascension, comme Baudrillard d’ailleurs est un simulacre de la véritable sagesse humaine, celle qui souffre ou qui s’enthousiasme.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU