Christophe

 

  

Christophe was coming

But the Moose is rather stout,

He's got stuck in a snowdrift

And it seems he can't get out.

If you've got a shovel

 You could help him to get loose.

A little bit of kindness

Makes a happy Chris-Moose.

 

*

Christophe arrivait
Mais l'élan s'est engraissé,
Il est coincé dans une congère
Et ne peut pas se libérer.

Vous pourriez lui rendre service
Si vous veniez avec une pelle.
Un peu de gentillesse
 Donne un élan à Noël.
 

*

The plight of the Moose and his need to be freed could, with a squeeze, be assimilated with countless situations.
We could even evoke, yet again, dear old Nelson Mandela. If he were able to witness the grandiose and moving ceremony organised in his honour, he would have found it hard to believe that he was so loved and respected by so many various cultures and virtuous ideologues of the world, (even though the Dalai Lama, a good friend of Mandela's, apparently wasn't invited).
Yet one could also compare the desire to be seen, if not heard there, to a sort of South-African 'Festival of Cannes' open to scissionists, dictators and would be defenders of faith and democracy. The invited apparently included extremists, if not listed terrorists, and everyone joyfully played the part of being good friends together, temporarily and especially for this august occasion in December.

There has been so much fervour and show that poor Mandela seems to have been a bit left out, trapped in his own deathly 'snow drift'. Priority is accorded to powerful (in principle) Heads of State like Obama.
But if we were honest we would admit that instead of burying the hero's convictions, reason of being and everything he fought for, with the hero himself, the best way of celebrating and honouring Nelson Mandela would be to honour and respect everything he fought for all his life including the twenty seven years spent in prison. This is certainly not the case in today's South Africa. Perhaps the frozen soul of Mandela would be dug out and gloriously freed to warm, sunlit heavens if this were indeed the case.

Even in France freedom and democracy seem to be 'snowed in'. Recently I heard that a young man (a Catholic also outraged by the mariage pour tous) who had anti-Hollande stickers on his car was arrested in Paris. The police confiscated his car. They even burnt an anti-socialist bandrole they found in his vehicle, and he was placed en guard à vue (retained for a certain period of time before being released pending his 'legal judgement'). Isn't this yet another indication that 'Liberty, Fraternity and Equality' only frugally apply to servile French socialists? Would it not signify that in order to try to survive, French socialism has to resort to quasi totalitarian methods?

I once made an allusion to messages in bottles, adding that it's possible to see from the stat reports where the bottled messages posted on Internet actually float to, who finds and uncorks the bottles, and how many are curious enough read the messages. If the overall number already accumulated worldwide is fairly important and the amount is constantly increasing, naturally this is satisfying in itself. On the other hand site ratings seem incoherent and thus meaningless. According too much importance to them encourages a sort of futile, rat-race.

The reason of being of Viewfinder was never to be drawn into any form of popularity contest. Originally the idea was to try to incite reactions, to hopefully find, exchange and share points of view (hence the name, obviously) on an international basis. Yet it's also true that one ends up by setting one's own standards, by trying to produce a desired amount of various efforts- if not rubbish- each month. This in itself can become a self inflicted rat-race, because one is not always inspired or capable of creating the most satisfying results at one's own beck and call, to obtain the monthly quantity of posts one might want to try to come up with. 

Thus in order to dig myself out of the 'snow drift' of my own making, I shall do my best to give more priority to quality instead of quantity. If this means that Viewfinder risks, God forbid, to lose it's few followers, or might, on the contrary, God be praised, gain one or two more, then so be it. If it means that Viewfinder will plummet into the dark and dismal abyss of no return according to the incoherent nonsense that site credit raters come up with, then so shall it also be.

Whatever, thank you dear readers for your fidelity and your patience.

__

 

Text and illustration © Mirino. December, 2013