We, the monsters

Like chimpanzees who don't tolerate their neighbours, the humans get angry over their borders, their prophets, messiahs and money. It's always been this way, but modernity is the first to see the extent of aggression. It's hard to see this as progress.

The blood is the same; the suffering makes a mockery of individual histories and draws a wide swath. We may no longer be dying of the plague, and the herd of men and women continues to grow despite the massacres. But the momentum is still there:

• I'm stronger than you.
• My reasons are better than yours.
• You're just a working cattleman to me.
• Your weakness is surely to blame; I don't do it intentionally.
• My prayers will kill you one day, and God will receive me in his eternal silence.

Of course, it's easy to tarnish humanity's image in this way because it does great things, too, especially for the people of the North and the Cold. The others can drown in their malaria.

It's tempting to see only the dark side of things, especially as, in the end, through the prism of our own little selves, there's no point in making a big deal of it. There will always be someone stronger than you who will subjugate their neighbours for whatever Darwinian reason you see fit.
In the meantime, everyone lives with their own little daily wounds, rounding their backs to better absorb the insult of a boss or the coldness of Providence.

I don't see so much as black but as fatigue and sadness. Always this stubbornness to want to live anyway, to taste what must be tasted, to open one's heart despite everything. To love, of course. To cling to your lover's skin, to persist in wanting what's right, but to be a little wary, a lot wary, because that's how life is, draped in insensitive shadows.

I tell myself that you see this more clearly as you get older. I'm more aware of the vinegar and clumsiness of those with power. Yet I accept, remain silent, absurdly telling myself that I may have my revenge one day. And I have to laugh at this stupid hope.

Our peace is our solitude, our only thought. Happiness can only be found in the breath, in the movement of the thorax that intoxicates us with oxygen.

The planet will eventually bury us unless it's a sun, a black hole, or the universe's lack of memory.

All the same, I would have wished that everyone's prayers hadn't been lost in the labyrinth of words and that, as in that paradise that Adam and Eve obviously despoiled, universal consciousness had remained as pink as a divine eternity.