A kōan (公案) is a story, dialogue, question, generally containing aspects that are inaccessible to rational understanding, yet that may be accessible to intuition.

Sometimes kōans appear out of nowhere, and I was today witness to a beautiful one:

(20:32) <@kena> sylvain_: c'est quoi l'art pour toi ?
(20:57) < sylvain> je suis inculte, nul, con et moche, et tu me
         poses cette question ?
(21:04) <@kena> tu dois avoir une opinion non ?
(21:43) < sylvain> je sais pas
(21:43) < sylvain> les filles me détestent totues
(21:43) < sylvain> j'en ai marre
(21:43) <@kena> ça répond pas vraiment à la question
(21:43) <@kena> je sais pas moi 
(21:43) <@kena> invente un truc
(21:44) < sylvain> faut que je trouve des choess à photographier.

Thanks, Sylvain.

The praying mantis is a small animal with an elegant body.

She stands still, beautiful and fertile; she waits for a mate with courage and strength to approach her. Then she chooses, they mate, and she bites his head off. He dies.

She may feel sad or guilty for a while. However soon enough she will be hunting again.

Nature is full of behaviors considered immoral by humans. We only need to step back and consider ourselves in the greater scheme of things. And she might starve before she can lay eggs.

… suivez mon regard.

À propos de regard, c'est bien ce que j'ai trouvé de plus intéressant pendant notre soirée.

En fait, j'aime beaucoup les yeux.

Il y avait ceux marqués par l'expérience et pourtant joueurs ; ceux marqués par une vie de changement et curieux de profiter du moment présent ; ceux ternis de fatigue émotionnelle et pourtant sensibles et dynamiques ; ceux qui se battent à chaque instant entre l'influence de la raison et ceux des sentiments ; ceux qui cherchent leur source de bonheur dans le regard des autres ; ceux qui cachent leur richesse derrière un phlegme bonhomme ; ou encore ceux dont l'esthétique ténébreuse fait fondre au premier regard.

Et pour tous, le dynamisme et la souplesse d'un regard qui apprécie et savoure ces moments privilégiés entre gens bien.

Today I feel warmth in my chest and on my face, because I feel the pleasure of a new emotional connection.

That is both good news and bad news.

Good news, because I had almost forgotten what it feels like. It's absolutely wonderful, and I find it far more interesting than lust or limerence because it does not tax the body or the mind by draining the energy out of it. I like to remember that this good stuff makes human bond together and societies hold. I like to remember that it has happened before, as my friends are coming to visit me for New Year's eve and now I will doubleplus thank them for being my friends.

Bad news, because I had almost forgotten what it feels like. Which means that I do not find many occasions to have it happen. Or maybe I do not hang out with the right people. Whatever. Now I want more of it and I do not really know what to do.

Hence another resolution for 2007: hang out with more people and see the good in all of them, to connect more often.

There were two guests at my place this week.

Hosting guests is one of the activities that help me keep care of my home.

There was a time when the mess would only be cleared when someone visited me. A reflex due to a contrast between the carelessness of youth and a deeply ingrained respect for the comfort of visitors. A principle acquired from my mum says that receiving someone properly goes necessarily through making every effort possible to make them feel home, and that is now part of my life.

Then it happened that I grew up (a bit). I started to realize the truth behind the age-old French saying: “charité bien ordonnée commence par soi-même,” and that the way to build the feeling of being at home for myself would go through making the kind of efforts I deploy for guests, for myself.

That was the moment when vacuum-cleaning, dish washing, mopping, laundry and disposing of the cat's litter became pleasurable (sometimes even fun), instead of a necessary chore to avoid as long and as often as possible. That was also the moment when I started actually caring about home decoration in shops in all places I visit. After that I would choose my furniture not only for practical aspects but also for the overall harmony they would bring at the place it would be eventually fitted. And so on; the list is long.

Oddly enough, it coincides more-or-less with my settling in Rotterdam. (ok, not that odd, but the coincidence is part of another story.)

But this is not a happy-ending story. I sometimes lose sight of the feeling of being at home when it becomes part of the invisible world of the daily routine.

Then come guests. Those people I like being with, for which I would just do the little extra that I can share with them and of which I know that it would make myself happy if it was reciprocated. Like preparing breakfast in the morning, or setting up beds in advance, and so on.

And doing so breaks the routine and brings the feeling of being at home back into sight.