sok boldogság után

Families for no season - Család

Hungarian has this unique capacity of 'gathering meaning'. One breath is enough.
Patience, in its gatherings, to give flavour to its spices. Hours of conversation for the well-being of some grounded meal.
Certainly I follow an already paved notion of discovery. But how good it is to be welcomed into it. A garden for a meal, a street for an encounter, a concert for the ears and silence for the planes.

find your road - droms

Besh O Drom, Zöld Pardon, May 2008.

Blasting brass, sörs and lickors
Jumping Jig of Jolly Jammers
Like a time of past joy
Figures of pleasure
Feelings of distance

Paths of Crossroads
Only in the square can spring
Pusta born youth
Pustas, leopards,
Born square and wild

Musicians change at each gig, but tunes stay the same.
I figure this is how it's always been. At risk, now, of seeing a 'survival operation' by a network of musicians. One would learn other's words, lines, tunes - the other melody, the melody of the other?

Parc for a roll-around

nice old shiver

A shiver like a warm hand on cold legs
Like a book saying death out loud
Holes of no colours, gaps of no length
Pictures shivering digital and crisp
Ice-frozen in the I

les fenêtres font le voyage

I had to finish the year off with some words for my three countries of adoption... adopted in travel, one rooted in words and images, countries as travels rooted in themselves.

les fenêtres font le voyage

des fenêtres pour bus, pour des images en déroute
des têtes pour stimulus, pour des voyages, du doute
une contine de soirée bien perdue dans mon sac
déjà lui bien caché au grenier de vieilles pâques

Windows of the freeborn men

at the bottom of my glass, no drop
alone, breath fills the gap, dreams
never giving a tip to their endings
I feel her hand, and an easter bell
sings again

hol az ablak?

Kis ajtóm, kis világom, gyerekem nézd meg oda
a színes, a szinészvilág, kint az igazi mozi
Az út az ablakon, ha a szemeid jönnek ideig
mint a husvét amit elveszett a tata, régen a katona

a régi Renault - East as a beginning

How many times have we seen someone say
Abroad, as broad a road as frontiers are thick
How far, how far have we seen someone walk
Along and inside the parks of the strange
Broadway capitals.

How long will it be for our legs to tremble
and fear to bring excitement to our doorstep
Excitement to be pored back into our new neighbour's cup
One thin, fragile, but recognisable cup
Where eyes lie.

The old Renault in the main park
Standing like a flagstone at the corner of eyes
Doorstep to past anecdotes, souvenir now so dually
Pronounced

into the railwork
turned flat grey pusta
turned river Danube
turned black mountains
turned high-circling roads

soon at your doorstep
a junkyard of left-overs
the scattering of memory
and the loss of tragic colours.

Nyugati Pályaudvar - cheap flights at 4a.m.

Carrying a myth, fogs, and storms, this statuesque woman

Anonymous and the other statues

Homeless park of a man - a férfi egy nyelv sziget

Amikor nem tudsz beszélni és csak jön a levegö
mikor nem érted az épület melleted, a levelet amit irsz
a meszére, az otthonra, a levelet a mit irsz
amikor más a fény és reggel nem indulok az épületböl...

Mert nem kell a nap, a meleg, és a szavakom szegény
A kértem pedig utazik mint egy régi francia könyvet
És az utca kérdez mindig, hogy mit csinálom ebben az épületben?
Nem indulok az épületböl mert a kértem nagy,
Nagy
Mint egy "talán"...

Les debuts d'une autre - The beginning of another

A text I am writing in French to congratulate an old friend - but the opportunity for me to bring back some very old pictures - in my very first "photographer-weeks".

Je dois rediger ce texte en francais, puisque j'ai le grand plaisir d'apprendre a l'instant que l'une de mes 'camarades' de Lycee, Kristell, se rend elle-meme a son tour grace aux fonds europeens-jeunesse pour un SVE a Kaposvar, Hongrie.

Tout excite que j'etais que d'apprendre que je peux partager mon vecu dans ce pays avec une voisine d'adolescence. Sans doute comme l'est un Hongrois lorsque l'on se penche tranquillement sur la question de SA langue, de SON origine, des contours de SON jardin. Enfin soyons humble, je suis encore un enfant ici, mais j'y suis ne, c'est sur. J'y ecoutes, j'y vois, j'y parles comme un enfant qui grandis et qui s'affirme. En meme temps j'ai rarement ressenti tel present, une envie de s'enraciner profonde. Quoique l'on ait pense de mon envie incessante de voyage, j'ai toujours su que mon coeur faisait sans arret le chemin inverse a mon village, a mon enfance, a mes parents, ma famille, mes soeurs, mes amis, mes racines musicales, footballistiques. Un chemin inverse, qui dans mon coeur s'enracinait, alors que je retrouvais l'envie d'etre un enfant, ailleurs.

On ne peut parler en terme finis, c'est important.
On ecrit toujours en vers ouverts, de nos jours.
Comme un Hongrois qui trinque et re-propose
Comme la lumiere transparente, percante, traversant...

Vers ou se dirige-t'on?
Une des questions que peut etre en train de se pauser Kristell..

Alors voila ce que, plein de joie et d'air hongrois, je lui espere:

"Plein de bonnes choses Kristell, ca me fait super plaisir que tu partes a l'aventure comme ca et je suis sur que tu y trouveras autant que moi, que l'experience te seras tout aussi 'fondatrice'. La Hongrie est un pays comme ca, un commencement, ni nouveau, ni 'curieux'. Un debut, un vide linguistique et de pensee ou l'on se reconstruit sur des couleures, des sensations, des emotions, des formes, des mouvements, une lumiere curieuse ou retentit le passe et pourtant eblouissante par la force de son present, une vie nocturne a l'humaine universelle. Plus tard, comme toujours apres une naissance, le mot est ne et l'on se reconstruit par la prose d'une culture cousine. Bref, je dois bien ca a la tres honorable miss Le Cunff, qui il y a quelques annees avait reussi a mieux me pencher sur le questionnement d'un certain Bergson."

voila une photo de moi (manteau bleu, coiffure extravagante) de dos, marchant dans Szeged...

Political gaps - change

2008, anniversary of May '68, forgetting the foundations and grounds of this thought-provoking period for academia, politicians, and the post-war generation, which lied somewhere between Budapest and Warsaw in the late 50s and early 60s... creating context also for the future changes of the 90s... Should we ask how generations, geographical zones, cultures and national schools have influenced the advancing sense of European hybridism?
Today the forint is forgotten and the luring shadow of euro-visions dawn on the Hungarian market - changes which are already hugely affecting workers, students, and the advancing public opinion on such reforms. And so I heard a few weeks ago that Hungarians were taking to the streets again, blocking public transports... At a time - 18 years after the Wende, Wiedervereinigung, and liberation, can we still talk of a "sudden change"? - when movement is increasingly fragmented in countries and societies where rhythm at work seems to contradict rhythm 'at home'. Identity starts... in the waving colours of a national flag, in the booing and cheering of a street or a living room answering the echoes of a governmental speech or the results of a national team, in the blue eyes of a national hero, in the grey eyes of our grandmothers, in the blurred vision of a digital cam staring back at the airport terminal through the misty and humid cockpit window. Goodbyes of our time.

On the week-end following the 8th of March, Hungary voted for a yes (three times) - "3 igen" - against the government, and 20% voted no against the referendum. Approximately 80% had 'decided against', by voting 'for it'. The majority reflected doubt and the current criticism of the government, thus leading to the national ordeal of the liberal and nationalist Fidesz party. Europe goes right by bits, giving mythical specters of a nation surviving an accident.
"Un pas de coté pour la revolution", said Gébé (L'an 01):
One step aside for the revolution. Where are we standing now?
A crossroad. A street facing the parliament, the river Duna flowing in like a reminder of the country's geographical centrality, an empty street echoing the moaning of a renovated pub in which resonate the sound of a[nother] lost football game, finally the last street is but air, questions, breathing worries, imagined utopia and rationalism like one single bed-cover for the old family.

I now realise my first year in Hungary was the 50th celebration of the 1956 upheaval in Budapest. Two years later, the French 1968 lurks into the framework of souvenir, blurring vivid images of contestation in the hot, heavy, but maybe also snowy Hungarian spring of the year 2008.