Pyramide du Louvre - at night

Pyramide du Louvre

De nuit...

Les petits bateaux

Les bateaux voguent sur l'eau du bassin du jardin du luxembourg... Une tradition digne des "Petites Filles Modèles" de la Comtesse de Ségur :)

Printemps au jardin du Luxembourg

ce dimanche, petit passage rapide au jardin du luxembourg...

Paris - from 'the' butte montmartre

- Vue sur les toits de Paris -

- les rappeurs, ils faisaient beaucoup mieux que ça les gars :) -

mais je n'ai pas bien réussi le shooting

The Screwtape letters by CS Lewis

I just recommend this book...

"Tactique du Diable" en français, are letters from a senior to a junior devil on how to best keep under control a man of this world. If you want to know how the fight is going on and who is going to win, read the book!!!! and then take your time to ask yourself What kingdom do I belong to? and who is my king?

So true, concise and refreshing. One chapter a night is enough :) to digest and apply! Sometimes I was shocked to recognize myself so perfectly in the situations described by CS Lewis...

I bought the book but you can find the text online, e.g.

http://members.fortunecity.com/phantom1/books2/c._s._lewis_-_the_screwtape_letters.htm

I hope you will like it :)

Chapter XV

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

I had noticed, of course, that the humans were having a lull in their European war—what they naïvely call "The War"!—and am not surprised that there is a corresponding lull in the patient's anxieties. Do we want to encourage this, or to keep him worried? Tortured fear and stupid confidence are both desirable states of mind. Our choice between them raises important questions.

The humans live in time but our Enemy destines them to eternity. He therefore, I believe, wants them to attend chiefly to two things, to eternity itself, and to that point of time which they call the Present. For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity. Of the present moment, and of it only, humans have an experience analogous to the experience which our Enemy has of reality as a whole; in it alone freedom and actuality are offered them. He would therefore have them continually concerned either with eternity (which means being concerned with Him) or with the Present—either meditating on their eternal union with, or separation from, Himself, or else obeying the present voice of conscience, bearing the present cross, receiving the present grace, giving thanks for the present pleasure.

Our business is to get them away from the eternal, and from the Present. With this in view, we sometimes tempt a human (say a widow or a scholar) to live in the Past. But this is of limited value, for they have some real knowledge of the past and it has a determinate nature and, to that extent, resembles eternity. .It is far better to make them live in the Future. Biological necessity makes all their passions point in that direction already, so that thought about the Future inflames hope and fear. Also, it is unknown to them, so that in making them think about it we make them think of unrealities. In a word, the Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time—for the Past is frozen and no longer flows, and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought such as Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism, or Communism, which fix men's affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence nearly all vices are rooted in the future. Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead. Do not think lust an exception. When the present pleasure arrives, the sin (which alone interests us) is already over. The pleasure is just the part of the process which we regret and would exclude if we could do so without losing the sin; it is the part contributed by the Enemy, and therefore experienced in a Present. The sin, which is our contribution, looked forward.

To be sure, the Enemy wants men to think of the Future too—just so much as is necessary for now planning the acts of justice or charity which will probably be their duty tomorrow. The duty of planning the morrow's work is today's duty; though its material is borrowed from the future, the duty, like all duties, is in the Present. This is not straw splitting. He does not want men to give the Future their hearts, to place their treasure in it. We do. His ideal is a man who, having worked all day for the good of posterity (if that is his vocation), washes his mind of the whole subject, commits the issue to Heaven, and returns at once to the patience or gratitude demanded by the moment that is passing over him. But we want a man hag-ridden by the Future—haunted by visions of an imminent heaven or hell upon earth—ready to break the Enemy's commands in the present if by so doing we make him think he can attain the one or avert the other—dependent for his faith on the success or failure of schemes whose end he will not live to see. We want a whole race perpetually in pursuit of the rainbow's end, never honest, nor kind, nor happy now, but always using as mere fuel wherewith to heap the altar of the future every real gift which is offered them in the Present.

It follows then, in general, and other things being equal, that it is better for your patient to be filled with anxiety or hope (it doesn't much matter which) about this war than for him to be living in the present. But the phrase "living in the present" is ambiguous. It may describe a process which is really just as much concerned with the Future as anxiety itself. Your man may be untroubled about the Future, not because he is concerned with the Present, but because he has persuaded himself that the Future is, going to be agreeable. As long as that is the real course of his tranquillity, his tranquillity will do us good, because it is only piling up more disappointment, and therefore more impatience, for him when his false hopes are dashed. If, on the other hand, he is aware that horrors may be in store for him and is praying for the virtues, wherewith to meet them, and meanwhile concerning himself with the Present because there, and there alone, all duty, all grace, all knowledge, and all pleasure dwell, his state is very undesirable and should be attacked at once. Here again, our Philological Arm has done good work; try the word "complacency" on him. But, of course, it is most likely that he is "living in the Present" for none of these reasons but simply because his health is good and he is enjoying his work. The phenomenon would then be merely natural. All the same, I should break it up if I were you. No natural phenomenon is really in our favour. And anyway, why should the creature be happy?

Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE

On s'habitue vite, trop vite même! Deux semaines que je suis à Paris, encore une! les jours rallongent... et demain je vais probablement voir le soleil se lever :) pour cause de réveil très matinal, alors je vous laisse un peu de lecture pour patienter jusqu'à la prochaine fois...

In Paris again

Jour pour jour 2 ans après mon départ de Paris pour Rome je suis arrivée dans la capitale hier soir. Il y a des choses inchangées. Les néons m'ont semblé criards et omniprésents. J'ai eu l'impression de revenir de très loin. Etrange en cette période où tout est en mouvement. Comme si j'avais hiberné et que le sang devait circuler à nouveau dans mes membres engourdis. Les journaux gratuits parlent du remaniement ministériel... Au monop' on vend des marrons-suisses et des veloutés danone... Le soir on dit: "J'aimerai une 1/2 tradition s'il vous plait!" :) J'ai des amis qui m'attendent et des gens que je pensais partis depuis longtemps qui habitent toujours la rue du foyer où je logeais autrefois... Ma réserve de thé russe aux 7 agrumes du marais vient juste de finir... le début d'un nouveau cycle qui commence comme la fin de l'antépénultième...