Stranded on Earth        Chapter 2       

Chapter 2

Brigitte and the Universe

No sooner said than done.

Brigitte is on her way to her grandma.

She does not carry much luggage (the school orientation papers were carefully left discolouring on her desk) and her heart is light, in the taxi driving her from the small railway station to her grandma's cottage. Sweet memories of her childhood! Her family came there almost every year when she was still a little girl, but later the house was too small for two teenagers, who were sent to summer camp or to the scouts.

Brigitte finds, moved, the little village with houses of red bricks and fake white stones, windows full of geraniums, hay barns with mysterious shadows. No doubt it changed, a both familiar and distant setting, full of moving memories. She feels it has curiously shrunk, though. This once ruined house has been restored and painted white in pure shoe box style, others which were inhabited are now invaded by nettles...

Her heart starts beating when the car enters the gravel path which runs through a shady grove. Finally she emerges into the yard of the little house, triggering a hurried noise on the wooden staircase.

«Brigitte! But you're a young lady now!» Exclaims the grandma. Grandmas always look astonished to see their grandchildren grown up. Between the exclamations and the cheeks kissing, Brigitte looks at her Grandma, a true one who rolls the rrrr. She also seems much smaller than in her memories, like the house. She now has wrinkled cheeks, but still as in Brigitte's memory, her eyes sparkle with gaiety and kindness. She speaks, speaks, glad to see her grand daughter she knew only as a child.

On entering the small house, Brigitte finds again the dear pies fragrance which always perfumed this house, plus the smell of the wood-burning stove, which, in spite of the season, is lit in the morning for the toilet. She finds the attic room where she slept, with, surprisingly, one of her first child drawings still pinned on the wall, all faded with time. The house is very small, and on the first floor there are only two half-mansard rooms: Grandma's room, Brigitte's old room, and another tiny room. The ground floor includes the living room which also serves for cooking, a simple toilet room, and a reserve.

The grandma is alone since the death of her husband long ago. She is not rich, yet not missing money: she has properties in a neighbouring little town, which she received from her husband. But boredom is her daily lot, so that she is voluble. She offers to eat, because it is the evening. They talk about Brigitte's memories and plans for the future (while refraining from referring to «her problems»),

«And Joseph, who came to bring wood, he is still in the village?

-Yes, my little one. And even definitively!

-Yet his house looks abandoned!

-Ah, he lives in the cemetery now, she replies, laughing as of an innocent thing. You see it's for the definitive.

-Oh! And Mother Jeanne, the grocer?

-In the cemetery too. Now only remain the other grocery store, and the butcher. I must go there now, to the other grocery store, even if it is further. Jeanne's grocery store, they made of it a communal thing, there, for the town hall. But those who are still there are the bar, with the license. Ah, these, they did a lot for the repopulation of the cemeteries of the countryside, dear! All of them, the Joseph, the Jean, the René, all of them it is the cirrhosis which took them! The René, it was him who had the nice house at the bridge. Now it is the Parisians who are there. They have arranged it well, it's modern, all white, but it is not like in ancient times. When I arrived in the village, it was before the war: there was no tar on the roads, as now, but pebbles and horse dung.»

Later, Brigitte finds back with joy the high wooden bed with vast covers, which remained as she knew it. What a strange sensation, to entrust to this childhood memory her new woman body, of which in the end she does not much know what to do of it...

Grandma's step makes the floors creak, then the door of her little room closes with a small squeak. Follows the little tick of the switch, and a big, vast, enormous silence falls on Brigitte.

It seems strange at first, like an immense void, a sound failure. Then she becomes aware of a powerful buzzing, accompanied by a hissing, like an alternator or some machine, as improbable as incongruous in this house in the woods. She had heard this, in the same way, as a child, when she came here. Intrigued, she looks what causes it, to realize that it comes from her own ears, totally unaccustomed to silence, in her city where perpetually buzz, muted or screaming, cars, trucks, pipes, televisions...

 

The next day, Brigitte is sleeping. Well deserved, she thinks. Yet when she gets up, it is still pretty early. Grandma (More exactly in French «Mère Grand». She likes to call her this way, in memories of Little Red Riding Hood stories) simply says hello, smiling, silently busy. As in the old days, pies bake in the oven, and the real milk is waiting to be warmed. Brigitte delights in fond memories as well as of good country bread. Ah, how smells have the gift, and even the privilege, to revive memories! Not only the images but also the feelings, the experienced atmosphere, the past happiness which they exhume and bring back to the present moment, intact, adorned with all its evocative intensity.

After breakfast, Grandma offers Brigitte a visit of the surroundings, already bathed with sunshine, and still faithful to themselves. The old well is still there, with the gesticulating arm pump which Grandma still uses sometimes, although the cottage has long been connected to the «city water». The garden is still between its bryony covered fences, with its plantations: marrows, onions for the winter, salads, and other things. At the end of the alley is the hutch. Brigitte adored, as a child, to cherish the rabbits, or to feed them. But at her disappointment it seems empty. Oh yes there still are two occupiers in the back end, white as snow. There still is the same lock at the door, which had exercised her sagacity as a toddler. She grabs a rabbit.

«No, I pray you, don't take them by the ears, Doe!

-Oh really, why?

-It is said it hurts them.

-Oooh I did not knew, Grandma. I have always seen like that.

-Yes. People do not know.

-He is cute, look.

-People are like that. They do things without knowing.

-Excuse me, nice little bunny.

-Note, it'was the same for me. I had to be told.

-Oh Grandma, it was great, when you gave us those huge plates of rabbit in sauce! Waowww!

-Ah, no, these ones I keep them, she replies in still friendly tone, but unanswerable.

-Oh, sorry, I did not knew.

-I would not have the heart to kill them.

-...

-I love them well, they are cute and quiet as trees. And they do not bother the birds, at least. When you were a kid, it was the Joseph who did the work. Now that he's gone, nobody has taken over for that.»

To Brigitte thoughtful, she now finds strange the though of throwing in the burning fry this tender flesh, with such a candid stare, and sweet quivering muzzle, which lets himself to be taken without the slightest distrust. And no one would ever have noticed? Not even her...

The following days, Brigitte spent a good part of her time in the surrounding woods. It is not a walk, but a pilgrimage, back to the roots!

Leaving the lawn surrounding the house, she engages under the boughs. She did that as a child, holding the hand of her mother, and she keeps a pleasant memory of it. But there... She goes from discovery to discovery, amazed... The plays of the light, under the leaves, the thrill of this impressive living mass... She knew that it was beautiful, poetic, she praised it in her school dissertations, but how could she suspect that it would fill her whole being? She feels invigorated, refreshed, with the desire to run and jump like a goat kid! And she does, by the way. She is so light that she would surely fly!

She finds herself extending her arms and doing some inspirations like at the gymnastic. But here too she jumps: while the forced breaths of the sport are purely technical, here she feels free, airy, purified, light, joyful: she can follow the delicious passage of the fresh and vivifying air from her nose In the chest, then a relief, a release at the release of the warm and exhausted air. Curiously the fullness feeling is when she relaxes and lets go her breath, and not when it swells. So much for the ideology of possession!

She traverses small clearings where the Sun plays with shadows, then fields and meadows of a delicious green. The Sun itself seems to be an accomplice, pouring out its flood of light, golden like Happiness. Crossing a fence, she finds a wood with a hollow, at the bottom of which runs a small stream, perfectly clean and limpid, with sand and gravel. Why not to soak her feet? These shoes squeeze a little. Out with the shoes. What a delicious freshness! How suddenly she feels lively and available! But we cannot immediately put back the wet feet into the shoes. Luckily there is moss around. Brigitte walks barefoot to a tree with a huge trunk, on a ground covered with forest moss flowered with sunspots. She sits down.

The subtle perfume and softness of the moss, the warmth of the air... Brigitte wants to taste these sensations with her whole body, not just with the fingertips. Out with the clothes... she thinks, but if she was surprised? She does not dare anyway. One would misunderstand her attitude, since for most people nudity equals sex. And sex too often equals vulgarity. Too bad. She contemplates the big tree, turning around, climbing with her eyes the powerful tortuous branches which disappear up in the immense mass of leaves. She never saw such a big one. How old is it? A silent witness of so much time, of so many scenes, it seems to be wholly surrounded with mystery and magic.

A small bird passes by, as close as two metres. What it was? A robin, or a goldfinch? She does not know, she only guesses it is not an ostrich nor a penguin. Suddenly she becomes aware of the symphony being played under the foliages: For her who only knows the sparrows screeching in older town, here is the moving song of the blackbirds, the merry trills of the tits...

 

Lengthily she wanders in the undergrowth, walks through meadows, follows paths, and back again to the big tree with its mossy place. Shyly, she starts to roll up a trouser leg. If somebody was to see her! But no matter. A conviction begins to gather strength in her mind. No, the sun cannot be replaced by an UV lamp. Air in pipe, and even pure oxygen, cannot have the effect of the breeze perfumed with humus and freshness of the undergrowth. A false tree in concrete, even perfectly imitated, will never share the aura of gentle power of the genuine tree. The aura of power, the light of Happiness, the enlivening freshness of the breeze, the Soft touch of the moss on the skin, all this is the TRUE LIFE, since it gives HAPPINESS.

Suddenly it appears obvious to Brigitte. Everything is simple, clear, luminous. Happiness. Nothing has any meaning which does not lead to Happiness. And Happiness is to enjoy with all her body, with all her being, all these nice feelings like the contact with living beings, with elements, with nature. But careful: not a selfish happiness: a sharing. Brigitte makes herself discreet in the woods, not to disturb. As she did not went to take anything, she receives everything in gift. She is the visitor, the guest. Better: she is herself a part of this candid freshness, of this hymn to the joy. She gives herself to the scene: All the beauty of the universe finds its meaning, thanks to the consciousness which allows itself to wonder!

 

Her too, she is the life. A live which in more has the priceless privilege of being aware, of feeling, of wondering.

 

Everything is putting in its place altogether, everything is clear in her head. Let go all what is wrong, drop, let go, unplug all what which binds, all what which makes obstacles, all what which go astray and makes us forget this precious communion. Why to run after complicated things, which make noise, which destroy, which cost so much of these precious instants of life so scarcely counted to us? Why to disperse one’s thought, why to waste our precious consciousness into futile activities, into derivatives? (She thinks to what the philosopher Pascal, that she studied in first class, call to distract oneself: to forget what is essential, to no longer be conscious). The life, it is to live. We must enter in, not stay besides. Not observer: involved. Life does not need any kind of justification, of definition. Life is itself its own purpose: Happiness, Consciousness, Wonder, creating beauty, creating new life. It is its own justification, it has no rational purpose. It is a vast joke of the universe to make itself laugh, a moving and huge game to feel tender as a mother toward her baby! Life finds in itself its own morals: no need to invent any, and especially not these terrible arbitrary rules which cost so much suffering.

Just hear, see, breathe what is beautiful and irreplaceable, as bird songs and the softness of the moss.

 

But this is not enough.

Again the thinks to her scout camp, of which she keeps a pleasant memory, yet mingled with bitterness. Oh yes, she loved this crazy jaunt, pitch their tent in the grass warm from the July sun, to assemble furniture from logs and ropes, to sing at evening. First she loved the nature, but she also (and especially) enjoyed the warmth of friendship and the complicity of the adventure shared altogether. (Hey, for these city dwellers, to heat a pan on a wood fire or to scoop water out of the tent under the storm, it is already adventure!) Unfortunately there also was bitterness: when she was getting enthusiastic, playing the game, her comrades were always slipping off. They were here, physically, but were speaking of futile things, of sport, of fashion, of the fade singers in the TV; in place of getting enthusiastic, they were laughing and mocking. For instance Brigitte began in the evenings to sing full heartedly some of these naive scout songs, but, as a beginner, she had some false notes, well posed, very frankly! She did not minded, for her it was just an incident, and she readily shared the laughers of her comrades. But in place of dissipating, these laughers were continuing, becoming hiccough, grimace... It was no longer the pleasure of singing together, it was the ugliness of mockery: all was getting wrong, lost, shunted out. Why so much effort, having travelled so far, having burned tens of litres of gasoline, walked for kilometres, have gathered in the scented grass warm from this nice summer evening? They were back to the start, in front of the television. Brigitte tried to resume the chant, calm down the game, but the sad laughers were continuing, like automates, like mechanism out of control, all communication severed from the outside world. The activity leaders themselves had to intervene with authority to put an end to this! What a pitiful failure!

The whole camp went like this, between the joy of living together in the scented nature and the comrades who constantly escaped from it, like soaps, to fall back into their tiny tales of television or fashion, that supreme derision, they called... «their life»!

You probably understood, friend reader: it is since that time that Brigitte «has a problem»... That she is «not like the others»... That «one does not understand her».

Now, in any case, in the light of this former experience, even if it was a failure, everything seems simple and clear to her on this point too. To live together. Everyone is in his communion with life, with Beauty. But this communion is shared by all. This is the base point: everyone is even happier with the happiness and joy of others, than with his own only. Happiness feeds on happiness, the happiness of some makes the Happiness of others, in a marvellous perpetual movement. It is a formidable complicity, a communion of each one in the heart of the other, a joyful conspiracy, a Rocambolesque farce. Warning! We leave for each other in a minute! No! Right now! We are each one the other! We shall love each other and do a lot of great things together! We shall sing together in circles! We are going to build a log table! Warning! We are going to roll ourselves all together in the moss!

Brigitte is joyful, but of a discreet joy. Who could think, in the village, that this calm girl who passes discreetly down there in the mead behind the barn has just pierced the secrets of the universe, that only the great Sages and the Magi know?

 

 

In the evening, she returns, to find the good smile of her grandma. The set table is waiting for her with the delicious smell of the soup simmering on the stove. Brigitte gently reproaches her grandma for giving herself so much trouble for her, and, after the meal, proposes to do her dishes. She cannot let her grandma pamper her like a child. She insists, but all her supplications remain in vain: Niet. Brigitte is the guest, and Grandma strongly defends the approaches to the sink and stove, classified strategic zone.

Brigitte, delighted at her discovery, would like to share it with her sweet Grandma. She opens her mouth, but... Which words to use? She searches, she cannot find. And she could look for a long time: there is none. As you see, dear readers, what I described with so many words, is very badly described; even a great writer would not do better. The Sages and the Prophets were not able either to express it and to be understood by all, otherwise we would all have become Sages in our turn... What is so long, so difficult to explain with words appeared In the consciousness of Brigitte in an infinitely short time, full and complete. She then only explored, admired it, let her be guided through all the facets. This can not be reduced to a set of knowledge, reasoning, concepts. It is a direct knowledge, another logic far wider than the one of the brave Descartes. Do not think that this is necessarily what fashion calls a «parapsychological phenomenon»: It is simply the bursting of life itself in an open and receptive consciousness. This can work with everybody, if one accepts the necessary opening, if one starts with making a clean sweep of all conception, of all prejudice. It is natural, but our civilization of the artificial, the semblance, the image stuck on it, is in fact incapable of grasping the natural in all its simplicity. The natural does not apprehend, it lives. It can not be reduced to a set of psychological, biological and social facts. It would indeed be sad, admit it!

Brigitte is annoyed. She thought of finding a way to get closer to her fellow Humans, to build a bridge. And now she is drawn radically away from them, as if carried offshore by a powerful current. She could renounce, forget what she has seen, but this simple suggestion is now even more intolerable than the evocation of death. Definitively no way! Only one solution: that the others follow her. But how to explain them? Brigitte, for lack of apparent solution, prefers to postpone this question until later, and begin to explore her new country, no matter if she is alone.

 

About «her problems», Brigitte tries discreetly about this: she really want to know exactly what her parents said to Grandma. She attracts this answer, at once clear and mysterious: «Oh, you know, my dear, your parents are worrying a lot for you, they think about things, but I know that you are a good girl, very lively and kind, in a world which is often wicked. And I say, my daughter, that you will go far, farther than you think, anyway farther than those who live only for the bucks!»

Impressed by this vehement tirade, Brigitte no longer dares to question Grandma on this matter. It would anyway be useless: Why should Grandma repeat these useless words, which only effect would be to bring trouble?

 

In the following days, Brigitte goes even further into what she calls her awakening, her consciousness taking, by lack of anything better, as these words are so overused or misused... After a few days spent in the countryside, she is in a better mood, available, and especially more lucid. She understands much better these things beyond logic, beyond concepts. What seemed to her confuse, elusive, is now solid, limpid, and even simple! She plays at moving from one to another of her finds. Why this sudden ease?

Some time before she came, during the high school strike (a privileged moment when she had learned much more important things than during long periods of study) she had read an article explaining that the air in the cities is poisoned with carbon monoxide from all the combustions, especially car engines. This carbon monoxide attaches itself to the blood, and deprives the brain of part of its oxygen. Little, of course, but this little corresponds to the most noble functions, the ones Brigitte obviously used for her awareness. Since carbon monoxide is very avid for blood, it can only release it after several days spent in a pure air, totally free of it, an air which is increasingly rare even in the wilderness.

This explanation seems interesting to Brigitte, but insufficient. It was by ten or a hundred that her lucidity was multiplied, and from the very day after her arrival.

 

 

Brigitte also loves the work in the garden, even if we do not talk of it as much as her walks in the woods. Brigitte would be ashamed not to lend a helping hand to her Grandma, who is alone and no more young. She even involves a lot, and Grandma does not refuse. She dedicates a good part of her stay to digging, the indispensable repair of the fence, repainting a room and other tinkering. She is not a tourist!

She also realizes, on this occasion, that life is not only contemplation, but also activity. This communion, this profound union of beings with nature that Brigitte has discovered, also applies to the moments of useful work in life, provided they are offered gratuitously and with good heart. What a pleasure! What a sweet complicity that creation and adventure lived together! Contemplative happiness alone would be incomplete without the joy of creating, participating, and being busy for more life. She dares not say anything to Grandma, but the universal complicity of the gardeners seems to work wonderfully with her, as of a natural thing, without one having to try to grasp it with words. Brigitte has the feeling that even if her grandma did not realize a full awareness like her, in fact she lives it naively, without knowing that it is extraordinary.

One day Brigitte comes out in the rain. Grandma lent her boots and a vast raincoat from before the war. So dressed, she could be mistaken for one of the peasant women of the village, except for the juvenile blond locks which escape the hood.

The countryside in the rain seems at first a little sad, but she quickly realizes that under the apparent greyness, life continues. Better, a quantity of small animals make a feast of the return of water. She finds again the great tree which, more than ever, radiates its mystery and majesty. The birds always sing, but their song offers in the rain a new sweetness, a more moving intimacy than their brilliant shows of the azure days. Under the magic caress of the rain, the leaves seem to breathe, relieved, revel in freshness. The green is more lively, stronger and deeper. In the shade of the foliage the rain awakens strange magicians ...

 

Returning home sooner than expected, she finds Grandma... in front of the TV.

«Oh, excuse me, my dear, I know you do not like it. But you see, me, the TV, I take the program, and I watch only what makes sense. There's not much, you bet, I'm shall not get stuck on the floor while just looking at that. But hush: when I am not looking at it, I lock the door of the closet, and nobody knows that it is there. Uncle Albert knows, he's the one who installed it in the closet, with the inner antenna. Because, if not, when he comes with your cousins, they would be planted all day long before it, and it's unhealthy for children: it sucks their life and it gives them odd ideas. So Tintin no TV. It is much better to garden or to go frolicking in the meadows: otherwise, it is not worth coming to the countryside! Surely I'm right, besides they are much happier this way. Me, it's different, I look at it sometimes, to not be bored, because you see since the Father is no longer there, I am very lonely. Look: it's about animals... Oh but they cannot make a show on animals without making them to eat each other. What a mess! They really have misplaced ideas these people. Then, punished, in the closet, it will teach them.» And, joining the gesture to the word, she folds the heavy oak door and turns the big black iron key.

Brigitte cannot stop laughing!

«When I saw the TV in the beginning, I said it's progress, it's something, we see nothing, we understand nothing, and the images come. You're too young, you did not know the beginning. One day, Uncle Albert, he has a repair shop, he opened it to set a button, so I saw inside all the wires and lamps and curlers that you do not understand nothing. I said that the people who did that were intelligent people, who had studied, when we are only people from the countryside with the certificat d'études, right. But when we see the programs, I said well it was not worth making so complicated stuff just to show that.»

Grandma finding curlers in Uncle Albert's TV, it must have been hilarious!

«You know, grandma, I often thought... (A moment of silence) It could be very nice, TV, a great way to communicate, if it spoke of important things... It would help People, instead of stunning them.

-Oooh my daughter, it's true, but I shall die before, and you too, no doubt.»

 

One sunny evening, the weather is so sweet that Brigitte wants to stay outside until night.

«Good evening, Grandma. I'll be back late, I want to see the sunset.

Yes, Doe, but do not go too far into the woods at night, not to get lost.

-Do not worry, I took the lamp, the compass, the buoy, the survival rations and the distress flares. I risk nothing, the Big Bad Wolf will not catch me.

-Ah well then, concludes the grandma, starting a loud laugh: Ah, this youth! We're not bored!»

Brigitte goes across the village to a meadow where the view is fairly clear towards the west. Slowly the day sinks into a blue twilight. The sky is so pure this day, that the horizon is just purple, without red. The air is filled with the powerful scent of warm herbs. The crickets and other grasshoppers, still shy in July, prepare their August sarabands. What a marvel, the singing of blackbirds! She knows how to recognize them, now that Grandma made her hear. She says that it is their prayer, and Brigitte thinks it must be true, as they emanates a poetry both powerful and quiet: the evening gold. How sweet! What kindness! Brigitte does not believe in angels or in God, but she thinks that if God existed then everything would be fine between Him and the blackbirds, and that, despite her lack of faith, no doubt He would still give her a small place in His Paradise, for having so well understood and loved His Creation, for having discovered and appreciated this ineffable Consciousness of life.

Later, the stars light up in the ultramarine sky. Brigitte does not know the constellations; how to admire the stars in the obscure night of his city? She discovers the Milky Way, and gaze in the dust of small stars barely visible to the naked eye.

The great silence of the night descends. She realizes that what she initially felt as a total silence is in fact populated with a furtive life, and small noises: light breeze in the trees, crackling and grinding of branches, ruffle of grass, Innumerable ticks and scraps of insects, and even the scraping of the moles, which is perfectly distinguishable by placing the ear on the ground. Farther on, owls, whose cry is in no way sinister, while the barking of dogs, which almost always resounds in the distance, evokes some mysterious and gloomy sadness. Even the brook can be heard singing at a hundred of metres, while on the day of her arrival she saw it before hearing it. A car is running along the curves of the departmental road: so this can be heard from so far? Strangely moving, the bell of a neighbouring village sounds who knows which hour, and repeats two minutes later. In this direction shine a few lamps, evocative of some Sweet cosy hearth.

The breeze is still warm, full of the scents of the day: mown hay, humus, dry flowers...

Later on, the sky is black. Suddenly a star moves! But it is only a satellite. Brigitte, like everyone else, could not but hear about interplanetary exploration, extraterrestrials, astronomy, and UFOs. Concerning the latter, she is somewhat circumspect, as every average citizen who heard of them only in bad; but this does not stop her from fantasizing about them, like everyone else here too. She dreams of other planets and the life they may host... Her consciousness tells her: not perhaps, but surely. This little speck of light up there, scarcely visible, flickering, is perhaps the messenger of a world, with its inhabitants, who also live, think, and love. Maybe they are watching her too, right now. What would they think of her if they saw her? How is life for them? Brigitte thinks of all these superficial science fiction novels, which merely extrapolate the technical progress, showing beings with bizarre and alien shapes, but with in facts exactly the same psychology as us, with of course all our very dear psychological defects and social troubles. Could it be that they are in fact different from us, in their inner life, in their very essence? Could it be that... what Brigitte calls her essential «consciousness taking» of life, would just be very natural for them? It takes so many stratagems and detours for Earthlings to escape it, that it would be really an incredibly unlikely bad trick of fate that the same unbelievable misadventure happened on a single other planet! But it is sure: what Brigitte has discovered can only be identical in every point of the universe. The consciousness, the higher morality of life, cannot depend on the conceptions of an epoch, a civilization; on the contrary, they are essentially identical for the whole universe!

Brigitte even starts dreaming what could be a planet where all the beings would have this consciousness. Of course it would be very beautiful, nature in bloom, everything arranged like an English garden, no, Japanese garden. The houses would be jewels in nature, covered with climbing flowers. The factories would be clean, flowery, non-polluting, discrete and silent. No employment or business owners: One would come at work on his own initiative, to make beautiful things, useful things, in Mutual Help, to give it full heartedly to those who will have an use of it: thus we would be happy working. And everyone would be friends, of course. One would sing while working, in the gardens and in the fields, and also in the evening around the fire. One would also go naked in the gardens and in the forests, and in the rivers of course.

There would be no laws, no morals, no regulations. Moral of life is enough, since everybody can easily FEEL what to do, or not to do, if it helps others, or if it causes other beings to suffer. Or rather, what would it take to... How to avoid insoluble situations such as three-person unions? It would need a base, but it is easy if at the beginning everybody is complicit. Well, this awareness does not solve all the problems, such as accidents, earthquakes and cyclones, but in any case the new state of mind radically eliminates any artificial suffering and could, by more prudence, discipline and organization, greatly reduce suffering of natural origin. Only death remains sovereign, but at least the little that one has to live will be nice...

Ah, how these projects are beautiful! But what prevents everybody from realizing them on Earth? Is it conceivable that she is the first to think about this, and even the only one, on five billions people? Would she be the victim of some sweet illusion? Like those people who believe they invented antigravity or water engine, but who «just» misinterpreted some basic law of physics? Split between the doubt, that nothing supports, and the simplicity, the evidence of her vision, which everything approves, Brigitte does not know what to think... Most likely she will keep this for her, and will not dare to speak to anybody. But suddenly she stands up: «No, nothing shows me that I am in error. I am the only one who understood? So what? What did the first Human think, who could kindle a fire? Where would we be if he had not spoken in front of the mockery of his fellows? If nothing in nature proves the contrary, I AM RIGHT. Period. As for sharing my discovery, I do not know yet how I shall do it, but I SHALL DO IT. Even if I need to devote my life to it. In the end, given the mess going on on Earth right now, I do not have much to lose, if I give the few life time I have in there. This what I thought: helping others to understand. And if there is no socioprofessional-machin-truc for that, I shall create one. As for training, no need: nobody knows anything about it anyway. Even as a beginner in this field, I already have more authority than all these ignorant people altogether.»

This firm resolution taken, Brigitte sees nothing special to do in the immediate future. Staying with Grandma? It is nice, but limited in time. The best thing to do right now is to take advantage of this gentle tranquillity to assimilate this new knowledge. Because after, she guesses, it will be much more difficult: carbon monoxide, noise, precipitation, annoyances, artificial preoccupations, everything will combine to blunt this precious lucidity, to introduce doubtful elements into it. In fact, Brigitte realizes that her future problem remains: how to stay herself? Where to start? With which means? Ah these socio-professional orientation papers which tangle in the feet of the destiny of the universe! Oh, evil and immoral economic system, where nothing can be done which does not yield MONEY AT ONCE! She now measures the colossal difficulty of the work which awaits her, the sum of efforts, disillusions, sacrifices, perhaps the supreme sacrifice. She may think that anyway, she would lose much more by renouncing her project, but now she is as pessimistic as she was determined two minutes ago.

Contemplating the delicate signal of the stars, she starts dreaming that from one of them, in a formidable symphony of rumblings reverberated to the Infinite, flies away a mighty galactic ship with mysterious curves... Yes, it comes to find her and take her to a more beautiful planet. This noise in the grass... Are they steps? Farewell, false insoluble problems, farewell artificial difficulties! Hello, nice friendly flowery village, with a small house of ivy and love, where awaits the man who will love her by sharing her consciousness! Brigitte plays for a moment at seeing luminous points which appear and grow... Perhaps, after all, that Earth is a nursery, where all those who mature and become conscious are immediately taken elsewhere... This would explain that «we never meet any»! In the UFO stories, there are hijacking, mysterious disappearances, footsteps which stop in the middle of a field... Why not? This fits well. Will one find her traces without continuation in this meadow, tomorrow? But no luminous point accepts to grow enough to become a worthy saucer, and the sky remains desperately desert, with just the friendly but so distant signal of the stars.

Yet, despite the total absence of evidence, Brigitte is now convinced that the planets of the Infinite are populated for their vast majority of conscious, free, and happy beings; that some have exceeded by several billion years the level of Earth civilization, both in technique and in Wisdom, with powerful means to intervene on Earth if they want. If they do not appear now at Brigitte, it cannot be because they are unable to do so. Then, it is probably because... she is not ready yet.

Brigitte gets up, both resigned and resolute. Resigned to her fate, and determined to do what is necessary to change it.

 

 

The next day, the drizzle returned on the village. No garden, no walks in the woods.

«Here, Doe, here are magazines that your uncle Albert brought me; they will please you no doubt. There's one on the planets, you who love this. I go to see Rose, she invited me, it's not so often so I have to go. Do not forget to think about feeding the two cuties at five o'clock.»

Brigitte is a little taken aback: Who told Grandma that she is interested in the planets? She never spoke to anyone. She has the nose, the Grandma. Brigitte reads thoughtfully. Patronage magazines, others of nature. Many insipid articles, some which talk about important things. Brigitte sometimes feel that the authors have captured a part of the truth that she has foreseen, a flash of kindness, a spek of love, a glint of poetry, but two lines further, a big blunder comes to contradict everything. As if the authors were writing random sentences. The articles on nature, or on the manners of exotic countries, she admires the photographs, but reads the comments only cautiously, ready to skip a whole passage if she steps on those grotesque interpretations, often put on beings one did not really try to understand.

After beautiful pictures of the wonders of Angkor, for her at once strange and curiously familiar, there is a series of images on elephants, then on Venice. Here is the article on Jupiter that Grandma spoke about. She looks, while thinking at her daydreams of the last day. These are the pictures that the two Voyager probes just sent, showing, O fantastic revelation, new planets that the human eye had never contemplated before! O privileged time which saw our first glances on other worlds! Brigitte falls in admiration, even if, as she knows, these planets are deprived of life. Here is Io, with its unrestrained volcanoes, Europe, with the strangely smooth and motley ice-field, Callisto, gray-green and covered with craters like the Moon, and Ganymede, with its strange networks of canals which remind of a tangle of tracks in a dishevelled railway station, covering a good part of the planet.

But this is not what most intrigues Brigitte: this image, totally new for all the Humans, is familiar to her.

What, two or three years earlier, no human eye had ever seen, that no human mind could have imagined, she dreamed of it long before.

The forgotten memory emerges, intact: little child, she had made this dream for her incomprehensible at the moment, several times, well before she ever heard of planets: a vast grey sphere, all covered with pimples, on a black ink sky, with, over a part of its surface, such a network of furrows as a triskelion of the Briton cromlechs. Farther, another sphere, this one totally smooth, matt and blue. In fact the planets in Brigitte's dream resembled Miranda and Neptune respectively, but at the time of this story, the Voyager probes are somewhere between Jupiter and Saturn, still several years from Neptune and its satellite.

Brigitte is more than intrigued by this impossible premonition. There is something. And it happens curiously at the very moment when she had promised herself to do one thing.

 

She now solemnly swore a total fidelity to her consciousness; she also vows to do everything she could to transmit it to others; She swears to herself to do everything in her power to keep herself in her this consciousness whatever happens, and, in her relations with others, to always act according to this consciousness; and finally to extend a hand, in case others would wish to grasp it and live with her according to this consciousness.

She swears this on the photo of the furrows of Ganymede. She is certainly ignorant of the exact meaning of her curious childhood dream, but she suspects that, given its obviously physically inexplicable origin, it is of the utmost importance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stranded on Earth        Chapter 2       

 

Scenario, graphics, sounds, colours, realization: Richard Trigaux.

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