Chapter 3

Searches and illusions.

The campus of a great university. Among the sympathetic and anonymous crowd who hurries in the big box where we students get their pittance, who are we finding? Brigitte. No, the nice extraterrestrial flying saucers did not came to take her, and she had to continue pretending to live this off-centre life. Coming home from her nice grandmother, she had found her orientation papers as she had left them, suitably yellowed by the sunshine of this beautiful summer, but still asking the same question without reply. Plus the father, still silent but awaiting for a solution to this problem which does not exist. As she has no clues on how to start her great work of saving mankind, the less worse was to do «as if» she played the game of this strange world, delaying as much as possible the moment when the chopper would fall, which would make her a doctor, an employee, a secretary, or, if she did not choose, a beggar. Everything considered, it was better any of the first solutions than the last one.

Brigitte is not at all a lazy woman, as we saw; then why is she so afraid of the «active life»? Because she knows that from this moment she will no longer have time for her work of helping humanity; too many worries to be conscious, no more freedom of movement, no more choice to guide her life. An immovable straitjacket once you enter in. She had only to look at her father, always regretting having no time. As for living in poverty, it would be even worse. Studies have an end; It can always be useful. The student milieu is open, wide, varied, when a workplace is necessarily limited and quickly explored. Then Brigitte temporizes, and choose a branch which, she thinks, can help her: a DEUG in human sciences. Two years, three if she doubles a class. Until then, many things can happen.

Before starting, to get into the spirit, she read psychology books. Freud and the others. Awakening humans, this can only be essentially a matter of psychology. She had to quickly force herself to read this literature only once. As for re-reading it to draw a plan, main ideas, putting in order all the data which lies in bulk, she will never do this. The first pages of notes full of her youthful and generous writing are still in the books, page thirty, page forty-two. Why this abandonment? Were these authors stupid? Dummies? Not really, their ideas are often relevant, but they always remain confined at a certain level. Never a luminous synthesis, never a link between the different domains, never this simple unifying intuition which for Brigitte tipped everything. Finally, she nevertheless trains her mind at that.

For the studies... The same mixed feeling. Some topics seem pertinent, others look abstruse. Some teachers are lively, interested in what they teach, in their students. Others are only dull automatons, with heavy and tangled lessons. Often the foundations of a course are given rapidly, or without emphasizing their importance, and thereafter they are never explained again, which is soon an insurmountable obstacle if this point of departure has not been assimilated. So, for two minutes of inattention, it is the whole year which can be compromised. Brigitte, who is caught two or three times, fulminates and runs through notes from comrades, practical work sessions, or through books, to find a trinket, a detail that she had neglected to note, but which subsequently proves indispensable for understanding other themes. The time lost to such research often forbids her to go deeper elsewhere, but this traitorous process seems quite common. Some teachers actually act as if they were talking to computers capable of ingesting and restoring word for word hours of speech without taking a glass of water. While Brigitte quickly realizes that new concepts, to be well assimilated, require to be explained, experienced, re-explained in different ways, instead of being spelled out in a few words. This certainly makes an intellectual aesthetic construction, but makes understanding difficult. The human spirit is not infallible! With the best goodwill of the world, memory, attention have lapses, foreign concerns interfere. Is it necessary to empty one's head of every personality, of all elementary human life, in order to be a student?

Sometimes, on the contrary, the rhythm of the lessons drops to an exhausting slowness, poking on accessory details, anecdotes, the history of the thought... The temptation is then great to take care of something else, to put her notes in order, or even squarely to leave the course. But how do we know in advance if what we are going to talk about is important or not? Brigitte regrets that there is not a precise plan of the lessons, more than these summary polycopied papers, or these books which are not coordinated with the lessons.

Finally, this does not prevent a decisive, available and healthy person from advancing and obtaining satisfactory results, and even, for Brigitte, quite good. All the more so, if certain subjects seem totally useless, burdens, others are on the contrary strongly interesting her. Not that they join her intuition, it is far away of it, but they provide concepts which allow this intuition to play wider, to better express itself in words. Although Brigitte does not tries yet. So this beginning in the faculty, despite the harassment, is a quite happy period.

The number one problem had been accommodations. No way to keep living with her parents, spending two hours in transports! The obvious solution was the university campus. But this turned out to be a hell: the occupants of the next room (a dozen, no doubt) made a terrible noise every night until a late hour. No soundproofing in this summary construction, probably originally planned for Third World aid. No way to do anything about it, either nor on the side of those jerks, neither on the side of the administration: the FFFreedom! Brigitte tried the Quies plugs, suicide blackmail, scenes, counter-jamming, father in the director's office, and even the sleeping pill, but then she felt so bad that she vowed never again to do this. She had to bear it for a month, waiting to find an attic in an old building half an hour's walk from the lessons, and three times the price of the city. But Brigitte now has a small home, calm most of the time, except on Saturday night. Her neighbours work at the factory, so that they cannot afford a dissolute life. This place is quite pretty, overlooking a quiet courtyard with trees. The mansard ceiling and the walls are plastered rounded on the beams, painted in pale purple, with built-in cupboards, a shower and even a kitchen area which she does not see the use at the moment, but we shall see that this will change quickly!

 

 

The Christmas holidays without the TVmanic brother, absent, allow Brigitte to take a bearing. No, she replied, annoyed, to her mother, she did not had «her problems.» Her parents must be happy, because she did not talk about it at all. But for Brigitte it is rather disturbing. Where are gone the beautiful resolutions of this summer? Absorbed as she was in her new existence and her lessons, she realizes that she did absolutely nothing to live and express this consciousness, contenting herself with being amiable and available to a possible encounter. As for sharing it... It must be said that in the city, to enjoy through her whole skin the caresses of the natural elements has little meaning... And that the powerful lucidity of her sojourn with her Grandma, this curious state of grace, is no more than a memory now. Despite these excuses, she is angry. Then she tries to live the activity fully.

Precisely she had brought some late notes to lay in proper form. Carefully placing the pencils in the same place to avoid getting angry looking at them. Take the sheets one by one, in order. It is not easy, because this teacher is meddling and clumsy, she needs to rummage in all this verb. But when it comes to writing, Brigitte is suddenly joyful: inspired, she adds flowers, makes calligraphy, and even in a moment of joyous delirium, try to put a little bit of perfume on one of the flowers. Ploof! What a clumsy one! Her notebooks will smell the cheap makeup throughout the quarter...

All this, however, is not very cosmic. Brigitte's mother is out of order (no, sorry, she is sick, but how this mechanistic mindset is contagious!) And Brigitte has to cook for her for two or three days. She applies her way of being to the peeling of potatoes, to the preparation of dishes. Not cosmic? Eeeeh... It works much better than with the psycho-philosophical-historical verbiage. To eat, at least, we know where it leads. It is not going to be out of fashion. Sure value. Vegetables are living beings which, in matters of caresses, have rather particular tastes. Brigitte began by preparing her place; she gathers the tools, takes time to smell the fragrance of the vegetable, to admire its colour, to feel its consistency, even to taste a bit, all raw. Taste, smell, colour... Be aware of it, pay attention to it, all this is happiness. There is much more things to see in a simple vegetable than she ever expected: curious shapes, textures, transparency effects... She even tries to taste the raw potatoes, but there, it does not work!

Then she works quietly, in order, inspiring and exhaling, feeling the freshness of the air in her lungs. Work is a creation, an expression, a pleasure. When she has finished preparing, she picks up everything and passes a sponge before preparing the next step. It works well with fresh vegetables, she easily feels the note of freshness or vivacity which suits them. It also works for dried beans, though more discreetly, but not at all for the meat or dried purée. Why these differences? She will look for the explanation later.

Brigitte, interested, prepares raw vegetables by arranging nicely the dishes, seeking new combinations, trying what she sees on the stalls but that she never tasted: avocados, celery, cabbages. She takes a small piece of leaf, which she smells, then, after making sure that she does not make wait for other customers, asks the merchant how it is prepared, to which it is always answered nicely. Brigitte came to experience the colours and variety of the stands on the market as of a joyous wealth, whereas she never paid attention to the luxurious bling of the jewellery stores.

The only problem Brigitte encounters is that, in the midst of attention and presence, the rumble of the nearby bypass suddenly takes hold of her consciousness. Yet she had never paid attention to this continual noise, which had accompanied her whole childhood. At first discreet, it had become more and more intense over the years. Suddenly, here it is, trying frantically to impose itself in the place of the pleasurable sensations she would like to cultivate. The same goes for all the noises which so easily cross the cheap walls of low-cost housing, flushing, stilettos, disputes, etc... without speaking of course of the mandatory growl of televisions, radical poetry reducer, bringing everywhere prosaicism and insignificance. Brigitte does not fail to be astonished with this phenomenon, which always occurs at the precise moment when she tries to feel the world poetically. She finally thinks that these noises are a form of dirt in the realm of sound, just as there are unclean matters in the physical realm, and that we must somehow wash them out to feel good in mind. But in this society yet so manic of physical hygiene, there is strictly nothing planned for sound cleanliness...

Decidedly, many things of this strange life are absolutely incompatible with this consciousness which she wishes to maintain, incompatible with Poetry.

She was much better at her Grandma, despite the smell of old house and cobwebs.

But also, Brigitte has the feeling that she had hitherto been nothing but a puppet, a robot performing pre-programmed gestures, feeling the indicated feelings, a null being without thickness or weight or warmth, whose disappearance would cost the universe absolutely nothing. But now she is a conscious being, a being who counts... A being to whom the stars have spoken.

 

Then she returns to her student room with a camping gas cooker, a carrots grater with carrots and some other utensils to continue this pleasure, both of tasting and preparation.

 

Since the episode of Ganymede, Brigitte is wondering about dreams. She always thought that they were merely the product of psychological mechanisms, that their content has no more value than letting steam off, according to this detestable pseudo-scientific theory. She must not have much steam to let off, since her dreams seem as flat as meaningless: baroque mixtures of everyday scenes, movies, and so on. A curious detail, however, had already attracted her attention for years: she always dream in colours, while all the people she met said that we always dream in black and white as in an old film. Again to think she is so radically different from the other torments Brigitte. What a mystery! In any case, the dream of the furrows of Ganymede, this one at least, provides an indisputable proof that the content of dreams is not always imaginary! It is a revelation for Brigitte, but where does this lead her?

 

Among her dreams, some still look particular, and they return more or less regularly. So, since she was eleven years old, she dreams of flying like a bird, with her arms, or with butterfly wings. These sunny and pretty dreams had become scarce, but since the university they came back in force, but in a different form: she takes off, but with difficulty, and the sky is now grey, foggy. Needless to try to understand, she thinks. Nevertheless, she decides to keep a notebook of her dreams, where she will add those which she thinks appear significant or representative. For this, she chose a beautiful workbook that she bought for her classes, but that she did not used. It alternates checked pages for writing, and drawing paper pages. She also bought coloured pencils. Since she hardly knows how to draw, she has to train... on her notebooks.

 

No sooner has she took this initiative than she dreams of herself giving herself lessons. She peels the Brussels sprouts and comments, in the playful tone of a living and passionate teacher:

«The important thing is to be orderly. Thoroughly arrange the utensils, always in the same place, logically so that we find them without getting irritated, by reflex, without losing the attention. Here the spouts to clean, in the dish the ones already made, and there the waste. When it is finished, a sponge, and hop, everything is removed and goes to the trash instantly. Cleanliness is important: without cleanliness there can be no poetry, and consciousness cannot be clean and pure. There are other important virtues for peeling vegetables: Good Mood, Enthusiasm. Without them we are not happy and if we are not happy it is useless to peel vegetables because then life no longer makes any sense».

 

An important issue is now bothering Brigitte. Is she really the only one? To her, this seems a priori far too improbable, but the fact is that she has not met anyone who seems to share her way of being, if only by a little. Kind of Earth-wise Fermi paradox: if people are so numerous, why don’t we never see them where we should?

It must be said that she only managed to meet very few people! Even in the university she had only purely academic relationship with her classmates, such as lending books or copying notes. Smiling relations, certainly, but without depth... Brigitte realizes with horror that she would probably not be noticed by another conscious person!

How to find companions in all this mass? At only three or four they would be so much stronger... and more self-confident. Brigitte then has an intuition, that she thinks is brilliant: the conscious beings must preferentially attend certain more interesting places.

But how do you know these places?

While she resumes her lessons, she thinks. Fortunately, she can sleep now in her new home; she even finds a little free time on Sunday.

In places where we have fun, where we party? For some Saturday evenings, she attends the famous campus parties, the eye watchful, discreetly observing the groups in the half-darkness, to see if there are any who really live. But paradoxically, she remains petrified, unable to move or to make contact. Mixed impressions, incomprehensible feelings assail her. On one hand, it sounds like what she seeks, but on the other hand it is completely contradictory, and she does not know how to interpret what she sees. She appreciates the colourful, joyful and catchy Caribbean music, but the grotesque spectacle of drunkards and violent guys just spoils everything... Around her, groups of friends and girlfriends form, discuss, dance. Smiles and laughter flourish, hands take hold and wander in the propitious darkness. Here, these ones are beautiful, warm, with their coloured clothes... She approaches, shuddering, without daring to manifest. With the music, she does not hear the conversation, but suddenly between two tunes she hears: «...the diploma, and after to me the good life: my father takes me in his company as a commercial agent, relax, with THE remuneration, more the dividends of my...» Poor Brigitte! This is clearly not what she is looking for.

When she is coming back to her room, so late, tired and smelling of tobacco, she is frustrated and sad, then angry at herself. The next day, tired, she must start with washing and change her smelly clothes, but she also feels dirty inside, from all these wrong emotions... Ah but how far is the state of grace from her stay with her grandmother sweetheart! Why did it left? Carbon monoxide is certainly not the only one responsible. But why is she left to hung up in this mess?

One night, leaving one of these parties, she is followed in the deserted and icy cold street. The guys are about to catch her up just as she comes in front of the door of her building, which she frantically locks with two key turns, her heart ready to burst. They will never see her again in the campus parties.

 

On Sunday, in the courtyard, below her room, the neighbours come out a bit, open the windows. Unfortunately they also put on the television, which Brigitte nicknamed long ago the «Thought Police» because with such a background of aggressive and overrated voices, specially studied to impose themselves to the attention, one is certain to never achieve a state of Poetry, or even simply to study. «Mr President-in-Chief... goal, yes!... new bombardments, five dead... super deodorant... car wrecked... zouzou the little children, it is me the clown...French values slightly up... The car of the year... you won the fifty francs... Tatatata!Pan!... goal, yes!... If you do not return my love» etc. etc.!

Suddenly, Brigitte startles: what a strange and beautiful sonority, which reverberation seems to fall from the stars... But it is only the introduction of a fashioned song: an effeminate voice starts to bleat, on a totally inexpressive mechanical beat.

For a moment, in spite of all their precautions, the petty pollsters, trite programmers, specialists in platitudes, experts in superficial human relationship, frozen musicians, drummers who are replaced by a box without anybody noticing, arrangers of the fifties and contracts signing impresarios let pass a vibrant and true beauty which goes right to the heart of Brigitte. Which instrument is it? Only the cathedral organ is celestial enough, but it is not. No material instrument can make this sound, slightly hissing like the wind of Liberty in the nebulae, ample and deep as the presence of a wonderful alien spacecraft. It must be synthesizer. Perhaps, as for now what Brigitte heard of it, synthesizer, on TV or on the radio, was rather mechanical and conventional, if not frankly ugly.

Brigitte, in her room, begins to dream of a music which expresses something. There is classical music, but it seems cold. As beautiful as it is, it is the past, not her new consciousness. She dreams of a music which awakens in her heart the desire to fly into interstellar spaces, which speaks to her of a marvellous and grandiose life, as the stars could do for her some months ago.

 

She imagines in her heart, sounds... She would diffuse them, for example with a cassette player, on the lawn in front of the university restaurant (when the weather allows, there always are people sitting there) and... a conscious being like her, who would happen to pass by, would also be moved by the cosmic sounds, and he would know that she is also conscious, like him. Perhaps even, such music could awaken those who are not? What a wonderful discovery it would be! What a precious gift for mankind!

But she does not know much, neither in music nor in musicians. She would have to learn. It is not human sciences that she had to choose, then. But to find a synthesizer, it takes money. So a job. And there, too, it is not with human sciences that... Nevertheless she learned interesting things in psychology and ethology. Still, Brigitte begins to experience doubt.

Courses, knowledge tests, obligations... Despite her reflections, Brigitte is well into her life as a student. She is both absorbed in her lessons and the eye on the lookout.

Come the month of March. Brigitte leaves, at one o'clock, the restaurant 2 (the university restaurant near her lessons, bearing the original name of number 2) when suddenly on the lawn... A guy with a cassette player... Brigitte suddenly found herself petrified with shyness: the awake music! Yes it is: Cosmic, vibrating sounds, a development which ignores the flat standards. It is simply Oxygen, by Jean Michel Jarre. Of course, you will say, He will not save mankind by himself alone, but he certainly contributed... With a wind of freedom in China a few years later.

The guy is a Métis. Brigitte has an hesitation: in her family, they are not racist, no no, of course not, but they still find that the Blacks have some flaws, that they are this of that, and more that we shall not repeat for obvious reasons. Brigitte always felt anti-racist, but the weight of the family conditioning makes her reluctant.

By luck, she already saw him, he often eats in the same time as her, sometimes with other métis or whites.

His skin is colour of coffee with milk, with brown hair, not frizzy, but curly in scattered wisps, a rare beard which never saw the razor, gentle features and a pleasant look. She always saw him wearing a kind of khaki trellis jacket, with plenty of pockets. Brigitte is blonde and slender, her hair is long and wavy, her nose is fine and pointed, her face is also fine, with somewhat prominent features, dressed conventionally in a medium-length dress and a gray-blue sweater. The world of students is contrasted!

For three days, every time she goes to take her place in the huge refectory, she looks for the khaki jacket. She finally finds it, towards the end of the room, which is a little more quiet. She goes as without thinking to sit next to him. Seen from close up, he looks sympathetic. And clean, a detail that Brigitte would have checked the same way for a White. No cleanliness, so no poetry, no consciousness.

How to start the conversation? Nerve paralyses her. Suddenly it comes out:

«Please, what it was, the music?»

The other looks at her with big frank eyes, astonished: it was three days ago! Now our saviour of humanity is spluttering to explain, and he ends up bursting with a high pitched good laugh of the so funny sunny accent from Guadeloupe!

Ten minutes later, they are talking like forever comrades. After a few generalities about music, Brigitte carefully tries the terrain.

«I found it more than beautiful: it makes us think of the Universe, space, other planets...

-Aaah, this is the planante music...

(Hey, planante, he has a vocabulary to talk about these things).

-How to say? We feel our mind more free, less limited...

-These musics are for the awakening of consciousness.»

(Oh the delicious needles of joy which pierce her heart at this moment! But she does not dare to express it yet, she has not yet forgotten the Saturday night parties)

At that moment another student, a White, sits down next to Roger (the name of the Guadeloupean), and then they went on a broken-down conversation about various problems but with a common denominator: the rich exploit the people, who do not realize it because they are «alienated», conditioned by the system.

Comes the problem of the selection in the studies:

«It's too bad, you see, Brigitte, because students like us, trying to have a good life, listening to music, having evenings together, we have a lot more difficulty studying than others who are mechanical, because the lessons contain too much stuff, we need such a work pace that we can no longer have nice relations between buddies. Even the bedrooms in the campus are so small that we cannot enter at several, and as meeting places there is nothing on the campus, apart from the parties where there is only sexual misery...»

The White is Mexican, his name is Fabriz. Tall, very slender, with an ample well-toned voice, almost without accent, and a moustache. He is wearing denim trousers and jacket. All he lacks is the great sombrero!

At first indifferent to Brigitte, he now leans to see her.

«This is Brigitte, a friend.

Suddenly he starts, with a big smile: Ah hello Brigitte. You are French?

- Yes, but it's not very important...

- You are right, countries are just to divide the workers. What are you doing as a student?

- The Human Sciences, psycho, all that.

- Psycho? But it's really bad! Just good to manipulate people!» She feels stuck: she did not envisioned things in this way. It is true that, by some sides...

- Well, I am trying to find a way to awaken them, to make them conscious. Psycho explains how the human mind works...

- ...in the bucks system

- ...to give them the desire to be happier and to leave the system, precisely.

- It's not with the psycho that you will get there, it's by living a super cool life at full speed, you will give them a freaking envy when they see you!

- Come on, it's time! We finish eating! We close!» This harsh exclamation means to the late lingering students that the u restaurant is about to close. (These students have the sense of abbreviations: u for university...)

In the evening, Brigitte dreams in her bed, the light off: «They surely must be! I need to see them more often to be sure. Fabriz seems to know a lot of things, and Roger is surely very kind». She expected to be very happy with such an encounter, but curiously she actually does not experience much joy. An embarrassing detail: gross words, which Fabriz uses systematically, three to four in a sentence, for everything and for nothing. Unknown in her family, these words. But isn’t it too an artificial convention, to declare that a word is rude and not another? Why would body words be associated with dirt? Why not declare gross some negative words, like «money» «revolver» «war» «stock exchange» etc.?

 

During the following month, as soon as she enters the u restaurant, Brigitte first checks the occupiers, to find Roger, then Fabriz, then Paco, then some Frenchs all the same: Antoine, Michèle, Ferdinand... Gang of buddies meeting whenever their schedules allow. Conversations are often focused on the same theme:

«Yeah, people are ⚠⚠⚠, they let themselves be exploited. Students all are preparing to become bosses or go to unemployment.

- It can no longer last like that, we really need a consciousness taking of everyone, otherwise with pollution and all, everything will blow up.

- That's what they'd need, the people, that a nuclear plant blows up, so that at least they'd understand!

- No, it would not be nice, we'd all get in our ⚠⚠⚠ anyway, whether we're conscious or not.»

One evening, she is so much into discussing with Roger that the closing of the u restaurant finds them still together, in full repair of the world. Where to go? It is raining!

«You just have to come to my room, to the campus lodges.» Roger has the innocence of people who simply take life without ulterior motives.

So they soon are in the little room. Roger has a cassette player and a shelf with music, more another with reviews. He dimmed the light, and it smells of coffee although he does not drink any. On the wall a wonderful poster of Guadeloupe, a real one with palm trees and beach and crystal clear water, plus small photos of tourist brochures: Caribbean, Guadeloupe, Martinique, African smiles, beaches, sensual mountains, birds, fruits. Roger also arranged a brown burlap in a kind of canopy above the bed, and as a bedspread. He even has small drums like tablas, which he plays a little, to start the evening.

Brigitte, after silently contemplating the photos, under the smiling glance of Roger, returns to the music.

«You can watch, all my music is there. We can listen to them, but not too late because of the neighbours who are asleep. You know the walls here are made of paper.

- Are they all planante musics?

- Oh not all, but not bad either: look, here are the Jean Michel Jarre, and Vangelis. Too bad it is exploited by the media. There's planant rock, like Yes. But what I'm listening to right now is the reggae. (Singing:) Rastaman vibrations, positiv! It is not the planant but we take off as well! How great!

- But then if it is not...

- Yeah you know the Rastas, they have their organic food cooperatives, and all that. There are plenty of different movements which make people becoming conscious. It is theirs, better than us who eat junk in the u restaurant. Here I pass you the headphones, so that you can listen, I'm going to swot a bit.»

The Reggae, despite its colourful warmth, does not enchant Brigitte, but if it is Roger's music... Yes seems very attractive but often indefinitely sad. The others are for Brigitte the revelation of a new musical world, that she was looking for: a music which awakens the consciousness, and evokes the beauty of a better world, or the fantastic interstellar space, music which resonates, standing up music which crushes the petty and the superficial. Until a late hour she delights of it; and Roger questions her all he time with his eyes, shaking his head, smiling as if to say «it's beautiful»: he certainly did not studied more than ten minutes in total.

 

More and more often, Brigitte visits Roger's room, or the one of Michèle, to listen to superb musics. She spends less time at her home work, and her level begins to lower (Fabriz and his selection) but it does not matter: it is stronger than her, she is convinced to have finally met conscious people. Better, they are not only a small group, but representatives of a whole alternative society with its culture, its music and its ideas. Even, according to Calix, we must include the native Indians of the Amazon, very conscious if we believe one of his friends who lived here, but the drama is that they are ousted and slaughtered with machetes or vaccines by settlers who destroy the forest and leave only an incultivable bush. According to Fabriz, we must also include extreme left movements and guerrilleros, all conscious of the need for a radical change of society, which they will certainly impose by force if they are supported. Roger adds of course his rastas and claims that the natives of the Antilles are very free and friendly, as long as they are not polluted by the tourists. Ferdinand also includes the ones who «transcended the Judeo-Christian morality» on sexual taboos, and put homosexuals at the forefront of the struggle for Liiiberation. Paco, it is the lovers of hashish and other small psychedelic mushrooms.

Brigitte accepts all this in one stroke, at a whole, all to her contentment. Society, as she already had several occasions to observe, is so used to lying, distorting, inculcating false or tampered ideas, that she sees no inconvenience in abandoning its ready-made opinions for the ones of her conscious friends. She trusts them all, as long as they speak of consciousness. They are awake, they do not miss an opportunity to say it and thus to differentiate themselves from whose who are not.

This still makes a warm atmosphere, and Brigitte starts to visit Ferdinand or Michèle on Sundays, when the spring and May brings the celebration of an innocent student custom: the strike.

For Brigitte and her friends, it is an opportunity to express their ideas in the «AG» (general assembly), in amphitheatres and in other Jeux de paume where they do the difficult learning of democracy and of communication in a group. This is very democratic indeed, since it is enough to join the line at the foot of the tribune, and wait one's turn to speak there, no matter if it is completely off topic in relation to the previous intervention. One can also hail the speaker, the time one manages to impose oneself. In the absence of consensus, it is needed to ensure that the balance of power are not leading alone the debates, so that swells often arise, and an uninformed (or non-objective) observer would see nothing but a huge mess.

The stakes are quickly identified for old timers like Ferdinand: the unique and lamentable student union (do not name it) wants to take over the movement, and impose its corporatist and shamelessly materialistic demands. Strange to see a young guy, somewhat hairy, apparently casually dressed in denim and turtleneck, talking about socio-professional statutes, wage settlements and other grey stuff, as if he expected nothing else from life, serious as a bank manager. Brigitte has a feeling of disgust for this being, which represents exactly the opposite of what she seeks. She sees in his actions the deliberate and organized sabotage of consciousness, by a worthy Big Brother offspring, similar to this character in the novel called O'Brien, who pretends to be on the side of freedom in order to better detect whose who do not accept the system, and then betray them.

Brigitte and her friends replied to the apprentice civil servant:

«The truth is that we are tired of swoting like ⚠⚠⚠, while life could be much nicer! We do not care a ⚠⚠⚠ about the recognition of the diploma! It is the recognition of the Happiness we want!»

This tirade is perhaps the only one to receive applauses, but paradoxically it more contributes to end up the movement than to strengthen it! «If the Truth is at this price...» Notes someone.

For Brigitte this period is a happy time, a high time, devoted to many discussions and also to party evenings with her friends, where, when they do not play music themselves, they much more often listen reggae, salsa and rock than the planante music. When, many years later, she recalls these moments, all this will seem very childish to her, but for the moment she feels like being part of an intellectual elite who is preparing to change the world. She becomes more self-confident, and feels more comfortable talking in groups, and even in public, her who always was shy and reserved.

Roger Allows Brigitte to read his magazines, of all sorts, which would be hard to find today. Brigitte discovers a lot. She learns who are these ecologists she heard about in the TV (always by malicious allusions, while carefully avoiding to say what they are in reality, like everything they speak on the TV). She discovers what is pollution, the evil plot of nuclear power, which purpose is to enslave humanity for ten million years (the time we need to monitor the nuclear wastes) and other attacks on the planet (which ecologists and scientists knew since ten years, but the media would echo them only ten years later), the dramatic ozone problem, the worrying greenhouse effect, the destruction of large forests, the crime against mankind of some genetic manipulation, the systematic poisoning and devitalization of food.

Roger also speaks to her about the communities, despite he never saw any. For him, it is the dream: a portion of the future, a group of friends living together in nature, in essential activities, the product of which is distributed to all. He plans to found one when he will return to Guadeloupe, where the mentality is, he says, more propitious. Brigitte already heard of communities in her family environment, but it always was to denigrate them, or to consider them as a failure of adaptation to society. As Roger presents the thing, Brigitte not yet dared to dream of it! This is already the life of other planets! But Roger could not quote a single community still alive, because «difficulties» made them fail, except some which «cheated» because they had «a spiritual foundation.»

«A spiritual foundation? You mean religious?

- Not only, in facts they believe in a sense of transcendent life, in the survival of the soul. But this diverts from the real problems.

- Which problems?

- Oooh I do not know me, communication problems, couples problems, money problems...

- But, among conscious people, there cannot be difficulties on such subjects!»

But Roger is evasive; These difficulties are like a mysterious fatality: «We are still too conditioned, maybe later.» Too bad, because this description of communities is very similar to the life she had imagined among conscious people. She must also think about it, because her studies will necessarily have an end, and she cannot envision becoming a civil servant... Will she propose all her friends to start a community together? Or at least a kind of self-help activity which would spare them from having to sell almost their entire lifetime? To dedicate it to useful and rewarding activities? But what she heard in her former milieu about communities lingers in her memory: dirt, disputes, parasitism... The very word has been charged with negative connotations. Did these gross disorders really existed? If so, they could definitively not be the feat of conscious people. So, what really took place in these communities?

 

A few days later, Brigitte is with the team, in Ferdinand's lodge. The latter looks like the angel of apocalypse: every time they see him, he starts the description of one or the other of the inevitable catastrophes which threaten humanity from its errors. Dark discussions which discourage Brigitte! Instead, she would like to know how to bring mankind along a path of progress, instead of discussing its destruction. This evening it is after genetic engineering: «You will see that with their tortures and their vivisection on animals, one of these days will bring out a new, incurable disease which will spread everywhere with the vaccines and all their filthy ⚠⚠⚠...»

Brigitte hints at Ferdinand that she is more motivated by the defence of nature than by the defence of homosexuals. What did she not say there? Ferdinand is reached in his manhood, of sort. But for now he seems not to have heard. He is a sly, this Ferdinand. Brigitte comes out of his home with a feeling of being dirty, and in fact she smells the tobacco, and dark ideas are filling her head. The state of grace of her grandma's house is very far away. Too far now, she no longer realizes it.

With Roger, Brigitte continues another of the discussions they started with Ferdinand: the pollution and the devitalization of food, by carcinogenic or toxic pesticides, by farming methods which burn the earth, destroying its subtle balance of bacteria and trace elements, by food preservation methods which destroy the vitamins, by the useless and often harmful dyes...

We never get out of Roger's place with dark ideas! Proof than skin colour has nothing to do with the one of the mind. Roger nicely explains to Brigitte what is «organic food»: products grown without fertilizers or hazardous pesticides, but respecting the vitality and biological life of the soil, which gives, with a quite acceptable yield, healthy foods, balanced, rich with their vitamins and valuable trace elements essential to health. Wholegrain foods, not denatured by refining or heating or treatments destroying vitamins. A more balanced diet without excess fat, based on wholegrains and legumes, vegetables, fresh and dried fruits.

Brigitte discovers a marvellous life, healthy, sunny, natural, full of health and vitality. This diet allows you to live longer, healthier, more conscious.

Roger let Brigitte taste wholegrain bread. For her, it is a revelation, as for all those who have done this first experience with their mind open to natural life. This taste, this delicious aroma arrives as the promise of a happier, more sunny life. More!

« But then the u restaurant, we are poisoning ourselves, then? This is really the worst quality!

- Well, yes, but what can we do? I have no money, just what my parents send me for my studies, and we are not rich! But you are quite right, I have African friends who used to have a healthy, natural, almost meatless food, and when they come to the college they are sick, and even Zacharie had to go back home without completing his license. He who wanted to do research on tropical diseases, he was made by those of Europe!

- Look at that, Brigitte, what I am doing: I grow basil and tarragon on the window sill. Taste it! From time to time on Sundays I do some cooking here, and I season it with this! Even that... Hihihi! The maid thought it was marijuana! Hohoho!

- Ooooh it's nice! It gives a great desire to do the same! Where do we find seeds?

- What, marijuana seeds? Ooooo Ooo OOOOh!

- But no, big rastapignouf! Basil!» And then they went to laugh for a moment!

 

If the atmosphere is pleasant between Brigitte and Roger, it is not so much for everybody. On the ground floor of the building where Brigitte is living, a small round woman acts as a concierge on occasion. Their relations were always kind, so that when she sees Brigitte passing with her flowerpots and a sack of earth, the conversation spontaneously starts: universal brotherhood of the gardeners... However, the television braying through the open door is getting on Brigitte's nerves, so that when the little woman starts to advise her not to bring «strange people» in her home, Brigitte bluntly sends her back to her business. She miss to tell her that she is conscious, and that conscious people have no lessons to receive from those who are not. Fortunately, a sort of «inexplicable» hesitation prevents her from saying such an enormity... but the small concierge politely closes the door in front of her.

Comes the end of the year. Fortunately for Brigitte's studies, the team members almost all return home, so that she can start catching up. As Fabriz was quite right: Brigitte's results considerably lowered; she passes in the second year, but with just some points above the minimum. It is still very good for Brigitte, if we consider that, unlike the vast majority of students, she never used any drug, be it pharmaceutical products, coffee or coca. Such an attitude is a handicap which, in this hyper-competitive environment, causes many students to fail, but also saves the finest qualities of their intelligence. But then what must we think of those who succeed with such methods, who will later be entrusted in responsibility positions in society?

One evening in Ferdinand's home, she is reading in one of the rooms, while Roger and Ferdinand are discussing in another. She would think that conscious people would lend full attention to their hearing, and they would hear all that their ear perceives. But considering the content of the conversation, obviously Ferdinand is persuaded that Brigitte is out of reach, although she is just behind the half-open door.

Ferdinand is still criticizing «the people» and «the idiots», without forgetting of course the bosses and the government. After him, mankind is inevitably sinking into darkness, the intellectual level is falling, ozone is beginning to run away, weather is getting out of control (and we now know that he was unfortunately right on the two last points...) But Ferdinand can spray Roger with his tar and soot, the latter remains superbly decontracted and visibly amused. «Hear, Roger, people are stuck. The bourgeois let us not talk about them. But even the students, they are blocked.

- (Singing :) Positiv Vibrations la laa...

- Yeah! You hippy bum, do you not believe me?

- Oooh yes yes yes! (The Guadeloupean accent hums and laughs)

- Look. Look, for example... (In the tone of a great revelation) look... Brigitte. (Stunned, she perks an ear and loses nothing)

- Who? Brigitte, blocked? (Feigning a huge astonishment :) Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

- Yes! Brigitte.

- Aaah that for example, I would never have believed. (How to know if the Guadeloupe accent is serious or is refraining from giggling?)

- She is a blue stockings.

- (Theatrical) A what?

- Ah, you do not know what is a blue stockings? In traditional student language it is a girl who does not want to ⚠⚠⚠. Besides, you noticed she always wears blue socks.

- It's rather crazy as an expression. For a better world it would be better to forget this kind of language, rather than to continue to cart it along. (The Guadeloupe accent is still equal, but no doubt, it is no longer laughing, this time)

- But you have to be realistic! It exists! You must be informed! Anyway I tell you she is.

- How do you want me to know? I do not try all the women I meet. I only think of Rita who is waiting for me in Guadeloupe. (With an amazed look, on the Beatles tune:) Lovely Rita meter maid tut tulut!

- But I am speaking seriously! Besides, I tell you that she must be full of repressed fantasies. I'm sure she'd like to...»

OUARK! No, I could not repeat that, friends readers. You will not mind me.

Roger whistled in astonishment. Brigitte's ears too.

«Where are you seeking such stuff? You really have odd fantasies squirting out, old chap.

- It is the liberation!

- You are confusing. We are not talking about the same liberation. I tell you that between men and women is to love each other.

- But how corny you are!»

Roger takes a dithyrambic tone and starts to openly provoke Ferdinand, who eagerly runs into the trap: «I only know Rita, she is waiting for me, I am burning to see her again, and when we shall be together, we shall make small mestizos of all the colours.

- How, to make children! But it is the height of selfishness!

- As for Brigitte, I love her, but as a friend.

- It's abstract!

- It's beautiful!

- Beauty is a bourgeois concept!»

Roger at last stops this painful discussion with his priceless accent, always amiable and joyous:

« You're a bit warped, guy. See ya, I'm pulling myself. Don't freak out too much, still.»

When, a minute later, Ferdinand, scowling, returns to the room where Brigitte is, he looks quite unaware she could have heard anything. He spins for a moment, silently, checking how to harpoon her. Then, in the tone of the great catastrophes:

«I just had a conversation with Roger.

- ...

- It's serious, you have to know.

- ... Mmh?

- This guy is not at all in our camp.

- Who? Roger? I find he is very nice! Chivalrous I would say!

- Chivalrous! Pff! Chivalrous! he is very negative and full of bourgeois concepts.

- !

- I could not make him listen to reason. Besides, he was very aggressive.»

This time, Brigitte, incapable of the detached humour of Roger, explodes, furious. Maybe for the first time in her life! She goes through everything: he should be ashamed, for a conscious person, to say such things, that she is tired of all his disgusting stories, his lies, and so on. The Ferdinand remains as if petrified under the avalanche.

(It should be noted that, at the time, the defence of homosexuality was still a novelty, and Brigitte had just begun the work of clearing her mind of all the prejudices on this subject. But the filthy culture too often associated with homosexuality does not pass at all. It even goes directly against the most basic ideals. But how such shades could be grasped by such an obtuse being as Ferdinand?)

When, later, Brigitte finds herself alone in her bedroom, she feels still ten times more dirty and shameful. To let herself into such an anger! Everything now seems absurd, empty, obscure. She wished to maintain herself in equal happiness, in joy, in poetry, in contemplation. Here she is in the mud, the illusory, the grotesque. Her clothes reek of Ferdinand's tobacco. How she begins to abhor tobacco and all who smoke it! This state of lucid happiness, which she wished to maintain in herself, and which at first seemed easy, now seems to be fleeing her systematically, multiplying obstacles. Why?

Suddenly her gaze falls on her pots, where a bit of basil points its nose out of the ground. This is, for Brigitte, a balm. This bit of vegetal life, humble, simple and straight, never will betray her.

As we need to live anyway, we find again a few days later Brigitte in the small university room of Fabriz, with Roger, Paco and some others. Sounds guitars and tablas! The evening is warming! The Cucaracha rolls and smokes! Fabriz perfectly imitates the enthusiastic rhythm of a steam train.

The Cucaracha, Fabriz explains, was a locomotive which the Mexican revolutionaries seized. Their taking of the Bastille. But they were Mexican... and the song said (in Spanish, fortunately) that by lack of coal, they loaded its firebox with marijuana. Aie Aïïïe Aïïille! Que Polloutionne, comments Paco.

Between two songs, they discuss. Fabriz just finished his studies. Paco, him, just finished studying... It is not the same thing! But it is still a feast for both of them. Roger, normally condemned to spend the summer vacation in town, from lack of money for the plane, is so happy: Rita's family offers him the trip! Tomorrow morning, departure for the Sun, the crystal clear water and the big dark eyes of Rita! Only Paco stays there. Brigitte, too, just received a letter from her grandma, who invites her again!

«Paco, since you are the only one left, could you water my plants?

- Oh yes, of course!

- Well, I'll leave you a key to my room, then, but of course you will not let anyone in. Besides, there's Roger's stuff too, for the holidays.

- Aaaah strongly agree»

Suddenly, Michele, who saw the evening news, rushes in and announces that a politician from South America has just been murdered. Brigitte has a sad heart: this man was working for Peace. Oh, he was certainly not a saint, but his work could have resulted in a reconciliation between his country and his neighbours. Fallen the man, disappeared the Peace, trampled the life, the children's laughter, the confident look of the mothers. Brigitte feels a sheet of sadness and pessimism falling over her... Then Fabriz's voice rises:

«Well don for this ⚠⚠⚠. He was playing the American's game, with disarming the guerrillas.»

Brigitte is taken aback. She uses to consider Fabriz as a sort of wise man, very knowledgeable in politics, keen on the rights of peoples and on social justice. She dares not to question him directly. Roger takes him, without Guadeloupe accent this time, but instead a piercing eye:

«Yes, of course, he was playing the American's game.

- I tell you.

- But he wanted Peace.

- And that the people shut it up."

- And let the people live without tears.

- Without tears! And the right of peoples then!

- The right of peoples... What right of peoples? The right to suffer for ideologies, or, as the Chilean Angel and Isabel Para sang, the day after the 1973 fascist coup, when many of their friends were also murdered: El derecho de vivir en Paz, the right to live in Peace !.

- The bourgeois order!

- Peace, old chap. The Peace. This is the main. If afterwards there still are problems of exploitation, shambles, injustices, we still can see for a remedy, them. Your guerillas all served as pretexts for the juntas to repress: they play the game of the dictatorships. Without them there would not be so many.

- What! Violence alone can...»

This time Brigitte explodes, as with Ferdinand: «But How horrible all these stories of wars and terrorists! Do you think, Fabriz, that on other planets they spend their time fighting?

- The other planets? But what...

- Someone conscious should realize that it is enough to stop all these horrors! Okay, the problems will not disappear suddenly, like that, but at least we'll be on the way! I'm sure that on other planets...

- Consciousness! The other planets! But what are you talking about? I know only one consciousness: the proletarian consciousness!

- (Roger:) Brigitte!

- The proletariat must unite to defend its material interests! Until the bourgeoisie is defeated! If there were civilizations on other planets, it is because they could have organized their economic production according to the interests of the proletariat, or else they did not survive!»

Roger calls again, with a little voice: «Brigitte! Let's get out of there!» She's so stunned that Roger has to take her by the sleeve.

Some time later later, in a dark alley of the sad and deserted campus, The warm Guadeloupe accent speaks softly to Brigitte trembling and dejected.

«I'm sorry, Brigitte. I did not pay enough attention.

- ...

- You see, consciousness, it is not so easy.

- ...

- There are illusions.

- I saw. What a jerk this guy!

- It's no use saying that. He is too sure of himself, of his ideas, that is all. Ferdinand, he's not like that, but he's in the dirty vibrations, he's attracted by the disgusting stuff. Do you know, the other night...

- I know, I heard everything.

- I thought so. You must have thought it odd.

- Disappointed, especially. There are not many people who are truly conscious. Ferdinand and Fabriz are like the people of society, basically, and even worse.

- Yeah... But it does not make any sense to be angry with them. One day they will feel the evil in them. They will understand. I think, you agree or you don't, that all humans can understand someday... And that one day the whole Humanity will be conscious. But it will take time and a lot of work.

- And sacrifices.

- Undoubtedly, unfortunately. Happiness is not for us. For me, you see, I've been making a cross on it for a long time. How valuable are my few years of life, if by my work to help humanity, I can bring happiness to five billion people by only a year?You realize: five billion years of happiness! It's worth any personal sacrifice.

- Anyway, we have nothing to lose. How to be happy in this society? You at least you have Rita, and your family respects your ideas. Me I am nearby alone.

- You probably will not always be alone.

- Of course, but how to know?

- I had a dream... A great guy waiting for you... What is funny is that he was tiny, big as the hand. He was waiting that you are totally conscious.

- How, I'm not yet completely?

- I don't know, maybe it goes further, but I do not know. You know as much as I do now. I am in this for a while longer, and I sometimes feel like I'm going round in circles...

- There would be...

- Maybe there are other things to understand to be really fully conscious. But...»

A silence. As they walked, they arrived at the building 4 where Roger was living.

«Brigitte...

- Yes?

- I'm sorry but if I do not want to miss my plane... I just have time to pack my luggage. This is Amedee who is to take me with his car to the airport. The plane is very early.

- Roger, after these stories, you're the only one I still trust. I hope we meet again next year...

- Me too. normally we should. Don't be sad! Goodbye...

- Goodbye...»