Djamil Diboune : L'Araignee et L'Abeille, un Changement de Paradigme

Quand on fait la connaissance d'un nouveau artiste, c'est renconfortant de pouvoir noter apres un certain temps des characteristiques qui rendent l'artiste a la fois unique et intriguant. On se trouve sur un nouveau chemin, mais il y a des indices qu'on reconnait sur ce voyage de decouverte qu'est l'art. Djamil Diboune est un artiste qu'on reconnait toujours avec beaucoup de joie et espoir. Le romanticisme, les touches de serigraphie, d'impressionisme, d'une connaissance de l'effet de clair-obscur, comme styles et techniques; la presence symbolique des montagnes, rivieres, et arbres, du desert, comme themes, donnent une richesse a l'art photographique de Djamil Diboune qui est exquise. Il y a aussi sa connaissance des fleurs, des animaux, avec des prises precises , saturees de beaute et interet. Les prises du flora et faune sont pacifiques, de leur nature et presence en repos, avec l'exception des oiseaux en vol.
Un des albums du 15 novembre se concentre sur 26 prises de fleurs delicates, joyeuses, et la derniere photo dans la serie montre une araignee noire et brilliante au dessin rouge sur le dos. L'araignee est bien nourrie, et vient d'attrapper une abeille couverte en pollen, qui s'avait posee sur une marguerite, sans s'avoir apercu de l'araignee qui a du etre bien cachee et tres vite, comme est la nature des araignees, pour attrapper le diner succulent que sera pour elle cette abeille. La photo est un changement de paradigme pour l'artiste. Ceci est un tableau actif, une bataille a mort que va perdre l'abeille gentille et qui aura comme vainqueur indisputablement l'araignee agressive. La photo est tres belle, un bijou de couleurs et textures :  les petales blanches de la marguerite avec son coeur jaune dore un beau contraste avec les lignes noires et rouges de l'araignee, et les ailes transparentes de l'abeille paralisee un contraste touchant montrant sa liberte tuee si rapidement et sans pitie. C'est une photo qui m'enthusiasme, malgre le fait que j'aime beaucoup les abeilles et je fait tout dans mon jardin pour leur fournir une abondance de fleurs, et de chasser les araignees vertes mortelles qui se cachent pour attrapper les abeilles qui nous visitent. La photo est un tableau artistique ce qui adoucit la realite tres factuelle de la lutte entre vie et mort dans la nature, entre force et vulnerabilite, entre proie et predateur. J'ai toujours beaucoup aimee l'art de Leonardo da Vinci, sa discipline et talent feroces quant a la peinture surtout, et ses dessins de ses inventions tellement avancees pour son temps. Il y a aussi biensur Leonardo da Vinci et ses dessins precis sur l'anatomie humaine, ce qui exigeait des maneuvres bien repugnants mais necessaires pour sa connaissance du corps humain qui a reste le guide essentielle dans ce domaine pour plus de 500 ans. Les dessins sont superbes, et on oublie pour la plupart le contenu et leur raison d'etre intrigue par l'art sublime de l'artiste. La photo de l'araignee dangereuse et l'abeille vulnerable m'ont fait penser non seulement a la realite souvent cruelle des lois de la nature, mais plus encore sur la beaute qu'a su infuser dans le tableau Djamil Diboune. La photo comme apotheose de la serie est une surprise bienvenue. C'est un tableau concret, et sublime a la fois, une des virtues artistiques dont est si capable le photographe de la nature berbere  versatile et profond. 

Le Mystere du Temps : L'Element Mystique dans les Deserts de Djamil Diboune

C'est toujours avec plaisir que je note le retour du sud du photographe de la nature d'Aokas, Djamil Diboune. L'energie infatigable de l'artiste berbere m'est bien connu, et parmi les beaux albums qu'il partage depuis son retour le 15 novembre, il y a une serie de vingt- deux photos du desert qui sont uniques pour leur perspective philosophique. Le desert est un enigme, qui seduit par son silence et immensite, par sa patience a travers les siecles et l'histoire. Tout change, paix, guerre, misere, bonheur, vie, mort... le desert l'absorbe tout, un sphinx immutable. Les prises du desert de Djamil Diboune cette fois montrent une sable doree, presque hallucinante dans sa beaute brillante, et avec son camera l'artiste a reussi de ralentir le moment de ses prises, leur donnant une qualite a la fois mystique et surreelle, une contradiction merveilleuse, un tour de force technique et unique. La troisieme, quatrieme, douzieme, treizieme, et suivantes prises, ont une qualite de profonde ambiguite, une tension tres subtile, entre une serenite mystique et une melancholie maitrise qui augmentent la beaute exquise des photos. Djamil Diboune est un artiste discret qui ne fait pas un theatre de son ego, et dans ses albums du desert immense de son pays, il nous permet une entree dans son ame privee, d'une facon supremement bien cachee, pas par deception, mais par esprit d'un artiste qui suit le chemin de sa vie sans bruit ou drame. La melodie mystique du desert lui va bien, c'est toujours un point de repos, une oasis pour ses forces creatives. Le soupcon de malaise dans ses prises du desert dorees et silencieuses me rappellent certaines peintures de Salvador Dali, surtout la peinture de 1931, " La Persistance de La Memoire ", qui montre un desert avec des horloges fondues, un chef d'oeuvre dans le monde de l'art surrealiste. C'est une peinture qui trouble, et dans les photos du desert de cette semaine, Djamil Diboune montre une finesse artistique qui egale l'art que fait le desert avec ses montagnes de sables dorees et taciturnes. Comme chacque grand artiste, le photographe de la nature nous donne pas une copie de la nature, il l'interprete avec les pinceaux de son ame, son intelligence et experiences. Ses prises de desert sont temoins ainsi que participants dans cette odyssee qu'est l'expression artistique de son etre. Son art encapsule pour le futur ses perspectives spirituelles sur la nature immense et profonde de l'Algerie, un pays ou resonnent souvent les artistes et la nature en chansons synchronisees sur le mystere et les contradictions et injustices de la vie et de l'histoire. Djamil Diboune reussit magnifiquement avec cet album qui celebre l'element mystique du desert, ce desert qui souvent est le temoin du courage persistant face aux recusations et espoirs de son pays de naissance. 

Le Creux

La pluie tombe, et le ciel pleure des larmes gris.
Je cherche vos photos de lumiere et couleurs chaud au soleil,
je sens l'absence de votre esprit et energie, et je sens le creux
qui touche mon ame dans cette foret feroce qu'est l'oubli.

Cette touche qu'est la beaute de votre art, qui me suit a travers deux oceans,
qui donne une chaleur et joie a mon histoire, un geste beau de la dame du sort,
c'est vos montagnes berberes qui me calment la melancholie et le chagrin
de toute une vie cherchant le pourquoi et comment de mon chemin.

C'est vos photos de vos rivieres, vos deserts et couchers de soleil,
vos fleurs et animaux, qui me guerissent les doutes et peines,
la passion de votre sang berbere qui est de l'eau fraiche pour le soif
qu'a depuis toujours ma muse, qui a en vos visions une forte racine.

Meme les montagnes les plus grands recoivent leurs creux, avec le temps qui passe
les rochers les plus durs recoivent aussi leur marque, comme la vie les donne a nos exploits.

Le vide qui est mon ombre certains jours et nuits, votre art l'adoucit, lui donne une melodie
comme un nouveau matin berbere, une aube doree et belle, venant de la lumiere qui vit
comme un feu clair dans vos yeux, ces deux etoiles ebenes qui illuminent depuis les reves de mes poemes.


 Trudi Ralston.
Pour Djamil Diboune. 

The Inconvenience

When I recently talked to my aunt and cousin in Belgium, the subject of the kitchen remodel came up. Amid the humorous remarks of how long these remodels can drag on, came up the inconvenience of not having a kitchen sink or running water or a counter top for about 5 weeks. It is true that juggling washing the dishes in the bathroom sink takes some creative approaches and flexibility, and an awareness of certain needs and the coordination of them around kitchen schedules. I had a good laugh about it, and it made me realize how very minor the temporary inconvenience was, with the emphasis on temporary. Countless millions of people all over the world live in conditions that make our temporary inconvenience seem a long weekend at the Ritz, as they are deprived of the most basic human needs such as shelter, food, clean water, safety, security, due to endless wars, either internal or international, due to corruption and poverty. Reading the news these days is a surefire way to get discouraged, if not downright depressed, at the horrific suffering millions deal with on a daily basis, in such nightmare places as Syria, Myanmar, Yemen, just to name the most obvious ones at the moment. The juggling of one sink at the moment for bathing and dishes also made me think of how quickly that can become a strain on patience and dignity. Brushing your teeth in the same sink you are washing dishes in is not particularly appealing. I thought of all the refugee camps for Syrian war refugees right now, of what it would feel like to sit shivering in a tent in winter weather, hoping you would have enough food to feed your baby or that the medicine needed for your sick father or mother would arrive in time. I thought what it would feel like to feel the contempt of the local population around the refugee camp that would look down on you simply for being destitute, what it would feel like to see your husband aimless, without the dignity of a job, to see your children go without school for months first, then years, to realize they may not have a future, unless they survive as adults and the tide turns. I wondered what it would feel like to stand in line for meager rations, to be reduced to a number next to your name on a list for a tent where rain comes in and it is always too hot in summer and freezing in winter, what it would feel like not to have a home anymore, because it was bombed out, to have members of your family imprisoned, tortured, killed, missing because of the inhumane business of war. It would feel miserable, hopeless. It made me think of all the homeless in our state, our city, of children sleeping in the streets at night, of how invisible misery makes you, of how it strips you of your dignity, your humanity and how people stare at you either in contempt, or they ignore you, trying everything not to look at you. We are all just 24 hours away from being just like those wretched humanity, let us go 24 hours without a proper shower, a change of clean clothes, shoes, a good meal, and we too would be looked upon with contempt by far too many. It is a good idea when you can to support a charity that helps those who are less fortunate, locally, and abroad, and also to show some acceptance and warmth when we see a person less fortunate than ourselves. No one chooses to be a victim of war, a victim of abuse, a victim of cyclical poverty, no matter how a hardened mind may want to spin it. I will make a possible exception for addiction, that can be a choice that leads to disastrous misfortune spinning out of control, but addiction can also be a desperate attempt to avoid desperate circumstances. The thing about temporary inconvenience is that you know it will end, and in my case, I will have a beautiful, new, modern kitchen. Imagine the courage it would take, each and every day, to believe that your desperately dire circumstances as a war refugee will actually have an end, that the nightmare will someday be over, even though you have no proof that having hope bears any reality to the circumstances. There are countless millions among us on this earth that have incredible spirit, strength, determination, faith, energy, love and bravery in the most dire circumstances. Inconvenience is a soft word they do not even know or understand, as their whole life is nothing but profound, continued hardship with no visible relief in sight, not in five weeks, not in five months, not in five years. Perhaps in a generation, or longer, some of the destitute of the earth get a well publicized break and we all feel the better for it, as our impatience with inconvenience, such as being reminded of desperate souls other than for a brief moment, is quite spectacular. 

The Request

In March this year my husband and I decided it was time to repaint the entire inside of the house, the walls, the ceilings, and to rewallpaper the bathroom, update the furniture in the living room and bedrooms, and have a contractor come in to remodel the kitchen from the floor up. The entire project is due to be finished by the end of this month. In the process, a lot of cabinets have been gone through, and a lifetime of picture albums were brought back to memory and presence. I noticed that the pictures struck a chord, especially the individual pictures of dear family members and friends, many lost in the mists of time. I found a small picture of my father I had taken of him in our backyard, one day when he had just gotten home from work, when I was 13, with my little Polaroid camera he had bought me when I was 12. He is smiling, holding a cigarette, looking confident and handsome in his nice herringbone coat and Kashmir scarf in the bright sky of a late autumn day. All those moves for me, from Belgium to Texas, first Dallas, then Fort Worth, then Austin, then California, then Washington State, and that small picture, among hundreds of pictures, survived. I gently put it with a framed picture of my son taken at our favorite seaside resort in Oregon nine years ago.
I found a picture of my youngest sister, at age 15, a picture taken in our backyard in Roeselare, Belgium, by a professional photographer. The picture shows her sweet and fragile and is all the more haunting, as she would commit suicide in her mid thirties, in the deep south of the US, in Georgia, where she was living with my parents at the time. In the picture she is wearing an almost gauze fine summer dress in colours of pale white and lavender, with flouncy short sleeves, making her look like a girl out of a 19th century picture book. It was heartbreaking to see her so vulnerable all these years later, as if her frame was already too frail to handle life even back then.
There were pictures of my brother, humorously flexing his bodybuilder muscles, as he was very fit as a college student. It was comforting to see these pictures, because a photograph is something you can hold, touch, when the person in the picture is someone dear to our memories and heart. There were precious pictures of our son as a baby and toddler, of my husband when we were first married, all so tender and precious to be seen again.
A friend dear to my heart recently let me know he would be sending some books my way. When we were friends in graduate school I was too shy to take a picture of him before he returned home, far away on the other side of the planet. I asked him if he could indulge me and include a small photograph of himself alongside the books. He pointed out with due pragmatism that pictures of himself at times appeared on his Website, and I agreed that was undeniably the case, but put forth my request saying that a physical photograph closes the distance in the mind and heart. As he is an important person in my creative endeavours and evolution, I want a picture I can frame and put on my desk or wall, next to the picture of my favorite aunt in Belgium, my longtime French girlfriend in Grenoble, my friend Shelia in Virginia, who had a profound impact on me spiritually, to make them present now, underlining these friendships have all lasted well over 30 years. I was glad my graduate school friend agreed to my sentimental request. A picture on a cell phone is just not quite the same. Some things are just better the old fashioned way, where you can touch the photograph, hold it, and make it part of your surroundings, so you are reminded how this person matters, truly and deeply, then, today, and tomorrow still, in the journey of our story and our life.   

Le Fil Fort : L'Echo Berbere au Battement du Coeur

L'article en anglais que j'ai fini sur mon blog " Lioness in Exile " de hier, " Time Served " qui parle du processus de me recuperer du chagrin de la perte de ma famille, et comment l'ecriture m'a redonne mon ame et courage, m'a fait voir, comme la lumiere claire de la lune la nuit, que la presence berbere dans mes poemes et articles de prose, est le fil fort, qui donne la joie et l'espoir au battement creatif de mon coeur. " Les Poemes pour Driss " et " La Goutte d'Eau " sont ecrits pour un ami berbere du Maroc, a qui j'avais fait la connaissance pendant mes etudes de maitrise au Texas. Son amitie fidele m'a permis d'exprimer mes efforts intellectuels en francais dans un pays anglophone qui souvent me reste etrange et loin de mes sensibilites culturelles. Le respect que Driss m'a montre quant a mes ideales poetiques dans les deux volumes inspires par lui, etait un soutien qui a donne fruit a une joie et confiance intelectuelle qui s'exprime avec beaucoup de passion et conviction dans les 3 series d' articles et le livre " L' Art a Bout de Souffle " publies sur le photographe de la nature berbere de Bejaia, Aokas, en Algerie : Djamil Diboune. Il y a une joie dans mon ame quand je me sens dans la presence de l'esprit berbere, comme je decouvre encore avec la voix du musicien jeune Kabyle de Tizi Ouzou, Bilal Mohri, a qui j'ai dedique plusieurs articles depuis septembre. Dans la presence creative berbere, il y a un espoir, une dignite, qui me fait sentir chez moi. La solitude et l'alieneation qui souvent accompagnent  mes ecrits en anglais sont absentes dans mes ecrits sur Djamil Diboune et Bilal Mohri, avec les volumes de poemes pour Driss un pont qui m'a permis de laisser derriere moi l'angoisse de ce mal de pays intellectuel qui souvent tourmente mes ecrits en anglais. L'echo berbere est une musique riche et heureuse dans mes exploits creatifs. C'est comme si j'ai traversee un terrain desole et hostile, pour me trouver avec la surprise d'une oasis verte et renconfortante, ou mon ame de poete s'est trouvee une residence paisible, digne, joyeuse.
Le destin parait avoir joue un coup de main dans ce cadeau qu'est pour moi la presence berbere dans ma vie d'ecrivain, et j'en suis tres reconnaissante. J'espere de tout coeur que ce bonheur qui m'est donne je suis capable de repayer avec tout mon amour dans mon ame de poete dans mes ecrits sur les talents creatifs berberes que j'ai le plaisir de decouvrir et partager. Comme balance du travail intellectuel qu'est ecrire, je fais des broderies en fils brillants metalliques, d'animaux et fleurs, et je pense depuis souvent a la presence du fil fort dans mes creations litteraires qu'est l'echo berbere dans ma vie.

Pour mes amis berberes :
Pour Dr. Driss Ouaouicha .
Pour Djamil Diboune.
Pour Chamy Esp.
Pour mes amis a Aokas Bejaia Tourisme.
Pour Bilal Mohri. 

Time Served

The weather this past week has been glorious, warm, clear, with a bright blue sky turning to a blazing light the purple, red, yellow, orange colours of the autumn leaves on the deciduous trees, whose fall splendour is underlined by the rich textures of the evergreen trees bringing to mind the magnificence of the nature photography of the Berber artist Djamil Diboune.  Each day my son and I or my husband and I on the weekends, walk our fiesty Flemish Bouvier - Labrador. The uplifting weather brought to the foreground in a bittersweet way, the solitude of the walk in our neighbourhood that is empty for the most part during the day, with everyone either at work or school. I am grateful for the company of my son and husband on those walks. My family is small with my husband and son, but without them I would be completely alone, as far as family goes. On those days that I am all alone, it occurs to me that parents do not realize what they are destroying when they tear their children apart in a dysfunctional marriage. My father was too weak to stand up to my mother, and my mother played her children against each other like pins in a bowling alley, and our father was destroyed in the process, as was my youngest sister, who ended up committing suicide, by hanging herself with a lasso in the garage of my parents' house in Georgia. By the time it was all over, my other sister had succombed to a fast spreading cancer, my father succombed to the horrors of dementia, alone, frightened after my mother turned him out of his home, as she decided she did not want to take care of him, he who had treated her like a queen always, now that he was ill and vulnerable, and my only brother retreated into silence from my life. I was without a family. Through the mercy of my father's youngest sister, and a good therapist, a woman my husband had recommended, I put the pieces of my life back together, slowly, hesitantly at first, over the course of the next ten years.
On my walk the other day, it came to me that losing your family the way I did and after the dust of the trauma starts settling, is on a social and emotional level like realizing your prison term is up, and that you are getting released, so they hand you your meager belongings you had on you when you were taken to prison, and they open the big, ugly prison gate, and send you on your way. And there you are, with a soul and heart as full of lonely holes as was it a colander, and if you are lucky, there is someone on the other side of that prsion gate to take you home. I was lucky like that, I had a husband and a son, and a few trusted friends, some close by , some far away, to help me through the dark forest I found myself in. It still took ten years. To be on the other side of that chasm is a relief, like walking out of a desert, realizing you made it alive.
I consider myself fortunate that therapy revived my passion for writing and that that writing has brought me new friends, who have opened up a new world for my heart and soul. In March  2015, I published a memoir by the same title as my blog I started in 2012. In December of  2015, I published a volume of poems in French , dedicated to a longtime friend from graduate school " Les Poemes pour Driss ", followed by a second volume for him, " La Goutte d' Eau " in November 2016. " Solo Flight " and " Through the Center " are two volumes of poems in English published also on Amazon the end of 2015 and 2016. In March of this year I published a series of reflections and poems, " The Long Way Home ", and in June, July and August I put forth 3 sets of articles on the nature photography of Djamil Diboune : Entre le Sublime et le Concret, Esprit et Conscience, and Ame Brulee, folowed by a book on his photographic art, " L'Art a Bout de Souffle " in October, while in August also, I  published a series of poems and prose, " As Night Falls ", all on Amazon as e- books, with " The Long Way Home " and " L' Art a Bout de Souffle " also available as paperbacks.  My aunt Lieve encouraged me to renew contacts with three of my cousins in Belgium, which has allowed me a walk back from the past when I still had an extended family, into the promise and healing of the now, a wonderful feeling.
You cannot change the past, but you can come to terms with it. That does not mean you won't have grey days of the soul, where you will feel like a recently released prisoner with their soul in a tattered paper bag. The feeling comes and goes, but just as with any process of healing sorrow, the good days far outnumber the bad ones with time and patience; time does have a way to settle the score to the advantage of the battered soul, as long as you keep sure to notice the silver lining even on the darkest days. Light has a way of winning out in the end, and no night lasts forever. I served my time in sorrow, and even if the path back was hard and dark, the flashbacks to that darkness are rare now. I am grateful for that every day. The best part is that I find myself capable of laughing out loud again, with complete surrender to the joy of the moment, especially when I was incapable of that simple human joy for a long time. I have my joy and hope back, my purpose and dreams. Time served it seems came for me with a chance of parole. Onward and forward, up the road of life that gave me a second chance.