My favourite blog recently talked about the Evil Corn Giant and corn-fed beef. It got me thinking about the Meatrix, which I hadn’t watched in a while. So I decided to post the link again, because the Meatrix is all around us. Of course, it’s much funnier if you are an unconditional fan of the first (and only) movie of the original trilogy.

Darkness rains on troubled days, its drops slowly wetting each hour like as many poisoned pearls sliding down wet sticky hair, headed for the corners of a helpless mouth closed shut to swallow the unavoidable scream that lets air hiss in, along with the poison and a certitude that doubt remains for the time being and long after.

But then always the light bursts in, like Galadriel’s, and its unflinching rays begin a trembling dance, dissolving the madness and reaching for the deepest recesses, cleaning the shell from its hardened iron crust and eventually, when time has done its art, the only thing that remains, naked and exposed, is the essence of one, and two. Ready to fly again. And fall. Because everything is energy, and energy is waves. Rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée.

I recently stumbled upon a very interesting article reevaluating the importance of fat in our diet. It’s long and at times quite technical, but well worth reading. Like any other source of information, it should be cross-referenced and not necessarily taken for granted as is. But it makes a solid argument in favour - yes, you read well - in favour of cholesterol, and of eating butter.

Of course, as you might already know, I’m a little biased here. I love butter. And I am thrilled to read that some actually consider it to be a healthy cornerstone (ok, I might be exaggerating a bit) of many foreign diets, in cultures that have obviously avoided for the longest time, and despite a high consumption of animal fats and butter, the pitfalls of North American diet-related issues. This article and others around it are denouncing an agriculture industry-lead campaign against fat which in the end only reflects said industry’s need to get rid of it’s by-products (for instance pushing soy products as cure-alls when in fact it just has too much left-over from the soy-oil industry), a need that is met by inducing a trend of anti-fat diets that promote as « healthy » the very foods and habits that are weakening us as a modern specie.

The article says:

As a final example, let us consider the French. Anyone who has eaten his way across France has observed that the French diet is just loaded with saturated fats in the form of butter, eggs, cheese, cream, liver, meats and rich patés. Yet the French have a lower rate of coronary heart disease than many other western countries. In the United States, 315 of every 100,000 middle-aged men die of heart attacks each year; in France the rate is 145 per 100,000. In the Gascony region, where goose and duck liver form a staple of the diet, this rate is a remarkably low 80 per 100,000.25 This phenomenon has recently gained international attention as the French Paradox. (The French do suffer from many degenerative diseases, however. They eat large amounts of sugar and white flour and in recent years have succumbed to the timesaving temptations of processed foods.)

The French Paradox. I like that. I’ll reuse it. After all, this very blog received its name as a tribute to the apparent paradox of seeming out of place and time while in fact, both are just right. Wandering invariably yields wondering. But I digress. I find the comparison between North American and other regional dietary habits fascinating because it revolves about culture and ancestral practices opposed to media trends.

Margarine is such a North American media and cultural trend. It has banned butter off our tables and pretends to be a blessing if bought in low’s (low-fat, low-cholesterol, low-sodium, low-taste, low-price.) Here’s the article’s description of the hydrogenation process - and my Advisor should beam with satisfaction:

Hydrogenation: This is the process that turns polyunsaturates, normally liquid at room temperature, into fats that are solid at room temperature—margarine and shortening. To produce them, manufacturers begin with the cheapest oils—soy, corn, cottonseed or canola, already rancid from the extraction process—and mix them with tiny metal particles—usually nickel oxide. The oil with its nickel catalyst is then subjected to hydrogen gas in a high-pressure, high-temperature reactor. Next, soap-like emulsifiers and starch are squeezed into the mixture to give it a better consistency; the oil is yet again subjected to high temperatures when it is steam-cleaned. This removes its unpleasant odor. Margarine’s natural color, an unappetizing grey, is removed by bleach. Dyes and strong flavors must then be added to make it resemble butter. Finally, the mixture is compressed and packaged in blocks or tubs and sold as a health food.

The bottom line, sadly, as I have assumed for a long time and been explained more precisely recently by my Advisor, is that 90% of modern food is plain and simply... bad. We process everything and kill the good part of what we eat. That’s an unavoidable consequence of mass-production. So where do we stand? I don’t think that organic farming is productive and sustainable if a majority of the population was to wake up and smell the roses, so to speak, and decide to change their eating habits and go back to more natural whole foods. Maybe this is part of nature’s selection, survival of the fittest. Maybe with so many of us sharing such a small planet, only the ones who understand what they must eat can survive.

Maybe next time I’m out shopping at Wholefoods, Capers or some other expensive local healthy store, I should look around and think, not « Hello, all of you snobbish rich pricks who make me feel like I am wrong to buy my organics eggs for 10 times the price of regular ones » but rather « Hi, so, you too intend to survive past mankind’s present dietary madness and live old and happy? »

If we need to re-learn how to feed ourselves from scratch, how on Earth will we do it from the heart of our mega-cities? How on Earth will we be able to sustain a healthier diet of the mind and body and avoid society-induced cultural, political, physiological and ideological wide-spread cancer? And how on Earth do we get it to play along? The Earth.

Perhaps what we need is a butter-fly effect. So tomorrow morning, when shamelessly spreading bread on my butter, I will hope to be indirectly responsible for a shift in our worldwide dietary awareness, ten or twenty years from now. If nothing else, it will boost my ego. Then I’ll go run a trail behind Grouse Mountain. But that’s another story.

[PS Yes, that was the Liberty Bell. I’m not very good in US history. I heard about it for the first time in National Treasure. Duh.]

When seeking peace inside and longing to settle the chaos outside, a West-Ender needs look no further than the Seawall. (I sound like a bloody advertisement, but it’s true.) Flowers greet me at the bottom of the tower and follow me down a quarter of a block to Alexandra Park where the wooden gazebo thrones over a parterre of green grass and a neat row of more flowers lined up against Beach Avenue, which I cross and arrive on the Seawall, 3 minutes and 23 seconds after leaving home.

A few things become instantly apparent, as I shed my urban burden and leave my worries behind, jumping in stride with passers by, rollerbladers, runners, bikers and other nondescript visitors. They have all come to do the same. They all seem to appreciate the beauty around them. They are not nearly as aggressive to my system as a normal crowd would be. I seem to become instantly more tolerant.

The wind typically abates at night and late afternoons often feature calming seas and gentle sunsets. My senses tune into the environment and I listen to the sounds of joyful living by the shore. Kids are laughing and chasing each other on the beach, while a few hardcore volleyball players are still smashing at their ball in the fleeting light. Small birds are chirping behind me in the trees and larger seabirds laugh by the water and in mid-air. The muffled sounds of a cheaply amplified microphone wander in waves from across the bottom of Denman where street performers usually set camp. I hear laughter and people clapping and cheering. The guy must have burnt himself voluntarily with the flaming rods I see flying over gathered heads.

Many have settled on the beach with towels or even chairs, picnics and cameras. They are waiting for sunset. Watching sunset is an institution in a land of westward shorelines and friendly public spaces. I know I will join them, at some point, but I haven’t really decided where and when yet. I’ll stroll until a spot or a scene catch my fancy, or until maybe the sky does one of its tricks and intimates me to stop and shoot immediately.

For now, I walk slowly, looking around, taking in the many scents, flowers, various plants, ocean, hotdogs, pot. Minuscule waves are licking at the shore, ever so softly cleaning it up, willingly manipulated by a rising tide. A lonely raccoon crosses the path before me, on its way to Raccoon City further towards Lost Lagoon. A couple of dogs do see it and show immense interest, but they are half its size and their leashes are held firmly by worried hands.

Some people informally salute each other on the Seawall, nodding in a friendly way or smiling as you pass by and therefore labeling themselves as locals. It’s a beautiful custom that reminds me of another highly civilized and respectful scene where saying hi to everybody is common practice, the mountains. My stress level is falling by the minute. The Seawall is creeping back under my skin, a welcome invasion that should be daily and weather-independent.

Eventually, I settle for my own share of picture folly, staying well into darkness, watching the city lights come alive behind me and the ocean go to sleep in front, as the night approaches from both sides and closes in on the brighter line that still links me to a now disappeared sun rushing forward around the globe to go greet an angel, far behind me, in a new dawn on a tiny terrace. It could all be confusing, but the peace around me so blissfully seeps in that in the end, it all makes sense. We are just so very lucky.

219 years ago, heads were about to roll in France. They had before and would roll again. Often. Such is the hideous face of our history.

On the 14th of July, 1789, the prison and armory of Paris, la Bastille, under assault by a mob composed of citizens of Paris and eventually joined by some mutinous National Guards, finally fell. Monarchy was about to collapse. It was the beginning of the French Revolution. 

A little over a month later, a document would be ratified that was called Déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du citoyen (Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen). Strangely enough, or maybe not, the US Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. These were troubled, freedom-seeking times. Bloody times.

Fighting for those rights, against them or not caring at all is just a matter of perspective. As the First Republic was being born, France went through a Reign of Terror (la Terreur) and guillotines snapped happily at a multitude of heads. Parisians were busy killing each other for quite a while; with or sans-culottes, nobody was safe, nor spared.

Eventually, the Republic would again fail as Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed himself Emperor, no less. Then monarchy did a come back, saluted and plummeted again. Then a Second Empire was built. Yawn. It gets so boring...

But tonight we celebrate the 14th of July and there will be fireworks everywhere. That’s nice. Before the fireworks, however, a huge military parade will catalyze and paralyze Paris. That’s stupid. Let’s, as I have said it in the National anthem of the lobotomized, put war to rest and stop bragging about the size of our... canons.

A bloody hymn will be played across the land, over and over again, as people stand up and veteran eyes shine and politician minds compute and mouths gap, as wide open as the brains that run them, fragile, empty.

From the heart of Paris to the suburbs of Marseilles, from the grey skies of Normandy to the sunny beaches of Côte d’Azur, from little alpine villages to rural Ardèche, everyone French, on this famous day, feels something. Feels different. If only we could get everybody to feel the same. And if only that meant looking forward rather than back. Then we would truly have a national holiday worth celebrating.

The bloodshed and barbarism that have lead us where we stand is nothing to be proud of. It might have been unavoidable but that was then, this is now. Can we, s’il vous plaît, once and for all, put it all behind us and allow ourselves to grow out of the blood bath, rather than look at the stains with the loving eye of a mother blinded by her instincts?

Le jour de gloire est arrivé, mon oeil. Et vive la France.

This was found here

Or a list of the incredibly important areas school failed to address, leaving it up to me to find out about them, often painfully, always late.

1. Goals and focus. Sure we were given homework. Sometimes a helluva lot of it. But homework doesn’t really address itself. It overburdens a student into spending entire evenings or even nights fighting for some essay or a score but it never includes instructions. Students are left on their own figuring out how to properly manage their time, set priorities and achieve their goals, and most never do. They treat homework and school classes as annoyances, unavoidable pains that have to be endured until eventually freedom comes. Never are they told that freedom could be there this very day while doing homework, and that finishing school won’t yield any relief in life unless they have learned how to manage said life. A 1952 Yale study revealed that only 3% of the graduating class members had written goals. Twenty years later, another survey of the class indicated that the net worth of the 3% of the class that had written goals now exceeded the net worth of the other 97% of the class! That 3% also had statistically fewer divorces, and an overall better quality of life. Well, it’s just numbers. But those numbers presented by a great teacher with charisma and vision would sure as hell have made me think!
2. A healthy mind in a sane body. Was it once a week? We would go to the field and play team sports. I was also enrolled into a very intensive sports-study gymnastics program, which I hated because it was not about my own improvement or training; it was about, because and for competition. What I didn’t know, and it was never explained, is that there is no dichotomy of the mind-body machine. There are, among the average population, no brains on one side and muscles on the other, no one group mocking the other, unable to grasp or achieve the level of performance of their opposite. What there is, is a bunch of innocents who have been lead to believe they are better brains or better muscles, and that this simply has specialized them a little more and is quite acceptable. Bullshit! The mind cannot work without the body and vice versa. They both need to be in top shape. Keeping up that shape should be of the utmost importance throughout our life. And always, always, they should work and play together. Why was I never told that eating well would make me a better student? Why wasn’t it explained that more exercise would help me concentrate on homework? And why oh why didn’t they tell me that the mind has to be trained just as hard as the body? They implied it by forcing me to go to school. They just never said it!
3. Right and wrong. I was given plenty of wrongs, and a few rights. Wrong to be distracted in class. Wrong to be lazy. Wrong to chew gum. Wrong to be different. Wrong to fail an exam. Wrong to speak during class. Right to understand that all of these are wrong. Right to play the game. Right to be a good boy. But these are jokes. They have nothing to do with reality. The reality of our world is that all humans need a set of values. These values are acquired, they are not inherited. Human values define the world by defining us and so we should be educated towards values just as we are with biology and calculus. Values can be shaped into tools. Kids needs to learn why lying is wrong, not just told not to. They must be shown how to give. How to care. How to commit. How to be fair. How to be strong. Honest. Forgiving. Loving. Hardworking. Patient. How not to take themselves too seriously. Where else than school can one learn all this? After school, it’s too late. Habits have been taken, the mind has become lazy and sometimes already wandered to the dark side. But no, I was learning about sine and cosine. How very helpful that has proven to be.
4. Play the saxophone. My whole life would have been different. But, hey, they taught me to play the flute.
5. Love, fear and other foundations of life. As a kid in school, I was never told to look inside of me and face my demons. If anything, I was lectured that such demons didn’t exist. Be brave, they said. They meant for me to be quiet. Granted, adults who have not conquered their own fears cannot possibly teach about them. So we end up in a giant vicious circle. Still, as a child, I think I would have loved to learn more about my emotions. I would have enjoyed, with the curious and innocent morbidity of children, being lead to look into my own suffering, to venture towards the heart of my fears, and to explore the very taboo world of my young linkings and dislikes. I think that if it was explained properly, I could have understood much earlier that fear can be faced, and tamed. That it doesn’t have to govern our lives. And that love will fare so much better, when the fear is gone. School could have taught me about myself; instead, it chose to teach me about itself - an outdated, mostly useless and self-deprecating institution that manages only to waste a few precious years of very precious lives, wasting time on theory when so much practice is needed. Mr. Keating had it right; he got fired for it. Who will pick up the flame?

Still to come: « 5 great things I managed to learn any way. »

... Or a list of the worse absurdities years of traditional school have painfully engraved into my young mind, polluting it and wasting precious space and resources that could have been so much better used.

1. History. My ancestors were barbarians. From immemorial times, they have killed, plundered, coveted, destroyed and trashed. They have waged wars, endlessly, showing that greed and cruelty are two of mankind’s main assets. So to make sure all this History is retained and passed on, our education system rolls its students in it thoroughly, day after day, year after year, insuring they are properly branded and labeling them psychologically as the descendants of the beasts. We are told to be proud of the blood that stains our path. Never once is a moral judgment made on past actions. It’s all studied in the name of science, as a curiosity, as an ongoing experiment and a collection of dates and heroes - because no matter what they did to mankind, they are all famous. Napoleon, Hitler, Alexander the Great, Columbus, Socrates, Da Vinci, Attila, Custer, what’s the difference? Good, bad, they’re all historical figures, they make a speaker’s eye shine. Not once did a history teacher take a minute to pause the lesson and show us history repeating itself in the form of a present war, some unnecessary greedy killing for oil or money or diamonds, live, somewhere on the planet. Not once were we told that the butchers we are should become farmers. It’s not part of a history class. With only peaceful dates to remember, history teachers would be like a crowd without any sensationalistic newspapers to read. Bored.
2. Conformism. My first point leads to the second. History was taught, like every other topic, in carefully arranged classrooms, row after row of perfectly aligned tables and chairs. Every student had the same desk, the same books, in some cases the same uniform,
   « It is a miracle that curiosity survives the formal education. »
   Albert Einstein
   and uniform behaviour was expected. At the beginning of the year, the entire class would be sent out to buy the same exact supplies, no deviation allowed - type of pencils, color of binders, ruler size, everything was orchestrated to the smallest details, in the name of conformity. Then throughout the year, great efforts were made by the teachers to keep that conformity up. Vincent, can’t you do this like everybody else? Shame! As students we were being slowly trained to become perfect sheep, socially functioning mindless zombies with no desire for individuality, seeking only to belong and melt into the mass, finding approval and recognition from their peers by looking alike. Our society functions on mass control. Everything depends on how easy a population is to manipulate; politics, advertising, entertainment, fashion, retail, pharmacology, they all thrive on their ability to influence an audience via the media, convincing minds and hearts that they must do like everybody else in order to be happy and fulfilled; and all that started on my first day in school.
3. « Can do better ». One of the most common comment that appeared on the monthly student report sent to my parents was « Vincent is lazy. He has potential but could do better. » Given that I was usually in the top quarter of the class, I got used to it. It wasn’t bad. I was good, and probably could have been better. But my parents were satisfied with it because they focused on the word « potential » rather than « lazy ». God bless them. The school, however, never once bothered to teach me how to actually become better, how to use that potential. It never pushed me to go the extra mile, to leave the pack behind and do something greater, on my own. It had to stick with point 2. The teacher’s role was very simple: rate the students’ performance, write it down on a report and pass it on to the parents. Hands wiped, job over. The parents would mysteriously make it happen, they would use their parenthood to metamorphose this potential into a reality. But most parents see their kids less often than the school does, and they don’t have the opportunity to seriously educate their children socially - their education is family-oriented, and so it should be. It’s then left mostly to the schools to fit children into society. A society only progresses because of the remarkable efforts of very few. The majority of people are acting like a dead weight on evolution. It’s the few who pull us forward. Yet people in school never bothered to show me motivating examples of that leading pack of a few, to tell me I could make it there and be an architect of my own times. They merely said I could do better.
4. Play the flute. I wanted to play the bloody saxophone. What else can I say?
5. « School sucks ». We spend 10 to 20 years of our lives in some kind of school. It plays a major role into who we become as adults, and ultimately as shapers of our world. Yet there is overwhelming social acceptance that school years are among the worse we have or will go through. It is in school that we are taught the hard way to accept our faith silently and lower our heads, and do « it » because « it » has to be done. We then go into life and settle for more of the same; we accept less than perfect family situations, take a job we don’t like and go through our existence thinking there must be something better, without ever really seeking it. It doesn’t have to be that way. School must evolve into the best time of our life. It must become a real cradle, a place where creativity is unleashed and potential nurtured and exploited, a time during which kids have fun discovering who they are and what they will accomplish. Finding out about their differences and how those will serve the greater good by bringing in diversity. Learning about past mistakes and being shown how to correct them. Not allowed to settle for less than the best. School must change if we are to.

Coming next: « 5 things I wish school would have taught me instead » and « 5 great things I still managed to learn, in spite of all my laziness »

Time has flown by, and flowed by, too, like a fast river in search of its epiphany. But mostly, it was about flying. We were young. We had nothing but the greatest dreams and our illusions were only a sign of innocence, not of age. But we were so young. Freshly out of high school for most of us, and suddenly thrown into a competitive world of adults and regulations and realities that smash you with the weight of a mountain. But our dreams rode on fast machines and their aluminum wings were real, and so would ours be. We were going to be pilots.

The year was 1984. We had been sweating hard on a college degree for over 30 months. We could not have cared less. The coveted title, printed on paper, too, but smaller and unframed, was so close now we could almost touch it. It would read: « Commercial Pilot License ». 700 hopeful kids had interviewed for a seat in Chicoutimi’s Centre Québécois de Formation Aéronautique; 40 had been accepted, 30 would graduate. We knew we were lucky. We thought we were the best. And we probably were.

The first year had been strictly academics and we had gone through it with our eyes turned skywards, envying the older class, learning their every moves, mimicking their behavior, preparing ourselves to take over the role and the privileges. We had studied hard, general subjects at first, then progressively more aeronautics and less chatter. Aerodynamics, meteorology, aviation regulations, radio-communications, navigation, even wilderness survival - like few students ever will, we devoured our manuals, worshiped our instructors and almost looked forward to any homework.

The following year, for most of us, had been a fantasy come true. We had finally become airborne, studied some more, practiced, practiced and practiced, and eventually, after an emotional first solo and losing our shirt’s collar, we’d gotten our wings. We’d come off the ground like bats out of hell. We were in. We were up. We could now talk about the rest of mankind as « them ». The crawlers. The Earthlings. Those who never left the ground out of their own will and control. The masses. We pitied them. We joked about them. One always jokes when nervous. And nervous we were. As tall as we stood, on the wing of our small yellow Beech Musketeers and Sundowners, posing for posterity, we instinctively knew that from our single-engine piston aircraft to jetliners and turbofans lay as much space as between us and the moon. Uncharted space, unconquered and threatening. But still, we had a go at it, and every single one of us intended to be on the winners list.

So when the third year came upon us, we addressed it like the veterans we ought to be. A crude initiation of the new first-year recruits was organized, just like it had been for us, and a point was made to identify them to the mud we poured on them. Raw matter, they were, full of potential but yet unshaped and unworthy of more respect. We had suffered to get to our stance and so shall they. There were no shortcuts.

But soon our attention was grabbed by upcoming challenges: the commercial license, an IFR rating and our respective specializations, bush flying, rotating wings or multi-engine. Our days and nights were filled with magic. We flew most of the time, classroom sessions having become rare and frowned upon. A typical day would begin back at home or at the college residence, bright and early, checking the weather and preparing flight plans and navigation. We’d hop on the bus to get to the airport, pre-flight our respective airplanes - I was by then flying on a twin-engine Beech Baron B-55 with Paul Savoie who would rate my performance by watching the colour of my knuckles on the yoke - and file the flight plan for an IFR trip to Montreal, surfing on a sea of clouds, or a solo single-engine cross-country to the St Lawrence River and back.

At night, we flew some more. Night flying was, and will remain, one of the most extraordinary things I have done in my life. It was a moody, silent, quiet and yet intense part of our routine. The temperature would drop, darkness would set in, normal lights would come on here and there, and our own set of lights would kick in. These were green, and blue, and yellow and red. They were runway and taxiway lights, the sweetest and most beautiful Christmas tree ever offered to man. We’d do our walk-around once again but in the dark, checking the plane from tail to nose, from wingtip to wingtip, from cockpit to fuselage, armed with a red colored flashlight to avoid destroying our night vision, which the most fanatic would have protected for hours by wearing sunglasses since sunset.

The plane ready, fueled up and checked in with dispatch, we’d line up for take-off, solo most of the time, and go circle around the airport in the traffic pattern, piling up take-offs and landings, one after an another - landing light on, landing light off, with power, without, full flaps, no flaps, short landing, soft field, again and again. Everything contributed to the magic: the instruments’ red glow, the runway lights shimmering below us, the flashing strobe of nearby aircraft, the laconic transmissions of the tower, the purring of our engine, the world that lay asleep at our feet, a perfect conditional freedom while inside of our rigid Control Zone regulations.

Sometimes, we’d go for a nighttime cross-country, unnerving because of all the dark emptiness that would stretch below us for most of the flight, reducing the potential landing zones in case of an engine failure to isolated oasis of light around agglomerations - and one does not land very well on top of houses. At night, the green, sacred emergency landing fields, much better than dark brown ones that would have been recently plowed and hence be much rougher and uneven, were invisible and might as well not have existed. Flying then was more ambiguous. It required faith. And that, we had lots of.

Alone in the sky, staring at constellations and following our route with a finger on the map, we were as close to god as one can ever be. But god, for us, was named St Exupéry, Mermoz or Yeager. We believed. We belonged. We would be welcomed up there.

The third year, despite its rising challenges and mounting stress, was also a time for recreation and fun. While I was learning the entire Quebec Terminal Area chart by heart, memorizing every single low level airway, route, heading, minimum altitude, radio frequency and navigation aid in a complex labyrinth of permissions and restrictions meant to keep planes on course and away from each other and the ground, we were also given a chance to relax and enjoy life. We organized an airborne rally, entered in teams and flown in successive steps as diverse as Precise Navigation, Timing, Speed, and... Aerial Bombing. Yes, we had to hit a target on the runway with a flour bag dropped in flight off the side window, after a low approach and a fly-by. Three of us were necessary for the task: a pilot, a navigator and a bomber. How we ever got that one approved, I’ll never understand.

Then there was this strange instructor training program in which we were given the role of flight instructors and sent up there with rookies to evaluate them after their first solo. It was a lot of fun and I took it extremely seriously, going as far as bringing along an empty can of Coke that I would ostensibly place on the dashboard before take off to see if they would remember to check for loose objects, and having been caught, would then place it on the cabin floor to make sure they’d figure the can could actually roll and block the rudder pedals. I was very anal about it. It’s only much later that I realized the rookies had most probably been recruited for a similar program in which they were to evaluate us as potential instructors.

But we had fun. The uniform seemed to fit perfectly. We were eating aviation regulations for breakfast, using exclusive aviation humour to flirt and engage the opposite sex and shaping our entire lives around the absolute certitude that our future was written among the clouds. We were action geeks. Our skill was psychomotor coordination. Our craft was the art of flying. Our playground, the sky, limitless and open. Our ego was enormous. Rightfully so.

Graduation came. June ‘84. For years before my time, Air Canada had awarded a First Officer seat to the best graduate of the Airline Specialty program, mine, one third of the 30 remaining braves. That year, aviation having dropped to the deepest trough of one of its regular lows, Air Canada had no such seat available. I won the prize. Sorry, they said, times are tough. They offered me instead a free ticket anywhere I wanted to go in North America. I almost threw up. I was broke, having spent all of my student loan - and grant - on completing the program. I opted for San Francisco and Calgary because they were as far as I could go on the stupid ticket. I spent 2 days in each, sleeping at the YMCA.

Then I came back and, still believing, launched into years of un-training, regression and failure. I was young, and aviation was old. Too old for its own good. Ex-military pilots were still saturating the market. I was also immature. I lacked a dad’s example and drive, even if foot would’ve had to meet ass. I was broke. I drifted, mostly away.

The closest I ever got to an actual flying job was with a small fire-patrol gig. Their fleet was a single Cessna 182. A week before deciding between me and another guy for the poorly paid Captain’s seat, they crashed the plane. That was it.

I wonder how many of us have made it. That year, maybe 2 or 3 got lucky, or mature enough, or supported enough to jump in. A few followed within years. I don’t know if they kept flying. I’ve lost touch. Maybe I actually severed it. It stung. It still does. The thought of flying always will sting. It’s in my blood forever, flowing thick, full of passion, without reason nor control. That’s why and how I came to paragliding: as a cure, a revenge, a compromise that isn’t one, another way to fly.

But all this has brought me where I stand today, and generates nothing but gratefulness. Life has turned out to be quite amazing, in many different ways, and although I will always look at the sky and want to be there, for « When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return » I also know that flying is only a thing. It’s practical and it’s material, and it’s technical, and selfish.

I have, however, found an even greater level of flight. It involves someone else. My wings have become invisible, but they are stronger. The sky is within us, its limitless space only measurable in terms of caring and giving. The storms are present, still, and so are the flight-planning and the mathematics. But now, finally, no tower is needed to request clearances and vectors. When I take off, it’s because I have a copilot that is my captain, and me, hers; and we can now fly wherever we want. It’s only a matter of time. And planning. And never, ever, forgetting to check fuel drains for the presence of water. But then again, water... Oh well, that’s another story.

A nice table by a large, freshly washed window has me staring distractedly at the street. Nine and a half small flowers are towering in a tiny vase in one corner of my little temporary empire, while on the other side the menu and wine list have been left untouched. I know what I wish for in the former and will not be needing the latter.

Repetitive music is hissing out of bad ceiling speakers, trying hard to be funky jazz but merely reaching the disgraceful mark of elevator background noise. People are trickling in, small groups on business lunches, regular singles with a newspaper, an elegant couple here and there, speaking softly. I look at the empty seat at my own table and can’t help but letting out a deep sigh. Soon.

The restaurant occupies the entire length of this older building, one long room flanked on one side by the bar and kitchen counter and lined with 15 or 20 tables of various sizes. At the back, squeezed between an elevated back-alley and more windows, a narrow strip of empty space has been pompously labeled as patio and a few more tables fitted in. Large fans are spinning lazily far above me and I can’t imagine they would do much good in the summer heat. But this is May and while « Je fais ce qu’il me plaît », the outside door still had to be closed to protect a pale skinned lady seated behind me.

Dark red moldings interrupt the otherwise boringly beige walls. The floor is old wood, and so are the tables and the bar, behind and above which a decent collection of bottles reflects the place’s open claim to French-hood. I can make out Pernod, Ricard, Greygoose, Campari and a long range of French wines.

My bouillabaisse arrives. Having sampled it here years ago, I remember not to expect rouille, which to me really defeats the purpose. But it was otherwise good, then, and is again today. Unconventional, but good. Served in a plate that is obviously too shallow to pretend being a soup bowl but too deep for anything else. I don’t like having to fight for my soup. But the saffron makes up for the fight, added to the dish itself when I thought I should go in the rouille.

Passers-by shamelessly help themselves mentally into my plate from the street, eyes hungry and imagination running wild. I can’t blame them. One always wonders. Of course, I’ve eaten at least two better bouillabaisses. One was a recent - and rather anachronistic - feast, cooked in Brooklyn, out of time, out of place, but never out of context since a Frenchie was meeting a French cook at heart.

The other is half-buried underneath a decade of chronic traveling and many layers of sorrow - five at least, according to Kübler-Ross. Somewhere in the old Marseilles, under the shadow of the Bonne Mère basilica, in a dark little resto off the beaten path and with no pretension other than continuing a long established tradition, my father had treated me to an exceptional bouillabaisse, one that might forever serve in my mind as a Reference in the field of fish soups.

It had been brought to our vinyl clothed table in no time, being the only dish on that day’s menu, accompanied by the most succulent rouille and croutons, in a bowl that made dipping a spoon in it as enjoyable as a dive into clear tropical water when one’s skin is burning. The flavour was amazing and without a doubt a direct consequence of the presence of a small fleet of tiny fishing boats, « les pointus », resting in their picturesque harbour a few steep streets below.

We’d talked about anything and everything, refaisant le monde, discussing extreme right politics, the Foreign Legion, planes and airlines and airports, Provence, Pagnol and food. And the past. Remembering the rabbits and chickens slowly roasted à la broche on the open air grill my dad has stoned and cemented in the angle of our small L-shaped garden, endlessly spun around on the spit and lovingly basted with a brush, the necessary herbs having been found fresh a few feet away, thyme, rosemary, bay leaves...

We had tried to catch up, to make up for lost time, to fill a gigantic gap. No one ever can. But trying is what matters. Trying and learning from our mistakes. If only the Chef at Cassis could learn that rouille m-u-s-t accompany bouillabaisse for it to be worth a trip down the memory lane and a glimpse of old Marseilles, through time and space...