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Bebert (a diminutive for Albert), where have you got to? If, an angel playing its part, you happen to read this blog, remember the hot summer day in 1944 when we you and I lived the wild bliss of the freedom that lasts the time a liberation lasts. How about making the world enjoy the freedom of perpetual, spiritual bliss?
On that day it was around 02:00 pm in Suresnes, Paris suburbs, France, the alarm sirens were hooting, my mother and I we were running to the air raid shelters (I can't remember where my sister was). You Bebert were passing by, you shouted to me, "Michel, come with me! The Americans 've got at Chaville." My mother couldn't keep me by her, I followed you. We were running along the Seine River when, not far from Bleriot industry, we sighted something moving between trees across the river, in Bois de Boulogne (the Wood of Boulogne). At first it was a color. Barely perceptible, dark, a greenish khaki unlike the usual brownish German khaki. We were two 15-year-old young men, already matured by the war, but still agile like kids we threw ourselves into the tall grass on the river bank. The thing was slowly heading towards Suresnes Bridge, from which we had been coming.
And then the thing grew less indistinct: a tank, its shape as unfamiliar as its khaki. Our hearts started pounding hard. The tank was moving along in stunning silence — We didn't know that the armored vehicles made in USA had rubber caterpillars —. Suddenly, something loomed up visible on the tank side... I yell, yes, I yell and my eyes get wet with tears just writing it. This was, stencilled white, France in silhouette with the Lorraine cross in it and elsewhere on the armor plate three colors, blue, white and red... A tank of General Leclerc's Division was scouting ahead into Paris through Boulogne Wood. The US Army had stopped and given way to the 1st French Army, so that it might enter the capital city first. Whoever has never experienced such a historical time after four years of fear, destitution, misery, censorship and humiliation, cannot imagine the felicity of the liberation! All of a sudden we were aware that the prisoners in Mont Valerien, who every morning were shot in the fortress moats, would not be shot tomorrow, we were aware that the SS in black and the Gestapo had already been fleeing and we would no longer have to step off the sidewalk into the gutter to let them walk the surface of earth. Bebert, just recall the tank looking as wonderful as if it was adorned with Monet's nymphea and hovering over the ground like an angel. Its gun got pointed at us and kept so as long as the tank sergeant suspected us to be Germans in the tall grass across the river, but if it was archangel Michael drawing his blazing sword we would not be filled with more wonder. And then the turret swivelled and got back lined up with the tank, when the tank sergeant realized that we were just two boys both laughing and crying, wild, altogether wild with joy.
Jesus, I own up to feeling as intensely emotional, but far less blissful, on the night I saw you, on January 15, 1974. Because your corporeal presence suddenly made me feel my own obscurity, my shame (Rev of Ares 1/1) and my evil I was embodying just as every man of this generation embodies evil. August 1944's tank was setting me free, instead. For several moments we Bebert and I felt as if we were a one huge light, a one felicity, which nothing would exceed in importance and intensity in our lifetimes, ever. Nothing? But are we really unable to help the world exceed its scarce short felicities, by prompting it to change (Rev of Ares 28/7)?
Hey Bebert, Albert Dumur, where have you got to? We were atheistic, children of Paris red suburbs. Your father had died in 1943; my father in 1942. Today, do you belong among the millions of men that, after having observed the world 62 years , ever since 1944, have seen that even though religion and politics have tried to correct a lot of errors, nothing has altered — and even a lot of facts may have worsened — the whole picture of sin and of evil, which sin generates? Why? Because, as long as man constantly calls for the safeguard of politics, law and even religion at times, he is to remain irresponsible for himself and unable to change himself or the system. This is another way of saying what The Revelation of Ares says!
Bebert, when will we send our penitence tanks covered in flowers to liberate the world? When will we point at sin that has controlled it our weapons: love, forgiveness, peace, spiritual freedom, in short, intelligence (Rév d'Arès 32/5) reappearing at last ?