Affective life of one French man by

Father

rdurocher2 — 2024-08-30 22:35:48 UTC

This is the cover of the autobiography book by my father, Max Pages. Professor, scientist, author. Famous and successful, but always suffering that others could be more successful, like de Peretti, hid friend and frequent co-author, who became a chevalier of Legion d'Honneur. The book's title is "The work (or more like "effort") of existing". His most famous book, "Affective life of Groups", explains the title of this time capsule.

Am I my father? Better? Worse?

rdurocher2 — 2024-08-30 22:44:27 UTC

With age, when I look in the mirror, I see Max (I call my parents by their first names) there, more and more. I know I am better than him. He was tyranic and fussy, always requesting all possible attention from everybody around, especially from his wives. However, he was exceptionally intelligent, and taught me to strive to be intelligent. To please him, I had to be smart, and it remained in me - I try to be smart to please others.

My first home

rdurocher2 — 2024-08-30 22:53:36 UTC

My first home (pictured on the previous tile) was in a privileged and selective gated community of "bourgeoisie intellectuelle" and "old money". So close to royal castle of Versailles that the Versailles' park (on the picture) was the place of our weekend walks. Ironically, there was a sort of competition among the residents (called in France "left caviar") to show how they abhor material goods. My parents were the winners with their old cheap Renaut-5 car, making the rest of community jealous. BMW was disdained as a car driven by "butchers' sons" - nouveau-riche. Coming here to see my mother after my 30s was a torture, every time. My friends and classmates graduated from prestigious universities, got high-paid jobs, married beautiful women from their own social class. I was single, a looser, a drop off.

Wisdom

rdurocher2 — 2024-08-30 23:08:10 UTC

Am I wise? I think I am wiser than I was at 17 year old. I try to take less place, to disturb others less. I also take better decisions, because I have more experience than a 17 year old. Opposing my father's advice to choose history major, I started as philosophy major. It was a dead end, I dropped. If I was wiser, I could see that history major could lead me to a specialization. I was good, very intelligent and knowledgeable. I could make a good career in academia. But I did not want to think about a career, and I did not want to listen to my father. I ended "on the street". I think I am also wiser because I take less risks. Young men take too much risks. For example, the son of our friend Francine who died on his bike could drive a little bit less boldly, and stay alive. I was like him. Now I drive my bike less boldly.

Taste education

rdurocher2 — 2024-08-30 23:25:25 UTC

This is a Triumph Arch - not the large, Napoleonian one, but the small, by Louvre. When I was a little boy, we often visited Louvre with my parents, and I thought that this Arch was the most beautiful architectural creation on Earth: with pink columns, golden horses and many baroque details. When I told it to my parents, they were appalled: how could I like this "crème pastry", where did they fell in my taste education? Since then I learned to like the purity of minimalism. Only with age I started to allow myself to like baroque and colors.

Politics

rdurocher2 — 2024-08-30 23:36:15 UTC

Young, I voted for Socialists. Even for Communists sometimes. Later in life I started to vote conservative, and ended by voting for Marine Le Pen. Now I vote for moderate right. Macron is good enough for me. I am for sacrifices at short term, for big leap at long term.

First love

rdurocher2 — 2024-08-30 23:36:34 UTC

I was in my 20s. Her name was Anne. I was delirious. I sincerely thought that all the history of universe, from Big Bang, to the birth of stars and planets, to French Revolution, to space Odyssey, happened only to make us meet and fall in love. I never knew if she loved me. One day she called and told me she was pregnant. I said "Quit smoke and come live with me." She never did. I even don't have pictures of her. I kept bright blue pumps that I bought for her, and she never wanted.

Last love

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-01 03:20:45 UTC

First time I told "I love you" to a woman, I was in my 60s. She was psychologist, psychotherapist. She insisted, she made it possible for me to tell. She was my date and wanted to live with me. I said no. Because she was seven years older than me. Very beautiful, fit, educated, sex-loving, but older. And I dreaded what she will become ten years later. So, she remarried her ex-husband, to inherit from him. If I would be really, really, honest with my self, probably I said "no" because I hoped that my wife would be back, and I wanted to keep a place for her. I never regretted my "no", even if my wife was not back. Yet. Probably.

Je t'aime, moi non plus.

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-01 03:27:20 UTC

Most of my life, I was never able to say to a woman "I love you." My wife resented me. She even pretends that she left me because I never told her my love or complimented her verbally. I think she was wrong. "I love you" is so smaller and shallower than what I felt for her and what I did for her. Saying these words was like pushing her away from our profound intimacy. Illustris Ignotus said "Verba in absentia actionnis", Terence said "Actus faciunt verba credere." She had to see what I was doing, not waiting for "words, words, words..."

Love poem

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-01 03:34:06 UTC

Once I wrote a poem for my wife.

"Marie, to not love you, one has to have a stone heart. Oh well, I have it." My message was that it was impossible to not love her. But, as always, I was afraid to seem pathetic by exposing my feelings, so I had to add this second phrase, to hide my feelings behind the irony. I thought she would understand. But she never forgave me this poem. 25 years later, she reminded me. On the picture, my wife with our daughters in our summer residence in Languedoc, south of France.

Wife

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-01 20:04:12 UTC

I never succeeded to make her happy. She was educated on Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and all other sort of Russian literature that gives Russians, especially Russian women this taste for suffering and sacrifice. I do not know, really, if she stayed with me so long because she was hoping that I would change and finally make her happy. Maybe, in opposite, she hoped that by suffering with me she would earn a merit that would allow her to buy a happiness one day, with another man. At the end, she estranged me, then she humiliated me, and finally she left me.

Daughter

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-01 20:26:23 UTC

I am very proud of her. She works in finances in NYC. She lives with her boyfriend, another yuppy, on Manhattan, by the board walk on West side. They spend their vacations in Singapore, Ibiza, Thailand. She has dozens of real physical friends and couple of very close long date friends. She is successful professionally and socially. I regret that she is not intellectual enough, she is not interested by ideas or politics. She does not read much, unlike me or her sister. She is not easily reachable. She could take days before responding to my emails. We are not close. She does not need me. I do not know how much I need her.

Mother

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-01 20:37:23 UTC

Capacity to love, I think, is innate and different in different people. We can learn how to better express our love, but we are born with a predetermined amount of love to give. My father did not have this capacity at all. He could be proud of his children, he could feel a connection with us, but he did not know what the love is. My mother, in opposite, had an enormous capacity of love. Not only for her children, but for everyone who approached her. It was almost always reciprocal. My wife loved my mother more than her own. For some reason, my sister was an exception. The picture is of my parents' home, where my mother lived until her recent death.

Music

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-01 20:42:33 UTC

I never liked any music. With age, I started to listen more to dance music, but not modern dance. I like ethnic and ancient music. Something nobody listen, very niche music.

Cinema

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-01 20:48:35 UTC

I believe that cinema is a second-class art. It is lower art than literature, poetry, sculpture, and even architecture. My cinema taste are quite classic. I like Fellini, Bergman, Tarkovsky. I also like adventure movies, with fights and heroes. It did not change much with age.

Fayum portraits

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-01 20:57:42 UTC

Andre Malraux in his famous book “Les Voies du Silence” (The Ways of Silence) said that it was the first time when the souls of real existing people were painted. They were Christians: the salvation is what they cared about, painted on their own sarcophagi. Theirs immense eyes contemplate the possibility of the salvation in the eternity.

Portraits of Fayoum are the portraits of human immortal soul, not in their earth life, but in the eternity, as a part of the God itself. These portraits are a Grand Art, but the painters did not aim a Grand Art or the Art at all. They were not concerned with rendering draperies or shine, not even concerned with the beauty of the subjects. They did not catch their subject in a particular moment of their lives, but in the eternity.

Brother

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-01 21:00:39 UTC

My brother died when he was 22, and I was 20. He felt from a mountain in Alps, while doing alpinism. He did not die immediately, he tried to crawl after his fall. He is buried in a little village cemetery, not far from Grenoble. My mother asked to be buried next to him, and she is. Here is his portrait on my wall behind me.

Son of other

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-01 21:03:24 UTC

I wanted a son all my life. When my wife told me that she was pregnant of a boy, I was so happy. I told everyone. I even told he was mine. I suggested, and she accepted, a name for him. The most beautiful and celebrated French name. Then, two months before giving birth, she left me for his father. The picture is taken by me in Death Valley, CA.

Society and aging

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-01 21:11:41 UTC

I am all for plastic surgery, and new medications that prolongate youth, beauty, and health. I know, it is unpopular point of view. We are supposed to accept our age, accept our lack of physical force, accept our extinguished intelligence. We must give way to young people, shamefully hide in our huts, leaving the stage. But I do not agree. It's not true that only the society makes us feel bad about our age. It's a consolation, not true. Look at my picture on the right at this board, and compare it with the picture above. It's an hypocrisy to say that I look equally well on both pictures. I accept to look as I do now, yes, because it's not the most important thing, and because there is nothing to do with it but accepting. But if I could look and feel again as on the picture above, I would. I think most people would. Even the people who does not give a s.. about looks, would want to have back their physical force or they better capacity to have a restful sleep. If there a way to keep our looks and capacities, why not? It's a question of price. I hope that a joy of physical force and intellectual sharpness will be available at any age at a minimal price. We deserve it not less than a 20 year old.

Books

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-01 21:15:37 UTC

I was reading since I can remember myself. I read hundreds of books per year. Scientific books. Good literature - classics, Prix Goncourt. Now - much less, I should confess. For years my favorite writer was Michel Houellbeq. Now he became too populist. I also like Andrey Makin, the last addition to French Academy. From classics, I like Celine. My favorite poet is St John Perce. The link above is for the teaser of a movie after one of my favorite books: "Elementary particles" of Michel Houellebecq, his first bestseller.

Historical Events

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-01 21:17:20 UTC

The main and the happiest historical event during my life is the fall of Soviet Union. I believe it is the triumph of Western Democratic Society that proves that we are right, that the future is ours.

Russia and Soviet Union

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-01 21:18:06 UTC

I was always fascinated by Soviet Union and Russia, in the sense as you can be fascinated by your enemy that you respect. I was always jealous of Russians and Americans: for them, being Russian (or American) is one of the important, if not the main part of their personality. I could not stop to be surprised how my wife, educated in French school, bilingual in French, living, studying, and working in France for decades, completely integrated in French culture, how, nerveless, she felt completely Russian. How she would bite everyone who would say a word against her motherland. I wish we, French, would feel the same about France. This is he picture of my wife when we were together.

Body

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-02 18:21:52 UTC

I do a lot of sports. I scuba dive, ski, ride my bicycle several hours per week, swim two hours per day. I do several-days hiking. I ride a motorcycle every day, but in Paris' traffic it is more a necessity than exercise. I think sport is essential in any age. I can do much less sport now, because I have pain everywhere, in every joint. Again, it's age related. And again, why should I accept my age as a positive thing if it prevents me from exercising and brings physical pain?

Death

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-02 18:26:14 UTC

This is me in the fog on Long Island. Ageing brings death. If this was only one inconvenience of ageing, it would be already enough to want to remain young. Young people do not think about death. Very old people do not fear it (it's what I heard). "Older adults" think about it, and it is not a pleasant thought. With our parents gone, we are on the front line now.

Mind

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-02 18:28:41 UTC

I try to exercise not only my body, but also my mind. I started to play chess as a kid, and I still do. I am a member of a chess club of my town. I even judge tournaments. However, I can tell that my rating does not go up with age. So, here as well, I do not see any advantage in aging.

Friends

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-02 19:13:06 UTC

I always suffered to be an outcast and lonely. It was the most painful in my young years. The relief came with my marriage. My wife brought the whole community of diverse bright grad students with her. We organized parties in our large flat (like on the picture, with me in the center), we were often invited to other houses. I also revived my old friendships because my wife's success and loveliness detained on me, and I was not feeling humiliated next to them anymore. After my divorce I was not comfortable to go see people alone. I was painfully lonely again. Strangely, after that, for years, my friends were all females. But now they are gone, too. Either they did not want to stay in friend-zone, either they resented me for my political views (not liberal - "left" -enough).

Societal changes

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-02 20:05:10 UTC

I would not tell something original here. From 1953 to 2024, human rights, minorities rights extended. Communism failed. USA continue to lead. Technologies transformed the world. Myself, I try to use all the advantages of new technologies. For instance, an electric scooter rented by the municipalities (on the picture). I agree with Bourdieu who says that rich people start the fashion trends, and with time and technological progress, these trends become accessible for middle class. Travel is accessible for everyone now. Vacations, clothing, sports. I have seen the blooming of sexual liberties, but when AIDS hit, people moved back to monogamy. Ecological tendencies are very powerful now.

Advice

rdurocher2 — 2024-09-03 18:23:52 UTC

Look, I came into this life with more advantages than an average kid. My parents were wealthy, educated, and caring (each their own way). My intelligence and looks were and stay above average. My older brother and friends had good influence on me. I was Parisian, and used all cultural, intellectual, and social resources of this capital of the World. So what? I was lonely and unhappy the most of my life, and it does not get better. I can probably give you a good advice on a concrete topic, because I have more experience than you. But don't ask me about what to do to be happy. I think, to be happy, you should be born happy. If not, whatever you do, whatever material and spiritual capital you get or earn, will not help. Maybe a love of a special woman could be a salvation. But nobody, and obviously not me could tell you how to meet or keep her. Even Dante did not succeed.