"Absurdity is king, but love saves us from it."

[jeancaro31]

Listen to the radio.

Fully credit to each video owner.and I edited it.

[hobbyist-lisse]

"Mothers and children, lovers, husbands and wives, who had a few days previously taken it for granted that their parting would be a short one, who had kissed one another good-by on the platform and exchanged a few trivial remarks, sure as they were of seeing each other again after a few days…duped by our blind human faith…and little if at all diverted from their normal interests…"

(Camus, The Plague, 1972 edition, p.63-64).

We never know when we are last seeing someone, or last visiting a place, or last eating a meal. Isn't that the unspoken tragedy of our life; for as great in intellect and advancement as humans are, we have our demise hidden in our blindspots.

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

I’m so in love. I want everything good for you. I want you so much! Images, an entire series of images that I keep playing over and over, my eyes closed, a whole sequence that I savor one by one. I’d love so much to hold you before July 15th! But don’t worry, I can also wait quietly. I feel certain about us. I can’t picture you anywhere else, far from me, without me. I don’t believe in that possibility. I don’t feel alone either. Not for a minute. And I don’t feel you’ve been abandoned. Oh mon cher cher amour, I thank you so much.

Don’t dwell on these scribbles. It will no doubt be like this every day until Friday. Don’t dwell on it. Close your eyes and let yourself come to me. Impossible that you can’t feel my love filling you up and carrying you along. Close your eyes. I’m holding you in my arms, I’m holding you, I’m holding you.

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Mon Cher Amour, May 22, 1950 [#311]

[angelnoellelifts]

breakfast of a locked in girl

I swear im not a larp guys im actually reading...

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

In the afternoon I’ll try to tell you at length about the joy, the peace, the fullness and the life that you left with me. Ah, mon cher amour! Take care of yourself. Work. Be happy and confident. I don’t know what it is—perhaps the shadow that follows you sometimes—but it tells me that good weather is on the way. Be patient and brave for a little while more! Take care of this revived beauty for me. Together! We really are together, shoulder to shoulder. More than ever. Let’s move forward! Keep going, mon chéri. I’ll follow along quietly. Keep going. I love you. Work. Work well. Until tomorrow.

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Mon Cher Amour, May 21, 1950 [#310]

[quitebluebird]

I’m waiting for you, I’m waiting for the evening calm, I’m waiting for our time, the oblique light, this pause between day and night. Peace will come, surely. But I can imagine no other peace than that of our two bodies bound together, of our gaze given over to each other - I have no other homeland but you.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Correspondance, July 17, 1949 .

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Your phone call! Ah, mon amour, you don’t know how good it was that you called me! You can’t know! You can’t imagine! Suddenly I feel like I’m reconnected to the earth, to the sea, to the sky, by a mysterious current that your voice and your spirit filled me with, and the clouds have suddenly become friendly. I love you! Oh, how I love you! How I treasure you! And tomorrow I’ll have your arms around me. How could I have doubts about anything when I’m given happiness itself so often! Bad! I’m bad! Demons take hold of me, making me deaf, blind, and sterile, and I’m left distraught, lonely, frozen in the midst of all my turmoil. Why, why, tell me, why am I so bad sometimes? Now…this way, the way I am at this moment, with your warm voice inside me and the promise of your cool mouth and your bright, kind eyes! If I stay this way…my pride returns, my great pride. I love you I thank you and am waiting for you. Tomorrow! Come to me with your heart open; surrender to me. I love you.

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Mon Cher Amour, May 17, 1950 [#308]

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Albert Camus

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

I had a bad morning. Perhaps it was the gray sky, or simply waking up, each morning’s the same, a dull day ahead of me, starting over again. There’s a ray of sunshine in my room now, I can see the wind outside. But it’s like the wind in the theater; I can’t feel it. What are you doing? I can picture you in that studio. I hate that studio. Soon you’ll be rehearsing. And even the joy of hearing you is denied to me. Yet it’s one of the most primordial, constant, and pure joys that you’ve given me. Your letter of yesterday made me happy, though. Your voice, last night, on the telephone…I love you. I hate being apart, darkness, suffering, the rain. I want a glorious day, with you, by the sea and sand, under a wildly joyful sky, in a place that I love, but with you, with you…I want your body, the heat, rocks, smooth water, everything you can touch. I hate dreaming, waiting… And yet I’m waiting for you, helpless, empty-handed, and it’s necessary to speak, speak as a substitute for our bodies, to prepare for their return. It’s quite true that I talk to you all day long. I think about you, I worry, I suffer for you, I love your heart. I’d like to make your pain easier, make life simpler and sweeter. But I don’t really know what I want. At other times, my only desire is to feel you’re looking forward to the future with me, with no distractions, until the end. I’ll see you on Thursday, my darling, my beauty. Yes, you are beautiful, and great. Forgive me my follies. Tell yourself that I love you, with courage as well, and with the determination to ease this unhappiness. Perhaps the glorious day, the beautiful countryside, is not far off. But I already have your love, you exist; no, the world is not a desert! I love you, see you on Thursday. Fall asleep with me. I think of you constantly.

Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, Mon Cher Amour, May 16, 1950 [#307]

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

..all true passion has a spice of cruelty.

Albert Camus, Caligula

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

I want to stay like I was yesterday until Thursday—I want to make you happy for the three days you’ll spend at my side, and to do that I must manage to be myself in a certain way. I don’t want to stir anything up; I just want to tell you that you’re not the only one making me unhappy, and that, on the other hand, you’re the only person in the world who brings me and will always bring me joy, true joy.

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Mon Cher Amour, May 16, 1950 [#306]

[kitaston]

Albert Camus

False identity card established in 1943. At that time, Albert Camus has just published *The Plague*, he writes for *Combat* and joins the Resistance.

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

I didn’t write you yesterday; I forced myself to have a bit of a break, to not think about anything, to forget you, and to forget myself as well, at least the way I am right now, to pull myself together and be ready to bring you a bit of the happiness on Thursday that I so love to give you. I banished my phone, forbade myself from any reading that might sting or hurt me by an unexpected twist in the plot; I turned off the radio, got undressed, lay down in the sun, on my balcony. I closed my eyes and waited, as stretched and taut as the string of a violin. I used to do this when I was little, when the weight of the world already seemed too much to bear. I armed myself with all the rage of my happiness, I secluded myself, I desperately tensed up all my muscles, and awaited the mysterious sound that the hand of some unknown god would wrench from me; and while I was waiting, I would begin to cry out with enthusiasm and triumph and gratitude. Yesterday I tried to do it again, to rid myself of everything, to find myself naked and pure like back then, and to do battle once more with the heart of the universe, peacefully. I stayed like that for hours, six hours, waiting, wiping everything away, blending everything together in the dazzling sky I could see through my eyelids, trying to turn the burning of the sun into a crucible for the frozen regions of the soul. Alas! I didn’t feel the need to shout. When I feel joy now, I want only one thing: to close myself off, to clench my teeth, my fists, to hold on to the joy, and for as long as possible. The time for generosity hasn’t yet returned. But during these endless moments, I managed once more to tremble in the air, with the air, with the light, and for the time of a brief glance at a flower quivering in the cool wind, I again relished the taste of eternity, where I finally completely found you. This is the flower that brought you back to me so totally for a second. Then I let go. I was tired, and all my muscles were aching from the prolonged tension—I let go once again, but I found a bit of gentleness within myself.

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Mon Cher Amour, May 16, 1950 [#306]

[time-and-disregard]

She asked me again if I loved her. I replied, much as before, that her question meant nothing or next to nothing—but I supposed I didn't.

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Ah, mon chéri, mon amour, my handsome love, you, you! You, with the peace you bring me, the life you fill me with, your greatness that rubs off on me, and the kindness and the demons you instill in me! You, and life! Don’t leave me! Keep me always by your side! Don’t let me leave. I don’t want to die! Ah, I’m afraid of this terrible need that you’ve become to me, this vital need that you are for me! I’m afraid. The bond that unites two beings is so fragile. The obstacles on our path are so great! And I need you so much! Come! Come quickly and take me in your arms, speak to me, calm me, cherish me. Tell me, tell me again and always that you need me and you’ll always need me, you’ll need my presence by your side! Give me back my reason for living and my appetite for life! I don’t know anymore if I love you. I think it’s more than that and I’m a bit terrified. Guide me. Help me. Give me your hand to lead me. I can only find myself within you. Help me, I beg you. Force me if you have to, but let me hear you, so I’ll finally know that you know that I belong to you. I know I’m a heavy burden to bear. Are you still willing to keep me beside you?

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Mon Cher Amour, May 14, 1950 [#304]

[thewinterwarr1or]

Jean Tarrou from "The Plague"!! ☆☆

There were a lot of things I wanted to do with Tarrou's design!! In the Penguin translation (which I had read first), it describes his face as being "pock-marked", so I tried to replicate that. I also liked the idea of him having an armband as a symbol of him being a member of the sanitary teams. I wanted to make hin look sort of young and carefree, but I tried to also show that there may be more to him through the scars on his arms, perhaps from fighting (the scars are faded, but still marked, as if the past will never leave him). ૮ ◞ ﻌ ◟ ა

I must admit, I dont like using colouring pencils much as I'm not the best with them, and the paper type certainly doesn't help with that - but it looks quite alright, better than I had expected XD

[acknowledgetheabsurd]

Don’t we all have a usefulness complex, a need to be needed? But what will I do without you? Find someone else? No! I can’t! I don’t want to! It would be fake, vile, mediocre! It would be a farce, a vulgar comedy! I don’t want to! A solitary life? I feel dizzy when I think of all those barren years to come, those gray and lifeless landscapes. Friendship? Camaraderie? The communion of a chance moment? I know all about that, oh yes, I do. My profession allowed me to get to know and explore this kind of friendship, these deep, total, and somewhat exhilarating bonds, these intimate links that are forged and dissolved with every play we perform in, those weeks we spend in the open air when we shoot a film. How disappointing it is! How superficial! My head spins when I think about it—I can literally taste what it’s like on the day after such drunkenness. Those aren’t friendships, not even temporary ones; they’re “emotional benders” that leave you with a hangover. If not that, then what? A life of kindness? Maybe. But will I be able to stand the people and the abstraction you find in such a life?

Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, Mon Cher Amour, May 14, 1950 [#304]