“At what time would you have lived if you could choose?” — someone throw the question at me. Unprepared, I cannot answer immediately. Not even after reflection. I am facing the question again. My first impulse is to think, “It would be better not to have lived ever…” — but I refuse the idea, it does not suits my profile… So I think about the various times and inevitably I am led to think of the various places. Where would I like to be born? I think and, incredibly, everything loses its luster: I see only what would be unbearable to me at all times and everywhere. The precariousness of cleaning forces me to cut all the centuries before the 19th century. I find myself with the horizon crassly reduced. Then the mind forces me to cut everything that is between the tropics: rather the gallows that heat twelve months a year…. Then I see my big intolerance exterminate time and space. Am I that hard to please? so adefied to customs? I think about America. Great America… But even America presents me with a big problem: the American; as well as France, the French and Germany, the German. I travel from north to south, travel in mind the 360 degrees of the globe and go back two centuries in time. I do not smile, and I come to the incredible conclusion that of all times, everywhere, it is best to be where I am: alone, in silence, seeing enter through the window the cool breeze of rain that falls outside…
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