Spiridon n°2 - June 1972 - Click and download!

EDITORIAL

“A little word from you.”

I heard the news this morning.
No matter how much I tell myself, no matter how much I know, we are all straws tossed this way and that with the slightest breath. I repeat things like that to myself.
However, he is stronger than me: he should never have abandoned him, Raphaël.
This is what I tell myself.
Earlier, a gray and brown hare stood motionless at the edge of the path.
At the sight of me, he made a few jumps towards the grove. Oh no, he didn't go very
far away: we've known each other for so long...I saw him, his muzzle against his paws.
A real strain. But I knew very well that he was plotting, that he was inviting me to play.
Further on, after the group of small, tightly packed fir trees, a squirrel froze
moment, hesitant, not knowing where to flee. And then he scampered almost under my
not, embarrassed by his parachute tail.
(God knows what they do to you, the doctors..)

I saw you once on TV. All alone during a lap of the track, ten meters
in front of the others. On arrival, far behind them. ''Because of TV'', as people say
has told me.

Maybe for you the race was never just an end, not a
AVERAGE. What you liked about her was the crowd, the friends, the girls around.
We, the long-distance runners, also eat this bread, but it's the one
festive days. What matters to us is the rest. These are the little ones
foggy mornings, when the sun is barely rising, ...so gently that it seems as if it
does it for you alone. These are the birds that chirp in the branches, while
that below a fresh runner greets a “Securitas” who is returning home.
When you have experienced all that, Raphaël, you can no longer leave the race. A
time maybe, but you'll come back to it.
Michel Bernard, I saw him on TV one evening. You know what he said, Michel
Bernard? "I'm an addict, he said. A running addict."
The others' looks said he was rather crazy. He was absolutely right, Michel
Bernard: We are all drug addicts, we runners. We have a need
vital to the race, a need that comes from deep within us. Three days without
running, and things are going wrong all over. An hour into the race, and everything changed.

After this failure, did you abandon her? completely, for
month...That's what hurt me, Raphaël. Because the race has never let you down.
Always present, always faithful beyond the seasons and the years, she would have known
prevent evil, or cure it. She's not far away, you know. At the bottom of
the stairs, she waits for you like a dog that you have thrown out. She's there,
ready to take you through the city or the countryside, to bring you back to the stadium among
friends. Or towards squirrels and field mice, depending on the day.

An addict, he said...Say, what are they making you swallow now, where
You are ? Drugs, not, that they administer to you. If it's not unfortunate...Then
that DRUGS - the one that makes us crazy and fools with eyes
of the populo - while running, you had it at your fingertips.
You have it at your fingertips, Raphaël.
“A little word from you..” your father asked me.
Come back, take some of our drugs, Raphael, and you'll never get tired of it again.
Christmas Tamini