French version

This month is the fifth anniversary of Interzone. As a result, a part of this report is dedicated to its starts, spirit and present situation. But first, the latest news: This has been an unexpected month. I have been off line a lot so did not answer the mail. I spent one week in Brussels. Then I have been visiting Patrice's house in France and have been spending most of the time there actually.

Patrice's village: ******************

Synchronisticly enough, the place looks like a good place for the Zone. The region is beautiful, not polluted, two hours far from Paris by train, so easy of access. Patrice's house is in the middle of the village. A part is still rented, a bar downstairs presently is in activity, and will be for the two following years, so we cannot use it yet, but Patrice is putting at my disposal an empty flat there, where I have been living this month, and it's been a real pleasure. The place really is energetic, beautiful and peaceful.

There is everything you basically need there, and for the rest, the next city is 9 kilometers far. Most of the food can be bought directly to the farmers around. 50 meters far from the house is a river the banks of which have been fixed by the municipality as a public area : there is a big camping place with a lot of space, a small beach where one can swim for free in the river, and paths for promenade on the banks and big lawns. There are a lot of facilities to welcome visitors: a hotel, rooms to rent in local people's houses. There also are a number of houses for sale at affordable prices: I have seen several worth less than 30 000 euros. There also are woods for sale : 32 hectares for 60 000 euros (the village of Ruigoord is 40 hectares large).

It's not far from Belgium, 3 hours far by the motorway. A lot of places to visit around, many cathedrals and historical places. The style of the houses of the region has been preserved and the villages seem to live at their own rythm, not affected by modernity.

So it's kind of a place for holidays where we can meet, and spend a great time. A number of Zoners might settle there as well, and we can organize a community life, cheap and simple, while contributing to keep the village alive.

After sending this report, I'll go to the full moon festival of Ruigoord http://www.ruigoord.nl/, which takes place from the 22^nd to the 25^th. More about it next month with pics of the event.

Following their misadventures of last month (see the report of Jully at http://users.skynet.be/interzone/reportjuly02.html ) they are presently back together, and ok. J

Cosmodelia pata-negra@wanadoo.es has been making a CD of music for dreamachine, which is available since this month. You can ask him for copies.

• Adam Possamai's book "Douze Perles Noires" , on line at http://users.skynet.be/interzone/12perles.html is available in printed version.
• I have put on line a part of the chapters of the second tome of the French Time of the Naguals: "Département de sémantique générale, de philosophie et d'histoire", at http://users.skynet.be/interzone/dptsgsommaire.html , plus the translating program of Voilà, so even if the translation is not so good, at least you have an idea of the contents of the chapters.

• The CD of compilation of the French books of the Zone is available at the price of 10 euros. It contains 10 books, so you get each for the price of 1 euro. J Now it's available in Word format for Windows, and I have to make it available for Mac too.

We started to take conscience of ourselves as a group of individuals who shared similar subjects of interest, similar experiments, in domains which were not labeled in the official map of reality, and which were not supposed to exist. As a result, as individuals, we were walled in uncommunicability, and the birth of Interzone broke this feeling, allowing us to share what we had been experimenting, and to state that we were coming to similar results. This confirmed that what we were at was part of reality, of levels of reality unknown in our civilization, called by Castaneda and Burroughs, the Nagual, in which the laws seemed different from the physical laws we were used to. And this statement was extremely positive on the image we had of ourselves as Burroughs' readers, in a world where our inner existence was literally banned from "reality".

When the Zone started, some days after Burroughs' death which occured on the 2nd, (see the presentation at http://www.inter-zone.org/presentation.html accounts in the first reports of August 1997 from the page http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/infzone.html), it was not programmed, and could not be. I had no idea, when starting to propose the Dreamachine plans to people writing in Malcolm Humes' Memorial dedicated to Burroughs, of what was going to come out of it, and I guess that if someone had told me, I would not have believed it. The only indications I had were dreams I had of an instructor beside me, and me sending a lot of emails to people. Then I found the Memorial on the net, and had the inner feeling there was something to do with it, but did not know what. I thought about sending dreamachine plans and asked the I Ching about proposing them to people, and the answer was that it could lead to a valuable human adventure , which would not happen if I did not do it. So I sent the mails on the next day. I was connected to the internet since one month, just discovering it, and did not handle well the use of emails, so the feed back to the proposal, 300 people asking for the plans, was really too much !

So the whole thing first started on synchronicities, meaningful coincidences, and a number of factors we had no control on, and which escaped to our will and consciousness.

Since the first day, I was connected with Foe, Gary and Rick. We quickly started common exchanges, and have been going on since. Most of the Zoners from the Memorial are still present.

After deciding to go on together, we started to apply spontaneously basic concepts spread by Burroughs and Gysin, which we shared, as Burroughs' readers, and which we had in some measures experimented at the individual level.

So we applied the Third Mind : as far as human relations are concerned , due to the mathematical principle of non-additivity (http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/intro-gs4.html), 1 + 1 is not equal to 2, but to 3. At the scale of 300 people, I let the professional mathematicians calculate.

People started to send their own creations in return : writings, music, accounts of personal experiences, paintings, URL, other kinds of dreamachine plans (http://www.inter-zone.org/dm.html) , cut-up machines, dreams, etc... As a result, we found ourselves with a lot of stuff on the artistic level, without spending a penny. We also started to exchanges knowledge, ideas, analyses, pieces of literature, through sites, a common email in hotmail, and met for chats. Foe taught me how to make web pages, sending far out ones, and we developed sites : see the Interzone Ring : http://www.interpc.fr/mapage/westernlands/Interzone-links.html.