from Guy Debord

Yes, in your preface the tone is recovered. It is your voice. As it still is, in the relationship to (or the programme of) life. What has been retained for us of life. "It is beautiful, it is easy."

Certainly we will know, as much as will be necessary, that we have met each other again! One goes far to see us again; not only at this Contrescarpe, which was the last stage of your liberty[1] -- where this or that derive momentarily stopped, from whence one will be able to start again -- but also, I hope, at other places that we had formerly found. . . . And so many that are still to be discovered, etc.

Here, retrieved from a note from the period -- in which the writing is trembling strongly -- are several cocktails that we named and drank at the beginning of 1954:

The Mentally Unstable Person: 2 rum, 1 Ricard
There also exists (instead) The Double Mentally Unstable Person
The First Communion: 1 Raphael, 1 kirsch (for little girls)
For people who have been excluded or crypto-trouble such as Conord:[2]

The Soft Exclusion: 1 coffee, 1 Raphael
The Last Hope: 1 Munich, 1 Suze

On the other hand, we appreciate ourselves:

The Influence Peddler: 1 Phoenix, 1 Mascara, 1 Raphael
and The Perfect Delinquent: 3 rum, 1 Raphael, 1 Pernod, 1 chartreuse, 1 kirsch, 1 white wine

And yes, humor hasn't failed the adventure . . . . Here is why we are so intelligent today

Double-Wagon[3] will die of sadness (in any event, perhaps he will consecrate thirty years of "survival" of this type of agony) when he certifies that you remain outside, and with us. That is to say, unattackable by his next manoeuvres, at the same moment that he will most desire to attack. Desire, that is the word! At the pole called illness, as at the pole called liberty (neither is so simple), resides the same quality that can not be attained in any case. But we try to hold firm at the second [pole]. Continue to write, even painfully: we will paste back together the pieces. On my side, I will try, this time, to do the most as far as editorial activity.

[1] It was at the cafe Cinq Billiards that Ivan Chtcheglov was seized for internment.

[2] Andre-Frank Conord, member of the Lettrist International, editor of Potlatch (#1 to #8) up to his exclusion on 29 August 1954 for "neo-Buddhism, evangelism, spiritualism."

[3] Nickname for Gaetan Langlais, who possessed certain practical customs.

(Published in Guy Debord, Correspondance, Volume 2, 1960-1964. Footnotes by Alice Debord. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! April 2005.)