The canal

Walks along the canal. I park my car on the gravel parking of the marina. It is still cold – a film of frost, almost imperceptible, still covers the landscape and the things. 

A sheep's carcass, or an animal I can't identify, on the frozen water. At the same time atrocious and atrociously photogenic.

I walk along the water, towards the farm where E... and I have been a few times, and continue on beyond.

I take pictures that look like post-apocalyptic, Chernobyl-like landscapes, mixing tall grass, rocks, blackened walls, drainpipes coming from who knows where.

I am in a strange mental state. Following this river, in absolute solitude, sometimes punctuated by a dilapidated barn, a brick warehouse or a bare metal structure, on a winter morning, gives a curious sensation of spiritual, religious experience, a kind of local equivalent of the Ganges revised by Tarkovski.

Dull existence

I lead a minimalist, routine, cramped, minimalist life. I need to escape, to explore, to see something else. The world can't be so poor, so reduced to a restricted series of utilitarian places, ugly areas where nothing is possible. There must be something to see, something to do. There must be territories still hidden, where everything is untouched. There has to be.

End of exercise

I have to admit that I haven't really continued my "presence in the world exercises", not having much use for them since I'm not a writer or a video game designer or anything like that. Nevertheless I think it's a very interesting and promising wild discipline - no matter how pretentious it sounds.

Dream last night

I drive alone, at night, towards Champagne. I stop in Reims or Troyes; it is a rather miserable city, ugly, grey, but it has this charm of the novelty which I need so much. This impression of being lost, disoriented, of being an absolute stranger, therefore absolutely free. I also find a rather medieval district, more alive, very beautiful, and I feel like a tourist, like an adventurer a little bit too, it is extremely soothing and pleasant. I also find myself in a kind of family banquet, or perhaps communal, because there are many people. A small sunny midday in province. I walk along a stream, there is a bridge or a ford, perhaps a small waterfall, too, and an old man – the bonesetter, the old sage of the village. There is a very poor little girl, very dirty, who lies down fully clothed in a kind of trough, in town, to wash herself.

The windy grove

Stroll on the heights of Neunkirch, this afternoon – as often these days. When I turned off, after the airfield, to go to the forest, along these endless and inextricable thickets permanently flown over, it seems, by whole nations of crows, I noticed a strange grove. By some chance or necessity, it was exactly on a corridor. It seemed as if a strong draught was coming out of it. And there was something cheerful and lively about this draught, which, I don't know why, evoked adventure, travel, novelty.

The pleasure of being lost

I arrived in Saint-Dizier after it had been dark for a while. I had an appointment with the girls; they hadn't left yet when I parked in a random car park. It was convenient; I took the opportunity to walk around. On my way in, I had walked along a park overlooking a large medieval wall that hid a more recent castle, and the whole thing looked really incongruous, just past the expressway and the shopping area I had come through. There were few people in the streets. Lots of old stones, decrepit facades, gates and portals, churches and cobbled streets, palm trees that gave, as sometimes in Nancy, the impression of being in a southern town, far away...

I wandered into the city, at random, feeling a bit the same as in Toulouse, the day I had spent a day alone walking in the streets, losing myself in more and more outlying and anonymous neighbourhoods, with an almost voluptuous vertigo, or as every time I was in a similar situation: the pleasure of getting lost, of discovering places – streets and alleys, squares, backyards, gardens – and of moving forward unceasingly, at random, open to any eventuality, any emergence of the unknown...