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...