A journal
The countryside was shrouded in mist. I was in the Haut-Beaujolais. A sombre silence hung in the air. I was twenty years old and for the first time in my life, I’d decided to ditch school. I turned around, dazzled by a fiery dawn, my chest aching; I was drowning. In a rage to live, a desire to tear my skin off and break free. I got into the car and drove away. The further I went, the deeper I sank into the fog, into the vineyards. I stopped at a random entrance to a track. Having been born in the Alps, you always have a few bits of mountain gear in the trunk. So I changed my clothes and set off.
French countryside in winter, 2021 —
An existential crisis is like a long fall. A fall that takes its time. Like an autumn leaf held by the wind. It’s cruel.
I was already experiencing them as a child ; all those questions burning inside, this insatiable thirst for life. I wanted to leave and I was stuck to the ground. From that constant tension between an aesthetic and that reality is born the need to write.
Now, maybe because I lack the means, or maybe because I have changed: I read, I paint. I’m still dreaming of far away but I’m okay. And this quote of Rilke sums it up all perfectly:
“Do not seek today the answers that cannot be given to you; you would not be able to live them. Live the questions today. Perhaps then, one day far in the future, your life will have gradually, without your realising it, led you to the answer.”
When the sun rose, I was already at the top of the hills. The mist was slowly lifting amongst the vineyards and the landscape was unfolding before my eyes. Dogs were barking at the bottom of the valley and the trees, one last time, were shaking the dew from their bare branches. That’s when I knew.
‘The cold is not to be feared,’ I heard. ‘And the hunger will disappear.’ That moment hung in the air, but ten years later, I hear the same thing from beyond the hills. The call to live, the need to write it all down.
So this diary, that’s ir. That’s me. The path, the paper, the ink stains on my fingers, the wind in the treetops… I don’t want any other images to appear in your minds when you think of your friend.
So this diary – that’s it, that’s me. The trail, the paper, the ink stains on my fingers, the wind in the treetops… I don’t want any other images to spring to your minds when you think of your friend. The little autumn leaf that, bathed in the rays of a golden sun, still wonders why it falls. —
