A few weeks ago, after receiving my sumi inkstone, I started a new Japanese notebook. Unbound pages unfold like days do, one after the other. When all of them have been turned, they spread out and pitch together like trees standing against each other in the forest.

"This first page is May 5. I like first pages and I like this May 5th. It’s a symbolic day in Japan, during which silk paper carps are hanging all over the streets. The carp is celebrated for his courage and persistence. Two years ago, I decorated the window of my office with them.

So, the first page ... empty as it should be, to inscribe future reminiscences, subjective or singular, of our postmodern era. Nothing seemed to happen yet on this day. Does something have to happen to connect the days together? No, things will come. The gesture, brushes and ink, lines and shapes play with the void and the plenty. The negative space speaks dumbly, extracting its essence from the shadow and the darkness, as the trees in the forest stretch, from the undergrowth to the end of their branches, to their leaves and think in silence ... Let's not be destabilized.

 It’s ultimately a carp that occurs on the first page."

 The travel ban has been in place in France as a sanitary measure since March 17 and will continue until May 11.

A logbook: nothing more useful to carry on despite the confusion, the severing of ties with others. when what was planned is in standby. What is this horizon at the end of our eyes?

"During this paradoxical time of spatial restriction, I reflect on the meaning we give to our freedom of movement, to the doubts that occur with the decisions of our governments, I think about own uncertainties. Accustomed to trudging here and there, coercive measures prompted us all to change our angles, to adopt another reasoning, to consider more or less latent projects.

So, let's stay home.

However, I like the idea of being contented with what is there. Here the place is remote. It is a fold of earth, confined in the foothills of the Massif Central. Here I can walk for hours without meeting a living soul. Here, social distancing does not exist. It is called isolation or loneliness, solitude, depending on the state of mind. And then, the orchard, the garden, the studio are the spaces that call me, to the rhythm of the seasons, light, rain or times of drought ...

Here, it is the earth that makes me."

In a notebook usually lay the mundane gestures, the immobile step of everyday life, so they can be gathered and mapped gently in the shapes of paths. Nothing new except the moment and the moment after.

It is the opportunity to "make time", to get lost in this forest, like the secular tree, which has nothing to do with our calendars. Days unfold on a whole new scale, in a mode of concentration and expansion all at once, whatever happens.