The Red Notebook

by Antoine Laurain

How many things do we feel obliged to do for the sake of it, or for appearances, or because we are trained to do them, but which weigh us down and don’t in fact achieve anything?

There are places where it is so peculiar to find yourself that you can’t help thinking that your mind is playing tricks on you – that you are daydreaming and will soon wake up.

We passed by, we passed so close that something of the experience remains.

They helped me to find my place in the world and, in a broader sense, to prove to myself that I really existed. I suppose I must have decided at some point that I no longer needed to do that, because I gave up writing a diary, stopped telling the story of my life and tried to just live it instead.