The Chronicles of the Lost Year (1)

Tuesday, March 16,

Nice departure at 9:00 p.m. (real time).

300 m later, the bus stops.

I raise my head.

Red crystals's clock announce 3:15 a.m.... so a quantum bus.

Just installed, a man snoring, unless it is truly 3:15 a.m. for him. Beside me, a woman of sixty years, shorted-black hairs and fancy glasses, reads a book called : I reinvent my life. I am experiencing unreal feelings.

Yesterday, with S. we talked joyfully sipping red wine. Yesterday, I was mentally in Porto connected with a group of artists. The time between yesterday and tomorrow is this bus.The time required to make the road, cheaply and slowly, perhaps randomly as the driver makes the line for the first time. In addition, he seems to have some difficulties in keeping the wheel.

The next stop will be in Marseille, coffee and cigarette break he announces. As he will unveil us the twelfth wonder of the world.

9:22 p.m. (real time)

The clock's bus shows 11:35 p.m.

On the darkness, only the screen of my PC radiates. No light outside, except the few car headlights. I can heard the beating of the countryside, quietly noisy. Inevitably, some drama takes place there, some story for the novelist who I am. Shortly before my departure, A. reminded me how much I do not like rurality. Well, I find it exhausting; even here, in the warmth of the bus, even on the move, I can not refrain my imagination of seizing black of night that sinks from one edge to the other of the road. Sinks in the fields. Sinks in the forests. What is crawling to the other side? (we know that, because we have read Stephen King). A cloudy quarter of moon floats above the bus which vibrates so hard that I can not write. And I imagine a road such a pierced, blistered, swollen, cracked skin.

Night trips produce impressions of strangeness. Especially when, every ten minutes, it's 3:15 a.m.

10:45 p.m. (real time)

Break in a deserted gas station.