Notes from My Logbook

Paris, Ten Years After November 13

In January of this year, following Austin Kleon’s and a friend of a friend’s model, I started keeping a logbook. Every morning - or at least most mornings - I make a nice coffee, take my Pilot fountain pen, and write and draw what happened the day before. I was hoping this would help me understand time - where it is going (if anywhere) - and, above all, how I spend it. The success rate of this project is not great; I think I managed “to do” maybe 45% of the days this year. But still - the fact that the notebook is half-filled is already something. And it’s something to work on in 2026. As for the rest of the unused paper from this year’s logbook, I’ve already planned to cut it out and repurpose it - to make mini notebooks from what’s left. The days will be, after all, used well.

On Friday morning, I started writing in my logbook. But the day before - 13th November, a day most Parisians of my generation remember well, too well - was hard to explain and hard to draw.

It seems like the number vanished in our collective memory, but that night, ten years ago here in Paris, 130 people lost their lives. On the night of the terrorist attacks of November 2015, I was locked in a bar two streets away from a place where many people died. The manager of the bar we were in - and I remember so clearly where I was sitting that night, in my usual bar, as I tried to understand how and where to hide if the terrorists happened to enter - shut the metal curtain so it looked like no one was inside. I admire the sobriety of Antoine, the manager (of what is otherwise the most unsober place in the world). It was a smart and safe thing to do. It cut through the fear - it crumbled a small part of it, maybe 5% - which, in that situation, is a lot.

As the news spread, we heard the terror and the fear, and the proximity of it all. We started seeing familiar faces (the local pizza girl, a guy from the hotel around the corner) coming in once the metal curtain was lifted, a couple of hours later, tears running down their faces. I went home with a friend of mine - who had been with me that night - and I insisted she stay over, as we had no idea what would happen next.

You know the rest. Every year I hope I will feel this date less - every year I feel it the same. I just do. But this year, I have a logbook, and this is what I did ten years later, on November 13th, 2025 - grateful to be alive and grateful that I could hug my friends. Every day needs to be celebrated - even in this gloomy and heartbreaking November:

• Warm days again - coffee on the balcony. The rosemary is acting weird - is it thirsty, is it overwatered? I don’t know. Véronique still flowers. Success.

• Packing art prints of the streets of the 11ème to bring to Trémas later. Listening to Thunder and Lightning by Natalie Goldberg. I learned that Isak Dinesen lived only on white grapes, oysters, and champagne. When she went to the USA, she insisted on seeing Marilyn Monroe and Carson McCullers - and she did.

• Birdy is better.

• Final touches on the library tour I am planning.

• Fear of tests tomorrow.

• Coffee with Perry. Perry is a poet as well - he won a poetry competition in Singapore and as an award he got a Sailor pen. It’s a brand. There are Pilot pens, and there are Sailor pens. Perry had a Caran d’Ache pen with him today.

• An appropriate day - so heavy and sad - to visit the 11ème. La Poste to send the orders and dropping off ten custom-made street signs to Trémas boutique. You can get street signs there now.

  Avoiding memorial locations of the attacks proves to be impossible.

• Getting raclette wooden scrapers.

• Phoebe and the special-occasion cake.
  Is a candle holder a candlestick? This is funny.

And that’s it. Another day passed, and in the evening I am lying in my bed, reading a Serbian writer who was in Paris when Eugène Ionesco first appeared on stage and shocked everyone, I am comfortable and with my wool hot water bottle. November is grey enough, but I purposely let my heart be broken on this day, mindfully and with remembrance.

Thank you for being here, buying my art, and celebrating this city with me through my tours. Feel what you need to feel, stay safe, and be well,

à bientôt,

Sonja

Fluctuat Nec Mergitur - indeed

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