A small card in the window of a Parisian bar announces the current events. I check the small scribbled felt-tip words: 'Reading at 16:30'.

Just what I need to make me push the door open. It's dark inside and some dancers tiresomely tango while at the back of the room the participants of the Journal Intime Collectif - Collective Intimate Diary to you, JIC to most - are gathered on two tables covered in books and papers. Some drink rum and talk and others read studiously through either the cream or red covered collections of their past work. Now their leader has had enough of waiting. She stands up and signals that the readings, which take place only on holidays, must begin! After a short introduction, above the brouhaha of the busy bar, a man suddenly reads aloud. Each story begins with the date, time and place but the author is not revealed. Some customers notice something is happening. Some laugh. Some talk. We all drink.

When a text has been read, another story begins in some other corner of the bar. Some readers stand up and walk around, books are passed from hand to hand, a few are bought. Innocent by-standers are asked to choose a text to read. They prepare silently, heavily-smoking, hand on forehead. The event is unrehearsed. I read a text for the first time, a comical story of two Japanese filming each other in the subway. I chose a short text but as soon as another voice tunes in, I need to know more. I buy the next round of rum for Caroline Sarrion, le chef. I'm invited to a monthly meeting: "Just come with a text and something to eat". She also advises not to drink more than two rums. Too late, I'm hooked and buy a book to see what the writing rules are: an actual story of at least three lines at most three sheets, set in a public place in Paris that must be written in a strictly descriptive manner, never employing 'I'. Caroline stresses the JIC motto: "we are not professional writers". She says the rules stem both from practice - mostly getting rid of angst-ridden poetry or over-indulgence - and from a love for 'l'écriture pauvre' when the subject becomes object. She talks of shooting Super-8 films from the texts, improving the website and the prospect of extending the JIC to other cities like Montreal. The private meeting is held in an apartment. Texts are swapped, read aloud and every non-JICian item is explained and expelled in a playful but determined manner. One man has trouble admitting that the non-descriptive "recently opened" Arab restaurant has to go but he complies and flexes his JIC-muscles for the next writer. Which happens to be me.

Frederic Madre [frederic@pleine-peau.com]