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En octobre 2013, il faisait 27° ou 28° sous les toits de l’Albaicín de Grenade, en Andalousie, où Amanda passait ses journées à écouter la rumeur de la ville en écrivant son premier livre, pendant que les roses se projetaient sur elle. Michaël V. Dandrieux

After the dream

Le fake
Une contribution de Amanda Dennis
Photographies de Michaël V. Dandrieux
cei6_amandadennis
Acheter
This story, like every story, is a seduction. Se + ducere. To be led astray, away from the true path in error. So you must wander, errantly, deviate from the straight line of a life that begins when it began and ends the day of your death. De + via is where all stories begin.
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This story, like every story, is a seduction. Se + ducere. To be led astray, away from the true path in error. So you must wander, errantly, deviate from the straight line of a life that begins when it began and ends the day of your death.
De + via is where all stories begin.

You are walking. You walk. You’re in the grid of a familiar place. Fifth, fourth, third along first, skirting alphabet city. You scan the streets as if they were written pages, as if combinations of letters and numbers could weave the text of a life. October morning. Sky a terrifying blue, everything possible.
You walk, one foot in front of the other. Ball of foot, arch, heel, grounding. Each step makes others (im)possible.
Yesterday, there was another world inside of this one, and another person spinning it all for you. Your steps rounded the rings of a labyrinth; you knew you would reach the center if you just kept going. You knew where to go and how to love. The end of the journey was legible in its beginning. You were guided by the concentricity of space; you were comfortable.
Now you look up at the autumn sky, very blue. You make images with your eye and hand. You become the seducer because you accept what others cannot. You let loss go, and it flows from you with the consistency of water. You feel lighter and more ready to stick to other things. Little by little you forget. You’ll make new forays. October is the month of beginnings.
The city stretches before you like a body. Watching coders and weavers, you learned to make legends:
You believed, word for word. You memorized and repeated the directions over and over, murmuring them on the bus ride like an incantation. The bus took you under tunnels, over highways and into wooded regions with pines and deciduous trees, leaves turning red and orange in the gold light of late afternoon. In case memory failed you, you copied down his words on the little map you always carry.
As you copied them, you remembered your first morning in his light-filled bed—he had gone at sunrise—and the step-by-step guide to breakfast written in his crisp hand:take two oranges from the bowl, hold over juicer, glass is there for you, turn on the button at the base of the coffee machine to warm, milk in the lower right part of the fridge, mug is next to coffee machine, baguette in the bread box on the counter, jam and almond butter out for you, plate and knife on the table, tonight at seven, Spring and Mercer. I’ll be there.
The bus ride took five and a half hours. You left at two in the afternoon. This is what you’d written, word for word, from the description he’d given you over the phone: House is 4/5 Mirabelle Lane. When you get out of the bus, cross the road, there’ll be a latched gate, diagonally cross the park, there is a fountain in the middle, on the other side, take a right on the street next to the park and cross a gravel and grass road, in one hundred paces, take a left onto a narrow lane, there is a vine of bougainvillea next to the house, there is a key under a pot of geraniums and a green door. I’ll be there.
There was a bus stop bearing the name he named and a road to cross where the bus let you off. There was a field. It may have been his park, but you noticed things were off. No latched gate, no fountain. You crossed the field diagonally, took a right on the street at the other edge. There was no cross street of gravel and grass, but the cement was crumbled in places on the road, so you thought, maybe, ok.
There was no lane. There was a street on your left in about a hundred paces, but no bougainvillea, no green door, no geraniums. You walked hours, thinking he’d meant one thousand paces, one hundred thousand. No way to reach him. You wandered into the darkness to the song of autumn crickets, found the park again, laid down on your pack and slept. You lay there for a day, then took the night bus from the same stop back to the city.

From Chinatown, you walk some. Fruit sellers come out of their shops and arrange things like dragon fruit, their pink wings furling about them. A giant’s flower bud, you think, and a word comes: credulous, how children are in fairy tales. But the sky is so blue, the day just waking up. You always knew, you now know, that you weren’t leaving for good. You had to follow (there are no untraveled paths in dreams) to see where it led. It led here. Here, too, the sky, the sun, the colors and smells, is a living error, a vital one, it is skin peeled away from the unreal. (The discarded, the dying into which we breathe.) You own now what you’ve often felt but couldn’t name: what is real is plural, mind-made, terrible beauty.
A cold thought pierces the heart – but only for a moment – medicinal taste in your mouth: By what unchanging index could you trace him? You loved his name, a very common name.
In your city textured by trajectories, by footsteps inventing, giving shape to space, you walk with a freedom you’ve never felt, path-making from A to D across the avenues. Your steps cross those of others, and you weave with them unforeseeable sentences, partly unreadable paths, in the vocabularies of established language, the ruses and design of your desire. You buy flowers, bright purple and persimmon, and for a moment you mistake yourself for the trace, high above, drawing its sure white mark across the bowl of blue.

  • portrait_amandadennis
    Amanda Dennis est née à Philadelphie. Elle a vécu à San Francisco, Princeton, Berlin, Cambridge et en Thaïlande. Elle est aujourd'hui entre Paris et Madrid, où, à L’Instituto Empresa à Segovia, elle enseigne sur la question du style dans les Arts, et de l’espace dans la littérature du début du xxe siècle. Amanda prépare un livre sur Beckett et Merleau-Ponty qui s’appellera Bodying Space: Beckett and the Sense(s) of Litterature. Son premier roman est en train de s’écrire aussi, entre la Bilbiothèque Reina Sofia et les toits de l’Albaicín de Grenade.
  • portrait_michaelvdandrieux
    Michaël V. Dandrieux, directeur éditorial des Cahiers, est co-fondateur de l’institut d’études Eranos, où il fait de la sociologie de l’imaginaire, chercheur associé au Ceaq (Sorbonne) et directeur du Lab de l'agence Hands. Il pratique le développement collaboratif sur Github, la cuisine de l’Escoffier, la photographie argentique, la clef des songes et le vin nature. En 2014, il a parcouru 135 231km en avion à la recherche des différences et des continuités du monde. En 2015 il a réduit son bilan carbone de 6 tonnes, en partie grâce au vélo.
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  • Français

    Les Cahiers de l'Imaginaire sont une revue de sciences humaines fondée en 1988 par Gilbert Durand et Michel Maffesoli.

    Les thèmes qui s'y sont succédés depuis sont dans toutes les têtes. Le corps, les socialités mystérieuses, les révélations politiques, les îles et la divinité continue, l'algèbre secrète des rêves, les formes infatigables du quotidien et de la fiction, les époques et leurs magies contradictoires, la fête et l'âme composent ces pages précieuses.

    Les Cahiers européens de l'Imaginaire perpétuent ces idées : trouver les mots les moins faux pour dire les imaginaires contemporains, porter et peupler nos mythologies tout à la fois, et donner à la curiosité de chacun la langue de l'autre, pour accompagner les mouvements de vie de l'Europe.

  • Italiano

    Les Cahiers de l'Imaginaire sono una rivista di scienze umane e sociali fondata da Gilbert Durand e Michel Maffesoli nel 1988.

    I temi da allora trattati risuonano sonoramente nel nostro pensiero: il corpo, l'attrazione sociale, le rivelazioni politiche, le isole immaginarie, le divinità, l'alchimia dei sogni, le forme torrenziali del quotidiano e della finzione, le magiche contraddizioni della storia e le multiple festività che marcano il nostro tempo popolano le preziose pagine della rivista.

    Les Cahiers européens de l'Imaginaire tentano e si dilettano a trovare le parole meno false possibile per nominare gli immaginari contemporanei, a decriptare le mitologie emergenti nella vita quotidiana e a porre in relazione le lingue e le culture presenti nel vecchio continente accompagnandone le trame e il vissuto.

  • Castellano

    Les Cahiers de l'Imaginaire son una revista de ciencias humanas fundada en 1988 por Gilbert Durand y Michel Maffesoli.

    Los temas que sucedieron su fundación están en todos los pensamientos. El cuerpo, las socialidades misteriosas, las revelaciones políticas, las islas y la continua divinidad, el algebra secreta de los sueños, las formas infatigables del cotidiano y de la ficción, las épocas y sus magias contradictorias, la fiesta y el alma, componen sus preciadas paginas.

    Les Cahiers européens de l'Imaginaire perpetúan esas ideas: encontrar las más adecuada de las palabras para expresar los imaginarios contemporáneos, al mismo tiempo que llevar y poblar nuestras mitologías, y dar a la curiosidad de cada uno de nosotros la lengua del otro, acompañando así los movimientos de vida en Europa.

  • English

    Les Cahiers de l'imaginaire is a social science review, founded in 1988 by Gilbert Durand and Michel Maffesoli.

    It explores the varied meanings within and beyond the body, mysterious social systems, political revelations, the isolated and continuous divinities. The secret algebra of dreams, the inexhaustible forms of the mundane and the fictitious, the ages and their contradictory magic, the festival and the soul are the stuff that fill its precious pages.

    Les Cahiers européens de l'Imaginaire perpetuates these ideas: finding the least false words to describe the contemporary imagination, sustaining and populating our mythologies, sharing our respective languages with each-other, in concert with the movements of the living Europe.

  • Portuguès

    Les Cahiers de l'Imaginaire é uma revista de ciências humanas fundada em 1988 por Gilbert Durand e Michel Maffesoli.

    Desde sua fundação, são abordados temas de diversos campos do pensamento. O corpo, as relações sociais misteriosas, as revelações políticas, as divindades isoladas e contínuas, a álgebra secreta dos sonhos, as incansáveis formas do quotidiano e da ficção, as diversas épocas e respectivas magias contraditórias, a festa e a alma fazem parte de suas preciosas páginas.

    Les Cahiers européens de l'Imaginaire perpetuam tais idéias: encontrar as melhores palavras para expressar os imaginários contemporâneos, ao mesmo tempo em que suporta e povoa nossas mitologias, e oferece à curiosidade de cada um a palavra do outro para acompanhar, assim, os movimentos de vida da Europa.

  • Deutsch

    Les Cahiers de l'Imaginaire ist eine sozialwissenschaftliche Revue, gegründet 1988 von Gilbert Durand und Michel Maffesoli.

    Sie adressiert Themen, die sich in allen Köpfen wiederfinden. Der Körper, mysteriöse soziale Systeme, politische Enthüllungen, isolierte und kontinuierliche Göttlichkeit, die geheime Algebra der Träume, die unerschöpflichen Formen des Alltäglichen und des Fiktiven, die verschiedenen Zeitalter und ihre widerspruchsvolle Magie, das Fest und die Seele füllen ihre wertvollen Seiten.

    Les Cahiers européens de l'Imaginaire führen diese Ideen fort: die treffendsten Worte zu finden, um das zeitgenössisch Imaginäre zu beschreiben, unsere Mythologien gleichzeitig zu erhalten und zu nähren, und unsere verschiedenen Sprachen miteinander zu teilen, im Gleichschritt mit dem Puls des europäischen Lebens.

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