Faded fables

If happy people have no history, it is because every day they are amazed by the happiness they experience. To my companion, Peter, for this astonishment and miracle so sweet.
A tender wink to Olivier, the friend, and brother I’ve always dreamed of...

I wrote this dedication for La Vie dure published in 1997. These sentences lie like faded flowers in their waterless vase, possessing a kind beauty close to a lie.

I reread them again, surprised by the distance traveled, the distance that will have initially widened this friendship with Olivier. I have, in fact, very little news of him. Our relationship will have lasted as long as we taste it. Oh, to see him again, I’d be pleased too, he brought me a lot. We met in the early days of the Internet, in Compuserve’s time. He lived in France, at the time I had even typed his thesis or I don’t know what school text he had and sent it to him by post. It was not yet time for tweets and instant passions. Olivier came to settle in Quebec for a while, then went back to live again in France.

As for Pierre, I lived with him for sixteen years. Our companionship will remain a beautiful furrow in my heart, and I do not deny the benefits that its presence will have brought me. Now that our steps are no longer following the same paths, I have still kept its coordinates in my sentimental GPS. He knows that, if he gets lost, I will be there to propose new routes, just as I know that he can correct the magnetism of my failing compass.

Nevertheless, this dedication has aged, and no longer represents me. As I am about to reread the text to publish it in electronic format, I already know that I cannot put this inscription at the beginning of the book, because I am no longer there, it is no longer me.

I wonder if this is the case for all these early work soars that we regularly read. These are marks, features that testify to our passage that will remain on the paper, that will age books. However, since my books are reborn differently, by my own will, without any consecration, in a new library that is more evanescent, undoubtedly more appropriate to my existence, I no longer have the desire to dedicate what I write to anyone.

Fables, like feelings, fade. They leave behind them autumnal scents. Life is hard, as suggested in this book. I hope my stories will take longer to fade.

I have reread some pages of this text. Strange impression. Soft warmth. Probably the book of all my hopes and all my fables.