We are so used to notice things in a numb trance, in order to save every slice and every morsel of life for later, that only when faced to a great deal of loss, tragedy, turmoil, fear and misadventure, totally crack-open we allow ourselves to feel, and to love and to mourn, and even to take a path of our choice and making. Jumping into the void, leaping, fearless.
When reality swings us down over the edge, we aknowledge the wild nature of our hearts, the preciousness of the moment, the value of each one of our encounters with the rest of us, the throbbing light of pain and pleasure, as still and silent in a black and white portrait.
Imagine what would be the story of you if all that could be rescued from a fire in your house was a small document photo of someone you loved dearly. Imagine that such a tiny, almost unsubstantial memento is the only thing you can hold on to for the rest of existence.
After imagining all your possessions absent, devastated, doomed, irretrievable, irreparable and gone, open your eyes to the wonder of now, and realize that it’s shaping the place where you belong, by this river. So instead of chasing happiness, remember it’s about just embracing everybody else in awe and gratitude, because joy doesn’t know the meaning of tomorrow.
Txema Rodríguez
photographer
By this river
Atonement
Her silhouette reveals as emerging from the totally black canvas of the cabaret.
Small tight feet in kinky boots, sexy pin-up fish net stockings, velvet garter, unbelievable prude bitsy hands keeping the gates of the land of promise.
I’m not sure if I like her. The energy of the shooting comes more from morbid curiosity than from true sympathy. The camera seems pulled to the orphan male shoes by the disturbance and the bewilderment of an absence. I stop looking at her face, benumbed, careless, insensitive and start wondering about the man, entangled and later devoured by black widow.
It was not my eye that beheaded the goddess, but the camera’s.
Oh, the forbidden pleasures of symbolic revenge.
Lovely bestiary
“‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.
‘Oh, you ca’n’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’
‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.
‘You must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’”
Lewis Carroll
Alice in Wonderland
There I am, slightly drunk and gripped by the lovely bestiary collected in the memory card. There I am, mesmerized by three beauty spots under the small boobs of the Red Queen. I wonder how the fluffy soutien stays in it’s place, but most of all I notice deep sadness or melancholy in her eyes, some kind of homesickness, some kind of saudade. And I want to hold her in my arms and say that everything is gonna be alright, but all I can do is rehearse a smile at her Ooops and be grateful to photography for providing me the endless occasion for human closeness, and for this night, for these gurus in how to take myself more lightly, the master class in the admiration of diversity. And most of all, for the ultimate sentimental reminder: sometimes we are the only thing that other stranded person has in a given moment.