To Delia
I arrived before dawn, dead-tired from the 260 mile train trip and there she was: stunning beauty wrapped in messy sheets, offering arms and begging for cuddle.
Imagine Leonard Cohen in the darkest angle of the room, singing Suzanne, imagine me fed with tea and oranges, imagine the girl that said “Come in, I’ll give you shelter from the storm” in Bob Dylan’s song. Imagine both girls and better them, make their skin whiter and softer and give them a miraculous talent for quietude and imagine me lost in her body, feeling the whole scene somewhat unreal.
Take two extremes of this love in solemn silence, supported at its ends and acted on only by its own weight. Take us to the deepest realms of your mind and give us the joys of Sunday morning, the hush of night, the auspicious ways of the shipwrecked, the statuelike disposition of eternity and forget everything else.
We both had to get up and commute to work.
Mondays shouldn’t exist.
Published on mayo 7, 2009 7:00 am.
Filed under: Departure of reality, Remix, Sense Tags: all about me, anima mia, Dylan, hopes
It was a case of posthumous revelation.
The man was standing by her side, holding the camera with his beautiful hands, waiting for an omen, waiting for the air to move the undergrowth and the leaves, waiting for a slight change in the light, waiting to hear his own voice whispering now, totally unaware of her proximity.
She touched his coat, and his hair, wondering how warmly and slowly those hands could travel across the delicate creases of her silken dress.
He ducked to the uneven and mossy ground, trying to put all the pieces of the gravestone together.
Confused, perplexed, she read her own name, slowly, voicelessly moving her pale and deaf lips.
The man took five photographs. Four of them were trashed. He only kept the one that rendered her whole life a mystery.
Published on mayo 6, 2009 7:00 am.
Filed under: Remix, Sense Tags: Camera, Just before the divorce, mental, revelations
Photography is my primary coping behavior.
I take photographs of what I’m scared to own, lose or let go of.
I take photographs of what I fear or secretly wish to become.
I take photographs of cyclical nightmares.
I wordlessly beg for a proof of my deserving.
I hide behind the focus like a shy actor on stage.
Photography has also become my universal prayer, the multiple portrait of my flaws, the endless list of my unmet needs.
Photography makes me invisible so I can finally become visible in a figurative sense.
I get a grip on light so I can explain shadows.
Photography is for me the weird experience of being born, falling in love, falling out of love and then dying in one hundredth of a second.
Published on mayo 5, 2009 7:00 am.
Filed under: Departure of reality, Forest and birds, Sense Tags: all about me, anima mia, cartography, hopes, the moment
Trying to penetrate the feeling (entre lusco e fusco) I realized that my deepest craving as an author has always been hunting the story that I can’t write, but you can shoot. Writing is about chaining tentatives. Shooting is about stopping time just when the moment fades.
Published on mayo 1, 2009 7:00 am.
Filed under: Camera, Forest and birds, Sense Tags: all about me, anima mia, the moment
I clearly remember the day I found out what was going on. The powerful sense of relief and emptiness numbed every single emotion, including betrayal.
I knew I was about taking the biggest leap in my whole life. My hands against the light reminded me my grandfather’s. Suddenly aged, panthocratic, yet innocent and bursting with the urge of creation. I also felt the whole body shaking, the fear of going mad and then, the rest of fears collapsed in two: losing them and not being enough.
I changed hundreds of diapers with those hands. I shot thousands of photographs over their beautiful faces as they were growing up. Now we have to travel far to spend a short weekend together. Now I am the weak one, the deadbeat dad, even though financially supportive, a hopeless failure.
I suspect they are being lied to or denied their right to hold a strong and encouraging masculine reference. The suspicion wouldn’t hurt me so much if I could keep their hearts and minds from all harm until they are secure, self-assured, self-possessed, self-reliant, self-respecting, self-sufficient enough to choose their own fights, choose their own thoughts and heal their own wounds.
Beliefs, memory and perception are tricky. They can be deeply affected by interference and nasty storytelling. I dread the idea that they will pay the price of our faults. I dread the idea of them trapped in a vicious cycle of lousy relationships just because they were told a horror tale of deprivation, absence and neglect. It’s just unacceptable.
What did I see in my ex? What was I thinking? I don’t care anymore.
I won’t nullify the miracle and treasure of the days we welcomed them to life.
I resist to join the war. I won’t hold on to hate.
I pledge not to bad mouth and brainwash them myself.
I won’t tell them stories of saints and sinners.
My amazing girls still walk on water.
Published on abril 28, 2009 7:00 am.
Filed under: Remix, Sense Tags: all about me, My amazing girls
