Hace ya Varios Años Desde un Puente...

El río cruza la ciudad en silencio
Esta ciudad que nunca será mía
A la que sin quererlo pertenezco

Su mudo rumor me ata
A la sombra de sus puentes
A los vientos helados de sus noches

El río me descubre los terrores del día
El canto silencioso que lo niega

O la dulce aceptación
De su vaivén bajo la luna

El río me distancia de todo
Lo que existe

En el tiempo
Y en sus aguas

El río habrá de transformar mi vida
Y lo que fueron mis recuerdos

El río es el ahora
Me limpia del pasado

Me muestra los espejos
De un presente que ignoro.


Inglaterra, Junio 6, 2011

Between Tunja and Duitama, Boyacá, Colombia 1975

In 1975 I travelled to Colombia for the first time after having moved to Canada in 1973. The trip was a revelation since it was the first time I was able to travel freely to places I have never visited before. The time spent going around my own country gave me an amazing insight into the beauty of a marvellous place. 

Noteworthy among many was the discovery of Boyacá, the land of my maternal grandmother. Travel by land was the best way to discover the country and this image was taken as I had been sleeping while going from Bogota to the beautiful land of my ancestry. 

I opened my eyes coming out of the slumber in the moving inward kaleidoscope and on the opposite seat  there they were; touched by a beautiful light as the landscape rolls indifferent out in the real world. 

The camera tries to see what the young man dreams. The light his only witness to those dreams. This time for real.

An Innocent Mind Stumbles Upon Conceptual Without Knowing it Back in 1975

Two Couples, Two Different Readings

Man Playing Saxophone in a Basement

Man Whose Shirt Resembles a Movie Screen

A Bagfull of Negs

Sometimes nostalgia has its madeleine moments (some of you would know what I'am saying) and then the past comes in torrents both in the mind and in the old black and white prints stored already for so many years so that the light (the light always present, the light of the present) does not destroy its molecules full of silver and dark shadows.
Funny how memory knows where to go when the desire strikes to look at old days so far gone as landscapes from a train, rapid, distant, impersonal, indifferent and changing so fast one does not know if we should keep on looking or to close one's eyes. Not that it hurts or nothing, it's just the way things are...