The Lake
Chapter 4: The Lake.
Isbn: 9781370814268
Abyssus Abyssum Invocat.
Psalms 42: 7
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—I could not do anything, just to take the gun out of his hands and let him die in peace. —he said ruefully and let his pupils to go from the dry fingers in his hands to the crystals that reverberated over the lake, like dragonflies.
They were crystals, or I thought them like that, like quartz dyed by the sun and the color of the pond; the blue settled in the prairie as if suddenly a sea between the vegetable of trees and rushes sprouted. The lake split in a thousand multicolored crystals, millions of waves, reflections and curves in the water that came, went away, were drowsed on the shore pushed by the wind. They were attenuating themselves until they became entangled with the wild ducks, among the tiny little hens that ran pecking at the water.
—"Let him go,"— my father said from the death and I let, but I told to, before I saw him again bending his bony and thin fingers:
—The dead weigh more than the living, and cannot be taken out from the memory.
I looked at the dismal face of the man whom I almost never managed to pull out more than four words and with which he now converged to see the jumbled pieces of liquid and foam painted in nuances. He got the peace the same I was; with the fragile transparencies of dreams that flew in bubbles and broke.
The lake was located in a nearby park and I went there to ease my confinement, to lighten the fatigue of work and distract myself with nature. I was always a passionate lover of nature. When I was a child, I made excursions through caves, rivers, hills and everything that would sound like adventure. I participated along with groups of fans of speleology and archeology in different events and trips through my native country.
In my new country of residence I had not been able to make any of those trips; all the time was occupied by my work. I had to fight to live. While most of my colleagues and acquaintances spent their free time buying things or making trips to places where there were only different conglomerates of the same frugal people and whose aim was only to squeeze people until to get the last penny, me, I usually used my time to appreciate the things that we could all see, however, perhaps nothing mattered to many others..
The lake was one of those places, my favorite paradise. I carried with my camera and my arsenal of stuff. I took pictures of everything; about the lake, of the animals, about the vegetation, about the children, in case they were present, about whatever, anything curious that crossed by the front of my lens and also photos that I would elaborate later to achieve the idea that had made me to take it.
I would not be able to remember all the wonder that gave me that landscape, all the magic and secrets I invented collecting the images and something from my creation.
I remembered my father and also used his suggestions, walked with his steps. I could never clarify if it was the same soul in different bodies. Could the human spirit bifurcate it self like that?
It was amazing how the lake filled me with serenity. I was feeling happy to see my mercy to grow while I watched the fidgety birds seek their food among the plants or peck at the larvae of the water. Once I was able to rescue a shipwrecked dog, that one that only God knows where he came from, the puppy was fastened to a log and fled from me as soon as broughting him to earth as if following a familiar scent.
Then I discovered more. The lake at night. I think this was the best of my discoveries. I was revealed the new beauties that sprouted when night fell with his blind and rotund weight on over the lake.
Not only in the water appeared different reflections and colors, also in the night itself, in the sky, in the infinite; In its imponderable magnitude, in the setting sun, in the clouds, in the moon, in the people who went to the lake at night to various things, everywhere, everyplace, there were other great and different allegories, other universes. In the silhouettes of the palm trees, in the white dewdrops that flashed from the leaves of the trees. There were thousands of details.
One night I met Marcos, as at last I knew that this man was called, entangled in his memories and lost in his loneliness, caressing the little dog I had saved.
I got very few photos about him; One or two in any case. His muteness I could not hang it from my hobby. My photos were a part of me, his silence was all of him, everything he could conceive.
Marcos was dead. A dead man who was not among the dead.
I walked the landscape with the cautious my father's footsteps even with his eyes and with the part that allows me to migrate from dimension to dimension. From the real to the unreal; That thin thread. I walked with his footsteps that were sank into the grass like also his yearnings sank; The yearnings which life made me some later possible.
I found Marcos and a story was revealed to me. An unfortunate episode among the countless prodigious subtleties of the lake. There were many things to discover on the lake. Sweet and sad.
There were innumerable secrets everywhere that I could count on my camera and there was also a nocturnal population. Fishermen with their rods, people in love, with their fevers, drunk with their hangovers, homeless people looking for a place to spend the night and Marcos. All with the globe of their floating world above their heads. Marcos did not have his balloon, he hung himself from a very fine spider's web that united him to this reality and left him to remain in a sort of marasmus.
A part I especially liked , was the part where I rescued the dog. There was a log in the ground and I could sit. It always came when it was just dusk. It could also have besides a wide view of the lake, another nearby view of the expressway going nearby and a beautiful picture of the sunset. The rays of the sun shone brightly above the goblets and bounced off the indigo surface creating a brittle effect. I also saw the silent man many times over there. The log later became our meeting place.
Once I extinguished a fire, which was undoubtedly dangerous. With the lake so close I did not find it difficult.
When night dissolved the colors in its murkiness, then other delicacies were multiplied, other features, it gave me other spaces. I sat down on the log and took hundreds of pictures with the camera attached to my tripod. Sometimes I wrote. Not only the clarifications about the photos I wanted to achieve and how I designed them or how I will desing them, but also things that came to my mind about what could be described from a specific photo.
One day I found like a bed, it was before I found Marcos. In the undergrowth someone planted a bed with old cloths and things that he could lie down on. One was those solitary beings of the night who went to the lake seeking shelter among the trees had left there provisions and clothes to mitigate their helplessness.I dialogued it with my father.
So, that changed my goal in some way. It changed in the sense that now I was not only looking for the photos, I looked from then on how I could help those people, who walked like ghosts carrying bags of belongings, things that they had nowhere to drop. However, I could perceive that sometimes the best way to help these beings was to be away from them.
The bed turned out to belong to a very thin man, of speech with accent like oriental; Arabic could be. He was riding his bicycles with clothes and bottles. I had seen that man before, but I never imagined that he slept there.
I even made friendship with a man of advanced age whom I saw him first fishing and who days after seeing me over the lake with my camera he let me take a picture about him and then invited me to eat some delicious cold and seasoned little fishes that he brought.
The old man was sometimes accompanied by another who presented laborious and severe aspect, the one who always wore a hat, whatever time it was. The other man, I never saw him spend the night in the vicinity of the lake, but he asserted that he did not allow himself to be imprisoned by the expensive rents of our city, what make me able to guess the rest.
I also met a very young teen girl who said that she often went to bath in the lake. The first time I saw this girl, I retired ashamed, because, she was practically naked. But without any shame, she came out from the water, she got her dry clothes, got her dressed and sat on the shore to eat something that she kept in her bag and had left out with her other belongings.
After a few minutes, I approached her and asked something I can not remember. She answered me very naturally, took off her long plastic boots full of water, emptied them and finished her diner, stood next to me and told me quickly four or five things interspersed without the slightest attempt to relate each them.
She emphasized her need to bathe and that our hospitable city had no public places to do so. It seemed to me toremember that somebody told me yes, but she reaffirmed that her custom had already allowed her to acquire a kind of aphrodisiac element in its practice.
After we laughed and introduced ourselves, I shook hands with her, she put on other lightweight shoes that were in his purse, and left. Her name was Clara. I never saw her again.
"My crazy city," I thought. "The voragin inside the voragin".
Few weeks later, a very demure and circumspect gentleman whom I met by the benches near the lake surrounded by ladies, was making to a story in which I recognized my friend Clara, the aphrodisiac habit's girl. The gentleman, quite offended because of the "indecency" of the young woman, he was claiming for requirements to be taken in order to, that "underworld" people did not frequent the park or the lake.
He said it, twisting his mouth with a gesture of contempt that denoted the belief of superiority, but in spite of being a crooked mouth, much uglier in my way of seeing that the one I remembered in the young girl, it was a single mouth, above which there was a single nose and two eyes already painfully covered with thick glasses and also were only two, two miserable eyes that were going to close forever some day like those of all the humble people he wanted to take away from the lake and the park.
I remember exactly that night; Which was the first time I saw Marcos, although we coincide in many other opportunities. Unlike most other people of similar appearance with which I ran into.
It was curious that those were almost never the same people. Except for the man on the bed, the one who going with his belongings on the bicycle and the fishermen of whom he spoke, he had never coincided with the same person twice. Many stories also escaped to me. They vanished just like their protagonists.
On one occasion I went to the lake to take a picture of a tremendous moon that I could see when I arrived home, with which I imagined a magnificent photo. As I was leaving and I could see, near some bushes, a little girl, who seemed to be no more than fourteen or fifteen years old, crying low and quietly. I approached her carefully and spoke to him first in English and then in Spanish.
I asked her what was wrong and if I could help her, but she just standed up and ran off. Either way sometimes the best help is not trying to help. Not to try interfere or been involve in others' concern.
That anecdote was lost to me and I related it to one in which I wanted to help a bird fallen from its nest or maybe it was that the parents was instructing him to fly. The case was that I grabbed it and when I was trying to put it on a fence from where I could better try the flight, The parents, who saw the little bird held in my hand screaming, attacked me fiercely, screaming and pricking on me, and threw me a jet of their excrement.
It is not always understood when others want to help and not always help is achieved when help is needed. The human intention is like the smoke, it is dissolve, it is confused and lost.
The night I found Marcos, I had gone to the lake called by some mysterious reflections that illuminated the sky from time to time, causing something that in case of being able to capture it with my camera could elaborate a thousand ideas with the photo. I looked for the best angle, or the most favorable view from where you could see the flashes better. I left my car under the pines of the park and tried different positions.
Finally, I stood almost in the water, in the solid part where I could still put my tripod and took many photos. When I thought I had enough, I kept my things in my backpack, although I left my camera by hand and I was leaving, but I noticed the desolate man at one of the tables under the pines.
The idea that ran through my mind was to take a picture of that image in the dark with the lake in the background. To get a silhouette using the backlight reflexes. I approached him and greeted him soberly. Since no different idea came to me, I asked him if he had something to light my cigar, I Kept a new one in my backpack.
I had the impression I'd seen him before, though I could not be sure. Sitting on his legs he had the dog that I took out from the water, the one that was attached to the log. He barely answered. He shook his head, not speaking, but I noticed that he pause his watching in my camera. I was close and he touched the lens lightly, denied again without words, quiet, like if he was extracting a memory from the most remote forgetfulness. Did you understand me? Do you speak Spanish?
—Do you have any lighter?— just in case, but the same, immutable.
I wondered how this elusive trope could exist in a society full of friendly people, who dominated with excellence their fluid sarcasms, whose eternal smiles made us suppose situations where they would beg you with delicious urbanity: — please, let us to rip your head off.
I did not know how to adopt the proper way, or establish any conversation and less ask him to let me take the picture. With my camera hanging around my neck, I walked away in the way I had approached. I did not dare to ask anything of that being who clamored shouting out from his mutism.
The dog barked at me as I walked away, it launched from the first position and came almost to me, barked twice more, and returned to the place that was before. The night absorbed the barking and the echo followed me as I walked towards my car.
The sophisticated and generous modern society has turned the protection of the helpless beings into a mere sophistry, I was thinking. It is preached everywhere for it; There are countries and cities that take action and create programs to help, but destitution and helplessness persist. It is the generality; it is promulgated, but that's all.
The photo I had thought was only one, but if I saw him again, it might happen that I designed a group, that is, several photos where I would represent this theme, about I felt attracted before :
Homeless people. A sensitive subject.
On my way to my car I stopped for a few minutes in the group of ladies and the gentleman; The one with the crooked bosa with its eloquent oratory. His speech disgusted me. I continued my trayectory, still thinking of the human shadow I had seen under the pines. The solitary being was already occupying a fragment in the cavity of my musings.
Days later I found him again in another place of the park. A bend in the lake, like a small pier where several boats were floating. I greeted him from a distance, but I do not remember if he answered me. Another afternoon when I got to my log, Marcos was sitting there. Incredibly he recognized me.
—Photographer— he said, "and I knew he spoke my language. I greeted him and he let me sit on the other end of the log. I was encouraged because he was able to recognize me, even if it was as "Photographer", I did not know his name, but he inspired a minimum of confidence. It sounded to me curious me because he called me "photographer", everyone could has a camera. I got up and talked to him about various things.
I asked where he had left his friend, I meant the dog, but he just shook his head and gave a slight smile.
As I spoke, I noticed that he was without anything. That is, belongings or bottles like the others homeless who used to walk in the park. I imagined that maybe he could had a place.
I left my things there. My backpack, the case of my fundamental instrument; That I carried it around my neck, my bottle of water and other useful things for my task that I had brought to the park that day.
It was easier and comfortable when I was carrying some auxiliary devices like other lenses, filters and my other camera with its remote control. Anything that would allow me to do whatever shot I could think of.
I entertained myself taking my pictures and when I returned to the trunk Marcos was gone.
Finally after several casual simultaneities where we had been able to see each other, and even exchange greetings, we started a tiny and first word.
The afternoon that there was a soccer tournament in the park and I wanted to take some photos. After I finished and went to my favorite place, we found in the log. Marcos was like drowsed in it, reading something.
I have the habit or the custom about to introducing myself talking regarding what I think was the craziest and Homeric of my adventures: my decision to come to another country, to emigrate to a culture, society and idiosyncrasy that are not the ones that saw me to born. That; the same hilarity of monochrome words that no longer bring me argument.
The greatness of my new country of residence and its generosity towards me, did not surpass yet the temerity of facing, only me, by my self a new life, in an immense and unknown land, without possible support, without resources, without the required mental preparation and really without the great need.
It may indeed be that change and its risk is not such a thing; Now I think so and it seems silly to say so. Now that I know how to walk the new ways, I know how to open doors and lean on things I did not even know existed. Ingredients and parts of the mechanism that I was not able to mesh.
Anyway, I understand that I ventured to do something that I did not calculate its size. Nor was I aware of how close I was, because my disinformation, to becoming one like those homeless beings. But luckily my arrival in my new settlement was full of beatitudes, I believe now; definitely.
I told him almost funny, how sitting on the air plane I wondered what action would take on my arrival. Where would I go and what could be my occupation. I knew that my titles and categorizations would not be useful. In addition to the most basic: where I would live.
I told him about my naive idea about with that meager money I brought I would be able to live until I got a job. That I thought I was going to rent a room in any hotel near the airport and the next day I would start the search that would allow me to find something to do.
My mother had secretly conciled with an old friend of her to come and pick me up. Mothers, whatever age we have, they always take care of us.
She did it without my approval because she knew that I would not consent to anyone bothering about things that were only my business. Then, the thing was not so serious; Nothing to unearth buried cities.
The testimony I said to Marcos ended the way things ended. Maybe that's why it seemed to him intrascendent. I followed my narration to the end and when I finished I saw that my interlocutor was paying me an empty attention. I realized that he was gone from our world.
—"So it was," — I told him —"how I left my roots and my dead behind. And we returned to silence. To the stillness under the pine forest.
It was the same afternoon like every afternoon, after which I would come another night like every night. There were no rainbows or luminous birds flying over us. We were just the two strangers, facing each other; the possibility to arise the nexus between two entities, to split our lives into two, like nuts.
He had not said a word. I stared at him. I had not been able to see him clearly. I calculated him about fifty years old, but that because of his athletic configuration; His hair was white and his skin eroded by calamity and contingencies.
He got up and went to get a seed of the pines. She came back and bent on disintegrating it into pieces. That was the beginning of his revelation. Then he said to me:
—"Interesting." And he just finished to broke his seed.
I wanted to ask him, but I understood that he would not tell me anything. I am used to talking and seeing with my camera, which is an extension of my eyes. With these eyes I took the picture of his blackened hands, his pores and gray hair, his frequent sitting position, his shabby look, his possible culture but little wordiness, his neat appearance against everything usual in These walking people. The best, when he said within the impenetrable breadth of his reservation:
—You left your dead behind. I brought one alive that is now my dead, —he said under his breath. — I could not do anything, just to take the gun out of his hands and let him die in peace.
There was the entrance to his crypt. He said so, and keep astonished in the distance, looking at the blue of the lake with the bright and colorful splashes that jumped like broken glass.
He folded and extended the fingers of his hands from the ones who seemed to want to pull something out. He changed his posture by standing in front of me. I supposed he was going to tell me:
—"I'll tell you,"—when he'd told me enough and nothing else.
—"The dead weigh more than the living," I said, stealing the phrase, "and you can not get them out of the memory."
He told me what he could tell me, I thought and I did not know who or how or why. I knew what he wanted to tell me and what I needed to figure out my story. It was not the matter I wanted to work on, but a more interesting one.
There are things that appear that at last end up being difficult to illustrate, at least with photographs, with vector images created, I do not remember if I tried before. If someone discover a way of portraying the subjective, it will be easy.
If it had been so at those times , would it be "La Monna Lisa" the same or would it be better?
That afternoon I took pictures about the tournament and others, but not about Marcos. I left to my house, busy, with my mind on more than about my project. I recorded the words, and the gloomy silence that followed them.
I like knowing how to respect the silence of others. Only the person himself owns his silence.
I stopped to think, who he was talking about, what gun I was talking about, and what I thought I understood. Marcos reproached himself for not having done something.
The trance to take the photos would be presented, but I wanted to be clear about what was going to tell and detail the images in what I would work. I started with a photo, one that ... I'm sorry to say, I hijacked it covertly.
The photo I was able to get was ... "regular". I do not think he says much. I shot the moon, I did not even know if it is focused. The gloom of the main motive repelled me. I could not achieve the correct framing, nor adapt the horizon line, because what I would have liked to take, I needed the strong immobility woven by the song of the crickets.
I do not like it as I did, it was incomplete. Was it possible to complete it?
My vision traversed the retina and hypersensitive nerves put it in the brain that did assemble the complete photo.
My humble lens transported an image to a cold sensor that could not knew how to make a fable with it.
It was a miserable idea, a syllable of an untold story. The tip of the ball of yarn that used to unwind in relationships. It was always like this. My models are my friends, my clients are, Marcos would be too.
Then something happened that helped me to understand who and how was the man who could become a friend.
One afternoon, I had gone to the park looking for pictures of people. Were images for a sporting event. One of the sites on the internet where I sold my photos was looking for pictures of people doing sports. I would use the ones I could take in the tournament, but I wanted other variants. I walked the park. It was near the lake but I could not see it from where I was.
I went around the basketball field, then down the tennis courts, took pictures and then went to where there were children, almost all with their parents, but some ran alone on the grass behind balls, with kites and toys .
The plain was full of young people, of boys who frolicked and shouted, of people walking with animals. Something distant saw Marcos. He walked stooped as he usually did. I sat there, from where I could see it surreptitiously. I saw him walk to where I was, but he had not seen me.
Suddenly a child threw a ball high and ran to catch it. There was a roar and I saw a black figure who ripped his leash from his ownter's hands and shot himself to the the boy's direction.
The ball rose and the boy stared at it, paying no attention to the unbridled dog running toward him. I watched the scene from my position but in truth I saw no danger. I forgot Marcos for a moment and I became aware of him again when I saw him run and catch the dog that was already very close to the boy.
The dog did not have the proper protector in his mouth that prevents these animals from biting, but Marcos grabbed his jaws and kept it that way until his master reached them and put the protector to the animal. In a somewhat inadequate position he addressed some words to the man who left the place without replying.
But this was not all. The worst thing was that a woman, presumably the mother of the little boy, left her entertained conversation and went desperate to the group that had gathered around and she directed several insults to the man of appearance like a homeless who was already distant.
She shouted and pointed with her finger, grasped her beautiful hair, composed her slender figure and sent all sorts of insults to the intruder who nearly ran over her child.
She greeted, presented herself very flirtatious and apologized to the owner, who caressed the innocent pet softly; who fortunately already had the protector well secured.
The whole group talked about the need to eliminate these individuals from the city or at least remove them from public places.
The reaction that this event made me to adopt should have been based not only on the event itself but also on my judgment on the majority of most of my cohabitants.
I got up and headed for the area where I had seen Marcos go. I thought I knew where I was going. So I met him in our log.
He was curled up in the hiding place. I greeted him and as soon as he raised his head I told him that I had seen what had happened. I clarified that I meant the dog and the boy. I asked if I could take a seat and he gave his approval. I told him about what seemed unfair to me, and that his action seemed to me to be cautious.
He shook a newspaper that he carried like saying: "Forget it"
I commented according my disagreement with what happened and offered him a bottle of water. By then, when I was going to the lake, I carried a plastic bag with several bottles of water. I had them ready and cold and left them new without uncovering in the sectors where I supposed my protégés to be. In the park there was water, but hot water and not in all its areas.
Marcos accepted my offer. Step forward; In our population it is not known if you can or when or from whom you can accept anything.
I put my hand out and told him my name. He did the same and said:
—Marcos— I knew then that this was his appellative.
They were two tremendous advances: a little trust and his name. It may seem implausible, but there are those who have at hand several, different to the real name. I have verified it, however I have not been able to establish the true purpose in it. I did not know if it was one of those cases. I did not think so.
He grabbed the bottle and drank without hesitation until he emptied it. Although I was curious to be told something about what had already outlined a minimum, I knew how to control myself and match his reserve. I have made it one of my premises: "explain me if you want and you think you can explain and when you want to explain."
He kept his isolation. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, as if a doubt assaulted him. I felt that it was time to leave. I said good-bye without another word. With those two words that I do not always pronounce well: "bye, bye".
I will be a misfit for life. Not only does it sound strange to express myself in another language when it is not necessary, I use English as a tool, when I need it. Equally I think it unacceptable to avoid modesty or invade even my friends with questions.I think that the modesty and discretion in my new habitat can turn out to be unfavorable.
Talking with my friends, they, in some situations, tell me:
—Why did not you ask him this? Or "you should have clarified that you are very good at such a thing"
I do not know, I do not think I'm very good at anything. I can live in a quiet "mediocrity". One of my friends says: "My greatest success has been that I became nobody".
I also see how many to whom advice could be good, hurry to give advice to you, no matter if you ask them or not, if they are sure of what they say or not. Without evaluating the level of trust between the adviser and the advised. They do not suggest or propose you, rather they impose you.
I noticed that there were buses that circulated through our distribution, that they went to the park and also tour over completely. But I would tell Marcos about it if there was a propitious opportunity, if the scope of our friendship increased. On the other hand, what could he not know about the park or the lake that I knew?
Marcos looked like an intelligent man. I did not balance the homelessr way that adsorbed him with what in truth his person could result. I met a lady, who lived or resided almost in time at an omnibus stop.
This lady carried her belongings in the markets' shopping carts. I was able to talk to her once. Several things surprised me. For example, she spoke different languages like: French, English, Portuguese, he said that something German besides his main language; the Spanish.
It seemed to be true, because we had already spoken English and had a word with her in French, She spoke better than I did. She also uttered phrases in Portuguese and German. According to what I could know about her, she had degrees and qualifications, but for some reason she lived as she lived. I never knew the reason, but I had the suspicion that she was not very sane. Logical if you live years in the explained conditions.
A Polish gentleman, who walked with another shopping cart carrying his books and gear, was an accountant and helped me without charging me to declare my taxes.
Difficulties can happen to us regardless of our condition, preparation, knowledge, training or ability. In addition to an important agent or factor:
The link between knowledge, the ability to work and obtaining a job, is now adulterated at present.
Our planet has a population that surpasses the seven thousand million inhabitants, this number has years, now must be greater. I have not been able to obtain the data on how much of that population is active and qualified labor force.
The cost of living in most nations is high and the global unemployment rate is enormous, according to recent data, but homeless people in the world are ... well, I will quote a consulted article:
"It is very difficult to determine the number of homeless people in the world because the countries have different legal definitions of the homeless. Natural disasters and sudden civil unrest also complicate the situation. The best there is is a conservative United Nations estimate of two thousand five, which indicates that the number of homeless people is one hundred million".
That means that about one in sixty people does not have decent housing.
This data seems to me a hyperbole, but I got it from reliable sources, if any online source can be. I give the above illustration by the obvious relationship between having a job and living in a home.
But, without getting entangled in statistics, the issue of housing is one, very serious indeed, but what I want to refer to is that many ready and qualified people cannot get a job and are forced to live in whatever posible way.
We can question our self whether it is the ability to work or the viability to obtain them or the management of citizens or what other factors imply that a kind of funnel is made where occupations, now speaking of the best paid, circulate in small groups. I believe that in the generality of the countries happens thus.
Good jobs are handled in cliques. Regarding the other jobs, it is generally not easy to get them, but is more likely.
The tumult of speculations I was handling was a product of a question that was at the polymorphic root of the subject which I wanted to understand and try even if it went beyond my project:
“ What determined or established, where was the due to point because of that those ambulatory people could existed?”
This concern was strengthened in my brain, it got rid of the project and made me study.
In agreement with essays and books read, I can write this brief review:
The components are different. They can be the loss of employment, debts, family problems, housing shortages, some are disabled, others affected suffer mental and physical problems or addiction, especially alcohol.
The homeless women, most of them have abandoned their husbands, either fled from them, been driven from their homes or engaged in prostitution. Of course the whole set is not considered to cover the hundreds or thousands of species and cases.
The content I wanted to address is, as I said, sensitive, even legally sensitive. At least not all the agencies that market photographic material accept works about homeless people.
I really did not know if Marcos was one of the ... "homeless", but he looked like. In addition, my doubt encompassed other people I met in the recent past and others I have seen without being linked to them.
The story about Marcos could give rise to other works with the same substance as a base, but I needed to understand it, to know about the delicate point regarding which I was going to express myself.
As if that were not enough, the subject intrigued me, it went out from work itself. The human who identifies me, asked for answers.
He said he had brought someone.
—"I brought an alive one who is now my dead" —he had said to me.
Bringing a family member or anyone else to another territory is a big responsibility. If that person dies or a certain mishap occurs, it will be an imprint difficult to erase.
It was, in my opinion, something like that what dragged Marcos to the precipice of despair and destitution.
It was an assumption, but sustained by a personal experience: the death of my father.
The world came over me, but for the first time I said a phrase that I would repeat in many other catastrophes:
"When everything seems to be lost, it's a good time to start again."
I wanted to give my key to Marcos. To give my words to him. To share with him the prophecy that helped me to change the setbacks into experiences.
I say prophecy because that was the first statement my father gave me from his other dimension. And I realized that he was still with me.
In a few days I went to the lake and walked to where the half-rotten tree log crushed its voluminous mass on the grass. I sat down, somewhat tired and lamenting that my friend was not there. Few people frequented this place. I took out one of my water bottles and drank anxiously.
I had gone to the park on my bike. It was better, at least when I was not carrying my photo auxiliary things. I had only taken my camera and my bottles of water. When I was riding my bike I did not have to waste time looking for parking.
The day before it was drizzling. Over the log was a wet paper. I picked it up and watched at it. It was a diary. Ads, offers, classifieds, merchandise in general.
In one paragraph there was talk of a regrettable incident in I do not know in what park where a dog had attacked a child. Serious injuries was caused. Several bites that still maintained him hospitalized. About how the insurance I do not know what, and the administration and management of the park warned that ...
My thought turned back. I remembered Marcos reading and then shaking his newspaper. That newspaper he left lying there, the one that shook when I got to him.
I thought, but my thinking was not just that. An idea that the air took away. It was also a note about that man.
I was around the lake almost every day. I was trying a wide-angle lens that I bought online and had no practice in its use. As well as another Macro lens that I found very useful to take pictures about insects and plants or small objects. I could take details about the bark of trees. Overall, photos that I found interesting.
Minor and beautiful mushrooms grew in the park. Small flowers and curious animals. I had work for a while.
I did not have meetings with Marcos during that week. I did not even see him in the park and I even thought I would not see him again. As usual. Another trail of smoke lost in the lake.
But I saw him again. I went to the park because I had agreed with some clients that we would meet when I finished my shift, that would be about two in the afternoon of that Tuesday. We were in the early dark months, so I had to make the photos in a hurry if I wanted to take advantage of the sunlight.
The sunlight gives me better colors and it avoids the noise in the images. I got to my room, dropped my stuff and took what I thought useful for the photo shoot.
Was about a pregnant with her husban. The rest was the family. It was not difficult to accommodate the details. I took the photos and came back, when near where I live, or almost on the same block I saw Marcos leaving a house. With his usual slowness, he closed the door of a side hall that surrounded the house and went down the same street that I came.
I stopped, greeted him very cordially and asked him if he lived there. I did not have time to think about what I was asking, I just asked the first thing that occurred to me.
To my astonishment, he pointed to the house from which he was leaving and said,
—There.
I was glad. Then, it was all my mistake. Marcos was not a ... "Homeless." He had where to live. And it was a house that looked comfortable.
I continued my way home thinking:
—What the hell is he looking for around the park?
I realized that the people who frequently saw me in the park, around the lake, with my shabby appearance; because my clothes are the usual, I do not use luxuries of any kind, my hair without trimming, carrying a plastic shopping bag; full of water bottles, in my old junk car, if not by bicycle, with my old work backpack , my tripod's bag, the camera's faded bag and my other stuff, would not see big difference between Marcos and me.
In truth there was no such difference. And if Marcos lived in that house even if he was rented, it was very possible, not to say sure, that his room was better than mine.
A big tall, thin man who was walked around our block. That he no doubt had an illness that made his lips tremble; may be Parkinson's, I think a disease called that has a similar symptomatology.
The fact is that this gentleman, whom I always saw walking laden with jabas and even provoked me the idea that it was something silly, on one occasion when we stumbled, he invited me to enter in a house that was like a mansion and told that was his house.
He called his wife, we had a pleasant conversation, and I rectified my belief that the guy was a street man , and if he had succeeded in getting that house as well as maintaining it, he was not fool at all in any manner.
Horacio said: We are deceived by the appearance of truth.
One of my favorite entertainments when I'm not inventing and designing algorithms that speed my methods to produce money is to read phrases from celebrities.
I learned that Rabindranath Tagore said:
You do not see what you are, but its shadow.
Also, Charles Louis de Secondat, Lord de la Brède and Baron de Montesquieu or in simple name; Montesquieu said: I have always observed that to succeed in life you have to be understood, but to appear like a fool.
Ovid: Men do well with a sloppy look.
Charles Churchill, however, said:
Strive to keep up appearances, that the world will give you credit for everything else.
And we go back.
Charles Dickens argued that: Great men are seldom excessively scrupulous in the arrangement of their attire.
Phrases I like to reason and think about. I find contradictions and agreements, but the important thing is to think one's own point of view. To structure models for my thinking.
Ideas to introduce myself in society with which I have no choice but to mix myself if I want to advance my life, my work, my projects. I've taken a lot of time in that and I never stop learning.
I have photos with which I only express ideas, others with which I want to get closer to details, others of my city, other photos that speak of the past besides the ones that I do for sale and the small ordinary projects, but what I consider the success of my Work is when I manage to tell a story with a sequence of photos. When I achieve that those whom look at it, they could experience a feeling.
The word "sequence" is not correctly used, if you analyze what that means in the photograph, I should say better: "tell a story with a group of photos", as I suppose I counted part of my daughter's childhood, when I had her by my side. Her pranks, costumes, games and the main thing: her feelings.
I have a very simple picture that I like to see and remember about when my daughter was small.
I think this photo was titled: "Love and innocence". Although I sold the above photo to one of the sites where I publish my work, that was no the real goal.
The polyglot lady who was wandering and living in a bus stop, I had the idea of taking a picture while she slept huddled in her rags. I thought about that photo all winter. Every time I folded her corner and saw her wrapped in her bedspreads.
I wanted to name the photo: "Once upon a time in America", like a film that I liked very much, the one I saw in my youth.
I never took it. It happened to me at that time as it was happening with Marcos. It hurt to me that photo. I was not going to take it without her consent and I would not ask for her approval either. So, I would not do it. I did not.
About my current idea:
The initial project I conceived, would consist of only three or four silhouettes, so I would not need what we called "Model release", that is, the authorization of the model to publish the photo, but in reality I was not going to publish it ; I would keep it for me.
If it was the sketch, the silhouette or any other plan, it was already almost ruled out and if it was what always happens to me, that is, I place myself in the life of my characters, for that, it was necessary to rectify my concept about Marcos or leave the Empty space. I really did not care anymore.
The inspiration escaped from me, and left me no choice but to give up. Leave the segment unused. A hollow without content, without idea, like another trail of smoke, but instead I was glad.
The smoke escaped from the tube of colors, from the jumble of forms, pigments and shades that fortunately did not have, if we looked at it well.
I compare my work in general with a kaleidoscope. To this tube is given turns and appear alternate colors, figures, nuances. When I open any of my forgotten photo folders, there are innumerable feelings, propositions, allusions, besides what I said before.
My opinion or point of view from which I thought to tell, had been grounded in the appearance of that man, in his seeming, but it was not the truth. About Marcos I could make up a story if I wanted to sell the pictures, but I was not interested. I do not think that I decide to lie and less with things like this.
Anyway, I always knew that I could be completely wrong. Better, not completely. There was no doubt about his inner struggle and his grief. About one thing: some tremendous and fatal event had happened to him; neither doubt regarding that. The mistake was that I had confused him with the walking homeless beings who was already familiar to me.
If I avoided the confidence, I could take things like someone who has a bad time, and the photo I had made could say the same thing. It was a variant. The project was synthesized in that, but there were words in between.
A note came when I least expected it. I went to the park on my bike, one Friday that I could finish early and decided to go to the lake to entertain myself. I took my digital machine gun or as I call it: "my abstract palette", a bottle of water and walked out without even riding my two wheels.
I arranged my things so that I could ride and almost did when I realized that I was in front of the house that I had seen Marcos to leave.
I stopped my hurry and stood for a moment watching the house. A very handsome and well-dressed young man came out from the side aisle and, without giving me time to talk, he got into a car. An expensive car, something common in my city.
If we are going to have a car, it has to be an expensive and new car. Whether it works well or not is less important. The main thing is that it has to be beautiful, new and pricey. It is not a car that could transports us what we want, that takes us and brings us; No, that is not the sense. Nor is it to stop us in considering whether we can afford that luxury, if our income of money allows it. That will be resolved later. Oh!, another thing, it has to be solved without giving the minnor occasion to affect the costumes, that is, our look and personal appearance.
We can diet, eliminate things and superfluous tastes and make some trapdoor, any little trick.
Do whatever is necessary to live and to do like others; "If you are in Rome, behave like the Romans."
I did not have time to speak to the elegant young man, but two houses later I found a woman sweeping her sidewalk and asked her concerning Marcos. I thought a neighbor so close should know about him.
The woman was thoughtful.
—Marcos, Marcos. No, I do not know him.
Then I pointed to the house and said,
—I think he lives over there.—and I described him.
Then she said:
—Oh, the photographer's father, yes, but he does not really live there.
I remained silent for a moment and the woman continued:
—"It's criminal." Criminal, sinic and I do not add other things because I do not know you. The real owners of that house were them; The old man and the son, the photographer boy who shot himself.
My perplexity must have been noted, because the woman, holding my hand, spoke piously:
—Forgive me, son, I do not even know who you are.
I hurried to introduce myself and half numbed by my stupefaction, I said my name, I clarified that he lived in the block when turning, that I saw Marcos leave the house that indicated to him but that by where he saw it very often was by the park, By the lake, that he had come to think that he was living there, that he was homeless.
—Well, you thought right about him, he has no home, they threw him out from his house.
My bewilderment had to be flashy.
—I am Maria, count on me the day you try to help that poor devil. Come, let's talk for a moment.
She made me to enter her garden, which was well fenced, we settled in both chairs and she began to straighten some plants that touched her knees.
I stopped to watch, to look at the woman I was talking with. Her face was excessively made up, but she was not ugly. She was not an old woman, really. Her hair complicated her curly shape and was covered by a black handkerchief. His lips were painted with little care, and his green eyes were the caricature of what were beautiful eyes. She managed her terms without giving the impression of who intended to gossip. Her mouth vibrated nervously with elusive slips that harmonized to say:
—They threw the old man out from the house, from his house. Before the young man died, she had managed to leave him adrift.
I asked her who she was talking about when she referred to her.
—The blonde—she deciphered as she straightened and settled into her chair.
—She's to blame, she is the guilty. You know that under this sky nothing is hidden and I know that she and her litigation ended up causing suicide.
I did not inquire about who had committed suicide, I already knew. I was calming a barrel of shrapnel in my brain, with the spark at less than a foot. I wanted to go to that one damn place to the house from where I had seen Marcos going out and to clarify to myself what kind of muddle mess that was.
Maria said that Marcos had a son about thirty or thirty-five, who was a photographer and worked for some magazine and newspaper. That he was a man who was passionate about his work and he lived attending to his father, taking care of him.
But, nothing is perfect; He seemed to suffer from an addiction: women and something else. Something that made him crazy and sometimes manic and insomniac. She watched him walk down the street at dawn with his camera in hand and talking to himself, like a damn.
I laughed to myself, thinking that she probably would have seen me, too, in an identical way, circling the hamlet at the same time and discussing how could I better portray something.
As for the other addiction, I also suffer it. But something else besides his passions took the photographer to end his life.
Marcos always looked the same was; as a crazy, a vagabond and he was not. Marcos was a good man. He liked serving others. According to Maria, he arranged his garden many times without charging her. She offered him coffee.
—He loved it!.
He adored his son. He admired him, he gave him everything he could give, even passed the house to his name. But Rene, who was the name of the photographer, fell in love with one of the many whores with whom he became embroiled, and she forced him to take it out of his own home.
—René also gave him things.— Maria went on, pulling up or rolling up her shorts. Maybe too short. I had the prosaic idea that she wanted me to look at his thighs, which were not bad at all. A delicate and appetizingly white and shaved skin.
—He gave him a car, which did not last long. Maros is epileptic.—she said, leaning back over the plant and I realized that the intention was not the plants. Despite her age, her breasts were round and firm.
Maria checked her flowers and suddenly pulled her tight blouse down to expand the field of vision.
I kept quiet. It is delightful to be silent looking at a woman who offers herself. Maria was my age, apparently, but she used to call me, “son”. She was pulling her blouse down and showed the top of her sturdy, solid breasts.
The talk was pleasant, but I had things to do. I gave my explanations to Maria and I I agreed with her to return. I asked if she liked the wine, if she liked that I brought a bottle to share it while we talked.
She blushed and with a mischievous smile:
—It should be while my husband works." When you see the parking lot like now, do not could be parked a silver BMW.
But she vindicated herself ashamed:
—My husband hates all those matters that are not our business." No, he could not be here.
She gave me her number and I left.
The park became insipid to me. I had it riddled. There was no place anymore, or anything that would have gone unnoticed. I got into the habit of walking. I was going by the lake, there was always something new and I was walking down my block.
I called my friend and I brought the wine. We drank a portion, we talked a little. It was early, about ten or ten and something in the morning. Maria was restless and I retired quickly, leaving the bottle. I told her we would finish it later, but we did not finish it.
In another confluence, although we exchanged words, she believed that I had gone only to inquire about Marcos. And he shortened the meeting.
She explained that she had lived there for more than fifteen years, and when she bought that house, Marcos already had his own. Then his son came to live with him and then brought the blonde, after bringing four or five sluts that did not stay long.
She never sympathized with the poor old man, who in three or four months was already walked the street, as if he were an indigent.
Maria watched them chat in the parking lot in the mornings. René looked embarrassed, gave him money and then, Marcos was leaving. "I do not know where," "I called him occasionally and gave him some coffee." René went to work and the "prostitute" stayed in their rooms to sleep and receive friends who came to comfort her melancholy.
—But the pain of René was not for this, but for his father. The shot was given by remorse. I can not imagine how, but at last the house was fucked up, was tricked up. The "cute girl" is the owner.
Suffocated, she added:
—He shot himself. I could not say if he deserved it.
The woman said so and wiped the sweat from her face, still without makeup. She stood up as if to say that the interview was over.
I said some kind words to say goodbye and I went on my way aimlessly, but it occurred to me that I could visit the... "cute girl" and after checking that Maria had stayed inside, I rang the bell of the other house.
What the hell! I wanted to see her! I would not leave to see the cause of the cataclysm. I thought the bottle could have been useful. At least take and have it in my backpack.
I rang the bell three or four times. The "sleeping beauty" opened its door and a wave of fragrance of woman rushed from inside as if emanated in jets. A provocative and insinuating breath was shuffled with the brightness of the morning that was on my back and surely caused a contrasting effect on my face.
She was a young woman. I calculated it twenty-eight or thirty years. She looked at me seriously and curiously. I detailed her too much, it can be. She was really beautiful and her voice reminded me of the December bells and the crystals on the lake.
She placed a hand under her chin as if to say:
—"Well, what the hell do you want?"
Some men, we have the defect of letting us to be overwhelmed by female beauty. It annihilates our intelligence. As if that were not enough, a slot in the bedding she had putted on her emanating body, showed two legs that the devil must have carried in his carry-on baggage when he was assigned the management of hell.
I explained that I was looking for Marcos. That I needed to see him for... I do not know what folly I had within my reach to say.
She lowered her hand and put it on the door frame, as if to close it.
—I do not know who you are talking about, I do not know Marcos at all, and much less here in my house.
She lit up with the smile that the executioner had made when asking to the condemned man:
—"Would you be so kind to let me reach that hygienic saw to saw off your neck, please?"
Then, with the same fraternal gesture and like singing:
—"Thank you!
So, she said:
—Goodbye!— and closed the door in my nose.
That afternoon, when the dusk was already dropping its spots like black snow, I went through the park. I wanted to see my friend. I did not think about the project or the photos, I thought I'd something to say to him. Somehow, to let him to know I wanted to help him.
But I did not see him. I walked by the park benches, by the log, by the boats, by the places where we were from time to time. Without any result, I could not find him.
I spent almost three hours in the park. I used one of the soda machines to quench my thirst, because I had not brought water. I went by the sports grounds, by a large shed where people sometimes sit. Wherever the solitary walker might be, but nothing, I could not find it.
About nine or ten at night, it began to rain. An icy rain that began when I was in the part of the park where there is another cabin. Close to the tree's log. Not too close, but I knew the log was on the other side, behind the trees risingin front of the small building.
I sat down and waited for the rain to subside, to go without getting too wet on my way home. Next day I had to start in my job at six in the morning to work and when I started at that time I would get up at about four-thirty to clean and dress calmly.
That's when I saw him. When I saw the distant silhouette of the head down. He was walking inside the water. I stood up startled and rubbed my eyes to make sure. I stared at the shadow, as the figure penetrates the lake, impassive as if walking through the queen's gardens.
I could not be sure he was Marcos, But it seemed to me. I took, migh be, too long to decide to run to him. I screamed at first, once, twice, three times. There was no one else around. I grabbed my phone and thought to dial and ask for help, but it would take me a long time.
I darted myself towards the dark figure that was already distant and interned in the waters that I supposed deep. I shouted at him many other times, when I was closer.
But I no longer saw him, he sank or disappeared or I can not explain where the fuck he went the trace of man that was lost in the quicksand, in those murky and shifting waters.
In the following days, I crossed the park, explored the lake from top to bottom, I asked park workers for something transcendent that had happened. I figured that if it was as I imagined they would discover the corpse floating. But no, I could only hear about a woman to whom was shot in the park and other common things.
Sometimes, I took the street and repaired carefully in the related houses, but I could not even see Maria or contact her and after calling her and trying to talk without answering me, I did not call anymore and erased the phone.
I do not just adapt my mind and that's it. They are daily, normal, ordinary things that happen every day. People are like the crystals of the lake; Appear, shine and disappear. They come and go.
The people whom we see no more, it is just that, events that crumble, volatilize in the human mass that delights with its internal combats, struggles and contradictions, nothing to be alarmed for, neither to worry about.
Life goes on and we can not be aware about everything that takes away the blizzard.
Even It will take myself away any day and God grant that no news concerning to be left that can sadden my daughter.
About Marcos, I never knew anything that would reaffirm or deny what I saw. He got lost and did not leave a trail either in the wind or in the water, nor even the smoke trail.
The lake swallowed him.
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