The monthly is an excercise for me to collect, roumage, and revisit my archive of past images in an attempt to bring them together under a feeling, concept, phrase, word, moment etc that I feel close to at this time.
Often I disregard past images because they dont reflect my current line of work, dont fit in any project or section to include in my portfolio, or becasue I dont feel as proud of them as I once did. Still, those pictures, and me taking them, enveloped the entirety of my existance at one moment, which is enough to give them a space and the respect they deserve, not only as images, but as moments to recall.
M02
“Dijo entonces que cada cual tenía un camino marcado en la vida y que se podía renegar de ese camino por ambición y sensualidad” - El Camino, Miguel Delibes.
“He said then that everyone had a path marked out in life, and that one could turn away from that path out of ambition or sensuality.”
I read El Camino in 2024 after my mom told me El Mochuelo, the main character, reminded her of me. The book, in itself, and the feeling it left with me have long dwelled in my mind as I fly to distant countries and continents, look for jobs and friendship, or lie down on the sofa of some beat-up hostel 5,000km away from everyone I love. It is in these places that I think of ambition and sensuality (not to be confused with sexuality, and which in my reading of the phrase, and with spanish connotations to the word, can be expanded to something other than romance and sexuality and into other realms of emotional depth) connected by a rope, and where walking towards one path seems to tense up that rope - tugging me towards the other. Where there is a constant imbalance between work and love, experience and friendship, opportunity and missed opportunities. Ambition and sensuality oppose one another. One can have the ambition to love, but that is within sensuality. One can be content with their objectives and/or conection with the people around them. One cannot be content and ambitious, or ambitious and enamored. Obviously, overlaps exist in this contentment, ambition, sensuality Venn diagram, in the same way one can jump from being pulled by one or the other interchangeably.
This excerpt appears in the book in the context of rural Spain in the 1940s. Of a boy who is sent off to the big city having lived only in the myth of a small town in between valleys, where everyone has their own call, and where everyone knows enough to distinguish a Jay from a Goldfinch. Where the train passes through town without stopping and shoots off to somewhere far, knowingly modern yet inconceivable. Where life in the shade of progress or innovation was, for the majority, enough and sound.
The quote lives now, and rests upon me, in a very different way to how it was laid onto paper by Delibes largely because the context has changed. The fast pace, immediacy of knowledge, the ability to dream your way to the opposite side of the world, the expectation around work, and to do (unpaid) internships, to eat from the supermarket, and not know what it is that you are eating or where it came from; much less who made it, AI, a global pandemic, watching people getting killed in tiktok news channels, digital nomads, mortgage-backed securities?, emails, linkedin. The quote now lives in dissonance with the order that the world has, and continues to rush into.
It seems to me that the marked-out path, what is now expected, is instead one of constant and increasing ambition, and that one can renage on that path out of sensuality or contentment.
“Dijo entonces que cada cual tenía un camino marcado en la vida y que se podía renegar de ese camino por ambición y sensualidad” - El Camino, Miguel Delibes.
“He said then that everyone had a path marked out in life, and that one could turn away from that path out of ambition or sensuality.”
I read El Camino in 2024 after my mom told me El Mochuelo, the main character, reminded her of me. The book, in itself, and the feeling it left with me have long dwelled in my mind as I fly to distant countries and continents, look for jobs and friendship, or lie down on the sofa of some beat-up hostel 5,000km away from everyone I love. It is in these places that I think of ambition and sensuality (not to be confused with sexuality, and which in my reading of the phrase, and with spanish connotations to the word, can be expanded to something other than romance and sexuality and into other realms of emotional depth) connected by a rope, and where walking towards one path seems to tense up that rope - tugging me towards the other. Where there is a constant imbalance between work and love, experience and friendship, opportunity and missed opportunities. Ambition and sensuality oppose one another. One can have the ambition to love, but that is within sensuality. One can be content with their objectives and/or conection with the people around them. One cannot be content and ambitious, or ambitious and enamored. Obviously, overlaps exist in this contentment, ambition, sensuality Venn diagram, in the same way one can jump from being pulled by one or the other interchangeably.
This excerpt appears in the book in the context of rural Spain in the 1940s. Of a boy who is sent off to the big city having lived only in the myth of a small town in between valleys, where everyone has their own call, and where everyone knows enough to distinguish a Jay from a Goldfinch. Where the train passes through town without stopping and shoots off to somewhere far, knowingly modern yet inconceivable. Where life in the shade of progress or innovation was, for the majority, enough and sound.
The quote lives now, and rests upon me, in a very different way to how it was laid onto paper by Delibes largely because the context has changed. The fast pace, immediacy of knowledge, the ability to dream your way to the opposite side of the world, the expectation around work, and to do (unpaid) internships, to eat from the supermarket, and not know what it is that you are eating or where it came from; much less who made it, AI, a global pandemic, watching people getting killed in tiktok news channels, digital nomads, mortgage-backed securities?, emails, linkedin. The quote now lives in dissonance with the order that the world has, and continues to rush into.
It seems to me that the marked-out path, what is now expected, is instead one of constant and increasing ambition, and that one can renage on that path out of sensuality or contentment.