Flight Leads to Flight

How many identical points could converge on one and the same path?

Later on, you'll only hear the echoes of each decision — The magic in the turning of the moon, its indelible mark. Fates interlinking your steps and uncertainty as your only baggage. Moments that are always as incandescent as indestructible candles. Crosses and memories, bends and mends.

You know that scales are drawn on each map. The question is how many beats will you manage to keep.

They were the photos of the tent in the Cazorla mountain range and the white Seat 128. The Pentax photos, the Kodak colour photos. We took the rest — those of the roads and bales of hay in national rally competitions, the one of the incredulous kid on Aspar's motor bike.

And back from each journey, reliving the adventure: setting up all the equipment, untangling cables, turning the slide projector on and listening to the sound it made every time the picture changed. Sunday afternoons at home, the tremulous light on the screen, the memories, overcoming the passage of time.

I already felt the urge, the meaning of looking. All that grew inside me. Years later came my escapes and returns. I changed places and views. I wanted to deliberately drift in order to conquer that same light. The hazy light in which memories are always bathed.

Then came the first second-hand reflex camera, the elementary manuals from a library by the sea, the toy cameras, the Polaroids of yesteryear and the Nikon I rescued from the rubbish, the cheap rolls of film in packs of three, the waiting outside developing shops, matt please, 7 x 10, thanks, in under an hour, a beginner's course to laboratory work, pressing the button without thinking, company, the heartfelt snap, diaries and meaning.

Times changed, nomadic ideas developed and year by year notebooks that would brim over. But even today, as never before, the urge remains to return.