July the seventh III: now, I have no dog; but I continue being and adolescent, though the other way round. This wonderful path which has just been finished is very important to me, reason for which I visit it daily and walk along it slowly, consciously. My fellow citizens do it running or on bicycle, with a sporting spirit. But of course, none has taken this bank so many times, and for so long, with the frail spirit of an adolescent. The river and its surroundings are beautiful, and though on the morning of the seventh of July I took my camera but not the inspiration, I achieved taking this picture which I like very much because it brings back my past which, curiously, becomes the present. It also brings the fact that I write about my dog Farolín. We walked downriver and when we arrived at the barrage of the philosophical bird, we sat down a long time to gaze at the river. Afterwards, we walked upstream, both alone keeping ourselves company. He, also very young, behaved happy and unconcerned; I, with my phantoms and complexes of a disoriented adolescent, frail and sad. In winter, spring, summer and especially in autumn, during years. Farolín was also alone, though he didn't realise it, because he was only with me and though he was very brave, I was a great coward...

July the seventh II: yesterday's picture won't make history. For sure. It can clearly be bettered. It took me three hours to walk the route with my camera (without the camera, only one). I didn't take memorable photographs, but as with the philosophical bird which gets the help of the water to think, for me, the camera and the river are the perfect combination to let my remembrances emerge. During years, in my adolescence, I also strolled almost daily, along this bank. It was then a sinuous path, between wild and capricious vegetation. My dog always accompanied me, a cinnamon mastiff, big and combative which we called Farolín. My dog loved me and looked at me with attention and that was important to me because, at least during some hours of the day, I felt observed with interest...

July the seventh I: I am very happy with a new way which borders the river during several kilometres before arriving to the city, coming from the northeast. I walk on it for three or four kilometres every day, in the morning. Today I took with me the camera (the big one) and I photographed. The first picture was of an old electric power station, besides a barrage. Just besides it, surrounded by the slow and surrounding movement of the water, stayed the philosophical bird, distant and contemplative (it can hardly be seen on the photograph). It doesn't miss a day and spends a lot of time there, gazing at the river and thinking. The rivers are favourable for thinkers because they are themselves a metaphor about the passing of life and time. All along my life, when I felt the need to think about something, and if I was near one, I always chose that place... 

Mondays chronicle IX: too many Mondays without a chronicle. It's the reflection effect of too many weekends without anything happening to report. In any case, even if nothing special is done, as for example, looking abstractly during hours and hours at the wall in front, that's already something, and of course liable to be turned into a fabulous manuscript, probably dull, if what you pretend is to tell happened facts (more or less), but in the end you may (and have to) tell all: -we don't take too much notice of them and neither they of us-; -we had a perfect dinner with the menu prepared for us by our friend T.: scrambled chillies of Navarra, scrambled blood sausages of León, meat in a sauce and two great wines from Rioja. Meanwhile, a football team composed of white players was playing against one of black players. At the last minute, the whites won. The result left us indifferent-; -our friend A., made up, very successfully by the way, what could happen to them on a trip to the south they have foreseen: a BP petrol station in a deserted zone, by night, lost and abandoned to their fate, without a car and not knowing how to get where they pretend. We, listeners added disquieting circumstances, as kidnapping; a bus which would take them to Murcia; somebody who finally would help them but who would abandon them naked in open country-; -the left foot is getting much better, but my resistance against tiredness worsens seriously, especially when I walk the same and known stretches of my trembling character -;- the girl with a young face and a not so young body guessed my age with a deviation of seven years in my favour, deviation I was reluctant to correct; nevertheless all continued the same way.  

INTERLUDE: LESSON OF PHOTOGRAPHIC PHILOSOPHY:
it's hot, very hot,
and practically nothing can be photographed.
On Sundays when it's hot,
in the afternoon,
almost nothing can be photographed.
The streets and the fields
are alone, soaked in sadness,
and so no pictures are born.
No, they are not born.
I never photograph on hot Sundays,
in the afternoon.
The sun scares the gods and the mystery,
the light flattens and hardens beauty till
mixing it with earth's dryness.
Only the miserable y earthly snake
dares coming out of its hole in the weeds,
between harsh dry thorns.
On hot Sundays in the afternoon
until a deadly stone,
thrown by a man driven mad
by the untenable heat, cuts it in two.
This was the only possible picture on a Sunday
in the afternoon; this image appeared before my eyes,
but as almost nothing can be photographed
with such a heat, so much light, so much sadness
on a harsh Sunday afternoon,
I didn't carry my Camera.
The only possible photographical lesson is that
almost nothing can be photographed on a Sunday afternoon.

June the fifth VIII: I still took some more pictures, until finishing the film I had in the camera, which furthermore was the last left of all taken to Lisbon . We went to the hotel immediately, least a photograph I couldn't take, appeared; that would have very much upset me...
"Big questions about knowing if the visual reality accepted by common sense has anything to do with real reality." Enrique Vila Matas

June the fifth VII: the rare balance of a photography, the sole that interests me, lies never in the obvious, narrating aspects; in spite of being attached to a certain formal naturalism or classicism, I don't believe to be a descriptive photographer. On the other hand, the illustrated report (as well the informative as the moving one), or the photograph with a "message" (generally univocal and simplistic), has no interest for me whatsoever; what's more, they deeply annoy me as spurious, and because they have the seeds of interpretations which have nothing to do with photography as an expression comparable to any other language of unquestionable plastic creation. Photography is free and polyhydric, complex and deep (in the end, the projection of the most genuine soul of the photographer), or only a simple document, a record, a certificate, a downright stupidity, or perhaps only a dispensable stupidity. I pretend that my pictures begin just when the elements in them have been identified and that this is the precise moment when the story begins and not when it ends. I believe that the importance of photography will always reside in "that other thing, which is there, but isn't there; in what it signals, but doesn't show"...

June the fifth VI: I continued photographing as the light and the disposition of the spontaneous, involuntary and advised extras, composed an enigmatic picture. In the cities, haphazardly, the still or moving passers-by, in unforeseen but suitable settings, compose scenes, representations or choreographies which tell, which express something which is some further, perhaps in the secret, or maybe they suggest the unavoidable misfortune of man on the earth. Those plastic moments normally have an inexpressible beauty, for me at least, and though I always look for them I seldom find them. They appear suddenly, in seconds and once altered they never happen again, at least in that setting and in those moments. The supposed talent of the photographer resides in capturing them and in not letting them be false impressions: the viewfinder, as the gaze and the perception, frequently deceive...

June the fifth V: a little later came a group of persons who celebrated something (I suppose). The group split in two: a man, a woman and a child dressed for the occasion...? (the woman dedicated herself to photograph the boy who, elegantly, was wearing a fly, and three men and a woman who grouped at some distance chatting animatedly); or so it seemed. I photographed kneeling, with the big camera mounted on a little tripod I was using for the first time at that moment and which resulted a damned disaster as it was too feeble for the weight and responsibility it had to support. Each time I pressed the trigger, the camera, the flimsy tripod and even I who tried to keep it still, moved, which evidently was even worse. Those in the group noticed that I was photographing them and, from time to time, turned their heads and looked at me annoyed...

June the fifth IV: in the afternoon we went back to the old embarcadero, in front of the Praça do Comércio and in front of the enlarged Tejo; passing through my city it's called Tajo and goes through slimmed down and running, avoiding the rushes of the masses of stone which hang over it, at great height, perpetually. Many kilometers later it arrives in Lisbon, perhaps tired but open and relieved, bright and alive. People come near that old embarcadero to rest, to look at the river, or at the city which begins, on this side, just on the bank of the old river and grows up the hills. This man gazed at the city and we looked at him. I like very much the images of lone persons looking at mythical cities. I love doing the same thing; and to photograph in them, naturally.

June the fifth III: today more about "Zoos, Haitians and photographic purposes, easy or difficult, and also about fame". Let's see if I am able to develop and idea I had while I took my pre-senile walk, which takes me one hour and fifteen minutes daily, in the morning, early, because later it's very warm. While I walked I explained carefully to myself the unerring difference between a great lady photographer and myself (the problem with my walking reflections lies in the fact that when I get home I forget almost everything). I try to remember them: she is globally acknowledged; me, I am completely unknown; but what I really would like is being like her. The lady photographer's name is García Rodero, she is more or less of my age and from a town near mine. She takes similar to today's pictures, but the difference is that instead of wet rhinoceroses, which doesn't suppose any effort and that furthermore is very cheap, only the fee to the Zoo, she photographs far away persons, for example Haitians, also muddy, but in a state of trance (the rhino I believe is also in trance, but it's not the same). Of course, going to Haiti is much more expensive and complicated. Furthermore, she uses transcendental arguments and motivations, as anthropology, sociology and the like, which being completely strange to the photographic act in itself, have always been convenient to introduce banality.  The other day, by chance, I heard that the said Cristina G.R., has gone to none other than Cuba to photograph the Cuban essence or soul. Furthermore, an important communications means has supported her through its correspondent, who would accompany her noting precisely each time she depressed the trigger and where she aimed her prodigious camera. And I ask myself, how can anybody claim the capacity to show the soul of a place, or of somebody, or of something? I suspect today's text shows a certain resentment against the world (it can also be defined as vulgar envy), because nobody recognizes me and neither do they send a reporter to my home (I would be happy with a scholar, with or without future), to look how I create unendingly fabulous photographs; even of dirty rhinoceroses (of course, you can't compare them to the Haitians, who also appeared in a pitiful muddy and sticky state on the García Rodero's photographs...

June the fifth II: more of the Lisboan zoo. The installations and sets where the animals live are rather vulgar, constructed aesthetically with little care to the contrary of Paris' or Chicago's. Nevertheless, the animals are the same and act the same in any zoo of the world. Rhinoceroses, for example, the beautifullest and most majestic of all, often behave very irritatingly, always at the farthest point from the visitors (just where I normally am, avid and impatient); still, peevish, impassibly and respectable, not  in the least ready to collaborate with my big old camera. I can wait for a long time for the Rhinoceros to come to the front, where its rough and wrinkled skin and its enigmatic shape, ancestral and proud, reaches its terrible and overwhelming force; but, generally, I never get it...

June the fifth I: we left for Lisbon a Wednesday and it was already Saturday. In the morning we asked ourselves: why not go to the zoo? We went. We visited several in Europe, and three in the United States. The Lisboan one, photographically didn't result very propitious, but even so I could photograph some of my preferred animals: a giraffe, an elephant and a rhinoceros, the most impressive of all of them. I can remain a long time bewitched by any animal I like. I hardly could elaborate a plastic theory, or psychological, or naturalist about the powerful influx the animals have upon me, and specially the captive ones. I have read texts about it, among others by John Berger, but, besides some intelligent observations, they have not helped me to tease out my special interest in Zoos. What's more, leaving aside the supposed suffering of the captive animals, photographically I prefer it so. Their statism and solipsism, perplexity and indifference, and their very probable depression (by the way, I don't know if there are psychologists for animals), offer me the possibilities to observe them closely and photograph them with a format and a philosophy akin to the portrait. That a giraffe gazes fixedly at me and, moreover, to photograph it seems to me an extraordinary experience, as easy and simple as it may seem...

June the fourth V: after being sometime at the embarcadero, we went to the Chiado, also ineluctable. You can't go to Lisbon and not spend some time at the Chiado, on any terrace on the square. This time it was at the A Brasileira.  At the next table was Fernando Pessoa, in bronze, a modern image and with a relaxed and friendly expression. It greatly caught my attention that all sort of people came to get photographed besides him, and I asked myself if all of them, with an improbable poetic aspect and sensibility, knew who Pessoa was or had read his work. I supposed it was so and I liked very much the acknowledgement and admiration they professed for him.  

June the fourth IV: at the embarcadero, it occurred to me to repeat a photograph taken at this same place twenty years ago and of which I am not sure either. The one of twenty years ago is better, I believe (See the diary of last June the twelfth). The day was a celebration day: we not only celebrated photographs and moments, but furthermore it was a wedding-day celebration, graciously, because you only notice them in that the splendor rises and rises...     

June the fourth II: after photographing Maximilian, who represents the role of Pedro IV, role he plays perfectly, impassive and elegant as he was in his short life (both Maximilian and Pedro died Young, in their thirties, and both were distinguished and well-meaning, but with very bad luck), we went slowly to the Castle. The up-hills to reach the fort are steeper every year. Soon they will become vertiginous precipices which will turn us from animated and tireless walkers into rested tram travelers. We arrived at the Castle gate, looked inside and around us, where numerous hyperactive groups of tourist moved and, burdened by what doubtless would be predictable, we decided on retracing our steps, though through other streets. As always, from the Castle, we descended to the viewpoints zone (we always do the same), and from there, also as always, we photographed a little. The panoramic view of the Tajo, from the city, is always fascinating, and this time the image of familiar and domestic triplets looking at the river, called for my attention. We couldn't push ourselves to go down and sit on one of them to drink a cold beer. It would have been great, surely...  

June the fourth I: Lisbon , from the morning on. First the Rossio square; there, up on a very high column, there is an impostor: the emperor Maximilian of Mexico, who impersonates the king Don Pedro IV of Portugal . As Cardoso Pires tells, the deception was carried out by the French sculptor who was entrusted with the representation of the king, and who sent to Portugal one of his left-over Maximilians.  I don't know if the Lisboans care or not; I suppose it leaves them indifferent. I too don't care, and moreover I believe it to be a great joke about kings, emperors and pompous leaders; annoying characters, always involved with their eternal and false dignities, their absolute truths, deceptive values and further dogmatic excrements. But, who cares...

June the third X: at mid-afternoon, from the da Pena Palace, in Sintra, we went to Cape Espichel . We where there in two thousand and six, on a day when a freezing wind and low, leaden clouds accompanied us on our stroll through the naked plateau high over the sea. The hostels, situated at the back of the chapel, in two long parallel rows which reflected each other with fidelity as in an enigmatic mirror. The inexorable weeds of forgetfulness grew carelessly under the arcades. On the upper level, some windows were blind, in some others you still could see torn curtains and in others only the total blackness of neglect. Two lonely and apparently abandoned dogs, wandered on the solitary esplanade. The sad and desolate beauty of the place moved you. Last third of June all had changed, the sensations excited by the beauty were impossible: the heavy and leaden sky of before was now of a virginal blue; the weeds in the arcades had disappeared; all the windows were sealed with care, and the faded white of the façades was now immaculate. Where the sad dogs drifted around, that afternoon there were stands with drinks and knickknacks. The poetry had left its place to Sunday tourists. We had to leave there immediately. But before, I took this photograph which I don't know if I like it or not.

June the third IX: from a courtyard to another; from a corner to a prominence on the void; to a corner, to a crenulated tower, to a graceful arch, to an angle, to a perspective or to a vision, as this viewpoint which surprisingly appeared in a narrow and winding passage which surrounded the palace. My gaze (the same as always, the unchangeable in spite of the long bygone time), and that of the old big camera, remained on the threshold of the crenulated bow. The picture was there, on that line we should not trespass, and it was because at that point there was the suggestive promise of the other side, of what there is somewhere else, in front of us but that we don't see, and in case we should dare looking would be disappointing as recognisable; a not wished ending, a revealed mystery, a dream in hands reach. Only that. I don't remember if I looked out, it's lacking importance at this moment; what I do know is that I didn't photograph what was hidden from us, because my camera and I had suddenly stopped. We didn't want to know more, that was enough, and that was important because it signified that our gaze was still not dead from exhaustion...

June the third VIII: I believe I am straying from a convenient, descriptive and simple style of telling about the last trip to Lisbon ; it's because when I write I don't think, I only type brainlessly on the computer's keyboard. Photographing is another song, if only for a little detail: what I press is the trigger of my old big camera. The gaze is the same, unchanging, by good or bad luck. All went well in the da Pena Palace that third of June in the afternoon, or so I thought; because, for some days, I would not have any news about the photographic results. As I photograph, I only count on my sensations: I feel that an image will work and another not. Sometimes, it's the other way around. But it's the difference between two ways of photographing: the administrative or immediately verifiable (about which I don't want to know anything: too perfect not to bore me); or the felt and unverifiable until it's too late (the only one I can practice, as uncertain and unforeseeable, and hence infinitely funnier). I continue: the late and amazing romantic spirit in its most pure state appeared everywhere in the da Pena Palace ...

June the third VII: afterward, Tritón, a menacing mythological giant watching the lintel of the big access door, hovering over our heads of naff tourists (if Ferdinand II saw us...), and that I photographed with deplorable results. It didn't seem that the photographic gods where helping me. In case deities do exist, I would prefer them being plentiful. Already as a little boy (six years), when in school they explained me the enigma of the "holy trinity", I came back home telling, very proudly and sure of my capacity to understand complex and unexplainable concepts, that there were three gods. When laughing and joking they tried to correct me telling me that no, that it was only one, I got very cross and furthermore didn't believe it (they had told me that they were three, without doubt, and even, that one was a bird). The splitting of one same god didn't agree with me: God shouldn't allow himself such frivolities which only could disconcert the pure, naive souls given to small imaginative realism. Though thinking about it, a whole cast of gods over-flying our heads and acts is more original. Along time later I thought (perhaps only some days ago) that the key of religions and gods is, in essence and every time, an artistic reflection, that is literature, plastic arts, design, economy and a lot of high politics strategy. In short, the picture shows a flowerpot of the da Pena Palace, artistic, naturally, and which, consequently, demonstrates that god and gods are a literary creation, and that I, the Olympus , I prefer him with several characters, and this happens to me since childhood. It must be because my gaze hasn't changed much...

June the third VI: after lunch, the da Pena Palace. Always from outside. First my ineluctable meeting with the jardinière from the access passage which I photographed on my first visit in nineteen eighty five y which came out as one of my emblematic pictures of those years (diary of last June the thirteenth). Why? Because I thought it was a mysterious image, with a halo of decaying romanticism very much in agreement with my spirit and that of the palace. That photography still fascinates me twenty five years later. Perhaps my gaze has not changed. I couldn't resist taking the same shot, approximately, as I remembered it. The same camera: my old big camera, younger then (as myself); a slow film, with fine grain; the actual film, more rapid and grainier; in eighty five I helped myself with a tripod, not now; and the lateral flash was and has been the same. The result then: excellent. The result of last month: worse, without doubt. The nostalgic plagiarism did not turn out very well, which tells me that what's done is done, and repeating it completely lacks sense...

June the third V...After Mafra to Sintra. I very much like Sintra. The national palace has two immense chimneys which look like gigantic bottles, which would contain the mysterious elixir of beauty. Although I am afraid they are only chimneys. In spite of them fascinating me, I never knew how to photograph them. Neither this time. The palace's perimeter resulted more available and expressive to my old big camera...

June the third IV... Strolling without purpose through the monastery and the palace had inoculated our spirit with a certain languor. Outside, the sun called upon the windows. It was essential to get out of there as soon as possible. So much saddened romanticism, darkened by the centuries, could weight on our spirit for the rest of the day, in spite of having the supposed aesthetic sense aware and trained for these experiences...

June the third...III: then, going up a flight, the royal palace. Monarchy and religion sharing a same roof, naturally. The palace, enormous, austere, sober, in semidarkness, melancholic; sad, perhaps. An endless corridor which ran the palace's perimeter took you from room to room; unpleasant and dark, so big that it discouraged you from looking at them. The wooden and heavy furniture, and on the walls paintings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, from which gazed hieratic, sever and sad characters. Curiously, the visit is free and what's more, you could photograph (without flash and tripod, this last I suppose, and anyway I hadn't it). Of course, I photographed although the gloomy and dense light was impossible (but this was the least of my worries)...

June the third II... On the first floor, the monastery. The dormitory of the monks: a spacious hall, elongated, where on each side Spartan compartments follow each other with only a wooden bed and a chair, and with the supposed intimacy only preserved by a light curtain. At the end of the huge common dormitory, an altar: praying, eating, sleeping and so day after day until the end of time. The daily life of monks (and nuns, of course) has always been an enigma to me; how can they, if they achieve it, avoid their compelling carnal needs (and all the others) inherent to the human condition. I suppose they achieve it thanks to their spiritual force or to the faith, for example (which, as everybody knows, is to believe in what doesn't exist), but I don't believe it completely because all that seems to me too naïve and elemental to be really useful. I don't know. I suspect that the occult religious practice, hidden and at the same time public and exhibitionist, encloses a monstrous and unhealthy contradiction. I prefer supposing that those shutting themselves up do what everybody else, but without having to get out into the world to look for somebody with whom to satisfy the unavoidable needs. Life in the world may also be represented in a reduced space and with few characters. I think...

June the third I: we leave Lisbon , neither early nor late, and go to Mafra. We were interested by the Royal Palace and the Monastery, both in the same building. On the first floor is the convent zone. I like convents, and prisons, and barracks and all those buildings where a considerable number of human beings live shut up sharing time, routines, faith, fears, dreams and expectations... What terrible stupidity! But of course, I also love stupidities. Someday I will have to reflect about this anomaly (mine), though now it's not the moment. Rapidly it occurs to me that it must be given to that doubtful taste I have for exploring existential questions and the passing of time...