iLiza's eyes

I was finally able to look at my pictures of the campo the other day. The urge to see them came randomly: perhaps it was because I had just gotten home from seeing my friends from Peru, perhaps I was lonely, perhaps I just wanted to feel that feeling again. I hadn't ever looked at the pictures except on my camera's screen months ago. From Ayacucho, I had gone to the campo and then taken the memory card straight to a store, had them put on CD and then deleted.

I could never bring myself to look at them. That CD, with the little girl of the future and her life in a different reality haunted me: things or people would drive me crazy in New York and then I would remember them, her, and I would want to cry. And I would feel small and in my place.

But when I opened the CD, I felt warm. I had forgotten how much color there was there, how real the people are. I hadn't realized that the memories I preserved in my mind were equal to those caught on film, to those that actually exist.

I was brought back there, more so than I ever thought I could be: to the little girl, to the pride that masked the poverty. And I remember how little sense it made there too, realized that life here can go on because in that other dimension, it's miraculously continuing as well. The little girl of the future is still waiting for her future, but she is waiting, she has not ceased to exist.

I keep returning to those pictures, especially in my mind. Keep looking back, as though if I turn away for too long, they will suddenly disappear. I find myself no longer haunted, but paranoid now. Paranoid that they will soon become obsolete; and then what will I be if I have no other reality running parallel to my own?

posted by iliza @ 7:46 AM