UNSEEN

When I was young I spent most of my holidays reading science fiction at my grandmother’s house in a small town of Catalonia. To say it was a small town is an understatement. The only street, a half a mile perfect straight line, was flanked by two churches at the beginning and at the end. In between there was a versatile shop, a small bar and what appeared to be uninhabited houses. The town, though, was full of people, old people. The community hit a historic average age of above 90, an ephemeral milestone by nature. The population was at that time around 600 pairs of eyes hiding behind the curtains. They followed you everywhere. It took time for me to discover them, but they did follow you everywhere.

Back then I had the feeling that the only person I could clearly identify on the street was the fog. Like a crawling animal, it appeared almost everyday when it was cold enough, and that was often. It was so thick, one day I walked out of my grandmother’s house and I immediately got lost. I couldn’t see the tip of my fingers if I stretched my arms. I walked aimlessly through the white for what seemed an eternity, hearing cows moo somehow electrically in the distance. At some point, the white curtain fell abruptly and I was left with the unworldly scenery that populated the pages of my cheap science fiction books.

Now, when I go back there, I still feel I’m in that fog, with that silence, lost. Like in these pictures.