It started many years ago, on long road trips, the endless, monotonous road ahead, a wish for clouds and the mind games that I played by myself, imagining what secret shapes, creatures, objects and stories could be hidden between my imagination and these fantastic formations.
Later I “discovered” reflections… I still remember a conversation I had with my dear friend João, during a weekend by the lagoon in Bilene… it went something like this:
“Is there anything more beautiful than a tree?”, he said under the canopies looking at the other margin… I thought for a moment, not because I couldn’t appreciate and agree with what he was saying but because it sounded unfair to many other beauties in nature… and I answered, hesitantly: “water?”…
“Yes, yes” he said very quickly…(maybe because we know each other well enough to know that the conversation wasn’t ending with that observation)…”water is beautiful, but look at the trees, their leaves, their bark, the way they dance with the wind and the light, how their roots are deep in the ground and their branches reach for the skies…the way they give shade, shelter, food, oxygen”…
Once again I thought about it and indeed trees have a special place in my heart, in our existence and in our culture, they are the Ancestors, some of them grow from the seed buried with the dead, it’s our own African reincarnation… but I pointed down at the water and told him: “look at the reflections of the trees, the clouds, the sun, us and everything else… when its surface is still it mirrors reality, blurring the boundaries between image and object, forming an abyss where imagination falls free, but the slightest ripple subverts this relationship and creates a surreal image that changes constantly and the waves, the rain, ice, vapour… have a life and a beauty of their own.”
Pulling a face and in a joking voice, João told me: “ok, you can have the bycicle”, which was our informal way of taking our hats to one another.
Uno 4 July 2011
