ahi va…
Visual diary 2007

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping—rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”

— Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven

For you

This book is a visual diary.

The photographs were taken during the spring of 2007, after my liver transplant at the Carlos Haya Regional University Hospital in Málaga. During the period of partial immobility while I was recovering, I made television the favourite subject of my creative efforts.

With a digital camera, I took photograph after photograph of the flow of images passing through the screen and into our minds. One medium, my camera, captures the image of another, the television, which in turn captures the image of another, which captures the image of another, and so on.

The intention is that the image, transported in this way and arrested in its movement, acquires an appearance and a presence of its own, while at the same time forming part of our collective subconscious.

The images are blurred partly because of the technique itself, and partly because what interests me is the sensation conveyed by the image — the memory itself.

This sequence of sensual and suggestive images can be seen as a succession of frames in the tradition of the comic strip.

Common sense is not so common. — Voltaire

You’re getting metaphysical; I’m doing a striptease. — Octavio Paz

The important questions are those asked by an intelligent child who, receiving no answer, stops asking. — George Wald

It is more dignified to laugh at life than to weep over it. — Seneca

Why do we agitate ourselves so much? To become again what we were before we were. — E. M. Cioran

We cry when we are born, because we come to this immense stage of fools. — Shakespeare

“We’ll always have Paris.” — Casablanca

“You talkin’ to me?” — Taxi Driver

Happiness is an angel with a serious face. — Amedeo Modigliani

What shapes our fate is not what we experience, but the way we experience it. — Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Even if it is only a hope, because desire is a question whose answer no one knows. — Luis Cernuda

An unfamiliar presence seemed to awaken me, for when I turned my head, I saw a woman, and she was smiling.” — Luis Cernuda

Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think. — H. Walpole

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” — Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

“We are what we do, especially what we do to change what we are.” — Eduardo Galeano

“We are never prepared for what we expect.” — James A. Michener

“Only your madness makes me tremble, and I return it to you in disordered megabytes.” — María Rosal

“It is best not to probe the soul, not to search for causes and effects, not to search for meaning; everything is nothing but chaos.” — Gao Xingjian

“The mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it isn’t open.” — attributed to Frank Zappa

“Love without admiration is only friendship.” — George Sand

“The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions.” — Susan Sontag

“Things are entirely what they appear to be, and behind them… there is nothing.” — Jean-Paul Sartre

“I would wrap you in a mantle of stars.” — Magaterrenal

“Help me break down these immense doors. With your silken shoulders, unearth these anchors.” — Pablo Neruda

“With my arm around your delicate waist, you let your head rest on my shoulder.” — Juan Ramón Jiménez

“Drink in thigh of honey blood spilled.” — Federico García Lorca

“I consecrate to you my pure and unblemished love; in my very entrails your affection is visibly engraved and inscribed.” — Ibn Hazm

“…so that you may never know that I live with you.” — Ana Merino, Pequeña confesión

“The body my hands so clearly desire, that my eyes may touch it, that my lips may see it, that the impossible may suddenly become possible.” — Rafael Alberti

“Girl, let me lift your dress to see you; open to my ancient fingers the blue rose of your womb.” — Federico García Lorca

“No snowflake ever fell in the wrong place.” — Zen saying

“When I understood that my exile was my home, I opened the door and settled in.” — Angelina Muñiz-Huberman

“The worst thing that can happen to anyone is to be completely understood.” — C. G. Jung

“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.” — Helen Keller

“Your warm heart, and nothing more.” — Federico García Lorca, Deseo

Thanks to Dr. Jiménez, Dr. Muñoz, Dr. Santoyo Santoyo, Dr. Aguilar, Dr. González, Dr. Sánchez, Dr. Suárez, Dr. Lozano, Dr. Martínez, Dr. Colmenar, Dr. Domínguez, Dr. Mate Hurtado, Dr. Santaella, Dr. Rodrigo; to all of you in the IM, to all of you in the ICU who did more for me than anyone could ask, to the supervising doctor for her spontaneity and to her son for the vignette, to Inmaculada for who I am when I think of you, to Silvia for being like a sister, to Eloíse for talking to me about books, to Belén — why do you never call me when you’re in Nerja? — to Estrella for teaching me to be straightforward, to María — ah, María — to Nina for being my favourite girl, to Ascensio, to María-Victoria, to you who invited me for a beer, to Juan-Antonio for helping me when he shouldn’t have, to David for the telephone business, to Paco for calling me from time to time, to you whose name I don’t even remember but who have a heart of gold, to you who said “what a pity” when you saw me, to those of you who measured my pee and made me feel good even though I hadn’t done enough, to you who knew how to open the window with a car key, to you who scolded me for taking out the little tubes myself, to you who cleaned my room with bleach until even I could no longer smell it, to you who bought me a bottle of Lanjarón because I’m a snob, to you beautiful women who looked far too young to be old enough to make a film, to you who made my bed and then I took a sheet with me — and perhaps you never forgave me, but I love you — to you who served me more dishes than I could possibly eat, to you who gave me two kisses when I felt alone, to you who…

The list is endless, and you are all in my heart.

I would also like to express my gratitude to the entire management team of the hospital for their great work.