A lazy afternoon at home, with the rain pouring down and, inevitably, the delicious smell of coffee filling the air, and perhaps even a cake in the oven. In the calm of a commitment-free Sunday, she picks up one of her books from the coffee table and begins to flip through the pages. Even though she already knows the content, after all this book has been part of her decor for years, with each new encounter with this book a new discovery, new ideas, new adventures formed by her mind as she interprets those beautiful images of distant places in the world where, she believes, one day she will visit.
The coffee is ready and the oven gives the most awaited warning. Wrapped up in the story that has been building in her imagination, she takes her cup and her piece of cloud (as her grandmother nicknamed that cake when she was a child), and sits in the living room armchair to continue the adventure through the professional photos of a photographer she has never met but who has been to places she would so much like to explore.
"But that day, greatly influenced by the mood of the moment, she was overwhelmed by the longing for things she had not yet lived and by the desire to go so far."
Page by page, mountains with ice on top, waves illuminated by the rays of the sun of a cold dawn in some remote part of Europe, abandoned amusement parks and ancient historical buildings that represent the culture of a people far removed from Western globalization, little by little she gets lost in how - and with whom - she would be living the experiences in each of these places.
The intention of this book to be "on top of it all" is, in general, to entertain guests who come to her house, that is, the choice of this specific book to be a "coffee table book" is more for the appearance and entertainment of others than for what it represents to her. But that day, greatly influenced by the mood of the moment, she was overwhelmed by the longing for things she had not yet experienced and by the desire to go so far.
Seeing herself physically in the most beautiful spots she had so fantasized about on that Sunday afternoon gave her a sense of fulfillment and completeness she had never felt before. She never thought that those publications that had inhabited her coffee table for so long could be reinterpreted in such a personal way, but suddenly the list that accompanied her in her favorite notebook was getting fuller and fuller with "check" marks and those images of remote landscapes this time were signed by her.
Her new coffee table books now showed the incredible scenarios visited, alone or accompanied, in the West or in the East, wrapped in snow or carried by the joyful sunshine on white sands of some place where many would consider paradise. Leaf by leaf, whoever goes through these records in one of the many photo albums lovingly assembled after each season of exotic trips that live in various places in her house - on the coffee table, on the coffee counter or on her bedside table - now experiences firsthand that sudden desire to go out into the world that she felt one day, but this time with her photos.
By Bruna Medina.
