I promised my wife to go early Monday morning (in the 17/07/2023, to be exact) to buy fresh bread at a bakery which is only about seven streets away from our house...

^{📷 01 - "Laika keeping an eye on the old Ford Fairlane"}

It was a foggy morning, like many of those that occur here in the middle of the year. So I grabbed my camera with the intention of "snapping a couple of shots" on the way to and from the bakery.

^{📷 01 B&W - "Laika keeping an eye on the old Ford Fairlane"}

By the way, the dog in the photo above is not called Laika, but it was the first name that came to my mind as soon as I saw her lying in front of my neighbour's old car. He usually comes home so drunk on Sunday nights that he finds it impossible to park the big thing in his garage (and he usually leaves his dog outside too, it seems).

^{📷 02 - "And the donkey escaped again!"}

It was 6:30am when I walked out the door of my house to buy fresh bread for our breakfast. I left a brewed coffee in the kitchen along with a note for my wife and daughter saying I would be back before 7:30am.

^{📷 02 B&W - "And the donkey escaped again!"}

A few metres from my house, the damned donkey of Mr. "Domingo Vidal" was in the street chewing a bit of grass which was growing in a corner of a façade. This "charming" animal usually has a sort of addiction for emitting long and powerful brays in the early hours of the morning.... It's a terrible way to wake up the whole neighbourhood!

^{📷 03 - "Man who goes coughing"}

By the way, I chose to do this post with both colour and black and white versions of the photos because: "I just couldn't decide which format to share them"... I thought both looked lovely! (Yes, I'm a damned fool who often turn his photos to black and white even when he has edited them for full colour, so I usually know how they look both ways).

^{📷 03 B&W - "Man who goes coughing"}

This man, who is walking along Farriar Avenue in the fog, has been coughing non-stop for several minutes. Then, many fears come to my mind, as I have heard that kind of cough many times in my life during the rainy months. And I know from my own experience that this often predict an early death. This is a village far away from many things, among those things are "good health care facilities". Also the poverty of the inhabitants makes some conditions more complicated than usual.

^{📷 04 - "UNEXPECTED!"}

The people are slowly waking up. Dampness and sadness seem to shake hands with each other, to greet another day full of misery for many here. Meanwhile I "The madman with the camera in my hand" am so early in the streets wearing my uncomfortable outfit of feigned indifference. Taking pictures, as if I didn't know that the town has been going to hell for a long time now.

^{📷 04 B&W - "UNEXPECTED!"}

A cat looks at me in amazement from through the fence of a hedged garden. It occurs to me that he knows what I think and shares it... But, anyway, I have a saying which I use for when I have complications ahead of me: "Life is a cat", that's what I usually say... I don't really understand what I mean by it, but so far it has served to distract me from problems and let them go to hell.

^{📷 05 - "Waiting for nothing"}

The streets and the fog end up seducing me, so I start taking pictures and at the same time I mentally place titles for them. I also "sketch" the text with which I would like to accompany them later on.

^{📷 05 B&W - "Waiting for nothing"}

On a street corner, leaning against a lamppost, a man whose pig farm was washed away by a flood in 2020, only to be widowed in 2021 and lose his eldest son while trying to migrate to another country in 2022, "waits for nothing"... (or at least that's how he answers when asked).

^{📷 06 - "Like distant spectres"}

The fog makes the distance grow, so a couple of streets turn any scene into something absolutely imaginary. However, the sounds move amazingly, but I try to ignore them and invent my own story... I admit I am "addicted" to watching stories in everyday life... Or are they true? .. I don't know, I don't care too much either. The threshold between my realities and those of others is diffuse like this fog that surrounds me.

^{📷 06 B&W - "Like distant spectres"}

At the edge of the town, where the streets end and the forest begins, two men greet each other with shouts and wish each other good luck... One goes to the fields to work and the other will stay in the town also trying to earn his livelihood. These are "two worlds" whose junctions stretch and shrink daily.

^{📷 07 - "Ladies in the central square."}

I don't usually wear a watch, I "abolished" it from my wrist years ago when I started carrying my cell phone with me... I hate wearing accessories, I admit it!... But the truth is that over time, I have also adopted going out at streets without my mobile phone... So I usually don't know what time it is unless I ask someone on the streets! (The clock on the church bell tower, visible from almost the entire town, stopped working many years ago)... I'm the madman with the camera in hand and no time! ;)

^{📷 07 B&W - "Ladies in the central square."}

The central square of the town is cleaner, more tidy, as if the drama and misery were partially averted by the efforts of the municipal robbery on duty (sorry, it's hard for me to contain myself, I had to write it)... Then the two ladies chatting there, they seem taken out of context when I close my eyes and remember the streets on the banks. Those with lonely donkeys and sad people, with cats looking absorbed and people like ghosts wandering while coughing.

^{📷 08 - "The faltering future"}

I feel like I need to stop thinking so much sometimes. I remember that I once read to Bukowski: "We are all going to die, everyone, what a circus!"... I understood that (in my universe) as a warning (a bit crude, it must be said) to avoid thinking so much and concentrate more on other things... But, at least for now, I'm still having fun taking photos and thinking... But yeah, I think Charles was right, this is a fucking circus after all! ;)

^{📷 08 B&W - "The faltering future"}

The future is lean, I see it in the "very few" children who now go to school. They crowd in the street waiting for the doors to be opened, but now the teachers are late, or even simply "never arrive"... It's all a miserable pantomime of those years when I was a child and there were more than 500 kids coming to school almost at the same time. That was then a masterful adage of certain futures... But now, there are only shadows.

Thank you all so much for stopping by and appreciating, I hope you liked this post!!!

PS: Yes! Of course I forgot to buy bread for breakfast together with my wife and daughter!... Both are really enraged when I arrived at my house (without any bread) around 9:00 Am!... Another botch of the crazy guy with camera in hand! :)

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