Forming

These pictures were taken on the same trip yet in two very different places, the altitude of the B-357 road, crossing the andes on its way to the Atacama dessert in Chile, and the altitude of a plane overlooking the great Chaco on its way to Iguazu. Both were photographed while being in movement yet at truly different speeds in relation to the land they portray (one on a coach, the other on a plane). However they both ask the same question: how do we form?

The first still made me think of Emilia. She is a good friend of my mother who made me understand grammar in a completely different way. As someone who worked with adults to help them become literate she understood language like no other. She was articulate enough to make me see how grammar wasn't just a set of rules but responded to a need to associate meanings and a need to communicate those to others. So, in my little head while at school, if I wanted to understand a writing's meaning I needed to understand its grammar, as form was intrinsic to meaning.

It was Emilia too, not the teacher but the warm and rebel woman, who made me see that freedom came from unexpected associations, from using those same tools to form new meanings. And so my guess is that we form and form in the lookout to liberate ourselves from those associations that were set at a time when we were not able to understand their formation.

To Emilia.