Apres Coup. Better late than never: March 2024

A few days ago it was my father’s birthday and my sister sent me a photo on Whatsapp that she didn’t remember having and that she had accidentally found, it was the virtual photo of a real photo from about twenty years ago that she had taken with her iPhone a few years ago, a photo of the three of us (father, son and daughter). It was the discovery of a photo that in turn she had taken of a real photo. This got me thinking.
It’s the first time that someone has told me that they have lost and then found the virtual photo of a real photo. Hearing that someone had found a forgotten photo in an old album had already happened to me, just as it had already happened to me to find a photo in the gallery of the cell phone that I didn’t remember the existence of, both memories forgotten and found. But finding the photo of a photo had never happened to me and I had never heard it, unless I have forgotten it. Now not only is the real photo no longer found, but also the photo of the photo of the real is about to be forgotten, so that all that will remain is the virtual, that is, a photo of a photo, of a photo, of a photo, …
This month will remain one of the most unforgettable of my experience in Spain for two reasons. One is too personal and the other is because for the first time in my life I was lucky enough to attend Las Fallas, the most important traditional festival in Valencia. Unfortunately on certain occasions I had to see what was happening through my cell phone because the crowd in front of me with their arms raised and their phone in their hands was more interested in filming than in experiencing what was happening, preventing me from directly watching what was happening. So very often I found myself forced to watch the video of what was happening, even though I was experiencing the event live.
The reason why these people feel the need to make a video of what happens is certainly not because they want to watch it again, because they often don’t watch it, it’s something much more terrifying and fascinating at the same time, which I can’t discuss here and which these people certainly don’t know.
But anyway, it’s impossible to summarize everything that happens in almost three weeks of celebration, especially in the last five days. After seeing thousands of women and man dressed in ancient traditional clothes parade, hearing thousands of firecrackers going off a meter away at all hours of the day, after seeing hundreds of Fallas sculptures throughout the city and after many other things, I witnessed what they call the Cremé here. This consists of setting fire to enormous monuments (Fallas) and is celebrated every year on the last night and decrees the end of Las Fallas. We could say that it is a final orgasm after a relationship that lasted weeks that decrees the end, after which you go to sleep because the next day you work. After the celebration you go back to work and resume your ordinary life.
This experience will stay with me forever and will make me think, so I can only renew my thanks to Amics for giving me the opportunity to live what I am living.
Seeing paper, polystyrene, so much money, clothes, etc. burn and waste, seeing value burn, doesn’t that go in the opposite direction of those who today sell objects only to accumulate money that then woe betide anyone who wastes it, they must immediately reinvest, make a profit out of it? What does the bulimic attempt to invoice that tries to cancel waste and transform everything into profit, into good, produce? If only time will tell us whether it is good or bad, it certainly generates an ever-increasing need to have an image of reality because we begin to suspect that one day we might lose it!