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Regalé esta novela a mi mujer por su cumpleaños porque yo llevaba una temporada leyendo cosas muy buenas sobre el libro (sí, tengo la desfachatez de regalar a la familia libros que luego pretendo leer yo también). Especialmente en redes sociales no hacía más que encontrar alabanzas a la novela. La premisa me parecía intrigante y muy alejada de mi mundo, y al estar basada en la experiencia personal de la autora, yo anticipaba aprendizaje y estímulo. Además, Alana S. Portero es madrileña como nosotros y solo un poco mayor que nosotros, así que esperaba encontrar referentes comunes (hasta donde su vida y las nuestras se intersecan, que tampoco es tanto).

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I always thought I had read this short story thirty years ago or so already, because it was included in a volume that my parents had at home… but I could not remember much. I had a vague image of a decrepit vacant mansion being invaded by the surrounding vegetation, and ultimately destroyed by it.

Then in December last year my wife and I visited Ronda in Southern Spain, and I was fascinated by this old mansion, Casa del Rey Moro. Visiting the house, and reading about its history, the House of Usher (or the distorted memory I had of it) came to my mind immediately, and I resolved to read Poe's story (again?) soon.

Is it me, or is this getting a bit better?

Still too damn long and still too damn detailed. And too damn overemotional (the amount of stress it can still cause grown-up Proust that one time that his mum didn't show up in his room to kiss him good-night that summer evening when he was a little kid!). And too damn posh and affected.

But on this fifth volume there were a dozen pages here and fifty pages there that were real engaging or real funny. And a few memorable quotes and brilliant reflections on life and love (of which I share a few at the end of this post).

“Love, what is it but space and time rendered perceptible by the heart”

(Ver mis subrayados en el primer libro y en el segundo libro.)

Ideas que me hicieron sentir reivindicado en alguna convicción mía previa (por ejemplo, cosas que escribí hace ya años en Vīta), ideas que me hicieron gracia, ideas que me inspiraron, o ideas que me espantaron.

(← See the third week)

(← See the second week)

(← Start on the first week)

There's a silly thing I started doing in 2008: during the month of April I take one photo every day to “document” my day-to-day life for my future self.

The idea, at least initially, was to be as “natural” and “honest” as possible, and to take pictures of myself doing all kind of things during the month — from household chores to work to time with friends to special events. In the first years I was much more meticulous about selecting varied and representative moments each day, and about using timers, mirrors, stands and even other people to help me capture the moment as faithfully as I could. I always thought: “I want my 80-year-old self to be able to peek at my life as it is today”, because I have a bad memory in general and I think I will like that. And indeed, it's been “only” sixteen years since I started, and I already enjoy browsing past April photos and reading the comments I wrote at the time.

I always posted the photos online, but hid the most intimate ones from strangers: those are visible only to family and/or to friends — and a few are only available to me (that's why you probably see fewer than 30 photos in each of my albums and sets online).

In the goold old days of Flickr, a bunch of friends and acquaintances liked the idea and even played along for a few installments. It was good fun for one month every year, some of us who had met mostly over the interwebs got to know each other a little better, and some people took it almost as seriously as I did. When we all most of us abandoned Flickr, I used Pixelfed for a while (eg, April 2021 here and here). During the transition, I never got around to publishing the photos I took one year (2020, I think). Some of those years I set myself a theme or a prompt for the month: “16:9 aspect ratio”, “black & white with dashes of colour”, “repetitions or reflections”, etc. And one year, I forgot to take one of the photos (but I have forgiven myself).

Anyway, here goes my first week of daily photos this year!

Seventeen years ago yesterday, everybody was talking about that amazing gadget, the “iPhone” — but nobody you knew had one yet, because the world had been introduced to the iPhone only two months earlier.

Seventeen years ago yesterday, in Europe only wonks knew who “Obama” was, since he had just announced that he'd be running for president the previous month.

Seventeen years ago yesterday, I had been living and working in London for one year, and I was loving it.

Seventeen years ago yesterday, Twitter had been open for registrations for half a year, and was slowly getting more attention from geeks (although the product had been one year in the making already). It was exactly then that I joined the “micro-blogging platform” and started tweeting all kind of banal thoughts — just like the few friends of mine who were there already.

Pillé este tebeo de la biblioteca municipal un poco al azar (mis hijos solo quieren que les lea sus libros, y no son muy pacientes cuando yo me paseo por los estantes de adultos). Hojeándolo rápido, el dibujo no me pareció sobresaliente; y la premisa se me antojaba un poco infantil, un poco rollo pulp. Creo que me decidí a sacarlo prestado sobre todo porque me impresionó y me intrigó la cita superlativa de Stephen King que ponen en la portada («la mejor novela gráfica que haya leído jamás»).

Ha sido un gran descubrimiento.