This book is a personal, an extremely personal, portrait of Ecuador, of my country, of my homeland. I have traveled its roads in an attempt to find healing following the death of Carolina, trying to find a formula for converting grief into beauty.
Nostalgia and sensuality need one another and nourish one another. It’s a virtuous circle: to overcome nostalgia one must declare the triumph of the senses, assert the concrete importance of the here and now.
The waters of the Tonle Sap River look still, almost motionless. The river is in no hurry. This is the city of Phnom Penh, flowing alongside the river. Fishermen drift by with their precious cargo.
The plains of central Australia are a horizontal chasm. One’s eyes can travel no more than a few yards across the flat continent, and they find relief only in the immensity of the sky.
When you climb up to those peaks, far off in the distance you see mountains that are even higher yet — mountains surrounded by dark forests, terrible and mysterious mountains impossible to climb.
This is a project I began in 1985. Every weekend I would drive out to the mountain. On those trips, I grew to know the wind. The wind is the voice of the mountain.
Romania is a country that suffered for decades under the black hand of a messianic government whose mission was to re-found the nation. In the name of utopias, governments have created poverty.
The first time I went to Rio, I was captivated — changed, in fact — by the city’s charms. “What are these uncomplicated people made of, that they smile so spontaneously, walk so self-confidently?
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