Meet Me in Walden

If a tree falls in a forest and not a soul is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If a promise is neither broken nor fulfilled, how long in the air does it linger? Until time or distance sweeps it away and it lands on the lips of another two lovers?

Argentinian photographer Luz Soria fell in love with Argentinian boy, Milton Monsalvo. After four years apart, they stole two weeks together, taking time to reconnect over one last Argentinian summer. See, Luz now lives in Madrid, and the photographs she shares evidence a future that could have been before the pandemic cut short any best laid intentions.

Follow the road south, to the southernmost tip of a secret daydream and there lies a shoreline. Crystal tides; sun flecked waters; a silhouette sculpted by Aphrodite herself. Red wine. Rented cars. Cold lakes and colder nights; snuggled together in a tent under the stars. Four years in two weeks. Four years in two weeks and an impulse-fuelled voyage from hometown to hometown. Walden was the gatekeeper at the final goodbye.

But what happens when the chips fall outside the perimeters of our consciousness? What happens to tomorrow when every day is today? Memories immortalised on 35mm reels. Now anchored to the earth through the joys of experience and the people that nourished them. Familiar as furniture in his second-hand jeans. It is the ‘brief glimpses of beauty’ that remain.

How long until Walden? Do another four years lie in store? A famous character in a famous play once said, ‘maybe it’s better not to know. Then at least you have hope.’ For now, all we have is this record of a journey that wasn’t meant to be. Delicate yet burning, tragic yet beautiful. We survive on hope and different shaped promises that one day we will get somewhere that is different from here.