“The Taste of Pebbles” by Jaime Guerra
Photo © Jaime Guerra self-portrait
Jaime Guerra is a Dominican visual artist, mostly known for his photographic work. A photographer, cameraman, film editor, creative, publicist, director of photography, and overall image man, Jaime has made an unmistakable contribution to the visual arts from our country since the 90’s.
A graduate in Photography from the Centre d´Estudis Cinematográfics de Catalunya (CECC) in Barcelona, he also holds a Master Degree in Essay Cinema from the Escuela Internacional de Cine y Televisión (EICTV), in San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. Presently, he is a faculty member of the Chavón School of Design in the Dominican Republic.
Well known for his accessible persona, one that contradicts the ethos of the “distant copyright jealous artist”, Jaime is the kind of artist who is always willing to collaborate with others’ creative projects. For example, the image that accompanies our blog entry on the Dominican musician Luis “El Terror” Días, was taken by him. And if one happens to be acquainted with the contemporary creative milieu of the Dominican Republic, just by taking a quick look at his Instagram or flickr, one could easily tell that he has captured the faces of some of the most well-known members of that community. Miguel de Mena, another contributor to our blog, claims that Jaime’s “portrait and landscape photography achieve the stature of essays”, becoming “radiographies of the soul”.
For this entry, exclusively written for our Culture Blog, Jaime departs from the visual to enter another realm of storytelling. After watching for the first time the Apu Trilogy, he jumps into literary waters by burrowing into his past to bring us a sensitive tale of childhood memories. One that, even if told from adulthood, still carries that imprint of the gaze on the world that only a child can give. One that also speaks about the, generally overlooked, importance of art in our lives.
With a tale of childish glory and shame, whose main characters are a boy, a pizza and Satyajit Ray, we invite you to travel in time into a Santo Domingo that no longer exists.
The Taste of Pebbles
by Jaime Guerra
After my mother’s divorce, my brother, my sister, and I moved in with her to the second floor of my grandmother’s house. She lived with my aunt on the first floor. It was my brother’s 11th birthday and he had come down with a fever.
My mother pulled me aside and, hesitantly, said: Take this, put it in your pocket. I want you to go to “El Avestruz” and buy a large pizza. When they give it to you, hand them the money, they are supposed to give you back 2 pesos. How much are they supposed to give you back? - Two pesos. - Good, now go before it gets darker.
I was beside myself. My brother always got to do the errands, even if he was only two years older than me. Rarely would he let me tag along.
But now he was bedridden. My mother couldn’t leave his side and my sister was only two, so I was the only one who could save the day and get a pizza to celebrate my brother’s birthday.
I secured the money in my pocket, walked to my room, and, once there, put my shoes on as fast as the Road Runner, before she changed her mind.
“El Avestruz” was two blocks away. I started on my way, as if walking on air. I would be the one walking, on my own, all the way to the pizza place to buy pizza for my family and we would be so happy, and my brother would recover. It was just perfect. I planned my way there. I had to cross the street right in front of our corner house and then turn to the left. I only had to cross the street one more time, in front of the pizza place.
Every time the man with the white muffin hat opened the oven door to get a pizza out, I could see our own pizza, sitting there, waiting for the heat to do its thing.
He then opened the oven and shoved his enormous spatula right under our pizza, pulled it out, and then placed it back in with a rotating motion. Not too long after, he went back and at last pulled out our pizza. It was a beautiful sight. There was an enormous air pocket with the top just slightly burned, exactly on the slice I would have wanted for myself. I had been there with my family before. I knew the process by heart. Now he puts it on a wooden table, there goes the gyrating round knife, four strokes to make eight slices. He places it in a white box and gives it to the cashier. I hand him the money; he hands me two pesos. I put them in my pocket and grab the box.
I looked both ways and crossed the street. As I raised my foot above the curb, it stumbled upon a root and I went down, and so did the pizza, upside down and slanted sideways.
A young couple asked if I was ok. He helped me up, the girl grabbed the upside-down pizza box, tried as best as she could not to let the pizza touch the floor but it was too late, pebbles of all sizes were a new topping. I was crying almost as hard as I could cry.
My mission was a failure, never again was I going to be asked to do an errand. The young couple, trying to console me, said: Don’t worry, we’ll buy you another.
Faster than the Road Runner I grabbed the pizza box and said No, thank you, and ran home without looking back. I was crying even harder than before.
And the thing is, their compassion towards me was what made me cry harder.
The reason I am writing this clumsy story is that I just finished watching Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy for the first time and it brought back the memory of this anecdote. I don’t pretend to understand the process by which these images arrived; I don’t even understand why they are here now. I can only suspect that it is all related to the feeling of compassion. I think Satyajit Ray was a compassionate man who understood humans in a very profound way. Never in a film had I seen someone being hand-fed by another person. It was a beautiful gesture of tenderness between siblings. One that says more about their relationship than almost any other form of communication.
Before the Apu Trilogy, I had only seen three films by Satyajit Ray: Pather Panchali, The Big City, and Music Box. I loved each scene of those movies so much that I decided to discover the rest of his filmography, slowly, as my life unfolded. I wanted to delay the feeling of emptiness that comes after viewing all the films by an admired author. The only word that comes to my mind to describe that peculiar sensation is “bleakness”.
Yasujiro Ozu is for me another such director. After seeing one of his movies, I need to let time pass, linger on the feeling, enjoy it for a long time. And then watch it again before looking for another one. Those are more than films. They are human experiences. They take me to places of my past, I thought I had forgotten. Few directors take me to those places: Ozu, Ray and, more recently, Kiarostami. The first film I saw by each of them was a journey within.
And what about the pizza, you might wonder? In the end, I arrived home and my mother saw me crying. I tried to explain but she saw the box, she saw the pizza, cheese all over, pebbles all over, tears and snot all over. I kept crying as she removed the pebbles one by one, handed a slice to my brother, handed a slice to me and put a third slice in her smile.
