Promises To Ghosts

I didn't believe being a barista, or social worker, or freelance writer, or office goffer prepared me for a career as a photographer. I didn't believe it right up to the moment the French tax official told me that's what I was. OK, so it was just another label, but enough to light my passion for this place. This place being the eastern Pyrenees. Bits of it are French the rest is Spanish, though it's often more African than either. There are other places with higher mountains, bigger lakes, deeper gorges and better ski resorts, but they are not a backdrop to my life. And then there's that sea, the cradle of so many things we cherish. Chic Mediterranean it isn't, happily what it lacks in Gucci it makes up for in good wines and restaurants that don't cost a fortune.With my slight photographic skills I have tried to capture its spirit but its beauty goes too deep, through levels that even a genius like Picasso couldn't penetrate. I'm starting to believe it hides half its beauty in the heart's of the people who were born here and perhaps even a little in those it has seduced.
Not everyone came here looking for love, too many came to rape and destroy. Armies have marched through here for as long as recorded history, Hannibal, the Romans, the Vandals, the Visigoths, the Arab Armies of the Caliphate, the Franks, Pirates sweeping in from the sea,French and Spanish armies crossing and re-crossing it and most recently Franco and Hitler. For the armies it was a stop along the way, for the people who lived here it was a crucifixion. They were butchered, plundered and enslaved but they survived, driven by their passion for their land. It is a place full of stories.