Even if he refuses to discuss many details, I sense that the experience was not positive and that it affirmed his desire to escape from life in society. He sometimes evokes in half-words the difficult experience of being recruited by the army and sent to Bolivia as a young man. For him, the company of others was too noisy. Pedro escaped from his home village at the age of 16. Inside, there are food nets, a bed with two old mattresses, a fireplace in the centre, and all around him, nature – immense, untouched forest and mountains. It is an oval cavity, like a sphere cut in half and diagonally, the opening concealed by large trees. Pedro’s cave is a discreet refuge in the middle of nature. When I first arrived at Pedro’s Tucuman cave two years before, after a four-hour walk from the nearest village, I found an active, smiling man whom I had trouble keeping up with even though he was double my age.
#VIRTUAL CITY DWELLER CROSSW FULL#
For the city dweller, isolation implies the absence of interactions, and therefore the absence of activities.īut Pedro, in his self-isolation, is full and complete. All besides Pedro, who is not restless like the rest of us. This becomes a sudden symbolic image of the urban quarantine we all now find ourselves in. The dog barks as it runs in a loop, trying in vain to grab its own tail. Through my viewfinder, on a small terrace opposite my flat, I see an old man and his dog in the sun. In the apartment, I pace, I drink coffee, I make virtual calls to connect with people I know, while the only real humans I meet are at times of food delivery. Returning to his cave, he looks around before entering, moving slowly, with careful but confident steps, a machete in one hand, a rifle in the other: “You can never be too careful,” he repeats often. He walks through the mountains that are his home, picks up wood, watches in silence for the invisible presence of the cougar, much more feared than the virus we hear about in the national media.
#VIRTUAL CITY DWELLER CROSSW SERIES#
Pedro Luca, 83, has lived alone in a cave for the last 45 years įor Pedro, who has lived in isolation for 45 years, the days continue as they always have – marked by a series of physical activities, which give him very little free time to procrastinate.
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