I Travelled to Photographs

February was ending.

Usually, such thing would mean regular summer days. However, it wasn’t summer or even a regular day – this was something else.

February 25th was winter. In that cold afternoon, I ended up into a place I’ll never forget: photographs from my phone’s gallery.

My steps were slow.

Red bricks erected the walls of houses built on top of an equally red-bricked avenue.

The windows of the houses were made of a wood strategically white-colored to match the brick’s white grouts. With such detail, it was pretty easy to forgive the toughness those bricks carried.

Houses ended themselves in grey roofing shingles. The roofs were all hipped. Houses with hip roofs, gotta love them!, I thought to myself. (Imagine the “V” letter upside down on top of a square – that’s a house with a hip roof.)

Showing a winter that was already leaving, dark trees with dry twigs were in contrast against a white sky – the whitest I’d ever seen in my life. Damn! The whole picture looked like a painting, while the white sky worked as the canvas board on which all that was drawn.

I remember walking and trying to get everything I could, until a freezing wind blew abruptly into my face. It was February, though. From where I come, February meant summer, not freezing winds. Why was February that cold?

In an attempt to clear things up, I told myself what I believed that was true: You’re just looking at photographs from your phone’s gallery. There’s no need to get this excited! Ok. So I was home and looking at the “Wallpapers” album I had on my phone.

A moment later, I found myself facing a large and wonderful canal, in which someone was solitary paddling a boat to somewhere. What a view.

Then, self-awareness hit me again: Wait. Isn’t my smartphone in my pocket? How could I be possibly looking at photographs on it?

I immediately started touching my entire body in a desperate hunt for my phone. And there it was. In my fucking coat. It wasn’t really possible for me to see photographs on my phone – that shit was in my pocket all the time.

Besides, why would I be wearing a coat on summer? And, if I was already wearing a coat, how could I be still cold? How inappropriate were my clothes for that weather? Only a person who sensed that winter solely with the eyes would underestimate its coldness like that!

The boat was really leaving through the canal. The view wasn’t photographs. What was all that, then?

I got my phone from my pocket, turned off airplane mode, and opened the Maps app. Come on, where am I?

“Noorder Amstelkanaal”, I read. Wow.

All of a sudden, February 25th was a cold winter in Amsterdam. My very first one.

I guess I travelled to photographs.