Our neighbor has a rooster! This wouldn’t be strange if we didn’t live in Porto city center. Perhaps the rooster has lived in the garden next to ours for many months but only now we have discovered it, now that COVID19 interrupted the world and our work in photography, and locked us down.

Every time the rooster crows, we laugh like fools, for the unusual of having a rooster neighbor, and our little ones cackle and run around the house flapping imaginary wings. On the living room couch, there are landing strips for our rooster-kids' flights. And when the landing goes wrong, the chicken-mom is there, with the miraculous kisses that (still) cure all pain.

The time we live in is overwhelming. We clash with our own smallness and our impotence. We are frightened, of the present but mostly of the future, of the uncertainty of what awaits us, of the foresights of new crises to come. We miss our people, those that we can see - for broadband’s sake – but that we cannot feel; and we are collecting hugs, hoping that the time will come to release them. We have an unspeakable admiration and gratitude for those who wear their uniforms and their superhero capes and are out there, trying to keep COVID19 from interrupting also life. It is impossible to hold the tears when thinking of them…

It is an overwhelming, dreadful, distressing time!

But I know that soon our rooster neighbor will crow. And there will come the laughter and a rooster-boy cackling, flying around the room. Amongst the surreal madness that we are living, we cackle! It was COVID19 who introduced us to the rooster and this was wonderful!

Closing us at home, it allowed us to be at home! It brought the time without clock and the embracing without time. It brought the board games, the playing cards and the puzzles; it brought the racing cars tracks and the blanket tent in the living room; it brought cakes and pizzas cooked by gluttonous fingers. And there is time for all! We end up being magicians, scientists and choreographers. We are scary green monsters and we hunt adorable green mini-monsters. And there is time for all! We are living in a four heads embrace… and we cackle! There is time…

By closing us at home, COVID19 gave us time! And while suspending our work in photography, it also boosted our leisure in photography ... and pleasure!

Take a look…