Amalia Quiñones

24 memories9 places

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2026

1 photoAdded Oct 4, 2026

You went to Mar y Sol?

Sofía was looking through some of my old photographs and found one of Carmen and me when we were young. She asked where it was taken and I said I thought it was Mar y Sol. She said, "What's Mar y Sol?" So I told her. When I got to the part about Carmen telling her mother she was staying at my house and me telling Mami I was staying at Carmen's, Sofía looked at me like she'd never seen me before. "You did that?" I reminded her that I was 21 years old. Apparently this did not make it better. Then she wanted to know everything. Who we saw. Where we slept. What we wore. Whether my mother ever found out. Some of it I knew. Some of it I couldn't remember. And some of it I realized I hadn't thought about in more than fifty years.

San Juan, Puerto Rico

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~2015

Added Oct 4, 2026

The box of negatives

I found a box of old negatives while cleaning a closet. I almost threw it away because I couldn't tell what was on most of them. Then I started holding them up to the window. Mexico. Culebra. Carmen. My parents. There were photographs I hadn't seen in thirty or forty years. I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the floor instead of cleaning the closet. There was one photograph of Carmen and me covered in mud that I was convinced was from Mar y Sol. I sent Carmen a picture of it. She immediately called me and said, "That's not Mar y Sol." I said, "Of course it is." She said, "Amalia, look at my hair." We're still arguing about it.

San Juan, Puerto Rico

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2000

1 photoAdded Oct 4, 2026

Carmen talked me into Vieques

Carmen talked me into going to Vieques. I didn't need convincing about what was happening there. I needed convincing that standing outside in the heat all day was going to accomplish anything. We went anyway. I remember expecting everything to feel very serious and political, and of course parts of it did, but mostly I remember people. Talking, sharing food, complaining about the heat, somebody always knowing somebody else's cousin. Carmen was much more energized by all of it than I was. At one point she looked at me and said, "Aren't you glad you came?" I told her I'd answer after I found some shade.

Vieques, Puerto Rico

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~1983

2 songsAdded Oct 4, 2026

Nobody wanted to hear my records

When I came back from Mexico I brought records with me that almost nobody I knew wanted to listen to. Joy Division, Siouxsie, The Cure. Carmen tolerated them. Rafi said they all sounded miserable. I remember putting Siouxsie on one night and Rafi asking me what had happened to Santana. Nothing had happened to Santana. I still loved Santana. I never understood why people thought liking something new meant you had to stop liking whatever came before it.

Santurce, Puerto Rico

Christine — Siouxsie and the Banshees

A Forest — The Cure

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~1978

1 photoAdded Oct 4, 2026

The apartment with the terrible water heater

The apartment in Mexico had a water heater that worked whenever it felt like it. You would turn on the shower and wait, and sometimes you got hot water and sometimes you just stood there bargaining with it. There were three of us living there for a while. Nobody ever had any money. The kitchen table was also a desk and a place for developing contact sheets and somewhere to leave records. I don't know why I remember that apartment so fondly. At the time we complained about it constantly. I would probably hate living there now.

Mexico City, Mexico

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~1975

1 photoAdded Oct 4, 2026

The first time I saw Culebra underwater

The first time I went to Culebra with Carmen we hardly had any money. We brought a tent that I don't think belonged to either one of us and far too much canned food. I had been snorkeling since I was a kid, but I had never seen anything like the water there. We stayed out for hours. I remember huge stands of coral and so many fish that after a while you stopped pointing them out. There were parrotfish everywhere. I saw a ray and tried to yell to Carmen through my snorkel. That obviously didn't work. That night I was completely sunburned across my back and couldn't sleep comfortably in the tent. I remember thinking I wanted to come back every year. I didn't come every year, but I came back a lot.

Culebra, Puerto Rico

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April 1–3, 1972

1 photoAdded Oct 4, 2026

Mar y Sol

Carmen's mother thought she was sleeping at my house and Mami thought I was sleeping at Carmen's. We were 21 years old, which sounds ridiculous now, but neither one of us was going to tell our parents we were going to spend the weekend at Mar y Sol. We went with some friends in a car that I can't believe made it there. I remember we brought almost nothing useful. No proper rain clothes, not enough food, nothing sensible to sleep on. We thought we were very prepared. Then it rained. There was mud everywhere. Everything was wet. At some point I stopped caring. I remember being exhausted and dirty and incredibly happy. For hours people kept saying Black Sabbath was coming. Then somebody said they couldn't get through the traffic. I don't know when we finally believed they weren't coming. I remember the Allman Brothers much more clearly. Or at least I think I do. That's the strange thing after all these years. I don't remember the performances in order. Some of them I probably only think I remember because I've seen the names so many times since. But I remember the crowd. I remember looking around and thinking I had never seen so many people like us in one place before. And I remember Carmen turning to me at some point and saying, "Your mother is going to kill you." She didn't. She was much more interested in why everything I owned was covered in mud.

Los Tubos / Manatí, Puerto Rico

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1968

1 filmAdded Oct 4, 2026

2001

Carmen and I went to see 2001 and I don't think either one of us had any idea what we were going to see. Carmen hated it. She kept asking me what was happening and I didn't know either. I remember walking out feeling almost irritated by it, but then I couldn't stop thinking about it. Especially the ending. I wanted somebody to explain it to me and at the same time I didn't want it explained. Carmen still says it was the longest movie she ever saw in her life.

San Juan, Puerto Rico

2001: A Space Odyssey — Stanley Kubrick

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