The Thirsty City

In black and gray nuances, there was a city in the middle of nowhere. It isn’t a common place, there was something in the air, something dense and heavy. There were no children there, it was strange actually, but people were born and became adults immediately. It was as if the childhood wasn’t important for them or they just didn’t know how this sweet and enchanted little piece of time could be so pleasant, so unforgettable.

You couldn’t see the mountains if you were on the street, you couldn’t see the field or even the horizon. It wasn’t because these things didn’t exist or because people were blind to see some special things, in fact they were, but not in this case, not in simple cases.

Come! Fast! See! You can see, you can see where they were. There they were! Hundreds and hundreds of people dressed in black clothes, people looking down at the ground, walking, marching in some kind of gloomy military discipline. Can you recognize who was a man and who was a woman? I can’t. They kept going in disillusioned steps.

So now we can follow them, come on! Walk fast, stay behind the last row of these human machines. Now look up at the sky!

The sky of that city was made of holes, actually people could just see small parts of the gray sky, if they looked up, what they didn’t do.

Those people didn’t wear shoes, but their feet were covered by a thin, sickening smoke of coal. They woke up in the dark, swallowed their food fast and left home to their scary procession. During all day they were drowned in the shadows. There wasn’t gleaming places or bright green oaks, there was no nature, except for the rats, the bugs and the cockroach. When the night fell down, all those miserable people without faces, hands or feet – all these parts were hired under the dirty-, left small and crooked doors made of branches and did the way back.

The street wasn’t the first floor of the city, it was the last one. People came out of the doors and started the way back, they went down, down, down under the culvert, under the rat’s houses. When people stopped going down they were already close enough to hell. They lay in their beds and covered themselves with an old and soiled blanket, but their feet of coal stayed out of the bed.

In the next morning, everything was exactly the same of the day before and the after. People there never asked themselves why they lived like that, who they worked for or why the lived inside the ground. They never went up with their head up, looking up. They always looked at the ground, to the small dirty gloomy kind of life.

Why did they do things that way? I don’t know, they didn’t know either. But I know something, I was there once and my heart cries of fear of going there again. When I was there I followed those people and I looked up, you saw that too. You saw the sky and you saw the monsters which pierced that soft gray wrap. You saw the skyscrapers, you saw them stretching themselves over every single empty space. You saw. You realized, as I did, that they were alive, they could and they did control everything there, everybody.

The skyscrapers did their slaves, their slaves feed their machines and they grow, they kept growing with energy of the lives they stole. And that was the destiny of the city, of the skyscrapers and of those who lived to feed the ambitions of the greatest.

Dicionário de idéias afins

Peguei um dicionário de idéias afins, era preciso fazer conexões de idéias perdidas no espaço infinito de minha alma. Foi um presente sábio esse, talvez não fosse esse o motivo de o ter ganho, porém foi o uso mais bem feito.

Uma noite, uma angústia, a busca por respostas que não pareciam perto, a busca por um alívio, por entendimento. E na confusão dos sentidos e dos sentimentos aparece a lógica escondida por de trás de nossas preocupações. E lá veio ela, morna, confortável, acalentadora, lá veio ela, a paz. Tudo o que eu precisava era descobrir que busco o movimento em minha quietude, que busco a permanência na ausência e na mudança, que busco a transformação do que é eterno e imutável. Que busco o ilusório que por si só é belo e mágico. A pequena felicidade, a tranqüilidade, o repouso e a dança de meu coração.

E a noite seguiu e pude descansar em paz, ciente de mim, ciente das idéias e das confusões que corriam sobre a minha cabeça.

Os velhos demônios

Os velhos demônios estão de volta, chegaram ao cair da noite fria e escura, sem aviso, sem fazer barulho. Os olhos piscaram e ao voltar ao seu estado normal lá estavam eles, entrando afoitos no salão.

As lembranças dançaram entre as mesas e cadeiras e repousaram no colo daqueles que os conheciam. Os demônios continuam seu caminho, sem pausa, sem descanso e ao chegarem ao fim do salão, decidiram ficar. Esta decisão pesou como uma lâmina fria no coração daqueles que podiam ver as bestas.

Os fantasmas que habitam o local se entreolharam em desconfiança, sabiam que eram mais bem vindos entre aquelas paredes. As pessoas cientes tomaram em apenas um gole seco o resto do vinho em suas taças. E mal tiveram tempo de respirar quando perceberam que já estavam presas na conversa envolvente daqueles novos convidados. Com vozes macias e relatos interessantes sobre o resto do mundo, eles receberam convites para sentar, beber e comer.

Os antigos fantasmas recolheram suas experiências e memórias e deixaram o salão, não para sempre, eles sabiam que iriam voltar. Enquanto isso a festa dos demônios continuava, com uma música que ecoava pelas paredes, atingia a alma e controlava o espírito dos que ali estavam presentes. Eram bonitos e dançavam magnificamente. Um deles com um vestido vermelho rodopiava pela sala, amparado por outro de fraque branco, elegantes e majestosos. Sedutores...

As pessoas hipnotizadas observavam a cena, não agiam, não pensavam, não sentiam nada além do que viam, do que os demônios mostravam. Elas perderam suas individualidades, suas almas...

E a festa durou, o dia chegou e foi embora várias vezes. Os pratos ficaram vazios e voltaram a encher e diversas luas passaram por aquelas terras até que o vinho adquiriu um gosto amargo, não matava mais a sede dos insaciáveis demônios que ainda sugavam a carcaça das pessoas em busca de energia, vida, porém esta já era uma fonte estérea. Ávidos, sedentos, eles partiram, deixando destroços, corpos, vazio.

E muito tempo foi necessário para que do nada e de almas vazias fossem reconstruídas imagens pálidas de vida. E mais tempo ainda foi preciso para que as pessoas se reconhecessem e para que o vinho recobrasse o seu primeiro gosto, para que os sentidos retornassem, para que o desejo e a paixão aparecessem, primeiro em formas tímidas, depois em formas avassaladoras.

O tempo, porém também é cruel. E na medida em que passou e não encontrou as suas expectativas satisfeitas, minou as formas devastadoras da vontade, da vida. A amargura foi, então a primeira a encontrar o seu espaço. Lá estava de volta, o primeiro fantasma. A solidão chegou em seguida e as almas daquelas pessoas foram finalmente enterradas pela desesperança e lá permaneceram com os olhos fixos no tempo que não passava.

Bons tempos eram aqueles em que se ainda morria de tristeza,
de coração partido por algum amor
ou de saudade.
Hoje nada parece importar muito.
E as pessoas morrem do coração por terem comido gordura demais durante a vida.

Enquanto a chuva cai fininha do outro lado da janela e o mundo se move devagar, apenas alguns percebem que a vida está em suspensão.

E o vento nada pode lhes contar sobre os segredos do universo,

nem as estrelas atingem mais as suas almas.

Não escutam mais.

Não podem ser mais,

não sentem.

Perderam o pulso, as cores e as paixões.

Perderam a vida na ausência da morte,

perderam por fim a existência.

E como agora proceder para sair do vazio e se configurarem na experiência e no tempo?

Eles não sabem,

Eles não querem ser.

Uma boa conversa durante horas de solidão de uma noite,
Uma poesia recebida,
Uma beleza compartilhada,
Um sentimento, um pedaço do mundo,
Um agradecimento resta apenas,
Obrigada.

The snow man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens

The sound of a crack of bones

This story starts with the sound of a crack of bones, into a mixture of flesh, blood and gold, it could be heard the whispering of life leaving the moisted spiracles with the sweat of an unlived life.

The sound danced in the air and with soft restings, it arrived in everyone’s ear bringing the certainty of hope. While the eyes were closed and minds were traveling though peaceful places and hidden courage, just for a moment, just for a second, people there met their souls again.

But the wind is hard and can’t let it’s way behind. It came and went away carrying with it that moment from those whose heart was weak.

Breaking the inertia of the scene, the light of the sun illuminated all the street and those frozen wax dolls returned from that dream. Right after faces gained expressions of horror, mercy, pain and guilt. The body was still there…

In the middle of the room, on the floor, on that destroyed bus, it was lain such a young body maculated by iron laminas and glass, cuts made blood come out and bring color to that brunet skin, contaminating the atmosphere with the smell of death, which carried the taste of life away with it. Pieces of fabric, dirty with red wine and golden dust, covered the fresh and the strength of that tender women, but her eyes were wide open and even though without movement it was bright and showed all the wishes for love, freedom, passion and art.

Watching that image, some people there just could not understand that the accident wasn’t an unfair and cruel occurrence. It was the crack of a moment, the crack of a situation, the crack of an old spirit. One crack that does not break or destroy, one crack that makes it be reborn and makes souls free.

Based in Frida Kahlo’s life.

Severino, o gato que mora na garagem

Eis Severino, o gato que mora na garagem. Olhar cabisbaixo, aparência fatigada e uma judiação excessiva para sua tenra idade.

Severino aqui chegou numa madrugada sem aviso prévio, pensaram que ele estava no telhado, porém a verdade é que o pobre animal habitava as folhagens dos jardins. Fugia de todos, desconfiado, arisco. Seu miado, porém, mais parecia um choro, na verdade um chamado. O que queria Severino? Atenção? Comida? Não sabem ao certo. Todas as noites seu escandaloso coral começava e todas as noites por conseqüência era alimentado.

A presença daquela pequena criatura foi ignorada por alguns, reclamada por outros e apenas para uma pequena parte cuidada, protegida. Mas Severino continuou pelas redondezas, não sabem ao certo como ele chegou aqui, nem por que. Talvez tenha escutado por ai que esse era um bom lugar para gatos, talvez tenha seguido a sua intuição ou pode ter sido obra do grande acaso que gosta de pregar peças nas pessoas.

Após alguns dias, Severino se mudou para embaixo da escada, junto a entulhos, coisas velhas, sem importância, descartáveis. E lá passou a ser alimentado. Depois foi gradualmente se mudando para a garagem e lá reside atualmente.

A canção desesperada de Severino ainda continua, embora em menor grau. Ele recebe comida várias vezes ao dia, porém ainda é contido, desconfiado, medroso, mesmo que já ensaie seus primeiros passos em direção a aqueles que o alimentam. Qual será o destino de Severino? Não sabem também.

Dessa história toda e da curta vida desse bicho nos resta uma questão: seria Severino um descrente das pessoas? Ou apenas um animal acometido? Por que sendo tão novo teria medo de humanos? O que lhe aconteceu? Ou é essa uma condição natural, é cético por excelência?

O fato engraçado é pensar que sem a comida diária que recebe talvez Severino não se arriscaria na sua tímida aproximação. Tudo isso seria então efeito da fome? Que como sabemos é de fato negra. Ou ele seria só mais um agindo por interesse?

Interesseiro, ingênuo, inocente, medroso, covarde o que será na verdade Severino? Um grande subvertedor da ordem ou apenas mais um que nela está inserido? Ou até mesmo um grande manipulador que chegou de mancinho, se fazendo de coitado, desprotegido, que ganhou os jardins, a escada e a garagem. Qual será seu próximo passo? Eles não sabem.

É, o Severino sabe fazer as coisas, como todo bom gato faz.

Which side of the mirror?

Ruby opened her eyes, they were deep blue, but at that moment they seemed to be so empty, opaque. Then she looked up to the sky – gray, full of chaos and sadness – when the first rain drop fell and reached the ground with all the strength. Ethan was by her side, but he still slept sat on the bench.

Far from there, at the same time, Death was leaving the city of dead for one more job.

The city of dead stretch itself like some cobweb over the city of the ones who imagine to live. It’s invisible to the disregarded eyes, but its rotten smell reaches the noses of the ones who are out of the material illusion.

It was the end of the afternoon and Death kept its way through the stretch alleys made of stone. It walked bringing the rain, extending itself through the threads of the cobweb.

The first rain drop reached the floor when Death arrived next to Ruby, it stayed behind a tree, watching the couple, waiting.

Ethan and Ruby looked at the rain wondering if they wanted it to wash their doubts away. They could feel all the weight of the air, but if their doubts went away what would be in its place?

Their last memory was from three days before, while they were traveling at night, they listened to music and laughed. Ruby’s smiles were so pure, so honest, her eyes shone shiner than ever, in deep blue as the sea. Ethan looked at her, her red full hair were moving on her breast, she was so beautiful that he could hardly breath when he was next to her.

She held his hand tightly and suddenly both saw so much light outside the car, it was coming so fast that they just felt the crash and the car falling down out of the road.

Ethan and Ruby woke up on their porch; Death was there behind the tree, but they didn’t know. Both stayed in silence for some time, they knew something had changed.

Ethan held Ruby’s hand, she couldn’t feel the heat of his skin anymore. She looked at him and he had his lips contracted and such a hard expression, he couldn’t listen to the sound of her heart beats and her shine was lost inside some sadness layer.

Ruby couldn’t breath then, her throat was closed. Ethan then kissed her with all his fear, with all his despair. She received that with all her love and all her pain. They knew someone was dead, but who was that?

Finding out the truth could bring more tears, more pain. It could bring loneliness, it could mean the separation. They were full of fear, they didn’t want to say goodbye.

Ethan spoke and asked: “What is death?”, Ruby answered him: “Life and death are the sides of the same coin, one just makes sense with the other. One just exists because the other exists, like us. That is the beautiful thing Ethan, that’s the meaning. This life is a mirror, the outer part of the mirror. We can just see the reflexes of real life in the inner part, but the reflexes aren’t all the inner part. There are so many other things beyond these, but we just can’t see because we are out. When we go inside, a new world will be there for us. I won’t fear it, I just don’t want to loose you.”.

Ethan cried, he cried so loud, he cried all his soul. He was so nervous, so afraid, so white that Ruby stood up and held him. She said “I will protect you my little bird, I don’t feel fear anymore, I don’t feel pain, I’m ready to find out the truth.”.

Death then went out from the tree and walked slowly till them. Each step forward worked as a silver dagger in Ethan’s heart, but Ruby didn’t move, didn’t change. Death smiled, Ruby was still.

Death said: “Come with me, my lady. Dance with me, one unique last dance, climbing the hill.”. Its voice was so soft. Ruby then said: “I can see in your eyes that I’m not dead, but my soul is connected to you because he is dead, I can’t let him alone, I won’t do it. I accept your dance, you can have my soul, but my heart will follow him.”.

Death looked at Ethan who was fainted, then looked at strong Ruby and extended its hand to her. They had such a sad dance, but it let her free. She didn’t go up the hill. Ethan and she still were outside the mirror, together.

Looking for Jack

In the cemetery, sat on a bench, there was a girl. She was too skinny and too white, but her hair was straight and black, the darkest hair you could ever see. Her hair was tied with a ribbon, a red one, she took it from some bouquet.

- You are too young to read this, girl.

Anna smiled softly, looking at the book. Then, she lifted her eyes to the man who had said those words. He was about forty, tall, a little brunet and his hair was so dark as his eyes.

- Am I? “She said still laughing.” How old do you think I am?
- Something around fifteen. “He answered looking suspicious.”
- I’m not that young, even though I’m young. I’m eighteen. Did you read this?
- Once. “He said.”
- Did you like it?
- Not at the first time I read.
- But… You said you read this once, just once. “She asked intricate.”
- And you are right, it was a long time ago, and I was an idiot. The rest of the times I lived it. “His eyes were shining.”
- So… this book is part of your soul. “She said in such a serious way.”
- A great part of it. “He smiled.” Can I sit?
- Yes, you can.

He sat next to her, someway, he was too nervous.

- So, were you an idiot one day?
- Yes, I was. “He was laughing”
- When?
- I was in the beginning of my twenties. I was a boy, a proud one without many feelings.
- How did you change?
- I met a girl, she was sat on a bench, as you are now. She was reading and she was just like you reading… you are untouchable, the world can’t reach you. You are here, in this ordinary life, but you are not at the fantasy world either. You couldn’t be, you aren’t dreaming, at least not just it. You are not in the world of the books, the stories. So you are somewhere in the middle of these three worlds.

Anna was curious about him.

- And this girl taught me about life, feelings, dreams, love and passion. She gave me this, “T. S. Eliot Poetry”. “He was pointing to the girl’s book.” Exactly this one, the one you are holding.

Anna was confused.

- So, are you Jack? “Anna asked surprised.”
- Yes, I’m Jack. “He answered looking down, to his feet.”
- I’ve been waiting for you for a long time. I’m tired, can you take me home? “She seemed so poorly saying that.”
- I didn’t know about you, till this morning when I receive Sarah’s letter. Why did she leave me?

At that time one tear dropped from his eyes.

- It was her destiny, nobody and nothing could hold her. I couldn’t either, so now she is dead. So please, take me home, you should take care of me now, as if we could go back eighteen years ago. I just can’t go on pretending that I’m strong and everything is ok.

Anna stood up, she had no shine inside her eyes anymore, her skin was pale and cold. Jack stood up too, his soul was somehow crashed, relieved and hopeful. Anna looked at him, then she fainted in his arms. Jack took her till his house, in his arms, looking how she was pretty, fragile and sweet. Even though he had never known about her before that day, he knew she had been already beloved by him, her father.