GALO AND PERU
(a Christmas antiphabule)
Christmas Eve. In the backyard of a middle-class family are a rooster and a turkey. The rooster walks cheerful, swinging its crest. The turkey doesn't come out of the corner and barely disguises the sadness. You know what's waiting for you.
Suddenly the rooster sings. The turkey then questions him with a mixture of surprise and resentment:
-- Why this joy?
-- Because I have something to do with what happens today. One of my ascenders greeted the Child's birth. It was the golden trumpet of a new world. How could I not rejoice? What about you? What's with the face?
-- Come on. Soon I'll become food for those who come to celebrate the birth to which you refer. You wanted me to be happy?
-- Try to accept. This is a great cause. Besides, you'll have everything to be the king of the party. Many will find it soft, crispy, well seasoned.
-- That won't depend on me, but on the cook. Have you forgotten I'll be dead?
-- You'll be lifeless, but you'll be the center of attention. And most importantly, it will represent the great note of reality. More than the tree, the songs, the formal greetings, will bear witness to the nature of man. Tonight's success will be measured by the pleasure you give the guests.
-- Are you sure?
- Of course! You will quench their body's appetite, which is deeper than that of the soul. If you see things that way, you'll be convinced of their importance.
Peru seems to be impressed by those words.
The rooster goes back away, swinging its crest, and sings again for no reason. Or maybe because of the joy of not being turkey. When he comes back from another walk, he hears new vent:
- Your rhetoric doesn't convince me. It's easy to praise a death sentence when you're gonna stay alive. I bet you're glad you're not taking my place.
-- I don't deny... But you know my day will come soon. And it won't be as bright as yours. I will “reign” at one of these banal Sunday lunches, with shrill music in the background and beer instead of champagne.
At this moment the cook comes to interrupt the conversation. He gets close to both of them, with a decided air, and ends up heading towards the
Turkey. There's a brilliant fishmonger in one hand.
The bird does not outline any reaction.
The moment it is lifted and tight against the woman's belly, it still hears the cock sing. For the third time.
@chico-viana-lwd0u
Chico Viana
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COMPULSIONS
I see a story on TV about compulsion. The reporter interviews some compulsive, who speak uncompromisingly of their manners. A woman only feels happy when she shops. Shows in the wardrobe a lot of dresses, blouses, shoes you'll never wear.
A man exposes his monumental collection of CDs, which piles up by several rooms of the house. He can't handle it if he spends the rest of his life listening to music. And do you really like music? Who likes to elect their favorite composers and hears them over and over again, without this desire to replace them with others. To like is to summarize, select. But the compulsive does not evaluate merits, qualities; what motivates him is the mechanical satisfaction of his impulses.
Cognitive-behavioral psychology associates compulsive gestures with obsessions that the individual seeks to free himself. Obsessive thinking points to a danger to which the person is exposed if he does not practice repetition rituals. In this sense, buying without motive or doing gymnastics without limits would be minor mortifications to ward off an illusory threat. Or to appease a guilty conscience.
This chain of mortifications constitutes in the limit a serious disorder, in which compulsive gestures gain a kind of autonomy that makes people forget what they want to purge. It's like the nervous tic, or the cacoete, which are prayer caricatures. The individual ritualizes a meaningless prayer with bodily devices. Or a prayer that at least at first only makes sense to him.
Who doesn't have their compulsions? The one who does not have them throw the first stone (the writers have the phrases made, which are language compulsions). Some disguise them in noble activities, such as art or politics. Others sublimate them in religious rituals. Others eventually vulgarize them in games, vices, physical exercises.
My thesis (nothing original) is that excess physical activity is an attempt to ward off fear of death. The awareness that you are exercising heart and muscles, and with this fighting the evil army of triglycerides and fatty acids, gives the person an illusion of fullness. Or unexpegnability. Some say that what leads to such excess is the effect of endorphin, but this does not invalidate the thesis. Prayers are an endorphin of the soul, and are also justified by our refusal to die.
Compulsions show that the limit between sanity and mental illness is tenuous. Even the normal individual has, as Machado would say, his degree of sandwich. Healing the compulsive would cure the world, and anyone who tried to do so would have the fate of Simon Bacamarte – that Machadian character who, in trying to distinguish the mad from the sane, ends up alone in a mental institution.
I see a story on TV about compulsion. The reporter interviews some compulsive, who speak uncompromisingly of their manners. A woman only feels happy when she shops. Shows in the wardrobe a lot of dresses, blouses, shoes you'll never wear.
A man exposes his monumental collection of CDs, which piles up by several rooms of the house. He can't handle it if he spends the rest of his life listening to music. And do you really like music? Who likes to elect their favorite composers and hears them over and over again, without this desire to replace them with others. To like is to summarize, select. But the compulsive does not evaluate merits, qualities; what motivates him is the mechanical satisfaction of his impulses.
Cognitive-behavioral psychology associates compulsive gestures with obsessions that the individual seeks to free himself. Obsessive thinking points to a danger to which the person is exposed if he does not practice repetition rituals. In this sense, buying without motive or doing gymnastics without limits would be minor mortifications to ward off an illusory threat. Or to appease a guilty conscience.
This chain of mortifications constitutes in the limit a serious disorder, in which compulsive gestures gain a kind of autonomy that makes people forget what they want to purge. It's like the nervous tic, or the cacoete, which are prayer caricatures. The individual ritualizes a meaningless prayer with bodily devices. Or a prayer that at least at first only makes sense to him.
Who doesn't have their compulsions? The one who does not have them throw the first stone (the writers have the phrases made, which are language compulsions). Some disguise them in noble activities, such as art or politics. Others sublimate them in religious rituals. Others eventually vulgarize them in games, vices, physical exercises.
My thesis (nothing original) is that excess physical activity is an attempt to ward off fear of death. The awareness that you are exercising heart and muscles, and with this fighting the evil army of triglycerides and fatty acids, gives the person an illusion of fullness. Or unexpegnability. Some say that what leads to such excess is the effect of endorphin, but this does not invalidate the thesis. Prayers are an endorphin of the soul, and are also justified by our refusal to die.
Compulsions show that the limit between sanity and mental illness is tenuous. Even the normal individual has, as Machado would say, his degree of sandwich. Healing the compulsive would cure the world, and anyone who tried to do so would have the fate of Simon Bacamarte – that Machadian character who, in trying to distinguish the mad from the sane, ends up alone in a mental institution.
MUST NEES ON THE CAMA
Someone has already said that the bed is a metaphysical mobile, because in it the individual is born, loves and dies. I see it more like a physical furniture, in which we sleep to relieve the discomforts of the body.
The bed is the place of rest, meditation, and also sloth. Laziness, as we know, is one of the capital sins. That must be why, in cloisters and convents, he tended to avoid comfortable beds. The religious slept on a hard road so that the body would not become accustomed to comfort and soften. I imagine, in a dream, they were supposed to be on a cute mattress, like the one the body lasciviously molds.
The primitive man slept on the ground, on stone, sand, grass. One of the advantages of that was that he didn't suffer from his spine. Certainly someone, feeling the softness of the grass, decided to cut it into tufts and put them in a bag or similar wrap. So was born the mattress, or a primitive prototype of it. Although it did stick a little bit, it was an advance on the stony surface. From then on, our forefather came to sleep not by necessity but also by pleasure.
With the habit of staying in bed, he began to devote much of his time to reflection and reverie, which led to the development of philosophy and art (from philosophy to Aristotle, for whom the walk stimulated thought). She also began to think more about women – the delicacy of traits, the melody of voice, the grace of walking. From this perception, the woman was transformed from a simple sexual object into an erotic muse. But it took time for her to stop being pulled by her hair and taken to the bottom of the cave to make love. This practice would only really end with the appearance of the first hairdressers.
The bed predisposes to inaction and everything it brings. Lying down, the individual consumes less calories, tends to gain weight and fall victim to so-called diseases of civilization. But the real disease is not of the body: it is of the spirit, which tends to erode as the impulse to rise weakens. First we end up giving up the effort, which is a real battle; then we give up on ourselves. In bed the world narrows between sheets and pillows – and this reduction, so comfortable, is also the most insidious of dangers.
This danger is less for old people, for the worst of old age is to see wane, not desire, but the will to sleep. The young man sleeps, in which identity dilutes, the grace of suspending for a few hours the weight of existence. The old man, condemned to the vigil, realizes that the night is not penumbra, but a clarity in which each memory is illuminated with a sharpness as irrefutable as painful. Without sleep the night becomes an uninterrupted vigil, where memory parades its ghosts with punitive sharpness.
The old man does not suffer for lack of dreams, but for the excess of memories – all clear, and some relentless. The bed, then, ceases to be a resting space to become an arena where keeping your eyes open signals defeat. In this kind of shipwreck, it's no use clinging to the pillow. And age no longer grants the patience to count lambs.
Now excuse me, I have to get up.
Someone has already said that the bed is a metaphysical mobile, because in it the individual is born, loves and dies. I see it more like a physical furniture, in which we sleep to relieve the discomforts of the body.
The bed is the place of rest, meditation, and also sloth. Laziness, as we know, is one of the capital sins. That must be why, in cloisters and convents, he tended to avoid comfortable beds. The religious slept on a hard road so that the body would not become accustomed to comfort and soften. I imagine, in a dream, they were supposed to be on a cute mattress, like the one the body lasciviously molds.
The primitive man slept on the ground, on stone, sand, grass. One of the advantages of that was that he didn't suffer from his spine. Certainly someone, feeling the softness of the grass, decided to cut it into tufts and put them in a bag or similar wrap. So was born the mattress, or a primitive prototype of it. Although it did stick a little bit, it was an advance on the stony surface. From then on, our forefather came to sleep not by necessity but also by pleasure.
With the habit of staying in bed, he began to devote much of his time to reflection and reverie, which led to the development of philosophy and art (from philosophy to Aristotle, for whom the walk stimulated thought). She also began to think more about women – the delicacy of traits, the melody of voice, the grace of walking. From this perception, the woman was transformed from a simple sexual object into an erotic muse. But it took time for her to stop being pulled by her hair and taken to the bottom of the cave to make love. This practice would only really end with the appearance of the first hairdressers.
The bed predisposes to inaction and everything it brings. Lying down, the individual consumes less calories, tends to gain weight and fall victim to so-called diseases of civilization. But the real disease is not of the body: it is of the spirit, which tends to erode as the impulse to rise weakens. First we end up giving up the effort, which is a real battle; then we give up on ourselves. In bed the world narrows between sheets and pillows – and this reduction, so comfortable, is also the most insidious of dangers.
This danger is less for old people, for the worst of old age is to see wane, not desire, but the will to sleep. The young man sleeps, in which identity dilutes, the grace of suspending for a few hours the weight of existence. The old man, condemned to the vigil, realizes that the night is not penumbra, but a clarity in which each memory is illuminated with a sharpness as irrefutable as painful. Without sleep the night becomes an uninterrupted vigil, where memory parades its ghosts with punitive sharpness.
The old man does not suffer for lack of dreams, but for the excess of memories – all clear, and some relentless. The bed, then, ceases to be a resting space to become an arena where keeping your eyes open signals defeat. In this kind of shipwreck, it's no use clinging to the pillow. And age no longer grants the patience to count lambs.
Now excuse me, I have to get up.
ZLIT3Z
FIRST STEP
The house in discreet turmoil. Adults are more amused by expectation, seeming taken by a toy anxiety. It's just that the girl's taking her first walk. Packed in sheets, it is put in the cart and then shakes hands. It could be enthusiasm, it could be a deaf call for help. After all, nobody knows what's going on inside the girl.
External evidence indicates that everything is fine; she is not hungry, does not thirst, and revels in a confused, mixed perfume of lavender and the moods of the recess where she has been for nine months. The father driving the cart, there goes the girl exploring the world...
The first one you face is the sun, the sea of light poured into your eyes. When she sees that she sorely squeezes her eyelids, it gives the father's shroud to play the tour guide and go explaining. May she be calm, for if she is suffering now, one day she will bless that there is something like the sun. Thanks to it there is a paradise called summer, where everything is injected with health, beauty and life. And how many times in the future you, stuffed in winter cellars, will miss the sun and wish it to re-invigorate everything with the transfiguration of its light and the energy of its heat.
Now take the sidewalk and pass before a garden. There are plants, flowers and also a jealous dog of space that it is up to you to keep. It barks furiously at them. It occurs to the father that the picture is well suited to allegory, and before the girl cries she tries to compose it. Plants, beautiful and fragile, rejoice and delight life. But nothing that is beautiful and good comes for free; even what is offered in appearance, like flowers in a garden, has its watchman with or behind it. So never be deceived by what is nodded to you without price. There will be extreme moments when the price will be yourself, your soul.
Now they cross the street. On the way a stone, a stone in the way. The allusion is too obvious, and the father smiles, quiet. No symbols or metaphors. Nothing when the situation so clearly suggests them. Here's a lesson he can't give the girl now, maybe not even interest her. But from this walk, from this street and perhaps from this chronicle, there is an appointment.
Before they get to the other side, a car passes by and almost runs them over. In the scare, Dad pushes the cart and hits the curb. The girl protestes crying, if she could swear. The father apologizes and again explains: it was a bad way, and this will happen to him a lot in life. Not out of evil or hatred, but only out of fear, you will inflict suffering on those you love. There's no point in explaining; no one will care about the car squeezing it. They'll judge only the reckless hand, the unskillful gesture you couldn't stop.
The house in discreet turmoil. Adults are more amused by expectation, seeming taken by a toy anxiety. It's just that the girl's taking her first walk. Packed in sheets, it is put in the cart and then shakes hands. It could be enthusiasm, it could be a deaf call for help. After all, nobody knows what's going on inside the girl.
External evidence indicates that everything is fine; she is not hungry, does not thirst, and revels in a confused, mixed perfume of lavender and the moods of the recess where she has been for nine months. The father driving the cart, there goes the girl exploring the world...
The first one you face is the sun, the sea of light poured into your eyes. When she sees that she sorely squeezes her eyelids, it gives the father's shroud to play the tour guide and go explaining. May she be calm, for if she is suffering now, one day she will bless that there is something like the sun. Thanks to it there is a paradise called summer, where everything is injected with health, beauty and life. And how many times in the future you, stuffed in winter cellars, will miss the sun and wish it to re-invigorate everything with the transfiguration of its light and the energy of its heat.
Now take the sidewalk and pass before a garden. There are plants, flowers and also a jealous dog of space that it is up to you to keep. It barks furiously at them. It occurs to the father that the picture is well suited to allegory, and before the girl cries she tries to compose it. Plants, beautiful and fragile, rejoice and delight life. But nothing that is beautiful and good comes for free; even what is offered in appearance, like flowers in a garden, has its watchman with or behind it. So never be deceived by what is nodded to you without price. There will be extreme moments when the price will be yourself, your soul.
Now they cross the street. On the way a stone, a stone in the way. The allusion is too obvious, and the father smiles, quiet. No symbols or metaphors. Nothing when the situation so clearly suggests them. Here's a lesson he can't give the girl now, maybe not even interest her. But from this walk, from this street and perhaps from this chronicle, there is an appointment.
Before they get to the other side, a car passes by and almost runs them over. In the scare, Dad pushes the cart and hits the curb. The girl protestes crying, if she could swear. The father apologizes and again explains: it was a bad way, and this will happen to him a lot in life. Not out of evil or hatred, but only out of fear, you will inflict suffering on those you love. There's no point in explaining; no one will care about the car squeezing it. They'll judge only the reckless hand, the unskillful gesture you couldn't stop.
THE VISIT
It's Sunday and he goes to an uncle's house. He does not like family visits, but it is not always possible to avoid. To increase discomfort, the fact that you despise such encounters is already a cause for guilt – and the boy suffers twice. First with himself, because of this seemingly inexplicable and unjust intolerance – above all unfair; then for the very occasion of the encounter, confusion of caresses and poisonous ironies. And always the bad way, or the pejo, of revealing at least by hints love.
Perhaps the previous disappointment is that it turns into hostility, that he wanted to disarm himself to open himself to the necessary tenderness. Necessary, possible. Why was it always easier with strangers?
It's Sunday and the boy goes. Stuck, more boy than ever, engorged in sorrows that he cannot explain (not even right to feel!), goes to social duty as for a sacrifice. It will compose the appearances but, why deny it?, it also goes out of curiosity to see by the eyes and gestures and tics of those who are flesh and blood. Was he better? It goes as one who tries, once again, to discover the path that leads to acceptance, to humidify the inner desert in which it had long been growing.
And it goes as if he regrets creating the drama – he, the imaginative and difficult – the blind threads and us that ended up entangled him in a web of misunderstanding and amazement. He wanted to untie himself, breathe.
On the way one laughs about everything, Sunday euphoria making the relatives comrades. It makes sun, wind a little, and all (the boy too) seem transfigured by the force of this morning. Now is no occasion for sorrow or fear; now it is to forget the rancid years, the indelible inscription in the flesh, in the soul. Now it's like an entanglement that's part of the act but it frees people from the role – that's what's been convincing itself slowly and forcefully over time. Now it seems a free, autonomous moment, from which emerges a strange desire for absolution.
When they get to their uncle's, they're still drunk. Here comes the relative who's become distant and sends everyone in. You didn't have to. Answering and asking, the owner of the house was very cordial; he was comfortable. He was among the humble of the family and lived this condition with a joy that spared others remorse. Your house should be a place of concord. The boy repents for not having remembered it, confusing a meek, good sheep, with some evil relatives.
Everybody sits down and starts talking. Memories come up, and Sunday goes back to other scenarios; the family likes a kind of jovial longing. All light, no shadows. But not for long. All of a sudden the whispering and evil comment of a vigilante jumps:
-- His wife, where is she? (This uncle's wife, really, hasn't shown up yet.) Don't you want to see us?
Insinuation is in the air like a tempting bird that soon relatives, voracious, rush to hold.
It's Sunday and he goes to an uncle's house. He does not like family visits, but it is not always possible to avoid. To increase discomfort, the fact that you despise such encounters is already a cause for guilt – and the boy suffers twice. First with himself, because of this seemingly inexplicable and unjust intolerance – above all unfair; then for the very occasion of the encounter, confusion of caresses and poisonous ironies. And always the bad way, or the pejo, of revealing at least by hints love.
Perhaps the previous disappointment is that it turns into hostility, that he wanted to disarm himself to open himself to the necessary tenderness. Necessary, possible. Why was it always easier with strangers?
It's Sunday and the boy goes. Stuck, more boy than ever, engorged in sorrows that he cannot explain (not even right to feel!), goes to social duty as for a sacrifice. It will compose the appearances but, why deny it?, it also goes out of curiosity to see by the eyes and gestures and tics of those who are flesh and blood. Was he better? It goes as one who tries, once again, to discover the path that leads to acceptance, to humidify the inner desert in which it had long been growing.
And it goes as if he regrets creating the drama – he, the imaginative and difficult – the blind threads and us that ended up entangled him in a web of misunderstanding and amazement. He wanted to untie himself, breathe.
On the way one laughs about everything, Sunday euphoria making the relatives comrades. It makes sun, wind a little, and all (the boy too) seem transfigured by the force of this morning. Now is no occasion for sorrow or fear; now it is to forget the rancid years, the indelible inscription in the flesh, in the soul. Now it's like an entanglement that's part of the act but it frees people from the role – that's what's been convincing itself slowly and forcefully over time. Now it seems a free, autonomous moment, from which emerges a strange desire for absolution.
When they get to their uncle's, they're still drunk. Here comes the relative who's become distant and sends everyone in. You didn't have to. Answering and asking, the owner of the house was very cordial; he was comfortable. He was among the humble of the family and lived this condition with a joy that spared others remorse. Your house should be a place of concord. The boy repents for not having remembered it, confusing a meek, good sheep, with some evil relatives.
Everybody sits down and starts talking. Memories come up, and Sunday goes back to other scenarios; the family likes a kind of jovial longing. All light, no shadows. But not for long. All of a sudden the whispering and evil comment of a vigilante jumps:
-- His wife, where is she? (This uncle's wife, really, hasn't shown up yet.) Don't you want to see us?
Insinuation is in the air like a tempting bird that soon relatives, voracious, rush to hold.
NORROW
I like the word "dating." It is one of the purest verbs in the Portuguese language. Even when by euphemism it designates something else (the connection between lovers, for example), “dating” suggests more tenderness than desire. It is such a word soaked in fresh teens that it should be forbidden to those who relate at a more advanced level.
Lovers gush; boyfriends sigh. Pleasure in them is more eager than consummation. Lovers have one before and one after, when the charm breaks. Lovers live in an eternal before, full of expectation and enchantment. Lovers have before them the explicit body, made flesh, opened in the frank exhibition of delivery. Lovers grope in the dark the hidden, spiritualized body they dream of someday possessing.
Boyfriend's not a regular either. The stayr is the enemy of whom he kisses or gropees in intimacy devoid of preambles and promises. He wants immediate pleasure, not just one. He wants diversity and number. The more girls or boys there are, the better, since none of them count for themselves. Valentines, if they could, would build a world just for the two of us.
Boyfriend does not want easy prey; he wants the hard and delicious work of conquest, which gradually occurs, in a growing of intimacy. He wants to seduce, which is only possible when the other opposes resistance for what is intimate, inalienable, personal. As in "stay" no one resists, it does not fit the devices of seduction. And without the work of seducing there is no reason to mobilize language and write cards, notes, poems (often stolen), in an attempt to tell the other what it feels like.
One of the problems with today's relationships is that you don't date very much. We live in an objective, pragmatic time when no one wants to waste time. In a hurry to reach the goal, the partners are alienated from what is fascinating in the course. The essential of dating is not at the point of arrival, but in the strategies that lead to it. It is a path punctuated with fears and raptures, whose meaning is more in going through it than in achieving the goal.
Even because the goal is never very clear, since boyfriends live somewhat lost in each other. It's part of the process to see the partner as an enigma and wait. As a possibility of something that none of them even know what it is. You only know that you must seize the moment before it turns, and the two of you are summoned to decide what fate they are going to give. While dating, time does its work, which consists of the slow and inflexible erosion of fantasy.
I know I'm romanticizing, but there's no romance without romanticization. That's why it only happens among those who don't know the world well. Or, if you know him, you prefer to ignore his ugliness and bet on the dream castle that (they know) will very soon be missed. The longing for boyfriends is a time when they were others, less tactical and cold. And more capable of hope in life and love.
I like the word "dating." It is one of the purest verbs in the Portuguese language. Even when by euphemism it designates something else (the connection between lovers, for example), “dating” suggests more tenderness than desire. It is such a word soaked in fresh teens that it should be forbidden to those who relate at a more advanced level.
Lovers gush; boyfriends sigh. Pleasure in them is more eager than consummation. Lovers have one before and one after, when the charm breaks. Lovers live in an eternal before, full of expectation and enchantment. Lovers have before them the explicit body, made flesh, opened in the frank exhibition of delivery. Lovers grope in the dark the hidden, spiritualized body they dream of someday possessing.
Boyfriend's not a regular either. The stayr is the enemy of whom he kisses or gropees in intimacy devoid of preambles and promises. He wants immediate pleasure, not just one. He wants diversity and number. The more girls or boys there are, the better, since none of them count for themselves. Valentines, if they could, would build a world just for the two of us.
Boyfriend does not want easy prey; he wants the hard and delicious work of conquest, which gradually occurs, in a growing of intimacy. He wants to seduce, which is only possible when the other opposes resistance for what is intimate, inalienable, personal. As in "stay" no one resists, it does not fit the devices of seduction. And without the work of seducing there is no reason to mobilize language and write cards, notes, poems (often stolen), in an attempt to tell the other what it feels like.
One of the problems with today's relationships is that you don't date very much. We live in an objective, pragmatic time when no one wants to waste time. In a hurry to reach the goal, the partners are alienated from what is fascinating in the course. The essential of dating is not at the point of arrival, but in the strategies that lead to it. It is a path punctuated with fears and raptures, whose meaning is more in going through it than in achieving the goal.
Even because the goal is never very clear, since boyfriends live somewhat lost in each other. It's part of the process to see the partner as an enigma and wait. As a possibility of something that none of them even know what it is. You only know that you must seize the moment before it turns, and the two of you are summoned to decide what fate they are going to give. While dating, time does its work, which consists of the slow and inflexible erosion of fantasy.
I know I'm romanticizing, but there's no romance without romanticization. That's why it only happens among those who don't know the world well. Or, if you know him, you prefer to ignore his ugliness and bet on the dream castle that (they know) will very soon be missed. The longing for boyfriends is a time when they were others, less tactical and cold. And more capable of hope in life and love.
REVIEWING ALICE (2)
Alice gave up looking for the Queen, but she was not satisfied with the size changes. It was very painful not knowing how to wake up the next day. He walked through the woods with these sad thoughts, when he saw beside the trail a man sitting before a table on which there was a blank paper. It was the Writer. He decided to tell you:
- Mr. Writer...
- Go away! Can't you see I'm concentrating?
The girl apologized and remained silent, observing the expression of man. He seemed to look inside you. After a couple of minutes, she came to Alice with a dull look:
- I told you to leave! I need concentration.
- But I'm quiet...
- You're looking at me, which is worse. I can't think with someone looking at me. Even if it's a girl like you.
Alice didn't like what she heard, but she decided not to. Every time he got upset, he got a little smaller. The worst thing wasn't to shrink in size, it was to see that the others noticed it.
- Why do you write?
- I haven't figured it out yet. In fact, I write to find out why I write - answered the man. He was so pleased with the answer, he decided to use it in his next writing.
- Have you written anything yet?
- I tried to write a story once, but it was very sad and I cried. Tears stained the paper.
You can't cry and write at the same time. Besides staining the paper, it damages the style.
- Style? Funny... my mom always says I need style. And now you come with this one. What's that again?
- Style is the way to do one thing. Everyone has their own.
- If everyone has their own, why does Mom say that I... “need” to have one?
- Your mother refers to another kind of style. He wants you to behave yourself.
- So style is good behavior?
- On the contrary... Style is rebellious - he said thoughtfully. Alice didn't understand and decided to change the subject:
- Can I tell you a little bit about my problems?
- I don't have time to listen; I'm writing. Besides, what kind of trouble can a little girl like you have?
- Actually, I have one problem only - but huge. I'd trade this big problem for a lot of minor problems.
- And what's your big problem? - I was wondering if you could get a story out of there.
- Change your size. Never be too long a single thing.
- Relax, you're not the only one. That's everybody's problem.
- That doesn't make me suffer any less. Not everyone gets bigger or smaller anyway. Depends on the... style of each.
- What you say makes sense, but it doesn't change things. You're no different than the others, and nothing you tell me will be new.
Disappointed, the girl decided to leave. You couldn't talk to someone who just wanted to look at himself and didn't have time to listen to others.
Alice gave up looking for the Queen, but she was not satisfied with the size changes. It was very painful not knowing how to wake up the next day. He walked through the woods with these sad thoughts, when he saw beside the trail a man sitting before a table on which there was a blank paper. It was the Writer. He decided to tell you:
- Mr. Writer...
- Go away! Can't you see I'm concentrating?
The girl apologized and remained silent, observing the expression of man. He seemed to look inside you. After a couple of minutes, she came to Alice with a dull look:
- I told you to leave! I need concentration.
- But I'm quiet...
- You're looking at me, which is worse. I can't think with someone looking at me. Even if it's a girl like you.
Alice didn't like what she heard, but she decided not to. Every time he got upset, he got a little smaller. The worst thing wasn't to shrink in size, it was to see that the others noticed it.
- Why do you write?
- I haven't figured it out yet. In fact, I write to find out why I write - answered the man. He was so pleased with the answer, he decided to use it in his next writing.
- Have you written anything yet?
- I tried to write a story once, but it was very sad and I cried. Tears stained the paper.
You can't cry and write at the same time. Besides staining the paper, it damages the style.
- Style? Funny... my mom always says I need style. And now you come with this one. What's that again?
- Style is the way to do one thing. Everyone has their own.
- If everyone has their own, why does Mom say that I... “need” to have one?
- Your mother refers to another kind of style. He wants you to behave yourself.
- So style is good behavior?
- On the contrary... Style is rebellious - he said thoughtfully. Alice didn't understand and decided to change the subject:
- Can I tell you a little bit about my problems?
- I don't have time to listen; I'm writing. Besides, what kind of trouble can a little girl like you have?
- Actually, I have one problem only - but huge. I'd trade this big problem for a lot of minor problems.
- And what's your big problem? - I was wondering if you could get a story out of there.
- Change your size. Never be too long a single thing.
- Relax, you're not the only one. That's everybody's problem.
- That doesn't make me suffer any less. Not everyone gets bigger or smaller anyway. Depends on the... style of each.
- What you say makes sense, but it doesn't change things. You're no different than the others, and nothing you tell me will be new.
Disappointed, the girl decided to leave. You couldn't talk to someone who just wanted to look at himself and didn't have time to listen to others.
ABOUT THE POWER'S VANGEL
In this book, which considered initial as a doctoral thesis, Chico Viana addresses the representation of melancholy in the paraiba poet, highlighting the literary procedures that the poet uses to express it.
The structure of the work, which initially appeared as a doctoral thesis, is inspired by the model by which psychoanalysis articulates the elements of this affective-emotional framework: mourning for the Lost Object, feeling guilty and renunciation of sexuality. In the melancholic, “death drive” tends to prevail over vital drives, precipitating the individual in deep and irremediable sadness. To each of the elements that compose the picture of melancholy corresponds a critical-interpretative trail, which the author was willing to follow, trying to illustrate the theoretical considerations with passages of the author of “I and other poetry”.
According to poet and critic Antonio Carlos Secchin, “‘The gospel of rot’ reveals in a full way the high level that university criticism can achieve when exercised by professionals who know how to combine subtlety and erudition. This is the case of Chico Viana: his text will undoubtedly be made mandatory reference for readers and exegetes of Augusto’s poetry”.
In this book, which considered initial as a doctoral thesis, Chico Viana addresses the representation of melancholy in the paraiba poet, highlighting the literary procedures that the poet uses to express it.
The structure of the work, which initially appeared as a doctoral thesis, is inspired by the model by which psychoanalysis articulates the elements of this affective-emotional framework: mourning for the Lost Object, feeling guilty and renunciation of sexuality. In the melancholic, “death drive” tends to prevail over vital drives, precipitating the individual in deep and irremediable sadness. To each of the elements that compose the picture of melancholy corresponds a critical-interpretative trail, which the author was willing to follow, trying to illustrate the theoretical considerations with passages of the author of “I and other poetry”.
According to poet and critic Antonio Carlos Secchin, “‘The gospel of rot’ reveals in a full way the high level that university criticism can achieve when exercised by professionals who know how to combine subtlety and erudition. This is the case of Chico Viana: his text will undoubtedly be made mandatory reference for readers and exegetes of Augusto’s poetry”.
THE GIRLFRIEND
We fought a lot. Friends saw us farther apart than together, and when they found one of the two, the first question they asked was: “Are you still dating?” The reason for the fights was trivial, irrelevant, but commonly (chorus in saying it) was linked to my jealousy.
I was an insecure teenager. He had little experience in dating, and he lived stuffed with literature and poorly assimilated philosophy. She had green eyes. Besides green, restless, as she was all. I'd like to look at the street, the cars, the people with a greed that seemed suspicious. Jealous sees threat in everything. I wanted to stop that magnetic wave, channel it to myself. Since I couldn't, I'd find excuses for collection and fighting.
We didn't see each other for a while, and then I would send him letters. The letters were an attempt to explain, a way to ask her to forgive me. I wrote them in a style that I would today call “desperate-incandescent”. It was all illuminated with metaphors, amplified with hyperboles, filled with supposedly gifted quotes about life and love.
I wanted all this rhetoric to impress her, of course, and it looks like it worked. Days later we were reconciled between torrid kisses and eternal oaths (with all the adjectives to which a teenage passion is entitled).
This alternation between fights and letters lasted a long time. I must've written about 15 or 20, always coming up in shape and thinking that the better I wrote, the more I impressed her and retained her.
One day we had a more serious fight, for such a silly reason that it angered her. I walked away for a few days and tried to arrange another tortured missive, in which my heart would burn again. You didn't have to. The fire this time came from the other side, and nothing metaphorical. When I called to inform her that I was taking the letter, she told me that it was useless; it had already burned all the others.
I barely believed what I heard. I thought it was a lie, she couldn't have been capable of so much evil. But outside, yes. It incinerated my suffering texts. If I wanted to confirm that you were there to see the ashes... I wasn't, of course. And that night I turned around in bed full of hate and frustration. At the same time I cursed her, I thought I was an asshole. Why had I not done as Sartre (my idol), who made copies of his love letters?
Over time I began to better evaluate the episode, which did not fail to finish a lesson – one of the many I would learn from women. The letters were nothing but a monument to my vanity. Wanting to supply through them personal failures was a misunderstanding that could only destroy the relationship. The girlfriend was not interested in the writer, but the man, who did not need to be “intelligent” to make love. All it took was to be less complicated, more confident and able to demonstrate that I really liked her.
I have no regrets, but I must confess that sometimes I think of the letters. I wish I could read them again now and find in them the eager teenager, who sought in a trembling style to confess his love. Maybe – who knows? - until they had some literary value... I don't know if I forgave all that girlfriend. Sometimes I think I married her for some kind of revenge.
(In “The Silly Age”)
We fought a lot. Friends saw us farther apart than together, and when they found one of the two, the first question they asked was: “Are you still dating?” The reason for the fights was trivial, irrelevant, but commonly (chorus in saying it) was linked to my jealousy.
I was an insecure teenager. He had little experience in dating, and he lived stuffed with literature and poorly assimilated philosophy. She had green eyes. Besides green, restless, as she was all. I'd like to look at the street, the cars, the people with a greed that seemed suspicious. Jealous sees threat in everything. I wanted to stop that magnetic wave, channel it to myself. Since I couldn't, I'd find excuses for collection and fighting.
We didn't see each other for a while, and then I would send him letters. The letters were an attempt to explain, a way to ask her to forgive me. I wrote them in a style that I would today call “desperate-incandescent”. It was all illuminated with metaphors, amplified with hyperboles, filled with supposedly gifted quotes about life and love.
I wanted all this rhetoric to impress her, of course, and it looks like it worked. Days later we were reconciled between torrid kisses and eternal oaths (with all the adjectives to which a teenage passion is entitled).
This alternation between fights and letters lasted a long time. I must've written about 15 or 20, always coming up in shape and thinking that the better I wrote, the more I impressed her and retained her.
One day we had a more serious fight, for such a silly reason that it angered her. I walked away for a few days and tried to arrange another tortured missive, in which my heart would burn again. You didn't have to. The fire this time came from the other side, and nothing metaphorical. When I called to inform her that I was taking the letter, she told me that it was useless; it had already burned all the others.
I barely believed what I heard. I thought it was a lie, she couldn't have been capable of so much evil. But outside, yes. It incinerated my suffering texts. If I wanted to confirm that you were there to see the ashes... I wasn't, of course. And that night I turned around in bed full of hate and frustration. At the same time I cursed her, I thought I was an asshole. Why had I not done as Sartre (my idol), who made copies of his love letters?
Over time I began to better evaluate the episode, which did not fail to finish a lesson – one of the many I would learn from women. The letters were nothing but a monument to my vanity. Wanting to supply through them personal failures was a misunderstanding that could only destroy the relationship. The girlfriend was not interested in the writer, but the man, who did not need to be “intelligent” to make love. All it took was to be less complicated, more confident and able to demonstrate that I really liked her.
I have no regrets, but I must confess that sometimes I think of the letters. I wish I could read them again now and find in them the eager teenager, who sought in a trembling style to confess his love. Maybe – who knows? - until they had some literary value... I don't know if I forgave all that girlfriend. Sometimes I think I married her for some kind of revenge.
(In “The Silly Age”)