The Renegades (Will Gray and Gretel)

However rare may be at such time those who will not want to please the Beast and to turn with the wind, it is in them, by the very fact that they will exercise a disinterested activity, that the human race will live. – Jacques Maritain

I could be everything. I could resist the winds that brought me here. I could ache the days living upon the eyes of my family. I could believe that God didn’t exist as much as I believe he does. I could devastate and simply burn down. I could dig everything. And wish I was ashamed. I could make other plans. I could imprint an idea of some matter. I could hate being cold. I could list qualities I don’t have. I could sum up what I learned so far and yet understand that something was lacking. But I can’t find a reason not to share.

The snow appears to have finally disappeared. Not yet. Appearances are tricky. Over the great nakedness of truth…I shadow on the things I know. Imagining if I had no soul. I’m speaking only of ideas and nothing else. What always happens to new ideas born by association are untold. Because men, apart from everything he can be, performs like they are dressed up neck to toe, disappearing under all that. I experienced the opposite. And experiencing the nakedness in front of strangers felt right. Even know I’m not any more than that.

As people embrace one another, and are truly amazed by the music of brilliant artists this weekend, for one brief moment time released mankind. Friends and strangers crying at random. These lovers loving you. They are the best kinds of all. I think these people that sing a song and makes you not just fascinated but ache, the entire soul of these artists reaches and rules their work. And however beautiful this may be for me, may not be for you (except that it is a shame if not for you)…it’s good. Good. It must be said.

Damage

Yes, my impression was that, in spite of his anger, he somehow trusted me, and that I had deceived him with all that nonsense. For a long time, I believed that everything one invented was a lie. And that only my conscience tormented by sin could redeem me from evil. I lowered my eyes in shame. I preferred his former rage, which has helped me in my struggle with myself, because it crowned my strategies with failure and one day might even reform me. What I did not want was gratitude, which was not only the worst punishment, because undeserved, but also because it encouraged my perverse existence which I so greatly feared. But looking at him, I lost heart: I could not find the courage to disappoint him. I had already become accustomed to protecting the happiness of others, that of my father, for example, who is even more vulnerable than I. But how difficult it is for me to remain silent about happiness which I had so irresponsibly provoked.
That same night all this would be transformed into an irrepressible fit of vomiting that would keep all the lights on in my house.
He then repeated slowly, as if under some spell…You are a funny child. You are a foolish little girl, once more adopting the smile of a little boy who takes his new shirt to bed with him. Trusting, he allowed me to see his ugliness, which was his most innocent feature. I had to swallow as best I could the outrage he inflicted on me by believing in me. I had to swallow my compassion for him and my own shame. Stories about hidden treasures are all made up. I was very conscious of being a child, which helped to explain all my serious faults, and I put such faith in growing up one day. I destroyed my faith in adults, he was the first person to bring me that back.

Suddenly my heart is pounding with disillusionment.

Foreigner’s Prayer

Do you know that hope sometimes consists only of a question without an answer?

I am now so much bigger that I cannot see myself anymore. As big as a landscape. I am in the distance. More perceptible in my most remote trees. I want to be a storyteller. Live a romance with my art. My clothes. My life.

My love in life is not plain. Even knowing plainness has its peculiar temptations and vice quite as much as beauty. Not everything is clear in life or in books. I’m not so sure of myself. But I’m sure of what I’m doing here.

“Oh rescue her! I’m her brother now,
And you her father, Every gentle aid
Should have a guardian in each gentleman” (Middlemarch)

When I came back home last night the night had fallen. I hurried, cold, but not so fast that I did not have time to ponder the terms I had formulated in my head. Riding a bike back home, I repeated under my breath, then out loud, to see if they were right. I then  repeated  over again and found them too dry. Almost brusque. And to tell you the truth not suitable for a young lady. In truth, the favor that I was asking was now immense, nothing less than the salvation or wreck of my whole existence. If HE were irritated at my forgetfulness, God might very well refuse to hear me…when all these things come to mind. But they do carry conviction. And hope.

It’s not too late, there’s still time, if you want. If I want. But what else do I want?What can I desire but for you to be happy as you deserve? There’s still time. Believe me. I’m ready for anything. Timidity is not the bad coinage it might seem to be.

It’s a great deal

I do not understand. This is so huge that goes beyond any understanding. Understanding is always limited. But do not think you can not have borders. I feel like I’m much more complete when you do not understand. I do not understand, the way I speak. Do not understand but not as a simple-minded. The good thing is be smart and do not understand. It’s a blessing strange, It is a quiet indifference, is a sweetheart of stupidity. It’s just that every once in a while comes the anxiety : I understand a little. But I at least understand that I don’t understand….so I write.

She can be vulnerable to criticism.Her very own criticism. If she had spoken, they wouldn’t have believed her. It’s a great deal, because it’s difficult to feel that solitude. It crushes her. It is October. It was September. The curtains wavered in the breeze of the singular night. The sheer white curtains. She hung them herself.

She reads. Turn off the lamp and fall asleep. It was the night of a full moon. It’s a great deal. And she sleeps. Like a song by Loreta Lynch…

A girl wakes up in a dream. She sighed a great deal. Solitude was crushing her. It was terrible not to have a single person to talk to. She didn’t have a television. She didn’t wish to. She says it’s all a small world. Men and woman she sees and love are driven to the extreme limits of their potential and show in their anguish both their greatness and their misery. Such is this world. It’s a great deal.
After her encounter with love. The absence of her mom is crucial. There was a time, when she teetered on the edge.The story of a girl’s cloistered childhood and loveless marriages fascinates her.

“It was the Portuguese language which influenced my spiritual life and innermost thoughts, and this was the language I used to utter words of love” she wrote. But now what? She is hooked to a different soul. Her works in translation. And yet, the more she reads, the more she writes, the more it doesn’t make any sense. Her immigration. Her home. Her other languages. Her rebellious thoughts. Her many loves. Her conscious. Full of rambling metaphysics. Dense and almost whispering.

She encounters the privilege and the curse of being human and of confronting both our absolute freedom and the world’s indifference. The privilege and the curse of having to choose between two worlds. It’s a great deal.

The sense of being in an alien world. Alienation to the point of nausea. A sense of inexorable isolation from other beings—forcibly present in nearly all of these stories she writes.

It’s a great deal.

Letter to Bella XVII – beautiful promises

My dearest,Let me seize this opportunity, while I’m here in the studio waiting for a client to walk in, to give you some news of myself. I treated myself in a day off with Lindo. The sun didn’t show its shiny face, but a rainy day just did it. I came to take a rest, determined that I would take only short walks. I’m also taking this opportunity to give you a sign of life. I’m well but horrendously busy. Business is getting to be too much for me. I need more quiet in my life. Thus I strengthened my American connections, above all. The heat is gone, completely gone. Now the beautiful fall is staring to show its face and giving space for the unpleasant winter. It goes fast, you know.

I’ve lost my best friends in the past years…and I have a new place to live. Melissa is as perfect as you darling. And I’m blessed having her on my way everyday to the kitchen, or backyard, or bathroom. “Qual eh o bem que te penteia?” We managed to save the paintings I did and hang them on our living room. I’m working almost exclusively with the English language, and you must know how hard it is to keep in touch with my fellows. So for this matter I’m desperately searching for more Brazilian friends in this land of strangers.

Photography is no longer a labor of love for me…but I’m still trying it out. I have the great hopes of doing it so. I make a decent living, but still to the point where I need to accept any work in fashion. I call it slavery. But, it’s the fashionable slavery, I guess. Better than the other way around. I endured the long days of war with my dad, with relatively steady nerves among a small camp of optimists. I’m still steadfastly hoping for a miracle, though catastrophe hangs over our heads and we must obviously be prepared for the worst, that they’ll come to see me in this place. I’m close to convince my mom. She is seriously missing me. I gave myself one more year. And I’ll see what this place does with me. I am to emerge from the dark tunnel into my renewed life. In full awareness of my creative powers, and with faith in myself, but facing the deadline of me living the “American life”. I do my best to get there with a peaceful soul. I threw myself into the French language once again. Descartes would be proud of me. If faith will be gracious enough…

How are you doing at home? Please write. Try to understand me. I know. I have deprived you of much happiness in your golden years. Try to be strong and patient! My faith hasn’t cheated me so far. I have no reason to believe that it would abandon me on the heels of its most beautiful promises.

I love you. And I’ll miss home as long as I live.

Woman without a country

It all happens as if she had preserved her childhood questioning and developed it aesthetically. As if she had not forgotten what it is to be a child in the world, in the fact that a child possesses a philosophy. And when she focuses on the experience of love, she crashes.

I was really sassy. As soon as I could pursue a career, I did. As soon as I could leave, I did. As soon as I could have, I did.

I reflect about the perplexity of our modern uncertainties, the revision and change of paradigms, the fragmentation of knowledge, the world of the image and the splitting up of the image; “the modern I-don’t-know-what, I-don’t-quite-get-what” in the words of Brazilian poet Fernando Pessoa. It’s a generous questioning. To question is to open, to unveil; it’s to have a glimpse and expand horizons. To answer is to establish limits, to close, to lock up. To ask is to eternally restart, it’s life being born again and broadening itself in its infinite possibilities, including that of making mistakes and restarting.

Being homesick is now like drinking water. But I have to. People would say I’m doing great, I’m following my dreams and that I’m really close to succeed…but all I can think is that at some point I’ll be gone, and leave again…because the truth is: I have no country.  Kurt Vonnegut was right.

I’m thinking when I’m about to give up the human race. It seems that my favorite writers gave up the human race by the end of their lives. It seems like my favorite people always struggle not to.

My dad is running again, and he’s happy but afraid this election will end his career in politics. He’s good, I know, and I want to believe this political life doesn’t kill him…but it’s hard. He’s a good man, and good people suffer in politics. It’s just how life is. It’s not going to change. Modern and ancient uncertainties. I’m afraid for him.

Like loving. I know I can do better. But don’t know how. Is there any instructions anywhere where I can read how to? To question is to think.

The experience attracts me, not its result or its significance, as is also the case with Bella. And she knows how to transform the fleeing instant into an absolute. I can’t seem to understand.

I could represent the Brazilian disgrace in all the oppression. I could be subject to: being poor, being unable to adapt, being a woman.

And I’ll pray every night for the time to come and I can say: I’m a woman with a country.

Our truth

The early morning opened itself in a vacillating light. For me, the atmosphere was that of a miracle. I have reached the impossible of myself. Because I felt that Ulysses was again attached to the pain of existence.

This capacity to renew myself as time passes is what I call living and writing. Living and painting. Living and loving. Living and dieing. … Around him, an emptiness blew, in which a man finds himself when he is going to create. Desolated, he provoked the great solitude. And, like an old man who has not learned to read, he measured the distance that separated him from the word. He lay down on my lap and flies through the solitude of a thought. A thought I can’t have. It isn’t mine. It isn’t yours. It’s his. Absolutely his.

He sometimes makes me divine. He sometimes makes me human. He sometimes makes me believe. I know what I’m doing here. I just don’t admit it. It’s mine. Not his.

My truth, our truth, this foreigner, this stranger whose face we were promised we would see in the end. The stranger that promised the truth. His truth. And my truth. It’s ours. Nobody else’s.

Machismo

“What to make of this story? That, too, I don’t know, I’m giving it as a present to whoever wants it, because I’m sick of it. And how! Sometimes people make me sick. Then it passes, and I become all curious and observant once again. That’s all.”

More than five years after I had my first kiss, Machismo is not a concept that was buried. The titular colloquialism refers specifically to the idea that there should be a substantial distance between the women rights and the men rights. So devoted I was to not be part of this called “Machismo” that I did.

I was right. It was impossible to not be enamored with these machos characters. It is something truly especial about them, the Latin blood? The warm heart, a wry sarcasm and the mystery. My dad repeatedly tried to raise me in a different perspective as my brother. He is a year younger than I am. At age 16 he could drive. I couldn’t. When he finally got a girlfriend at age 18, they could stay in his bedroom with the door closed…I could never…EVER…have a boyfriend passing the line of my door…and the limits of my dad’s eyes. I had rules. My maid was paid sometimes to give dad my hours of study. My brother never had to prove anything. The only way to keep my rights was staying in and obey. Nothing so harsh, I was never beaten..except when I opened my grandma’s couch with a cutter. I was 5 or 6, can’t remember. The heart beating in solitude. I remember the action, slowly and adrenaline running…the curiosity to find out what is inside the black couch. I realized it wasn’t that interesting. I could go to Balls at age 18 (right after my exchanging program in America) only if my bro could come along (I taught the fact that I had lived in a different culture and country for a year could give me more freedom when I got back. Big mistake). So I crashed. And decisively anticipated my trip to Buenos Aires. This capacity to renew myself as time passes is an “existential soup opera”. I felt anger against men and stupid rights.

My first boyfriend was atheist and very much like the stereotypical macho…so I struggled against that too…and he never looked me in the eyes again after I said:
- My love, you don’t believe in the God, because we made a mistake when we humanized Him. We humanized Him because we did not understand Him, then it didn’t work out. I’m certain that He is not human. But although He’s not human, He sometimes makes us divine.

He taught I was too much.

He was actually tormented with the reality of his familial drama. And I wasn’t the submissive type.

To take care of the world demands also a lot of patience, and in this Latin world, to take care of yourself in a “macho” world is necessary to double that patience. Most women give up, and learn that they have different rights than man. For myself, double that double. These machos will never learn, and I understand…but do not stand. I’m kind of envious of those women who can. My mom has four sisters…they’re all bosses and anti-machismo. They’re all independent from their husbands and raised boys like no other. This brings to a mixed feeling, I had to understand that to become a “good-woman” my dad had to make the rules…and she let him. But, doesn’t that mean she allowed him to machismo? How far we consider that machismo? Am I sexist? I think I need another life to think about it.

To love the truth of what is alive, that which seems ungrateful to Narcissus eyes, to love the origin, to be personally interested in the impersonal, in the animal, in the thing…man and woman must be one.

"Rebellion" – part I

It was the Portuguese language which influenced my spiritual life and innermost thoughts, and this was the language I used to utter words of love. I began to write as soon as I could read and write and, needless to say, I wrote them in Portuguese. I spent my childhood in Salto de Pirapora and I firmly believe that living in the Southern or Southeastern provinces of Brazil brings one into closer contact with Brazilian life at isn’t most authentic because there the country is cultivated with
outside influences. My beliefs were nurtured in Sao Paulo.
And from our housemaids I absorbed the rich folklore of those regions. I was already in my teens when we moved to SP , this vast metropolis I soon began to think of as Brazilian globalized.

As for the way in which I roll my r’s, as if I were speaking French or some other foreign language, this is simply because of a speech defect. A defect which I have never succeeded in correcting. A defect which my good friend tells me can be overcome. He has offered to help me but I am lazy and I know perfectly well I would never do the exercises once I was on my own. And besides my rolled r’s are not doing anyone any harm. So that should clear up yet another mystery.

Much more difficult to explain, however, is the path my life has taken. If my family had emigrated to the United States along with me, would I still have become an english-lover? Is to say, a brazilian writing in English?
In all probability I would get married to an American and have American children. And my life would be completely different. I wonder what I would have written about? What I would have supported? What sort of friends I would have cultivated? There is a real mystery.
But I’m not married, I don’t live with my family, and I still love the English language as my own. And of course, I don’t have children….and by the way, I’m only 22. In the other side, I imagine what would have happened If I had stayed in Brazil, with my family. I wonder what I would have written about? What I would have supported? What sorts of friends I would have cultivated?

It’s a mystery.

“Rebellion!”:

“When love is too great it becomes futile; it can no longer be put to use and not even the person loved has the capacity for so much love. I became as bemused as any child when I realized that even in love we must be sensible and show restraint. Our emotional life, alas, is extremely mediocre.”

“I said to a friend:

—Life has always asked too much of me.

She replied:

—But don’t forget that you also ask too much of life.

That is true.”

The first blog. english version.

In this imaginary and pleasurable scene which made her smile devoutly, she addressed herself as “Bella”, as if speaking in a third person.

A train that had already departed started all that. I remember when I was younger, solitary and amused by everything and everyone, I decided to write a diary. And as the technology advances and my life is sucked into a computer I began to think of a way to write my blogs. This blog is about a blog. Does that make sense? Probably not.

A part of a primitive rhythm of a ritual. This morning I woke up, went down the stairs… as I walked the hall I heard Peter (my roommate) taking a shower, looked around and noticed there were elements missing… and I waited. Started off the coffee pot… my Colombian coffee running down the glass and my mug excited to be filled with fantastic-magical-caffeine… to, of course, wake me up. All this, certainly… prolonged, exhausted, the exasperation. But on the following hours, I awoke.

She pretended to be distracted and, conversing, she avoided conversation. Part of the rhythm. And she wrote a blog.

This is my ritual. I write from lack of conversation. Like this morning. I’m here… in this house … with my coffee.

“Not to move is what matters” she thought from afar “not to move”.

The first time I wrote a blog.. happened this way (I may change real names):

Then the day broke. Slowly she retrieved her books scattered on the ground. Further ahead lay her open exercise books. When she bent over to pick it up, she saw the large round handwriting which until this morning had been hers. Then she left, without knowing how she had filled in the time, she arrived at school more than two hours late. Since she had thought about nothing, she did not realized how the time had slipped by. From the presence of the Latin master she discovered with polite surprise that in class they had already started on the third hour.

“What happened to you?”
“Why”
“You look pale”
“I am pale”
“No”

She got up and said in a loud voice “Excuse me!”

She was standing there, also missing the third class in the long library bench in front of several trees.
I must take more care of myself. She did not know how to…
So she wrote a letter:

Dear Bella,

Confronted with this situation, I’m writing you to ask you for my pardon. In fact, I must have been drunk last night and do not remember a word I said to you. So here goes my apologies and love to you. There was no need to lower oneself in the eyes of another chap for whom a session at the movies could only be improved by being with a boy. I ruined everything.

I’m sorry.

Relieved, I must say that Arthur was a jerk. He leaned back against his seat and touched my legs.

But I love you. Very much.

yours.

I never gave this letter to her. She died in a car accident after the movie session. I posted this on my blog, virtually connection with no one…that one day…had been someone.

now You know.