We never know ourselves.

I see you alone and this makes me wonder why things went out that way. Maybe you thought I didn't like you, maybe we've got tired of mirrors. You know, I was never too good for you, and you’ve always heard they say. When the wind blew backwards that night, I got scared of interiors, I didn’t want to go back home, I confess.
Anyways, I decided to reach you just to let you know, as you might, that I still see you, and the broken glass we’ve left behind scattered light all over, it is beautiful. I hope your life turns out to be the best of all our. We never know who we are until we see ourselves hugged in front of that thing, don’t you think?

São Paulo

It wouldn’t be summer in São Paulo if it wasn’t for the rain. Some of the sidewalks are actually made of a porous kind of stone, so it can absorb a small amount of water, as if it could be enough to prevent the recurring floods of January. Usually, this late in the afternoon, a storm should be raging, but the rain falling now is very light. It creates ever-changing patterns on the porous stone, filling it with slightly darker spots, as in a Pollock painting. God always held some resemblance to Pollock anyway.

I see this while I stand waiting on the bus stop. I get so hypnotized by the sidewalk that I almost forget to give it the sign to stop. Through the window I see the city and it’s post-modern patterns racing, like a movie in fast-forward. São Paulo was supposed to be gray, but it’s not. Nah, I should rather say that it is, but in a different way than usual. Newton said that if you go too fast trough all the colours, you’ll only see a white shade. I assume if he ever had a chance of seeing this city he would change his opinion. All the colours merge into gray. Gray and green. There’s quite a lot of green here, despite what people say, and despite all reason. And the green here is eternal. Maybe that’s why I think there’s a lot of trees. The place I was born was dry, no plants could ever grow proper green leaves there. My hometown was gray and blue – a unbearable, cloudless blue sky – and São Paulo is Gray and Green. But when it’s cloudy, like today, I can almost understand why people forget how green it is.

I get to the underground. Blue and Yellow lines and I’m in the center. Not the old, historic center, but the real center. Paulista, Augusta, Consolação.  Roosevelt square. Ypiranga and São João. As I walk these streets I can’t avoid remembering so many others I’ve seen. The narrow ones, the loving alleys, the royal roads all over the world. I can’t say that I haven’t fallen in love for them, in them. But in all the cities I roamed, it was a passionate love, carnal, some of them became perennial in the maps of my heart and mind, others were ephemeral. The other cities were lovers. This one is family. Is the place I'm always dragged back to. And the place I ultimately feel I have to leave. Even so, it will still be home, my home. Hometown is an ancestor, is my past, my history. São Paulo is my flesh and bones.

A famous song – and everybody must be quoting it today – says that there’s no true love in São Paulo. I guess that might be truth. This city was build upon obsession and illusion. Broken hearts and dreams. But it has its wonders, I must say. There’s no sense in a book where all the characters are good, a movie without motion, a song without emotion. São Paulo is the place where they all come from. Is a hole in the fabric of reality, showing us heaven and hell and telling both are lies. Getting us drunk on love. However fake or paid-for or misunderstood. Let’s keep the real love for the rest of the world. All we need are the Japanese lampposts in Liberdade – freedom, it means – and the Pollock sidewalks and the light rain, the city’s most renowned patrimony, over our heads. All we need is to belong somewhere. 

Cats and dogs (b).

It was the third Friday evening of the month, and Red Hat (with a tiny white stripe) Girl was really happy. She was tall and almost never combed her hair – which is why she would usually keep the hat on even inside. She had two parrots, named “Dog” and “Cat”, and  “Karl Marx”, the cockatoo, and that sort of humour, stuck somewhere between sarcastic and ironic, was the only one she seemed to get a hold of.

So thought most of her friends, who would only invite her to cult French, Swedish and sometimes Finnish movies, which used to play at the old willow tree cinema downtown. They had once made the mistake of bringing her to a superhero film/dance party combo and, legend says, for the next entire month she would just leave her apartment for work and to watch, repeatedly, a minimalist (and dreadfully tedious, for most human beings) post-post-modernist montage of Moses und Aaron, which was playing on a theatre two blocks away.

Every third Friday evening of the month, however, she would engage in a secret ritual unknown to everyone but her bird friends: She would set herself a mysterious mix of milk, cocoa, ice cream, tea and some alcoholics, enough to last an entire night; she would place Cat on the sofa, by her side, while Dog bounced around the floor of the living room; She would take off the hat, and Karl Marx would nest himself in it; They would then, together, proceed to watch something between ten and thirteen hours of pirate movies – with the occasional break for toilet, cookies and sunflower seed.

They loved pirate movies. Dog would always do his impression on barking whenever a ship appeared. Marx wouldn’t blink for as long as a swordfight took place. The only of the four who didn’t like it that much was Cat:

Red Hat Girl would always tell Cat she could never fall in love for another person after seeing Errol Flynn as “Captain Blood”, but Cat was never sure if she was talking sarcasm, and ended up having troubling thoughts on the human nature.       

Viagem (Açaraí nº2)

No cano o fogo

No fogo um estalo

No pano o vento

No vento um pouco do mar
<->

De boca em boca um sopro

De palma em palma ferramentas

Olhamos além dos morros

Trazemos no peito tal tormenta

<->

Na cabeça, fios de cada dia

Agradece-se o sol que ilumina

Queimam-se pés com pedra quente

Espera-se a noite com seu presente 

Aos errantes, de oferenda, uma alforria
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Haikai casual (1)

Luz da geladeira
o tolo confia, o sábio
Liga a da cozinha

Cats and dogs.

He had a cat called Deleuze.

The first he did when he arrived home was to go get his cat. He had been out of town for quite a long time. Too long maybe. When he left, he was in a relationship. Nothing seemed more natural then than to leave the cat with his significant other. The thing is, he was away for far too long. The relationship was now over, but, fortunately, they kept at least a decent respect for one another. So, it was a little weird to go meet someone with whom he had a relationship no more and ask to have the cat back. What if it was one of those involuntary heirlooms people get when they broke-up? Still, it was surprising how well things went. It was probably a result of the mutual awkwardness of exes who don’t really have anything to hold against each other but at the same time know that things are definitely over among them. The thing is, when he opened the door to his dusty-filled apartment, he was carrying a huge carrier bag on one hand and a black-and-white cat on the other one. Deleuze was a suspiciously thin cat; bony and awkward. He moved not with the confidence usual to most felines, but with a shyness that seemed to be out of a song by The Smiths.

She had a dog called Byron.

It took her and awful long while to find a place to live where she could have a dog, especially a dog as big as Byron. The big city seemed to be terribly uncaring about the animals living in there. She was actually a pet-person. Back in her hometown she had quite a few of them, but most she had to leave at her parent’s house. She moved to the city to study in the university, and she wouldn’t be able to give the pets the attention they required, even if she had found a place where she could keep them all, which wasn’t the case. She was now sharing a house, and her flatmates were not entirely happy about having the big coffee-colured Labrador there. But time would teach them to like the happy dog. She couldn’t find the guts to leave Byron behind, with the other pets. He had been by her side since she was ten years old. It got his name due to a slight shorter hind leg that made his walk look clumsy, but that was overshadowed by the inherent joy and majesty that Byron emanated. The dog made her feel happy, and that was the ulterior reason why she couldn’t let go of him. And also the reason why everybody ended up loving him, sooner or later.

They met in front of the cinema.

It was one of his favourite places in the city. He had to go there and see if it was still the way it used to be. It wasn’t.

It was a very cozy place, with a vintage air, in a quite old building. Now it’s almost contemporary. The outside looks haven’t changed that much, but the old movie poster have been replaced by ever-changing images on flat screens. The café there is now bigger, but it lost the tables it had on the outside. Apparently it’s no more possible to enjoy a cup of coffee under the willow tree on the backyard.

She was walking Byron. She lived nearby and loved to walk her dog. Especially since she couldn’t quite believe that she was living in the city and walking there made everything look real.

He was disappointed with the changes he was seeing everywhere, even in places close to his heart, like that cinema. She was temporarily amazed by the big-city lights, by the buildings and didn’t really realize that Byron approached someone. The dog caught his eye ‘coz it was majestic, even if limping. The voice of someone talking to Byron made her come back from her wonderings.

He said that that was a beautiful dog.

She asked if he was a dog person.

He answered that not really, that he liked cats better.

She told him she liked animals in general. That she missed the cats she left behind, but that her dog made her company.

He jokingly talked to the dog, as a mean of talking to her, saying of course, such a Don Juan might charm everyone he meets. And asked her if she had moved to town recently.

She replied yes, to study at the university and be and animal activist.

They smiled at each other with empathy and parted ways.