grave digger

2004-07-08T01:05:00.000+01:00

SONG TO HALL UP HIGH

I know you watch over me
Father of all the past
And all that will ever be
You are the first and the last

The watcher of all that lives
The guardian of all that died

The one-eyed God way up high
Who rules my world and the sky

Northern wind take my song up high
To the Hall of glory in the sky
So its gates shall greet me open wide
When my time has come to die

Quorton, Hammerheart

(This words are in the memory of Quorton, also known as Thomas Forsberg, creator of the legendary band Bathory, who died on the seventh of June in Stockholm and that, through many years, was a creator of thruth and of dreams. One of the people touched by his words and by music was the teenager that I once was. Quorton, I deeply thank you for all the strengh that you thaugh me.)

AML (1922-2004)

2004-07-06T23:35:00.000+01:00

Everybody used to call him "Ti Saturninho". "Ti" is a small word that we use in this part of the country for older people and that shows respect. It derives from "tio" (oncle). "Saturninho" comes from the name "Saturnino". Here, we have a chapel devoted to Saint Saturnino and the father from Ti Saturninho had a small property close to that chapel. He sold it when he was still alive and Mr. AML got that name only because of his father.
He used to live in one of the last houses of the village on the way to the road that leads to the city. Nowadays, there are a few more houses close to his house. It was one of those neighbours that found him dead. He was still in his bed and he probably died during his sleep. The woman that found him dead, was going to his yard to pick some lemons. She knocked on his door but he didn't answer. Like most people, he didn't have his door locked, so she entered and found him cold and dead.
I still remember when he worked. I was a child and, on my way to school, I would pass through him on the street. His job was to sweep the streets. He would greet everybody without stopping to sweep the street. He had a huge broom. It was bigger than him.
He never got married. He never had children. Nobody ever heard of him having anything with anybody. I have always seen him as a nice, polite and gentle man.
There weren't many people on his fu,eral: one sister, that came from a village that is ten kilometers away, with her family; some people from his age and some of his neighbours.
With all respect, I hope that he may now get all the freedom and all the peace. I am sure that he was much more than his story. Still, I leave it here in the form of these simple words so that we may know that he once existed among us.

Ti Satorninho

2004-07-05T14:13:00.000+01:00

Mr. Antonio "Satorninho" passed away. He was found dead in his house this morning. He was more than eighty years old. He will be burried tomorrow. I will spend the whole day working on his grave.

2004-07-05T13:05:00.000+01:00

"Way out at the end of a tiny little town was an old overgrown garden, and in the garden was an old house, and in the house lived Pippi Longstocking. She was nine years old, and she lived there all alone. She had no mother and no father, and that was of course very nice because there was no one to tell her to go to bed just when she was having the most fun, and no one who could make her take cod liver oil when she much preferred caramel candy.
Once upon a time Pippi had had a father of whom she was extremely fond. Naturally she had had a mother too, but that was so long ago that Pippi didn't remember her at all. Her mother had died when Pippi was just a tiny baby and lay in a cradle and howled so that nobody could go anywhere near her. Pippi was sure that her mother was now up in Heaven, watching her little girl through a peephole in the sky, and Pippi often waved up at her and called, "Don't you worry about me. I'll always come out on top."
Pippi had not forgotten her father. He was a sea captain who sailed on the great ocean, and Pippi had sailed with him on his ship until one day her father was blown overboard in a storm and disapeared. But Pippi was absolutely certain that he would come back. She would never believe that he had drowned; she was sure he had floated until he landed on an island inhabited by cannibals. And she thought he had become the king of all the cannibals and went around with a golden crown on his head all day long.
"My papa is a cannibal king; it certainly isn't every child who has such a stylish papa," Pippi used to say with satisfaction. "And as soon as my papa has built himself a boat he will come and get me, and I'll be a cannibal princess. Heigh-ho, won't that be exciting?"

Astrid Lindgren, The Adventures of Pippi Longstocking

FAQ

2004-07-05T13:01:00.000+01:00

Do you have two arms?
Yes, I have two arms.

Who took the picture?
The camera had self-timer.

Another street from my village

2004-07-05T12:03:00.000+01:00

A street from my village

2004-07-05T12:02:00.000+01:00

We

2004-07-01T02:56:00.000+01:00

How many are we?

Existencialism

2004-07-01T02:29:00.000+01:00

Three simple existencial exercises:

1 - Spin

How to do it: Just spin around for as much as you can take it. Focus on the spining and focus on the way that the ground and everything around you is still moving after you stopped.

Time needed: 3 to 5 minutes.

Conditions required: 2 square metters of empty space.

Results desired: A new perspective about a specific problem, about space and about the world. Sensation of confort afterwards.

2 - Water

How to do it: Drink lots of water and pee. Drink lots of water and pee.

Time needed: 2 hours.

Conditions required: 1 bathroom. 1 water tap.

Results desired: Taking conscience of the body. Sense of property over the body. Knowing and accepting weaknesses.

3 - TV

How to do it: Spend 4 to 5 hours watching TV.

Time needed: 4 to 5 hours.

Conditions required: 1 TV.

Results desired: Loosing conscience of time. Understanding what is essencial about the way ones uses time and attention.

Love

2004-06-30T03:05:00.000+01:00

There are some nights when, before going to bed, you think that the more you look for it, the less you are likely to find it.

My presence without me

2004-06-30T02:54:00.000+01:00

The shelter house

2004-06-30T02:52:00.000+01:00

2004-06-30T02:45:00.000+01:00

A REPLY TO SOMEONE IN THE MOUNTAINS

You ask why I choose to live among the green hills;
I smile without answering, my heart at peace.
Peach blossoms float away with the stream;
There are heavens and earths beyond the world of men.

Li Bai (701-762)

Poem

2004-06-27T17:47:00.000+01:00

Like the shadow of a flower, I like
you. Like me, please. Like the light
enlightning, like me, please. I like
you. Like a flower enlightning, like
a shadow of light, I like you and I
like to believe that I am like you.

Dance

2004-06-26T05:58:00.000+01:00

I am not much of a dancer, but sometimes I feel that I should go out more often and dance

Her face

2004-06-24T19:06:00.000+01:00

I have never tried to know who she was. I could ask my mother or someone older than me, but I never wanted to. I know that she died in 1967, seven years before I was born. I also know her name.
For a while, I was in love with her. At least, that was the way I used to name the feeling I held after looking at her for a time that could not be measured in hours.
Back then, when I was away from her picture, I couldn't remember her face. At home, I would try and try to remember her face and I couldn't. I would miss her and I would suffer for not being able to see her face in my memory.
Today, I can always see her face clearly inside of me. I feel profound tenderness for her. I still don't want to know who she was. I feel that I know who she is.

English team supporters

2004-06-24T18:57:00.000+01:00

The match between Portugal and England for the European Soccer Championship will start in about 45 minutes. I don't have a clue about the way the score will go. The whole country is waiting for this game. Everything will stop in 45 minutes.
I don't care that much about it. Still, I have just found a game that reminds me of some english team supporters. Play it here.

Talking alone

2004-06-23T04:18:00.000+01:00

In my village, people always greet eachother when they pass by in the street. Sometimes, alone in the graveyard, I pass by the pictures that are in certain graves and I greet them. Sometimes, I feel a bit ridiculous doing so, but most times I feel that is a way of honouring those people and keeping them alive for a moment. Those are pictures of people that I met and that I used to greet. Those are people that are part of my past. Sometimes, I feel that I live more in the past than most people. I don't mind that. And when I say "good morning" or "good afternoon", I hear them answering back inside my head and I never feel that I am talking alone.

Anjinhos

2004-06-23T04:12:00.000+01:00

Here it is where children are buried. Commonly people call them "anjinhos" (little angels). They are usually buried in white caskets. In this part of the graveyard, death is a mixture of sadness and purity, like water, like morning brightness.

General view

2004-06-23T04:05:00.000+01:00

Chapel

2004-06-23T04:02:00.000+01:00

Family grave

2004-06-23T04:00:00.000+01:00

Main path

2004-06-22T02:19:00.000+01:00

Main gate

2004-06-22T00:39:00.000+01:00

(parentesis)

2004-06-22T00:38:00.000+01:00

(Regarding pictures, I managed to learn everything on my own. Here goes the first one. Wait for more in the next few days.)

MFRS (1912-2004)

2004-06-21T22:39:00.000+01:00

People always addressed to her as "Dona" Maria de Fatima. Dona Maria de Fatima was married for about thirty-two years with the postman. My mother told me that her husband was really respect throught the whole village. Back then, he was one of the few men that knew how to read. They got married very young. She was about sixteen years old when her first son was born. She still had one more boy and a girl. Her husband died before turning fifty years old. They sent their children to live and study in Lisbon at very young age. They sent them to live with a sister of her husband. She was never very close with her two sons and her daughter because, back then, it was very difficult to have the money to travel often to Lisbon. The children grew more attached to their aunt than to their mother. Once her husband died, she couldn't exchange any more letters with her children because she couldn't read or write. She started to work in some rich people's house as a maid and the money was just enough to feed her and to send something to her children every month. Her daughter died with an heroin overdose in the eighties. People say that Dona Maria de Fatima stopped eating after that loss. That mith grew out of her extrem slimness. She weighted about fourty kilos. Both her sons graduated. Before retirement, one of them was a doctor, the other one was a teacher. They were her pride. They still live in Lisbon and they used to visit her twice a year. People say that they are polite and they were very kind to their mother. One of them bought a house in the village but never lived here. Both her sons had children and grandchildren. She never knew her great-grandchildren because she stopped noticing people a few years ago. Before that, her sons tried to persuade her to live with them in Lisbon. She always refused, saying that she didn't want to be a weight on their lives. After she lost her senses, they respected her will and hired a woman to take care of her. She never left her home.
During burial, her sons were very old. Their grandchildren were holding them by the arm.
With all respect, I hope that she may now get all the freedom and all the peace. I am sure that she was much more than her story. Still, I leave it here in the form of these simple words so that we may know that she once existed among us.

(parentesis)

2004-06-21T22:36:00.000+01:00

(I have been away for a few days because I needed to gather some information for the post that I will write about the woman that died last week. Also, I managed to get a digital camera and I took about fifty pictures that I already have in my computer. Now I just need to turn them into a jpeg file... Can anybody help me? I don't have a clue about how to do that...)

Poem

2004-06-17T04:22:00.000+01:00

I will keep in my drawer of secrets and of useless
objects the memory of a star shining in your eyes.

I will keep the memory of your lips, my lips,
and one unspoken word, the simple meaning of birds.

Morbid thoughts before falling asleep

2004-06-17T04:14:00.000+01:00

After being buried, corpses lie in the casket, with their arms crossed over their chest, in complete darkness.
Covered with land. In total silence.
Right now, in the whole world, there are thousands of corpses lying in caskets, with their arms crossed over their chest, in complete darkness.
Covered with land. In total silence.

2004-06-17T04:10:00.000+01:00

Death will come and will wear your eyes –
the death that is with us
from morning to evening, sleepless,
deaf, like an old regret
or an absurd vice. Your eyes
will be a futile word,
a cry kept silent, a silence.
Thus you see them every morning
when alone you stoop over yourself
in the mirror. O dear hope,
that day we too will know
that you are life and nothingness.

Death keeps an eye on each of us.
Death will come and will have your eyes.
It will be like giving up a vice,
like watching a dead face
re-emerge in the mirror,
like listening to closed lips.
We will go down into the vortex mute.

Cesare Pavese, Death Will Come and Will Wear Your Eyes

Vinegar

2004-06-16T00:11:00.000+01:00

It never happened to me before. Yesterday, an old woman died at the city hospital. In the end of the afternoon, I heard the bells and, as usually, I called my mother. After a few minutes, she called me back, saying the name of the deceased woman. She was ninety two years old, was senile for a few years and I had never heard about her. My mother tried to explain me who she was but my mind was on other things and, after a while, she also started to talk about other things.
Today, during mid afternoon, I was at the graveyard, reading, enjoying the shade of my shelter house, when I got a phone call from my mother asking if I could pass in the grocery store and buy her a bottle of vinegar. I said that I would do that and, casually, she told me to leave as soon as the burrial of the woman was over, otherwise I wouldn't find the grocery store open. That was when I realized that I had forgot the whole thing. I ran to the storage, I grabed the tools I needed and I ran to the place where I started to dig until I was soaked with sweat and the palm of my hands were covered with blisters. When I heard them arrive, I was still inside the hole. I jumped out of it, I ran the side gate and I can only imagine the way I looked by the way the undertaker and the family of the deceased woman looked at me.
It never happened to me before. Needless to say, that I bought my mother the vinegar she asked me to and I also bought her a small gift. As I write these words, my hands are rolled with gauze.

Pictures

2004-06-15T04:35:00.000+01:00

Since internet is such a pictorial area, I have been wondering about the possibility of posting some pictures here. I wouldn't post pictures of me, but I would post pictures of the graveyard where I work and of the places where I exist. First I would have to borrow a digital camera. Then, I would have to find someone that helped me to to turn those pictures in a jpeg file. Then, I would have to find a place on the internet to store them. Do you think this idea is worth all these effort?

100th post

2004-06-14T20:56:00.000+01:00

This is my 100th post.
I want to dedicate it to this fine people:
Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Gertrude Thomas
Dora Douglas
and
Tony Lopes

Hope that they are in good shape and I wish them 100 more.

Home videos

2004-06-14T20:47:00.000+01:00

Did anybody outside Europe heard about what happened to Severina Vuckovic? Read it here. Can you imagine what would happen if somebody put your most hidden secrets available for free download all over the internet? Can you imagine if somebody got pictures of you doing those things that only you know that you have done? Can you imagine how Severina Vuckovic must be feeling right now?

Hiragana

2004-06-14T04:34:00.000+01:00

Yesterday, I decided to learn japanese. Today I have started to learn it. I have spent a few hours, with a note book, in front of the computer, with the sound of sitcoms on the TV, practicing the writing of japanese vowels.

I have learned that with this alphabet, one of the three possible japanese alphabets, the word "love" is written only with two letters: "ai". I think that I have learned a lot today.

Witty

2004-06-14T04:20:00.000+01:00

I have disliked the word "witty" since the day that I have learned it. I don't like the meaning of it and I don't like the sound of it.
When people try to be witty, the only possible thing that they may achieve is to be witty. The only thing that is worse than being witty is when people try and fail to be witty.
Please warn me whenever you feel that I am being witty. That will only happen by accident. I don't want to be witty. I will do my best never to be witty.

Unlabeled paradoxes

2004-06-13T18:37:00.000+01:00

Some of my favourite bands can easily be considered as "goth", "gothic", "gothic metal", "dark wave" or simply "dark". Still, there are a lot of bands that I love that can't be labeled with any of these names. Also, there are a lot of "dark goth" bands that I dislike.
Unlike most people, I can easily cope with paradoxes. Actually, I believe that some of the most important things in life are paradoxal. That is why I believe that this kind of labels are important and absurd at the same time.
They are absurd because it is obvious to me that it is impossible to label someone. There is no label in the world that can exactly fit all the complexity of any human being. People are always bigger than labels. But labels are important because they are the most effective possibility of comunication that we have. In a way, words are labels. If I write "apple", you will read "apple" and, probably, it will come to your mind the image or the taste of a completelly different apple than the one I was meaning when I wrote "apple". Maybe I was meaning a small, green, bitter apple and maybe you understood a big, red, sweet apple. If that happens to a word as objective as "apple", we can all imagine the missunderstandings carried by words such as: "death", "sorrow", "pain" or "goth"... Still, words are one of the main tools we have to comunicate. In a way, words are labels. That is why I consider labels important.
I always dress in black, I mostly listen to goth bands, but you would never hear me saying: "I am a goth". I find these need of self-labeling either adolescent or too simplistic. That is exactly how I feel about the need to clarify the definitions of labels. In its own nature, all labels are clichés. But, paradoxically, I feel the need to clarify the meaning of "goth".
As I see it, "goth" is an attitude, both ethic and aesthetic, that opposes the common mainstream attitude of living life in a superficial way. Most people pay with loneliness and emptyness the choice of sex over love, the choice of "fun" at any cost. "Goth" has to do with feelings and with people. People are the most important thing in life, life is all we have and feelings are what make us humans. And there are no feelings without inteligence as much as there is no inteligence without feelings. Dressing in black, mentioning issues seen by a majority of people as "negative" are reminders that those issues exist. It weren't the "goths" that invented death, nor sorrow, nor mourning. It exists, it is certain for everybody, but we all live in societies that choose to close their eyes to it, as if they could refuse it. Some of our problems derive from that refusal. When our lives are not touched by any of those issues, we tend to give importance to issues that aren't important at all: money, envy and so on. We put things out of proportion. "Goth" is about being true to life. "Goth" is about sensitivity and empathy. "Goth" is about being deep because life is a deep issue, despite all labels, despite all paradoxes.

To make friends

2004-06-12T13:40:00.000+01:00

How to make friends by telephone.

Click here for really usefull tips.

Bedroom window

2004-06-11T12:32:00.000+01:00

From my bedroom window, I see a field of olive trees surrounded by the back of houses painted in white. Sometimes, shepards bring in flocks of sheeps that stay eating from the grazing land. Further, there is a small hill with houses and, on top of it, there is the church. That is where, sometimes, the bells toll anounicing that someone died. At night, all is quiet. At this time of the year, between spring and summer, one can only listen to cicatas and crickets at night.
What do you see from your bedroom window?

Smoking habits

2004-06-11T02:34:00.000+01:00

I have never smoked a cigarrete near my mother. I am twenty-nine years old, I smoke for about ten years and I have never smoked a cigarrete near my mother. When I lived at her place, I would leave full ashtrays in my bedroom. After a while, I would find them empty and washed, but I have never smoked a cigarrete near her. Once, she left a book in the bathroom, opened at a page where it was written: "Ten advices to quit smoking". Whenever she found packs of cigarretes or lighters in my dirty laundry, she always left them untouched in the center of the empty kitchen table. We have never talked about it and I am sure that, if somebody mentions the subject of smoking, my mother will say that no one in our family smokes.

FAQ

2004-06-11T02:28:00.000+01:00

Why didn't you write more often during the last week?
Because I have been busy.

Why have you been busy if nobody died at your village?
Because I have been busy doing other things.

What other things do you do besides digging graves?
I think about things.

Have you been busy thinking about things?
Yes, I have been busy thinking about things.

The concert

2004-06-08T05:48:00.000+01:00

I thought a lot about how to describe you the concert. I have been the last few days describing it in my head, trying to find a way of describing it to you. I have thought about lots of different aproaches. I always got to the same conclusion. The best way to describe how it was and how I have felt is the following:
It was great.

Metal man

2004-06-04T13:49:00.000+01:00

I am really happy and enthusiastic. As soon as I finish this post I will drive to Lisbon and I will watch .a concert of Slipknot, Incubus, Sepultura, Metallica and my portuguese all time favourite band, Moonspell I will be back tomorrow, probably with a hangover and hopefully with lots of stories

Uzbekistan

2004-06-03T14:28:00.000+01:00

The good thing about counters is that it leaves one to imagine the people that read these words from the few details that you are permited to know. I have noticed lately that the words that have been written here got some visits by someone in Uzbekistan. Yeah... I thought the exact same thing that you are thinking.

Call me

2004-06-03T14:15:00.000+01:00

This last weekend, I was walking in the street when I got a call on my mobile phone from a friend of mine. I kept on walking and talking. After a while, I saw him at some distance. We waved ate each other and kept on going our ways. Only after I arrived home, I noticed that we could have hung up the phone and we could have talked live. After a while, he called me saying that he had just realized the exact same thing.

BFAC (1996-2004)

2004-06-02T00:50:00.000+01:00

Some people tried to explain me who Bruno was, but I have no memory of him. He was on second grade. His teacher was Dona Angela. She was also my teacher because she has been the elementary school teacher in my village for the past thirty five years. I remember when I was on second grade and that is my way of imagining Bruno. We were all very naive. Like me, Bruno had classes in the morning. I remember how difficult it was to wake up early. Then, we would spend the whole morning in the class. When I was on second grade, we already knew all the letters in the alphabet and Dona Angela would ask us, one by one, to read out loud stories from our text book. We were learning multiplications, divisions as well as subtractions with three digits. Besides school, we would spend our time playing and helping our parents. I guess that Bruno was not far from what we were then. Things haven't changed that much around here.
Bruno lived in a part of the village called "Queimado" (which means "burned"). This part of the village is in the exact opposite from where my parents lived, where my mother still lives, and a bit far from where I live today. I was never much related with anyone living in that part of the village. Still, I have seen his parents before. Here, we all know each other, we have all seen or even talked to each other at some point of our lives. His father works in construction. He is a mason. I have seen him many times talking about soccer in the tavern of the main square. I have also seen him going to work or coming back from work. Like most women in the village, Bruno's mother is a housewife. I have seen her sometimes at the vegetable's market. They must be in their mid thirties, but they look a bit older because of the way they dress and behave. During the burial, they had no reaction. I have seen many burials and I am almost certain that someone gave them pills to endure all the still pain that was in their faces. I haven't seen Bruno's face because the casket was sealed, but I am sure that I must have seen him sometime. Maybe I was walking in the street and he was playing soccer with other kids. Maybe I passed and he mocked me in the way that kids usually do, half brave, half scared.
He was buried in a white casket in the part of the graveyard where children are buried. That part of the graveyard is called the area of the "santinhos" (which means "little saints").
With all respect, I hope that he may now get all the freedom and all the peace. I am sure that he was much more than his story. Still, I leave it here in the form of these simple words so that we may know that he once existed among us.

To bury a child

2004-05-31T17:34:00.000+01:00

Since I have been working at the graveyard, I have only buried one child. It was a baby girl that got shoked when she was being born. The umbilical chord got rolled around her neck. Doctors couldn't do anything to save her. It was unusual that she was buried, because most babies that die under those circunstances never get to the graveyard, but her parents insisted on it. I will never forget the face of the mother of that dead baby.
Today, a boy of seven years old was hit by a car when he was going to school. He arrived dead to the hospital. He will be buried tomorrow. The whole village is mourning him. I am mourning him.

FAQ

2004-05-27T20:00:00.000+01:00

Why?
I don't know.

2004-05-27T19:52:00.000+01:00

"like a rock, like a planet,
like a fucking atom bomb,
I'll remain unperturbed by the joy and the madness
that I encounter everywhere I turn,
I've seen it all along,
in books and magazines,
like a twitch before dying,
like a pornographic scene,
there's a flower behind the window,
there's an ugly laughing man,
like a hummingbird in silence,
like the blood on my door,
it's the generator

oh yeah, oh yeah, like the blood on my door,
wash me clean and I will run until I reach the shore,
I've known it all along like the bone under my skin,
like actors in a photograph,
like paper in the wind,
there's a hammer by the window,
there's a knife on the floor,
like turbines in darkness,
like the blood on my door,
it's the generator"

Bad Religion, "Generator"

One

2004-05-27T18:57:00.000+01:00

I know today that when I was 5 years old I was happy. My aunt that lives in London would come every Summer for a couple of weeks. She would bring us chocolates that we had never seen before. Me and my sisters would choose the time to eat them. It would the most important time of the day. We would eat them slowly.

They were the 4 persons that I most cared about in the world: my parents and my two sisters. My father died in the day that my childhood ended. Then, I am not sure about what happened. My mother abandoned life or maybe it was me that abandoned her. My sisters are far away. I have lost them all inside of me.

I had 3 meaningful relationships in my life. They are all completly over. Sometimes I feel that we wasted ourselves in them, but then I know that my current me wouldn't be the same if those days didn't happen. I don't want to believe that we have to waste ourselves in order to learn.

I miss my 2 sisters. I miss the days when they would call me by a name that nobody else ever called me. I miss when we smiled together and nothing, nothing was between us. I miss when we knew without words that we were true brother and sisters.

Now, you are the 1 person that I put all my hope in. I cling to the idea of you and, for a moment, my eyes are brighter. We are still knowing eachother. We hope that we may spend all our lives doing so. But we know more than we should know. I will never be 5 years old again. I will never be surrounded by the 4 persons that most loved me and that I most loved. I have failed 3 relationships that are like scars on my skin. My 2 sisters are far away. And you are the only 1.

We were born from zero. One day we will go back to zero. That is certain.

Hope

2004-05-24T16:38:00.000+01:00

Rain returned to the graveyard. I feel it covering my face. I look at tumbstones covered with rain. I can't help to think that we are together on the way between sky and earth. I can´t help to think that maybe, rain never left the graveyard. Then I remember the laughter of children playing. Memory is always true. Truth is always bigger than now.

I am ok

2004-05-24T16:09:00.000+01:00

It could be worse. In this exact moment there are one million people dying. And I stay here, not knowing what to do with life.
Pain gives place to emptyness. Tasteless emptyness. But it could be worse. In this exact moment there are one million people being raped. And I stay here, confused and vague.
It could be worse. In this exact time there are one million people feeling empty. It is time to let dead leaves feed the soil. It is time to feel roots growing from me. It is time to move on.

2004-05-24T16:06:00.000+01:00

(Taken from a blue dog's journal).

Soccer

2004-05-23T12:06:00.000+01:00

It is not that I care about soccer. I am curious about Euro 2004, just like any other portuguese person. We have been bombed with it everywhere: TV is obsessed by it, newspapers' main news are about it, plastic bags from supermarkets have "Euro 2004" printed on them. Kids are colecting stickers with pictures of the players. I used to do the same when I was a kid. Not that I cared about it.
This wednesday, the portuguese team FC Porto will play against Monaco in the Champions League Final. I have never supported Porto. Since I know anything about me that I support Benfica. I was about three years old when people started to ask me which team did I support. My parents and my sisters supported Sporting. I guess that is the reason why I chose to support their long-time rival, Benfica. But I never really cared.
I hope that Porto wins this wednesday, I hope that Euro 2004 ends up well and I hope that Portugal wins. But if they all loose, it will not be as if I cared.

Alive

2004-05-23T11:36:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I try to explain impossible issues. I try, but I can't explain the shadows. I can't explain the clouds. I can't explain the night. I have been far from words during this last week. It wasn't painful. It was long and dull. It was grey. It was made of shadows, clouds and night. I was made of impossible issues that kept me from writing and from being alive. From here, now, I think about it as if was looking at it from the top of a hill. But, then, I prefer to look to the other side of the hill. There lies the future. There is a new week starting today. There is a new week starting now. I want to accept the meaning of words. I want to feel them as they touch my lips. I want to hold them between two fingers and know that my life means exactly the same as they do. I know that I am alive again.

Excuse

2004-05-18T01:42:00.000+01:00

It really seems like an excuse, but it's not. I just wrote a huge text. When I was going to publish it, my internet connection stoped responding. I tried to click the "back" button, but it didn't go back. It just showed the same report of error. I feel deeply that the time that I have spent writing it was irreplaceable. I feel that I wasted it. I can never write that same text, word per word, again. I don't feel like trying to write it again. Maybe it is just too late. Maybe I should just go to bed and hope that tomorrow will be a better day.
The text that I wrote was about me. I don't feel like trying to write it again.

Certainties

2004-05-15T18:30:00.000+01:00

Sometimes, life teaches me things that I have learned before at some point of my life, but that I ended up forgeting. Only when life shows me those lessons again, I notice that I knew them once. When I think about how I forgot them, I don't have many answers. Maybe it was because, for a long while, I wasn't confronted with those issues, life changed, so I didn't have to think about them, I didn't have to use those lessons that I have learned the hard way. Then, when the same circunstances gather around me, I learn it again, again through the hard way, and that is when I remember that I knew it once. Then, I try to cling to those certainties. I try to hold them and never forget them again. But I always wonder if I am doomed to learn things the hard way and gradually forget them and learn them again, only to forget them again.

MGVR (1958-2004)

2004-05-12T23:02:00.000+01:00

Whenever people referred her in a conversation, they would call her "the daughter of Chico Ranho". It would be easier to say "Gabriela". She was fourty-six years old. She was the same age as my older sister's husband. She always had leukemia. I remember her hands white and her nails blue. Before my sister, my sister's husband was her boyfriend for about two years. My sister was always divided between being jealous or feeling sorry for her. I remember the whitness of her face. I remember the cold touch of her skin. I remember passing by her on summer nights when I was on my way to the main square. She would be sitted in a small bench by her door. I would say "good night", she would say "good night" with the weakest voice. We all knew she was frail. There was one night, about five years ago, that she called me. I remember her eyes. As if we talked, we smiled. Her bedroom was dim. I can't forget my hands on her waist. Her skin was white and cold. After our breaths slowed down, the only words she said were "good-bye". For years, during summer, I took another way to the main square. Sometimes, I gave up on going because of that. I felt shy about her. I felt like a child. Today, in the morning, I called my sister's husband to tell him that she died. I don't feel confortable with him. I always showed him the respect that I show to older people. There weren't any right words to say it. I told him. Then, there was a moment when there was silence. I know that he was crying. On the other side of the line, I was crying too. On the phone, separated by two hundred kilometers, we were crying, in silence.
She died yesterday. I have spent the whole morning digging her grave. She arrived in a pinewood coffin, carried by four of her cousins.
With all respect, I hope that she may now get all the freedom and all the peace. I am sure that she was much more than her story. Still, I leave it here in the form of these simple words so that we may know that she once existed among us.

Wisdom

2004-05-10T17:19:00.000+01:00

On the phone, my mother told me: "Never forget, son, there are three forms of nobility: blood, money and inteligence. But only the last one is worthwhile."

One day

2004-05-09T17:58:00.000+01:00

One day you will die. Your children and everyone that ever met you will die. Every single person that ever thought about you will die. Every hand that once touched you will, one day, lie lifeless.
One day the roof that covers you will fall. The walls that surround you will fall. The ground where you stand will disapear.
One day you will die. I will die. And noone will remember that these words were once written.

Really

2004-05-08T02:17:00.000+01:00

Newspapers make me sad. I usually try to avoid them. It is not that I want to avoid knowing what they report. I know the world can be cold, cruel and sad. The thing is that, when I read them, I can't help myself from imagine everything they report as if it really happened. "Really" is a very important word here. For example, if I read "eighty six people died today in a crash somewhere", I always tend to stay imagining how it really was for each of those people to whom everything ended at that moment of their lives. That thought leads me to imagine all the lives of each one of those eighty six individuals. Then I start to imagine how it must be for their relatives, at that moment of their lives, to loose their parents or their brothers and sisters. All those will have to live with that loss for the rest of their lives. I always imagine how their lives will be. Another example, if I read "president X declares something", I always imagine president X's real worries. How he sees himself being who he is and doing what he does. I always imagine where he was, how he was until that day in which he declares something whose real effect and extent he can't understand. The real effect of that declaration, whatever declaration might be, will never be confirmed, because there are no ways to trace every individual full life story that it touched and all the efects it provoked in future generations that had to live with individuals that were directly affected by president X´s declaration. It is completly diferent if you think that things really happened. "Really" is a very important word.

Economy

2004-05-07T22:45:00.000+01:00

Here, at bars, cigarretes cost a bit less than two euros and fifty cents. One sandwish is about the same price.
Today, after work, I was at a bar, I had no cigarretes, I was hungry and I only had two euros and fifty cents.

Failure

2004-05-07T04:48:00.000+01:00

I always postpone going to sleep. Accepting the end of the day is accepting another failure.

Dinner

2004-05-06T17:16:00.000+01:00

My mother would ask me to go and check if my father's motorcycle was parked in front of Goba's. I should be about nine years old. It would be winter and night would come at around six o'clock. It would be already night and everything, the houses, the streets, would have the dark blue shade of the beginning of the night. I would see my father's motorcycle trown against the wall. When I was ten, I started to straighten it up myself. After going back home and telling my mother that he was there, I would stay playing on a blanket that lied on the kitchen floor with all my toys. Around nine o'clock my mother would ask me to go there and bring him for dinner. Again, the houses and the streets. I would cross the Goba's door and all the men, sitting around a wooden table, would turn their gazes to me. I am sure that I had eyes of childish embarrasement. My father was among those men, like a stranger. I would walk towards him. Like if he was talking to me, he would ask: "Your mother send you for me again". With low voice, I would say: "Dinner is ready". They would all laugh. Sometimes, my father would finnish his beer or his glass of red wine and would come with me. Sometimes, we would stay all night and ignore me. That was when he bought me cans of juice. Those were the first cans of juice that I ever saw. I would drink them enjoying every sip. I would listen to their talks. I would explore every possible corner of Goba's. Sometimes, when it was finally time to go home, my father was drunk. I would try to help him to go back on his motorcycle. After arriving home, it would be expected that he argued with my mother.
This is what I remembered yesterday before arriving for dinner at my mother's place.

2004-05-05T03:20:00.000+01:00

"A cheap Saturday night took you down. You died stupidly and harshly and without the means to hold your own life dear.
Your run to safety was a brief reprieve. You brought me into hiding as your good-luck charm. I failed you as a talisman - so I stand now as your witness.
Your death defines my life. I want to find the love we never had and explicate it in your name.
I want to take your secrets public. I want to burn down the distance between us.
I want to give you breath."

James Ellroy, My dark places

Skin

2004-05-05T02:44:00.000+01:00

It happened this last Monday. I was having lunch and, through the window of my shelter house, I could see her washing her husband's grave. I was looking at her just because she was the only thing in motion in the whole graveyard. I wasn't really interested. I was thinking about other things. Sometimes, she would turn her face to me. Her husband's grave is at the rear of the graveyard. I saw her looking in my direction, I held the fork still in front of my mouth, but I didn't think that she could see me. She is one of the widows that comes often. After a few months they all turned the same to me. If we talk, I always say the same things and they always answer the same sighs. I don't know much about her. I know which part of the village she lives. She must be about seventy years old. When she started walking towards the shelter house, I was peeling an apple. Her footsteps were long and steady. I have heard her voice asking: "may I come in?" When she entered, I greeted her in the way that I greet old widows like her. I speak to them the way that I used to speak to my grandmother and her old neighbours. I thought about mentioning the weather, but she just stood there in silence and, inside her eyes, I could see fire. She slowly rose her hands and let her hair loose. Then, both her hands stoped at the first buttons from her black wool jacket. Her eyes were always fixed on me as she took off all her black clothes that were pilled like dead pets in front her. Then, she started to take off her white cotton underwear. She could see my face. Then, she was all naked in front of me. Her arms were still, like silence, along her body. There was a moment of sadness. The motionless expression of her face slowly turned into tears. I didn't move as she put her clothes back on and left.

We

2004-05-05T02:43:00.000+01:00

We are all alone, aren't we?

God

2004-05-03T05:18:00.000+01:00

I like it when I feel empty. If I could, I would like to feel always empty. Silence is close to god.

Endless story

2004-05-03T03:07:00.000+01:00

(This is a work of fiction. All persons, places and events depicted herein are imaginary, and no resemblance to actual persons, places or events is intended.)

They used to meet at dawn. She was a small girl when they first met. He was sad and old when he first saw her eyes shining in the begining of winter. They used to sit by the fire-place. She would ask for stories. She would listen to the story of a small girl that lived alone in the woods. He would always tell the same story. It was an endless story. Sometimes he would add a wolves' hunter, a bad wolf or a princess, but he would never end the story because,at some point, he would always go back to the beginning.

(parentesis)

2004-05-01T23:16:00.000+01:00

(At the bottom of these page there are a few devices that don't cease to amaze me. I am talking about both visitor's counters, the guestmap and the referrer's list. The visitor's counters never give the same information. I don't know which one of them is right. I don't know if any of them is right. The guestmap is nice: the pins, the small men and women. It seems like a plan to invade the world. Then, the list of referrers, like a statue of silence. The more I look at these devices the more I feel lonely.)

My secret

2004-05-01T18:31:00.000+01:00

I have arrived earlier than I needed to the graveyard. I walked towards my shelter house. I have stayed there the whole morning. I remembered you. I remembered everything that we once planed. Life forgot our plans.
I told my secret. You didn't want it.

Poem

2004-05-01T17:47:00.000+01:00

Today, time, like walls, invaded me.
I look at my hands, like windows, and
I know that, today, I can't exist.

2004-04-29T18:14:00.000+01:00

MISSING BODY

Don't go swimming in the ocean, Mother said,
right after you eat lunch. You could get
a cramp, & drown. You can't expect
the lifeguard to save you. He may not
have noticed that you went into the water,
he might have been too busy trying to remove
the sand from his hair. We may never find
your body, it could drift further out
into the sea, & not come back with the tide.
But I'll still get a tombstone for you,
& make it look like you're in the grave.
I just won't tell anyone that you're not there.

Hal Sirowitz, Mother said

.

The empire of keys

2004-04-29T12:03:00.000+01:00

Senhor Moreira is an undertaker that does a lot of funerals in this village. Sometimes we talk and laugh. He is a nice person to talk with. Once he offered me a ride to Elvas, a city near the spanish border. He went there to get the body of a man that died in jail. We both entered the gates of jail and, while he was taking care of the body, I was in the yard smoking a cigarrete with a convicted man of about sixty years old. I remember his eyes. I can still recall his mild voice. He told me that he was writing a book called "The empire of keys".
Today, I arrived to the graveyard's gates and when I was about to open them, like I do everyday, I noticed that I couldn't find the key. The main gate's key is huge. I always leave it in my coat's pocket. I do it without thinking. Today it wasn't there. It wasn't in my car. I went back home and, after turning it upside down, I was sure that it isn't there either.
I drove to the town hall. I don't like going there. Usually, I just go there once a month to get my pay check. Dona Chica is the person that takes care of everything related to the graveyard. Even if I just say "good morning", she answers back like if I did something wrong. Today, when I told her that I couldn't find the graveyard keys, she opened her eyes wide and there was a moment of silence and rage. Then, she must have thought that she finally got all her rage justified and, after walking to the cabinet where she keeps all the keys, she held the graveyard's key in her hand and said a few senteces containing the word "irresponsable". I listened to her like if I was a child that broke a window while playing soccer in the street. It took her a while to say everything she wanted to say. Irresponsable. When she placed the key in my hand, I tried not to touch her fingers. Then, I turned her my back and left. As I walked away, I could still hear her voice and her contempt. While I drove back, I remembered the conversation that I once had in Elvas with a convicted man. I couldn't help to think that I would love to read a book called "The empire of keys".

Toons

2004-04-28T16:47:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I like to put on the speakers of my computer and watch some toons.

Translator

2004-04-28T16:24:00.000+01:00

I wonder if we are different because we live in different places. We see different things from our windows. As children, we ran in different backyards. I wonder if we are different because we speak different languages. When you say "mother", I say "mãe". When you say "life", I say "vida". I wonder if we are different because I am here and you are there. When I get there, you are somewhere else. Then I say "come here", but you never come, you are always there.

The previous lines were translated into portuguese in http://dictionary.reference.com, then they were translated back to english using the same translator engine. Here is the result:

I want to know if we will be different because we live in different places. We see things different of our windows. As children, us we function in different yards. I want to know if we will be different because we say different languages. When you the "mother" says, I says "mother". When you she says the "life", I I say the "life". I want to know if we will be different because I am here and you are there. When I start there, you I am in some place another one. Then I say "come here", but you never come, you you are always there.

2004-04-27T16:20:00.000+01:00

HAPPIEST MOMENT

"If you ask her what is a favorite story she has written, she will hesitate for a long time and then say it may be this story that she read in a book once: an English language teacher in China asked his Chinese student to say what was the happiest moment in his life. The student hesitated for a long time. At last he smiled with embarrassment and said that his wife had once gone to Beijing and eaten duck there, and she often told him about it, and he would have to say the happiest momment in his life was her trip, and the eating of the duck."

Lydia Davis, Samuel Johnson is indignant

Elephant man

2004-04-27T15:22:00.000+01:00

He is a person. He has been standing for years in a corner of Rossio square in Lisbon. He shows his identification card and begs for money. People call him "the elephant man". There are all kinds of stories about him. A few years ago, I have seen on TV a report about him. I remember his mother saying that, when he is at home, he usually stays for hours in his bedroom with the windows' shades completely closed. Since then, whenever I hear about him, I can't help to imagine him in his completely dark bedroom. I imagine what he thinks about. I imagine the extent of his pain.
When I was small, I would travel to Lisbon with my parents and my sisters. We would go early in the morning. My mother and my sisters would walk from one store to another trying clothes. Me and my father would walk around, going to hardware stores and coffee shops where my father would drink consecutive draft beers. The elephant man would be in his corner of Rossio square. My father would always walk towards him and give him a coin. I would try to close my eyes, but the temptation was always bigger and I always ended up with a character for my childish nightmares. Back then, the elephant man's face was only starting to get the shape that it has today. He suffers from a genetical disease called proteus syndrome.
A friend sent me an email with a link to a picture of the elephant man. I just saw it with a mist of horror and still the same temptation that I used to have when I was small. I wanted to close my eyes, but I couldn't. I wanted to click on the return button, but I couldn't. I guess I am attracted by his gaze. He is a person. Don't forget that. It is an highly chocking sight. Do you really want to see it? Just don't forget that he is a person. Do you really want to see it? Do it at your own risk. The link to his picture is here.

JR (1944-2004)

2004-04-26T21:19:00.000+01:00

Everybody knew Ti JR. He owned a small grocery store near the elementary school. I guess that every person under thirty-five in this village got a candy from him at one point or another. He was a gentile but sober man. Every kid liked to carry a coin and enter his grocery store. Most times, he would leave with two candies, instead of one; three candies, instead of two. Ti JR was a generous man. The more we grew, the more we could tell he saw his joy in our joy.
His face was always perfectly shaved. His hair was always perfectly combed. He had two sons that are about the age of my sisters. Both of them are also perfectly shaved and perfectly combed. They both live in Lisbon. Ti Rasquete spent his life behind the counter of his grocery store.
Sunday morning, after his wife left for the mass, Ti JR locked all the doors in the house. When his wife arrived, she found all the doors locked and, after knocking for half an hour, decided to get help from the neighbours. They knocked and called Ti JR for one hour before deciding to break in. They found him hanged in the basement with barbed wire.
The priest refused to perform the ceremony unless the family signed a paper stating that he was mentally disturbed. The family refused to sign such a paper.
He would turn sixty years old in a week. His burial was dark and sad.
With all respect, I hope that he may now get all the freedom and all the peace. I am sure that he was much more than his story. Still, I leave it here in the form of these simple words so that we may know that he once existed among us.

Ti JR

2004-04-26T21:16:00.000+01:00

At six o'clock in the afternoon the coffin of Ti JR arrived to the graveyard.

Uneasy

2004-04-25T23:43:00.000+01:00

Today, it is the thirtieth birthday of the "carnation revolution". I will be thirty years old in September. The celebrations of this holiday have been less and less enthusiastic as years go by. Today there were some speeches on TV. The heroes of the revolution were uneasy. There are less and less people that actually witnessed the revolution.
Thirty years ago, I was in my mother's belly. I have only celebrated my birthday once and that was when I turned five. I remember all the neighbourhood kids arriving with their mothers. We were small and embarraced. We were all the same age. Today, we are all apart. We live in different places. We don't have each others' phone number. We would be uneasy if we were condemned to meet once a year.

2004-04-24T19:53:00.000+01:00

NOONE IS YOU

So many women
and noone is you.

In Sarajevo
two hundred thousand women
and noone is you.

In Europe
two hundred million women
and noone is you.

In the world
two thousand million women
and no one is you.

Izet Sarajlic (1930-2002)
Translated by me.

FAQ

2004-04-24T19:50:00.000+01:00

Why do you insist that people should place a pin in your ridiculous guestmap?
Because it helps to keep my ilusion alive.

Party

2004-04-21T17:51:00.000+01:00

In the morning, when I arrived to the graveyard and opened the front gate, I noticed footsteps of kids in the main path. It is not the first time that it happens. The footsteps led me to a grave where two bottles of whisky lay empty. The first thought that came to my head was: these kids do it because they don't imagine that one day they will be dead too. But then I thought that some day I will die too and I wouldn't mind that some kids would party on my grave.

Time

2004-04-21T17:44:00.000+01:00

Today I have spent the afternoon watching the smoke that rose from the cigarettes that I held burning between my fingers. Beauty needs quietness.

My life

2004-04-21T17:06:00.000+01:00

My friends went back to Germany.
My toothache is completelly healed.
The weather is almost cold.

True poet

2004-04-21T16:13:00.000+01:00

I have a friend who is a true poet. Sometimes, when I write him an email he replies with a poem about what he felt by receiving my email. Once, we had lunch together at a restaurant. Before ordering the food, he wrote a poem about the feeling of someone who is at a restaurant about to order food. While we were waiting for the food, he wrote a poem about someone who is at a restaurant waiting for food. He writes about what he feels and he writes about what he feels when he feels. I believe that he is a true poet.

Memory

2004-04-19T04:57:00.000+01:00

I always have the best ideas when I am stoned, but I always forget them.

Twenty-something

2004-04-19T04:36:00.000+01:00

My german friends are Frank and his girlfriend Julia. After they arrived we were speaking for a while in the livingroom. I have known Frank from before but this was the first time I have ever met Julia. I can't help making judgements. Frank didn't change much. He is still lost. As far as Julia, when I first saw her I got the impression that she was a wise old man traped in the body a twenty-something years old girl. Then, they went to their room for a few minutes. I have waited for them on the couch. Julia arrived alone. Then she looked like if she was an abandoned small girl traped in the body of a twenty-something years old girl. Frank arrived and we laughed for a while. Julia couldn't understand most of the jokes because she didn't know most of the people we were talking about. At dinner, we exchanged silent gazes. She seemed a just borned baby or a dying old woman traped in the body of a twenty-somenthing years old girl. I didn't think anymore about her up till now. I have just notice that all twenty-something years old girls are a wise old man, an abandoned small girl, a just borned baby and a dying old woman. I have just noticed that we all are.

FAQ

2004-04-19T04:32:00.000+01:00

When are you comming over for dinner, Ze?
I don't know, mother.

To lie

2004-04-18T01:26:00.000+01:00

I have just realized that, for the first time in my life, I am lying to a doctor. The other day, the dentist told me not to smoke for a week because of the tooth healing. I told her that I would stop, but I am still smoking.
I wonder if I will ever lie to a doctor again. I wonder which will be the circunstances.

Cleaning up

2004-04-17T17:07:00.000+01:00

Some friends from Germany will arrive tomorrow. I met them in Lisbon about three years ago and I have visited them once in Frankfurt. They will stay for a couple of days. They will stay at my place. I don't have much room for all of us but I think we will manage. We haven't seen eachother for quite a while. I am sure that we will be strangers in the first minutes. Today, I will be cleaning up my place. I hope that they will feel confortable here.
The graveyard is all cleaned up. The sun is shining and spreading life all over the village and the surrounding fields. I hope that nobody dies while my friends are here.

(parentesis)

2004-04-17T17:03:00.000+01:00

(Check out the "guest map" at the bottom of this page. It would be nice if you placed your pin there. Thanks.)

2004-04-17T16:41:00.000+01:00

LET ME DIE FIRST

It's not enough that I had to suffer
terrible labor pains, Mother said,
to bring you into this world, but
looking at you bloodshot eyes
I can tell you've been taking drugs,
& you'll probably die before I do,
& then I'll have to mourn you too.
I thought you would at least have
the decency to die after me, so
you can put flowers on my grave,
& light memorial candles for me.
But I see that I'll just have to
find someone else to do that for me.
And even if you do happen to survive me,
you probably destroyed so many brain cells
that you won't be able to find
the cemetery that I'm buried in,
because they're usually in out-of-the-way places,
since people don't want to be reminded of death.

Hal Sirowitz, Mother said

Link

2004-04-17T03:56:00.000+01:00

I know that you are there. My eyes are looking at you from a place that you can't see. Look around. Feel the chair that you are sitting on. Sometimes, when you stop noticing the chair, I hold you on the palm of my hand.
I would like to see through your eyes now. I would like to reach the innerplaces in you that are reached by these words. To you, I am the voice that says these words in your head as you read. I am here. I am saying these words inside you. And I am here. My hands are tired. My fingers are long. My nails are dirty.
Between you and me, there is this screen of light. Pass your finger across this screen. Feel the cold, smooth surface of this screen. Put your finger on the exact word where my finger is right now. Let's link: here.

I

2004-04-16T17:02:00.000+01:00

"I" is a strange word. It only means "I" when pronounced by me. If you say "I", you will be meaning "you". I will never know exactly what you are saying when you say "I" because, for me, you will be saying "you" and "you" is so different from "I". On the other hand, you can't understand what I mean when I say "I" because you understand "you" and only you know what you understand when you look at me and think that "I" is "you".

2004-04-16T16:40:00.000+01:00

THE GREAT-GRANDMOTHERS

"At the family gathering, the great-grandmothers were put out on the sun porch. But because of some problem with the children, at the same time as the brother-in-law had fallen into a drunken stupor, the great-grandmothers were forgotten by everyone for a very long time. When we opened the glass door, made our way through the rubber trees, and approached the sunlit old women, it was too late: their gnarled hands had grown into the wood of their cane handles, their lips had cleaved together into one membrane, their eyeballs had hardened and were immovably focused out on the chestnut grove where the children were flashing to and fro. Only old Agnes had a little life left in her, we could hear her breath sucking through her mouth, we could see her heart laboring beneath her silk dress, but even as we went to her she shuddered and was still."

Lydia Davis, Almost no memory

Pain

2004-04-16T03:58:00.000+01:00

I have spent the whole day on a chair, pressuring the palm of my hand against my cheeck. I know that my eyes were open, but now I just feel that I had them shut all day. I woke up at 7 a.m. with a sharp toothache that didn't give me any rest and that, right now, doesn't let me sleep.
It seems that all the thoughts I had today were empty. I was held inside pain. When in physical pain, there is no other life, there is no other world. I have spent the whole day without feeling myself.
It is as if I woke up to be a different me. My feet touched the ground but I didn't feel it. People named all sorts of things but there are no names for pain. This world in which I am now is only mine and impossible to share. There are no names for every different shade of pain. We know them throughout our life. We ignore them for most of the time and, when it happens, when it is happening, in the moment that our world is pain, we always feel that nobody ever succeeded in describing pain, maybe because there are no words to describe it, maybe because we don't believe in the words that describe it.
I remember my father near the fireplace. He would pass my hand on his belly, I would feel the roundness of his tumors and he would tell me: "they are getting bigger". We all knew that nothing could save him. I remember putting on the lights on my parents' bedroom. My father was lying in bed. I knew that he was in a different world. My parent's bedroom had the horrible stench of profound and lasting pain.
Pain is like a blade of light that comes from far away to trespass you. It sounds like the shrill that it going to deafen you. It tastes like having the mouth full of blood.
I have a toothache. Tomorrow I will go to the dentist. I remember my father. I wonder how it was the pain that my father felt when it was all his body that hurt, when morphine stopped having any effect at all and when he knew that, besides pain, all that was left for him was to die.
Am I ready for such a pain?

Beauty

2004-04-15T02:16:00.000+01:00

Unless we all believe in beauty...

BESCPC (1929-2004)

2004-04-14T21:44:00.000+01:00

In the village, everybody knows the name of Dona Bia. I have spent the whole day opening the grave in which she now lies. She was the richest person in the village. Well, maybe she wasn't the richest since there are about five or six families that own a lot of land, but, to the poor, she grew to be the icon of rich people. I guess that must have happened because she did a lot of things that nobody did before her. Being an orphan at the age of twenty-two, being an only-daughter, she took possession of a huge amount of money at young age. She was the first woman to smoke publicly and to drive in our village. Even when shocked, people could always sense her feminity. I only saw her once, I was ten and sensed it instantly.
The parents of the boy that sat near me in school worked as butler and maid at Dona Bia's house. She lived in the center of the village. Her house is bigger than ten regular houses. It has a huge garden, swimming pool and tenis court. Once my friend invited me to her house. He told me that nobody was there except his parents. We were in the fourth grade. We only had classes in the morning and I remember the hours we spent in the library where they kept the cartoon books of Dona Bia's sons: two men with children of their own. Prior to being there, I had never allowed myself to dream something like that. To my eyes, the library was endless. Then my friend invited me to play tenis. To me, tenis was something that only existed on TV. So, I have returned all cartoon books to their shelves and I jumped towards the door. We went out and, when were headed to the tenis court, Dona Bia's car entered the open gate. She was smoking and wearing really big sun glasses. Her face was her lips and her sun glasses. Me and my friend were silent and montionless. We watched her getting our of the car, geting her purse and disapearing in the stairs that lead to the front door. Me and my friend walked towards the gate. That would not be the day that we would play tenis. I have never played tenis in my life.
A few months after the revolution in 1974, some people close to the Communist Party, which represented most of the people, went to her house because they wanted to evict her. She refused to leave. A crowd stood in front of her house for three days. She refused to leave. The crowd in front of her house was becoming smaller and smaller when the last man gave up.
She was married at the age of thirty. She was the mother of two boys and she was the grandmother of five children. She was a widow for the past decade. Her body arrived at graveyard carried by her sons and two of her grandsons. There were many people in her burial. Her family stood apart and never looked around at other people's faces.
With all respect, I hope that she may now get all the freedom and all the peace. I am sure that she was much more than her story. Still, I leave it here in the form of these simple words so that we may know that she once existed among us.