Signs

My oldest daughter is starting to show the first signs of puberty. It is time. If I think about my life, I can remember I was about her age when I realized I was growing old, I was becoming an adult. Up to that point, I guess I only thought I was growing up, getting taller without actually thinking my height meant something else than being able to look my mother straight into her eyes.

She is still my girl, a sweet child who loves to play with her favorite toys, but, little by little, she´s changing, she´s being changed by the passage of time. In a question of months, she will be bloming into a beautiful young woman. 

In a very short period of time, she will be looking at me straight into my eyes, as an equal.  

I just hope I will be wise enough in helping her in making some sense of what it means to be a woman.            

September 22

On a September 22, my grandfather was born, a hundred and fourteen years ago. He ceased to exist long before that date, although he lived longer than he had probably expected: ninety six years. He outlived his wife, my grandmother, with whom he had a turbulent  marriage, in almost ten years. On the last three years of his life, he wasn´t able to recognize none of us. When he saw his son, my father, he tought he was seeing his own father. He kept on calling: daddy, daddy, and his son would go to him in an attempt to comfort his agonies, his uneasiness. What was he thinking then? We never knew. 

My grandfather had a long life, I´m not sure if it was a happy one. He had a harsh childhood, an agitated adulthood due to his personal political beliefs and actions,  and lived longer to see the collapse of some of his cherished ideas. 

I miss my grandfather dearly. He was not the tender and caring type of person, but he was the only grandfather I met. He was extremely inteligent and had a strange sense of humor, and when I was born, he wrote me a poem. What else could I ask for?

Eighteen  years have passed since the death of my grandfather, and I still remember his birthday. I can clearly hear his voice, and I can picture him right in front of his old house walking his dog. And, when I look at my father as he is today, I see a litttle (or a lot, depending on the day) of my grandfather. And it makes me feel better to think that part of him is still around.

        

A perfect day

This is the closest I get to an idyllic saturday:

- a cup of coffee (or maybe two);
- a good book (I´ve gotten this fantastic comic book called Daytripper, written and ilustrated by two twin brothers: Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá);
- peace and quiet;
- reading by the window, the sunlight occasionally iluminating the pages;
- the company of a cat;
- drinking a glass of red wine (or maybe two), just enough to feel lighter;
- eyelids closed for a while, still enjoying the peace and quiet;
- finishing the book and have this feeling of being blown away by a great history;
- getting to write a little bit;
- taking a walk and coming back;
- shower, salad, orange juice.
- Bed.

In a Blink of an eye

I´ve finished reading Watchmen recently, what a great and positive surprise. I had no idea it was that good, so good that I can´t really say for sure which is my favorite character, but there´s one in particular I´ve felt somehow connected with and that was Dr. Manhattan.

The guy has been through a lot. Being desintegrated during a nuclear accident is not something easy, but  he gets to pull himself together somehow. He becomes a different type of being with superpowers such as teletransportation. He can teletransport himself and others to pretty much wherever he wants to. He gets well fine, but the same cannot be said to ordinary human beings; some can experience minor side effects, such as vomits, and others can go through major ones, such as massive heart attacks.
What I thought it was really cool was his understanding of time. To him, there´s no past, present and future, everything is happening simultaneously, and nothing really ends. If I knew that would be possible, I would agree on submitting myself to nuclear experiences.
My time is short, always in a hurry, always late. I´ve heard during a lecture this week that time really flies when we live in cities, people walk faster, talk faster, do everything faster in cities. I´m not sure, but I would guess the speed is directed related with the size of the city, so I´m almost happy I live in a reasonable sized town and not in Sao Paulo, Tokio or New York. I mean, I would desintegrate with the effort of keeping up with the life speed in places like that.
I blinked and it was March, I had the whole year in front of me. I blinked again and it is August. When I blink the next time, the year would be over. I wish I could be teletransported to somewhere else.
Time´s up. Gotta go.  

The right to be forgotten

I´ve heard (and read) about the changes the top European Community court  of justice is requiring Google to adopt: whenever asked, the company has to remove from its search results data that is considered by the demanding part as inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relavant (see links HERE). It´s a complex subject, involving delicate aspects; on one side, the right for privacy claimed by european citizens. On the other,the so called freedom of expression claimed by Google. However, what really caught my attention was the tittle of the proposal: The right to be forgotten.

The right to be forgotten.  Five words that can tell a whole story, or many different stories, depending on the reader understanding of what´s behind of a carefull selection of words. One example: If you read one of the most famous short stories ever written, supposedly by Hemingway, using only six words: "For sale: baby shoes never worn", and burst into tears - as many has done before you, as you can check by reading this LINK -, you´ve imagined a terrible drama: a couple that has lost a child. Was it during labor? Was it after for an unexpected desease? As consequence of an accident? It could be whatever you choose to, including something completely different. What if the baby was born healthy and heavy, bigger than the mother expected and the clothes simply didn´t fit? The story loses its dramatic strenght, for sure, but not everybody appreciates sad endings. There are the ones who love the happy ones. The story goes on according to the reader´s imagination.

The right to be forgotten, a legitimate claim. Thinking about that sentence, about this sequence of words, all I could envision was a collection of dramas: couples that split, families torn apart by different types of tragedies. As much as I tried, I couldn´t come up with a happy ending story. But that´s me, I´m quite dramatic. And there was something else that came up to my mind. It´s funny how sometimes we choose a specific  sequence of words that have a very clear meaning if we take them literally, but we wish for the exact opposite of what we´re saying. There are times when leave me alone means don´t leave me alone. So, for me, in many cases, ask to be forgotten means you wish you wouldn´t be. Humans are strange animals, don´t you think?
I´ve also heard (and read) that sad stories can make great art, whereas the happy ones hardly ever. Why would that be? I´m not sure. I guess Tolstoy has the best explanation I´ve read: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way". Happyness is worth living, not reading about it.
And this song in particular is a wonderful example of pain turned into art. Enjoy.

  


 

    

The cracked house

Draw a cracked house, I´ve heard. No, it wasn´t exaclty what he said. I had a hard time trying to translate such a simple sentence from Portuguese to English, but what am I saying? There´s no such a thing as a simple sentence. Anyway, what he meant was that we should come up with a house that was somehow wrong, inappropriate, and he said that in his lovely peninsular accent.


I draw the first thing that came to my mind: a corner, the encounter of two walls forming a right angle, which is interesting considering I was supposed to draw a cracked house. Then I draw a hole on the floor. One of my walls had, well, a huge crack, and from the fissure the branches of a tree could be seen. There was a window and, from the outside, faces staring at the emptiness of the inside.
The others came up with different ideas: houses with no doors or windows, houses that were placed upside down, all inappropriate because living between those walls was impossible. At the end, we all came up with representations of empty spaces. Ultimately, a cracked house is not a place to live in.  

memories of losses

The first thing I remember to lose was a teddy bear. As a toddler, I guess I was always carrying it around, and that´s why I´ came to lose it.

I was at an airport waiting for someone. I´m not sure, but I think I was waiting for my dad. I was probably excited. Going to the airport was something I enjoyed doing at that age, I was probably fascinated with airplanes as all kids are. Anyway, I can clearly see my arms around that relatively big teddy bear. We sat for a while, maybe to have something to drink and/or eat, and I put Geroncio (that was his name, I remember) on a chair right in front of me. I can still see his round, dark, unexpressive eyes starring at me.

The fact is I forgot my teddy bear on that chair, at that airport. When I realized my arms where missing something, we came back but it was too late. Someone else has taken him away.

I felt sad. And guilty. How could I have forgotten my teddy bear? How can we forget things that are so damn important, so dear to us? And I did it not only once, many times. That was my first. The first time I´ve lost something dear to me.

I´ve lost books, and for a person who loves reading and writing, losing books is very bad. I´ve lost Decameron inside a bus when I was going to the beach for my summer vacation. And the book wasn´t even mine. I´ve lost another one, about the Russian Revolution at an airport in Michigan. And I realized, while I was writting this post, how much I still regret those losses. I realized how much I hate losing things I love and care about.

And the losses kept on happening. I started to lose not only things, but also living things that we basically lose to death; first it was my dog, then, years later, family members: granparents, aunts, uncles... And as much as I know that that´s the way life is, I never stopped missing them, and hating the fact that they were taken away from me.

I´ve also lost friends. I believe most of them are doing well, living their lives the best way they can, but we lost contact. It wouldn´t be difficult to find out about some of them if I really wanted to. However, I have this feeling that I shouldn´t. People change, I´ve changed. And maybe what we once shared has vanished as well, so getting together could be a huge mistake. Either way, thinking about those lost friends make me feel deeply sorry.

For the last few days, I´ve been feeling gloomy and I could not tell why. This is very strange to me, because I usually know what is bothering me or hurting me very well, that was never a problem I had, not knowing what was wrong. So, when I started feeling this way, I begun to think, trying to find out what was the problem. And then I thought about losses. The small and the big ones, so I think that was it.  I feel sorry for things I´ve lost, for people I´ve once loved, and that are gone forever. Knowing that didn´t make the feeling go away. But that was never the reason why I kept on thinking. I just wanted to understand. And now I do.         

Baby Teeth

Baby Teeth

Babies have no teeth when they are born, only rosy gums full of promisses and a strong tongue.
Baby teeth are also known as milk teeth, and milk is what babies should have before having any teeth showing up on their gums. For sucking milk from their mothers, they only need a strong tongue.
When babies reach four to six months, the first incisors, two, erupt from their gums.
Children usually have twenty baby teeth that will occasioanlly fall, giving place to the permanent ones.
I´ve seen the eruption of 40 baby teeth, 20 per child.
Last week, I pulled two baby teeth, one per child.
I´ve pulled more teeth than I dare to count.
I wish I didn´t have to pull their teeth, but I have to.
My children do not believe in the Tooth Fairy anymore.
Will they remember I had to pull their teeth when they´re grown?
Will they remember I was their Tooth Fairy when I´m gone?