3:24

São três e vinte e quatro da manhã..
E tudo perdeu o sentido pra mim.

FINDING (Jorge Mello's Short Story)

[Este conto é uma colaboração do amigo Jorge Mello]

There are some times in life when we have to advance…

Well I’m nobody special in this world; I’m just a 25 year old man telling my story while I’m walking by the neighborhood trying to find something that is lacking in my life. If you question me, you’ll notice that I “have everything”. I’m working at a private school, well paid, I have my friends and practice exercises. I had a girlfriend but, when I was committed I still felt this sensation of missing something else. Now I’m single, not searching a girl, but a motivation that don’t have since I entered the university seven years ago. Before this, I used to be a young boy full of dreams, some of those became reality other changed into something more distant now, and full of a vigor that was losing force day by day ‘till now. I see many people without any interest in life, acting as if they didn’t want anything else here. I’m trying to be different from these people, I’m seeking this lack throughout my soul, my life, the place where I live, by my actions… well now I’m hanging on by the streets and telling what I was and what is probably missing in this.

I didn’t even have a love disillusion, all my relationships were nice and I don’t have enemies. Maybe you can say that what is missing is a kind of emotion and adrenaline in the way of how I live. Yes, maybe, but the new things that I try, I succeed well. Just a deep search in my vigorous past can say what I had that now I lost. The inspiration of the walk by the boulevard makes me think about my youth before starting my adult life of commitments and deadlines. What can bring this back? How can I fit myself among my commitments a lost feeling of fullness? It is funny to say something like that. If a had a completely occupied life, It’d be ok, but how can I miss something? The answer to this question is very complex, I think. Maybe it is just a very small detail in how I see life, but it is hidden from my eyes and my soul.

Now then it is almost eleven a.m. and I walked about 3 miles reflecting when I met a friend of mine. He was going to meet his parents in the neighborhood. I was at my parents last weekend. My mom and dad were looking nice and we talked about life and how things changed along the time. They questioned if I was planning to move, because it was my idea certain time ago, but it is impossible due to my job at school. My mom looks happy because without moving I stay closer to her. I like to visit my parents, I feel comfortable and for an instance I forget this strange feeling. I cannot move to live with my parents again, this term ended and I advance to other situation where I have to figure on myself in order to solve my issues.

It is not ease to look for something that we don’t know what it is properly. Well it is the time to go back. I have to tidy my apartment up and prepare some lessons for next week. While I am going home I see the dog-house truck passing by with some lost dogs inside it. I started to think about my dog that died when I joined the university. I earned my puppy in my sixth birthday. I didn’t have many friends and my dog many times was the only true friend that I had to share my problems and ideas. This truck made me think about a detail that passed unperceived. Now everything seems too much clear. I stopped in the middle of the side walk if my legs have lost strength and desire to resume the walk. Remember how it was nice to know that after a daylong studying or doing other things I’ll have a friend waiting me without caring about anything. My dog wouldn’t care if I was tired, sick, bored, or sad. He was always there, showing that he was a special and loyal friend. I just can think in one thing now, I have to go to the dog-house and look for, or maybe be found by a real true four paw friend. My stuff can wait me, other things can do that, but a friend cannot. I can’t wait anymore to recover my strength, my inspiration to try things and know that I will have someone that will understand me with his wet nose and fanning tail.

Now I walk toward a house that is not mine, but my friend’s temporary house.

Sea of Tranquility

Somebody Said something about a Sea of Tranquility, I Just don’t know, I’m stuck here for a long time and have no contact with news. 1963 as far as I remember. Foolish people those who put me here, okay, as Mary said, this is my fate, I got to accomplish it.
Johnny the Guy who killed the wife, told me on Tuesday, that men has got a flag on the moon’s surface. I could hardly believe him. Man I’d really like to be there. If it’s true there’s a Sea of Tranquility there I could be a moonsailor whose only fate was taking everything easy.
If I had taken that easier that time I wouldn’t be here now, sharing a small room with Joe, the guy who killed that couple on the Christmas Eve, He became famous because of that, I was having dinner with Mary at the Shrimps’s House when I saw him in black and white.
My mom always told me not to become a burglar nor a murderer, because it was really common in our family. I kinda didn’t pay attention to her.
Once when I was just sixteen I wanted to talk to Mary in person. There were four phone calls until she accepted talking to me in front of her first working place. She was a baby-sitter at the time. We talked to each other for Five long hours up to 10p.m. when her father went there to pick her up. I’ll never forget the way Harry, her brother, looked at me. Harry should be here, he is the one whose privacy should be shared with this goddamn sick Joe.
Mary and I got married on a Sunday in a beautiful religious cerimony, at least it was beautiful up to the moment Harry got drunk and punched the priest saying that God was a human’s creation while the devil was part of us since the dawn of man.
Mary tried to save me, she said to the judge in person, that I didn’t have the intention, that I’d never do such a crime. However there was no salvation, I’m stuck and fourteen days from now I’ll be dead in front of her eyes. She’ll probably be quiet. Silence is a typical reaction from those whose hope and will to live were completely neglected by the surrounding circumstances. This world is unfair, I knew that.
Fourteen Days, this is a good period of time to spend on a vacation with your family, the place doesn’t matter, having your relatives next to you is the most important thing.
I’m afraid that Mary might find anorher man and then forget everything we have gone through together, in the thick and thin I was there for her, and so far she’s here for me. But, what when she has another man? Will she remember me.. I don’t know, I just want her to be happy. Since I killed her brother our lives became a hell on earth. Fourteen days from now. Gosh, Harry should be killed again.

when your head is haunted by things you just don't know...

Cegueira

Muitas vezes na vida eu, Desidério, brinquei de fechar os olhos por algum tempo e sair por aí caminhando. Na infância eu considerava este ato como um treinamento ninja, que por sinal era minha profissão preferida, muito embora eu não estivesse a par da remuneração nem dos benefícios (vai que a classe não possuísse plano dentário, vale transporte e outras coisitas mais) eu sabia que só pelo fato de vestir aquela roupa com máscara e jogar estrelas nos inimigos já valeria a pena. Mas enfim, continuando, como parte desse meu treinamento ninja, passava horas a fio com os olhos cerrados caminhando pela casa, tocava cada objeto, tentava visualizá-lo com a mente. Em pouco tempo eu conhecia a posição de cada um deles na casa. Não raro para impressionar alguma visita eu vestia uma touca, puxando-a até o queixo é claro, e corria pela casa, pasmem, sem tocar em nada. Tudo nessa vida pode ser treinado, tudo pode ser coordenado e também, dependendo dos interesses, descoordenado. O fato é que, mesmo sendo tão treinado para aquilo, minha cegueira ninja foi a vilã quando minha mãe resolveu comprar uma mesa de centro, de mármore. A maldita densidade do mármore. A maldita falta de comunicação em minha casa. Como que uma mãe compra um móvel, se é que uma mesa de centro é um móvel, e não avisa o filho?
Hoje, um tanto mais velho, já recuperado, porém de olhos bem abertos, eu descobri que há um outro tipo de cegueira, que não a ninja nem a científica. É a cegueira do coração. Esta sim, é vilã, sem choro nem ais, porque ela engana a favor e contra. Porém ambos os casos lidam com o verbo enganar.
Ela (pessoa e não a cegueira) desconfia de algo que diz que fiz, porém se houve mesmo algo de desrespeitoso em minha atitude, foi para comigo mesmo, por tentar a todo momento deixar claro o que o meu coração queria dizer. Este, certamente afetado pela primeira cegueira, aquela a favor, não sei bem de que. Já ela, afetou-se pela segunda, a contra, pois esbravejou os mais desrespeitosos impropérios sem fundamentação alguma, fazendo com que, tudo o que disse hoje a tarde olhando em seu olho valesse tanto ou menos que a tachinha enferrujada que está cravada no meu tênis há cerca de cinco meses.
Esse meu ensaio sobre a cegueira, diferende daquele de Saramago, é algo bem recorrente. Estejam atentos e de olhos abertos.

Desidério