Personal Letters

Francisco foi um excelente pai para a Igreja. Chamo-o assim, pelo primeiro e único nome, porque deixou em seu testamento que deveria ser a inscrição em seu túmulo: “Franciscus”.

Escrito na metade de 2022, o texto oferece o “sofrimento que esteve presente na última parte” da vida do Papa ao “Senhor, pela paz no mundo e pela fraternidade entre os povos”. Infere‑se que, desde então, a despedida esteve em suas preocupações.

É coerente sentir estranheza diante de um líder que telefonava para o pároco de Gaza, e que não se esquivou de pedir o desarmamento e o fim da guerra. Naquilo que chamava de “globalização da indiferença”, os homens passaram a consumir os horrores da natureza violenta sem tomar qualquer providência.

Certamente ele foi atingido pelos tsunamis de ódio que cobriram a comunidade humana nos últimos anos. Nesse sentido, nunca vi tanto descompasso entre católicos. Porém, não me surpreende em nada. Afinal, quem não está perdido?

O riso de Francisco vai fazer muita falta. Seu jeito simples de oferecer conselhos, e de ensinar a dar conselhos. Para ele, um sermão não deveria passar de oito minutos. Que respeito aos ouvidos, e ao tempo dos outros! “O senso de humor é um certificado de sanidade”, defendeu.

Pergunta-se, com razoável preocupação, o quanto as lições de caridade ensinadas por ele estão aprendidas, quanto internalizadas. Para que nenhuma geada queime a lavoura de novos cristãos, os cardeais têm agora o trabalho de escolher um Papa que nos ame.

Uns dias antes de morrer, no fim do ano passado, meu avô Jorge ouviu Ravel comigo. Dedico essa memória.

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I repeatedly fail. Even now, I failed in my intention to go to bed at 9:30 pm. For some reason akin to “what the hell! I don't sleep more than four hours anyway,” I surrendered to the drift of darkness. I fear a stern authority will weep to discipline me: “it’s not time to go to the bathroom.” Activities in general. The late-night chats have ended, covered in sand, disintegrated by a shock, incinerated. It’s a little sad. All that chaotic literature that brought me so many friends has gone mad, and speaks to itself in Mark's posts.

The book Maku sent me is well-written, of course, but it's read in super slow motion. The character begins to reveal herself through a desire to die. You don't find such honest people easily. Like toast with cream cheese and red fruit jam. It was the box, the jar. I switched to whipped cream. Whipped cream is foolproof.

This fractal, then: death and life explaining themselves poorly, speaking quickly and loudly, like Brazilian tourists with red lipstick and crossbody bags enchanting the world with smiling rudeness. My analysis, which follows, is sophisticated.

There are life’s discordances that are, it must be repeated, forces of nature. Discordances, in this text, are metaphorically Meryl Streep portraying Florence Foster Jenkins in the cinema, or any instrument that should vibrate a sublime "ooowooowooow," but ends up materializing Grandma Jephinha venturing off-key, without melody.

I like water because it doesn't waste time with stones or walls; it deviates, accepts a good tunnel, but, if necessary, breaks through everything. Water takes for itself lands that didn't even have a vocation for a swimming pool, resting there as a calamitous flood.

The regions of the world that are about to disappear need intellectual support to resolve issues of property, repatriation, and the return of predictable bureaucracies. You cannot erect an island on top of a two-story house; not even Japanese drainage cathedrals make a difference in the ocean. Such dangers equate our intelligence to nothing. Nature is one of the three notable sources of displeasure in Freudian psychoanalysis.

“And from all this out-of-tune instrument I was never an apprentice.” There's this verse in a Gabrielle Seraine lyric. And in her music too, when she sings “[out-of-]tune,” when she sings exactly “deceased,” the harmony shatters for a moment, like a little shit blowing a plastic flute. It's the valley before the peak, the “dark before the dawn.”

Flusser's Spirit

When the out-of-tune individual — the "medium" (of media, not of speaking to the dead) — emits noise, communication becomes clearer. Let's use the word "communication" as a future synonym for "spirit," a beautiful conception of Flusser's.

In the religions that deal with "spirits," note the similarity in the conduct of intentions: doors are opened and closed, people are stimulated to move their psyches, and even banal requests that are nothing more than predictable bureaucracies. One asks, promises, thanks, expels, infuses — all through the conjuring of human and intelligible words.

Accepting Jesus, renouncing Freemasonry, declaring victory, taking possession of the blessing, doing macumba for Dona Ida to die (children are very inventive) — all this requires speaking. From the spell of the Greek Father to the Seven Knocks on the Door of Grace prayer chain from Janine's people. Communication. Speech. Listening.

In some evangelical cults, faced with unsatisfactory communication, someone is likely to take on the role of the demoniac for the benefit of the group. The Catholic mass has so many communication resources that part of the sermon ends up being saved.

"Spirits" are an ancient, primitive subject. It was a way of keeping the dead nearby. Later, these dead became demons. History records in anthropological terms; I have here an original Frazer that I received from Luca. My point is: if spirits "are born" from domestic dead, it is natural that, before committing to events outside the home — speaking of spiritualist meetings, making wind — they are available in the family inventory.

Powerful but Foolish

There is power in psychoanalysis, in Transactional Analysis, in Narcotics Anonymous. But these endeavors require much more time, specialization, and opportunities for mistakes than can be achieved in a family, when a family is available. Family, of course, should be understood broadly.

A family that has understood the permanence of love, that has left the struggles for recognition for community practices, has a better chance of success in invoking powerful spirits.

The powerful spirit of the creator, for those who believe thus, has to make some difference. Is God dead? Don't be fooled. I write about communication. About conjuring, invoking, good communication. In the last line of the noise, "taking possession of the blessing," as well observed by Nina.

In Portuguese, "spirits" have been communication at least since 1976, when Cartola composed: "From each dead person, one will inherit only cynicism." From my tensioning, Flusser offers us a simplification: it's a lot of "spiritual battle" for little "talking like people."

Let's return. The relationship of the out-of-tune, the deceased — properly the word in question, noise, this thing that disturbs sleep — with clarity is not only poetry. The physics and computer engineering that support image generation proceed from the use of two very basic stages that do not harm each other.

To improve someone's skin in a photograph, you first need the caress of blurring, like a hyperope without glasses. Then, you have to add noise, something like an old TV without a signal. And then you can see better.

Thus, my suggestion for the group — laughter — is an appreciation of noise, along with a careful observation of the content of the disturbances. When this battery runs out, with more clarity, let us be arrogant in our pretensions of dignity.

Only I was going to write about something completely different. I'll make another post.

The air of novelty that a New Year brings seems akin to the effect of renewing vows. It is, let's say, an opportunity.  By analogy, a wedding ceremony itself is powerless to effect changes in a couple, in the sense of expanding trust and reciprocity, and the consequent happiness derived from these expansions. A ceremony in itself is nothing, but the couple's focus on achieving a better self-awareness is.  With the new year, it's very similar.

It is entirely understandable to disregard the commercial calendar's timekeeping when one's intention is a free and fruitful life. A personal history should not (but often is) subjected to the mechanics of exhausting work: vacations, recesses, and holidays. Things of this category are very welcome, of course, but almost always correspond to the logic of industry and consumption. Hence the proverb: "The more you have, the less you are."

In these contexts, buying a new outfit for New Year's Eve can be an ambivalent act. On one hand, there's the obligation of purchase, the competition established with other party guests. On the other, there's a legitimate inclination towards self-care, and for the outward appearance to match the novelty of the innermost self.

To change the year within oneself requires a certain degree of the ridiculous. That is, to cross the line of the ridiculous. Instead of a costume, to dress in what truly corresponds to who one is. It's not about *pretending* to be, it's about being in essence.  Something interesting is the fact that what one desires to be in the future can only be true if it is so right now. This is a very basic philosophical idea. It is also true that if something ceased to be, it is because it never truly was.

What I previously called ridiculous could also be called courage. To put on one's own shoes, to open one's chest: to think, speak, act, and celebrate from what one truly is, what always was, and will always be. But courage lies less in the behavioral aspect, which even a ham actor could interpret with utter cowardice, and much more in a permission for the individual spirit to communicate to the world what it came to do.

Godfather Pedro – the composite name for the dearly departed neighbor, Pedro Zotto. He and my grandfather, Jorge Camargo (Godfather Jorge in turn), built their houses in an undeveloped area of São José dos Pinhais, starting in the 1950s.  They were such close friends that, besides their houses standing on corners of the same intersection of Avenida das Torres, they purchased mausoleums side-by-side for their retirement. Godfather Pedro moved to his final address some years ago. While the husbands were exceptionally close, their wives waged a perpetual war. Although comadres (godmothers to each other's children), they never missed a single opportunity to create the most hilarious chaos.  "Very Crazy Neighbors," in their afternoon matinee. Their squabbles were so trivial that we always had the impression that, above all, the comical aspect prevailed.  Comadre Ida also moved to her final address.

Both families endured the hardships characteristic of those who are poor yet possess a certain dignity. They were plundered, primarily, by religious ideas, by terrible illusions. For a lifetime, they attempted to resolve matters with spells: candles, prayer chains, alongside considerable religious intolerance. The only ones who remained unaffected by such nonsense were the godfathers, and the children.

One of the children's games I would have loved to have filmed was their weddings. There were bride and groom, parents of the couple, godparents, and of course, the priest. Juarez would secretly borrow Comadre Ida's black dress to use as a cassock. They also held exorcism ceremonies. On one occasion, the father of a child from the neighborhood saw his son playing a demon and lashed out with his belt.  Not to mention the "macumba to die," which involved stones and some weeds.  The freedom of childhood very quickly transformed into cultural imposition, and the games ended.

I count the dead, not a few, who leave me with both longing and anger. One of my neuroses is blaming the dead for their deaths; I do not forgive them for leaving me without them.

Last Christmas, Godfather Pedro's great-granddaughter was held in Godfather Jorge's arms.  Jorge, as solid as an ancient oak, wept twice upon seeing the Zotto's old house demolished. And he wept again when he held the great-granddaughter, who is also his.

About thirty years ago, when the Christmas celebration was the same for those families of the heart, and the degeneration of life was in full swing, a relative of Godfather Pedro said to him a phrase that is repeated several times a year to this day:

—What a cursed Christmas, Pedro!

How much can you bear to be a whole man? How far will you go if you anguish when rejected by your eighth-grade classmates? When you take them into account, you repeat yourself as small and weak. You feel like half a rotten orange. More specifically. Part Fábio Jr. orange, part rotten fruit. So much so that few from the Ideal are intelligent enough to decipher.

As for the boys, Paulo would give you a free slap in the hallway during break. Years later, he'd record a gratitude video, unaware that he'd pierced both your kidneys with the same arrow; the gym teachers – two cretins – would take offense at your disrespect for the perfection of their diabetes; the weakling, the ugly one, the fag! And you, having to share your world with those kinds of shits.

You sent messages to the one you considered your friend, to tell him about your conversion to his religion, and were relegated to the role of irrelevance. He didn't even wish you'd go to hell to keep him company.

You remember perfectly the day Fernando told you: "I invite you to my party, but against the will of the majority, who want to forget you". That night, you were the embodiment of ridicule. Not only did you get dressed up to go to a place where you weren't welcome, but you wasted a Sprite and two books with terrible company.

Don't be the Ideal. And be grateful.

Stiff gates, paths guided by impassive pines, such ambiguous silences, and a cold moon. I arrived at Limoeiro six years after my first visit, barely remembering how much this displacement is capable of embracing me, of harvesting me.

I've lost count of the words that have ceased to express me in these years. So many years have passed since the enormous precaution I took in securing myself with words. Today, I secure myself with nothing. A certain running alongside all things gives me the sensation that I remain alive, with some pulsation outside my body. But always in that way.

It rains heavily, all the windows stream in that way, half sad, half tacky. I have no signal to guarantee the transit of my ridiculous epiphanies. In fact, the ridiculous, the traversing of the ridiculous, has been a particular theme. God spoke to me about this at the beginning of the week, making a pact with me.

Always living hidden, loving hidden, as if my nature were not appropriate. Now. How can nature not be appropriate, if natural, if nature? This constant, immutable, invincible struggle against the permanent condition had come to an end. It was when I realized that so many convictions had come to an end. The struggle itself was an engineering for life, something I had clung to in order to live and that had now fallen apart like an old wagon. It was possible to hear the sound of the parts piling up on one another in the irrecoverable symphony of calamity. The time had come to definitively die to those false expectations of transforming the world or the world within me. I was definitively tired, having concluded that a plan to die in the flesh would be more useful than a plan to live in the soul—although previous attempts at both had failed before, now a kind of resignation about life and determination about death followed me continuously. I was willing to put an end to all of that, as indeed I did.

At 30, reality had proven frighteningly harsh to me, because any unsuccessful daydream would bring terrible consequences. It was necessary to think morbidly, focusing on complete destruction, without damaging the surrounding structures. A kind of implosion. Difficult to achieve when you are a communications executive and a correspondent for international news. Having conceived of this text as an autobiographical, testimonial fantasy has drastically diminished the dramatic quality of this account. Instead of recounting the blatant anguish of these days, I did what I was clinging to in the last hours, counting titles and tasks in order to forget the main reasons. Moreover, it is after them that I hurled myself in the face of all the miseries I wore, that I fed on, that I spent the night with. It is behind the reasons that I have been greater and lesser, it is where I am now. It is behind a reason that I died. My mind was disturbed when it finally lay in bed, saw itself alone again, remembered that it intended to write a little before dying. It remembered that its desire is to die. That death lurks and God watches closely, guards, saves, one day will give a sign. Yesterday or today, it repeated, an answer is on its way.

The answer will find me prostrate. Even holding onto the Eternal's arm, I feel the delay in rising. I miss the day I was called a woman. When they made me feel like I was something other than this. I will hide nothing from the Eternal, that is my agreement with him, so he will keep a new pact with me. At the same time, this devastates me, silences every signal I might emit. It makes me dead. It makes me, above all, want to die.

The anguish returned, but transformed. Analyzed, combed, clean, barefaced. Before, it presented itself intoxicated, legs tangled, suggesting foolishness. Now it comes alone, like a sober widow on the morning of the funeral, without masks.

It was necessary to locate all of that, since the main prisons had been established. I mean, the time was established, the most irreversible condition, the most stable – worryingly, most worryingly stable – was established. So the norms of description applied from the inside out, from top to bottom. It was possible to see the Portuguese teacher standing before me, gesturing slowly, in an effort to make me a less stupid writer when it came to drawing the exact location of my sadness. She would certainly have some compassion for me, good as she was, upon discovering that I was swallowed by the mediocrity of the simplest attempts, and that I hardly risked saying that the heart of my tragedy pulsed from a stolen kiss.

I hadn't yet realized how my recovery was going, or if there was even any recovery going on. In fact, terms like that, recovery, were the last things that interested me. So many relapses – indeed, a succession so bitter, recurrent, and tiring that it had left me for dead – had taken away any prospect that I was still living to live. It was as if I were playing just to finish the season, knowing relegation was imminent. I never liked soccer and I have no idea why I made this poor analogy with a sport that doesn't interest me at all.

From the day I buried Aunt Josmara I remember few details. I had kept little in the foreground, so that superficiality would be that very appropriate kind of anesthesia. It was the way to endure a Catholic funeral. Initially, I tried to avoid going, but civic obligations got me out of bed around three in the morning. My brother's voice tore through the cold night, saying with headline euphoria, "Aunt Josmara died”. How lucky I am not to have her fate, to be without anyone who loved her at that moment. We got out of bed and made a memorial, a photo and birthday candles floating on the shallow, slow water of a decoration. That ritual would have been enough. But it was necessary, not for me, but for the lives of others, that I suffer publicly. It wasn't long before my father came to pick me up. He didn't want to go with me. Then, her coffin dragged across the floor of the grave, making a heavy sound, the last of the inert body. Wood rubbing against cement, earth, sand. That's how I learned the sound of death.

In 2022, I experienced the most delicious monotony. It's as if. Precisely. The "as if" of literature. It's as if I had applied color filters, noise reduction, lowered the lights, and decreased the contrast. It was a deliciously normal year, which, for me, means that I learned many new skills, and I could say: if we haven't seen each other in a long time, it's possible I've changed a lot.

I occupied myself primarily with politics, to which I dedicated two dissertations (one worse than the other). I also settled into what I call "serene pessimism". I find it amusing how much we, being human, are capable of erring through sheer stupidity (less through ignorance, more through stupidity). Not even a talking cat could be funnier.

I disagreed with practically everything I read on Instagram. Taken to their ultimate consequences, those pieces of advice can destroy years of civilizing progress. The world, at least in my view, needs more people talking, more people taking risks, more people saying yes or no without fear. It's quite the opposite of the narcissistic life.

There is no culture or civilization in lives lived for themselves. They are still in the omnipotence of animal thought. Sometimes, they are our colleagues, sometimes a lover, a family member, what a shame for all of us. The simplification of memes almost always reminds me of the laughter of the gallows.

Ultimately, what matters is a certain courage in the face of one's own desire. I don't know a single soul who has achieved success without confessing to themselves that they can do little and know even less. There's enormous power in this conversion to oneself. "But there's no revolt, no, I just want you to find yourself". I met the man who helped Peninha write that lyric. We sat on a wooden bench, remembering that life is also love, if it isn't only love.

Before God and his angels, before Satan and his demons, before the Church and the Great Cloud of Witnesses, before the most perfidious alley of a neighborhood overtaken by drug trafficking, before the prostitutes of Visconde de Guarapuava, before the priests of all religions, before the world without faith and the Holy See, before Our Lady and Saint Joseph, and all the apostles living or dead, before the cars on the highway, the stones of Passeio Público, before the Bolsonaro supporters in front of the barracks, before the Bolsonaro supporters with the wrong sign at the universities, before Patryck's photo printed on PVC, before the worst collection of books a house can have — Tag's —, before myself, I confess: I cannot change the world by shouting (although I am an excellent shouter).

I know in the depths and on the surface of my spirit that we can be very happy before we die. That human life can be worthwhile when we have our first kiss or when we make eternal plans. The message is: "You know what happens when greed takes over: the more you have, the less you are. Wisdom goes out into the street and shouts, and in the middle of the city, makes its speech".

The infinite help I receive hasn't stopped with me; abundant as it is, it has flowed through glamorous rivers and threads of life in rotten gutters. The life that resists battery acid, space travel in a vacuum, and the salty, oxygen-deprived depths of the oceans also shows up in therapy sessions. The more I find resources to destroy the ideas of others, the more I take hold of the mercy that is recurrently offered to me.

Whoever eventually thinks that I am part of a grand scheme is completely mistaken. Whoever eventually thinks of involving me in some grand trafficking is wasting their time. My life is truly indifferent to human things that are not connected to the greatness of our divinity. If I were to die now, and the final judgment were a single question, which would be "were you happy?", my approval would come from the answer "well, despite the Lord not having been exactly clear most of the time, I did everything I knew". And that's it. You could print my photos along with the "Novena of Saint Sgarbe". From the first to the last day of my Holy Novena, you will have to pray: "I am not Bono Vox, nor Madonna, I am an essential person for the people around me. For me to achieve [insert your intention here], I need to wake up early and sleep early, have an organized schedule, and avoid psychological games as much as possible. Through the intercession of Saint Sgarbe, may God cease to be an authoritarian and vengeful father, and become someone I make happy. Amen".

Little can resist a certain insistence. If the door doesn't open at all, not with prayer, not with spells, not with all the playful and special effects, our path is not there. "God's blessing enriches and does not bring sorrow". If that gentleman changed his mind about keeping his own word, it is a matter for him to review his own principles.

I know less and less about God, but this I know: he gives preference to those who surrender. It's better to say "I won't go" and go, than to be the first in line and not show up for work. The other day, I said to him, "and You are the most hypocritical of all". As usual, I was wrong. But I think he got the message.

The Day of Creation Cida, today is Saturday, and it is also an important eve for those who believe in the resurrection of the dead. There is no coincidence in this: that you have a personal celebration on the day of sacred rest. When I think of you, I have too many advantages, namely the joys and desires that you kindly provide me. This has been going on for so many years, not counting the times that are outside the clock. You have, my dear friend, for the most part, such a full awareness that the world is turning the way it should, and that it is necessary to move forward from here, that you transform this awareness into something that serves me at least twice (first, a fragment for spiritual progress; then, when I remember you, to give an example, every time I get tangled up in the text—a practical aspect of the originality of your routines—you come to me, and I almost hear you with my natural ears, in the gentleness of your advice: “follow the subject, Vinícius”). Vinicius de Moraes. Rio de Janeiro, 1946:

Today is Saturday, tomorrow is Sunday
Life comes in waves, like the sea
The trams run upon the tracks
And Our Lord Jesus Christ died on the Cross to save us.

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Today is Saturday, tomorrow is Sunday
There’s nothing like time to go by
It was great kindness from Our Lord Jesus Christ
But just in case, deliver us, my God, from all evil.