Zé

3 Maio, 2024

FÔLEGO

AFINAL HÁ UNS TODOS QUE TE CORTAM O FÔLEGO que são tão raros que te esqueces que para serem todos inteiros e dessa dimensão toda precisam de ser salpicados dos sobressaltos que te fecham num poço negro num poço que parece não ter saída mas lá vais saindo e a cada vez que sais lembras-te e afagas-te com o calor de achar que percebeste que o sobressalto afinal era preciso tu que sempre juraste a pés juntos que só os sobressaltos existem o mesmo tu que agora descobre que o fôlego sim se esgota e que sem os sobressaltos então nunca mais se te cortava sem eles esse teu todo não ia mais deixar-te sequer respirar e então já não era todo já não tinha dimensão era só era como se não fosse.

• • •

11 Abril, 2024

The Infinite Loop

I get stuck sometimes.

I don’t mean stuck as in “frozen” but literally stuck in an infinite loop, processing the same set of mental steps, over and over, unable to detect an exit.

Yes, it sounds slightly mental but there’s a familiar tranquillity to it, much in the same way as the prospect of going to prison may be daunting at first, but there is still no denying that the idea of a prolonged isolation from initiative, or even reaction, is a blessing of sorts; all of a sudden, only a very specific universe of possible steps exists, there are no external variables. What has to be done, but especially what can be done becomes very clear.

The curse of it all is that no matter whether I embrace or question the thought, it just becomes another infinite loop in the next order of magnitude.

Maybe it’s not that important.

• • •

17 Fevereiro, 2024

Se calhar não interessa

NÃO SABES NEM NUNCA VAIS SABER a culpa é tua de reparares nos mais ínfimos movimentos de um pescoço num encontro de olhares que dura mais tempo do que aquele que tu definiste como sendo o tempo suficiente para olhares razoáveis tempo esse que nem sequer sabes quanto é num olá ou num adeus que te parecem despropositados e que te deixam a pensar durante muito mais tempo do que aquele que alguém mais normal do que tu alguma vez lhes dedicaria mas mesmo assim isso aquece-te um bocadinho por dentro mas não sabes porquê nem nunca vais saber não vais nunca saber se estás certo ou se estás errado ou se tudo isso sequer interessa.

• • •

23 Agosto, 2023

Mamihlapinatapai

BOM NÃO ERA MESMO NADA DISSO até podia ser mas na minha mente nunca como objectivo primeiro só se fosse mais como efeito secundário e seja como for ia-me atrapalhar à mesma não por não saber o que fazer mas mais por saber perfeitamente que não era capaz de o fazer bem ou pelo menos de o fazer sem arestas porque a dúvida sabes basta-me a dúvida para ter a certeza de tudo o que não sei e ela só se dissipa com um tempo que não temos que ninguém tem a menos que não saibamos que queremos é isso é preciso querer sem saber se calhar e alguém tem que começar.

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14 Agosto, 2023

Fica Aí

O QUE TU QUERIAS SEI EU querias saber o que é que é para fazer agora o que é para fazer a seguir só que nada é o que tu querias que fosse nada é sequer o que tu estavas convencido que é e lá em baixo está um breu que te assusta mas se calhar agora até já nem te assusta tanto assim mas não interessa porque assim como assim já nem trampolim tens para saltar não interessa porque se calhar já percebeste que não tens nenhuma dívida que te mande saltar não interessa porque podes ficar aí um dia acaba fica aí pronto.

• • •

4 Agosto, 2023

Todos Os Nadas

NÃO SEI SEI LÁ EU DESTA ANESTESIA que não te protege de nada e que faz menos efeito quando te dás conta que é a única que há mas que mesmo assim é precisa apesar de não te proteger de nada porque era ainda pior que te protegesse menos do que nada bem sabes que claro que há menos do que nada bem sabes só não sabes é que só tu é que sabes dos teus nadas que são menos que nada e que todos somados são tudo e não são nada.

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30 Agosto, 2022

Está Tudo Bem

FOI O QUE ELE DISSE que estava tudo bem disse que o normal é ter dúvidas e também disse que o normal não existe o que me baralhou um bocadinho porque isso do normal existir e não existir ao mesmo tempo arranhou-me sem eu me dar conta imediatamente foi-me fazendo cada vez mais comichão ao longo do dia e quando comecei a coçar nada estava assim tão bem.

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29 Novembro, 2021

No Worries

YOU’VE SPENT YOUR WHOLE LIFE WORRYING about all that could happen but never did happen and you knew it all along and still defend that all that never happened never happened precisely because you worried about it happening because oh yes it would surely happen if you didn’t worry about it and now that nothing really happened you worry that it so happens that there’s nothing to worry about anymore.

• • •

10 Novembro, 2021

Almost

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID is not what I did say come to think of it I didn’t actually say anything at all which usually feels like it is the right thing to say or even to not say and I now see that it isn’t not always not ever almost but the almost is precisely where I live even if I only wish to live somewhere else than this almost but that’s all there is to me that’s all that means something to me you know the suspended state between decisions is the one thing I should have said but no words exist to say almost so I guess I’ll wait.

• • •

8 Outubro, 2018

What To Do

I AM VERY SORRY AND ALSO VERY AWARE that I ought to have gathered the courage or the patience to tell you to go fuck yourself but I’m still not sure I ever will perhaps because it’s painful or else simply moot by now and no I have not thought this through seen that I’m not even sure that the distinction is important and maybe I did tell you to go fuck yourself just now come to think of it but it doesn’t really matter anymore I’m sure you’ll know what to do.

• • •

21 Setembro, 2015

Poetry

(originally published on my now defunct Medium page, sometime in 2014)

I know exactly bugger-all about poetry.

It’s not that I haven’t tried, I have very often and very hard, too: after all how could I resist the temptation, led on by a high-school teacher’s remark, that reciting poetry was the surest way to impress girls? So and in step with was being discussed in class I attacked Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud and all of the poètes maudits with unparalleled determination: all my other ploys to dazzle girls having met with various degrees of failure, poetry couldn’t conceivably fare worse, I thought.

I could already picture my then unrequited crush on her veranda hopelessly swooning at my declamation of the Fleurs du Mal under the full-moon. I was going to be Cyrano, damn it, and without stupid Christian de Neuvillette, too.

Sadly, reality intervened: no matter how much I read I invariably rebelled in anger after a few pages, jumped from my chair, paced the room furiously, yelling the by now familiar, for-fuck’s-sake-get-to-the-fucking-point-what-in-god’s-name-are-you-trying-to-say-make-it-stop-it’s-making-my-head-melt-oh-hell-yes-I’ll-have-another-drink-or-ten-et-meeerde litany. Also and to add to my despair, try as I might, I couldn’t memorize a single verse.

I had no problem with the poets themselves, mind you: their biographies were fascinating. After all, how many drug fiends, gun runners, absinthe drunkards, runaway criminals and suicidal maniacs does it take to make me take notice? Not many and there were plenty of those.

The fact is that Roxane looked very distant now.

It is true that I may have been an arrogant little twit back then and simply didn’t have the tranquility and wisdom that may have been needed to fully appreciate the rhythm, flow and music of the words. Today, as time has changed me into a much bigger arrogant twit, poetry doesn’t anger me as much and I do read some of it with great pleasure. Always careful, always on the look-out for the signals that are going to make me boil again, and sufficiently wise to know when to simply put down the book, should I feel attacked again.

Not that I understand it any better, though. Some of it stuck much like the many other passages from authors who aren’t poets and often for reasons that aren’t especially noble. I can quote Verlaine’s first stanza of the Chanson d’Automne for instance (les sanglots longs/des violons/de l’automne/blessent mon cœur/d’une langueur/monotone) but the explanation couldn’t be more pedestrian: it is prominently featured on the movie The Longest Day. And by the way can you spot the apparently arbitrary separation of sentences and how irritating that is? Right.

Perhaps the word “poetry” has a very specific connotation in my mind, one which doesn’t correspond to what it is usually understood to mean; Shakespeare, to me, isn’t classified under “poetry” for instance. Not even his sonnets, which, incidentally, have served me well with many a Roxane. Or a few. Well, at least one. Who would’ve thought that one day I’d softly whisper into some beautiful ear, …Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved? And yet I did, and the words worked wonders.

My high-school teacher, who I’ve now come to realise must have been an incorrigible romantic, failed to tell me about the most important fact about wooing your love interest with poetry: namely that in the dance of courtship it is equivalent to the thermonuclear solution. You don’t simply pull out the verses for no good reason and offer them trivially: for one your ammunition is limited (trust me, it is) and then the effect is lost if it is used too often.

—

You could always use your charming struggles with poetry instead; I’m told that it works extremely well.

• • •

14 Setembro, 2015

Eduard

I first met Eduard Kosmack by coincidence on a lazy Viennese afternoon.

While exploring my new surroundings I came across a museum of modern art, right next to where we lived. There was no merit or elevation in any of this, no thirst for art, no sublime sharpening of the inner vision. The truth is simply that I was out of cigarettes and the museum’s coffee-shop was the only establishment open on Sundays. As it turns out, it didn’t sell cigarettes either.

(mais…)

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5 Abril, 2015

The Silent Sea

(or, my first true gesamterfahrung of the French language.)

Il fut précédé par un grand déploiement d’appareil militaire. D’abord deux troufions, tous deux très blonds, l’un dégingandé et maigre, l’autre carré, aux mains de carrier. Ils regardèrent la maison, sans entrer. Plus tard vint un sous-officier. Le troufion dégingandé l’accompagnait. Ils me parlèrent, dans ce qu’ils supposaient être du français. Je ne comprenais pas un mot. Pourtant je leur montrai les chambres libres. Ils parurent contents.

Vercors — Le Silence de la Mer

I did have some prior contact with French before, but not at the level of actually analyzing literary works. As a portuguese high-school student my experience of it had been a very formal and limited one, where many grammatical rules were taught, verb conjugations were reviewed with an iron resolve and vocabulary was an afterthought. It is little wonder that I consistently and predictably flunked the class, year after year after year.

(mais…)

• • •

23 Dezembro, 2010

The Dry Martini Postulate

For some unfathomable reason, and despite the fact that I have been pouring them down for many years, only lately have I repeatedly been asked for my dry martini recipe.

To make it absolutely clear, under normal circumstances I would not share it, but the prospect of maybe achieving that just one person in this world stops drinking dubious concoctions ill-named after such a noble drink clearly trumps the dark clouds of resignation hanging over me as I prepare to reveal a secret that’s dear to my heart.

(mais…)

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