To be sincere…

The following reflection was written originally in Portuguese, in October 26th. Translation may contain flaws.

To be sincere, I can’t define what I feel. It is a lack that completes me. An emptiness that make me who I am. Usually when I touch it, talking to someone who juges himself more mature than me, only and exclusively for being older, I get the same answer. They tell meI am too young to think about it. That I should enjoy my teenage. I disagree. Maybe this reason, assumed in a so prepotent way, by people whose knees were already bent, and whose dreams were already crushed by the weight of responsibility, may be the only option facing the absence of the sensbility oasis, natural to innocence. Maybe that innocence is natural to all of us, and with time passing, are gradually put aside, at the same time our insecurities eat us alive form inside out. With that said, it’s not hard to notice, that the decisions that once seemed so simple, suddenly become that feared monster gazing at us from under the bed a few years ago. All of this makes me believe that I shouldn’t feel ashamed of missing this so untangible feeling, which I believe, I never got even close to feeling. So, yes! I feel proud of culting this provisional lonely love, spreading smiles haphazard, coloring this eternal ashes wednesday¹ that we so banally call life.

¹Ashes Wednesday: The last day of Carnaval in Brazil, usually resembling regret, shame, hangovers, and the prospection of a cloudy tomorrow.

Rain Before Dawn

This week I’ve decided to add the first piece of poetry to TCIC. The choice for this was not easy. During the last few months, I’ve had the luck of having classes that immerse me in quality poetry and literature. After considering a few different writers, the choose I’ve made, is for the poem Rain Before Dawn, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, an extremely important writer born in St. Paul, MN, who has a great literary carreer, and an enormous amount of historic registries in his writings.

Rain Before Dawn

He dull, faint patter in the drooping hours
Drifts in upon my sleep and fills my hair
With damp; the burden of the heavy air
Is strewn upon me where my tired soul cowers,
Shrinking like some lone queen in empty towers
Dying. Blind with unrest I grow aware:
The pounding of broad wings drifts down the stair
And sates me like the heavy scent of flowers.

I lie upon my heart. My eyes like hands
Grip at the soggy pillow. Now the dawn
Tears from her wetted breast the splattered blouse
Of night; lead-eyed and moist she straggles o’er the lawn,
Between the curtains brooding stares and stands
Like some drenched swimmer — Death’s within the house!

- F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald was part of the literary movement know as “The Lost Generation”. Mostly formed by writers, and artists, followed by many young people who had no perspective of life after WWI. As the time went by, this feeling of emptiness resulted in the start of the period know as “The Roaring 20′s” or “The Jazz Age”, which is mainly represented by the “live fast, die young” philosophy, which consisted in endless promiscuous nights of partying, dancing, consumption of alcohol and drugs, followed by a period of headaches and reflection. Many of these periods flourished into some of the most beautiful poems I’ve ever read. Sitting right next to Fitzgerald in the “dissipation gallery”, is Earnest Hemingway. A WWI veteran who turned his war experience into inspiration for many battlefield related books, like “A Separate Peace” and “The Sun Also Rises”. Authors like these are more than just writers. They are the ones who used lies to tell the truth. Through fiction, made the registry of an era.

A point of view on bragging.

 

These days, a friend of mine, told me that I should write about bragging. It would be indelicate to talk about people in general, to say the least, so I decided to talk about myself. Sincerely I can’t remember one time that I had  as much difficulty to write something as I had this time. Usually I  just let my thoughts flow and it doesn’t ends up that bad, but after a  long time thinking about it, I realized that it would take way more of me than I tought.

 

 Maybe  because all of my skills are fairly ok, nothing exceptional. I can play  the guitar, but I can’t read music sheets. I can write poems, but I  always sound like a whining widow. I can get good grades in classes that  demand my creativity, but not in the ones that require my full attention.

 

  Maybe the reason for that just happens to be the way I see things, the  way that life shaped me through the experiences that laid in my way, the  stones that laid down in my path, while I was distracted staring at the  horizon. During a time where I bloomed, facing the spring of a lifetime, where pebbles were much more relevant than stones.

 

 Maybe I should regret being like that, and chase a new beginning, having the experiences judged adequate for a young man, it could be the solution to be shaped in the way that my mom always dreamed of. Have a wife, a couple kids, and a two-story house, with three bedrooms. A diploma on the wall, a job that makes me a teardrop in  a stream of conformism. Waste all my health to make money, retiring,  and spending all my money to regain my health. Enjoy the fake taste of  canned food while staring at the label, being sure that the good part is  to come at some point. Build a castle made of sand that as once a wise African American man sang, would eventually slip into the sea. I think that’s not the meaning of happiness, at least not for me. 

 

 

A Passionate Suicidal

A few months ago, when I still lived in Brazil, eventually I hung out with a woman which had an impairing kind of beauty, as much on her actions, ideas, and attitudes, as she did on her appearance. In each one of her smiles, I saw myself present, feeling extremely well, just by making she feel well. In these simple, gentle smiles, I saw things that I saw so much things that I lacked, things never seen on me, the same things that naturally flourished on her.
Eventually, when we went out, we walked by the Historical buildings of my home town, Curitiba. The awkwardly gorgeous decadence surrounded us. The frequent oscillation between sunny days, and cloudy nights, made me feel fond to the weather, due to the tiny little struggles that happen daily in my mind. These conflicts make me less certain of who I am, and consider the possibility that no one really knows me, not even myself.

In one of these times we were together, during rush hour after leaving school, when crossing a six-lane avenue close to one of my favorite places to hang out during the weekends, I held her hand, and simply decided to ignore the ruthless flow of vehicles that consumed the asphalt, I abdicated the use of the most primitive instinct, of staring at the fangs of the predator, and caculating the easiest way out. I trusted her judgement. What if one of the many buses coming happened to hit her ? And what if I, in a involuntary reflex, happened to avoid it, what would be the point of carrying it on from then on ? What would be my reason to keep on breathing from that moment ? In an so untoughtful gesture, I poured my fate into the hands of Lady Luck. So much to lose, so much life hanging over the edge of relief and tears, uncertain of which way to go. An action as passionate as the life outcome of a kamikaze hero. An atittude of a suicide stung by the cupid’s poison.

That few seconds stretched themselves longer than I wished. The typical breeze of late autumn invited her hair to dance, and it would not take a no as an answer. Reaching the other side of the street, I felt great, victorious. After all I was still alive, and still had her by my side. Maybe happiness for me lives in the feeling of donating myself to the ones I love without measuring consequences. I miss that feeling, I truely do.

Moscow On The Hill

During last friday in St. Paul we had a pretty typical day in Minnesota, windy and sunny day, followed by a cloudy evening. As typical as that day was the recurrent question that comes with dusk every friday night: What to do to make this weekend worth the hard week that just passed by us ? This time the doubt did not last long. After hanging out in the commons of SPP for enough time to the urge of eating become actually hunger, me and a few friends headed to the Russian Restaurant, Moscow On The Hill, located in Selby Avenue, a few minutes away from our beloved school.

Getting of the bus and immeadiately facing the facade seen previously on the internet, I had the impression that the place was more of a bar than an actual restaurant. Impression proved wrong as soon as I stepped into the red handmade rug which laid right after the door. A middle aged woman said hello to us, and more than immediately noticed that the ones that came with me were russians, so started to speak a very native-sounding russian language, fact brought to my attention by a posterior comment of one of my mates. This lady had a constant smile on her countenance, altough in no moment it seemed something unnatural. She led us to a table and after talking to my friends for a while, called a waiter to get our orders.

The first order, was common to all of the people who sitted on the table. We ordered Borsch, (in Russian борщ) a type of soup of Ukranian origin, but widely spread troughout Eastern Europe. And as a side order, Piroshki, (in russian пирожок) a baked soft bun, thatn can contain a wide range of fillings, in this case, lamb, seasoned with onions and different types of herbs native from Europe, but grown in America specially for the cooking in Moscow On The Hill.  For a few minutes a pleasant chat took place, remembering individual aspects of European Culture, that became the topic due to the unique decoration and ornamentation of the ambient. Including landmarks as the Red Square and the Kremlin.

As expected, the waiter brought us our orders, carrying in a malabaristic motion 8 plates and a basket of bread. We were served and started enjoying the meal. At the first taste, my Brazilian paladar juged the taste as “unusual” to say the least, but after a minuncious analysis of how those new ingredients mixed, behaved while I chewed, I had a pleasant surprise. I was enjoying as said my fellow “Comrades”, true Russian food, really liking it. The Borsch was bodied and consistent, but at the same time smooth and soft, sided by the Piroshki, which had a crunchy crust, with an amazingly soft lamb filling. Really impressive.

After the meal was ended, and the bill payed (U$ 18) a few more minutes of unintelligible Russian talk for me, went trough. Altough the meal was finished and I walked out out of the restaurant, I still could feel the good taste in my mouth. I left the place satisfied, happy by having this new experience, with a smile on my face, and one more good memory made in Minnesota.

RATING:
Ambient: 💎💎💎💎
Food Quality:💎💎💎💎💎
Neatness:💎💎💎
Price:💎💎💎
OVERALL:💎💎💎💎