Chronicle of a Simple Blackout...

 

I looked at myself beneath my protective glasses, through the mirror in the shop window that refracted the daylight in the movements of passersby. I recognized the figure, just the faint image, the outline of who I had once been. Or rather, I had ceased to be. And physicality, in earthly terms, we know, is important, it is objective, even if we lose this or that limb, or this or that ability. I didn't miss the mermaid, despite the time that had passed over me, I was still material and I still recognized myself and others, no matter how far away they saw me, in psychological and realistic terms. I missed who I was before. My empathetic and relaxed personality. The wrinkles in that window gave way to another form that, in my opinion, had distinguished me from other bodies, from other people, saying something about me, perhaps even more than I did talking, murmuring, or giving my opinion about the many things that the world has always had. The events, the turbulences and the experiences.

I missed not suffering from anxiety, which is that fear that takes over and creeps up on us, penetrating our body and soul by contagion. That questions us about the future, about our plans, about our goals and dreams, about achievements and failures, about others and about ourselves. I felt, then, clearly, at that moment, the weight of anxiety that, I knew well, only the sea could remove circumstantially. I was far from the sea.

I sat restless, between thoughts aligned about the change that was crossing my path and about other smaller and more detailed things, like silencing the growling of my stomach. Hunger does not live inside me. There is a hunger that does not growl, but bites silently, in the silence of the day and entertains me until late, until the alprazolam effect. The hunger of dying again, in successive and daily nights, from exhaustion and tiredness.

I contemplated the menu. I stood on that terrace, grateful for the shade it offered me and looking at the fast-food bakery's menu. A toasted sandwich shouldn't be eaten just anywhere. It has to be a certain way. The triangles are cut symmetrically, the bread is heated to a certain degree and then, well, then, there's the choice of ham and cheese. I preferred my frankness as a monologue between the devils and the angels shouting at me: shut up and eat. I asked for a still juice to go with it and they brought me a nice natural orange juice. There's nothing better than a good orange juice, freshly squeezed and, preferably, with a splash on the edge of the glass, two ice cubes. I threw myself into the toasted sandwich. I had chosen well. Tiredness had started to change my mood. That orange juice put an end to the internal conflict about the future, about any thesis to nullify anxieties or, at least, rectify them. For now, everything was on pause. What a beautiful toasted sandwich. I looked behind me at the sign of the establishment. There, they made superb toasted sandwiches. There was a God up there, breaking down all my resistance to leaving my comfort zone. I asked for an encore of juice, and it didn't take long, with the little pieces melting, singing, against the surface of the glass. The crowd of people paraded as if today, right now, the popular festivals had begun, such was the profusion of tourists and colors, languages ​​and phonemes, cameras, cell phones and maps in hand, open and resting against the street lamps, on the backs of friends, questions that would be concluded, fingers in the air, outbursts of passion, kisses, waves and smiles.

That was my Porto, completely taken over by the world and turned to excess of everything. I took the second triangle of toast. With the tip of my tongue, I was removing those crumbs of bread and cheese that were stuck between my teeth and my renewed joy (the pause in the fearful anxiety), my hunger was saying: you see? It was really a toasted sandwich like this that you needed, and you were doubting, because only here or there or nowhere, never now, would you find pleasure in food again. The last pleasure I had had in food had been a wok. And not completely, the spicy and the pistachio had been missing. There, in that now, I was missing nothing. Not even the part of me that had been missing. I was whole. Despite the boos in the chairs, the pedestrians, the bicycles, the louder voices, the business that was multiplying around there, the strange smells, namely, the candles coming from the church of the congregation, the soup that was coming, somewhere from the tavern next door, from the window on the upper floor, I don't know, Porto continued to be dazzling and inviting. For an hour and a half, I forgot everything I had carried between my head and my chest, reason and the lack thereof. I ordered a short cimbalino and the bill, so that when I wanted to leave, I wouldn't have to wait half an hour in front of the queue that had formed for the fast food restaurants, to return to the stressful business of slavery that they call work.

I took out of my bag the notebook with the notes and the phone numbers, addresses, names of the agencies, and sales representatives and ticked almost all of them. I still had three things left to do. I put them aside for the next day. One was the IRS agency, another was the issue of the paper, which was so thick that it wouldn't even be enough to wipe your ass, because we demand double-sided, soft paper for it, because ours deserves the best. I've always paid a lot of attention to baby products, because if it's good for them, it's very good for me, like the wipes and the milk powder itself, Cerélac. He was right. What the aforementioned gentleman deserved was for me to offer him those documents so that, in the event of a lack of double-sided paper, he could use them, in the good old Portuguese way, like in the days of the Estado Novo, when the newspaper was a royalty that couldn't be wasted, cut into pieces. Times when the asshole was better informed than the minds of the gray and resigned people. Any people who refused to use their brains and passively accepted the wheel of embarrassment, the ajoujo that united the heads of cattle and kept them aligned with the inflexible system, well-oiled pulleys, so that things would hurt less. Together, in poverty and misery, in ill health and illness, and, moreover, like the moral and psychological sacrifices suffered by a large part of people in societies, such as marriages and other social affiliations.

I had already racked my brains. I needed to rent a house, an apartment, I only asked for a one-bedroom apartment or a two-bedroom apartment, or even a simple one-bedroom apartment with a living room, office, furnished, a washing machine, a stove, simple things, so simple that we would forget we were human, if such furnishing prerequisites did not exist. There were none. The prices were exorbitant and the conditions impossible. I remembered when I was young, looking for a job, everyone who opened windows to a dream or a pleasant and sonorous expectation demanded experience. How can one have talent if it escapes demands such as mastering three languages, having a driving license, being young and experienced, all in the same body and in one go? What they wanted was slavery and competition, of which there are loads everywhere, as if they were noble requirements for achieving happiness. And we presumed, barely out of a new state, to arrive at an old state, young and full of disappointments, of regrets for the country, of exorcisms to this and that politician who attacked merits, climbed a ladder far from our sight and illicitly enriched themselves at our expense. Deolinda had a noble way out of all this parasitism that I lived before and that we live, even today. What a fool I am, who fell and still falls, like gold under blue sky, into the shit of progressive presumptions of those who refuse to look at what we have, worse, looking at what we have and, even so, always going after any smart guy who has a carrot and puts it in front of his snout. I believe that not even donkeys are as stupid as we have shown, in the lack of civility, of cooperation by the majority, of disinterest in privatizations, of complete abandonment of the causes of health, education and justice, of the ideals of those who came before us, to sow the wheat that we still eat. And it's all, for a long time, more of the same that stinks. The connections and the swindles, the friends of others and if I had a friend like that, like the Socrates of the world, I would already have a nice apartment near the Sorbonne, where I could enroll in a doctorate in art, literature and mother tongue. But I am the daughter of humble people. And this whole conversation is not about patriotism, that my country is the world and my heritage is who I am and what I do with who I am, for the benefit of the whole. Even though the toasted sandwich was mine, I would have been happy to share it with any hungry stranger. Because that is in my blood.

I've been researching Criap because it has two courses that I like, but right now, my greatest pleasure is still vomiting out what's been contained in these inglorious 24 years of life. I've been purging myself for so long. Purging here and purging there, because Imodium treats me like a friend and coffee sustains my dreams. And the damn obstacles postpone my expectations far away, to another parish, another district and perhaps, as Passos Coelho rightly said, to another country (emigrate, get rid of my shop), because in this one, the population dictates inaccessible conditions. I'll always be part of the world, of the human race, but I'm so much from Porto that even in my erotic dreams there's always a sign showing me where my Lilith lives and what she feeds on. Well, of the twenty euros I handed over, I got three euros and twenty cents in change. It wasn't expensive. I ordered two glasses of juice, a toasted sandwich and a coffee. And I stayed there in the shade for over an hour and a half. It was time that cost money. Time is money, someone said.

I left, in a rush, as if I had been injected by some fly due to my haste and lack of patience. In the village, it is the pica boi. Here, in the city, I looked for the word and couldn't find it. Maybe I had run away on the corner, right after I had put out my cigarette and looked once more at the establishment's sign. I was forced to stop, because the traffic light was red and the sidewalk was full of people. It was impossible to walk. And that was when I saw you. Not in front of me, but in the surprise of having spent almost two hours, seeing people and thinking about so many things and, surprisingly, not once did I see your face. And that, yes, is new to me. I am beginning to understand other mechanisms that lead me to you and I can act in a different way that makes me not go crazy, which would be a palindrome, synchronicities and so on and so forth and who knows what else. I was able, without wanting to avoid you, to not remember you. For me, the alarm of victory sounded. Not just any victory, but one of those that we seek to find in life, and we fight, fight, fight, sweat, and it, the victory, eludes us, and I remembered once again the essence of this moment: Everything we resist, persists. And I was grateful that there was a couple, it was enough for a man and a woman to conceive a thinking being, a Carl Jung, who brought us so much mental matter and that, at that very moment, when I saw you, without seeing you, I realized that this mechanism worked with everything, with passion, with problems, with unemployment, with lack of morality, with mental cleanliness, but it did not work with love. You cannot resist love. If it is love. I ran the red light, but no one saw me, only the vehicle that was coming towards Bolhão and entered the prohibited area. It stopped. So did I. And from there to my boat, it was only a few steps, there in Fernandes Tomás. And speaking of Tomás, I can't resist missing him. Gaza continues to suffer the human madness of more or less generalized silence. But now we can hear cries of insubordination, that this pain contaminates the mind and those who don't feel it can't be the son of good people. I remind you of Brecht. And then, of my Tomás who is the son of good people. I'll call him back in a little while. As for the others, my living "dead", I would give my straw throne here on earth for a hug from you, a silly conversation, a glass of water in the silence of your speech. Because being human hurts like hell, damn it!