Inner Babel / Babel Interior

  I am the kind of person who lights candles. This is now, not then. it is a recently acquired habit, one that has done me well. I light up candles every day. In the beginning of each class I set up an intention, I focus and I light the candle. I ask myself to be the light, to be the container, not the conduit. I am now the kind of person Who walks barefoot on the grass of my backyard and lets herself shower in the improbable rain of Brasilia in May.  The four elements rest now on my desk making my therapist smile when told about them, making her proud of myself and my journey. I am the kind of person that feels the connection with the elements, and nature and the universe, so new. I am again a newborn being. And it is not the first time, I have once died and it’s no secret. This time, however, I did not have to die. I had only to shed the old skin, the one who served me no more. I am still the kind of person who looks in the mirror and who wonders who this new being is. This...

Uma panela velhinha, o fundo equilibra-se instável na boca do fogo baixo. As alças foram repostas há vinte, trinta anos... A panela tem mais idade. As alças pretas combinam hoje com as diversas manchas negras de tempo e de uso. Hoje em meio ao isolamento social que ultrapassa os cem dias, eu fiz brigadeiro nessa panela.  A mesma receita que era dela: Uma lata de leite condensado, quatro colheres de chocolate, bem cheias, e duas colheres de manteiga ,tão cheias quanto as outras. Cada volta da colher me levou de novo à ela, a seu sorriso, a seu cantarolar e sua voz me sussurrou, mais uma vez, que o ponto é quando a gente vira a panela e a massa brilhante do doce movimenta-se una e uniforme, deixando aparecer a  que ficou no fundo. “Não raspe a panela! Deixe cair em um prato fundo apenas o que se solta dela.” O que fica, com seus furinhos aerados, é a raspa. É, talvez, como o passado do brigadeiro. A gente pode até degusta-la um pouquinho, voltar a ela, mas ela...

Those who learn the secret do not scream like you do, and if they do, they do not punish themselves forever, like you do. Those who learn the secret remember to breathe in and out slowly and find little things to do to try to make the place a little more colorful, light and beautiful.  Those who learn the secret treat others kindly. They do not buy all the toilet paper from the supermarket or the masks from the drugstore. They are kind and believe in kindness. They know someone will help them in a time of need. Also, if there is no more toilet paper in the world,  they know they can still shower. Those who learn the secret often cry for those who they cannot help, but find reasons to laugh even when in face of their own, so far small, misfortunes. They keep Quarantine diaries to keep them sane or bear witness if the apocalypse is inevitable.  Those who learn the secret understand we were never meant to be eternal, but we can still be meaningful. T...

As I seat here to write with a group of women from around the Globe, I feel I have to look inside myself. And myself, this week, is exhausted and cluttered. I am not sure I can look inside and find anything. Like a teenager's room, full of clothes and books scattered on the floor. I will probably find rests of food inside a drawer or a used ballet shoe among the t-shirts. Like a teenager, perhaps, I'm not sure I want to organize that room. I'm uncertain of where or how to start .  I've been losing things. These past two months of the year, this year that only had two months so far. I've lost a bracelet, a diamond ring, a necklace, not to mention a number of earrings I cannot locate. I've lost so much more in the turning of the year to 2019. Maybe I should not even care about these little things I've lost now. I, we, the country, lost hope, faith, the outlook for a better future. But maybe that is exactly why it upsets me losing any stupid small thing....

Sou o tipo de pessoa que não sabe de onde é ou o que lhe define. Saí cedo de onde nasci e cresci em outro canto, com gente de tanto canto, que também não sei se eles mesmos sabem de que canto são. Eu não sei. Por um tempo achava que esse lugar para onde fui trazida era o melhor lugar: “Nesse país lugar melhor não há”. Acho mais não. Acho mais nada, porque por outros lugares andei, em outras paragens parei. E muito que admirei belezas e singelezas “que não encontro por cá”. O que sei, hoje, é que se sou esse tipo de pessoa sem canto pra chamar de meu, faço meu canto dentro do meu próprio eu. ... I’m the kind of person who does not know where she’s from or what defines her. I left early the place where I was born and came to grow up in yet another place, with people from such different places, that I don’t know as well if they themselves do know to which place they belong. I don’t. For a while I thought this place they brought me to was the best place of all place...

Fine and delicate folded paper. White, in the middle of the room, it seems minuscule. It multiplies itself, however, through its projected shadow. Symbol of the beauty extending from myself to the other and returning to me. Small gesture, and gift, that brings me consolation and reminds me of why what I do matters. Because, after writing, someone folds a lovely light Tsuru and returns to me the wings I have helped setting free.

While contemplating the crumbling of my youth, I think of songs which once made sense. Words expressing the pointless sorrows. Drums and guitars, never too loud or too insistent, telling me to recoil or expand. Keyboards providing me shelter or direction. The heart that hoped feels battered.The rain falling outside sounds, on the roof, like fire burning the Cerrado. It will probably bring new uninvited plants to our garden. Like the Heliconia that months ago was just a single leaf sprouting across the red dirt. That was right before we hired that gardener who killed the grass. We still hope it will miraculously grow green once more. I don’t know. I have no more money, disposition or time to seriously think about it. I have no time. I would like to see the next intruder blooming in the garden though. I wish for something as unique as the Heliconia. If that is in fact what it is. I wish for something beautiful. I breathe with difficulty and nothing has ever been  as I...

If you tell me to imagine I'm holding something in my hands. And if you tell me to write about this imaginary object. This thing I imagine will unavoidably be a soap bubble. I have come to terms with my obsession for soap bubbles. It does not mean I understand where it comes from. This understanding is probably part of my mission on Earth, our blue little planet floating away in the universe like one little bubble itself. There is, perhaps,  right there an explanation in the fact that the world we live may be seen as a soap bubble from afar. Perhaps, that is a small part of the whole explanation, the impermanence of life in its large and small concerns, the frailty and beauty of our human dreams. Our imperfect connexions, our frustrated attempts to be truly seen and contemplated, our impossibility of floating towards the other without creating some kind of damage, even if unintentionally. Our flaws, our protective covers scretching against the skin of the ones we love, like th...

Lavando os copos e as taças de espumante que deixei para depois, os copos e taças da última Oficina que coordenei e repousaram ali no fim de semana. Sábado brindávamos o sentimento bom de criar e compor o mundo, de partilhar e acolher o outro. Domingo votávamos e hoje lavo os copos e taças do sábado. Enquanto lavo, me pergunto, como seguirei um trabalho que pretende abrir caminho para a voz de cada um, a voz única consonante e divergente de cada um em um mundo que só quer ouvir “Sim, senhor!” Será possível por muito tempo continuar construindo o que só pôde ser imaginado após as portas se abrirem? Lavando os copos e as taças, precisei parar, sentar e aqui colocar para fora o que me vai por dentro triste. Não quero conviver mais com tanta gente, não quero mais saber o que tanta gente pensa. Não era assim que vivíamos antes das redes sociais e não somos obrigados a viver assim. Nos últimos tempos, nos últimos votos, fui apresentada ao que pensa gente demais, gente educada, ...

“The real poet is always a resistance force. The false poet, however, regardless of the causes he argues to advocate, is always conniving”, the Portuguese writer Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen stated this in an interview in 1963. One year previous to the military coup d’état suffered by Brazil  which brought us twenty years of dictatorship and an authoritarian and antidemocratic inheritance that keeps so many of us still hostage  as if we were still living a Stockholm syndrome of sorts. Today, 2018, her words comfort me in my poet’s fate, in my truth and in the fact that I stand surrounded by other very real and resistant poets. We resist together, seeking light in these dark times, in the search of a country where love would be the empire and diversity would triumph. It is in diversity that beauty resides, it is in beauty that poetry inhabits. The beauty found in our day to day struggles, the beauty found in the truth and battles we face, the beauty found in the swea...