Preguiça; Laziness

Voltei para Brasília, e dês de então, tenho sofrido as mais lânguidas férias preguiçosas que me entrego há tempos..., dês de que estive em Cabo Frio perto do ano novo. Durmo quase sempre até depois das 9, as vezes 10, as vezes 11... Não lavo nem passo nem cozinho nem limpo nada além de meu próprio corpo. Nem mesmo as atividades que havia me entregue - a tradução de um livro, a busca de mais contatos para pesquisa - seguem ao passo ~esperado~. Mas, contudo, ainda não me sinto mal o suficiente por isso para realmente atravancar uma mudança de marcha. Afinal, devo curtir ainda essas férias - como férias - enquanto ainda posso. Logo, o passo de tudo mudará drasticamente.

I returned to Brasília and, since, I've been suffering the most languid lazy vacations that I give myself in some time..., since I was in Cabo Frio close to new year. I sleep almost always past 9, sometimes 10, sometimes 11... I don't wash don't iron don't cook nor clean anything beyond my own body. Not even the activities I had given myself - the translation of a book, the search for more research contacts - continue at the ~expected~ pace. Yet, however, I still don't feel bad enough about it to break myself into a change of gears. After all, I should still enjoy these vacations - as vacations - while I still can. Soon, the pace of it all will change drastically.

Agora, o que me incomoda mesmo, é estar tirando essas férias num ambiente que me estimula à desestimulaçao de atividades rotineiras. Poderia estar tirando tantas "férias" quanto tiro agora, e ainda assim cozinhar para mim mesmo, lavar minhas próprias roupas, etc. Não o faço, por que estou na casa de meus pais, e há uma pessoa empregada e encarregada dessas tarefas. E eu - e é aqui que entra o discomforto - não tenho a força de espírito para contrariar meus pais, meu histórico, e meus próprios hábitos que se despertam novamente (as 11 da manhã) comigo nesta casa na qual cresci.

Now, what actually bothers me, is to take these vacations in an environment that encourages me to disencouragement from daily activities. I could be taking as much "vacations" as I do now, and still cook for myself, wash my own clothes, etc. I don't do so because I am at my parents' house, and there is a person employed and responsible for these tasks. And I - and here is where my discomfort comes in - don't have the strength of spirit to go against my parents, my history, and my own habits that awake again (at 11 in the morning) with me in this house where I grew up.

Então vou tentar compensar, trabalhando na horta essa tarde... algo que não tive tempo, espaço, oportunidade, quando vivia sozinho em uma quitinete aonde "só se comia quem trabalhava" (inclusive meu gato, que trazia para casa os frutos de seu trabalho de caça: passarinhos, esquilos e camundongos. Claro, ele não comia estes seus troféus, que eu, após reconhecer e agradecer a ele por sua contribuição para nossa casa, jogava fora - e alimentava ele ração).

So I will try to compensate working in the garden this afternoon... something that I did not have the time, space, and opportunity while I lived alone in a studio where "only the ones who worked would eat" (including my cat, who would bring home the fruits of his hunting labor: birds, squirrels and mice. Of course, he did not eat these trophies of his, that I, after recognizing and thanking him for his contribution to our household, would throw away - and fed him pet feed).

Muzzle

(Smashing Pumpkins)

I fear that I'm ordinary, just like everyone
to lie here and die among the sorrows
adrift among the days
for everything I ever said
and everything I've ever done is gone and dead

...as all things must surely have to end!
...and great loves will one day have to part!

I know that I am meant for this world

my life has been extraordinary
blessed and cursed and won!

time heals but I'm forever broken
by and by the way...
have you ever heard the words
I'm singing in these songs?
it's for the girl I've loved all along
can a taste of love be so wrong...!?

as all things must surely have to end...
and great loves will one day have to part...
I know that I am meant for this world

and in my mind as I was floating
far above the clouds
some children laughed, I'd fall for certain
for thinking that I'd last
.. forever ..

but I knew -exactly- where -I was-
and I knew the meaning of it all
and I knew the distance to the sun
and I knew the *echo* that is love
and I knew the secrets in your spires
and I knew the emptiness of youth
and I knew the solitude of heart
and I knew the murmurs of the soul..........

and the world is drawn into your hands!
and the world is etched upon your heart!
and the world so hard to understand
is the world your can't live without!

and I knew the silence of the world.

De novo, lendo, escrevendo...

Cá estou novamente. Lendo (cada histórias!). Escrevendo. Na verdade, com o coração partido. Agridoce. Mas o trabalho continua se encaixando, peça por peça, gestalt-eando uma figura linda de futuro, pouco a pouco. Alguém me disse, em dias de viagem, que ~devagar vai longe~. Em dias assim, tento manter minhas vistas nesse horizonte.

It all goes as it should, whether we know it or not...

It has been some time since I've written anything in english, so here goes a little 'catch up'. When I arrived from the States, briefly visited with friends and family in Brasilia and left again - and I have yet to return. I went to the Florestan Fernandes National School of the Landless Movement again, this time to work as interpreter for a meeting of communicators of all regions of Via Campesina. That is something that could use an entire entry on its own, which I might do sometime these next few days... In short, it went very well. It is not a 'merely logistical' or 'technical' issue - communication - but one of the key fronts of the class struggle.

After about a week there, I went to Curitiba to be with Xiao Ta. She showed me around the city, we enjoyed the wonderful Oscar Niemeyer Museum and other places, and - ahh - rested for some time after so much traveling. Yet, after about one week we hit the road again. We went into the countryside, to COPAVI, one of the most consolidated socialist experiments in Brazil. The twenty two families have controlled that territory since 1993, holding a concession from the State (their position is that land should remain public property) and producing a vegetable garden and fruit orchard for their own use, as well as milk cattle for themselves and for the local markets (including the production of yogurt and cheese) and a substantial production of organic sugar cane for brown sugar, cachaça, and other products like rapadura. It is interesting to witness such a different production of the same crop that chokes and desertifies the entire region in monocultures and slave-like labor.

So much more could and should be said about COPAVI, but again, that should wait another occasion. From there, across the river to Presidente Prudente, where I went to meet with Bernardo Mançano and others around him. This remarkable Marxist geographer was the person who brought me into the fold of the movements in Brazil, and remains actively engaged with me in my continuing and future endeavors. We traded guanxi - he presented me with contacts in Goiania and elsewhere, in academia and the Movement, and he presented me with the challenge of orchestrating stronger ties between UNESP (São Paulo State University) and my own soon-to-be Berkeley. His students were great people, and one of them in particular introduced me to another friend in the Ministério Público (an independent branch of our Judicial system akin to Ombudsmen). That contact is especially exciting, for they are currently starting up a working group to harmonize the various conflicting means of evaluating environmental costs of properties to be expropriated for compensation purposes. And the state and federal offices are working with academics on the area - the door through which I intend to put my foot into the State.

From Prudente, back to São Paulo, for meetings with the international relations folk of the Movement. Since I will be going back to Berkeley for school, I will work with the committee of Friends of the MST - in addition to shifting from the translators/interpreters network of Via Campesina Sudamerica to North America. This, then, represents a third (or fourth) front on which I will continue my share of the struggle. This seems, at the moment, the most complicated and delicate situation - and I cannot write more about it now. In fact, I remain in São Paulo now in order to finish setting up this process.

And on a more personal note, my mother's younger sister had come to São Paulo for a health exam and ended up staying for surgery - which went well and she is now recovering in a hotel; a hotel at which I will be staying this week to accompany and help out my aunt and grandmother. This was unexpected - it was unexpected by them that I would be here - who knows - it all goes as it should, whether we knot it or not...

Mulher Árvore

A pele é casca
Sulca profunda
Olhos ainda mais profundos
Que já viram tanto
Nascer e morrer
A terra nas unhas
Raízes
A mulher árvore
Secular
Sem elas
Eu poderia até acreditar que tudo sempre foi assim
E por isso não poderíamos nem respirar
Sem elas