Saudades. Tempo é tão raro, ultimamente, que eu vi, outro dia, um camelô vendendo tempo. Lógico que era tempo falsificado. Claro que o minuto não durava mais que 2 segundos, e é óbvio que estava caro.

Mas eu fiquei com tamanha vontade de comprar umas horinhas e gastar com você… Pena não se poder confiar em camelôs, hoje em dia. Mesmo no Thundercat Games, aquela banquinha ali na esquina, em frente ao banco, que vende o DVD "The Wall" como "Pink Floyd, o da BOCA". Desconfio que o Thundercat Games recolha imposto para poder dar nota de contribuição legal de campanha enquanto o giro de capital se dá no caixa 2. Tenho certeza que o Cezinha recebe de volta em forma de mensalão.

Não, não se pode confiar no tempo genérico que eles vendem. Mas a tentação de duas horas a mais de você, por dia, me faria torrar a grana do frila. Frila que consome tempo. E o paradoxo se faz.

E toco a calcular. Puxo a régua de cálculo e lembro que eu não aprendi a usar essa trolha. Procuro a calculadora do Professor Corujão, mas só acho uma HP e fico constrangido. Paro uns instantes e tento lembrar a regra dos nove. Só me lembro dos novesfora, mantra de qualquer demente que quisesse imitar um Oswald de Souza. Meu caso. Precisamente. Noves fora, nada. Nada era o tanto que eu precisava pensar e decidir que sim, valeria a pena. Duas horas a mais com você? Troco por 3 a menos de sono.

Assim, fácil assim.

Daqui a pouco vota-se pela proibição ou não do porte de arma. A vontade é andar por aí com uma camiseta onde se lê:

"Guns don't kill people. People like you kill people."

Nah. No Largo de Pinheiros, ninguém ia entender chongas.

26/7

Your mind and your experience call to me
You have lived and your intelligence is sexy
I want to know what you got to say
I can tell you taste like the sky cause you look like rain
You look like rain
You look like rain
You look like rain

You think like a whip on a horse's back
Stretched out to the limit you make it crack
Send that horse round and round the track
I want to know what you got to say
I can tell you taste like the sky cause you look like rain
You look like rain
You look like rain
You look like rain

Yeah you look like rain

Então acabou e não foi lá grandes coisas. (Monica Bellucci, do alto de seus 41 anos, é grandes coisas.)
E sinto-me aleatório. E sinto-me velho.
Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus. Já dizia Virgílio.

Chora cavaco. Enquanto isso, na Sala da Justiça, os chavões se unem para comemorar mais um texto digno de mainardis e guanaes e coelhos e hebes e tantos santos mártires da mediocridade que nos cercam.

E tome buscar ar fresco, que não se acha (só em porões) these days.

Whoever said that to ya, he's lying

-Postface-

Catching up in the struggle, I wonder why we spent so much time doing whatever is cronópio cronópio.

Since when we alligators have to watch those flies die inside the insidious glass globe?

No, never forget to care, never walk those streets again, if you know what's best for the people you'll never meet.

And if you quite can't grab the meaning of all this, you were not paying attention. You were listening the whole fucking way.

Scram.

Freak! The swing.

-Part XVI-

So you came. So you waited. So you have wandered where could we be going. And now you realize that the road leads nowhere, the music stopped when you least expected and now you can only stare at the end of all worlds.

My carrying you all the way was not without method or without meaning. But I'm not the one who'll clarify. I ain't telling you what the fuck was meant to be learned or acquired or what should've downed on ya by this time of the day.

Run. Stay. Pray if you must. There's no more to see, there's never been.

Blame me. You've it before. It's not gonna change zilch.

It's no use cleaning up this mess. I told you in the beggining. And, if you're expecting any word of wisdom, any closure, go read one of those top-selling books of yours. And let me alone.

See ya.

Follow me

-Part XV-

Pour down all your prejudices. It's really annoing the way you grab them like they're life supporters. And it's a wonder how you came this far carrying those.

I'm entangled here. Deep down in all the things I ever wanted to see. I just gazed at the mesh, I took but a peek at the Indra's net and bam! I can't think of things separately.

I'll try to explain.

No thought anymore comes alone. There's no way I can concentrate in a thing since there's no more such thing as a single, unique, thing. I can see the connections, see? D'ya see what I'm doin' here? Hear me?

You are not what you think you are anymore than I'm not whatever image I had of myself. You can only be defined by what you're not. And that changes a lot. Then you figure out that it can be you that's changing, not the object you're referring to. Either that or you're changing the friggin' subject whilst you're observing it.

Look at me. Look at yourself. See the difference? Neither I do.

Now be a nice boy and pass the salt.

Alternative grooming

-Part XIV-

Julie has this thing about writing in English, which was very odd since she's brazilian and never really had any formal English language learning. It didn't stop her, though. She was allways correcting me and making fun of my English. In fact, she harassed me everyday for every conceivable reason. She had this I'myourintellectualsuperior thing, you know?

Julie wasn't that good between the sheets, but I always had this lust for big, round, butts, dig? Anyway, I tried hard, but Julie never had me as worthy. Intelectually, of cousrse. And she made a point of it. With one or two "english" expressions. Commonplace.

Julie, the bullie. Cliche Julie, I called her. Not to her face, of course.

It took her five years to dump me. And she left a note.

"And then there was no more sunshine, for the 'bitch who were pestering you' is long gone and she took your will with her. No, really, it's not like you've got something to celebrate.
"Anyway, you keep things going until there's no more turning back or tunring away. Then you blame yourself (indeed reasonably) and do nothing to change or to better the situation. It's almost like if you take pleasure in being miserable. Oh, yeah, for you seem to make everything worse than it is, everytime. And you complain. A lot. Oh, how I'm miserable, oh, how my heart hurts, oh how the world treats me, oh, what have I done to deserve this, oh, nobody loves me. Fuck, you don't love yourself. You panic at the sight of happiness.
"Oh, but there's more. All you do is daydream about changes, magical changes in your life that you know will never happen. Basically, you have the emotional maturity of a 12-year old boy.
"In fact, you're a control freak and a low-life manipulator. And you're an emotional blackmailer, You've got to have people around just to hear how you're good, how you're intelligent, how hot you are. It all boils down to your humongous ego. Maybe you even let people down to get attention. You're a fucking emotional black hole.
"Maybe you really shoulda kill yourself."

Julie, I love you, bitch.

Glad to hear from ya

-Part XIII-

A C-sharp. A B-flat. A natural killer G and we called it a day. Went straight to the bridge.

(oh, yeah!)

There's nothing much left to say, except that we cannot find no way out anymore. We're chained, bounded, we're involved so far and so deep that it'd be compared to an organ removal. And yet, sometimes you have to cut a leg before it kills you.

(I'm Jack's colon. I get cancer. I kill Jack.)

But you heard it elsewhere, and it's not like your friends never tried to warn you. I'm fucking evil. I'm a fucking evil genius, whose sole purpose is to take people out of their worlds and put them under my influence. I distort peoples' minds, I make them change.

In no-time, people feel trapped, entangled in my whims and evil deeds. I lock 'em up. They lose their will and become zombies, begging for scraps of my attention. No, love's got nothing to do with it. I know no love, they say. I'm a fucking emotional blackhole. And I'll kill you in the process.

So, what are you doing with me? Haven't you been warned? Your friends haven't alerted you to run while you could? Can't you see they don't like me, that they never did?

I've nothing to offer but the night.

Passé composé

-Intermission-

All the commands are set flat.

Bob sent me

-Part XII-

With all due respect, I think I got you.

You're, like, 10 years younger than you look. You're 20 years younger than I thought you were while talking with you. You have some kind of disease (some say it's called ninetofive) that impares your peripherical vision and have corroded your brain to a potato mush.

The second stage is: you stop making sense. Prejudice is one of the first things I could notice. Laziness. Apathy. Self-righteousness. Let me ask if you zombies eat brains to make up for those you don't use?

Third thing: you'll live out of scraps. Scraps of attention, scraps of food, scraps of money. And you seem to thrive on scraps of power. You know, the moment you knew you could be mean to the intern and get along with it, you seemed to have grown in size.

Now you can barely see through your very, very distorted prejudice, you sound like your boss and colleagues and actually think you make a difference. And right now I don't know if I let you suffer another year or I fire you so you can "think out of the box".

Go fish.

Goin' home

-Part XI-

Been wondering what the heck are we supposed to do here. I'm not you. I'm not myself. I'm not your saviour, not your boss. I'm not your daddy — though someone has gotta be. I'm clueless as the rest of the race, and one of them few to admit to it.

So, I was saying, I'm not here to make you comfortable. I'm not here to explain myself. I'm not here to give you hope or to guide you, and certainly not to tell you what to do next.I'm not here to abuse you. I thought we could just get along. A little chit-chat here, a pint there. A growing insatisfaction later.

Got to see my I.D.? What do you mean? Need to know my smell or something? Wanna tag me? Oh, I see. It's a friggin' anthropologic experiment for ya. I'm your, like, subject. A guinea pig. A mutant groundhog who's about to tell you if your misery is about to end or you'll have two more decades of it. Well, I'll think about it and decide if I tell you wether I see my shadow.

Second thoughts abou the race, you know. Maybe we're worthy the puniest time we'll float around here. In the corner.

O amarelo faz aniversário, mania que não o larga há 36 anos. Também posta poesia — ou coisa que o valha —, neste dia. Tomem Cortázar. Tomem duas vezes ao dia, exceto em quartas-feiras chuvosas, que é quando vocês devem acender as luzes do lado de fora e fazer o chá para esperar os Famas. Ou o sobrinho da sua avó.
Cortázar:

Relojes

Un fama tenía un reloj de pared y todas las semanas le daba cuerda CON GRAN CUIDADO. Pasó un cronopio y al verlo se puso a reír, fue a su casa e inventó el reloj-alcachofa o alcaucil, que de una y otra manera puede y debe decirse.
El reloj alcaucil de este cronopio es un alcaucil de la gran especie, sujeto por el tallo a un agujero de la pared. Las innumerables hojas del alcaucil marcan la hora presente y además todas las horas, de modo que el cronopio no hace más que sacarle una hoja y ya sabe una hora. Como las va sacando de izquierda a derecha, siempre la hoja da la hora justa, y cada día el cronopio empieza a sacar una nueva vuelta de hojas. Al llegar al corazón el tiempo no puede ya medirse, y en la infinita rosa violeta del centro el cronopio encuentra un gran contento, entonces se la come con aceite, vinagre y sal, y pone otro reloj en el agujero.

Never underestimate the pain

-Part X-

A strong feeling of emptyness. One look around and you notice the hints of the end, or the beggining of the end. Signs. Will you ever learn to read those?

You look around, you look the other way. You sip your tea and look one more time. No, not this time. This time it stays unanswered. This time is final. Until the next time.

Stretch. Yawn. Scratch. Sigh.

Collecting reasons why you shoulda take a walk, see the world, interact. Imagining what would be like to get to start talking to people again. Real talk. Real people. Nah. Bots are far more interesting these days. And you could never stand the smell, anyway.

Flesh. You see it more as a handicap than otherwise. Time to jack in and go digit again. On the count of three.

Tune in, drop out

-Part IX-

Zoom in. Chill out. No. Not a move. Let me try with my sunglasses on.

Opt in. Roll out. Nope. That's not right. I'll have to shake a little like this. And, oh, there used to be a lever of some kind… Here. There you go. Have another shot.

Languages can be so useful and tricky as the devil. It needs only the smallest bend and there you go: you're someone else. You can walk among your equals, among your superiors and subordinates. You can mingle with the gods. It's all in your head.

Go ahead, try it for, like, a week or two. And then show me what you've got. I'ts frightening the way you can make people believe you're another person entirely. I can never recall who said what when, but these things are precious and should be one of those public domain shit:

The only thing you have to be good at is lying. Once you've mastered that, you're good at everything else.

English as a second language

-Part VIII-

Make no mistake: I'm sure not here to entertain you.

Some will say I'm not here at all. Some'll say stuff about web personæ, narrowcasting, exponential communities. Some'll argue about sanity and relationships in the new millenium. I'll say they ain't got a clue.

Lost in a handful of dogmas.

Being such a clown doesn't make me any more wiser. I keep watching (I'm fucking paying attention, ya know?) and I see no sense, no pattern, no ghost of a chance. Or, maybe, all I see is chance. By chance. Perchance to get confused, this watching thing.

Learnt it from a magician friend. You're about to see what I want you to see. I got your attention just where I wanted it. And you can't see what I'm doing, unless I let you. I own you. That's the beauty of this.

Bottomline? You've been fooled. And entertained in the process.

We're hiring

-Part VII-

She's giving me that stare again. Oh, dear, here we go…

— Why did you send her?
— Did you…?
— Yeah, but that's not the issue…
— Was she…?
— Of course, but what I mean is…
— Have you girls…?
— That's beside the point, you…
— Now, now, darling, let me get this straight so my blond gorgeous little head can make something out of it. You naughty girls had a good time and you're about to lecture me in some sort of "I have to have the last word for I'm a big queen kameha bitch"?
— Just don't do this anymore.
— Hm. I think I just might have gotten it. Are you in l.o.v.e., bitch?
— And you're to blame.

Oh, dear. I just ruined two more lives. Ain't I a marvelous bastard?

Sorrow

-Part VI-

It's the Fool. The symbolism it carries strikes you as you go along with you petty life. It's the sharks that bother you now. Those infinite teeth, razor-sharp.

It's the light that won't go. There's no more darkness. It's lights everywhere. Even when they want the lights to go out is so they can record darkness: night-vision shots of whatever they're killing with those GigaWatts of theirs.

It's the snow. And every morning you go to work and have to deal with that white shit that only look good in movies. Snow and beaches with all that sand. Sand and snow. The plagues that pisses you off and make it impossible to live here.

It's you. You and your ever-wandering feeble mind. You that cannot and want not to be sedated. It's all your fault, in the end — only yourself to blame. It's your resilence in staying awake and alive.

It's gotta be the time.

Let my people go

-Part V-

Phone rings. I pick it up, hear for a while, grab my coat and leave.

It takes me 10 minutes to get where the guy asked me to go. I stand for a while there, with a strange urge to smoke. I don't smoke, but it somehow seem like the right thing to do: to lit a fag, inhale and act like I'm in a fucking movie.

People pass by trying to look busy, or cool, or smart. Temperature has dropped, like, 10 degrees from yesterday and everybody is gettin' their expensive coats out to a hike. Everybody's trying to look parisien.

Ok. Now he's officially late. I'll have a coffee.

Strangely, I feel I could blend in. Be with them. Go shopping. Go do whatever those humans do. But I've got a plane to catch. And my agent is late.

Girly-girl walks a dog. The dog isn't happy. The girl isn't happy. I resist the urge to put them out of their misery. Instead, I give her a grim — halfway to a smirk. She smiles. I point to the chair, leaning my head. She keeps walking. I keep my mind to myself.

Ok. I won't wait no more. I'll stroll around. I'll see what I can do not to stab people in the eyes for being such a lame excuses for human beings.

And I'll have another cup o'coffee.

Smart Alec

-Part IV-

Ms. B. says it allatime: that we're doomed. That we've no salvation. That life, as we perceive it, is aging, is rotting, is forgetting. Ms. B. is kinda right, but refuses to acknowledge that. Ms. B. is wide awake, running with rats she knows will never realize the fact that they're mice.

Ms. B. told me once that she was leaving. After some 30 years of incessant reading and learning and thinking, she was leaving. Ms. B. has left in that sunny (albeit cold) Sunday afternoon. She's gone fishing. Now she works 9 to 5, she works out, she pretends she's dumb. Oh, the dumber, the easier, she'd say.

Ms. B., her eyes, are sad. She didn't manage to kill herself totally. She's still there, buried, though, but still alive. Ms. B. just doesn't fit her dream of beigeness. Ms. B. lacks ordinarity.

Someday Ms. B. will grow tired of being this well-adjusted productive law-abiding beautiful human being. Tentacles will grow off her shoulders, her hair will turn green, her legs will stretch to impossible lenght an she'll tear off one of her breasts. Then she'll learn portuguese and walk with derviches. And she'll start a religion, stop worring about her weight and won't spare dumb people anymore.

And then, she'll be able to die. Again.

Tuesday, Apr 26, 2005 - 20:52pm (-3GMT)

-Part III-

Grumpy. Harsh. Inconsistent. Obnoxious. Unsupporting. Mean. Dirty. Mischievous. Rude. Scornful.

Oh, yeah. I'm your fucking wet dream of a guy, babe.