NEPTUNE'S CHRONICLE ON WEDNESDAY

 

Tonight passed slowly until almost four in the morning. Until I wake up again. Me and my insomnia. If I break them down, they spread and grow in the form of worries and anxieties of the future, satisfactions and joys of the now, in fact, the now has a shadow that stands still and maybe it is even the one that keeps me in insomnia. It's called stagnation. Almost four years of immobility as a person, not living with anyone except my mother, with whom I talk regularly, daily, except with Tomás between differences of opinion and truncated and personal humor, except with my dogs and cats, my plants and every now and then, there I receive Manel on the phone, Chinita, José Ferreira, Justino, always on messenger, but they are not dialogues, they are notes of record, they are good mornings and good nights, they are greetings and strength! I don't talk to anyone, I don't look for anyone. I'm isolated from the world and this isn't me, it's just a part of me that stands in the resilience and consequences of the other part, hostage to having trusted everyone. Today I only trust myself. 

At night, I try to make a playlist of songs and movies so I can choose how I want to get to the other side. Meditation has been postponed. Whenever I go to it, for the first half hour I am a body resting in the water and then I am a face in tears, a sea where I drown and all my ancestors here, in my room they clean me, caress me and tell me that it's almost done. Patience is, in my opinion, the most difficult of the virtues, it requires the stilling of the inner waters, the inner fire, the inner earth, it requires the resting of the emotions and the control of the thoughts. All my restless life, mistake after mistake, shit after shit, but always dedicated to everything and everyone, consciously leaving myself aside. Those were my biggest mistakes, the ones about palmatoria. My Achilles heel. And how they sucked me in, manipulated me, bothered me for it. Today I try to dribble those memories, reassuring myself, forgiving myself and loving myself. Sometimes, I can. Sometimes I am overcome and always overcome by tiredness. 

Tonight, there were no dogs barking when I woke up. All quiet. I opened the window of my room and heard only the grasses, the crawlies and a cat here or a dog in the distance, giving an account of their existence. I lit my cigarette. I took two or three raisins. I am disgusted by tobacco, but it is an addiction that calms me down. I closed the window again, and in the dark, groping in the hallway, I reached the kitchen. I turned on the exhaust fan light and made tea. Ginger and lemonade tea. Or lemon.  Groping down the corridor in the light of the moon tearing through the glass bricks, I reached the room again. Great-grandfather, wherever he is, because I have already changed the arrangement of the furniture and the paintings, no matter which way, he looks at me, an invasive and tender look and I tell him without a mouth: I know, sometimes out loud, I know great-grandfather, I know I need to rest, I know I need to be whole, I know,  I know, but even if we know, sleep resistance is a huge driving force. I sat up in bed, sipping my tea, looking at my dead, trapped in the pictures, in the frame of the dresser's mirror, and I couldn't help but be moved. They don't abandon me. Neither do I miss them. Viriato, Cláudia, my father, Ruizinho, great-grandfather and great-grandmother, my grandmother Bina's parents, and now, too, grandfather Rodrigo's parents and my godmother's. I've made peace with my godmother. Who called me somber in the death of her grandfather, her brother Rodrigo. My dear grandfather Rodrigo. I look at them ecstatically. Truly ecstatic. How beautiful they are, how they stay clean in the passage of time that never spares anyone. Cleansed of an immaculate love, of a family dedication taken to detail, of an intensity of passion in the education of their own. I love them more and more every day, even more than when they were alive, that there was no notion of their loss and even less of the physical distance of losing them. And after all, I earned them in my nights of sadness, in my moments of joy. I don't talk to the living, I only relate to the people who are never gone. Aunt Carmen, after having appeared to me in my nocturnal dreams asking for light and a garden, after having freed her from the jar of ashes, has never complained to me again, on the contrary, her smile touches me. And yes, I miss her physically. Many. Many. I've gotten used to having them this way. And when I wake up from my dreams and nightmares, here they are, to make me smile, in the dialogues I often have, in the monologues the living would say, if they saw me. Tonight, when I woke up before four, I saw the shape of a pizza, on a piece of paper, a circle, where only one slice was missing. But it wasn't a pizza. And the lipless mouth repeated to me: Neptune. Neptune, don't forget Neptune. And I never forget Neptune, it would be impossible for me to be such that I am forty-one percent water. But that slice on a paper tinted the color of the embarrassed sun, where a slice was missing, I was told that I would have to take Neptune into account. The god of the seas is my moon governing the high tides and the high tides, ruling the moods and dissonances of joy.  And although I laughed and cried with my friends, here in this cubicle, where the tea was sipped between my waters and those of the kettle, I asked myself, in a fit of lucidity, that I am like this with myself, perhaps because I have so many planets in Virgo, the detailer, why the hell would I cry, if I am not unhappy,  Do I force myself to be happy in everything I give and do? Why girl? Because I don't belong here. I'm waiting to sell this piece of land, waiting for the perfect buyer, the right one, who is already destined, to freak out from here, to take me and my mother and my animals and give them a. What no tea makes me love this piece of the world, that I didn't come here to die here, to dedicate myself to the inactivity of the days. And there are so many days when I force myself to be consistent with myself and with others. 

I already have the chicken stewing, with carrots, pepper paste, half a knorr of chicken, lots of garlic and a little salt. I already have the cucumber, tomato and beetroot salad ready, to force my mother to strengthen her life, fuel to produce miracles, another meal is almost ready and I already have the spinach and carrot soup in advance, I already have almost everything ready, I need to set the table, the drinks, and call them for another routine of standing,  to keep carburetion to a minimum. And the clothes I laid out are dry on the rope, Kirie's bacorinhos continue to run and take shelter to sleep under my car, the men from the green Penafiel who gutted the street almost two months ago continue to bark. Hopefully this week the works will be finished, to return to a normality of not ruining the bumper again, of not once again exhausting my patience that I have so much trouble oiling. And now, I raise my spine, taste once again the stew sauce that will be served with dry rice and start preparing the dishwasher with the lozenge, in the Manichaeisms typical of laziness. To keep as much organization as possible so that laziness doesn't beat me and I send everything to nettles and disappear with Neptune. No, I don't forget Neptune, whatever they wanted to tell me. At 23º Scorpio. Right there, next to my vertex, in the same house, but already in Sagittarius. And something I keep close to Neptune is that the north node in Aries has been retrograding again for two days and remains so. Patience to be worked on, until you reach the 12th of Aries. To a release that can be explosive, implosive, or controlled. And it doesn't depend on the heavens, on the universe, on God, it depends on me, on my fiber and on the therapeutic gains that I will extract from this patience skillfully crafted, meticulously sculpted and so immersed in murky waters, in a lake-like appearance. Resilience, Cristina.

Resilience, persistence and acceptance, Cristina, for liberation, for faith to flood you. That's how I talk to myself and how I give myself love. Yes, I love myself very much. Yes, I love myself more than anything. Yes, me first. Yes, I prioritize myself, but that's not why I love others any less. On the contrary, I only love them because I know how to love myself. This chronicle diary is my most faithful feedback. 

Yes, I am unconditional love, but first I fertilize myself. 

And now lunch, to resume the daily chores of a domestic girl, full of bad temper and who talks to the dead.