MY NIGHTSTANDS ARE ALMOST-TWINS

 

Between reading the bedside books, of which there are some, I do this exercise with some regularity, what did you learn from this book? Yes, because there must always be a reward, that to open the door to a book is to let it provoke me and to leave the latitude where I find myself, in order to be able to break barriers. And then I ask myself, what fascinated you about this reading?  

I always get "n" points from learning, because I'm really thirsty for knowledge, but I recognize that if I don't feel passion for the subject of reading, I quickly become lazy and disinterested. When I read, I need to be in love or, in the disposition to fall in love with the material, or with the characters, or with the setting, or with the construction of the plot that the writer draws, so that it rescues me entirely. There are some who do it, in the demanding way that my interiority aspires to. These are just a few. And even fewer the ones that provoke my deepest senses. 

I have been reading Salman Rushdie's novel since yesterday. I have "religiously" with me Lobo Antunes, Inês Pedrosa, Teolinda Gersão and, I have not yet removed from here the Durian Sukegawa and Gabriel García Marquez, read yesterday, and for lack of time, they did not march to the shelf, but I intend to take them to the living room. The Durian pleasantly surprised me, although it left one or two points in abeyance that, I think, the author could have taken better advantage of. Two poetic notes. I was pleased, however, by the simplicity, because it is always through one quality that all the other qualities of the argument are deepened. Twenty points for Sweet Tokyo, for being simply beautiful, for having addressed Hansen's disease, for having added two or three points about humanity and the way in which minorities are determined and people are discriminated against. Gabriel García Marquez needs no introduction, there are so many passions that he provokes, that this "See you in August" arranged within me, one more point to the last one I had read from him, the Memory of my sad whores. In addition to I am not here to make a speech, which is basically a trilogy (...) I continue with the technical reading of Maria Clementina Diniz, psychologist at the Júlio de Matos Hospital, now deceased and to whom the class of psychologists, especially clinicians, owes so much. for his passionate and boundless effort to practice in this hospital, and teaching in faculties, sharing her knowledge, as it should always be. I'm not done yet. Page 159. And so much could be said about this author who, unfortunately, has left, thus making it impossible for me to get to know her better, as I would have liked. She was best known for the openness and intelligence with which she addressed topics on sexuality, menopause, and others, such as the proposal for the Institutionalization of Clinical Health Psychology. Technical reading can also be pleasurable, when the texts are well argued, and I definitely see the Word as a pseudo-technical work. I would have liked to have read other texts by this author, about her way of seeing the world, about her party ideologies, etc. 

Another author who fascinated me for the form and content of I don't know what time it is tonight, was José Luís Ferreira. The love of words is found right at the entrance of any of his works, and which is an author's mark, one can hardly pass through the text without feeling it. And this feat is not for everyone. Who reads and who writes, who engages in one or the other or both activities, clearly understands that the author speaks as he feels, that perhaps in the mastery of words, one notices no desire to control them, nor the emotions, nor the content of life, and whose fertility and simplicity are always exposed and arranged, naturally. From the unwary readers, it can elicit different sensations, perhaps appropriations, as if everything that the author puts on the table, in the chairs, on the streets, it could be a matter of contagion. I haven't read Pedro Strecht's last one yet. I am not sure if I will read it, at least not briefly. Good enough parents will hardly add anything to me if I don't have the need or availability to read. All the ones I read from this child psychiatrist I liked, However, I feel uninterested in the subject at the moment. I still have Héctor Abad Faciolince to read, We are the oblivion that we will be, which will be, for sure, when I finish this Two years, eight months and twenty-eight nights, of SR, the next to be read. Still on the bedside table next to me is Salomé, by Nuno Júdice, since he left. I've reread it and I'll reread it again, I'm sure, but maybe not now. The chronicles of Lobo Antunes are my bible in terms of provocation. On the bedside table on my right side, there is also Filipe Chinita's Barefoot Woman, the impetuous and rouge poetry of an upright and passionate man, as well as Valter Hugo Mother, The Son of a Thousand Men that I have read for years and will be reread. Every monkey on its branch, all will be read and eventually reread. From the technicians I expect knowledge. From the others, provocation. And now, an aside, because of this provocation, which does not always have to be to the noblest feelings, or to the values we share as humanity, can also be the opposite, what outrages us, what causes us stress and even sadness, why not say it? We live under the notorious freedom of expression. And speaking of the provocation, perhaps because I ventured to erase a Marcelist sketch here some time ago, at the time of the media case of the twins, coupled with a few days apart, by the attempt to find scapegoats for the oblivion of the same sad case I saw erecting executioners of colonialism, perhaps because of this or something else, I have noticed that on my Facebook wall,  that only serves me, to share what I'm writing here and to take a look at videos of music, dance, painting, theater, cinema and animals, the presence of illustrious, public i must say, non-famous, figures. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, Cláudio Ramos from TV, Maia's letters that I deduce are also from TV, because I haven't watched television for years, but MSN news has headlines and I read them sometimes. If I were president of the republic, I would never be willing to have Facebook and much less scroll down with unknown and uninteresting material. And probably, it's not even you, but a scout of the opinions about you. I'm glad I'm not president of this or any other republic. I wouldn't want to be president of any banana republic, where health is unhealthy, where finances are corrupt, Where justice does not exist, where education leads to unemployment, exports well-formed surplus value to emigration, under the weight of political laziness and national embezzlement, to the rest of the world. Speaking of the president, I've blocked his profile. I am not president of anything and the only power I enjoy remains to breathe and to choose what I read, which is the same thing as saying what I eat and what I think. Because in these matters no one forces me to eat what I don't like. If I lived in a healthy and decent country, one of those countries that considers people above the level of sludge, my mother, for example, would have sleeping medication available and would not need to spend the night, just because she does not want to leave the house, in her eighties. That the Saúde 24 app is very pretty, but useless. I'm happy with myself, because it's nothing important, with pedigree, in this country or any other. Because if I were, education would be compulsory and in other ways, and the system would have to be broken, the entire system that meets the conditions for the continuity of school disinterest, discrimination, influence peddling, the fattening of power, the lack of housing and the sponsorship of the powerful for the maintenance of this and, by the destruction of social housing, has been replaced by the construction of luxurious lofts that pay off the purses of small elitist minorities, but make the poor even poorer. The elderly, children and animals would have policies consistent and rigorous with what was expected. If I had power, I would have shame and responsibility and hypocrisy would be prescribed. That it is with the truth that solid structures are built! That this assumption of responsible positions should only be allowed to those who resign from their ego and step into the shoes of those they defend. I feel sadness. Can a man have read so many books and remain the same as before he read them? Can a man go around selling a good public image and choosing shortcuts and practices that are in no way in keeping with the national commitment he has made? Power can, thanks in large part to overconfidence and the very power that is given to them, without demands for transparency by those who attribute it to them. It is not enough to read books, powerful gentlemen, it is necessary to be willing to make personal sacrifices in order to contribute to the whole.  And I bet that there is a lot of books that teach all these things, some simpler and others more elaborate, but you can have training and be an affective illiterate. And this, powerful gentlemen, is what proliferates the most, all over the world. Thus, we risk becoming yet another underdeveloped country. Emotional intelligence is not learned from books, but from life. And it involves looking at the social mirror and not the personal one, by the predictability of thinking about problems from ourselves, from our own, in order to understand others. And what are the others, if not the characters, who surrender their trust along with their ignorance into the hands of selfish and profoundly hypocritical characters!? Conflicts of interest happen, but it takes more than subterfuge on the one hand, and accusing fingers on the other, to fight and build. There are a lot of real people I wouldn't mind taking a selfie with, just to be able to exchange ideas with them, but you would never be one of them. By the way, and to conclude, from an author who says what he thinks and with whom I identify a lot, in terms of ideas and senses, Lobo Antunes and, on whose subject I don't share the same opinion - we don't need to be good to write -, as the author seems to have said about another author, here, I make a concordant comparative analogy,  You have to be a good family man, a husband and a good household manager to represent a country, a ministry, a political, social or economic portfolio. Experience is a great asset. There can be no room for conflicting interests. Power doesn't serve me. I serve the power.  I'm talking about being people, to be able to serve people seriously. And that's why it's important to read and read and keep reading. Because there is no shortage of perspectives to add to us, let us allow it.