Ceres and Persephone

 

I'm not politically correct, it disgusts me to look at what the whole has become, in the compulsive blindness, in the corruption, in the bootlickers who all want the same, powers, for them to abuse too, to be able to fuck everyone. From there envy is born. Which is so much, that there is already plenty of it, for this world and for two or three more.  That society is this, reduced to a fuck you, or fuck me. And the threesomes are what there are the most, and gang bangs and much more, as you know. I'm the one who doesn't line up in movies. I did a lot, and it seems that I did well, because I managed to defend myself and my two younger brothers from pedophiles and children on the agenda. When I felt threatened or felt that my brothers were being threatened, I repeated out loud the name of my father, Francisco Rodrigo da Silva Guedes, this is our father's name and I repeated it again, and as many times as necessary, and I felt a strength, a courage that no adult has ever taught me to have, which was mine and that came from him. At least, so i believed at the time. And I did it, so that they wouldn't try to confuse me with their illusions and loincloth games. My father's body was not present, but his energy was there, like a wall. And I started to have to do it very early. Do the math with me. Three kids, me with six, Tero with three and Ruizinho with one year, until I was sixteen, I always had to take that message into account. There was someone bigger than me, but he was neither father nor mother.  Then life came to give us another slap. That's when we lost the youngest. The father had already taught us the lack. He taught us from childhood, saudade. That's what he taught us the most. At that time, I was seriously thinking about whether it was a kind of family curse. From five, to four, from four, to three, which, after all, after Ruizinho left, we were not even three, because each one turned inward, privatizing the mourning, in the individual rooms, and when we crossed paths, I believe that the pain increased, because we realized that we were no longer anything, or we would be a kind of guinea pigs, a kind of plaything in the hands of that so-called whose, who came and interceded and separated and subtracted, was another sad thought, also recurrent, at the time. That of injustice. That we had been deceived. That having been five, after all, was the great illusion for us to learn pain. My mother had to work and the maids she got at home, either they were from the provinces and wanted to know the world of the cities, away from the fields and the sacholas or they all wanted to date. And they read Gina and other things that were not interesting for my age.The first time I smoked, at nine, I stole five escudos from the maid and went to buy kentuckies at the station kiosk, a group of four on the hill, near the school, and I thought I was going to die, but damn, I was almost an adult, at that time! In part, it was true. But no! Because then the maid started to take advantage of that to make me tidy up the kitchen while she went to date the fireman and, if I didn't accept the rules of that game, she would report me to my mother and there went the privileges of being able to read until later, not being forced to eat soup and other things like that. So, I would tidy up the kitchen for the price of two or two and five hundred and, after the kitchen was tidied up and when she arrived, coming from dating, I would find a way to go to the station kiosk to buy loose cigarettes. And stickers for my brothers' albums. Yes, I started smoking on the sly at the age of twelve. I had already read Christiane F. And long before, I had already read worse, heavier things, as is the case of the last day of a convict, the Nuremberg trial. My father left and we inherited the entire library, Russian, American, English, French, Portuguese authors, everyone was ready to teach me the things of life. There was no censorship. There was negligence. Ignorance. Permissiveness. It was also at that same age that my mother caught me smoking at the campsite, and from then on she forbade me to ask for or accept cigarettes (she was unaware of the tobacco business) and started giving me money to buy my own tobacco and still pay for tobacco and discos to my cousin and so on. The first time I tried one of those cigarettes that makes you laugh, marijuana, I was sixteen years old, it was at the CPN, next to Torres, with Albano who was older than me, who instead of trying to grope me, talked to me, him on the bottom step and I sat on the step above, that the stairs were high and you could see the station, the trains,arriving from Campanhã and going crowded to Marco or Régua. Around three in the afternoon, always with the gaze of Mr. Mendes attentive. It was a unique experience. I didn't smoke marijuana again at that age. I did it again years later and always as a social experiment with close friends and I was never addicted. If I had it today, I probably wouldn't have it anymore. But the synthetic drug never wanted to try. For me, smoking this is healthier than tobacco, but it's like talking to a friend and drinking a glass of Port. Some like it, others like music, others ice cream, others sex, others like alcohol and others like flowers. And others like it all and even like more things and others don't like it at all. It would be a lie if I said that I am not a hedonist. Aren't we all? I used to go there to play table tennis, because I wanted to feel what my father would have felt, who was a champion of that and billiards and snooker, and I only went there in the holes of high school classes. And because I lost my father a long time ago, and my grandfather at that time, I needed male figures to serve as a model for me, and Mr. Mendes became a father-grandfather borrowed, almost at the age of my grandfather Rodrigo and who, like his grandfather, told fantastic stories of people I never saw. From an Ermesinde that I didn't know. We all have experiences and that's life. An experience. And when we don't have parents present or are negligent, life is an experience without a network. If you fall, you may die. It was also at that age that I had the near-death experience and what I learned about it is that it doesn't exist. Which is apparent, like society, only more noble, because it does not dress this and that, with tricks or makeup. Death is just a state of being. Elsewhere. That is, the state of not being on this side. These things are learned during the leaps of faith we take. What I know about life is not academic knowledge, on the contrary, it is very experimental. I've always liked science labs and their test tubes. I consider myself open and a sucker. Today much less, of both. And my teachers were all these experiences, these wise and tender people, authentic and without pretense, with patience for my questions, and of course, the authors of the books I read. It's like in college, you have to take theoretical and practical classes, even if you don't have a job afterwards. And I am grateful, even today, that my father put generous people on the path, always older than me, with whom I did not have to fight or defend myself, I could simply lower my defenses and learn, and because I had no patience for the interests of kids my age, it was an eagerness to grow, to be an adult and to set limits. Now, when I look back at the whole journey, I regret not having set limits earlier, not having erected barriers. In an ideal and utopian world, I would not want to do it, but in this one where I had to live and survive, I would have saved myself many sorrows and disappointments. From here on, I am already guilty. And the law of the jungle does not prevail, pretend that I am alone and as I am responsible for myself, I do what I please. Not at all. Despite having "benefited" from a modernly absent mother, I imposed limits and responsibilities on myself. My brothers were my responsibility. Defend them. Be present. My mother is eighty years old. She did everything the opposite in life, due to parental absence. They both left, she was not yet ten years old. From that point of view, I can now understand that she had no better plan to offer us, because she was not offered an option either.And she fled the constant mourning that crossed her life, transversally. And outwards. Whoever does not turn inward, does not heal. Postpone the dismissal. I owe her a lot, in terms of life learning and gratitude for what she achieved and even for what she did not know how to do. The first thing I learned from her was not to want to be like her. Especially with her absence and the intermittences of her stay, before and after her work. I learned that grief is the source of more emotional imbalances and mental pathologies. That there are people who, like my mother, are disconnected from their hearts from an early age. That what is loneliness for some is solitude for others. That people are hurt more by entering relationships fleeing loneliness than hunger. That the search for affective stability, at a crossroads, without a compass, creates instability in other fields. That you shouldn't eat anything in other people's houses. But that one should not reject an offer and should be thankful before receiving it. That the others are good, we are not. That what you want to learn or do is not allowed to you. Because of what others think. Because of the family. Of others. Today she has learned that others don't matter at all.  What do we care about others? They are dead weight. That there is no time for children when you work. That family members are always good, even if they hurt us. Even when they speak ill of their father, even when they speak ill of their mother. That they steal and deceive them all their lives, that weave intrigue and envy, that they want to bring ignorance in abundance into our home. All in all. A lot. Of nothing. We can only give what we have and what we seek. If we spend our lives escaping from mourning, what we find outside are deaf screams. And blindness. And the compassion I feel for her today, seeing her from the outside in, in her shoes, is much greater than the sadness and resentment that during our life together she nurtured. 

I don't like to be told: Think this way or that. And I want it like this and that. I want you to be this way, you shouldn't do that, you have to be cooked more, and if you don't think like me, then you're an idiot, an imbecile, and if I get angry, because of my mental and physical superiority, I'll beat you as if you were an object that has been made available to me so that I can break you and throw you away. Objectifying myself. And from then on, when the matter at stake collides with my nature, which I obey it, with the life lessons of what I have learned and what I have not learned, it is no longer to coexist, it is to survive, to fight to be me and, ultimately, to continue to be so.  God in heaven and the other, any other, on earth. Do not dare to see yourself as your own priority. The internal discourse was this. Others always come first. I didn't know where I had heard that, I knew it was another thought equal to the curse of family abduction. What you hope for and dream and want, you keep in your pocket. I never meant to be nasty. As a child, yes, I needed high walls. Until the time I left home, around the age of eighteen, I always kept the barriers up.I still have my mother's speech in mind, now seeing it from another perspective, but eloquent and imbued with emotional blackmail.  Either you leave that older boyfriend you have or I bring back to live with us the one you can't stand. Who I always called the devil. The choice was made when she projected the first part of the sentence. Leaving him was no option, the rest of the sentence came to solve the readiness of time. In a safe environment, danger stops chasing you and you let your guard down. And at twenty-nine, the fox had already entered and caused damage, which I tried to correct with mistakes and courtesy always left over me, like the hems in my new pants. Always diplomacy. There was some law that put that lady of justice in an inconvenient or unfair position for me and the council had to fit. And I have harmed myself many times. He almost always won the desire of the other and mine, I forgot it, I put it in a corner, believing that it could be recyclable, probably, for a new card of life, I don't know, later on. There would always be time to be me. That the others come first. Whoever knows a crab, knows them all. We're all lame, aren't we? All full of stains and pictures of victimization, of pains that we have not healed and others that came with us, inherited. We are true empaths, we always have in our pockets a couple of hundred grams of empathy for others and, from the others we receive, at most, a fucking empath. Yields and sublimations. In the worst case, a narcissist. There are no councils here, it is a new stage, we take extreme positions – if we do not do it, the solution is escalated and ugly. We set out to separate.And that's all right. And always maintain coherence. Faltering is not a solution, it is a trap. In today's dating, there is a lot of control and violence, whether from an intellectual, physical or emotional point of view. The resolution process has to see the cutting there, before more seeds sprout. Game over.  And here, it doesn't matter if it's marriage, whether it's a labor, social or blood relationship. Occasional truces that, later, if you give in, will be fights It's a scream, a loud and for the ball. Especially if the participants cannot sit at the table, as civilized people, and discuss differences in a friendly way. Through clear and comprehensive arguments.  Tolerance and transparency are mandatory. In any area of life, whether with your father, boss, uncle, cousin, neighbor or boyfriend.Dialogue is the only way to build peace. The monologue is the only way to subsist alone, in circumstantial and rugged monologues or we would go crazy. We have to talk to ourselves, go inside. To resolve the decision on the outside. And I don't say this from the point of view of mental health, with sarcasm, cynicism or levity. We are all human beings. May our constructions, whether they be conversations, projects or buildings, be guided by humanity and civility, than effectively polish us! We have to be a spark of fire in an active consciousness, which is, after all, what makes us human. And so, I would say that when I came into the world, I didn't know myself at all. I unwrapped, as life arose, what demanded of me, what was natural and passionate in me or, on the other hand, consequence or response, primitive instinct.The consequential ones. I tried to take another step, longer, deeper, to test if I still had a footing. And I did, and from my arms grew wings that I fed with reading and, sometimes, when they withered, I watered it with music and when life left me without water, I would go to get poetry, or paintings, or photographs. And I never quenched my thirst for these flights. And I'm that, I'm not prudish. I am brave and I reveal myself without fear. I am an eagle of the rocks that has always insisted on taking flight. In this world three give. Of the matter. But that's not who I am, but a part. No one is just dense matter. We are immaterial, and I fear that this part that is beautiful, after all, is the one that reaches me sooner, in any curve, even so, that is where I point the coordinates. The world is dual and I am contemplative. I believe that this particularity comes from the two poles: innate and acquired.I have Mars in my waters. I can see hurricanes rise, but if I am not distracted or fall with the winds, I bring together essential elements, in order to contain the violence. With an appearance that oscillates between calm and temperate, I may be small, but God gave me this talent, of being cordially martial, in a storm; When you are wind, I translate epiphanies, and in the intervals of the gloss, a key, a password that rhymes with the whole, gives me to be generous and to snap left and right, with kid gloves, in all the lukewarm people, who do not take positions, who do not take similar attitudes, and then I draw some palaces, half a dozen Aladdin rugs, an eagle flirting with the floor and so much trapeze without a net, so much clay on the wall, so much longing for him, gave me to lose my modesty, to sculpt the ocean of this thing that is pain, that was intense and now is motivation and sandbank. And beautiful, inside me.