The danger of a free translation

 

For the ox to fall asleep

(instead of chasing herds, counting their heads)

It was all I had. A three-by-four screen. Thick brushes and two thinner brushes, paints and the biggest app you can enjoy. A lawn next to a gentle stream, flanked by poppies and wild daisies. Blackberry bushes, mostly dry! I put down the screen and tried to scale the image of what I saw to the limit of my parapet. And I thought that everything could fit there. In my childhood days, in a simple car, the mini, they managed to put 27 big guys inside, what couldn't I do, on a three-by-four canvas, just debuted? I brushed the green paint on the pallet and added two drops of yellow, one of brown and to the blue, I added a drop of soft ribeiro. I picked a maple leaf from the grass and with it I began the sketch. From a simple maple leaf, I drew a living forest. With only two drops of yellow, I set fire to a harvest, dry and faint from heat and at the extreme, the king star, but I wanted to see the stream turn into a lake and so I did, I drew the darkness of still and mysterious waters, mosses and herbs on the verges and a beautiful frog that croaked while I drew with the finest brush,  the edges of your maternity ward. A frog was resting on a water lily and I tried to get them both closer and, with a jump, the frog jumped to the water lily, drawing a stupendous splash in the darkness of the waters. I needed to touch up the waters that were invaded by the light and fermented waves all around. Near my hand, a small arm of a baby tree would serve to give sap to all the trunks of my forest. And so it was, growing, angular and firm, with birds and flowers and even three sunflowers on its edge. I was dissatisfied and wanted to color three more seasons. I drew a turntable and some records on the grass to entertain myself while I gave light to the canvas. And in the distance, I began to listen to Vivaldi, next to a fence he had drawn near the beginning of the living forest. In the direction of the fence, I drew a heavy cloud, loaded with ash and took the opportunity to skim a storm lightning, there was the first station, childhood where I learned to crawl and cry. And I resorted to the rest of the tubes, other colors, I asked for the canvas. I couldn't refuse. Was it me entering the screen or was the screen superimposing itself on me? The path had begun. I drew a terrestrial globe, and brought the poles closer together, just to scare the equator. I had the earth in my hands, a country could have fallen on me, in fact, it could have shattered the entire globe and eliminated all chances of survival of the human race. And to have interfered in the galaxy through the butterfly effect. I placed it at my feet and drew a ladder and binoculars. The ladder I placed on the outside of the screen, binoculars in my hand, as I brought my eye closer to better see the state of Gaia. But I became myopic. Suddenly, I had the impression that I was looking at the bald head of a human being. Not a light, not anything, just a smooth, pinkish and slightly circular face. I took the stairs and went to the furthest point of the screen and only then could I see, with great joy, that, after all, our land was one among many that the galaxy had. And I resized the scale on the canvas. And I was able to peek at several planets with human lives. Well, not human, but they were lives, because they had elaborate constructions and the beings moved, communicated with each other and even had multiple ways of transforming and moving. One of the planets I sighted, I saw on the entrance sign, which was called Velladya, showed a lot of still life, that is, dead to me that I saw no colors, neither above nor below, no hair, nose and eyes, no spyglasses and no clothes. Not mountains, not plains, nothing I knew until then, not even the crazy idea that we had been sold about the moon or the rings of Saturn. I started to ruminate that, perhaps, I had fallen asleep and had forgotten the canvas and it was already night and I didn't even know where it was, and I started to imagine coming out of the bushes I painted and the trees I covered, fantastic animals, elves, druids and UFOs and I even imagined a monster in the miniature of my Lockness. I threw the binoculars into the lake and regretted it afterwards, because instead of seeing better, a tube was splashed over my eyes, I didn't even know what color, and I remembered the poor couple of frog and toad, if they would have had time to mate and have babies while I was away in the unknown worlds. I threw the ladder at the foot of the fence and went to peek at the lake. Not a water lily could be heard. Only the silence of the sleeping screen. And that's when I looked at the floor and was moved. A calf lying next to the tubes and brushes asking me for color and shape. I rounded off his ass with the thicker spatula on the white and covered him with grass to hide it. No, there was no more time, it was almost twilight time and I still had to go cook my dinner. I used the chisel, I gave color to the eyes, filled it with time, the calf turned into a bull, I took the tintins out of it and the bull turned into a beautiful ox, mottled green. I cleaned it all up, put some black spots on it, sat it with its little legs Chinese style, its paws drawing an O on each end, in a zen position, drew a piercing on the tip of its nostrils, put a weed between its teeth and on the turntable I put Jordan Mompo. I saw him open a sideways eye and smile at me and I even saw many frogs making trapeze on the lotus flowers that Mompo lent me. The ox remained to meditate. Nicely, tomorrow when I wake up, I have a kid similar to me, drawing sandals on my feet and a board with hairpins to avoid putting on the tubes of paint. And as I leave the canvas, I paint in the lower right corner a ball that is the full moon, a dark blue sky and put half a dozen stars and sneak out of here to the kitchen, without waking the ox from its meditation.