Brazil
Oh, my Brazil … chaos, samba, carnival, football, slums, mulatas, copa-
cabana, corcovado, pelé, niemeyer, villa-lobos, jk, bossa nova, jobim,
slums, amazonas, the nordeste (northeast region), the pantanal, petro-
brás, corruption, brasília, the “canarinho” team, land of the futur, more
than a land a continent, giant by its own nature, so the national hymn,
eternally lying in a splendid bed, god! what a land, pardon “great land” …
Lula, after two sinister decades of military dictatorship and some prede-
cessors who, mostly corrupt and quite inept, didn’t bring anything, Lula
is said to have reinvented the country —he, the half illiterate, the dema-
gogue, the gullible fool— and now, there he is, the great guy, internatio-
nal prestige and so, europe, china and africa, onu, the military mouth shut
as it should be, well, more or less, and leading and ordering is the former
guerrilla fighter lady Dilma, who’s said to be the fourth more powerful
woman in the world … well, well, who'd imagine it!
Lavrinhas
The second decade di nostra vita … better forget it. Tempi passati.
A past time full of shades and gaps, too far away to be remembered
with details of less importance.
Lavrinhas: idyllic landscape. Right. Apart from that, monastic rules,
rigid, no fun, discipline and faith, like barracks.
It remained, beginning with the Gregorian chant, the fondness for
singing. And for books, books and more books, as well as for an incu-
rable intellectual curiosity: thinking, reflecting, looking up words,
playing with words, aligning words. As for the rest … hey, it’s silence!
Other stages of the pious and rough monastic adventure, nothing of
nostalgic or glorious memory: novitiate, temporary vows, the so-called
“philosophy” years.
Passa Quatro {MG}
Going for gold and the dreamed green stones, the inexaustible and fierce
bandeirante paulista Fernão Dias Paes Leme —whose eyes tired of emerald
hunting would never see them and whose hands injured by moving heaven
and earth in search of an untraceable treasure would never reach the glory
to touch it— discovered back in the Ides of 1674, and today everyone knows, admires, praises [who saw it, who was there] the natural beauty, the sympathy,
the peculiarity of the wonderful green pearl called Passa Quatro … right on the other side of the Sierra [Mantiqueira] coming from Rio or São Paulo:
A quiet southern Minas village, picturesquely embedded in an idyllic and cozy
shell at the foot of the majestic peaks of the Mantiqueira, at first glance like forgotten by time, with an air of Sleeping Beauty, but anyway not stopping to modernize, with good infrastructure, comfortable hotels, some luxury, and countless touristic attractions of permanent and renovated fascination for its natural environment.
São Paulo
The third decade: I fell into the bottomless and unbridled world called “Pauliceia”, forced to exercise and support activities unthinkable today, from general services
at the regional administration of a bank, bankrupt and disappeared long ago …
passing through I don’t know how many companies and jobs, knowing closely all
sorts of trickery and misdeeds … and where, breathing [without suffocating] the
most polluted air that had passed through the lungs of a highlander, I learned a
thousand tricks of survival, as to get honey even from stones, from asphalt and
most especially from the countless starving, ravenous, crazy mouths of the
hallucinated and amazing girls of the night, and of the day too …
São Paulo: prolonged and profound mental purification bath.
Whoever comes out clean, can be canonized in the act, Santo Subito!
Holier than any Catholic Pole!