Pelé wrote and perfected the grammar of futebol; he is to futebol what Shakespeare is to literature. R.I.P.

Click on photo to watch his plays, decades before anyone else.

Pele ✭ The King Did it Years Ago ● Part 1

Pele ✭ The King did it Years Ago ● Part 2

                                           PELÉ - He did it 50 years ago!! | Reação

MESSI FAN REACTS TO - PELE Best Goals & Skills (HE SURPRISED ME 😱

Sunset Strip Animal

     When I met him, he was furious; not at me, he hadn't noticed my presence yet, busy he was, head down, clothes in need of washing, furiously trying to get food off an empty can of something. He ran his finger inside the can and took it to his mouth and repeated this action, each time getting angrier and angrier with the futility of it. There was nothing inside the can; no nutrients that would sustain a man his size.

     I can't never tell someone's age, nor can I recognize faces, which made it so easy to forget undeserving people. In appreciation for, what they perceived to be an act of forgiveness, they would always try their hardest to knock me off my white horse. I would venture a guess that this creature in front of me was in his mid-thirties; I can't be sure. A homeless man is an animal like the ones you see at a forest with scarce food supply: extremely unpredictable, angry, and unlike other animals in nature, aware of his condition: that being how irrelevant his existence is to the rest of us. This one sits at a bus stop on the famous Sunset Boulevard, near The Comedy Store; how funny is that? 

     If you were to sit across the street from this particular animal and watch, you would think he was waiting for Godot, while improvising a funny sketch to kill time. But I. I was two feet away from him now, curious to find out what possibly could he have done to end up alone, a few days shy of Christmas,  in what was once known as the city of angels. But there are no angels here any longer, you learn that quickly just by losing count of the many opulent law offices spreading along the boulevard; lawyers inside so well fed that one has to ask what is the herd up to.

     I watch, waiting for a propitious time to address him. I come to the conclusion that I needed to wait until he accepted that there was no nutrients of any kind to be had from his can. Long ago, I stood between a friend I loved and his bottle; I still bear the psychological scars of that misguided decision.  Love* is, and don't let the romantics convince you otherwise, either a trolley rusting inside a museum, or an out of control wagon filled with homosexuals, gaining speed downhill, in any hill in San Francisco. 

     All of these thoughts run through my head while I watch him feed. Twice now I saw the cars line up behind each other at the red light and drive away. Countless time I asked what have I done to be so alone? Near here, at the same boulevard, lives the Blessed Sacrament Catholic church where the family business of the priests in charge, brothers Mark and Arthur Falvey, was molesting children: five young girls  and five young boys. For symmetry, I suppose. Both men of God were forgiven, reformed, as the catholic church bought back their soul with a sixteen million dollars check. Both siblings died there, at the blessed church, sheltered and well fed.

     I once encountered a family of mountain lions while hiking at an early morning in the Santa Monica beautiful mountains. I was distracted by my own demons when they walked out of the bushes and crossed the path in front of me. A cold feeling ran through my veins, the same I feel now when I realize that this animal in front of me is giving me his full attention. How long has it been? I wonder. Was it enough for him to fully assess me? The only thing one has when encountering a dangerous animal is the brief, ephemeral instant when it is not clear how dangerous you are to him.

     He stares at me now. Compounding the situation is a not so funny inner voice I possess that suggests to me: " See? You should have immediately yelled stardenburdenhardenburt." which made me laugh inappropriately. Curiously, this softened his gaze, as if he had perceived this to mean that I  was comfortable being there, twin souls we were. Having no other option but to stay with the ruse I asked: " what the hell are you eating there, my man?" He smiled at that, looked back at his empty can and stood up, revealing to me his height, which I can't precisely specify with a number, but knew to be far above my 5'11, 145 pounds frame.

     I watched him toss his can in the garbage nearby and move back to his seat with an elegant cat like demeanor. He had the same level of comfort one has when one, having witnessed or suffered violence and ugliness at an early age, becomes immune to fear, and at the same time prudent, aware of the scope of damage a human animal is capable of.

" Trying to survive." he answered my question from long ago. 

"Great" I thought. You and I have something in common after all,  as I stood before him listening to his life story.

* the little kitten on the photo is my cat Shades who passed away in 2019. I loved her. She hated my guts over a misunderstanding in regards to a flying sandal; she scratched me any chance she got and never once took any responsibility for breaking my favorite one of a kind kerosene writer's lamp, which she moved across the table until it splashed on the floor. She too was hungry.

                                          

Me and I and nothing.

 

     I long for myself; for the time when I was without the need to be. Anything. An open horizon, sun and oceans, an ocean away from where I stand: terra firma. Due in part for my inadequacies as a human being, and the voices of others who told me what a man was suppose to be. I long for myself; for the time when I was without the need to be.

     I run outside myself, looking for a chain, a path that leads to me, an ephemeral being that I can't find  in the real world but that I feel intensely within, a being in communion with the world around me and paradoxically, with nothing.

   These searches take me nowhere; except to a sea of men and women who think they are and that know it all. They are exhausting, these men and women. Bending my ear, wanting to be heard, desperately trying to validate what they think they know. 

     All I know is the stress and confusion of being.

                                          

Click Clack

 

A Little Tulip

 

Summer Dress

| A beautiful painting of a white house in South America, stamped on a light summer dress. |

| Busy being me |

| click clack |

 

ART and WRITING

 

mobile

Here They Are! The Shameless.

     Finally we get a demonstration of the bias against women having sex out of the "convention" of marriage; because that is what this is about. Morality.

     It is certainly not about protecting life because Republicans have made clear their feelings about struggling single young mothers; by voting NO to any and all form of financial aid to mother and babies. 

     Let it be known, the truth:

ABORTION IS NOW PROHIBITED FOR POOR WOMEN.

     There is no greater carcinogen to humans than power; especially when the fabric of their soul is prejudice. 

TITLE - Whichever SAFE WORD of the Day

     I will hide somewhere, until you cancel each other out; it's coming - there, I must apologize for the use of the word coming and assure you that it was not an allusion to sexual climax. 

Let me start again.

     I will hide somewhere, until you cancel each other out, it's the obvious conclusion to the toxic environment it's been created. I carefully stated that so not to point fingers.

     

     You know the old saying about social landscape, " First they came for the Jews and we did nothing, then they came for the..." - okay, we must deconstruct that too.

First things first, doesn't mean that second things don't matter, or third, forths and so on; they do. All numbers have the same value, none are above others, except for Zero, which I will not apologize for saying since I'm more afraid of Zero than I am of all of you, combined. Zero is a number you disrespect at your own peril; it behaves as damn well it feels like and doesn't care if you like it. It will defend itself violently and unapologetically. Zero cannot be cancelled out. 

     First things first was simply an expression I used to delineate the order in which I was about to address my sensitivity blunder. The word I used, came, was the past tense of the verb come which I now realize has been cancelled and is no longer allowed unless one has special permission to use it. 

     I confess that it was only after I checked the long list of words we can no longer use that I noticed; there it was, right next to went related to the verb go  which is allowed, carefully, and never in association with the word down which again, can be perceived as a micro- aggression or toxic masculinity.

     Down, should be avoided whenever possible, since we wouldn't want to upset anyone by reminding them of how hard life can be at times. The use of the word can trigger sadness which is no longer allowed. Hence our glorification of celebrities, actors, movie stars, in talk shows and their  press junkets where everyone is so damn Happy!!! 

     That being cleared up ( not a micro-aggression towards teenagers with pimples, which now can be cured scientifically by a 5 days fast and a ketogenic regimen.) 

Where was I? Oh, yes. The Jews. Always the Jews. When I said, First they came for the jews... it was not my intent to place them before any other group, blacks, indians, women, Argentines, gays, whichever pronoun of the day, is in vogue now.

     Before I wonder too far from the last period let me state unequivocally that whichever pronoun of the day, was not used to poke fun of gender neutral individuals. It was a sincere confession of someone unsure of the proper term.

     Perhaps this is as good moment as any to mention that I grew up in the theatrical community, surrounded by gay - the term surrounded was not used to express 😨

I was just saying that there was lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of them.

Geraldinho, my mentor, teacher, friend, was gay and I love him as much as I loved regular people.

     I also had a very good friend who was black; today he's African Brazilian.

     Which brings me to the word period used to suggest a grammatical punctuation and not as an allusion to the time of the month women bleed to clean their reproduction system; which the Supreme Court is now ruling whether or not to allow since bleeding girls scare the little boys.

     My explanation of menstruation is according to science, and it meant no disrespect towards any religion since it is a fact that God has the power to, with or without 🩸 decide whether or not a woman can bare a child.

     And please, I'm not suggesting God can impregnate women and I'm not being passive agressive saying that to allude to priests and nuns and young children; men of the cloth have been persecuted enough.

And priests are my cue.

     I will hide away now, from everyone, my family, my children, my neighbors. I will hide and avoid anyone whose unable to face their own 👿 and need others to to ascribe injuries, personal offences in order to negate their own faults and cowardice; their own actions forgotten while they conveniently cancel others.

     I will hide in anger for not using the sword I had always possessed to protect myself; in shame for my own shortcomings; I will hide as humans once did, to regroup before the cancellation era began.

     I will hide from all of you, perfect human beings, over exposed in your social media accounts where all is elegant, beautiful, righteous, and as pristine as Lake Karachay.

Bumble Bee

🐝🐝🐝 🐝 

Instagram

www.instagram.com/marco.aurelio.1128

🐝🐝🐝 🐝

Castles Within

 I’m alone; an alone animal roaming a Covid infested world. My fellow man, although forced to stay home didn’t miss a beat, full speed ahead: angry, selfish, entitled. To what, I ask? To everything. Their space, your space, my space; space itself as they lounge upwards, bored with the mess they made of things down here.

I lounge forward too; searching for myself in memories and places within; for pockets of light I hid, from demons I encountered along the way; demons that gorge on light. Your light, my light, the light of the world itself. With the little light left in me I rebuild an entire world, because my nature demands that of me; it refuses to die. 

Dying is easy, but living it’s not hard as the canto goes; just tricky…

L.A. nights

DISCLAIMER

This is an assignment on the issue of homelessness in the city of Los Angeles. I have a few questions; and felt the need to verify the accepted sentiment that the problem is related to mental illness and drug use. Three days into this assignment and a third road keeps inviting me to a new direction.  I have taken that road. 

I am not a journalist; I am a writer. There will be no unbiased reporting, only the truth of what I see and how it affects me as well as the questions that arise. I don't, for a second, think that I will arrive at a complete understanding of why a child that was once waited for and loved by someone now lies forgotten in the city of Los Angeles. The city of angels.

I could plan this, organize it, and then post it; but decided instead to post each day and invite you along to what I see and learn, and feel.

                                              

Mother

I was by the sea

When I realized

That sadness would always be.

The memory of my mother

Just too vast to forget

It sips into me, and me and me...

I practice many religions:

meditation, visualization, exercise,

Journaling, writing...

But mother is always there

She does not die; today

Or any other day.

And whatelse is there

Besides living with her within me?

A Breeze

 

Love Affair

I remember you,

even when you are,

nothing but a feeling.

I remember you,

even when all there is,

is hints of us.

Somewhere in time,

a feeling o despair, loneliness, nostalghia.

A feeling of a loss

of something,

that was never ours:

to possess, to claim

to forever long for.

In all my memories

of you

is the present that never was

a long for what we never became;

as if we exist somewhere 

and I alone remember 

each moment of it.

Your life moves forward 

and I can’t tell whether or not,

you miss me, think of me,

even once remember my existence.

I long for what you represent:

a family,

companionship,

complicity.

All that never was; 

and isn’t that,

the ripped fabric of a lost affair?

❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ 

The Edge of Self

When one thinks of writing, one thinks of a person sitting alone and making things up, while the reality of it is that it’s in the real world that we manage to connect to the things we care about or the things we don’t necessarily care about and must one way or the other express those parameters to ourselves.

 The connection one has with a reader is the purest connection, since it is the reader acknowledging that he too feels the same way about: our place in the universe, our day to day, the conditions of the life around us and how we can’t seem to fit in anymore.

When you don’t fit in anymore is only because you outgrew your position, you outgrew the place you once felt comfortable in and you are growing, expanding, moving on to new things. There is no point in fighting this because not moving forward, even though you are afraid or worse, nostalgic, is a mistake and it will lead to mental health issues. 

As you walk forward in your life, it seems, every once in a while you come to the edge of yourself and you can no longer remain in stasis, you must cross the threshold of yourself and find something anew, something you didn’t even know you cold be.

RED LIGHT of the dead.

 I sat next to them on a red light; busy with their phones, all of them; frantically trying to send out their smoke signals, to whomever. I watched them, one by one, trying to determine what we had in common, and it came to me: a moment. We will never meet again and the very next moment we’ll share will be when we die. Yet, with so much on the line, none of them showed any interest in each other, their world safely downsized to their small devices.

We don’t share death anyway; we don’t face it, we don’t accept it; these are linguistic psychological tools the living use to soothe themselves. Ironic, since death will be the most soothing state our bodies will ever be in. Death will take us all and one hundred years from now, on the corner of LaBrea and whatever that other street is, new people will be there waiting for a green light, typing away on their phones.

It occurred to me that technology might be advanced enough that they won’t need to type at all; perhaps they will all have a chip on their heads which will allow them to communicate to whoever, at will. 

On the few minutes that it will take for that light to turn green what will remain the same is our aptitude to create ingenious ways to allow us to do the same things over and over again until the end.

🚘🏍🛴🚲✈️⛵️