IN MEMORIAM: NYSNA Nurse RENEE FRENCH - click on photo to donate.
An unforgettable human being; one of the nicest person I've ever met.
Renee French in Coffee and Cigarettes (dir. Jim Jarmusch)
( click on photo to donate to the family )
Showing posts with label Love Letters to the Past. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Love Letters to the Past. Show all posts
Sunday, June 7, 2020
Renée
Monday, June 1, 2020
|Part 4| The Silent Worldwide Pandemic - We the People.
"Imagine all the people, sharing all the world." John Lennon and Yoko Ono
(A Tribute to All Medical Personnel)
PART FOUR
The Silent Worldwide Pandemic - We the People.
Alone, human beings are not islands, we are viruses. We don’t belong, we don’t have common goals, even when it appears we do. Humans can be alone in groups, distancing themselves from others considered less than: wrong color, wrong clothes, wrong sex, wrong social class, wrong God. A virus kills its host, yet, it doesn’t plan to do so, it serves a genetic code and it is quite beautiful, if you take the time to study it. It won’t stop until it reaches the top of the hill, and when the rock rolls down to the bottom of the hill, a virus will pick up where it left off, unrelenting, e.g. republicans using the worldwide pandemic to ban abortions, therefore circumventing the Supreme Court decision guaranteeing women those rights; democrats absurd position on late term abortions. Both groups pushing their rocks uphill no matter what; reasoning be damned.
Our constitution crafted by prejudices, paranoia, greed and the fear of death; fallacies, the cornerstone of our civil discord.
Once the medical community has the Coronavirus under control, we will engage in a new fight, against the pandemic of false prophets and politicians; and our new orders will be GO OUT & SOCIALIZE...
..............................
SOMEWHERE OVER THE PANDEMIC,
the skies are blue; or perpetually gray if you live in London, yellow-reddish in Morocco, and in Sao Paulo and Beijing, you can’t see the sky at all. Yes, we still have things we need to fix; but we are on our way. Considering that we have not only survived the Pandemic of 1918, but thrived after that, it was a matter of time, patience and diligence to adapt to the whims of nature during the 2020 pandemic.
We have learned a few things these past few years; humans want to conquer, but nature teaches us that our only choice is to assimilate and adapt. These days, we are a bit more humble, appreciative of others. Some of our habits have permanently changed, and we do not bat an eye seeing anyone wearing a mask in public. The masks are manufactured in different colors to announce to everyone whether you have a cold, flu or the coronavirus, and at what stage of the cycle you are. It is uncommon to see anyone traveling by subways, or by plane not wearing a mask.
For all of us, 2020 will mark the time where everything changed; family members, friends, acquaintances we met while traveling in Europe and Asia, in the years before the pandemic, now forever gone. It won’t be the year we had to stay inside the houses, it will be remembered as a shift in our collective consciousness.
After the pandemic, it became very clear to us that we could no longer rely on religion leaders and politicians. A movement began to take shape around the beginning of 2021 and we went from quarantining together for survival to planning a future where little by little, the government began losing its grip in our lives. The same way that the medical community rallied together worldwide to save people’s lives, we came together and seriously addressed the two main reasons for our distrust in one another: politicians and false prophets, a.k.a religious leaders. Put it bluntly, we no longer need leaders, we need each other.
Back in 2020, politicians were simple to figure out, although no less a terrifying bunch; meeting one meant that you had just met a person trying to determine how you could help him achieve his goals. Their proposition was simple: we are part of a group, and we need something; there is a group over there that has it and doesn't want to share with us; there is another group that doesn’t have it and are after what we have. Elect me, and I assure you that you will have what you want and together we will protect what is ours.
Read that again to see how stupid that idea is, and yet millions of people gobbled that up like a Thanksgiving turkey. I never liked politicians; every time I heard one speaking, the same thought crossed my mind: I need a bigger spoon for the bullshit you’re selling.
The pandemic of 2020 was a necessary evil, for we finally saw politicians' genetic code in a different light. When the medical community asked you geographic questions, they were trying to determine what kind of diseases you might have been exposed to, in order to save your life. They take their hippocratic oath seriously. When politicians asked you your race, they were trying to determine your costumes, so that they can determine your intolerances, so that they can find a group you might have an issue with, in order for them to cast themselves as the solution, to a problem you didn’t have in the first place; therefore advancing their agenda.
The year 2020 was the year we finally understood that politicians invaded our communities like viruses invaded our cells and changed it from within. So now we have shortened their terms in office, we hold them accountable and vote them out of office at lightning speed when they are self-serving. The reforms we passed within five years of the 2020 pandemic put an end to their manipulations; now they are servants, their salaries are fixed, and consequently, there are fewer of them. We vote them out swiftly the moment they don’t serve the community interest.
Our relationship with religion is a bit more complicated because they have parts of it right; it is only when we see ourselves as whole, a worldwide community, that we have the chance to grow a healthy society and guarantee the survival of our species. It is when religious leaders sell life beyond this one that things begin to get fuzzy. Pulling on the strings of our fear of dying; like viruses, they invaded our subconscious mind and divided us in groups, and demanded that we act according to their beliefs and dogmas. In that environment, our customs will clash, the clothes we wear will clash and the Gods we pray too will always have something to say about the other Gods. I’ve yet to find a single inclusive God in the history of mankind.
Foregoing religion and embracing a loving God for all, as well as respecting and accepting each other's faiths was the best decision we made as a species. We kept all of our traditional rituals for their beauty and now it is not uncommon for people to join each other’s religious ceremonies in celebration of God and the life given to us. I go to churches, synagogues, temples in communion with others and when I close my eyes, I see my grandmother, grandfather, my mother and I visit a girl I love when I was 9 years old.
By the year 2025, the world opened up to us like a cell. Without politics and religion dividing us, we took to traveling everywhere, meeting new people, eating their food and listening to their music, participating in religious ceremonies of others and praying to their Gods; as well as ours. It is estimated that 4.5 billion people were outside of their native country every single day in a single calendar year. Our new mantra became GO OUT & SOCIALIZE.
The first country I visited was Yemen, a land that has fascinated me from the time I saw the first picture of their mountains. Shaharah, with its geometric shapes carved right off the mountains, and its spectacular 17th century footbridge that join villages and span across mountains defying gravity, held together only by the grace of mathematics. The Bridge of Sighs, how is known, stood before me like a reminder: that I’m alive, that life is short, that I ought to be listening to a song. Stairway to Heaven immediately came to mind but before I knew Smokey Robinson was singing My Girl. I stood there thinking: “I've got all the riches baby one man can claim/oh yes I do.”
I visited Shibam; its anil colored skies met by green at the horizon, and land carried to the forefront of our mind by its beige pastel tones. Buildings made of mud and earthy tone turned orange by a sleepy sun. You can see its colors on the painting “Three Reds” by Brennie Brackett, another place I travel to in meditation.
Unbeknownst to the painter, I lifted the vase and replaced the white cloth with one of my grandmother's embroidered work. I can still see her sitting there, mid afternoon, quietly embroidering. My grandmother was peace itself.
Shibam, under the light of a retrieving sun, is an unforgettable site. The Yemeni women heading to pray and giving thanks to a new life, dressed by their own choice in my favorite color,
black
like arrows that
fell from the sky;
their voices like songs
in flight
forever kept in my heart
And mind.
Henry, my goodfellow, forever standing by my side. Come, let us visit the Sufi monasteries and sit down for some coffee, while we make our way to Mecca, Cairo, Istanbul, Egypt..The coffee trail.
After religion and politics were put aside, we had to figure out a way to come to terms with our differences, and we did; we simply agreed that we believed in different things. Yes, I disregarded the complexity of the human condition, it was prejudicial to a solution. Imagine a world where we can be free of the voices in our head, the tantalizing voices telling us that all the problems are derived from other people. If other people behave the way we want all will be fine, “I have the right way. I am certain it would be best for everyone,” thinks each single person.
A virus has a single program once infects someone: invades the cell, changes it, multiplies itself. Unless it is killed or it kills the host, will continue with its course of action without deviations.
I know that we are not viruses, but I am sure that sometimes we behave as one without knowing, think of a kid | Part 3 | falling in love with someone and walking away from that person not knowing why for almost 35 years. So we might as well commit to one single action everyone would follow. Each religion and every religion is right, if God wants someone killed he knows how to do it himself. Our agreement is that, for the 100 years we each spend on this earth we will not hurt each other. If God decides to punish all of us when we die, so be it. God will judge us all in the end.
Out of all the people in the world, if the religious people are right, there will be no forgiveness for the people with no faith, the atheists. I am willing to take this chance if everyone just put their god damn guns on the ground; break some bread, some coffee. I will even drink tea if that's what it takes.
It took me long to post this. I read it over and over again, and the only note the key on my piano played loudly and repeatedly was:
the human condition, the human condition, the human condition
I thought about asking God except that I don’t believe He exists; so I went to see a girl I love when I was 9 years old. I sat there for the longest time. She caught me staring: “ Eyes on the blackboard, mister.” she gestured to me and I did what she told me to do. I always listened to every word she said. Tia Zelia was enumerating the responses available to us; she wrote the number 2 on the blackboard, corresponding to the second answer. Karla Maria got my attention again. The light coming from the window, bouncing off her hair was mesmerizing. The number 2. Light. Particles. Traveling. A 9 year old child. Love.
God, how does all of this fit together?
the human condition, the human condition, the human condition
It is ludicrous to think of a simple agreement that would allow us to share this world in peace and cooperation,
the human condition, the human condition, the human condition
It is naive to think of a simple agreement that would allow us to share this world in peace and cooperation,
the human condition, the human condition, the human condition
I looked at Karla again, smiling at something, and everything slowed down to flow. I thought about Newton and the time he forgot to listen to his inner child and mistook love with an ether; until a little boy came along following a beam of light, in possession only of a child's imagination and a few numbers and letters. E=mc ²
The pundits looked at his clothes, his social status, his jewish heritage, looking for a way to dismiss the imaginative simplicity of his idea. Mathematics is not dissuaded by politics, religion or the human condition; it sustains its truths and holds our material universe in place, unimpressed by the egoic monuments we create to ourselves.
I thought of Esperanto, the most beautiful and simple idea of an universal language and yet, no one has accepted. I know precisely why. We like ourselves the way we are: we like our heritage, our culture and the way our name sounds when it's called by someone who loves and accepts us. We like our music, bread and butter, coffee, tea. We like what we like, and the only way all of this works is by accepting and sharing.
Our name is the first note we hear from our mothers and fathers and that becomes our music. The soundtrack that codes our life programming.
The experiences we have make us unique, and it represents the particular place we come from. You wouldn't think of building a house in California with the same materials they use in Niterói. You wouldn’t think of never hearing the italian idiom again, or french or never again seeing the majestic Arabic script on white paper; how could we ever replace any of that with Esperanto.
We are different. We like different things. We believe in different Gods. Or no Gods at all. Let us agree to that and share our beliefs in communion.
While you read this, millions of doctors around the world are out there risking their lives to save our loved ones. They don’t see color, creed, or death itself. They are risking the only lives they have because their piano key plays one simple note over and over and over…
the hippocratic oath the hippocratic oath the hippocratic oath
Three words. One simple idea. One agreement. Enough to make doctors, nurses and staff risk their only existence for us. Worldwide. As my beloved Renee did.
IN MEMORIAM: NYSNA Nurse RENEE FRENCH - click on photo to donate.
An unforgettable human being; one of the nicest person I've ever met.
|Part 3| A Love Letter to the 9 Year Old Girl I Love: The Ties that Bind
| November 28th, 1969 |
(A Tribute to All Medical Personnel and Staff)
PART THREE
I am sitting in my grandmother’s backyard, thinking: about you, my inexistent mother, my grandfather, about myself. I hold within me the entire knowledge of my past and so much future, that I sit here trying to find a way to help this 9 year old understand that there is plenty of life ahead. I head inside and look at my grandmother, she is boiling milk; I feel the love inside overtaking me, I tiptoe out of there and I take off to school to see you...
On the way to the front door I see my grandfather, sitting there listening to his radio. Radio theater, about a woman who is killed and comes back from the grave to take someone's soul; it is scary. I watch my grandfather sitting here, quiet, and wonder what he’s thinking about. He is like you, Karla, always distant, alway thinking and eating chocolate, not my grandfather, you, my grandfather eats malagueta pepper. Hey, what do you know, a second memory.
I am standing now, marveled, to the left side of his table, my grandfather sits on the head of the table, the right side of it, and he has a plate in front of him now. He reaches inside…; I can't see where he’s taking them from but I can see them crystal clear; huge, red and scary. “Never put this in your mouth” my grandmother says. He takes his fork and squishes all the malagueta pepper on his plate while my grandmother gives him beans, black beans, which he mixes onto the pepper. He is eating and sweating. I am standing a foot away from him watching, “ Whatcha you doing there, Grandpa?”
Now I am standing in the sitting room. I think I know what my grandfather thinks about all the time, "Why in the world do I do that to myself? Now, if I can only figure it out what you, Karla, think, sitting there eating the “round chocolate” you brought from Niterói.
When death is around my mind scatters.
I walk around Rio de Janeiro with a girl I met at a party. I am about 19 years old. We have been talking from the moment we met, and I feel amazing. She likes Chico Buarque, she loves Dante, actually read Divine Comedy twice, and we have just spent the entire night talking about it. She plays the oboe. I sing her a song I wrote. It is dawn and we walk around the Rio de Janeiro's shoreline.
As a bit of cold air blows from the ocean, we talk about Quixote now and laugh at his insanities. Earlier in the evening I told her about my mother, how she gave birth to me, and how all the adults in her life put her in a mental institution and went on living their lives. Like the people in the pandemic, she died in that hospital many many many many years later. As if to torture me, once a year they would bring me to the mental hospital to visit her, and each year there was less and less of my mother and less and less of me inside. On the drive back, I listened quietly, as they patted themselves on the back for having taken the time to visit her.
Once, when I was around 20 years old, I had a nervous breakdown on the drive back, my father’s neighbors had taken me to see my mother. I was sweating, freezing, in the middle of summer, and all the windows were closed. Air conditioner blowing cold air. I couldn’t breathe. After they met with my father, it was decided that I was having an issue accepting the fact that I was going bald. My father sat me down for a lecture and I sat listening, aware of the futility of trying to explain anything to a man I didn’t know. Albert Camus was right. I tried to kill myself a couple months later; and when I survived, I walked away from God and his promises once an for all and I decided to live; and leave Brazil. I arrived in New York City when I was 21 years old. I could not have gotten out of Brazil soon enough.
I carry one memory of my mother, two actually, and I have tried shooting one of them with three actresses now, unsuccessfully. The director of photography couldn’t get the light right, I couldn't find a beat, and the AD kept nagging me trying to determine how important that scene was to my narrative.
When my mother was admitted, my dad went around looking for a place to put his twin sons. After we lived with a couple of people, before the age of six months, my grandmother put her foot down and we lived with her until I was 11 years old. My father lived an hour away and we saw him once a year, on Christmas. A few Christmases, he never came, but he sent a nice letter; he had beautiful penmanship. He was proud of it.
I look at the girl now. She has black hair, the most beautiful green eyes and she does not look away when I look at her. I kissed her hours ago so now there is only talking on my mind. I am listening to her explaining Camus to me. She can’t believe I haven’t read Camus and she is laughing hard now because I mistook Albert Camus for my favorite Portuguese poet Luís Vaz de Camões. “Not Camões, you dope. Camus" and she laughs some more.
The moment the words come out of her mouth I remember my grandmother who beat me without ever putting her love aside. She said that in a warm tone of complicity, empathy and familiarity. This girl is pulling on all the right strings. The sun is about to rise and we sit to watch; this is going to be spectacular. We kiss again and watch the sunrise. We sit for the longest time, watching the sun rise in one of the most beautiful views anywhere in the world, Rio de Janeiro, a cidade maravilhosa. She asks me if I can take her home and I, “well, what do you think I said?”
We walk to the boat she must take to make it home. We sit in a place I don't quite remember, waiting for the boat. She lives on an island. I like her, it is obvious she likes me and we make the cross together to her town. We barely speak. We arrive on the other side and wait for everyone else to exit; and as we walk towards the ramp I pull her aside, and tell her goodbye.
I am as surprised about that as she is. She sells me on the walk to her house, a little coffee place where we can sit and talk some more; the conversation turns into an interrogation on whether or not she did something wrong. She is concerned she might have said something that offended me and I tell her that I really enjoyed meeting her but I must go.
I don’t have rhyme or reason but every single part of my being wants to turn around and go back to Rio de Janeiro. I see her standing there on dry land, in the city of Niterói, and I float towards Rio de Janeiro feeling empty inside. Many years later, during the Pandemic of 2020, I came to realize that, apparently, unbeknownst to me, I had made myself a promise never to step foot in Niterói and I was not about to break that promise for someone I just met. This time, I float around unable to understand what just happened. I like her, we spent the night talking. I feel disconnected from myself, as if a link inside of me is missing, a link that would explain why I walked away from a beautiful, nice, well-read girl that I obviously like. I come out empty. I feel empty. I never saw that girl again.
I am standing next to my grandfather, he’s listening to his radio. He doesn’t see me, I am a bystander in his time zone. I think about hugging him for the first time ever, but I don’t. Can't say why.
The links that don’t bind.
the Grand Canyons in our mind, that
swallow traumas whole; deep inside.
I arrive in school, except that I am not in school, I'm behind Marcelo’s house being led to a table where you sit, Karla, with Christiane and some out of focus people. We look at each other. You are playing a word game where you have to name different things with a particular letter, I listen to you…
Cor: preto. Animal: pato.
The links that bind
to erroneous sights
to places where we are
empty inside, but refuse to die.
Albert is right, “There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that…”
I sit in our classroom, Tia Zelia is here as always, but this time I can’t stay. I can’t have you see me. There is something horrifying coming and you must pay attention in class. “I’ll be back.”
-----------------End of PART THREE ---------------
|Part 2| A Love Letter to the 9 Year Old Girl I Love: Afonso Arinos
Reality is indeed stranger than fiction, the 9 year old girl I love grew up to save the world.
| I’m easy to spot; I am the writer-director who didn't care about the frame, the camera, or anything else when she was around. Karla is the one glowing. |
(A Tribute to All Medical Personnel and Staff)
PART TWO
I couldn’t help myself from loving you, I looked up one day and there you were. I can’t quite explain the beginning of love, it’s unlike anything else; it is not a creation, it’s a force that already exists somewhere, unencumbered by any other forces, except for the very existence of the person you love; and how it enhances all your senses: the river, the birds, the music your mother played for the entire city through the catholic church speakers, the April floods, the jabuticabeiras, the quick rain that broke through the clouds on a bright sunny day, and made me look up to your house wondering if you were outside playing in it.
The narrative of your life would be precise, direct, starting and arriving to the right place and time where you would meet Fernando. I wonder if he knew the moment he met you that his life would never be the same. I only knew that I loved you with all my heart until I left Afonso Arinos when I was 11 years old and never looked back. I kept one scene of our narrative and watched it over and over throughout the years. You, Karla, my mother, my grandfather are saved in my heart in one powerful scene.
There was always something distant about you, even when you gave me your full attention; but love is such a powerful force that it didn’t matter much. Every school vacation you went to the city of Niterói, near Rio de Janeiro, and I stayed alone in Afonso Arinos waiting for you to return: writing poems, stories and getting into trouble.The very next morning after you left for school vacation felt like the day after a movie shoot ends, or the end of play rehearsal. I felt a tremendous void gaping inside me, and I kept it at bay by avoiding the front of my house, with the perfect view of your empty house atop the hill.
I would wake up and sit at my grandmother’s backyard for hours, thinking; about you, my inexistent mother, one and the same, a void that my 9 year old heart couldn’t take, a pain that my soul filed away unexplained.
Eventually, thinking became waiting; waiting for grandma to get busy, so that I could walk to the riverbank, climb into my neighbor’s canoe and row it up stream. I was 9 years old and unable to swim, but poets risk their lives to feel alive and deny death; there is no courage in it, it’s a selfish act.
I used a long bamboo to row up stream, passing under the railroad bridge and carrying my grandfather’s transistor radio; turned off. I would listen to the calming sound of the water hitting the canoe on the way up, and as I stopped rowing, the canoe would slow down almost immediately, and gently begin to turn, and turn, and turn, until it faced downstream. Only then I would turn the radio on to Radio Mundial and lay my head against the second seat, enjoying the gentle flow downstream.
( The Black river viewed from the railroad bridge, with the cemetery in the distance; my grandparents resting place )
From the canoe that far upstream, I could only see the cemetery, then the church, the elementary school; your house would come as a cinematic reveal, but knowing that you were not there, only revealed how empty I felt when you were not around. I tried not thinking of you, there were plenty of trouble I could get into before you returned. I closed my eyes and listened to the music while flowing downstream; the current was gentle and it would be a while until I floated passed my grandmother’s house. There are no words to describe how much I love that woman, but seeing her standing at the riverbank was always a bummer.
Most of the time she couldn’t do a thing, she was old, diabetic and if she knew how to swim she never showed. I knew I was in for a beating the moment I got home and I remember clearly thinking, “If you are going to get a beating anyway you might as well enjoy this,” so I lay back down, close my eyes and listened to Jeff Barry’s “Sugar, Sugar” or whatever else was playing. I would float down as far as the soccer field, a good 10 houses away from my grandmother’s house, until the influence of Hollywood movies would intervene and end my adventure.
The comedic genius Jerry Lewis wrote a book that every single person interested in filmmaking should read, The Total Filmmaker; in it he describes the “Dingaling,” a person on the set who has a constant need to show off his ability , speed and skill. “There is one in every crew,” he said. What Mr. Lewis couldn’t have known is that Afonso Arinos had its own Dingaling, and it was fascinating watching him.
By the time I got to the soccer field, the news of my adventures had hit half the population of Afonso Arinos, after all, we only had around 50 houses. Dingaling never missed an opportunity to impress his elders; I watched as he climbed the tree near the soccer field, took his shirt off and hang it on a branch; then took a dive that would have made Tarzan’s Johnny Weissmuller green with envy. He would swim to me very quickly and climb aboard and lecture me all the way upstream to my grandmother’s house. I couldn’t hear a single word Dingaling was saying, all that I could think of was, “ what’s your problem?” and why did you leave your shirt behind, it will be a long walk back to that tree.
I remember once, on a whim, having the idea of asking him to let me row , and he did. He stood on that canoe as if I was a damn prey he just caught; I could see some of the neighbors standing on the riverbank yelling at me, “You are going to kill your grandmother,” they would say. Dingaling would complain about how slow we were going and I’d suggest to him changing the station; and to my surprise, it always worked. I would be rowing and rowing and rowing upstream, the neighbors would be yelling and he would be there, standing in the middle of that canoe, trying to find a good song. Thank God we didn’t have an iPod then, that transistor radio got Dingaling very entertained. Thanks to Dingaling, I never missed a beating.
Using the word beating to describe my grandmother's punishment is a bit of a stretch, I don’t even know why she bothered, quite honestly. For starters, she would ask me to go to the bamboo trees and get her a thin bamboo that grew on the edge of the river. I stood watching as she took a knife and began sharpening it, “ Whatcha you’re doing there, grandma?” After she was done sharpening the already thin bamboo, she would hold my arm and explain to me what I did wrong, and why I should never do that again, and she would hit me with her device on my leg a few times. You can experience the same feeling by giving yourself a long paper cut on your thigh and rubbing salt on it.
I learned that valuable lesson the first time around, and the very next time she asked me to get the bamboo, I went to get it and never returned. I enjoyed my day climbing trees, eating mangos harvested from one of the six trees we had in our orchid and by the time I came back home, mid afternoon, she had completely forgotten that I needed a beating. Strangely enough, I never felt unloved by that woman. It would be years after her death, Karla, that I would come to realize that she felt about me the same way I felt about you.
My grandfather is like you, a single memory that I play over and over in my mind. He sat with his elbows rested on a pillow, which he placed on the table, next to his transistor radio. I don’t have a single memory of him otherwise; not walking, not standing, not even speaking, but I remember pride in his eyes and his smile when I sat next to him. I would be playing outside and hear a song I liked, and I would run inside no matter what I was doing. I would sit on the chair to the right of the table, or maybe I stood, can’t quite place that memory, but I never forgot his gentle smile at me and I never forgot his eyes. Fellini was right: face and eyes, it betrays the most private of souls. In his eyes I saw love, pride, as if he had written the songs himself and was glad that I was enjoying it.
My grandfather sat on that chair day in and day out until the day he was no longer there. I don’t remember his funeral, I don’t remember him dying, I don’t remember the house filled with crying people, and yet I know that it had to have taken place. My grandparents had 9 children and when you add the grandchildren, there had to be a day when everyone came to mourn his loss. He is my eternal connection to Italy, to Dante, to you, Karla.
I have plenty of memories of my grandmother, but losing my grandfather was obviously a major event, one that I completely erased from my mind. Perhaps, learning to block the painful memories of his death helped me in dealing with walking away from you at 11 years old. The same overall feeling permeates both moments; one day you were there and the next you were one single scene I could recall for comfort. My grandfather’s death and my mother’s absence taught me that there are things in this world that are absolute, things that remain unchanged no matter how much you wish it to be otherwise. Death changes everything permanently but pain lingers in your heart and soul like Madame Curie’s little sparkly rocks; its half-life a slow lifetime decay.
As I again look at the coronavirus death toll rising, I feel useless, yes, there are things I am doing to help, but it is not enough. It doesn’t feel enough. I am, and have always been a human being that suffers his condition, acknowledges his place in the world, however irrelevant, unable to take things in stride, but one hundred percent committed in being truthful to who I am, and changing what I don't like. Perhaps it is one of the reasons that I have never taken a selfie, taking pictures of myself and things to show others is silly any day of the week, but now, with the bodies piling up around the world is unthinkable. I look at my library, almost 3,000 books and I lack any practical skills that can be useful at this time, and yet I know that the only way this will end, it is if people stay home. Period. Every person that sits at home is one less person your community has to treat.
During this crisis, all I have around me are more questions; death has the power to concentrate the mind. I took a trip around the worldwide web and came to realize two things: either I am the only person in the world afraid of dying or people are already living in a virtual reality. Pictures of people enjoying their day, playing volleyball, enjoying themselves is everywhere. People out with friends buying beer and partying, footage of the president of Brazil cleaning his nose with his hand and then shaking people's hand in the crowd. I think of the many people suffering, disappearing into a hospital to never returned, dying alone and being buried in unmarked graves because there is no space nor time for a proper burial. I think of the people who leave their homes and whose job is to bury other human beings. One thousand a day.
We are not on a worldwide vacation. This matters. The lives lost matters. More than staying home to curtail the spread of the disease, is our responsibility to mourn the dead and we do this by being humble and introspective. It might be why I despise politicians so much, masters of well rehearsed lines to fit any circumstance, meaningless quotations unattached to their soul. If you are going on with your day unafraid of dying, trying not to feel too bad, whatever you say for public consumption invalidates all your words of appreciation for the medical community. The medical community's courage is directly related to your fear of dying and understanding of the danger you face; there is one truth they are certain of, the more patients they see, the more are the chances they will catch the virus and perhaps die from it.
There are times in our existence that feeling horrified, sad, unhopeful is a sign of our humanity; not a weakness as many politicians want us to believe. The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, last week, pulled on Texan's pride string to send them out there, back to work, “Texans are proud people. They like working” said the governor. Your excellency, they need to be alive to be able to work. Carefully study the second wave of contamination in China, that is why Texans voted you in. This week was time for his offspring, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, to suggest on national television that, “ lots of grandparents out there are willing to risk their lives to save the economy." This sentiment is echoed by many politicians but yet, I would give all the money I have to see my grandmother and grandfather again. Compassion and empathy make us humans. I was born in Brazil and we don't “swim in sewer water” as the President of Brazil suggested for worldwide consumption, and we are certainly not immune to diseases. Even Jesus Christ, whom these people profess to follow, washed people’s feet to show love, compassion, friendship and empathy. These feelings make us humans.
I am afraid of dying. I am aware of how dangerous this virus is; just try watching everything you touch for one hour and the danger becomes clear. I have two children that still depend on me and I still have things I want to do; life is a precious commodity I want to keep. I refuse to keep the appearance of normal. There is nothing normal about thousands of people dying a day, and when we are out there posting insignificant pictures in our social display of hypocrisy, we give the politicians a signal that we would be willing to let our parents die to “save the economy.” When we don't display our sorrow for the loss of lives, we give politicians the idea that we might be okay to the possibility that some in our society can be "sacrificed."
Never once in my lifetime I gave a second thought about the people whose job it is to bury other people, and now they are all that I can think about. A horrific job. The courage these people are displaying is remarkable. I sit home, afraid of dying. Our medical community and staff risk their lives to save others. Many of these people now pleading to the government for more masks and protective gears, and it is hard to believe they are being heard. When politicians are out there suggesting that grandparents are expendable, anything that comes out of their mouth in support of the medical community is just another display of their demagogy and hypocrisy.
I have time on my hands and death in my mind.
I also have the understanding that there are times in our narratives that feeling sorrow, sadness, empathy is how we relate to each other as human beings. It is how we show other people, in far away places that we are sorry for their loss, and that we share their grief. In the end, it is love that will carry us through: love of being alive, for another, for a child, for your parents and grandparents, or the unforgettable memories of a girl you loved when you were 9 years old.
A bit of humility before the fragility of life and our powerlessness before nature would also help. That is why we pray, for ourselves and others. If there was ever a moment for a prayer. I am an atheist, and I've learned that much.
-----------------End of PART TWO ------------
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