Luciana´s ocean

Two Ways

2011-12-04T22:05:00.002-02:00

"Two Ways" is my most recent Storybird for ages 4-6 :

http://storybird.com/books/two-ways/

Hope you enjoy it!

On Girls and Books

2011-09-13T21:14:00.003-03:00

New post at

http://lucianasocean.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/on-girls-and-books/

Independence day

2011-09-07T16:51:00.000-03:00

New post at

http://lucianasocean.wordpress.com/2011/09/07/independence-day/

To Father, with Love

2011-08-14T20:15:00.002-03:00

http://lucianasocean.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/to-father-with-love/

The Old House We Were Born Into

2011-06-12T22:27:00.000-03:00

New post at

http://lucianasocean.wordpress.com/

On Stereotypes et al

2011-06-11T16:08:00.001-03:00

New post at

http://lucianasocean.wordpress.com/

Moving

2011-05-14T20:44:00.000-03:00

Due to problems in Blogger in the last few days, I decided it´s time I moved to another host. I´ll be posting in both Blogger and WordPress for a little while, before I move definitely.
Please bookmark the new address for Luciana´s Ocean :

http://lucianasocean.wordpress.com/

See you there!

Some Thoughts on Mother´s Day

2011-05-11T22:01:00.000-03:00

I open the local newspaper and there it is: the picture of a woman holding a little boy and the title “Maternal Instinct” . It´s a two page article about mother´s day with an interview with a nurse from the maternity ward in one of the local hospitals. She describes her observations of the relationship between mothers and infants in the days they spend there after delivery.

Honestly, I don´t believe in what is usually called maternal instinct. I believe we humans have survival instincts and that includes not letting our offspring die, by keeping it clean, warm, and fed. What people usually mean by maternal instinct - that every woman is a potential mother in terms of loving a child and helping her/him develop into an independent and autonomous human being - is far from being instinctive. That was actually built in society, when the need to worry exclusively about the basic survival of the young, as we, as a species, did in other times, became less pressing.

When society in the 21^st century says that every woman, by instinct, is prepared to be a mother, it is shooting itself in the foot. It is actually telling women that there´s something wrong with them if they´re childless, and they should get themselves a child in order to be happy. Also it is telling young women that motherhood doesn´t need planning, that thanks to instincts everything is going to be all right. It also tells men that they have no business in raising children, since it is a task that is performed by women, by instinct. And finally, it turns motherhood into a nightmare to some women and especially to their children, who many times are completely right when they say or imply: I didn´t ask to be born.

In a world where everything one does can be publicized, being a mother turned into something “cool” as long as you keep doing everything you were doing before you got the baby. A mother who changes her life (what would be more than expected, after all) is “uncool”. Gisele Bundchen returned to the catwalk a few months after she had her baby, with the same body as before her pregnancy, which means she´s probably eating very little and not breastfeeding. Brazilian TV Host Adriane Galisteu tells Caras magazine, referring to her pregnancy and the birth of her son, that “having been a mother was the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me”. Wait a minute. Having been? So that´s it? Pregnancy, childbirth and you´re done? And on, and on the list of celebrities goes. And what´s worse is that in a society of consumers, their behavior/image is a consumer good as much as the clothes they wear. People pay lots of money to IVF clinics for treatments that are physically as well as emotionally painful , and many times done for the wrong reasons. Quite recently ,I read about this very well-off couple from a town nearby who gave birth to triplets and decided to leave one of them for adoption in the hospital, because “ it´s just too much work”. The result is that the three babies were taken from them and are now for adoption.

Mothers are not goddesses, or saints, or even martyrs. Mothers are human beings, which means that things can go very wrong if motherhood turns out to be something they suddenly don´t want to or can´t deal with, because they´re already at a point where there´s no way back. In a 21^st century civilized world, there´s no worry about the survival of the species. In fact, there are too many people in the planet. We´re not an endangered species, which gives us some choices. And that should be respected. Women should be respected when they decide not to be mothers.

And if women do decide to be mothers, they should get support so they can enjoy the task they signed up to. Motherhood is about caring, giving and helping. It´s about saying NO, because we love so much, but also about saying YES, because we need to let go. It´s about finding inside ourselves an unselfish part of us who will be happy with being left behind. It´s about giving all the tools and telling all the secret formulas, and then getting out of the way, so our children can grow.

Being a mother is not easy, and it can be really crazy sometimes, but it shouldn´t be emotionally painful and destructive, as is the case with many families so often (dangerously often) nowadays.

Those are some ideas I have about motherhood. I´ve always wanted to be a mother; when I was a child I dreamed of having children. Because of that, I understand that it should be really hard if people don´t want it or are not sure about it, and end up having kids for reasons such as trying to fit in, or please a spouse, or even (and yes, I´ve seen that) because all their girlfriends are doing it. I´d like all women to be able and free to choose. It´d be great for the world.

2011-05-06T13:55:00.000-03:00

An Open Letter to Mr. H.C. Andersen, Author - another post at the Wooden Box, following the Fairy Tale series.

The Problem with Saints

2011-05-05T10:41:00.001-03:00

The problem with saints is that they take metaphors as facts. Also, they concentrate all their efforts in their imaginary battles.

For them, the end justifies the means and they´re never, ever, wrong.

Saints are dangerous, unpredictable beings. Although always focused on their own interests, they often use the words "freedom, God, and enemy" , and I have to agree with Neil Gaiman: sometimes it´s really hard to hang around with saints.

[These people are the talented Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman, authors of, among other songs in 8in8, The Problem with Saints]

2011-05-01T22:49:00.000-03:00

When I was growing up, my middle brother used to say that, as a newborn, I had been left at our house's doorsteps in a box, along with two baby parrots. They had chosen to keep me, he said, because they mistakenly thought I wouldn't be as noisy as the parrots...
That's my dear brother's sense of humor.
Anyway, if that were really true,and if parrots lived that long, they'd be celebrating their birthday today, with me.

2011-04-25T22:46:00.000-03:00

Of all the Catholic metaphors, I should say that Easter is the one that makes more sense to me. I do believe in death and rebirth. I don´t believe in it as a fact. I believe in symbolical death and rebirth: something has to go so that something else occupies its place. It happens in nature all the time.

I spent this Easter with the people I love most in this world, and many of them are children. Their growing up means a symbolical death to us, adults. I´m fine with it. My body feels the years go by, but my heart is reborn, again and again, in their smile.

Ana and Gabriel

Luana, Lucas and the little Analu

After Clarice, in Forgiving God

2011-04-07T22:54:00.000-03:00

No, I don´t want to embrace a rat.

I´m not ready for that.

In my selfish, so human way

I want to cry and scream and kill the rat.

I thought I could embrace the world.

But the world has rats.

And I´m not ready to share my world with a rat.

I want to embrace those twelve dead birds.

Heart stopped. Broken wings.

I know the rat was a bird once.

Sorry for him.

But when he got two guns and became a rat

He got bad, and there are birds to protect.

I just want to be human today

And in my selfish, so human way

I weep for the birds, not the rat.

- This poem came out after trying to make sense of this and this.

Keeping On With The Fairy Tale Series

2011-03-25T22:18:00.000-03:00

Another view on the story of Snow White: Snow White Man and The Seven Princesses.

2011-03-11T23:08:00.000-03:00

About one year ago, I shared my views on this whole thing of International Women Day , or International Day of Women, or Women International Day, whatever. I wrote them on this post called Woman Beings.
This year, I´d like to share this poem : The Other Princess . It´s based on Andersen´s story The Princess and the Pea. You can find the story here.

La Vie Champêtre

2011-01-17T15:28:00.000-02:00

A frequent visitor, this woodpecker has no idea my cat is keeping an eye on him.

Like I said, that woodpecker had better choose the highest trees.

Meanwhile, Dracula the lizard goes out for a stroll.

As for us, humans, we´re busy being people.

2011-01-14T13:53:00.000-02:00

My poem To Poe With Love was published at Contemporary Literary Horizon , a multicultural publication from Romania. Thanks to Keiko Amano for introducing me to the journal and its editor-in-chief, Daniel Dragomirescu, and thanks to Daniel for publishing it. I really appreciated it! You can check the work of many talented and multicultural contributors to the journal here.

2010-12-22T21:46:00.000-02:00

Old and new friends, I´ll be taking a short break from posting. I´ll be traveling to the "initial shores of my life", more precisely, the circled place in the map. Have very happy holidays, you all!

The Wives

2010-12-09T21:53:00.000-02:00

A poem inspired in the Bluebeard story, published at the Wooden Box: The Wives

You, Cat, Who Play on the Street

2010-12-09T14:17:00.000-02:00

My English version (that means all the faults are mine) of Fernando Pessoa´s poem "Gato que brincas na rua"

Cat who play on the street

As if you were in bed,

I envy your fate

Because I can´t even call it that.

Good servant of fatal laws

That rule over rocks and people,

You have general instincts

And your only feelings are what you feel.

You are happy because you´re like that,

All the nothing you are is yours

I see myself but I´m not in my own body,

I know myself but I´m not who I am.

(Gato que brincas na rua,Como se fosse na cama,Invejo a sorte que é tua,Porque nem sorte se chama. /Bom servo das leis fatais,Que regem pedras e gentes,Que tens instintos gerais,E sentes só o que sentes./És feliz porque és assim,Todo o nada que és é teu.Eu vejo-me e estou sem mim,Conheço-me e não sou eu.)

On Trees and People II

2010-11-21T16:58:00.000-02:00

A selection of photos of trees.

I took this photo to illustrate what I meant in a comment in Keiko´s blog the other day. The sidewalk goes around the tree.

This will be a Willow

This is "possessed"

This one is watching over a wheat field

And this is one of my old friends .

I´ll Tell You Something

2010-11-20T11:53:00.000-02:00

I think you´ll understand. My boy is growing. And he doesn´t want to hold my hand. [I´m proud of him!]

My son and his colleagues are performing a parody of The Beatles for their English class. They are very excited about that and insisted on taking that photo. I was their photographer. Their song is called I Want to Hold Your Head, as you can see for the photo bellow:

The Girl in the Tower

2010-11-15T15:08:00.000-02:00

A flap of wings.

An open window.

A beautiful creature inside, waiting for the black bird, ready to go.

They have been flying together for a long time now.

Appreciating each other´s company and talking about things of their different worlds.

The witch is always cursing the princes who climb the girl´s prison. She never sees the only one who flies in.

One day he alighted on her windowsill and she invited him inside.

And that´s how the Raven-Prince met The Lady of the Tower.

Funny the way things are.

People only see what they want to.

A young woman locked in a tower.

A witch who thinks she owns the girl.

She breaks the girl´s heart, she even cuts her braids.

But she´ll never, ever, suspect Rapunzel has a hidden pair of wings.

[also published at Wooden Box ]

On Trees and People

2010-11-05T18:24:00.000-02:00

This is a story I created at Storybird . It´s for children, but adults can enjoy, too: The Secret Life of Trees.

Hansel and Gretel

2010-10-25T19:25:00.000-02:00

Another post at the Wooden Box: Hansel and Gretel, You´re So Ungrateful! . Let the witch have a say...

Jack

2010-10-18T19:57:00.000-02:00

The second of a series of poems based on fairy tales, at the Wooden Box: JACK

2010-10-15T15:07:00.000-03:00

A beautiful project : Bottlenose Dolphins of the Patos Lagoon, in Southern Brazil When I see this I keep thinking of my "road not taken" many years ago, when I considered being a biologist. Oh well, too late now.

Red Hats

2010-10-12T21:34:00.000-03:00

New post at the Wooden Box: Red Hats

To Our Children

2010-10-11T11:30:00.000-03:00

October 12th is Children´s Day in Brazil. Although I don´t like those kind of celebrations (women´s day, children´s day etc) per se, I think they might be useful to make us think about and discuss ways of improving as a society. In this case, I would like that all children in Brazil had the right to be children, and therefore had responsible adults to care for them and to help them become independent when time comes. For that, parents will have to act as parents and teachers will have to act as teachers.

Children need a lot of appreciation, but they also need limits, so that they develop empathy. A big problem we face today as a society is that parents and teachers are confused about their role so, children suffer. Anxious, depressed, and sad kids are being misdiagnosed for mental disorders and treated for things they don´t have, when what they really needed was attention and care. On the other hand, children who need medical treatment are being neglected and taken as "incorrectable little monsters".

A child is a joy. A sometimes exhausting, irritating, time-consuming joy, but nonetheless a joy. Watching them grow ( be them our own or a friend´s or a family member´s ) is the most wonderful moment in the experience of being human. They take us back to our inner child and make us see life in a whole different way, because priorities change. The trust they put on us should never be broken.

Adults don´t have and shouldn´t have all the answers and children know that. What kids really want and we can certainly give them is all our love. Without "ifs" and "maybes". Unconditionally.

Despite a great loss I experienced in childhood, I remember it as a happy one. Thanks to the adults who were there for me.

TO POE,WITH LOVE

2010-09-23T16:12:00.000-03:00

New post at the Wooden Box - To Poe, with love .

Cigano

2010-09-15T20:12:00.001-03:00

"Cigano" is the word for gypsy in Portuguese.

When my first child was born, 11 years ago, on the same day, a gypsy child was born, too. My boy was big, 3.6 kg, 51 cm. The gypsy baby was a premature weighing 1 kg, the nurses told me. Nobody knew whether he would survive, and the whole family was obviously very nervous.

The next day I was in hospital, my boy was crying too much, and I was by myself at that moment. So, in spite of having undergone a c-section the day before, I decided to take the baby for a walk in the corridor. Next to my room was the gypsy family´s room.

When I passed by, with my little boy in my arms, for some reason they all came to the door. Now, everybody is suspicious of gypsyes, it seems. There is a whole folklore around them. I decided that was stupid and I was going to talk to them.

I stoped and asked how the baby was doing. There was an old woman in the back of the group and she smiled to me and said they were all praying. I told her I don´t pray, but I would certainly, with a mother´s heart, wish for the baby to make it and be healthy. She thanked me and looked at my son and wished him the best. We did some small talk and when I was going back to my room (the nurses were staring already) she held my arm and said some good fortune things like you´ll be very happy etc. Then she said thank you for talking to us, and I knew she really meant it, although I thought she had nothing to thank me for. We were two human beings, being what we´re supposed to be: human.

I don´t know whether the baby survived, and I haven´t seen that gypsy family after that, but I keep asking myself what stupid, horrible society is that we have built, that makes a human being feel so despised and isolated as to thank another for talking to her.

I´m still sad to learn that, of all countries in the world, the land of "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité", in the person of its president, has expelled human beings from the French territory for the single fact of them being gypsies.

Sad. Not surprised.

Feline Update

2010-08-28T21:09:00.000-03:00

This is the (then) tiny thing I brought home some months ago, weighing 700 gr, infested with fleas and sneezing. He´s survived an infection and is a healthy cat now. Our Perseus.

2010-08-21T12:39:00.000-03:00

My grandfather, Edmundo Carvalho Cardoso with his parents and siblings.

Here he is with my mother, his older child.

With some of his grandchildren. I´m the baby in my middle brother´s arms.

A birthday celebration. You can see me there with my arms on his shoulder.

Those Things - Part II

2010-08-21T10:49:00.000-03:00

Some years later, around eleven years old, taking advantage of my brother´s absence and, as usual, breaking into his room to snoop around, I came across an edition of Sherlock Holmes stories and started reading them one after the other. My brother lent me then his Agatha Christie collection, but my passion for Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple would come much later, in my adolescence, when, curiously, Holmes didn´t seem that perfect, after all. Another great lesson: readers are constantly mutating beings.

Talking about passions makes me recall my forbidden ones. Like the one that started the day my father got home with an edition of Papillon by Henri Charrière. I was twelve years old. For about two days the only possible way to talk to him was during meals. He was completely absorbed by that book, and I was completely fascinated by the image of my dad reading a book whose cover reminded me of a butterfly. He was absolutely unplugged from the outside world.

During another routine incursion into one of my brothers´ bedroom, I was able to locate and capture the book and, of course, read it after everyone had gone to bed. The realism and cruelty of the story really shook me up. That other one in the pages of the book showed me suffering and isolation in a way I had never seen before. I had never even thought about it. Raw, cruel, miserable reality. No glamour, no sophistication, no mystery. I´m not sure whether I should have read that book, but again, meeting certain books are like meeting certain people: there´s not a right place or time, they just happen. And then we wonder whether we would have grown to be who we are if they hadn´t.

When comparing books and people, I can´t help but think of one of the greatest times I had in my life from reading a book. That was when I shared The Mists of Avalon with my grandfather.

Edmundo Carvalho Cardoso, a retired civil servant, was one of the most interesting people I´ve ever met. Conversations and discussions with him were always very exciting.

One day, grandpa told me he was reading The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley, and that he was very impressed by the way the author approached the Arthurian legends. As the Portuguese translation was a series of four books, he said he was going to lend me them as he finished reading each book, so we could discuss them. Among all the people surrounding my grandfather, he had chosen me to be his reading partner. I was in Heaven! As our reading advanced, we shared our impressions about the story. Grandfather told me about the Arthurian legends he had heard since childhood, and about his great interest in the stories of the British Isles. Some time ago, a distant cousin told me my grandfather´s name, Edmundo, had been chosen by our great grandfather after the character Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo. That was when I, in my late thirties, read for the first time what is today considered juvenile fiction. I was certainly searching for a part of my beloved grandfather in those pages. Unexpectedly, I also found Papillon in Dantes.

Time and duty occupy a minor position in this huge web of meaning that reading represents to me. It does not really matter if I should read or should have read a certain book or author that the academic world considers of extreme importance. The essential factor of being a reader to me is how much of myself I´ll find or discover in what I read. The more I feel connected with my surroundings, the greater will be this universe I carry within myself. It´s a two-way road. And because of that, I´ll be able to promote returns, rescues, transformations, and reconciliations in my life.

In Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Strange manages to get into a mirror and in it he finds countless ways connected by bridges, all of them leading to the magical world, where time and space are relative. My bridges don´t have a certain time or a place to be built. In fact some of them are halfway done already, I just have to finish them. The important is to be sure that they are and will always be crossed by my desires, dreams, anxieties, questions, aspirations and memories. You know, those things.

Those Things - Part I

2010-08-20T20:50:00.000-03:00

This is an article I wrote for a book about "life stories and books", a friend (www.maluvargas.com) and I edited some time ago. This is actually the translation I made and it was posted at Redroom before. Since I´m among friends, I´ll post it here, too:

Those things

“You´re past the age of suffering

for those things.”

Oh, so there´s a right age to suffer or not to suffer any longer for those, those things?

Things should only happen to make us suffer at the right age of suffering?

Or we shouldn´t suffer for things that make us suffer because they came in late, and this is a quiet time ?

And if I´m past the age of suffering, is it because I´m dead, and dead is the age of not feeling things, those things?

Carlos Drummond de Andrade Those Things (my translation)

I learned to read when I was five years old. My earliest memories are being read at and having around me storybooks, comic books, and a record player, where I could listen to recorded stories. I´m the youngest child of three, and the only girl. My parents and my brothers , who were teenagers when I was a little kid, were always trying to find things to keep me entertained in my own company: I was also the only little kid in the neighborhood . Oddly enough, I never felt lonely. My maternal grandfather, Edmundo, was also a regular in our house. He would come in with a pack of candy and a comic book, just for me – with sugar and love.

Despite being given the appropriate reading material for my age, I was often drawn to what wasn´t so obviously available to me, what was in other people´s shelves or drawers: my brothers´, more specifically.

I don´t remember which was the first book I read that I wasn´t supposed to, or it wasn´t expected of me to be interested in, but I do remember the time I found Tarzan. That was my father´s ‘fault’

Mozart Lhullier was born in the Lhullier family´s Summer house in Pelotas, Southern Brazil, in 1925. My grandfather Alfredo was a businessman, and my grandmother Antonia, just like every other well-to-do woman in the beginning of the twentieth century, was a housewife. The fondest memories my father has ever mentioned were feeling the freedom of the countryside and his mother´s cheerfulness. From his childhood, he always felt that the only way to be himself was to be close to what formed his essence: trees, animals and streams. Thousands of stories about adventures in faraway lands as well as in our own backyard were part of my childhood . Thanks to my father, for years I believed there was a wild cat behind a leafy bush in our country home. A black jaguar or onça, as we say in Brazil, would guard our kitchen at night, and an albino gorilla would come to my rescue if I ever needed some help with my conflicts at school. Maybe those were the reasons why, when my mother passed away, and I was 7 years old, I turned to a book I found in my brothers´ bedroom: Tarzan of the Apes. The possibility of affection within a seemingly hostile environment was an idea that attracted me very much. Edgar Rice Burroughs, with his adventure story of an orphaned boy raised by apes, and that boy growing up to be strong and confident, provided me with the consolation I needed at that time…

But of course there was also Pollyanna which my oldest cousin highly recommended to me. I used to observe her reading it and found it the coolest thing when she sighed and sometimes cried because of the story. My top goals then , at that time, became the possibility of meeting a wild cat , and also reading Pollyanna and shedding some tears. I never met a wild cat in our backyard, and I confess that Pollyanna irritated me to the point that I wanted her to die. I didn´t shed a single tear, but somehow I saw a little bit of myself there, and it made me think, despite being so young, that I would have to be in charge of my own life from then on. Maybe there I learned my first big lesson from reading : that other one I meet in the pages of books is also a part of myself.

TO BE CONTINUED.

2010-08-18T14:32:00.000-03:00

" Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again." [Joseph Campbell]

2010-08-13T18:51:00.000-03:00

New post at the Wooden Box: Cronos

More of London

2010-08-07T00:13:00.000-03:00

The world´s cutest detective. :-)

Help!

Nooooo!

A plesiosaurus? Natural History Museum - very nice place!

"Really, lady, you need more focus!"

An incredibly beautiful building.

How to make a mummy.- British Museum, another very nice place!

Beautiful jewellery and ornamentation from ancient mesopotamia.

A gold wreath from the hellenistic period.

A Parthenon frieze showing a centaur fighting a human.

Millennium Bridge and St Paul´s

Checking out Brazil´s Festival in the Southbank.

Busy Trafalgar square in late afternoon, seen from the National Gallery.

2010-08-04T19:20:00.000-03:00

Of course I won´t bother you with all my 900 photos (that´s the digital age...), so I selected some. The photo above was taken as you can obviously see at Stonehenge. It was chilly and windy, but it was a very special moment for the young guy doing the peace sign. He´s been reading about it for quite a while and visiting the site was one of his highlights of the trip.

A happy traveler!

Bonds grow stronger during trips. :-)

I love lavenders!

From the London Eye.

Those fish give me the creeps. ;-)

The busy Thames.

Notre Dame de Paris

Chagall´s ceiling at the Ópera.

Where´s Wally?

Maybe Wally is in there ;-)

My favorite: Claude Monet´s house and gardens at Giverny, in Normandy.

Moulin de Fourges

2010-07-10T12:34:00.000-03:00

I´ll be off for the next two weeks. I´m going on vacation and will post pictures and comments after that! :-D
See you in two weeks!

Wooden Box

2010-06-19T21:12:00.000-03:00

This is another blog I´ll be keeping alongside Luciana´s Ocean, but more focused on my creative projects: Wooden Box . As the name says, it´s a place to keep things. You´re welcome to visit.

2010-05-28T17:46:00.000-03:00

Inside of me a forest grew.
Its trees kept calling: come in , come in
I saw a path and I followed it.
Suddenly, I was running on my four legs.
My fur was soft.
I saw my own soul.

Freedom.

Fragments of Brazil III - My Corner in the World

2010-05-28T14:36:00.000-03:00

The city is 'Passo Fundo' and this is what I see from my apartment window. This is my city life in Southern Brazil.

Just outside Passo Fundo, there is the beautiful countryside on the Middle Plateau. That´s where my heart loves to be.

Simple country flowers. Nobody plants them. They just grow out of the grass.

Araucaria - the coniferous tree that´s a symbol of the Plateau

A beautiful neighbor: 'Quero-quero' - another symbol of the South

A hammock and late afternoon - good combination

Ah, the waters of my life...

The Prince of Curiosity

2010-05-19T21:58:00.000-03:00

We´re all in love with this cat here at home, so you´ll please have to bear with me talking about him for a little while. It´s been a long time since I had a pet and the first time for my family, so this is a big deal.

Fragments of Brazil - Part II - Dreams

2010-05-12T18:09:00.001-03:00

This is the River Maragogi, in Northeastern Brazil, about 3,400 km from where I sit now.This is the point where it meets the sea.

The sea can be seen in this one.

Another view of the river.

This region has an ecosystem called 'Mangue' or 'Manguezal' (Mangal), inhabited by various plant and animal species, among them, the crab.

Now, the sea of Maragogi, with its calm and warm waters

Sea weeds leave their mark in the sand

Lunch time. The main course is Sea Turtle.

Greeting the sea.

This is How it Sounds to Me

2010-05-11T22:11:00.001-03:00

This is how my origins sound to me.

Fragments of Brazil - Part I - Origins

2010-05-05T21:59:00.001-03:00

Ok, my turn to post photos here. My fellow blogger Vincent said he´d like to visit Brazil, so I decided to post some photos of 'my' Brazil. The Brazil I grew up in and the parts I love to visit. I´ll be posting them in three parts. Part I is called 'origins' and shows the place I come from and that runs in my veins. Part II is called 'dreams' and will show places in Brazil I love to visit, and Part III is called 'my corner in the world' and will show the place I live now and where I belong as well.

ORIGINS

The surroundings of Pelotas in the Southernmost tip of Brazil. I took that picture on my way to the Uruguayan border, for an afternoon trip. Those fields are part of what´s called Pampa : they´re flat and endless.

The Uruguayan border. Portuñol or Portunhol ( a hybrid of Portuguese and Spanish) is spoken here.

Going the other way, towards the Atlantic ocean, you can find a Lagoon complex, divided into the Patos (the biggest one), The Mirim and The Mangueira Lagoons. That photo shows the Laranjal beach, on the Patos Lagoon.

This is a famous shipwreck on Cassino Beach, in the Atlantic Ocean. The water is cold and the wind is heavy.

My own view of another part of the Patos Lagoon. This time in the city of Rio Grande.

The Lagoon receives many visitors: sea lions, penguins and dolphins.

I realized I cannot talk about origins without including these two amazing men: my brothers.

Meet Daphne

2010-04-26T22:35:00.000-03:00

She´s the very first draft of an idea that has been going on in my mind for some time, so I´m fully aware she´s very imperfect and primitive. And if you call her Medusa, I´ll send virtual Furies after you ;-)
Daphne doesn´t like getting old, therefore any kind of death, be it actual or symbolical, frightens her. Loving Phoebus means she´ll have to leave a lot of her 'ninph' self behind, and there´s the risk he won´t be with her forever. So, becoming a tree seems like an alternative - at first, and at a price.
I obviously based myself on the Greek myth of Apollo and Daphne, but I want to show my idea of what/who Daphne and Phoebus could be.

Here´s a beautiful poem called 'Daphne' by Faye George

That Other Home

2010-04-23T11:59:00.000-03:00

What is it made of? This home that we have within? Whether we like it or not, and among other things, it is made of other people, of what we acquire or inherit from them. And we carry it with us wherever we go. It´s an inseparable part of our self (not ourselves). And, again, whether that is good or not for some, the main people who live in our home within are our parents, or their absence, or what is left of our life with them. Both my parents are gone, but they were certainly essential for my home within. I thought about that in this 'story': THE HOME WITHIN, by Luciana Lhullier

Storytelling Adventures

2010-04-16T21:39:00.000-03:00

It seems, for some of us,that the older we get the more daring...So now I´m telling stories. Who´d thought! I am making things up and loving every minute of it. Funny enough, they tell more about myself than any blog post ever will.This is one of my adventures in storytelling(I recommend the website; it´s great):

Wings, by Luciana

It Starts When They´re 11

2010-03-29T20:56:00.000-03:00

No, it actually starts earlier, much earlier. What happens is that when they´re 11 we start realizing we have to step aside and let them go. He tells me he doesn´t want to have his hair cut for a while: ‘it´s better this way, mom’. Then, the other day the two girls who came in here go into his room where he´s playing video games with the other boys, and say ‘wow, your room is so cool!!!’.

I can´t take him to the dentist anymore. I have to meet him there. And while I´m waiting I peek out the window and watch him coming, crossing the street and walking as if he were some sort of character in the video game of his life: fearless, bold, and free. Yes, I think we believe in that sort of freedom when we´re 11.

Some relative asks me, ‘don´t you miss the baby?’ . To tell the truth, no, I don´t. I loved him when he was a baby, but I love to watch him become this imaginative, sometimes absent-minded, but nonetheless caring and affectionate young man. His beautiful personality emerging and making me smile.

I have to confess, though, that many times I hesitate. When he said I didn´t need to pick him up at soccer practice the other day, I was silent for a few seconds. Then, his dad , realizing my silence, said ‘ok, you´ll come back by yourself then’. I thank him for that. He did what I was reluctant to do, but needed to be done. I´m not over-protective: we live in a violent country, where crack-addicted teens will beat a young boy up to steal his pair of sneakers. Sad, but true. On the other hand, my husband is right again when he says that one day our son will have to learn to take care of himself out there, and it´s about time he started.

One day he tells me he wants to be a scientist , the other day he tells me he wants to be an actor. I tell him he needs to be a good human being in whatever career he chooses to follow. Really, that´s what I expect from my kids, that they become good human beings. He looks at me and says: ‘I knew you were going to say that, mom’. Big smile on my face, I hug and kiss him. Go on, my son, my beautiful boy. Go and live.

Woman Beings

2010-03-09T21:50:00.000-03:00

Coming back from a long break. Summer is ending, schools are back and the lights and winds announce the arrival of more temperate days. That´s good. Although I enjoy Summer, eternal Summer is a sort of a nightmare for individuals like me, who appreciate the shade as well.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yesterday was ‘International Women´s Day’ or something like that. Really . Some colleagues said they were really PROUD to be women and I even saw some women on TV saying that we are multi-task by nature and can handle everything, from very time demanding jobs to raising children. Who invented this? And what does it mean to be proud of something? How can I be proud of something I didn´t choose or achieve?

I am a woman, and I´m very happy as a woman, but I don´t feel I should be proud. It´d be the same as female jaguars being proud of being female jaguars… None of us women ‘achieved’ being women. We are. And for that reason we have our place in the sun. There´s no way of ignoring it. Unless we allow or even contribute to that ignorance. Watch out. Pride can be very tricky. Pride can sound a lot like ‘I wanna sit in the grown-up table’. Also, being able to handle everything steals our humanity. Human beings are not able to handle everything so, are we, women, not human beings? That´s tricky, too. And very, very confusing.

There are some choices we should focus on, though, because they´re extremely important. I´m not talking about sexual interactions, because they´re not a choice either. It´s not like saying ‘from now on, I´ll sleep with men’ or ‘ I decided to like to sleep with other women’. It is. There are women who like men, there are others who like other women, there are others who like both, and there are the ones who like their own company. Fine. They´re all women and that´s the way it is. I just don´t think anyone should be pushed into a marriage. And that´s a choice we should be thinking about: marrying or not getting married (I´m not talking about paperwork here, I´m talking about living and sharing a life with someone). It´s a lot of giving and taking, of chaos and order, and there should be something that holds it together. Glamorous,cinematic sex won´t. Children won´t either. All in all, it´s how human we are as beings to truly love someone in spite of.

Also, we can choose whether or not we´re going to be parents. Yes, that´s a choice. Women have the right of not wanting to be mothers. As they have the right of being one. Both choices should be respected and appreciated. It´s a sign of maturity when a woman realizes she wouldn´t have the patience required for bringing up a child. Many women don´t contemplate that choice and end up making their and their children´s lives miserable. But when we decide to be mothers, we should be allowed to be there for our kids. You cannot possibly expect the mother of an infant to work outside the home for 8 hours a day. Of course a lot of women do that, but end up being stressed and frustrated, many times depressed, because of that. Who are we kidding? And we do need men to share that with us. Men have to be allowed to be parents, too. It´s not fair to exclude them. Just let´s not try to turn them into mock mothers. It can be disastrous. They´re men and are able to be caring, sensitive and affectionate in their own way. They have their own role. They are there to cut the umbilical chord, as many times as it is necessary. They are there to dress the kids up with the most impossible to match clothes and think they look fine. They are there to teach them to be bold and look into life from a different perspective.

Of course I know that in many parts of the world, including parts or social segments in my own country, all I´m saying doesn´t make any sense. Medieval and Modern co-exist.

But what really bothers me in this whole ‘women issue’ thing is that we´re all blind to one simple aspect: we, women, shouldn´t try to play by the rules that are out there. It´s not fair. We should write our own rules. Women shouldn´t have to delay motherhood to have a career. They should be allowed to return, restart or begin a career after their children are grown, if they wish so. We, so smart and free western women, tell our daughters they can be anything they want: astronauts, physicists, athletes, CEOs, and mothers-the sky is the limit- but then we expect them to be all that at the same time, working full time outside and inside their homes. It´s insane.

Who says that working 40, 50 hours a week is more productive? ‘Quality time’ should be applied to jobs, not to children. The rules have been made to/by men, and we try to follow them to prove to ourselves that we can? Ha! I don´t want to be a woman disguised as a man to be respected as a professional. And I don´t want to feel that I´ve sacrificed my career for my family or vice versa. I shouldn´t have to.

I think we, women, have a lot to think about. About what we want for ourselves, about the way we raise our boys and girls, about the way we interact with our partners, about what are the real achievements in our lives, and most importantly, that there should be a day when we don´t need to have a Women´s Day.

Vicente, by Miguel Torga - Part I

2010-01-07T14:30:00.000-02:00

[Unpublished translation by Luciana Lhullier]

That afternoon, the time the sky showed itself harder and more sinister, Vicente spread his black wings and left. Forty days had already elapsed since, integrated to the group of the chosen ones, he had given entrance in the Ark. But from the first moment everyone saw there was no peace in his spirit. Quiet and frowning, he walked to and fro in continuous agitation, as if that great ship where the Lord had kept life was an outrage to creation itself. In similar disorder - wolves and lambs together in the same fate -, just his black and dry figure kept bitter about God´s procedure. In a silent indignation he asked: - to what purpose were the animals involved in the confusing issue of Babel? What did they have to do with men's fornications, that the Creator wanted to punish? Fair or unfair, the high purposes that determined that flood clashed against a deep feeling of irrepressible repulse. And, the more inexorable prepotency was presented, the more Vicente's revolt increased.

Forty days, however, his weak flesh kept him there. Not even he could explain how they had left Lebanon to the boarding wharf and then, in the Ark, for so long he had received from Noah's servile hands his everyday feed. But he had been able to win. He had, finally, overcome the instinct of self-preservation, and had opened his wings towards the terrible immensity of the sea.

The unusual departure was witnessed by big and small in a quiet and reserved respect . Amazed and dazzled, they saw him, reckless, with an open chest, cross the first fire wall with what God had wanted to prevent him from escaping, and disappear in the distance in the boundaries of space. But nobody said anything. His gesture was, at that moment , the symbol of universal liberation. The conscience, in active protest against the will that divided the beings between the chosen ones and the doomed.

Still, in spite of everyone´s savoring that rescue flavor, and already high, releasead as a thunder, penetrating as a ray, terrible, the voice of God:

- Noah, where is my servant Vicente?

Bipeds and quadrupeds were petrified. On the deck, swept of illusions, a heavy, a silent shroud went down.

(To be continued)

Aldo, Luciana, and the Cathedral

2009-12-31T16:52:00.000-02:00

Italian painter Aldo Locatelli left Italy in 1948, invited by Dom Antônio Zattera, bishop of Pelotas, in Southern Brazil, to paint the frescos of the São Francisco de Paula Cathedral. The result is what you see in the photos. I love the place where I was baptized, but more than it representing my belonging in any sort of religion - I don´t worship, I live - it is a place of calm and tranquility, where I sometimes like to be, when I go back to "the initial shores of my life", as in Sophia Andresen´s poem.

This is the Brazilian map where I circled (ok, it´s not a circle) Pelotas:

Pictures from the interior of the Cathedral:

Poem of the Child

2009-12-21T19:21:00.001-02:00

For the divine child who lives inside each one of us. May he/she always tell us stories. Merry Christmas!

Poema do Menino Jesus (Fernando Pessoa)

At noon, on a Spring day I had a dream, just likea photograph:
I saw Jesus Christ descend to Earth .
He ran down a hill, but He was a boy againrunning and rolling in the grass
Picking flowers and laughing so hard, that you could hear Himfar away.
He had escaped Heaven.
He was ours, so much ours,to pretend to be the Second Person of the Trinity.
One day that God was sleeping and the Holy Ghostwas flying around, He went to the box of miracles,And stole three of them:
With the first He made no one notice He had escaped; with the second He created Himselfeternally human and child; and with the third Hecreated a Christ eternally in the cross and left him nailedin the cross to serve as a model to the other ones .
Then He fled to the Sun and came down on the firstsunbeam He was able to catch.Nowadays He lives in my village, with me.
He´s a beautifulchild, with a natural smile.
He wipes His nose with His right arm, jumps in the puddles, picks flowers- He likes them- forgets things. throws stones, picks fruit in the orchardsand runs away from the dogs.
Just because He knows they don´t like it, and everybody laughs at that,He runs after the girls who carry jugs on their head and pulls up their skirts.

To me, He taught me everything.
He taught me how to lookat things.
He shows me all the colors there arein the flowers and shows me how pebbles can be funny when we have them in our hands and carefully lookat them.
We get along so well, with everything, that we never think about each other.
We live, both of us,in a close agreement, like the right hand and the left hand.
When it starts to grow dark, we play the five little rockson my doorstep. Very seriously, as it suits to a GODand a poet. As if each little rock were the whole Universeand it would be very dangerous to let it fall.
Then I tell Him stories about humankind. And He smiles, because they are all incredible. He laughsat the kings and at the ones who are not kings. And He´s sorryto hear about the wars and the greed.
After that He falls asleep and I carry Him in my armsto my home, I lay Him in my bed, in a ritual, all humanand all motherly.
He sleeps inside my soul.
Sometimes He wakes upin the middle of the night, plays with my dreams. Turns some of them upside down,piles them up, and claps, alone,smiling at my dreams.

When I die, Little Son, I´ll be the child, the littlestone. You´ll carry me in Your arms, take me to Your home. lay me down in Your bed, to sleep. Undress my being, tired andhuman. Tell me stories in case I wake up, so that I go back to sleep, and give me Your dreams – to play.

Growing Up

2009-12-09T21:50:00.001-02:00

In the first pages of Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie, Wendy, then two years old, brings a flower to her mother . Mrs Darling “put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can´t you remain like this forever!’ “ Hearing this, Wendy understood that she had to grow up. Barrie continues by saying that “two is the beginning of the end” and that (and this tells a lot about mothers and daughters) “Of course they lived at 14, and until Wendy came her mother was the chief one”.
Is it really a loving thing to say to a child, oh you´ll always be a child to me ? I don´t think so. I think we should tell our children “I´ll always love you, no matter what” , and that´s a completely different thing. When parents tell their children they will always be children, what they really mean is “ you´ll never outshine me. I´ll be the chief one, always.” They´re afraid of the painful and inevitable little deaths we go through every day in parenthood.
As I write this, my five –year –old (almost, almost six, according to herself) daughter is in a school excursion in a Farm Hotel 200 km away from here. They left early in the morning and will be back tomorrow evening.

She has always been very independent, that one. In her first day of school (she was two) , I arrived with her at the school gate and when we were crossing it she turned to me and said “Go home, mom”. Of course I didn´t go home immediately. I stayed there for a little while in case she “needed me”, but then realized I was obviously not needed, and came home. I thought it was going to be like her brother´s first months of school, that I had to be there all the time. Her brother had spoiled me.
When the trip permit came in her notebook I asked her if she wanted to go. I was expecting her to be at least hesitant, but no. I got an “of course” fired straight at me… Yesterday, when I went to help her pack, to my surprise she had managed to read a few items of the packing list sent by the school and had already separated them. I feel a mixture of pride and anxiety. I´m really proud of this beautiful little project of woman I´m raising and I´m proud of my ten-year-old boy, who told me this morning: don´t worry mom, I´ll be there with her. And I´m anxious because I don´t want them to grow before their time.
All in all, in these past few days I realized that the only certain thing I can give those two is my love in many ways. It´s imprinted in them and they´ll carry it wherever they go. All else will be up to them.

Words

2009-12-05T11:22:00.000-02:00

Some things are better left unsaid. Really? And what do you do with them, since they cannot be left unfelt? Where do they go? To the same place as Broken Dreams and Missed Opportunities? Where is it? I know where it is, but I don´t think there´s enough room any longer.
Countless times the words stop in my throat, and go back in. And they stay there, mocking me for not being brave enough to have said them. Words can be quite scary. Glances and gestures many times give you the benefit of the doubt, but not loud and clear words. And once they are out, they cannot be taken in again.
The written word is no different. Poems and stories are like people. Once you´ve met them, even in a brief encounter, they´re there forever. When you think they´ve disappeared, they pop out of nowhere in your dreams, in a song, in a stranger´s face.
I have a deep respect for stories. There are books and movies in my shelves waiting to be read or seen, and still, I haven´t found the courage to do so. I want them, but I fear the change their words might cause. Crazy, I know. As Paul Auster said in a recent interview, […]clarity, I think, is the most unsettling thing possible. It allows the reader, in some sense, if you can do it well, ideally to forget that the medium of expression is language. You´re just somehow in what the words are saying. You´re not even thinking about the words anymore.[…] . If that can be achieved, then the story becomes part of you. It enters your mind and soul and finds a place to stay. That can be unsettling, but it is part of the experience of being alive.
At the same time, there are poems and stories I go back to frequently, because they resonate inside of me. They´re comfortable, and have a face I like to look at. They keep me alive, also, but in a different way.
These days I want to say and hear the unsaid . What is kept in that labyrinthian and misty place within my heart.

Music for the Weekend - O Bonde do Dom [Marisa Monte]

2009-11-27T16:42:00.000-02:00

Wings

2009-11-18T22:14:00.000-02:00

Beautiful poem 'Wings', by Kim Antieau.

Avian Friendship

2009-11-18T22:12:00.000-02:00

It must be great to feel the wind on your face when you´re flying. Spread your wings and fly over land obstacles. That´s the usual impression I get from birds. Freedom.
I´ve never had any bird as a pet in my life. They always came to me. Robins, seagulls, lapwings, owls, even cranes. You name it. They don´t fear me. I don´t know if that´s a good thing, it just is. I stay where I am and they come around. Sometimes I happen to have a camera at hand.

Dog-sitting

2009-11-15T19:28:00.000-02:00

In response to Rebb´s blog post , I´m posting this photo from a trillion years ago (you can see that in my teenage-like face), when I used to dog-sit. Those two ladies by my side were called Sadie and Heidi. They were like water and wine. Sadie (the setter) was very mature and independent, and Heidi was a big, adorable, baby. They´re both gone now, obviously, but looking at Rebb´s Kyo made me think of them again.

Magnificent

2009-11-13T18:47:00.000-02:00

I was 13 when I first heard about this Irish band, U2. Thought that name was really strange, but hey, band´s names are always unusual. Have been listening to them ever since. Every time they come up with a new album I think it can´t get any better than the previous one. And they always are.

Old photos

2009-11-09T21:52:00.000-02:00

This one was some years later than the one with Xodó. Again, taken by my uncle Eddie in the staircase in his house.

My Life as a Dog

2009-11-07T17:15:00.000-02:00

I´m a dog. Or so I´m told by the Chinese Zodiac page :-D Well at least that means I´m loyal to my friends, root for the underdogs, and will do anything to protect my offspring. Good, good. That might also explain my love for the canines. Rummaging through old family photos I found this one of Xodó, my earliest partner in crime. I was probably trying to teach him some trick - that he never learned, by the way.

Body, Mind and Soul

2009-11-05T14:53:00.001-02:00

This is Grupo Corpo, with the ballet Bach. Couples dancing in harmony and partnership, supporting each other. I think they´re perfect!

Why the Ocean...

2009-11-04T18:50:00.000-02:00

Sophia Andresen, in one of her poems, addresses the sea with this line: You are a mystery, made only for me (És um mistério feito só para mim).Every time I get a chance to contemplate the ocean, I get the same feeling: I know nothing. Whenever the cold southern waves invite me into their waters, I follow them in a mixture of curiosity and caution: I never know what they might have reserved for me. I love the magnetic , though many times dangerous, freedom of being one with the sea.When my feet change from sand to water, I usually complain about the cold, but welcome the touch. I love to watch the waves come and go and I´m always curious about what the high tide might bring to shore. Some months ago, when I was visiting my hometown, after two days of strong winds and turbulent waters, there were two dead sea turtles and a dead sea lion, besides hundreds of seashells on the sand, brought by the storm. Some years ago, the Southern Atlantic tide brought a shipwreck to Cassino Beach. That´s the cycle of life.
We all have our ways of connecting with Nature, whether we´re aware of them or not. Some people see nature as a mother, some as an enemy, and some others as a slave. I see nature within myself. I have my mountains, my oceans, my trees, my high and low tides, my tempests, my hurricanes, my sunny days but, most importantly, I have that mixed feeling of uncertainty and curiosity about life that makes me appreciate every single experience, as if it had been brought by the waves.

Inhabiting One´s Own Body

2009-11-02T11:33:00.000-02:00

Some time ago I was attending a funeral service and there was this acquaintance right beside me who kept muttering, this is so sad, although her face remained unmoved, frozen. She had just had botox injected all over her face that morning, and could barely speak. Another acquaintance whom I thought I´d see there couldn´t make it, because she had just had liposuction the day before and it was still very painful to move. Both women are about my age: 39 years old, and have always been attractive, healthy women who really didn´t need those interventions.
I´m not saying we shouldn´t care about beauty. There´s nothing wrong with females (and males) trying to look good. Make-up, moisturizing creams, jewelry, perfume. I love all of that. The problem is when we can´t draw the line. When we stop being human beings above everything and live our lives around cosmetic procedures that will make us look like this or that celebrity, sometimes of the opposite sex ;-).Why are we, women, so obsessed about being someone else? First of all, let´s absolve the guys. It has absolutely nothing to do with them. In fact, most men are perfectly fine with the way we look. Second, I don´t think it has to do with beauty. I can´t be convinced that substituting your actual and normal nose for something that looks like a light switch will make you look more beautiful.
I think I´ve had a glimpse to where the problem may lie observing mothers and daughters, including myself and my daughter: our daughters growing up means we´re getting older. That´s basic. But I´ve been observing something else in this complex relationship: mothers can do many damages to their daughters´ self-esteem when, instead of behaving like parents, they behave like same-age friends with a credit card. Instead of saying- my love, you don´t need those (astronomically expensive) jeans to be beautiful, you are beautiful being yourself- we go ahead and buy them those jeans because all her friends have them, too. Now, when we buy that , and into that, what we´re actually saying to that young girl is: yes, a pair of very expensive jeans is all we, women, need to make us feel we´re worth something. It can also be a handbag, sunglasses, a pair of shoes, a boob job, a car, a crystal engraved cell phone, the list is endless.
I have wrinkles around my eyes, and they are most evident when I smile. It´s part of me. Many times I don´t say anything, I just smile with my eyes and the people I love know what I mean. I also don´t wear expensive and exclusive clothes. I choose clothes that are beautiful (in my opinion) and comfortable, and that have to do with my personality. My nose is not small, but it´s exactly like my father´s, and I´m proud to have inherited it, among his many other traits: he was an awesome man. I think the best I can teach my daughter is that being comfortable in one´s skin, that is living in one´s own body, is one of the most beautiful things you can find in a person.

To Live in this World

2009-10-31T08:51:00.000-02:00

This was a very intense week. I met wonderful people, and some of them I wish I could keep with me. This is the thing with loving people: they become a part of you and still, you got to let them go... Oh, well. I think that what best describes that feeling is in a poem I love and keep with me ever since I first read it : Mary Oliver´s "In Blackwater Woods" :

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones
knowing your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go;
to let it go.

I got to live in this world. There´s no other one.

A Collective Existence

2009-10-22T18:56:00.000-02:00

32.
Existence is infinite, not to be defined;
And, though it seem but a bit of wood in your hand, to carve as you please,
It is not to be lightly played with and laid down.
When rulers adhered to the way of life,
They were upheld by natural loyalty:
Heaven and earth were joined and made fertile,
Life was a freshness of rain,
Subject to none,
Free to all.
But men of culture came, with their grades and their distinctions;
And as soon as such differences had been devised
No one knew where to end them,
Though the one who does know the end of all such differences
Is the sound man:
Existence
Might be likened to the course
Of many rivers reaching the one sea.
(Witter Bynner´s version of Tao-Te Ching)

Is cyberspace the "one sea" where the many rivers flow? Are we drops of water that exist, but cease to have an individual existence in that sea? Is this the space where we can experience a collective existence?

The Sword God

2009-10-16T16:08:00.000-03:00

One of the most beautiful stories I´ve heard from Yoruba ( West African) mythology is related to the deity Ogun, the fierce warrior. Those stories were brought here by the people from African nations that the Portuguese, and later the Brazilians, enslaved and shipped to Brazil to work in nothing less than building the country from the 16th to the 19th century. Besides owing Africa a lot of what we have today, we also owe it a big part of the Brazilian soul.
It goes like this: After fighting many battles and spending many years away from home, Ogun decided to go back to the city of Irê, where his son ruled. When he arrived, he addressed the people and expected to be celebrated, but no one talked to him. People looked at him, but did not seem excited. He would talk to them, but they would not answer. Ogun is not very patient and, without trying to investigate what was wrong with his son´s subjects, became enraged and started cutting off the head of whoever came in his way. That´s when his son comes and offers him his (Ogun´s) favorite food and drink. His son reminded him that it was a sacred day and people were forbidden to speak and cheer by orders of the great Ogun, himself. Ogun then remebered that, and was ashamed of what he had done . I´ve lived enough, he said. He then put the tip of his sword on the ground, and went down into earth with a thunderous sound. From that day on, he became an orixá, an owner of head.
Yoruba is also a religion ( Candomblé and Umbanda in Brazil) and I suspect that this close relationship between the stories and the worship of deities is what prevents its ancient mythology from becoming more popular.
I´m not a follower of any religion. I usually say that I am culturally Catholic, because it is the dominat religion among the groups I was raised with, but I have a great interest in all religions. More than the rituals of Catholicism or even Candomblé, I´ve always found the stories fascinating. Their symbols and metaphors contain valuable teachings about every day life that are usually missed when people are too worried about miracles or sins.
Everytime I remember Ogun´s story, I smile and think that even the most powerful ones make mistakes and learn a lesson one day. Never take yourself too seriously. It´s very dangerous.

Quintanares

2009-10-14T14:01:00.000-03:00

The soul is what keeps asking us whether the soul really exists. This is one of the many witty, wise, and many times ironic quotes of Brazilian poet, jornalist and translator Mario Quintana. I met him when I was in College. He was already very sick, but was very kind to have the visit of a group of young adults passionate about his work. I thought I´d translate some other ones to share:
- The secret is not to run after the butterflies...It is to look after your garden, so they´ll come to you;
- Lavoisier´s reflection after he found out they had stolen his wallet: nothing is lost, everything changes ownership;
- It really does not matter to know if we believe in God: the important is to know whether God believes in us;-If someone asks you what you meant with a poem, ask him what God meant with this world;
-Time is eternity´s insomnia;
-The alarm clock is a traffic accident in our sleep;
- The art of being good : Be good./But to your heart/Discretion and caution provide./The one who covers himself with honey,/will end up being licked by bears.
- The worst about our problems is that no one else has anything to do with them;
- What really concerns me when I look at the apes is not that we came from them: it is that we might be turning into them again;
- To dream is to wake up inside ourselves;
-A good poem is the one that reads us;
-The most ferocius of animals is the clock on the wall. It has devoured three generations of my family already.

"Nothing Human is Alien to Me"

2009-10-08T15:42:00.003-03:00

Terence answered to his neighbor, who told him to mind his own business: Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto. - I am a man, nothing human is alien to me.Immigration is always a very curious issue to me. Especially in the Americas. As I write, I keep thinking that I´d simply not exist, as I know myself, had my ancestors been detained at customs. Those were other times,though. At that time, Europe was "exporting" its unwanted or extra people. On my mother´s side, they were new christians ( or, if you wish, forcibily baptised old jews) who had to leave Portugal around the end of the 18th century, and settled in Northeastern Brazil. On my father´s side, my great grandparents, after escaping an arson attack on their house, and having seen everything they built burned down to ashes, decided to come to this promising land in the Southern hemisphere, and were able to make a living here. My great grand father, Jean-Baptiste Lhullier, became the town photographer and even changed his name to Baptista, because he felt Brazilian. Most immigrants leave their homeland because they want to live better, or live. It´s as simple as that. All in all, it can be a matter of perspective whether you spend money and energy on building walls and fences, so people won´t come to ruin your beautiful garden(we know, as members of the human race, where misanthropy can lead us to), or on helping communities, so people don´t need to leave them, and are able to grow their own gardens.Just some thoughts on where I stand in this world... http://bit.ly/yq8ai

The Universe Within

2009-10-06T21:23:00.003-03:00

Here´s another one, fellow blogger Vincent :-)

Poem Da Minha Aldeia (From My Village) by Fernando Pessoa under his heteronomy Alberto Caieiro., from the collection of poems O Guardador de Rebanhos (The herd keeper).

From my village I see the universe.
That´s why my village is as big as any other one
Because I am the size of what I see
And not the size of my height.

In the cities life is smaller
than it is here in my house on the hill.
In the city big houses block our view
hide the horizon, push our eyes away from the sky,
make us small, because they take away from us what our eyes can give us
and impoverish us, because our only wealth is what we see.

From my village I see the universe
That´s why my village is as big as any other one
Because I am the size of what I see
And not the size of my height.

Existing in a Foreign Language

2009-10-05T22:33:00.002-03:00

Algerian author and filmmaker Abdelwahab Hammoudi (http://www.youtube.com/user/dirwahab)says that learning a language can be a powerful tool for more understanding and less violence in the world. I totally agree.
Languages are ways of existence. Speaking a language is a way of "being" in the world, and learning a second, third language is a way of experiencing other ways of existing in the same world. Like when in Portuguese we use "to have" to talk about age and in English it is "to be". So, in Portuguese I´d say : I have 38 years . As if I could own time...
I´m Brazilian, so my first language is Portuguese. I´ve never learned Spanish formally. I can read and understand it perfectly, but if I want to communicate with someone who´s a native speaker of Spanish, I speak Portuñol (or Portunhol), which is a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish spoken in places close to the Uruguayan and Argentinian borders. And I can´t write it at all. French is an acquired language, a family thing, but not much formal study there, too. Just the basics for communication.
I started studying English as a kid, 9, 10 years old. And that was a totally new world to me. I love music, so I could sing and understand the lyrics, and pronouncing the words was fun. English is not a Romance, or Neolatin, language like Portuguese, French and Spanish, so there were not many analogies that could be made. I was literally stepping in someone else´s shoes, and loving it. I still do.
Would my life have been different had I not learned foreign languages? No doubt about it. I wouldn´t be writing this, in the first place. I wouldn´t be able to read the interesting things people write in their blogs, I wouldn´t be able to see their points and reflect on their perspectives, I would have to depend on translations when I travel, or when I read certain authors, just to think of some examples.
It´s never too late to start. Japanese, here I come!

Princes all of them

2009-10-05T22:30:00.001-03:00

It´s been a tough week. I´ll just share my humble and imperfect, thus free, translation of Poema em Linha Reta by Álvaro de Campos (Fernando Pessoa):

Poem in a Straight Line

I´ve never met anyone who´d been beaten up.
All my acquaintances have been champions in everything.
And I, so often crude, so often filthy, so often vile,
I, so often inarguably parasite,
Unforgivably dirty.
I, who so often haven´t taken the time to take a bath,
I, who have so often been ridiculous, absurd,
Who have publicly stumbled my feet in the rugs of etiquette,
Who have been grotesque, despicable, submissive and arrogant,
Who have been humiliated and remained quiet,
And was ridiculed when did not remain quiet;
I, who have been the laughing stock of the chambermaids,
I, who have noticed the eye winks of the delivery boys,
I, who have caused financial embarrassments, borrowing without paying,
I, who, instead of taking a punch, have crouched
Away from the possibility of the punch;
I, who have been anxious over ridiculous, small things,
I see I have no peer in this world.
Everybody I know and talks to me
Has never had a ridiculous moment, has never been scolded,
Has never been but a prince - princes all of them - in life...
I wish I could hear human voices
That would not confess sins, but flaws;
That would not report their violent actions, but their coward reactions!
No, they are all the Ideal, as they tell me.
Is there anyone in this immense world that would confess having been vile once?
Oh princes, my brothers and sisters
Damn it, I am fed up with these demigods!
Where are the real people in this world?
Is it only me that is vile and wrong in this land?
Their husbands and wives may have not loved them,
They may have been betrayed - but never ridiculous!
And I, who have been ridiculous without having been betrayed,
How can I address my superiors without hesitating?
I, who have been vile, literally vile,
Vile in the despicable and infamous sense of vileness.

Manos de Pincel

2009-04-25T15:00:00.004-03:00

This is a beautiful animation video I found on You Tube. It´s from Alternativas Acadêmicas, in Chile. It reminded me of myself, many years ago.

Buildings Speak to Us

2009-04-24T16:40:00.002-03:00

No, no, I´m not talking about haunted houses. I´m referring to what author Alain de Botton says in his book The architecture of happiness. According to him, there is a language buildings and objects speak when we look at them, and our fondness or distaste of them comes from the relationship we establish between those buildings and human beings whom we like or do not like. In other words, they remind us of people we´ve encountered in our life.

That happened to me when I visited Brasília, the capital of Brazil, for the first time. I was very excited I was going to see the buildings I knew housed the big decisions in this country.The Congress, the Senate, the Alvorada palace. I was going to actually be there and experience the work of architect Oscar Niemeyer, the man who designed that city, built in the 1960´s, during the government of President Juscelino Kubitschek.I was finally going to have a glimpse of what these two men thought Brazil should look and be like.

I was very disappointed when I got there. As I tried to connect with the buildings, they didn´t even try to connect with me. They were mute. Concrete giants enclosed within themselves.

That´s when I began realizing what de Botton says. Those buildings, and Brasília as a whole, for the landscape is uniform, reminded me of what I find most obnoxious in certain people, especially when they are powerful: selfishness, lack of empathy and that attitute of owning the world. In a paradox, I felt suffocated in a place where empty spaces are abundant. There are no sidewalks, there are almost no trees ( in a country full of trees), the air is dry to the point of gasping. The only positive aspect of Brasília, for me, is the people: kind, friendly, warm. And that takes me to another realization about my country.

For many decades now, Brazil has been trying to be modern, developed, respected. And in some ways we´re reaching that. But the concept of modern in the minds of our past leaders (and some present ones, too) was linked to the idea of rupturing with the past at any cost. For the country of the future, anything that resembled our colonial past had to go.Wood, brick, clay, intricate shapes, bright colors either resembled Europe, or the jungle, or the slave quarters. In the anxiety of finding a face in the mirror that could match the idea of new, they chose concrete. Cold, mute concrete. Had they looked more closely, they´d have seen that´s not the Brazilian face. The Brazilian face is every face. And that´s where novelty is: in diversity. Instead of wasting time and money trying to build huge concrete structures to show up to the world, they should have tried to build a fair society first.

Democracy

2009-04-24T16:28:00.003-03:00

Twenty-five years ago, in April, I was able to be part of one of the most beautiful and memorable moments in History for my country: the campaign for the end of the military dictatorship and the call for direct elections for the presidency. The rallies in the cities had started in January, after the previous year had had an annual inflation rate of 240%. Can you imagine what that is like? Working hard and finding out that your money simply "disappeared"; that it´s not worth anything? That you won´t be able to save a cent: right the opposite, your debts only get higher?

The military dictatorship, as with any dictatorship anywhere, nearly destroyed this country. They couldn´t destroy its people, though. Despite years and years of torture, persecution, concealing of information, archaic trade regulations, hypocritical nationalism, and stupidity, all maintained through the use of violence and repression,one day people thought they had had enough. The press could not take it any longer, either, and the opposition party (the only one) was much better organized, as it had never been before. It was the time to get our country back.

I was fourteen years old, and had to wear a uniform to go to school. The only item I could customize to my taste was my backpack, and boy, was it full of pins and buttons: "Direct elections, now!"/"Stop repression"/"I want my country back!" During Social Studies, in between the reciting of historical dates and names of national heroes, I asked our teacher: what is the meaning of democracy? Could we discuss that? I liked her a lot, she had honest eyes. I remember she said something like: that one day I´ll be able to answer your question and not be afraid of doing so.

For us, Brazilians, at that time, that was what it was all about: militaries out=presidential elections=democracy=the possibility of breathing. We wanted to breathe. We wanted to pick up the pieces and build a country again, where we could be citizens, and not hostages.

The seed was planted but there were some set backs. It was not until 1989 that we could elect a president. And when he proved to be corrupt and reckless, we impeached him. We wanted better.

It takes a long way to rebuild a country. But it´s happening. Day by day.

This image will never, ever be erased from my memory. During a march in Brasilia, there was heavy rain, and people ran to protect themselves under the giant Brazilian flag they were carrying.

Square Dance - Carlos Drummond de Andrade

2009-01-15T18:12:00.003-02:00

João loved Teresa, who loved Raimundo, who loved Maria,
who loved Joaquim, who loved Lili,
who loved no one.

João went to the United States,
Teresa, to a convent
Raimundo died in a disaster
Maria became a spinster
Joaquim commited suicide,
And Lili got married to J.Pinto Fernandes,
who wasn´t a part of this story.

Freedom, by Alberto Caieiro (Fernando Pessoa)

2009-01-14T14:50:00.002-02:00

Oh, what a pleasure
not to follow a duty!
To have a book
and not read it!
Reading is boring.
Studying is nothing.
The sun shines without literature.
Rivers run without original editions.
And the breeze, so natural to the morning, has plenty of time, and no rush...

Books are papers painted with ink.
Studying is something that can´t distinguish nihil from nothing.

The best is the mist.
It doesn´t matter if Dom Sebastião will ever come back.

Great is the poetry, goodness, and the dances.
But the best in this world are the children,
Flowers, Music, Moonlight, and the Sun, whose only flaw
is sometimes burning instead of making life bloom.

And more than anything else, Jesus Christ,
who didn´t know anything about finances,
and never owned a library.

Is it worth it?

2008-08-16T11:17:00.002-03:00

Keeping on with the gold medal issue, I was just thinking about those girls in Gymnastics. They´re 14,15, but theiy look like they´re 10, 11. Since they´re 3 years old they have been practising every day for 5, 6 hours...And we applaud that! Many of them didn´t have a choice. They are there because since they were very little (a time they should be playing) they were told they should do that. The Olympics are a biiiig business. Call me a romantic, if you will, but I still think sports should be about finding out about ourselves through physical activity and games. It should be about realizing our limits. And, believe me, they´re much closer than we would like to think they are.

Gold Medal

2008-08-15T23:48:00.001-03:00

Congratulations Cesar Cielo Filho! Our gold in swimming! It really doesn´t matter how many medals you get. It matters how much you deserved each one of them.