DOES THE DEVIL ACTUALLY EXIST?

 --Rebbe, I did not believe in the existence of the devil. For me, it was just a symbolic figure placed by G-d in the Torah to scare hyperactive and not-much-intelligent children.

-- I understand, Akiva, but then I assume you changed your mind...

-- Yes, now more than I believe, I am certain that the Devil exists as a concrete, palpable being.

-- And what made you come to this certainty?

-- I suddenly realized that I have been married to him/her, her/himself, for several years.

Two Coexisting Realities, Just Choose Yours!

Lacoonte and His Sons, Vatican Museum

In the "Invisible Cities", by Italo Calvino, Marco Polo speaks to the Mongol Emperor, Kublai Khan:

"Hell is not something that will come. If there is one, it is already here as this Hell we live in every day, this Hell that we form up just by being together. There are two ways to avoid suffering in it. The first is easy for most people: to accept Hell and become part of it, till a point where it is no more perceived. The second way is risky and requires continuous attention and learning: to try knowing how to recognize who and what, in the midst of this Hell, is not Hell and make them last and give them space."

Translated freely from 'Le Città Invisibili', Einaudi Editore, Torino 1972.
by Marcos Wagner da Cunha, author of the e-books below:

The Last Owl

A Última Coruja

Akiva and the Devil

--Rebbe, I did not believe in the existence of the devil. For me, it was just a symbolic figure placed by G-d in the Torah to scare hyperactive and less intelligent children.
-- I understand, Akiva, but then I assume you changed your mind...
-- Yes, now more than I believe, I am certain that the Devil exists as a concrete, palpable being.
-- And what was it to make you come to this certainty?
-- I suddenly realized that I have been married to you myself for several years

Akiva e o Demônio

--Rebbe, eu não acreditava na existência do demónio. Pra mim, era só uma figura simbólica posta por D'us na Torah pra assustar as crianças hiperativas e menos inteligentes.

-- Entendo, Akiva, mas então deduzo que mudou de opinião...

-- Sim, agora mais que creio, tenho certeza de que o Diabo existe como ser concreto, palpável.

-- E o que o fez chegar a essa certeza?

-- De repente, percebi que estou casado com o próprio há vários anos.

Duas Realidades Coexistentes, Simultâneas: Em Qual Delas Escolhe Viver?

Último parágrafo de As Cidades Invisíveis, de Italo Calvino.   Marco Polo fala a Kublai Khan, imperador mongol:

"O inferno dos vivos não é algo que virá; se existe algum, é aquele que já está aqui, o inferno no qual vivemos todos os dias, que formamos por estar juntos. Existem duas maneiras de não sofrer nele. A primeira é fácil para a maioria das pessoas: aceitar o inferno, e tornar-se parte dele a ponto de não percebê-lo mais. A segunda é arriscada, e exige atenção e aprendizado contínuos: tentar saber reconhecer quem e o quê, em meio ao inferno, não é inferno, e fazê-los durar, e dar-lhes espaço." -

Ítalo Calvino

Visão Amazônica do Paraíso

"Ao homem que cavalga por longo tempo por terrenos selvagens, vem desejo de uma cidade. Finalmente alcança Isidra..."                              Italo Calvino, em 'As Cidades Invisíveis'

Sempre sonhei embrenhar-me na floresta amazônica, nem que fosse aventura perigosa, desconfortável, quente demais ou tendo de pagar preços exorbitantes nos hotéis melhores, que têm preços exorbitantes por serem destinados sobretudo a estrangeiros. Depois de muitos planos e de uma pesquisa minuciosa de roteiros, enfim, a partida: seriam dez dias no Juma Lodge, em plena selva. Viajamos por quatro horas sem parada desde Manaus, adentrando a mais densa das matas do mundo, por estradas de terra, depois em barcos guiados por índios, ouvindo histórias de jacarés, piranhas, onças, até chegar a uns bangalôs pendurados nas copas das árvores à beira do Rio Juma. Que aventura! Aquele pequeno hotel havia sido praticamente destruído pela cheia gigante de 2009, e, então, passados 12 meses de inatividade, tornava a aceitar hóspedes. Fênix ressurgia das cinzas, que imagem exuberante para o poder infinito da Natureza com seus ciclos de destruição e renascimento. Tudo bem ao gosto da Revolução Verde, que haverá de salvar a Terra! No dia seguinte pela manhã, o café num refeitório em formato de construção dos índios ianomami... Quanta emoção! Ali não havia sinal de internet, nem de TV ou rádio. E sempre odiei excesso de conexão! Tampouco seria incomodado por aparelhos celulares, e sequer meu leitor eletrônico de livros (kindle) funcionava... Seriam, pra este paulistano aqui amordaçado por esta infernal megalópole em que nasci, 10 dias sem contato nenhum com as pragas e quinquilharias desta tristíssima civilização hiperconsumista, cada vez mais vazia de sentido. Enfim estava em meio à selva tropical, longe de tudo e de todos, como em tantos de meus sonhos, devaneios e fantasias!
Tomando um suco de cupuaçu delicioso, logo após o café-da-manhã, e eis meus pensamentos enquanto mirava o Rio Juma e a densa floresta:
-- "Nem tudo está perdido! Há espaço (e tempo) para a fruição da plena autenticidade de nós mesmos, aquele melancólico do Lars von Trier se engana, pois nem tudo é imitação, repetição ou vigilância ininterrupta! O Big Brother de George Orwell --outro pessimista de maus humores -- nunca vencerá!".
Eu estava muitíssimo bem acompanhado no Juma, e ainda assim, ou talvez até por isso mesmo, notei com presteza a aproximação de duas jovens adolescentes: irmãs, uma com cerca de 16, outra uns 18 anos. E que belas 'comissões de frente', como diria meu amigo Ermanno!
Senti logo que seus olhares estavam a revelar certo interesse por este simpátíco, sensual, homem com mais de 40 anos. Talvez até mesmo fosse já evidente uma iniciativa maior aproximação física por parte da de 18 anos... Fui ficando animado pra valer, beirando a euforia, a ponrto de dizer a mi mesmo:

"Este é meu paraíso! Em meio a esta exuberante floresta brasileira, intocada como nos tempos de Cabral, realizarei enfim aquela tão sonhada orgia com um delicioso harém de belas jovens. Sozinho, com estes volumes abundantes, à disposição de quantas vierem!"
Quando já ia decidindo chamar pra orgia também aquela morenaça, que acompanhava um alemãozinho, a mais peituda delas me lançou sua lancinante pergunta:
"O senhor é o pai do Cunha, não é? Do Henrique Cunha, que fez Colégio Santa Cruz e agora estuda Ciências Sociais na USP? Estudamos juntos, e hoje frequento o Instituto de Química."

Eu me imaginava ali isolado, protegido, blindado contra a apavorante civilização Big Brother. Imaginando que só seria coagido a abandonar aquele 'anonimato' ao ter que pagar a conta, ao despedir-me. Pensava-me livre das tantas amarras identificadoras deste século 21, a ponto de relativizar o disparate ousado de Jean Paul Sarte quando disse: "Moi? Mais non je n'ai pas de surrmoi!" [Eu? Claro que não tenho super-ego!]

"A cidade sonhada o continha jovem; a Isidra chega em idade tardia.(...) Os desejos são já lembranças"                                 Obra citada, 'As Cidades e a Memória 2'

Eschatologically (on the innermost essence of money)

 “According to an old legend King Midas once pursued the astute Silenus, Dionysus' escort, throughout the woods without being able to capture him. When, finally, he fell into the king's hands, this asked him what was for a human being the greatest of all goods, the biggest of all privileges. Inflexible and without a move fell silent the demon."                                 --Friedrich Nietzsche

 All of the world's money, in all its existing forms, suddenly was seen and smelt as human excrement, its new material essence, its absolute form. Individual reactions were too diverse, but all marked by an intense perplexity. The banker was counting his cash, when the dollar bills melted and made soft, pasty, slipped down from his hands. Astute, he didn't give an order to throw that repulsive thing into garbage, because he soon noticed that all of his patrimony had by then assumed this new way of being-in-the-world. Beggars, shantytown dwellers,favelados and wretches of all kinds began enthusiastically to eat vegetables, weeds, earth or whatever could cause them to defecate abundantly. All existing gold turned into a mild, sweetly ill-smelling kind of yellowish feces, resembling that of little babies.

Rumors arose that, intending to maintain public order, governments soon would print new paper money. By doing so, they would be then obliged to exchange old money---eschatologically transformed--- by the new one. To each citizen would be warranted the right to permute his fecal portion by a new money amount.

  Nonetheless, every attempt to make new dollars, yuans, yens, pounds, euros as well as any other currency, resulted inexorably in the same shit.

Bank checks, even if correctly written, evaporated immediately after being signed, becoming fetid flatulencies.

As a result of these rumors about the exchange of excrements by new money, crowds began to drain out cities' sewers. Some people  tried to bottle their intestinal gases in large vaults, or even smaller ones, certain that they would become rich by alleging to have lost large amounts of money in printed checks.

The irrespirable milieu of banks was soon carefully sanitized. All pickings that remained as rests of excrement or farts were meticulously stored inside the most hermetic vaults. In newspapers, supposed specialists announced their finest abilities as smart connoisseurs of the also very well discernible" smell of U.S. dollars, euros, Japanese yen, and British pounds. Although at this time it was evident that no one could be able to state anything about the true value of these once-strong currencies, the economists seemed still to breathe amidst the same atmosphere previous to the unusual, peculiar cataclysm.
Meanwhile, bankers and billionaires were waiting anxiously for an official statement, a credible e-mail, or even for any kind of rumor, concerning whatever might have happened in Switzerland. In this country, differently from all others, news agencies were totally mute from the first moment of Eschatos or Skatos (scholars were still discussing on which could be the most appropriate name for this New Age). Nobody, not even frontier's guards nor spies, had been capable of getting any information about what exactly had happened by those days to the Swiss franc. Might it have changed into the same dejects? Nothing was known regarding the giant amounts of dollars and of gold stored inside the banking houses of Zürich, Genève, and Basel.
Another rumor in the media: an extraordinary meeting of the United Nations,
followed by a resolution of the Security Council immediately, would have discussed the possibility of using carbon-14 dating in assigning value to the whole global stock of human feces. Only this way would it be possible to assign a fair value for the individual lots that actually were fecal gold or real money before that ominous day of July. All member nations would have signed such a declaration, with the exception of Switzerland, whose diplomatic staff alleged have not received any information about what might be happening inside their country. Nobody gave credence to this claim, and the once peaceful and reliable Swiss people soon became the subject of gravest suspicions. Submerged in an ocean of uncertainty, humans began to gather their own feces within market plastic bags, under blankets, inside refrigerators, or even outdoors. Nobody was using latrines more, nor diapers were thrown out as before. Everyone was trying to gather the most of this strange stuff that people wished to believe to be the long-awaited wealth.

There were then indications that people were getting used to living with what, a short time before, was seen as the most repugnant of their products. Odors were more and more tolerated or even said to be milder, perfectly supportable ''Maybe we were excessively refined” many were repeating.
On the Andean Highlands, military strategists took power through a new coup d'etat. Nothing suggested that silver had been hit by the eschatos' plague, or (skatos an interministerial comission was created to decide on the correct spell). The new president decreed that thirteen thousand tons of silver coins would have to be immediately minted. Such were intended to be exported as money for worldwide circulation. On one side would be imprinted in high relief the bust of the general who had taken power immediately after having conceived himself the great idea. As for the other side, one could not forget to pay homage to skatos (eschatos), the catastrophic event that would create a once-unimaginable opulence and power for ''all the hearts and minds of our nation’s citizens''. On this side there would be imprinted the typical contour taken on by human feces when placed naturally on the ground, twisted on itself as a spiral shell. Heads and tails.
Right away the president became a first ranked in popularity among his country's citizens. In a speech through TV, Mr Luis  Igberto enthusiastically proclaimed:

"Tomorrow  our people will show to the whole world for what purpose God gave us this wealthiest country on Earth. After minting the silver money, we'll show to the other nations, unfortunately submerged under a tsunami of shit, that the latter has been for us nothing but a marolinha ( tiny wave )"

 The Andean failure gave rise to another coup d'état, since a quick decision was needed on so many matters, yet the disturbed president seemed unable even to make a single pronouncement to his people. Radical disinfection of O Palácio das Moedas (The Coin's Palace) could not be postponed anymore. Thousands of tons of those pretty and fragile, almost perfumed dejects ---into which had turned all the noble metal after being coined--- were requiring a fast and radical cleaning out. Maintaining the shape of coins and the intended printed images, all that huge amount of silver had too become excrement, similar in all its characteristics to the acholic lees of people suffering from hepatitis.
The new way to deal with the wealth of nations came, paradoxically and at last, from another Emergent Nation.   Its old and wise Minister of Economy, a fat and clumsy man, was respected all over the world as one of the most prominent brains in such science.   He announced to have an infallible plan, to be revealed as soon as possible.
Any kind of solution could not take any longer, since the entire world was suffering serious damage from such an overwhelming monetary crisis.
The most notable socialites, so much constrained for having to keep under rigid guardianship the weird new shape taken on by their jewelry and goods, were pressing their husbands and rulers incessantly.
 As for poor people, they were perishing by the hundred millions, victims of an illness similar to cholera, as a consequence of eating, or trying to eat, all kinds of stuff from green trees' branches to pure earth. When they were fading away, the moribund ones kept on trying not to lose any drop of the "precious" liquid being excreted.
Finally in  the middle of July, the fore-mentioned minister declared in a press release that his global plan was ready, but he was still waiting for an answer to a  referral he had addressed to the Swiss government. Thereafter, only the UNO sanction would be needed to bring an end to that all exasperating crisis.
It should be clarified that the generalized mistrust concerning the Swiss people was then focused on speculation about a terribly powerful weapon, perhaps biological,  cultivated in the Alps and then scattered all over the world for hegemonic intentions. That would be the cause of Eschatos or Skatos (some were still debating it). That would explain the absolute silence in communications media from that country for so long. After the plague be finished, Switzerland would emerge as the most powerful nation on Earth. People were dreaming by this time of the gold, of the silver, and also of those huge amounts of dollars, euros and yens remaining still intact above those high mountains, amid glaciers pine trees and lakes.
Within socialist countries something a bit different occurred, which was soon interpreted as complementary to the "Fecal Revolution": all and every paper sealed with the signature of state officials also turned into shit. Rather hard and compact, like that of chronically constipated people, but the purest shit.
But regarding the minister, who after all has been able to save mankind, we ought to talk a little more. Perhaps after diving into the circumstances and fluids that surrounded him, could we reach a new insights about how the new legal order-- that saved us all -- has emerged from such a peculiar brain.
 He was, and still is, since long before eschatos the most fetid person on the planet Earth, even without carrying rests of the old and now transmuted money. Although he took prolonged baths and using only excellent French perfumes, the most expensive ones, such habits weren't enough to free his body from that awful ill-smell. This seemed to worse as the hours passed. His presence or departure was known by all people in a whole city block where he had recently been. His plane could be easily identified among so many others arriving at a given airport. Just through smell.
Here follows the text of his Lex Magna ( Great Law), that would thereafter be literally copied by so many other ministers and chiefs of state, and UNO officials.
It was quickly sanctioned, under a regimen of martial law, all over the world:

Decree Number 001 (One) of Eschatos (Skatos) Era:

Each and every citizen of this country, as well as foreigners who own temporary or permanent visa, tourists and diplomatic representatives, from now on are obliged to defecate exclusively in the sight of at least one member of the newly created Militia for Economic and Sanitary Inspection (M.E.S.I.). Their fecal excrement must be immediately confiscated to the Public Coffers. The so collected amount will be repaid in fibrous food, preferably vegetables. It is a function of the members of this Militia to qualify, to weigh and to quantify the dejects of every human being inside our boundaries. Complementary laws will treat such matters as well the techniques and the thorough know-how needed for these delicate monetary transactions.
The volume collected in this way will be deposited into the recently founded Good Pepsis Central Bank (G.P.C.B.).
Public servants from the M.E.S.I., from the G.P.C.B., and from intermediary instances, have the right to defecate only in front of one of their immediate superiors, and will receive the same kind of payment as the common citizens.
Each and every individual, foreigner or citizen of our nation, who traffics or trades human feces illegally, will be condemned to perpetual prison inside the Defecation Chamber, where he or she will be allowed just to eat and to defecate until his/her natural death.
To the Swiss ambassador will be given monthly reports about mass as well as volume of our wealth reserves.

       Professor Dr Eurico Furtado
        Minister of the Economy

"...till the moment when, forced by Midas, Silenus began to laugh at bursts and uttered these words: ''Miserable human genus, that lasts just one day, children born by chance and made for hardworking.What do you oblige me to say? Words that would be better for you not to hear? The greatest of all goods is for you quite unattainable: not to be born, not to be, be nothing. The second of the greatest goods is however to die soon."                       F.Nietzsche, in 'The Birth of Tragedy '§3                            

PS: This story is an excerpt from the e-book below:        
The Last Owl

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ESCATOLOGICAMENTE

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ESCATOLOGICAMENTE