On 'Time', a chapter of 'The Last Owl'*

 

A Glimpse of a Landmark Chapter: “Time”

One of the most discussed accounts (cited in the book’s jacket copy) imagines the dawn when humans broke away from the animal kingdom. Before time existed, creatures enjoyed life without any awareness of their own mortality. The author paints a scene of simultaneous orgasm involving three bodies and attributes the origin of language to the woman—a spell, a form of sorcery that interrupted the natural flow of life. The “Father” subtly rejects; the “Mother” desires the “Son” more. The result? True humanity is born the very moment the animal within us is annihilated forever.

It is pure philosophical erotism: desire, myth, and decadence all at once. Language as a curse that separates us from animal happiness and condemns us to a conscious void.

Reception (Scant but Visceral)

Sylvia Loeb (psychoanalyst, Instituto Sedes Sapientiae): “*The Owl of Minerva* is exceptional. The narrative—combined with culture, delirious imagination, boundless audacity, and courage—is impressive.”

*The author of this comment, to whom I am deeply grateful, remains anonymous. *

Acerca de 'O Tempo', capítulo de 'A Última Coruja'*

Vislumbre de um capítulo emblemático: “O Tempo”

Um dos relatos mais comentados (citado nos textos de orelha) imagina o alvorecer em que o humano se desprendeu do reino animal. Antes do tempo, os bichos gozavam a vida sem consciência da finitude. O autor pinta uma cena de orgasmo simultâneo de três corpos e credita à mulher a origem da linguagem — um feitiço, uma bruxaria que interrompeu o fluxo natural da vida. O “Pai” rejeita sutilmente; a “Mãe” deseja mais o “Filho”. O resultado? A humanidade verdadeira nasce no exato momento em que o bicho dentro de nós é aniquilado para sempre.É erotismo filosófico puro: desejo, mito e decadência num só golpe. Linguagem como maldição que nos separa da felicidade animal e nos condena ao vazio consciente.Recepção (escassa, mas visceral)

• Sylvia Loeb (psicanalista, Instituto Sedes Sapientiae): “A Coruja de Minerva é excepcional. Impressionante a narrativa aliada à cultura, imaginação delirante, audácia infinda, coragem.”

*O autor desse comentário, a quem muito agradeço, não se identificou. 

Upon The World

"Yes, but who will cure us of the silent fire, 

the colorless fire that runs at nightfall?..."

"Sì, pero quién nos curará del fuego sordo,
del fuego sin color que corre al anochecer?..."

 Julio Cortázar

--When I met him, we were students, and we then had very little contact. It happened only one single day on which our eyes met. Nothing more. We never had any kind of date. Immediately transfigured after glancing me, he wrote short, interspersed verses, then pulled away abruptly, as someone who sees the possibility of something like God, and wants, needs or is forced to remain atheist. He averted his eyes from mine, as if to turn away their eyes from the bright sun of noon. Soon thereafter began, in front of my home, the building of a most exquisite bridge. In just days, and no one could understand how, it was ready - for crossing the broad avenue - a medieval Florentine style catwalk. Yes, a huge walkway with frescoes by Giotto. Architects rushed to examine it with telescopes since nobody would dare to touch or even get close to such a masterpiece. International experts pondered about taking it to a world exposition that would take place in the same Padova, where Giotto once painted so many bright expressive glances. I did not let them do it.

We lost one another, me and him. We followed separate lives, each one of us with a maze of searches, illusions, love, children, times and places. We barely knew whether the other one was still alive. Except for the blue catwalk every day there. Except by the glances of the figures of the frescoes.
I always knew it was built so I crossed it alone, no one by my side. Naked, walking to meet him, from the first night the catwalk was there. I never did it. We never met together there, both naked on a warm night - while hundreds, thousands of cars come along the avenue just before dawn - making love like cats in heat, like insects flying in copulation. No, we never met there, in spite of this being the sole purpose of this piece of art full of glances, namely, our secret meeting by dawn, as do so many lovers, so many dogs, so many beasts. We follow different and distant lives: I barely know where he might spend his afternoons and nights until the coming of the full Moon. We are born again every full Moon, as when we first saw that ours was to be the most intense desire. But only here over this magnificent bridge, where our naked selves are seen only by the figures in the frescoes, by those so beautiful eyes! He tells me that this painted woman on the left is la Beatrice di Dante, and that my eyes and hers are one and the same.
No, we couldn't keep on living just as those whose automatized lives make of them trite things, who stay adrift on Earth in a short helplessly solitary Existence. That's why, since our first moment, you and I have come from a different corner of the city, meeting together on the top of the walkway.
Under the full moon, both naked, he tenderly caresses my face and kisses me. He touches my breasts with his warm tongue and devours them. Then touches my thighs and penetrates me so tightly as the male lion penetrates his female under a tree in the savannah. Hard as a rock, thick, soft and tender, he tells me that my eyes are indeed the sun, and with the strength of the sunlight he has been able to build this bridge, where we have never been.

--- It was in broad daylight that she could be seen while crossing the catwalk for the first time. She had come in search of me. Naked, she stopped right on top where, without ever being there together, we were making love under the glances of the frescoes' characters. She seemed to be missing me. She was afraid of not finding myself anymore, since that was the first night on which she was seen alone over our huge avenue, under splendorous Moon, amidst the glittering blue of the frescoes, waiting even a single moment for my coming.

Naked, at noon, only your eyes could dare to beat the beauty of your thighs, of your hair, of your breasts, of your pussy, of your mouth, of your feet. Because of not finding me, since none of us actually have ever been there over the catwalk, you looked at those bright meaningful eyes in which Giotto represented Beatrice, and you finally understood. You saw that truest lovers are eternal, never meet, and keep fucking hard under the moonlight during the warm nights of a perpetual summer, crossing bridges over small obstacles, such as the world. This world that humans see from within their cars. And that their bodies penetrate each other, yes, so much as do the roaring lion during his heat, over a transposing bridge built by the burning of their lustful looks.

---It was, thus, under noon light, that we were now for the first time indeed, quite possessed by this same intense heat here over our catwalk built upon the world. No longer do I fear thy sight, as when I did compare them to the Sun god (which, admittedly, was a pretty poor analogy). I do not fear thy eyes. They are God.                    

            "No one will cure us of the silent fire,          of the colorless fire that runs at nightfall."

                 Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch,Rayuela 

                "Nadie nos curará del fuego sordo, del fuego                  sin color que corre al anochecer.              

This poem's author also published 'The Last Owl' on amazon.com .  Just click to get a FREE sample: 'The Last Owl'

El Condor Flies Over

"Alguma coisa acontece no meu coraçãoque só quando cruza a Ipiranga e a avenida São João"

                                   Sampa, by Caetano Veloso 

For a long time in my life, I had not this fear of them. I even think that there has been a time in which they were scarcely known by me, so distant they were. Most probably they have been even admired by me in those times. I search for the causes for such a feeling of mine but never find them. Some people advised me to recall the first images, supposedly plentiful of a vague embryonic angst. They said such was always the beginning of all irrational fears. But seemingly not in my case. At the origin of my woes, I am not able to find any notable fact except a single ridicule event: an innocent talk regarding the correct pronunciation of his name. Paco, my Peruvian friend, living in São Paulo so distant from his country for long, was talking to me about the splendid flight of the condors. Speaking Portuguese without any accent, he nevertheless pronounced the word CÔndores, so putting the tonic accent on the first syllable, as is the correct way in Spanish, but an evident mistake in Portuguese. I right away corrected him: "The accent must be on the second syllable, Paco: conDÔres and not CÔndores.'' ''You are wrong. Their name is CÔndores.'' ''If you are speaking Spanish or even English, which is correct. I am aware of this. But in Portuguese, the right pronunciation is another. We say condôr, never another way." Politely, or presuming to act so, I did speak only these few phrases and nothing else. Nevertheless, they were enough for Paco uttering his trite but mighty words. That same utterance that at once and forever disrupted everything, and which I have been repeating incessantly in my thoughts since then. He looked into my eyes, resembling an Inca prince with his cabezita negra and displaying a subtle and ironic disdain, he launched into my ears a just sarcastic utterance. This latter however revealed itself fatally for me:

              [End of Sample]

Can you guess what comes next? Look at these singular interconnected tales making up a single novel!

A Kafkian tale? This short story is part of the book below: 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004FGMTRC/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tmb

Narciso e O Outro

"Narciso" habita camada primordial e profund da mente humana, pilar mestre a partir do qual se estrutura nosso "Eu" (Ego), nossa personalidade. É força vital que perdura enquanto vivermos, pois o amar a si mesmo se confunde com a própria vontade de viver.
O 'narcisista' a que se referem as descrições clínicas de transtornos de caráter, é apenas um desvio grotesco dessa fundamental pulsão de vida.
Ao nascer, cada 'Narciso' logo se depara com a existência de outros seres humanos, que, como logo percebe, também são 'Narcisos'. E é no olhar do 'Outro' que o recém-chegado 'Narciso' encontra sua DANAÇÃO incontornável, o fim de seu gozo por si próprio, que soube extrair de sua própria imagem. É a efetiva expulsão humana do Paraíso.
No gozo autocontemplativo, 'Narciso' atingia a afirmação plena de si, enquanto a totalidade do existente único que julgava ser, dado que nada de externo lhe dizia respeito.
A imagem do 'Outro', então, imiscui-se e lhe rouba o protagonismo que busca ser o absoluto na cena do mundo.
Todo 'outro' com que se depara está, entretanto, nessa mesma busca ávida do orgasmo autocontemplativo de si, que prefere tomar por eterno.
Toda identidade pessoal, todo Eu/Ego que se mostra ao conviver na cena humana do mundo não pode ser senão máscara, armadura de combatente para uso na guerra dos Narcisos, nessa grande tartufferie que é sempre a convivência social.
Ninguém usa uma única máscara, nem cem, nem cem mil; seu número tende ao infinito, pois que se exibem a infinitos olhares e/ou infinitas perspectivas distribuídos pelos infinitos instantes fugazes da existência humana.

A Poesia Emana da Natureza!

"Quando as aves falam

com as pedras

e as rãs com as águas -

é de poesia que estão falando?"

Manoel de Barros

As Crianças, O Brincar e as Realidades

Crianças, ao brincar, criam e recriam realidades, a partir do que lhes chega aos sentidos vindo do exterior a sua volta. Sim, a essência de qualquer brincadeira é inventar realidades.(Que ingenuidade a de quem pensa que realidade só existe como um absoluto singular!)

Bem por isso não podemos deixar morrer dentro de nós o menino e/ou a menina que fomos. 

Dado que imaginação de criança é sempre livre, dela pode brotar-nos a força pra vencer adversidades. Tantas vezes os obstáculos intransponíveis impõem-se a nós  só pela incapacidade de pensarmos as situações concretas da vida sob ângulos diferentes.