September, 11

" Our fourteen-year-old daughter started high school today. For the first time in her life, she rode on the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan – alone.
She will not be coming home tonight. The subways are no longer running in New York, and my wife and I have arranged for her to stay with friends on the Upper West Side.
Less than an hour after she passed under the World Trade Center, the Twin Towers crumbled to the ground.
From the top floor of our house, we can see the smoke filling the sky of the city. The wind is blowing toward Brooklyn today, and the smells of the fire have settled into every room of the house. A terrible, stinging odor: flaming plastic, electric wire, building materials.
My wife’s sister, who lives in TriBeCa, just ten blocks north of what was once the World Trade Center, called to tell us about the screams she heard after the first tower collapsed. Friends of hers, who live on John Street, even closer to the site of the catastrophe, were evacuated by police after the door of their building was blown in by the impact. They walked north through the rubble and debris – which, they told her, contained human body parts.
After watching the news on television all morning, my wife and I went out for a walk in the neighbourhood. Many people were wearing handkerchiefs over their faces. Some wore painters’ masks. I stopped and talked to the man who cuts my hair, who was standing in front of his empty barber shop with an anguished look on his face. A few hours earlier, he said, the woman who owns the antique shop next door had been on the phone with her son-in-law – who had been trapped in his office on the 107th floor of the World Trade Center. Less than an hour after she spoke to him, the tower collapsed.
All day, as I have watched the horrific images on the television screen and looked at the smoke through the window, I have been thinking about my friend, the high-wire artist Philippe Petit, who walked between the towers of the World Trade Center in August 1974, just after construction of the buildings was completed. A small man dancing on a wire more than five hundred yards off the ground – an act of indelible beauty.
Today, that same spot has been turned into a place of death. It frightens me to contemplate how many people have been killed.
We all knew this could happen. We have been talking about the possibility for years, but now that the tragedy has struck, it’s far worse than anyone ever imagined. The last foreign attack on American soil occurred in 1812. We have no precedent for what has happened today, and the consequences of this assault will no doubt be terrible. More violence, more death, more pain for everyone.
And so the twenty-first century finally begins. "

(Random Notes – September 11, 2001 – 4:00 PM, Paul Auster)

Conta-me uma história

" Conta-me uma história, pediu-me. Ri-me. Conta-me uma história, disse outra vez. Apertou-me os dedos sobre o peito, pedia-me que lhe contasse uma história, eu cantarolei estava uma princesa debaixo de um laranjal, e ela, ansiosa, não, conta-me antes uma história, era uma vez um palácio, comecei, era um palácio novo, perguntou-me, eu tinha dúvidas que um palácio pudesse ser novo a não ser na nossa memória dele, ela queria uma história, e eu anunciara-lhe a história de um palácio, ela tinha os olhos fixos em mim, quem o mandou construir, foi um rei, sim, sim, diz-me se foi um rei, mesmo que seja mentira diz-me que foi um rei que o mandou construir, eu falava-lhe das mãos que o iam construindo, lanço a lanço, passo a passo, e ela insistia, foi um rei, sim, eu sei, foi um rei que mandou construir o palácio, o rei amava uma princesa bela como a lua, eu lembrava-me da princesa moura, mas ela dizia que não, a princesa era loura como todos os sóis, e o rei mandou construir aquele palácio interminável, sim, gritou, o plácio era interminável, havia portas que abriam para o céu e janelas escancaradas sobre o tempo, o rei queria que o palácio não tivesse fim, ele queria que a obra cantassse a insuportável dor de amar a princesa que era bonita como as estrelas, lembras-te, e eu disse que sim, mas talvez ela tivesse notado que alguma coisa viera instalar-se entre nós, então, ela parou, olhou-me durante muito tempo, disse, tudo te lembra sempre alguma coisa, não é, e eu soube que antes de tudo, mesmo que não fosse verdade, era a história do meu palácio que ela queria ouvir. "

(Lisboa Song, Revista Egoísta, António Mega Ferreira)

The story of the doll

“ All right. The story. The story of the doll... It’s the last year of Kafka’s life, and he’s fallen in love with Dora Diamant, a young girl of nineteen or twenty who ran away from her Hasidic family in Poland and now lives in Berlin. She’s half his age, but she’s the one who gives him the courage to leave Prague – something he’s been wanting to do for years – and she becomes the first and only woman he lives with. He gets to Berlin in the fall of 1923 and dies the following spring, but those last months are probably the happiest months of his life. In spite of his deteriorating health. In spite of the social conditions in Berlin: food shortages, political riots, the worst inflation in German history. In spite of the certain knowledge that he is not long for this world.
Every afternoon, Kafka goes out for a walk in the park. More often than not, Dora goes with him. One day, they run into a little girl in tears, sobbing her heart out. Kafka asks her what’s wrong, and she tells him that she’s lost her doll. He immediately starts inventing a story to explain what happened. ‘Your doll has gone off on a trip,’ he says. ‘How do you know that?’ the girl asks. ‘Because she’s written me a letter,’ Kafka says. The girl seems suspicious. ‘Dou you have it on you?’ she asks. ‘No, I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘I left it at home by mistake, but I’ll bring it with me tomorrow.’ He’s so convincing, the girl doesn’t know what to think anymore. Can it be possible that this mysterious man is telling the truth?
Kafka goes straight home to write the letter. He sits down at his desk, and as Dora watches him write, she notices the same seriousness and tension he displays when composing his own work. He isn’t about to cheat the little girl. This is a real literary labor, and he’s determined to get it right. If he can come up with a beautiful and persuasive lie, it will supplant the girl’s loss with a different reality – a false one, maybe, but something true and believable according to the laws of fiction.
The next day, Kafka rushes back to the park with the letter. The little girl is waiting for him, and since she hasn’t learned how to read yet, he reads the letter out loud to her. The doll is very sorry, but she’s grown tired of living with the same people all the time. She needs to get out and see the world, to make new friends. It’s not that she doesn’t love the little girl, but she longs for a change of scenery, and therefore they must separate for a while. The doll then promises to write the girl every day and keep her abreast of her activities.
That’s where the story begins to break my heart. It’s astonishing enough that Kafka took the trouble to write that first letter, but now he commits himself to the project of writing a new letter every day – for no other reason than to console the little girl, who happens to be a complete stranger to him, a child he ran into by accident one afternoon in a park. What kind of man does a thing like that? He kept it up for three week, Nathan. Three weeks. One of the most brilliant writers who ever lived sacrificing his time – his ever more precious and dwindling time – to composing imaginary letters from a lost doll. Dora says that he wrote every sentence with excruciating attention to detail, that the prose was precise, funny, and absorbing. In other words, it was Kafka’s prose, and every day for three weeks he went to the park and read another letter to the girl. The doll grows up, goes to school, gets to know other people. She continues to assure the girl of her love, but she hints at certain complications in her life that make it impossible for her to return home. Little by little, Kafka is preparing the girl for the moment when the doll will vanish from her life forever. He struggles to come up with a satisfactory ending, worried that if he doesn’t succeed, the magic spell will be broken. After testing out several possibilities, he finally decides to marry off the doll. He describes the young man she falls in love with, the engagement party, the wedding in the country, even the house where the doll and her husband now live. And then, in the last line, the doll bids farewell to her old and beloved friend.
By that point, of course, the girl no longer misses the doll. Kafka has given her something else instead, and by the time those three weeks are up, the letters have cured here of her unhappiness. She has the story, and when a person is lucky enough to live inside a story, to live inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappear. For as long as the story goes on, reality no longer exists. “

(The Brooklyn Follies, Paul Auster)

A story about people who can’t tell stories

“ Now, as you read what I have to say, please try and imagine the faces I describe to you. (For what is reading but the animating of a writer’s words on the silent film strip in our minds?) Project onto this silver screen a simple general store in eastern Anatolia. It’s a cold winter’s afternoon and the sky is already growing dark, and because business is slow, the barber across the way has left his apprentice to mind the store, and now he is here, sitting around the stove with his younger brother and a retired old man and a visitor who’s come to town, more for the company than to do the shopping. To pass the time, they make idle conversation, sharing stories about their days in the army and flipping through the newspaper and exchanging gossip, and they laugh from time to time, but sitting among them is one troubled man who speaks very little and has a hard time getting anyone to listen to him when he does: the barber’s brother. He has stories he wants to share, and jokes too, but much as he longs to tell them, he just doesn’t have the knack, he just can’t make himself shine. The one time all afternoon he tried to begin telling a story, the others cut him off without even realizing it. Please imagine the expression on this barber’s brother’s face when the others interrupted his story.
Now imagine an engagement party in the home of a westernized but not unusually wealthy Istanbul doctor. At one point, a handful of the guests who have invaded his house happen to find themselves in his daughter’s room, around a bed piled high with coats. Among them is a charming young girl and two men who long to impress her; one is not particularly good-looking or intelligent, but he’s chatty and gregarious. So the girl, like the older men in the room, listens to his stories; everyone present gives him their full attention. Now please try to picture the face of the other young man, who is so much brighter and more sensitive than his prattling friend but who can get no one to pay him any attention whatsoever.
Now please imagine three sisters who have all been married over the past two years; they’ve gathered at their mother’s house two months after the youngest sister’s wedding. The huge clock ticking on the wall and the impatient canary clucking in the cage tell us that we are in the home of a moderately successful merchant. As the four women sit sipping their tea in the leaden light of the wintry afternoon, the youngest daughter, who’s always been the vivacious one, tells such amusing stories about her two months of married life that her eldest and most beautiful sister, though she knows so much more about married life, sadly asks herself if perhaps there is something lacking in her husband, something missing in her life. So now please bring this melancholy face before your eyes.
Have you seen all these faces? Have you noticed that, in some strange way, they all look alike? Is there not something that makes them all resemble each other, an invisible thread that joins their souls? When you look into the faces of these quiet creatures who don’t know how to tell stories – who are mute, who can’t make themselves heard, who fade into the woodmark, who only think of the perfect answer after the fact, after they’re back at home, who can never think of a story anyone else will find interesting – is there not more depth and more meaning in them? You can see every letter of every untold story swimming on their faces, and all the sings of silence, dejection, and even defeat. You can even imagine your own face in those faces, can’t you? How many we are, how much anguish we all carry, and how helpless most of us are in the face of the world. "

(The Black Book, Orhan Pamuk)

Coisas dela...

A ele sempre lhe tinham dito que conhecia e sabia muitas coisas.
Mas ela, ela sim, tinha tantas coisas que eram dela, só dela, assim dela.
É verdade que muitas delas, das coisas que eram só dela, ele não as percebia bem.
Mas sabia que gostava delas, das coisas que eram assim, dela, assim, um bocadinho diferentes, assim, um bocadinho... peculiares.
Talvez um dia ele as aprendesse, as coisas dela, talvez um dia ele as compreendesse, as coisas dela, talvez um dia ele lhe mostrasse coisas que eram só dele, secretas e indizíveis, verdadeiras umas, imaginadas outras, porque às vezes ele próprio já não sabia bem a diferença, ele que se lembrava de repente de uma imagem (ele estava sempre a lembrar-se de imagens) e misturava as imagens com a realidade do que pensava e do que sentia e às tantas lá estava ele outra vez no seu palco imaginário.
Mas talvez um dia, também, ela o deixasse entrar nas coisas dela, sem que deixassem de ser dela, mas que fossem, também, um bocadinho, dele, de uma maneira, assim, um pouquinho diferente e, assim, um bocadinho... peculiar.
E de todas as coisas reais e de todas as coisas imaginadas, o que ele achava mais graça era quando a ouvia dizer coisas lá dela, só com ela, bem dela, como “tenho uma coisa importante para decidir” e outras coisas assim. Imagine-se, então, quando eram duas. As coisas. Importantes. Dela. Só dela. Assim dela. Ela...

Anjos e demónios

" Uma mulher concentra o fumo doce da sala. Veste uma camisa branca e uma espécie de calções de cetim, com atilhos nos joelhos - vêem-se quando ela inicia a dança e a saia, redonda, sobe perpendicular às ancas. Levanta os braços. Roda sempre. Tem um véu que lhe tapa a cara. Vê-se o essencial: dois olhos que sofrem. "

(O evangelho segundo a serpente, Faíza Hayat)

Onde tu estás é sempre o fim do mundo

"Perhaps it is possible to love a woman because of a book, a poem that has been underlined, a black and white movie, a house, the look in a man’s eyes when he talks about her, the way her dog waits for her. Because of a Mondrian print on the living room wall."

(Se nos encontrarmos de novo, Ana Teresa Pereira)