I dance through the rush hour traffic. I try using the inner city road but the traffic’s so jammed I immediately choose another route and when I find it is also jammed I try another one and like this I go around town, you know, just checking that every building is still there. I recently made a CD out of some of my favourite songs of all times and am now listening to my favourite of the moment, The Reason, Hoobastank . Such a perfect song you almost wish you’d had the honour of witting it yourself, at least I do! In fact, I press ‘repeat’ on that song so many times I think I could have completed a CD with that single song and would listen to it from beginning till end. So, I guess I obsess about stuff once in a while. Meanwhile my thoughts are unclear, I try not to think at all. What a mess I got myself into. I stop the car and sight. It’s just going to be another day, just like any other day at work I remind myself. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, I’m not sure. As I said, I’m refraining from thought as much as I can. Despite the fact that I recently read in this book that ‘denial is so last century’, right now, I’ve become pretty good on the denial thing. So you do learn from experience after all. Just you don’t learn never to do it again, you learn to block it out the next time.

Another sigh as I enter the place. (I’ve been doing so much sighing these last couple of weeks you’d think I would have drained all the air my lungs could get me by now.) The place I work. It is how I earned my way through these last years of college. And now it is high time for me to find something new. I just can’t stand this place anymore. The place, the people, the work. I want to do something I love, and work with interesting people. This gym, as far as people are concerned, you just meet dumbasses, a few exceptions aside I must say, to their credit. I don’t mean to say these people are shallow. Oh, no, certainly not. They’re full … of rubbish. And they do have useful information to pass on … if you wanna be talked into freaking anorexia nervosa!

So it’s a quiet day and I have my book ready to fill the void between getting a coffee and making a sandwich. I start to read and this person comes to me, takes a look at the book, decides it’s not the one I was reading last week and shouts ‘Are you reading ANOTHER book? Do you read like three books a month?’ She actually made it sound like I was on drugs or something. That’s the thing about my country, if you’re smoking pot and drinking anything but water every other night, you’re a rebel, a COOL rebel; if you read a lot, you’re a freak. And I don’t even read a lot, it’s just a frenzy I’m going through at the moment. And I just found out that the more I read, the more I wan to write. So, if I keep this pace, I should well be on my way to becoming a novelist. I just need to fix up a story to tell. Anyway, as much as I love the person, I took offence on the commentary. But that’s how people are, I guess you cannot expect a gym instructor to sympathise with the ‘reading kind’. She’s becoming a mother in a few months. Now THAT’S a kind I don’t understand. Just the day before one of the many brilliant people at the gym said (kept saying) that she would bring her four-year-old daughter the next day because she had no one to look after her. I immediately got the feeling that what she really meant was something like ‘Tomorrow be ready and have many many tricks up your sleeve to entertain my baby. Please, also have some nice comments on how beautiful and cute and well-behaved she is.’ So, when I smile at her ‘warning’ I just think ‘Oh, no you don’t!’ I’m not playing the babysitter and I’m not playing with your daughter. I always find parents who drool over their children’s perfectness so pathetic, especially when they expect everybody else to agree with them. When I have kids, and I’m sure they’ll be too beautiful what with my wide green eyes and perfect taste on men, I’ll never boast about their virtues. And I won’t treat them like children, I’ll definitely treat them like little adults. I don’t usually relate to children, my whole life I can only remember two little girls I just loved and wished mine would be just like them. But that’s it! Parents out there, don’t expect everybody to envy your kids, cause they don’t.

That’s just what I think but it’s not really what I say. I mean, has anyone ever told you that it was good to speak one’s mind? Well, these people are either mad or they just never thought of what that meant. If I said everything that I think it would be … bad, for lack of a word that expresses how despicable that would turn out to be. But then again, if people expressed everything that comes to their minds World War Three would be on its way. That’s why we have compromised to do a ‘little’ bit of editing in every thought, or else, society has made us do it.

Oh, and here it is, The Reason, Hoobastank

 

 

To be a translator, believe me it’s sad,

To be a translator, you have to be mad-

Who else would sit in a room

Encased in loneliness more like a tomb?

 

Who else would fondle a microphone cable

Or typewriter keyboard when perfectly able

To fondle some better more pliant device?

(It happens to others, they say it’s quite nice.)

 

Who else would apply so much love, care, devotion

To something that is another man’s notion?

Who else would spend hours to seek out one word

Just to ensure he writes nothing absurd?

 

Who else would read carefully through some epistle

Produced by a half-wit who had better whistle

Than write rotten copy that doesn’t mean much,

Yet expects a translation in, say, perfect Dutch?

 

Who else would accept that every job’s hot

When he knows that it’s probably not

And flog himself silly to see the work through

Then wait for three months not collecting one sou?

 

Who else would put up at social occasions

With statements like: “Oh, you do translations.-

There’s not much to that, after all it’s your lingo,

So where are the problems, why labour that thing so?”

 

Who else would be willing each day of the year

To sit exam where the pass-mark’s a mere

One hundred percent or perhaps just below?

If you think that’s easy, why not have a go?

 

And yet it’s a challenge which on reflection

Provides enormous job satisfaction.

Those who enjoy it will never desert

The odd fascination of the “foreign” word

-Wort, oh what the hell…

 

 

J.H. Hayes

Existem excepções, mas devem ser só para confirmar a regra: quando sou obrigada a ler não me apetece fazê-lo. Quem sabe se tivesse tido uma cadeira do género Literatura Inglesa – ficção J. K. Rowliana não teria ido comprar Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows no dia (noite) em que saiu dos caixotes selados, acorrentados, com infra-vermelhos à volta e td e td e td. Por exemplo, acho que ia adorar ter lido Wuthering Heights, ou não. Bem, doesn´t reaaly matter. Isto só para dizer que o Fernando Pessoa é um gajo que parece saber das coisas; isso de falar de amores contemplativos e locus amaenus não era a cena dele.

Ai que prazer
Não cumprir um dever,
Ter um livro para ler
E não o fazer!

Ler é maçada,
Estudar é nada.
O Sol doira
Sem literatura.
O rio corre bem ou mal,
sem edição original.

E a brisa, essa,
De tão naturalmente matinal,
Como tem tempo não tem pressa…

Livros são papéis pintados com tinta.
Estudar é uma coisa em que está indistinta
A distinção entre nada e coisa nenhuma.

Quanto é melhor, quando há bruma,
Esperar por D. Sebastião,
Quer venha ou não!

Grande é a poesia, a bondade e as danças…
Mas o melhor do mundo são as crianças,
Flores, música, o luar, e o sol, que peca
Só quando, em vez de criar, seca.

O mais do que isto
É Jesus Cristo,
Que não sabia nada de finanças
Nem consta que tivesse biblioteca…

… diz Fernando Pessoa e eu subscrevo!  Quem me dera  passar os meus dias a esperar por D. Sebastião … quando há bruma claro está. Às vezes a ignorância faz bem à alma.

Cá estou eu, de volta às aulinhas. Desta vez como finalista … yehhhhhhh. Neste momento estou numa aulinha em pause (a prof foi atender uma chamadinha do maridinho). Quando terminar vai voltar para continuar a contar a história da sua vida. Can’t blame her … não se vai com certeza a pôr a falar de como vai correr o ano lectivo já que isso é uma incógnita. Ninguém sabe o que está e muito menos o que vai acontecer… viva a incompetência.