A perfect day

Escrevi este texto em Janeiro de 2005, no mesmo dia deste acontecimentos aqui descritos. Recentemente a vossa já conhecida Gwendo resolveu compilar uma zine poly em Munique, a Krake, e pediu me alguns textos. Desenterrei este que traduzi e adaptei para inglês. Quem tiver interesse em receber a Krake, que é escrita em alemão com excepção dos meus textos e se dirige a um público feminino (queer) deve contactar-me ou á Gwendo.


6/Jan/2004 - "A perfect day", or, "on the nature of Present and Future in relationships".

We had a beatiful day today, cold and bright, planted in the middle of a grey and condescending January. We decided to jump in the car, throw some wine and cheese inside a picnic basket and just drive to that medieval village we contemplated visiting for so long. In pure honesty, what was really important was not quite the village itself, but driving there, and images like that of a k7 box tapping lazily against a thermobotle filled with tea on the bottom of the car.

The day was so bright that we drove with an open car, heater constantly busy. Nothing between us and the blue sky except icy wind. Buried in berets, caps and coats, we insisted in the decadent poetry of the open car. We crossed the kms of suburbia where nobody who wants to be taken seriously really wants to live. We suffered with a smile and dreamy eyes all the fatal colds and lung infections that the bypassers would predict (or even wish) us.
The rolling hills immediately afterwards were crossed at antisocial cruising speed, more adequate for contemplative beings than for drivers in a competitive world, "Durutti Column"´s gentle music as soundtrack. All other cars on the road got, thankfully, impatient and eventually overtook us, finally leaving us alone on the asfalt, mountains looming proud on the horizon as sentinels. Being January, the shadows were dark and long against that impossibly bright green. We were very happy, happy inside, and happy with us. All of us. Very likely we were asking ourselves in silence (well, I was, at least, definetely) if we shouldn't be together again, specially after we recreated such a beautiful moment without any effort. But nobody voiced it loud. Maybe because all of us knew that this thought was not only in one´s head. Maybe because we were in a way together again.

We got to our destination, and unanimously decided to skip the cultural visit, expontaneous empty heads we all are, and just indulge into walking along the river where so many before us strided through the centuries. Let's assume it, is has been a quite "bourjoise" saturday, and not even shopping was overlooked, in an improvised antique shop contiguous to the city walls, smelling of mold and "saudade". This shop we left with the already usual amount of odd music reliqs and unlikely objects which will end up some day in another antique shop after we become dust, without lips to kiss and love anymore.

But, allas! Suddenly the fight erupted, violent, unsummoned, redundant and ridiculous like always. It is the end of the state of grace, the World becomes ugly in a second, and each of us only wants to go back home, to familiar territory, where one can be alone and not face this another defeat. We know then, that this fighting is an old story and that rivers don't run backwards.

Now it is clear why we are not together anymore. Because of never being able to handle such fights. But at the same time, we are silently certain that such moments tell us clearly how precious the Present is, and that they remove all fear from the Future. If this is our beautiful and bitter Present and we have no expectations from the Future, then we are free because we have nothing to loose. Ours is the complete beauty of a moment because we don't try to confine it.

We flee to the car, because only a trip back home can give us the isolation needed. After such bitter discussion none of us can endure to sit together. But suddenly we hear music, and we follow it, like children. There is a party going on. We are explained that is a very seldom heppening, takes place only every seven years for centuries and that people drive specially for the occasion (and we land on it unknowing.. so typical) We drink some with the crowd, and let the party creep inside us. We are still bleeding inside, but now we are somehow in peace. We go to the car. We lay a table cloth over the motor cover, blue and white squares over metal, and make our picnic there, in the cold air. The crowd and the dance are a distant rumour now.

Now we are home. I am writting this. We pacified our feelings over a spartan but correct table. The same blue and white table cloth, some beans, bread, wine, some manioc as dessert. Coffee, "medronho" and a hand rolled cigarrette to close it. I spent the whole trip home cunning ways to ensure I could be alone, not see these two lovely but so irritating darlings for some time. Too painful to see them. But as soon as we arrived, it was just automatic to sit at the table and eat together, like we did for years, like a family that we never stopped being, even after we are not together anymore. I watch them talking on the sofa as I writte this. They know what I am writting about.
I am almost finished with the writting. I think I will publish it online, and then go over there, to the sofa, rejoin those two, rejoin our bliss. I don't know what the evening is reserving me, but I am sure it will be wonderful, after a wonderful day. Maybe this evening has no Present and no Future, or maybe it has. But this is not important. Love doesn't care about the potential of a nice and confortable Future. Love is something that just happens and knows no boundaries.