Futuro, parte I

(para uma filha que ainda quero ver nascer)

Ainda não nasceste e já te quero pedir desculpa. Quero pedir-te desculpa porque, provavelmente, não verás o mundo que conheci. Não é o melhor dos mundos. Todos os dias se anunciam novas catástrofes naturais e artificiais. Todos os dias surgem novos focos de conflito. A cada hora, morrem crianças e sofrem mães. Mas ainda é um mundo onde podemos viver, pensar, sentir, e desenhar. Esta parte do mundo, pelo menos. Este quinhão que te quero deixar, cheio de defeitos e coisas belas.

Ainda não nasceste e já te quero prometer muita coisa. Nunca é bom sinal. Se prometo a esta distância e não sei se posso cumprir, levanta o sobrolho e duvida. Se o fizeres, ficarei feliz. Duvida. Nunca deixes a dúvida sair-te do corpo. Nunca deixes que te convençam de que duvidar é mau ou que hesitar é sinal de fraqueza. Pelo contrário. Ter dúvidas é sinal de humanidade e hesitar significa que pensas. Nunca deixes de pensar. Nunca permitas que te digam "pensas demais" ou "levas tudo demasiado a sério". Só os fanáticos têm certezas absolutas além do amor que sentem.

Ainda não nasceste e quero dizer-te que lutei. Lutei para que tivesses o direito a pensar por ti. Lutei para que pudesses gritar quando discordas. Provavelmente não o fiz da melhor forma, porque esta época é escura, é um breu completo, e não sabemos quando terminará. Ainda podemos ir a hospitais sem empenharmos as nossas vidas, mas já não sabemos se poderemos tratar cancros sem encher os bolsos a facínoras que riem ao comparar o negócio da saúde ao das armas. Ainda podemos entrar em escolas sem ter de pagar, embora tenhamos que pagar as nossas universidades e o nosso conhecimento. Porque educar, formar e treinar não são direitos fundamentais, neste mundo; aqui, o direito ao lucro (ainda) tem mais força. Porque nem toda a gente percebe que é importante toda a gente gozar de saúde plena e de uma inteligência vivaz. Porque há gente, se lhes posso chamar assim, que anseia por um mundo tenebroso e injusto, um mundo onde pessoas sofrem porque não têm moedas para comprar água e livros. Espero que continues a lutar contra estes facínoras. Eles e elas andarão por aí quando leres isto. Eles e elas andam sempre por aí. É uma lição dura: se queremos um mundo livre, é preciso aceitar quem odeia a liberdade e constrói altares de vidro a deuses de papel. Mas, quero acreditar, poderás encostar o ombro àqueles que amas e construir. Ter uma ideia e fazer algo de novo. Não consigo imaginar-te nada, porque não imagino profissões, apenas estados de espírito. Imagino-te desafiante e inquieta. Imagino-te de voz firme. Imagino-te de viagens a todos os países desta terra. E imagino-te de cabelos longos e rebeldes, olhos semicerrados e cristalinos, pensativos como os meus, risonhos como... os de alguém.

Ainda não nasceste e já te quero cheia de utopias. Não quero que desprezes as utopias. Foram maltratadas e não podem sê-lo. Também não podemos exagerá-las. Só podemos usá-las para caminhar, como disse alguém. São muletas e aguarelas para colorir todos os sonhos que engendramos. É para isso que servem. Quando te oferecerem uma utopia, duvida. Constrói a tua. Se te disserem que és utópica, toma-o como elogio e concorda. Nunca digas que és realista ou pragmática como resposta. Ninguém é realista sem ter a nostalgia de uma utopia. Ninguém tem pragmatismo se não sonhar à noite. As utopias são muletas que nos dão firmeza. Mas nunca cesses de duvidar.

Ainda não nasceste e já quero agradecer-te. Estou a escrever para ti sem ter a certeza de que estarás comigo. Mas sei que serás uma bênção. Apesar de haver quem te queira reduzir a uma folha de cálculo. Quando te quiserem fazer isto, grita. O futuro não é uma pilha de folhas de cálculo. O futuro é uma muralha de almas em chamas.

(...)

Why do we keep going in the age of austerity?

Why do I fight in the face of certain defeat?

This is the question that thunders at night, during those long dark hours when all the time in the world flows through bedsheets and my body wanders in search of another body long gone. Because I kept fighting. Because we suffer together and we keep looking. We keep looking at the stars in search of different stories, different stars.

Why do I fight if I am certain we will end up shedding tears, perhaps blood? Why do I struggle if it is all meaningless? Why do we keep marching with no end in sight? Why are we chanting if perfectly bound to oblivion?

If we are to face defeat, wouldn't it be more rational, more reasonable even, to give up and embrace the spoils of war that we become by shedding our illusions? By signing statements saying "I, citizen X, hereby declare my utopian dreams dead and buried. I recognize my vision of human brotherhood to be wrong and allow my dreams to be burned at a stake specifically designed for dreams", and thereby recognizing our helplessness and realistic assessment of reality (even though reality is no longer realistic), wouldn't we be happier? Wouldn't our lives be wholesome then? Wouldn't our fears wither away? Wouldn't our frustrated desires, our ideas, our gestures and grandeurs, also wither away to the burial grounds of great ideas, sand-like statues, leave us lighter and freer, free to pursue ventures within correct and normal boundaries?

Why then do I fight? Why do I keep going? Why have these last four years turned me into ashes and from the ashes I have been reborn, not as phoenix but as an ever more resilient man? Why do we keep going in the age of austerity?

I keep going because I cannot stop believing. There must be something else out there. There must be a future where we do not exploit each other for kicks and we make mistakes but apologize and go on. There must be a future where we're able to speak without feeling constrained or being constantly afraid. There must be a future without fear of fellow beings. There must. Even if it were simply a matter of possibility, I would keep going. Because we build our paths along the way. Because we keep going in search of something else and we might end up building our destination simply by looking for it.

I keep going because I cannot bear the thought of leaving an ashen world to my kindred spirits.

I keep going because I believe in love and utopias and dreams and goodness and did I mention love?, and all those unspeakable moments when we raise our fists and sing, then we stand together against the brunt, the worst of them, and we resist, and we march, bloodletting be damned, they can't defeat us as long as all of us see that our collective soul glimmers in our eyes.

I keep going because tears let us know we're still alive. I keep going because I have the right to madness and sadness and irrational belief in the flourishing of the children I see growing by my side. We have the right to madness and laughter. We have the right to beautiful, radiant things. Nobody has the right to take those things, those things our grandparents built with their bloody hand, their bloodstricken eyes, their warmest hearts. I have no right to let those things disappear.

The age of austerity keeps us going. We will never know if we march because we want victory. Victory is a much too simple word to convey our beliefs. To encompass every thing we feel when nights are loss in thought, when nights are spent alone because love was not enough.

I might end up lonely in a desert island, a single raspy voice in an old theater where an old movie plays endlessly. A single raspy voice who bore the brunt of cruel beings and refused to break apart, refused to forget warm embraces and kisses and acts of kindness. A single raspy voice, white hair and coarse skin, skin soaked in tears, but a solid heart, a good heart, a pulsating heart of heaven and glory and memories of chants and dignity. I keep going because I want to remember these years as those years where we never forgot we were human beings, human beings with souls. I keep going because I want to be that raspy voice lonely in a theater who still remembers what it was to love and be the guardian of a small piece of a huge, incomprehensible soul which resisted the night. I keep walking because that raspy voice wants to look to the sky and remember those days when we fought and maybe we were defeated but we never forgot laughter. And at the end we still knew home, we still were able to forgive and build. We fed our hungry hearts. I want to be a raspy voice who knows he fought valiantly because he believed and he cared and he tried. Even if he didn't reach utopia; even if he didn't land there. The raspy voice, the soft white hair, just wants to remember having tried. And that will be enough to make memories sweeter. To make it worthwhile. My raspy voice does not care whether we won, although it would like not to be lonely. But even if it is lonely, it will remember.

This is why I keep going.

A rainbow, broken.

It was then we asked ourselves. "Were we ever good people?", "Did we do as much as we could before turning into stone golems?", "Should we have been more gracious, less pitiful in our sorrows?".

It was then we regretted not having regretted further. It was then, at that moment in the space-time continuum, we realized how torn asunder we became. It was too late but we tried to make it too soon. Because maybe perhaps things could have been will be might be different. Because grief shouldn't be an ocean, and in any event oceans shouldn't be salty, they should be sugary to make up for all the ugliness.

It was then we remembered words forgotten, words never spoken, words that made sense before but lost their meaning while traversing the skies. It was then we remembered promises broken and kept, and dreams as detailed as embroidered wooden tulips, and looking up to the heavens hoping for whatever comes next, come what may and all that jazz, but then all we thought about was "were we ever good people?". No wooden flowers. Just acid rain. We remember Jay Williams, Ashley Jackson and people who slowed time down for us, when we had time to be slowed down for us, when time was not of the essence and had barely any place in us. It was then, as the moon rose and the sun set over the hill, we remembered Jay's thundering smoothness, "look out for your souls, they'll come back to claim what's rightfully theirs", as he guided the boat through the river, I can't remember if it was the Hudson or the Styx, if he was Jay the trumpet-player or Charon the rudder-singer. I just remember that back then I was we and you were we. And Jay whistled Kind of Blue while we thought of words unspoken, we tried to invent words, we tried to give names to fireflies, and Jay sang all over, and we were alone in the night but we never felt fuller.

It was then we understood Oppenheimer. It was then we became death, the destroyer of worlds, this world we built over entire lifecourses, we resurrected and suspended time just to build it, then we dropped the "L" word, we became lost. And Ashley remembered us like two little orbs dancing, naming fireflies and deluding ourselves into eternity. Ashley knew better. We should have asked her if we were ever good people. I don't think we were. I wasn't. For all the flags waved, and all the chanting, and all the writing, let us change the world, let us bring utopia to the masses, let us quote Wilde and wax philosophical as we believe deeply in the revolution of angels dropping on earth, wings clipped but voices like heaven, they might be bearded but they bring good news, we're consuming ourselves for something, all is not lost, though we didn't comprehend at that time that for nothing to be lost all must be left behind, and we believed, oh how we believed, but that didn't stop us from thrusting the universe forward a thousand years and standing there and then, asking if we have ever been good people, decent people, people who are built statues and whose adventures are told in fables, people who are to be taught in schools even though kids don't give a shit about us.

It was then we understood that we never felt welcome and that in order to feel welcome, we needed to stop feeling wanted. We needed to stop feeling. We needed to be better and stronger. We needed to be impervious and believe blindly, without sorrow, iron wills without love, because love is petty and kills eventually, it's a good drug, a lovely drug pun intended although not required, but it kills and should be forbidden to those of us who believe, who believe until it hurts, until it breaks us, and then I remember Jay's thunder, "your soul will return to claim its due; you can't sell it to a higher good; Casy and Joad are right, you don't have a soul, you're the guardian of a small, minuscule bit of a larger soul", just as he banked the boat leftward, the sea is almost there, now I'm reaching conscious thought, and I know grief is going to set me on fire, because I will rewrite this moment of then in a book of sand and carry it with me, I will carry it in my heart and still question my vengeance-seeking soul whether I was good people, whether I did good enough, whether I fought long and hard enough. I know the answer, we knew then the answer, when you suddenly slipped into the sugary ocean and I never saw you again. Ashley threw herself into the sky, then into the dark water, and Jay stood oblivious to it all, whistling "A Change is Gonna Come" like Sam Cooke reborn, and I kept on regretting turning into a stone golem. She disappeared. Perhaps I wanted this. Perhaps you wanted this. Perhaps I should blame it on you, since it was you who slipped, even if it was I who always felt unwelcome, even my footprints said sorry, my eyes always trying to run away in shame, even if my voice thundered with rage against injustice; the bottomless pit of our own personal darkness was always there and I had fell so deeply that nothing I did would ever rescue me, unless I saw beyond the dark and closed my eyes into light. Then it would fade and become a sugary ocean. The one you slipped into.

It was then we forgot about everything because we had the power to remember. It was then we hated each other because we remembered how to cherish each other again. It was then we let go because we understood the difference between love and clinging. It was then I understood that I will never see two skies again, because when you watch the stars with someone you always look at several rays of light at once and hence it is impossible to see a single sky and single stars, it is always multiple skies and, because of that, a memory we can never complete without exchanging words or looks. If you had died, I would never be complete again, if only because right there we merged into a single memory, unrepetant.

But now we stand, just before you slip into a sugary ocean, just after we forgot everything because we had remembered it, asking "were we ever good people?"

I wasn't. Not good enough. Not close enough. Not hard enough. I was a rainbow, broken.