World Social Forum fiction (I)

Sou faxineiro na Casa das 11 Janelas, em Belém, e gasto meu tempo livre com duas coisas: lendo livros velhos e colecionando coisas interessantes que encontro quando limpo o café. Com o Fórum Social Mundial, minha coleção engordou bastante. Coloco o texto abaixo, última entrada num caderninho preto, porque não consigo lê-lo, minha instrução não permitiu nem mesmo terminar o segundo grau, mas tenho esperança de que alguém veja beleza no que não sou capaz de decifrar. Muita gente veio aqui querendo mudar o mundo, eu só queria mudar um pouquinho de mim mesmo, aprender mais coisas, conseguir conversar com esse pessoal estrangeiro que veio aqui e saber o que eles pensam de nós. Talvez, ao ler isso, alguém possa me dizer mais.

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I am stuck by the rain in the most wonderful place, right beside you. I write to you as you write something I will never know. You probably wander about past events, distant memories of other people and places. I write about you and dream we are corresponding somehow.

I cannot think of any small solution to hunger and poverty. One billion people starving. Perhaps, 30 billion dollars could solve the problem, but we prefer to spend trillions on arms. The difference between the income of populations in developed and developing countries keeps getting bigger, an international crisis which will probably make it even worse. A food crisis, an environmental crisis, which will be followed by another one. A whole continent left alone: a desert. No one agrees on what to do. Perhaps a conspiracy not to do anything. Just another tragedy. Human misery. Let us go on with our lives.

What could I do? My insignificant NGO about which nobody gives the shit. Try, perhaps, a career in the government. It is not the time to small solutions, to charity. Perhaps I am going back to the time when charity was the only relief to the wretched. An old-fashioned post-modern wannabe. Mistaken.

I like your blue scarf and your peculiar face. Imagine an everlasting future with you, photographs of the family by the fireplace which will never be taken. All the love stories in my head, only. No concrete existence yet experienced.

Eventually the rain will cease, you will follow your way, and I will follow mine. I will forget you, eventually. I live in a world with infinite possibilities and I am always aware of it and I suffer since I cannot live them all, I have one life, everything is continual and cannot bifurcate, cannot multiply. One single thread: my one and only.

Time ought to be lived as simultaneity and as continuity. Then all possibilities would be lived and I would not be only an I but a we. And everything would conspire now for us to live this future that will not happen and I will never say that I never forgot you were wearing a blue scarf the day I met you and I fell in love with you. Time, nevertheless, is useless and only one.

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As time goes by, the rain softens. Soon you will follow your way, and I will follow mine.

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Belém, 01/29/2009.