All language subtitles for A Paixão Segundo G.H.

The Passion According to G.H.

I'm searching,

I'm searching.

I'm trying to understand.

Trying to give what I’ve lived to
somebody else and I don’t know to whom,

but I don’t want to keep what I lived.

I don’t know what to do
with what I lived,

I’m afraid of that profound disorder.

I don’t trust what happened to me.

Did something happen
to me that I,

because I didn’t know how to live
it, lived as something else?

That’s what I’d like to call
disorganization,

because I don’t want to
confirm myself in what I lived.

In the confirmation of me
I would lose the world as I had it,

and I know I don’t
have the fortitude for another.

Yesterday morning,

when I left the living room
to enter the maid’s room

nothing led me to suspect that I was

a step away from discovering
an empire.

Just a step from me.

My most primary struggle for the most
primary life,

would open with the calm,
devouring ferocity of desert animals.

That morning...

before entering the maid’s room...

what was I?

How difficult it is
to know who I once was.

The maid had quit the day before.

I finally got up
from the breakfast table,

that woman.

Not having a maid that day

would give me
the type of activity I wanted:

arranging.

I always liked to arrange things.

Arranging is finding the best form.

By putting things in order, I create
and understand at the same time.

If money and education hadn’t put me
in the class I belong to,

I’d normally have worked as the maid
in a large home of rich people,

where there
is so much to arrange.

I treat myself as others treat me.

I am whatever others see of me.

People refer to me as someone who does
sculptures,

that wouldn’t be bad
if they were less amateurish.

For a woman
this reputation means a lot socially,

and placed me, in a region that is
socially between women and men.

Which granted me far
more freedom to be a woman.

All this gave me
the light tone of pre-climax.

I didn’t need the climax
or the revolution

or anything more
than the pre-love,

which is so much
happier than love.

Was the promise enough for me?

A promise was enough for me.

My last relaxed romantic entanglement
had dissolved amicably with a caress

I gaining once again the happy
and somewhat insipid taste of freedom.

Does that place me?

I, hieroglyphic
fragment of an empire dead or alive.

Were my snapshots the only things
that photographed an abyss?

An abyss.

Maybe it was that tone of pre-climax

that I saw in the smiling
haunted photograph.

An abyss of nothing.

Just that great and empty thing.

Every picture of a person
is a picture of Mona Lisa.

The pre-climax was perhaps
until now my existence.

As for my so-called personal life,

maybe it was the sporadic sculpture
that gave it a light tone of pre-climax.

Because of having the experience
of patiently wearing down the materia.

Until gradually finding
its immanent sculpture.

The rest?
Ah, now I know.

The rest was the way
I’d transformed myself little by little

into the person
who bears my name.

All I have to do is see
my initials in my suitcases,

and there I am.

Where would I begin?

And also so that afterward,

in the seventh hour
as on the seventh day,

I would be free to rest and enjoy
the calm remainder of the day.

Almost joyless calm.

The week before
I’d had too much fun,

and now I wished for a day exactly like
the one this one promised to be.

Maybe I’d start cleaning
at the back of the apartment.

The maid’s room must be filthy,

given its dual roles as a sleeping space
and storage room for old clothes,

suitcases, ancient newspapers,
wrapping paper and leftover twine.

I’d clean and ready it for the new maid.

I’d read the newspaper, stretched out
on the sofa, and probably fall asleep.

“Lost in the Fiery Hell of a Canyon

a Woman Struggles Desperately for Life.”

Yesterday, however, I lost my human
setup for hours and hours.

Except now,

now I know a secret.

I found out something
I could not understand,

my lips were sealed,

and all I’ve got are the
incomprehensible fragments of a ritual.

Life and death were mine,
and I was monstrous.

I was courageous like a
sleepwalker who simply goes.

I saw.

I know I saw because
I didn’t give my meaning to what I saw.

I know I saw
because I don’t understand.

I know I saw
because there’s no point to what I saw.

Listen.

What I saw smashes my daily life.

Listen.

Sorry for giving you this,

I’d much rather have seen
something better.

Take what I saw,

deliver me from my useless vision,
and from my useless sin.

I am so afraid that I can only accept

that I got lost if I imagine that
someone is holding my hand.

Holding someone’s hand
was always my idea of joy.

Often before falling asleep

in that small struggle
not to lose consciousness

and enter the greater world.

I pretend that someone
is holding my hand

and I go!

Go toward the enormous
absence of form that is sleep.

And when even then I
can’t find the courage,

then I dream.

In the meantime
I must hold this hand of yours

though I can’t invent your face
and your eyes and your mouth.

Yet even amputated,
that hand doesn’t scare me.

Its invention comes
from such an idea of love.

As if the hand really were
attached to a body that I don’t see.

Only because I can’t love enough.

I cannot imagine a whole person

because I am not a whole person.

And how can I imagine a face

without knowing
what expression I need?

As soon as I can release
your warm hand,

I’ll go alone and with horror.

The horror will be my responsibility
until the metamorphosis is complete.

Though I know that the horror.

I am the horror
in the face of things.

I myself, was a pretty replica.

And here is a woman who isn’t a bother,
a woman who smiles

and laughs, and one who doesn’t eat
away at a man.

And delicately I consume
my own pleasure,

tedium nourishes me
and delicately consumes me,

the sweet tedium of a honeymoon.

Was I

is it I, still? No.

I’ll have every appearance of a failure,

and only I will know if
that was the failure I needed.

Only I will know if that
was the failure I needed.

Give me your unknown hand,

since life is hurting me,
and I don’t know how to speak.

What I probably asked for
and finally got,

left me needy.

As a child wandering
the earth alone.

So needy.

That only the love of the entire
universe for me could console me.

For an instant,

I experienced vitalizing death.

The fine death that let me brush up
against the forbidden fabric of life.

It’s forbidden to say the name of life.
And I almost said it.

Could what I saw have been love?

I shall need courage to do
what I’m about to do: speak.

And risk the enormous surprise

I shall feel at the poverty
of the spoken thing.

As soon as it’s out of my mouth,
I’ll have to add:

that’s not it, that’s not it!

I’m putting off
having to speak to myself.

Out of fear?

And because
I don’t have a word to say.

I don’t have a word to say.

So why don’t I shut up?

So why don’t I shut up?

I shall create
whatever happened to me.

Only because life
cannot be retold.

Life is not livable.

I shall have to create atop life.

And without lying.

Create yes, lie no.

Creating isn’t imagination.

It’s taking the great risk
of grasping reality.

How can I say now

that I’d already begun to see what would
only become evident afterward?

I’d already begun to see,
without knowing it.

I had seen since
I was born and didn’t know.

I didn’t know.

Three thousand years ago
I went astray,

and what was left were
phonetic fragments of me.

Telegraph signals.

The world bristling with antennas,
and I picking up the signal.

Handing myself over to
what I don’t understand would be

placing myself
at the edge of the nothing.

It will be just going,
and like a blind woman lost in a field.

That supernatural thing which is life.

My morality was
the desire to understand.

And, since I didn’t,
I arranged things.

This was only yesterday and now.

I’ve discovered that
I was always profoundly moral:

I only admitted the purpose.

For my previous
profound morality.

Having discovered that
I’m as crudely alive

as that crude light I learned yesterday,

For that morality of mine,

the hard glory
of being alive is the horror.

Before I lived
in the humanized world,

but did something purely alive
collapse the morality I had?

Because a world fully alive
has the power of a Hell.

African queen.

Foreign enemy.

What was her name?

What was her name?

Of course!

Janair!

I’d used her as if she had no presence.

And her clothes.

She always wore dark brown or black,

which made her
entirely dark and invisible

What was happening to me?

I’ll never understand but there must be
someone who understands.

And it’s inside myself that I must
create that someone who will understand.

And though I’d gone into the room,

I was still somehow outside.

Nothing.

It was nothing.

No, it was nothing.

Then, before understanding,

my heart went gray
as hair goes gray.

Scream!

Scream!

Scream!

I was alert,

I was totally alert.

Because in this state
of alert expectation.

I was seeing all
my earlier expectations.

I was seeing the awareness
from which I’d also lived before,

an awareness that never leaves me.

An awareness that
in the final analysis

might be the thing that
most attached to my life.

Perhaps that awareness
was my life itself.

I hadn’t struggled,
for fifteen centuries.

This is madness!

I hadn’t killed,
for fifteen centuries.

For fifteen centuries
I hadn’t died.

What had I done?

What had I done to myself?

I had killed!

I had killed!

One more strike.

One more strike!

That was it.

Suddenly that was it.

I falling centuries
and centuries inside a mud.

It was a mud in which the roots of my

identity were still shifting
with unbearable slowness.

This is madness.

A cockroach doesn’t
have a nose.

A dying mulatto woman.

The eyes of a bride.

The fringed, dark,

dustless and living eye.

And the other eye was the same.

Two roaches implanted
in the roach.

And each eye reproduced
the entire cockroach.

Pardon me for giving you this,
hand holding mine,

but I don’t want
this for myself!

Take that roach!

I don’t want what I saw.

Take what I saw!

Because what I was seeing
with an embarrassment so painful,

so frightened and so innocent.

What I was seeing
was the world looking back at me.

What I was seeing
was life looking back at me.

If I have the courage,
I’ll let myself stay lost.

If I had the courage
to abandon my feelings.

If I had the courage
to abandon hope.

Hope for what?

The unknown room,
laboratory of hell.

I was in the desert
as I’d never been before.

Hold my hand.

Because I feel that I’m going.

Don’t let me see.

Because I’m close to seeing
the nucleus of life.

The cockroach is pure seduction.

Cilia, blinking cilia
that keep calling.

Life, my love, is a great seduction

in which all that exists seduces.

I had reached the nothing.

And the nothing
was living and moist.

Because, hand that sustains me,

because I,
in a trial I never want again,

in a trial for which
I ask pardon for myself,

I was exiting my world

and entering the world.

Because I was no longer
seeing myself.

I was simply seeing.

Why to see?

I knew I was entering the crude
and raw glory of nature.

Seduced.

I was still fighting as best I could

against the quicksand
that was swallowing me.

And each movement
I was making toward no.

No.
No!

No!

Every movement only pushed me
deeper into inescapable despair.

Not having the strength to
fight was my only forgiveness.

And the first true silence
began to whisper.

I knew I’d struggled,

that I had succumbed
and surrendered.

I am the roach.

I am my leg.

I am my hair.

I am the section of whitest light
on the plaster of the wall.

I am every hellish piece of me.

The world looks at itself in me.

Everything looks at everything.

Everything lives the other.

Things know things.

Things know things so much.

That’s what I’ll call forgiveness.

It’s forgiveness itself.

Forgiveness is an attribute
of living matter.

For now the metamorphosis
of me into myself makes no sense.

It’s a metamorphosis in which I lose
everything I had,

and what I had was me.

I only have what I am.

And what am I now?

I am: standing in front of a fright.

I am: what I saw.

I don’t understand
and I am afraid to understand.

But why me?

But why not me.

If it hadn’t been me,
I wouldn’t know.

And since it was me,
I knew that’s all.

What was it that called me?

Madness or reality?

G. H. was a woman
who lived well, lived well!

Lived well.

Lived on the uppermost layer
of the sands of the world.

G. H. lived on the top floor of a
superstructure,

and, though built in the air,
it was a solid building.

She herself in the air.

And that had been happening
for centuries.

As bees weave life in the air.

And it worked.
It worked!

At least no one said
it was wrong.

But why exactly in me had
the first silence suddenly reappeared?

As if a woman had simply been called
and, wordlessly

abandoned her life,

renouncing embroidery,
love and an already-made soul.

Because the earlier life had called her

and she went.

In every case of madness
something came back.

The possessed are not possessed
by what is coming.

But by what is coming back.

Sometimes life comes back.

And afterward, as after a flood,

floating upon the waters
was a wardrobe,

a person, a stray window,
three suitcases.

And that seemed like hell to me.

Seen up close,
a roach is an object of great luxury.

A bride in black jewels.

It is rare,
it seems to be one-of-a-kind.

I was feeling unclean
as the Bible speaks of the unclean.

Why was the Bible so concerned
with the unclean?

And made a list of unclean and
forbidden animals?

Why?

If those animals, just like the rest,
had been created too?

And why was the unclean forbidden?

I had committed the forbidden
act of touching the unclean.

I had committed the forbidden
act of touching the unclean.

They say everything!

In the Bible!
They say everything.

But if I understand
what they say,

they themselves
will call me mad.

But thou shalt not eat of the impure.

Which are the eagle, and the
griffin, and the merlin.

And neither the owl,
nor the swan, nor the bat,

nor the stork,
and any kind of raven.

And the law commands that,

whoever eats of the unclean,
must do so unawares.

Since whoever eats of the unclean,
knowing that it is unclean,

will also know that the unclean
is not unclean.

And everything that crawls
and has wings shall be impure!

And not be eaten!

Help me!
Help me!

Becoming unclean with what?

Becoming unclean with joy.

My love!

See how I’m already losing the courage
to find whatever I’ll have to find.

See how I’m losing the courage
to hand myself over to the path.

And I’m already promising us.

That in that hell I’ll find hope.

Help me!

Help me!

Help me!

Why?

I had nothing to ask for.

I didn’t have anything to ask
for help against.

I had fastened before me
the unclean of the world.

Holy Mary...

I offer thee my life
in exchange for this

moment of now not being true.

To have experienced it was already
the beginning of a hell of wanting.

Holy Mary...
Wanting! Wanting!

I offer thee my life in exchange
for this moment of now not being true.

Was my will to want stronger
than my will for salvation?

And had broken the spell
of the living thing.

Holy Mary...
I had lost the ideas.

I offer thee my life,

in exchange for this
moment now not being true.

I remembered you,
when I kissed your man face.

Slowly...

and the salt of tears in your eyes
was my love for you.

With my kiss your deepest insipid life
was given to me.

And kissing your face

was the saltless
and busy patient work of love.

It was woman weaving a man.

Just as you had woven me.

Neutral crafting of life.

The country was
in eleven in the morning.

Superficially as a yard that is green,

of the most
delicate superficiality,

Green, green....

green is a yard.

Between me and the green,
the water of the air.

Nothing is heard.

In the rest of the house the shadows
are all swollen.

It’s eleven in the morning in Brazil.

It’s now.

That means exactly now.

Amen.

Canticle of thanksgiving for the murder
of one being by another being.

Amen.

The deepest murder.

The one that is a way of relating.

Away of one
being existing the other being.

A way of seeing one other and being one
other and having one other.

Murder where there is neither
victim nor executioner,

But a link of mutual ferocity.

My primary struggle for life.

“Lost in the Fiery Hell of a Canyon

a Woman Desperately Struggles for Life.”

But hell had already
taken me, my love.

I was already selling
my human soul.

Because seeing had already
begun to consume me in pleasure.

I was selling my future,
I was selling my salvation,

I was selling us.

Pray for me, my mother!
Pray for me.

Do you feel?

Don’t you feel that there’s
something that must be known?

Farewell beauty of the world!

Farewell beauty of the world.

Blessed be the fruit of thy womb.

Blessed be the fruit of thy womb.

“The scandal still is necessary,

but woe to him through
whom the scandal comes”

Was it in the New Testament
that it was said?

Freedom is a secret.

Though I know that,
freedom doesn’t take care of guilt.

The tiny divine part of me
is greater than my human guilt.

So I prefer the
God, to my guilt.

I want the God in whatever
comes out of the roach’s belly!

Even if that...

in my former human terms,
means the worst!

In human terms...

the infernal!

I wanted it.
I wanted it!

Would its eyes be salty?

If I touched them
with my mouth?

I can't!

Would they taste salty?

Mother!

I don’t want to feel directly in my
very delicate mouth.

The salt in the eyes
of the roach.

I can’t do anything for you, roach.

I don’t want to do
anything for you.

If the telephone rang,

I would have to answer
and would still be saved!

I would flee
the room to answer it.

And never again.

Never again would return.

I was also recognizing
the roach’s watchfulness.

The two neutral and fertile ovaries.

In them I was recognizing
my two anonymous neutral ovaries.

And I didn’t want to,
ah, how I didn’t want to!

I’d taken the phone off the hook.

But somebody could
maybe ring the doorbell.

And I’d be free!

The blouse!

The blouse that I’d bought.

They’d said they’d deliver it,
and then they’d ring the bell!

The blouse!

No, they wouldn’t.

I’d have to keep recognizing.

And I was recognizing in the roach

the saltlessness of the time
I was pregnant.

Doutor,

I recalled myself roaming the streets
knowing I’d have the abortion

I was walking,
I was carrying it.

Along the streets,

I was feeling inside me
the child that still wasn’t moving.

I had already known
within myself.

The shiny gaze of a roach
captured at the waist.

And living, doctor,

was for me the opposite
side of a crime.

Pregnancy.

I had been flung
into the happy horror

of the neutral life
that lives and moves.

I said this to you, sir:

“what’s bothering me most, doctor,

is that I’m having
trouble breathing.”

Behold her.

I swear, I swear,
I’ll do everything you want!

Don’t leave me imprisoned
in the roach’s room

because something enormous
is going to happen to me.

I don’t want the other species!
I just want people!

How I hate the light of the sun
that reveals everything,

reveals even the possible.

But no one touches yours eyes,
unclean thing.

Only another roach
would want this roach.

And me?

Who would want me today?

Who had already become as
mute as I was?

Who, like me, was calling fear love?
And want, love? and need, love?

Who, like me, knew that
I had never changed my form

since they had drawn me
on the stone of a cave?

And next to a man and a dog!

It’s bad to hold my hand.

It’s bad to be left without air in that
collapsed mine

where I brought you
without mercy on you,

but out of mercy on me.

But I swear I’ll get you
out of here still alive.

Even though I’m not lying, even though
I’m not lying about what my eyes saw.

I’ll save you from this terror in which,
for the time being, I need you.

You innocently
gave me your hand,

and because I was holding it
I had the courage to submerge myself.

How can I repay you?

Use me at least
like a dark tunnel.

And when you’ve crossed my darkness.

You’ll find yourself on the
other side with yourself

You might not find yourself with me,

I don’t know if I’ll cross over,
but with yourself.

A person who isn’t
committed to hope,

lives the demonic.

Now let me tell
you the scariest part:

I was being carried off
by the demonic.

For the inexpressive is diabolic.

The same that exists
in the cockroach.

The same in the stars.

The same in the self.

The demonic precedes the human.

A person who has the courage
to cast off feelings,

discovers the ample life
of an extremely busy silence.

Prehuman life is divine.

Is of a presentness that burns.

And the person who sees that presentness
burns as if seeing the God.

the God.

the God.

I’m going to tell you:
I feared a certain blind

and already ferocious joy
that was starting to overtake me.

The joy of getting lost
is a Sabbath joy.

Getting lost is a
dangerous finding.

I was experiencing
in that desert

the fire of things.

And it was a hell, that place,

because in that world
where I was living

neither compassion
nor hope exists.

Now I know what happens

in the dark of the mountains
on the nights of orgies.

I know with horror:

things enjoy themselves.

The thing of which things
are made delights itself.

That is the raw joy
of black magic!

I was feeling the
joy of the hell.

And the hell is not
the torture of pain.

It is the torture of a joy.

The neutral is
inexplicable and alive,

try to understand me.

Just as protoplasm and semen
and protein are of a living neutral.

And I was all new.

How else could I get started?

It was as if before
I had had a palate addicted

to salt and sugar.

And a soul addicted
to joys and pains.

And had never felt
the first taste.

And now I was experiencing
the taste of the nothing.

And the taste was new
as the mother’s milk.

That only has taste
for an infant’s mouth.

I was coming orgiastically
to taste the identity of things.

It’s very difficult to taste.

Sleep with me awake.

And only thus can you know
of my great sleep.

And know what is
the living desert.

But I’m going to take a chance
because I trust in my future cowardice.

And it will be my essential cowardice

that will reorganize me
once again into a person.

In this new cowardice of mine,

cowardice is the newest thing
to happen to me.

It’s my greatest adventure.

Which is like waking one morning
in a foreigner’s house,

I don’t know if I’ll have
the courage just to go.

It must have been past noon.

From that room excavated
in the rock of a building,

from the window of my minaret,
I was searching for vastness.

From atop this building,

the present
contemplates the present.

And I.

I had grown, and had
become as simple as a queen.

I was perhaps the first person
to set foot in that castle in the air.

Here is the city where I live,
and all extinct.

For I was seeking
the treasure of my city.

Rio de Janeiro.

Whose inhabitants under the sun
were six hundred thousand beggars.

The treasure of the city could be
in one of the breaches in the rubble.

But which one?

That city needed
the work of a cartographer.

And I couldn’t forget,
at the outset of the job,

to prepare myself to err.

Not forgetting that the error
had often become my path.

Every time something I was thinking
or feeling didn’t work out

was because finally
there was a breach.

And, if I’d had courage before,
I’d have already gone through it.

But I’d always been afraid
of delirium and error.

Ah, I want to go
back to my house.

And, later, could I understand
myself afterward?

I don’t know.

If at least I’d entered
the room at dusk.

I would see the full moon
rising over the desert.

Since the moist moon
had made me long for my life.

Disgust is as necessary for me.

Disgust guides me
and fertilizes me.

Long ago I was drawn
with you in a cave,

and with you I swam
from its dark depths up to today.

I swear that’s how love is.

Except for us
it will have to be at night,

I know that everything the
two of us once had was already love.

The night is so moist that
plants are born.

We are moist and salty beings.

In houses the lights go out
in order to hear the grasshoppers

can walk atop the leaves
almost without touching them.

The leaves, the leaves, the leaves.

Guess at me,
guess at me because it’s cold.

But you’re afraid.

I know you were always
afraid of the ritual.

If you could know through me,
without having to be tortured first.

Without having to be split
by the door of a wardrobe.

Without having broken
your casings of fear.

But when one has been tortured
to the point of becoming a nucleus.

Then one starts demonically
wanting to serve the ritual.

Even if the ritual
means consuming oneself.

The form of living
is a secret so secret

that it is the silent
crawling of a secret.

Ah, my love,
things are very delicate.

We tread upon them with a too-
human hoof,

with too many feelings.

Only the delicateness of innocence.

Only the delicateness of the initiates
can taste its almost null taste.

I remembered you.

Who are the oldest
thing in my memory.

If I could transmit the memory to you,
that’s just now come alive,

of what the two of us
had lived without being aware of it.

No, I don’t want to give you
the fright of my love.

If you’re afraid of me,
I’ll be afraid of me.

Don’t be scared of the pain.

All things course
above and below pain.

Pain is not the true name
for whatever people call pain.

The ritual.

Believe me because I think I know.

The ritual is the mark of the God.

That was what we were living
and despising.

I didn’t know that love
was happening much more exactly

when the thing we were
calling love wasn’t there.

What I’m talking about is when
nothing was happening.

And, we called
that nothing-happening an interval.

But what was that interval like?

The man who was delicate
with things and with time.

I didn’t know I learned
so much from you.

I learned how to look at a person
intertwining electrical wires.

Mindful of the positive
and negative poles.

You were the monotony of
my eternal love, and I didn’t know it.

I did not know how to see
that that was delicate love.

And it seemed
like tedium to me.

It really was tedium.

It was a search
for someone to play with.

The abundance of the body
that asks not and needs not.

And I could not stand the slow
transformation of something

that was slowly transforming
into the same something.

I had for you the tedium,
I feel on holidays.

My sore throat went away,
I was telling you.

Each word was as light
and empty as a butterfly.

In the intervals
we called empty and calm.

My great and trembling vision.

It was the enormous flower opening.

I shall never rest again.

I stole the hunting horse
from the Sabbath king.

Every day it will be the same thing.

I know that the first drum on
the mountain will make the night.

I know that the third will
already wrap me in its thunder.

And by the fifth drum I shall already be
unconscious inside my greed.

What did we do,
we who trot in the hell of joy?

The last time I got down
from the adorned saddle,

I swore never again.

Yet the trotting
carries on inside me.

I chat, tidy the house, smile.

But I know that
the trot is inside me.

I miss it like one who dies.

I can no longer not go.

Nobody knows, nobody sees.

In my mouth and on
your hooves the mark of blood.

What did we sacrifice?

The happy night is my sad life.

From that country of rats and tarantulas
and roaches, my love.

Where enjoyment drips
in fat drops of blood.

Only the mercy of the God
could yank me out

of that terrible indifferent
joy in which I was bathing.

Complete.
For I was exulting.

I was coming to know
the violence of the happy dark.

I was happy as a demon.

Hell is my maximum.

My God.

Give me what Thou hast done.

Or hast Thou
already given it to me?

And I am the one who
cannot take the step

that will give me
what Thou hast done?

Am I what Thou hast made?

And I cannot take
the step toward me.

Me that art Thing and Thou.

Give me what Thou art in me.

Give me what Thou art in others.

Thou art the he, I know.

I know because when
I touch I see the he.

But the he.

The man.

Takes care of what
Thou hast given him.

Covers himself in a casing made
especially for me to touch and see.

And I want more than the
casing that I love too.

I want what I Thee love.

In the end we are so, so happy.

Since there is not just one way of
entering into contact with life.

The secret of power was power.

The secret of love was love.

And the jewel of the world,
is an opaque piece of thing.

I miss hell.

I’m not up to staying in heaven
because heaven has no human taste.

But that, would be destruction.

It is a sin to enter the
divine matter.

Staying inside the thing is madness.

I know that if I abandoned what was
a life entirely organized around hope.

It hurts.

It’s like death throes.

Some thing in death
wants to break free.

And yet fears letting go
of the safety of the body.

Listen my love,

because I dived into the abyss

I started to love the abyss
of which I am made.

And it’s not dangerous.

But listen for a moment.

I am not speaking of the future,
I am speaking of a permanent present.

Hope for me was postponement.

But now I discover that one
doesn’t even need hope.

And it is as if the future
stopped coming to exist.

Listen without fright
and without suffering.

Hope does not exist because
it is no longer a postponed future.

It is today.

Because the God
does not promise.

He is much greater than that.

He is, and never stops being.

We are the ones who cannot stand
this always present light.

And so we promise it for later.

The present is the face
today of the God.

The horror.

Is that we know that
we see God in life itself.

It is with our eyes fully open
that we see God.

And if I postpone the face of reality
until after my death.

Because I prefer to be dead
when it is time to see Him.

And that way I think
I shall not really see Him.

Just as I only have the courage
to really dream when I sleep.

I know that what I am feeling
is serious and could destroy me.

It is like giving myself the news
that the kingdom of heaven already is.

I don’t want
the kingdom of heaven.

I don’t want it.

All I can stand
is the promise of it.

Since relinquishing hope.

Means that I shall have to start living.

And not just promise myself life.

And this is the greatest
fright I can have.

I did not have the courage
to stop being a promise.

I preferred to keep asking,

without the courage
to already have.

And I do.
I always will.

All I have to do is need,
and I have.

Needing never ends.

Not putting oneself in view of hope
is not the destruction of the plea.

And is not abstaining
from neediness.

It’s by increasing it.

It’s by infinitely increasing.

The plea that is born
of neediness.

The more we need,
the more God exists.

The more we can take,
the more God we shall have.

As the blind grope along,
we feel uneasily used by God.

But that awakens within us,
the uneasy desire to use as well.

In order for us to have,
all we are missing is to need.

Needing is always
the supreme moment.

Without you I could not live.

I don’t want pretty love.

I don’t want the expressive.

I want the inexpressive.

I want the inhuman inside the person.

Wanting to be human
sounds too pretty to me.

I want the material of things.

A thing exists that is fuller,

deafer, deeper, less good,

less bad, less pretty.

In the world no aesthetic
plane exists,

the thing is much more than that.

The God is greater than
goodness with its beauty.

Speaking to me
and to you is being mute.

Speaking to the God
is the mutest that exists.

Speaking to things, is mute.

I know this sounds sad to you,
and to me too.

And that is why muteness
hurts me like a dismissal.

Ah, don’t misunderstand me.

I am not taking anything from you.

I am demanding of myself
a much greater love.

It is a life so much greater that
it does not even have beauty.

I know one thing:

if I reach the end of this story,
I shall go, not tomorrow,

but this very day, out to eat
and dance at the “Top-Bambino.”

I furiously need to have some fun
and diverge myself.

Yes, I’ll wear my new blue dress
that flatters me and gives me color.

I’ll call Carlos,
Josefina, Antônio.

I don’t really remember which of the
two of them I noticed wanted me.

Or if both of them wanted me.

I’ll eat crevettes à la
whatever.

And I know because
I’ll eat crevettes.

Tonight.

Tonight will be my
normal life resumed,

the life of my common joy.

For the rest of my days,
I’ll need my light vulgarity.

Sweet and good-humored.

I need to forget,
like everyone.

Because I haven’t told everything.

I lost something that
was essential to me,

and that no longer is.

I no longer need it,
as if I’d lost a third leg

that up till then
made it impossible for me to walk

but that turned me
into a stable tripod.

I lost that third leg.

And I went back to being
a person I never was.

I went back to having
something I never had:

just two legs.

I know I can only walk
with two legs.

But I feel the useless absence
of that third leg and it scares me.

Am I speaking of death?

No, of life.

For the journey exists, and the journey
is not simply a manner of going.

We ourselves are the journey.

In the matter of living,
one can never arrive beforehand.

The via crucis is not a detour,
it is the only way,

one cannot arrive except
along it and with it.

And now I am not taking
your hand for myself.

I am the one
giving you my hand.

I know that believing in all this
will be, at first, your great solitude.

But the moment will come
when you will give me your hand,

no longer out of solitude,

but as I am doing now:
out of love.

And solitude is not needing.

Not needing leaves
a man very alone,

all alone.

Love is so much more
fatal than I had thought.

Love already is, it is always.

All that is missing
is the coup de grâce.

Which is called passion.

I am finally heading
toward the inverse path.

I head toward the destruction
of what I built.

I head toward losing everything
one can lose and, even so, being.

Little by little stripping,

with an effort so mindful
that one does not feel the pain.

Stripping, like getting
rid of one’s own skin.

The first step in relation to the other

is finding inside oneself
the woman of all women.

Every woman
is the woman of all women.

I was always afraid of being
struck down by completion.

I had always thought
that completion is an end.

And had not counted
on the ever-born need.

Needing is my guide.

Reality is the raw material.

Language is the way
I go in search of it.

And the way I do not find it.

My destiny is to search and
my destiny is to return empty-handed.

I return with the unsayable.

Only when the construction fails,
can I obtain what it could not achieve.

Persistence is our effort.

Giving up is the reward.

Giving up is the most sacred
choice of a life.

I was approaching something
I think was trust.

I was trusting.

Finally!

Finally, my casing had really broken
and without limit I was.

Through not being, I was.

To the ends of whatever
I was not, I was.

Whatever I am not, I am.

All shall be within me,
if I shall not be.

For “I” is just one of the instantaneous
spasms of the world.

My life does not have a
merely human meaning.

It is much greater.

So much greater that,
as humanity goes, it makes no sense.

Of the general organization
that was greater than I,

I had previously only
perceived the fragments.

But now,
I was much less than human.

And I would only fulfill
my specifically human destiny

if I handed myself over.

As I was handing myself over,

to whatever was no longer I.

To whatever is already inhuman.

And handing myself over with the trust
of belonging to the unknown.

Since I can only pray
to whatever I do not know.

And I can only love the
unknown evidence of things,

and can only add myself
to what I do not know.

Only that.

Is really handing myself over.

And such handing-over is the only
surpassing that does not exclude me.

I was now so much greater
that I could no longer see myself.

As great as a
far-off landscape.

I was far off.

But perceptible in my furthest mountains
and in my remotest rivers.

The simultaneous present
no longer scared me.

And in the furthest
extremity of me

I could finally smile
without even smiling.

At last I was stretching
beyond my sensibility.

The world independed on me!

That was the trust
I had reached.

The world independed on me.

And I am not understanding whatever
it is I’m saying,

never!

Never again shall I
understand anything I say.

Since how could I speak
without the word lying for me?

How could I speak
except timidly like this?

Life just is for me.

Life just is for me

Life just is for me!

Life just is for me,

and I don’t understand
what I’m saying.

And so...

I adore it.

I adore it.

I adore it.

I adore it.

I adore it.

I adore it.