is, and why you are here. No, the insects require no training, no care, no tenderness. They step right into the world, looking like a cross between an expresso machine and a 1928 Packard, and then they begin flying arcs and circles, tracing lines of red and gold in the rising sun in the gardens of Niterói. I suppose the parents don't even stay around to watch the eggs open.
It is a great privilege not to be hatched and then loosed upon the frightening speedways of the air to hunt a few bouncing gnats, lay an egg, and expire. In relative terms, these little buzz bombs can fly at 4,000 miles an hour. And they have no emotions, no regret, no deep unfulfilled desires ... I think. If, in fact, they do, they're in trouble.
I almost died on this very bench. I had come here at my usual time, before the streets and alleys fill with the sickening smell of brewing coffee, and spent my usual half hour catching my breath and watching the sunrise. I then uncapped my pen and took these papers from the antproof case. At that moment, a ship's whistle sounded far below.
I am unable to ignore such a summons, and I rise, always, to see what great creature has sidled in from the sea and how the wind washes the smoke over its smooth decks. As soon as I stood I perceived the source of the soundâa red ship laden with silver and blue containers, backing into a berth on the other side of the bay.
When I sat down I saw that my pen was rolling away from me. The bench is not quite level, and the pen was rolling like one of the logs upon which the Egyptians moved giant blocks of sandstone.
I reached to my left to grab it, but it escaped me by a micron. I extended myself. It escaped once more. And so on, until I found one part of me at one end of the bench and the other part at the other end. The bench is about five feet long, and my torso, from coccyx to glabella, about three feet long. This momentary extension, I believe, temporarily disconnected my arteries from my heart, which then stopped.
As luck would have it, gravity seized me and threw me upon the ground, snapping the arteries back into their accustomed ruts, and I survived. But the shock and pain of the temporary disconnection were such that I could not arise, and I lay by the bench for half an hour until a gardener discovered me and called an ambulance.
To my astonishment, the ambulance arrived at the hospital without killing anyone or turning over, and I was raced through the halls on a gurney as if I were in danger of death. I tried to explain, in Portuguese that had begun to fail me and turn into the plain idiom of my youth, that luck and gravity had reconnected my heart to the rivers of my blood, but no one understood. They were agitated, and I was tranquil. They worked about me as if in war, and I watched. I kept telling them not to rush, but they had probably seen too many American movies in which emergency rooms run at the pace of hand-to-hand combat.
"Look," I said, "the body is like a guitar. It has a certain music. Find the tempo of the music. Put on the music. I'm not a machine. Treat me with the rhythm of my own heart, and I'll be fine."
And those fools, they tied me to the table and gave me an injection of atropine. I needed rest, not twenty cups of purified cappuccino. It nearly killed me. Then they pounded on my chest like monkeys trying to open a coconut. They broke my sternum. Blood began to pour from my mouth.
I thought, this is it, I'm going to die even before I finish my memoir.
"Funio," I said, as they beat me relentlessly. "Funio, Funio," I cried, because I missed him. But then, as I jangled down the violent laundry chute that I thought would be my last, the music started. It came from within (they were too serious, those idiots, to have a radio), and it stabilized me in the surf that was tossing me aboutâuntil I felt that I rose above it, suspended in the sun, like Botticelli's Venus.
All was quiet, and I saw what seemed to be a great spiral shell
It is a great privilege not to be hatched and then loosed upon the frightening speedways of the air to hunt a few bouncing gnats, lay an egg, and expire. In relative terms, these little buzz bombs can fly at 4,000 miles an hour. And they have no emotions, no regret, no deep unfulfilled desires ... I think. If, in fact, they do, they're in trouble.
I almost died on this very bench. I had come here at my usual time, before the streets and alleys fill with the sickening smell of brewing coffee, and spent my usual half hour catching my breath and watching the sunrise. I then uncapped my pen and took these papers from the antproof case. At that moment, a ship's whistle sounded far below.
I am unable to ignore such a summons, and I rise, always, to see what great creature has sidled in from the sea and how the wind washes the smoke over its smooth decks. As soon as I stood I perceived the source of the soundâa red ship laden with silver and blue containers, backing into a berth on the other side of the bay.
When I sat down I saw that my pen was rolling away from me. The bench is not quite level, and the pen was rolling like one of the logs upon which the Egyptians moved giant blocks of sandstone.
I reached to my left to grab it, but it escaped me by a micron. I extended myself. It escaped once more. And so on, until I found one part of me at one end of the bench and the other part at the other end. The bench is about five feet long, and my torso, from coccyx to glabella, about three feet long. This momentary extension, I believe, temporarily disconnected my arteries from my heart, which then stopped.
As luck would have it, gravity seized me and threw me upon the ground, snapping the arteries back into their accustomed ruts, and I survived. But the shock and pain of the temporary disconnection were such that I could not arise, and I lay by the bench for half an hour until a gardener discovered me and called an ambulance.
To my astonishment, the ambulance arrived at the hospital without killing anyone or turning over, and I was raced through the halls on a gurney as if I were in danger of death. I tried to explain, in Portuguese that had begun to fail me and turn into the plain idiom of my youth, that luck and gravity had reconnected my heart to the rivers of my blood, but no one understood. They were agitated, and I was tranquil. They worked about me as if in war, and I watched. I kept telling them not to rush, but they had probably seen too many American movies in which emergency rooms run at the pace of hand-to-hand combat.
"Look," I said, "the body is like a guitar. It has a certain music. Find the tempo of the music. Put on the music. I'm not a machine. Treat me with the rhythm of my own heart, and I'll be fine."
And those fools, they tied me to the table and gave me an injection of atropine. I needed rest, not twenty cups of purified cappuccino. It nearly killed me. Then they pounded on my chest like monkeys trying to open a coconut. They broke my sternum. Blood began to pour from my mouth.
I thought, this is it, I'm going to die even before I finish my memoir.
"Funio," I said, as they beat me relentlessly. "Funio, Funio," I cried, because I missed him. But then, as I jangled down the violent laundry chute that I thought would be my last, the music started. It came from within (they were too serious, those idiots, to have a radio), and it stabilized me in the surf that was tossing me aboutâuntil I felt that I rose above it, suspended in the sun, like Botticelli's Venus.
All was quiet, and I saw what seemed to be a great spiral shell
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