The Vineyards

It was a warm early evening in Athens – about 6h PM, local time. We were hungry, so we followed upstairs into a nice little restaurant. Very cozy, had a familiar feeling to it. The owner, a pretty lady in her mid-thirties, greeted us in Greek and in a broken English. She looked a bit tired, but happy. Her husband came from the kitchen to greet us as well, said he always liked to be visited by foreigners. Very friendly couple.

The house was higher than most buildings nearby, and the terrain was inclined. Because of that, we could see the sea from the window by which was our table. I picked the menu and browsed through the names in Greek, following them by the English translation by their side. It was fun decyphering the Greek characters. I love Greek and Russian (Cyrillic, that is) mainly because of the different characters.

Among the very pleasant patrons who formed the group I was a part of, there was a friend proud of his Greek origin, with whom I always wanted to have a certain conversation. He pointed to a name in my menu. “This is the true Greek Salad, much better than whatever you ate back home that was called Greek Salad. This will even beat your favorite Caesar Salad.” So that is what I ordered, curious about his certainty. Then I chuckled at the problem with the lamb, the order of the pretty lady who sat across the table from me. “Ternero!”, the owner insisted, in Italian. “Lamb!?”, she asked. They were saying the very same thing, yet could not comprehend each other. The friend of Greek origin intervened and solved the problem.

My salad arrived, I waited for the other dishes to follow before eating. Then I asked the friend of Greek origin that which I had wanted to ask for a very long time: “Why are you a communist?”. I must say he is the only person I know is very smart who claims to be a communist. I was always very curious about that. The lady across the table giggled at the question and made a small disapproving motion with her head, but more in the sense of “You are impossible!” than anything more serious.

The friend of Greek origin was surprised by the question, but found it funny. “No one ever asked me that.” “No worries, I will not try to change your mind. I am truly just curious.” I looked out the window again, noticed how the color of the sea matched the eyes of the lady across the table – at least for that moment. She noticed me looking and smiled. It marvelled me it was still so sunny outside in spite of the time. It also marvelled me that we were eating so early – I always refuse to eat early.

So he started. “You see, I believe…”

Then the bell rang. Twice. And twice more. And I heard clapping. And the bell rang again. And more clapping. And calling, “Hey, at home! Hey!” More ringing, more clapping, more calling.

Athens crumbled, the Mediterranean vaporized, the Greek Salad turned to ashes, the pleasant company vanished. All that was left was my pillow, the clock, and the ringing, the clapping, the calling.

“Package from Reader’s Digest to…”

“Yeah, yeah. Hand it over, let me sign.”, said a very sleepy and ultimately angry me.

I will never forgive Reader’s Digest.

What a very silent day.

No, that needs rephrasing.

Oh, how silent I am today, and how that allows me to hear what little silence there is in the world around me when I look past all the noise.

I had never noticed that, how one can disregard the noise and focus on the silence. Maybe it is not possible, and I am just delusional today. Probably. Fact is, it is delightful.

One noise I cannot by any possible means disregard is the power supply’s fan. Of course. They are building a new circle in Hell filled with power supplies to torture people like me for eternity. But I was away from it for most of the time here mentioned, so it is irrelevant for the issue at hand.

While driving I heard it the clearest. When I could reach the 5th gear, and the engine noise became inaudible, all there was left was the sound of the tyres against the pavement – the other cars seemed all quiet today. A very distant echo in my mind murmured some songs that troubled me a bit. It is amazing how I always remember songs fitting to most situations, unwillingly. Bad songs, too. And in this case it was two songs, even. Two bad songs. One for each side of the issue.

What issue?
Eh? What do you mean? We got hundreds of tons of carbon monoxide and other polluting materials being dumped daily on the atmosphere, killing millions of beautiful purple butterflies, and you come to ask me what issue? Pfaw!

Driving is very interesting. Going from one point to another can be completely trivial, ultimately frustrating, or glorious.

It is glorious when the fifth gear is in, the only noise is the tyres against the pavement, and for one brief moment the car ahead is unimportant. It is not a vehicle with a person behind the wheel – it is a target. Maybe the kamikaze pilots felt a bit like that. It is great. For one moment, seeing the car ahead and imagining the target get closer and closer and then the tremendous wreck that would result from the collision, and just pushing the accelerator a bit further down, that is glorious.

Of course, this moment needs to be very short, or I would not be here at all. But a mere second is enough to make the whole process of going from point A to B a pleasure – a very sadistic, unnatural, dangerous, devious pleasure. It always makes my days better.

Today was made better, but no less silent.

It is necessary to let it be known that, on this very day, at approximately 7h45 PM, the fourth power supply to be in Asgaard left the land of the living.

Naturally, this happens on a Saturday (when not a Friday evening).

Fortunately, I still had the last one, that did not fully die – it only started making stupid noises and letting out a strong smell of burnt plastic and metal. Nothing serious, as you can see, only a minor risk of death by poisoning and/or fire. But it is 300V, so it will not live long.

On Monday I will have to solve this one more time. But I cannot go downtown and purchase the very expensive Zalman box of 400V with ball-bearing fan – the American thingie, made by people who do not get freaked out when you say “I leave my computer on for more than four hours straight”.

No, I will have to call the same guy I called every time since then and say once again that yet another box died. “For the sake of all gods living and dead, tangible and intangible, good and evil, tell me truly, I implore, do you have one single power supply that will not die on me within less than six months? Tell me, tell me, I implore!”

And he will say, “Nevermore”. Because in Brazil there is this monopoly of Troni products of extreme low quality because users are far too dumb to know better. So I will invest even more in a box that I know will die very soon, and will make a tremendous amount of noise before death, and cause me huge headaches.

This comes to crown a very dull Saturday. It makes sense, even: after two days of unparalleled grandeur, a dumb day follows. Balance must be kept.

My hatred right now knows no boundaries. But I am in fact sad. Four. Four boxes that die so young. Because the disgraced company that makes them knows it is in a comfortable position providing the least in quality for the populace of this ridiculous country.

Forget the sadness. It is just hatred, indeed.

Bed? Bed! I couldn’t go to bed!
My head’s too light to try to set it down!

For a very long time, my favorite radio station was Alpha FM, 101.7. And I always thought funny how it would confuse me when I looked at the radio, which is also a clock, when it showed 10:17, and I thought it was 101.7. At that time, I used to sleep quite earlier, so the situation was common – I turned the radio on, it showed the station, then switched back to the hour and nothing changed: from 101.7 to 10:17.

Sometime later I noticed I had a tendency to look at my watch at school at 10h17 in the morning – just three minutes before the break was over. I never planned to, I just looked casually and 10h17 it was.

That all intrigued me. I came to like 10h17. Nearly every day, completely by chance, I would see it twice on the clock – morning and evening. So I created a silly superstition around it – seeing it in the morning meant good luck; seeing 10h16 or 10h18 meant bad luck. I just liked to think of it that way – there were not even coincidences to back that up. But the number became meaningful: 10h17, 101.7, 1017, and finally, October 17th. Nothing of importance ever happened on any October 17th, though.

Sleep? Sleep! I couldn’t sleep tonight.
Not for all the jewels in the crown!

Some time ago, a friend asked me, “What do you think of girls with braces?”. My answer to that was unimportant, to be honest. He later revealed what he meant by asking that – he wanted to know if I knew a band called Whale – specifically, a song called “Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe”, and its video.

“No, I never heard of that, why?” There was no particular reason, in fact: he was just commenting on it after seeing the clip with an awful quality in some site whose name I forgot. “But surely I can find it.”

“No, you can’t. I’ve looked everywhere and never found it. It’s impossible. It’s very old, it can’t be found, it is not available online. You can’t find it.”

“I just did.”

Truth be told, that is surely the rarest file I ever looked for – on Overnet I could find only two sources, and they seemed to show up once every two weeks, for a few hours – and I would fall in their endless queues and not see a single byte of the file before they left. On WinMX I found three sources, but the file is four times bigger, and the people who have it are not too fond of remaining online for long periods either.

But I had been challenged; it would take me endless nights of listening to the stupid multiple noises of the broken power supply, but I would get that file.

I could have danced all night,
I could have danced all night,
And still have begged for more.

Thursdays are usually bad days. When I did not have access to a second car, I needed to wake up at 5h30 AM to be at school before 7h, or I would get a fine (certain license plates cannot be on the road from 7h to 10h AM, and from 5h to 8h PM, on a given day of the week – mine was Thursday). With that, I had to wait in the car for one hour, until the class started, at 8h. Fortunately that is solved, I can finally drive the other car. But that was never the only problem.

This semester’s class for Thursday, I refer to as the class about nothing. Supposedly it is about the publishing market, its workings, rules, perils, taints. But we just spend ninety minutes listening to the teacher weave some story about the troubles she had to publish her book, after we copy some numbers that are mostly meaningless. Thursday’s class is a true waste of time.

I could have spread my wings
And done a thousand things
I’ve never done before.

I have two copies of “Grave of the Fireflies” in VHS, both fansubbed – one in English, one in Portuguese. The English one has rather low image quality. The one in Portuguese was very good – but in the name of the art I lent it to a teacher, who liked it so much he showed it to the entire school. That one tape was in his hands for a good few years, and the gods know how many times it was played, and how many people saw it. My greatest achievement in the spreading of anime, but it cost the tape all but its last breath.

I’ll never know what made it so exciting;

Today I woke up and checked Overnet and WinMX. Nothing to be proud of in Overnet, but WinMX showed a source for the Whale’s video, and with a low number in the queue. “Very good, never seen so low a queue place. I hope it actually starts downloading today. But still, so big a file, I doubt it will ever download the entire thing.”

As I drove to school, I had some troubles with dumb drivers who refuse to let go of their place in line, no matter how much in advance I give a signal that I need to move to their lane or I will miss my turn. Such a bother. “Bah, bad day for driving, Thursdays are always bad days for driving.” Finally I got into the lane where I needed to be, and immediately the traffic stopped. “Bother, bother.” Then I noticed the plate on the car ahead of me. The number was 1017.

Why all at once my heart took flight.

I got to school a bit late, rushed to the classroom – the teacher had not arrived yet. Very soon a secretary came to tell us she had called and apologized: she could not make it today, we would have no class about nothing this Thursday.

With that, we waited around for a while, then I went to have lunch with a friend.

As usual, we passed by the big bookstore. And in there I saw what I never expected to see within the territory of this country: “Grave of the Fireflies”, in DVD, for sale. Imported, of course, but still never expected. I did not buy it, but I hope to, soon.

I got home, looked at WinMX. The download of the video had actually started. It was going very slowly, but after about a month it had finally left zero. If it held on for another few hours, all would be grand.

I needed to deal with some issues, and they were nicely dealt with. Took a few hours, but all went well. It should prove most useful in the next few days.

Having the few hours passed, I looked at WinMX again. The download was complete. I had proven to be able to find the unfindable, and to have the patience to wait for it to arrive, through fire and rain, day and night.

(Patience, aye, aye.)

I only know when he began to dance with me

“Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.”

The day had been good enough. It would be impolite to ask for anything else from such a generous Thursday.

But I was given something else.

And I found it most regretful that I was out of German champagne to celebrate, for it certainly has greater worth than a cancelled class about nothing, a “Grave of the Fireflies” imported DVD, and a very rare download that reaches its end.

I had a very good day. The night may fall now.

I could have danced, danced, danced… all night!

Days go by.

They lack something. Picture the original game “Sonic” for the Genesis – at the end of each level, you would run across a sign with Dr. Robotnik, that flipped around and became a sign of Sonic. It is impossible to picture Sonic without those signs at the end of each level. A level without a sign is not a level from Sonic. That is how days have been feeling lately – Sonic levels without the sign. They just pass, and move on to the next, and feel incomplete. So much it is so, that I still believe we are in September, early days of October at most. Days are not getting concluded, they are never making it all the way there. They collapse near the finishing line. But they never happen again; they are left behind and replaced with another one that will not make it all the way there.

I need to publish a book. Soon. Let me rephrase that. I have an original, by someone who is not me. I have read it, at last, and need to make it into a book. But I had not been able to talk to the author since days immemorial (from when days did pass, and life was simple). This week I finally got his e-mail, and contacted him. And suddenly all problems revolving around the publishing of this book are gone, including the greatest of them all – he is not from Rio, as I was led to believe. At least I believe now he is not from Rio. I will not be surprised to learn he is my neighbor, too. Which means I can finally start to get this thing done, and then tell everyone that I, and I alone, braved the barren fields of fiction, and published a book of short stories – while all the others dared not go beyond the academical books, and the pictures, and the poetry. “These are too hard,” the teacher said. “I want to!”, I replied, “This may be the sole opportunity ever for me to publish something based solely on personal taste. I will do it.”

Maybe this will put the sign back into the end of the levels. I hope so. If that does not, I will have to use the second plan, something I was saving for the case I could not contact the author at all: write my own book.

Or rather, put together something that resembles a book. In the most holy name of Apollo, if any guy can put together a bunch of ridiculous “poems” with no metre or rhyme (and reason) or feeling or quality and have it published under the school’s label, surely I can do that as well. The only problem is that I would need another 19 poems or so (9 if I make them all as long as I plan to) and maybe – maybe – include one or two of those three tales I mentioned a few days ago – probably “Ambulance” and “Shutdown”. I doubt I would have the stamina for such a project, though; as a result, it would not fill up my days, and it would result in nothing. But I would have a book with my name on the cover and twice inside, and I would forever remember it was written during those days that never ended.

Let the days end. I want days that end. Being outside of passing time is devastating.