The Vineyards

Once upon an aft’noon dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a…

I could not find the word to finish that verse. What came was not a tapping.

What did happen, however: I was at work, with little to do, so I decided to read blogs. I could not find some that I usually read at home, so I followed links from those I did find. Among the links I followed, one blog I had not visited in a long time. But it was confusing, boring; the author seems to try to emulate another author, and it bothers me – he fails.

So maybe I did nap for two seconds there – although I doubt it. Truth is a song came to my mind, a song I have not heard in a very long time: John Denver’s “Dreamland Express”. It reminded me of something, and that brought an odd sensation. That moment I knew I could add one more item to my list of epiphanies.

(I love the word “epiphanies”. I thought it was the name of an episode from Xena, but it is actually from Babylon 5. I was a bit frustrated by that. I probably made the confusion because the Xena episode I thought was titled “Epiphanies” marks the first appearance of a character called Ephiny.)

Epiphany it was – I believe it helped that I was a bit hungry. “Butterflies in the stomach.” What in the name of a tall peach tree could that possibly be? – it troubled me a few weeks past. And precisely then, with that boring blog on my screen and the silly song in my ears I realized what it was.

But immediately “Dreamland Express” was replaced with “I Told Him That My Dog Wouldn’t Run”. Two passages of it came crashing at the same time, but I knew they were not to be taken together; rather, each one should apply to a different event, two weeks apart. “This would be all there was.” “Thank God when the sun goes down I don’t blow it.”

For a moment I was troubled with those two verses, and what devious trick of mind was being played. This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing. Pessimism overcame me; I did my best to shake it off. “Think not of it; think not of anything,” I reminded myself – wise words.

End of relevant episode.

With a clear mind, I remembered a mention of Jung from the morning. I always liked Jung more than Freud. I remembered, too, that I read a passage about the Symbolism, a literary movement of a single book. And it occurred to me that the elements from those few seconds – the two songs, the epiphany, the Xena episode – all wrapped up in a tremendously complex system that I just had to put down to paper – or, in this case, bits. So, here be it.

Diversas notas de rodapé serão necessárias para explicar esse post quando algum tolo pesquisador cheirando a mofo de academia resolver decifrar o autor deste Journal. Imagino, já, as letras de ambas as músicas, com alguns versos sublinhados; o nome do episódio de Xena, e sua importância na série e para o autor; e um comentário (fatalmente incorreto) sobre a quote que abre o post. O interessante é que, de fato, para tal fim, este post é dos mais significativos.

“Decifra-me e/ou te devoro.”

In “Lord of the Rings”, Moria was called, in the language of the dwarves, Khazad-Dum. In the mines of Moria, the greatest battle of the first book (and movie) takes place. In it, the fellowship faces the Balrog, a great demon of the ancient world. Deep in those mountains they also lose Gandalf, their leader and guide, who falls into a great abyss and supposedly dies. In the second book Gandalf reappears, and tells the group he was in a place where each day was an era, et cetera.

In “Babylon 5″, the homeworld of the Shadows was called Z’ha’dum (pronounced “Za-Ha-Dum”). The Shadows were one of the two Older Races left behind when the other races left the universe, a million years before. There is no major battle in Z’ha’dum, as far as I remember; there is, however, great destruction, when a White Star ship filled with bombs is flown into the planet’s core and detonated – later it is said the whole planet was destroyed, in fact. Sheridan, captain of Babylon 5 and leader of the forming Army of Light, jumps into the pit with the White Star (not inside it, mind you) and supposedly dies – that is the season’s finale. The following season, Sheridan is alive, and is told he is trapped “between the ‘tic’ and the ‘tac’”.

The Lurker’s Guide to Babylon 5, the ultimate source of information about the series on the web, has only this to say regarding this coincidence: A parallel to Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” is possible: Gandalf fell into the pit at Khazad-dum with the Balrog, died (as Sheridan will, according to Kosh) and was reborn as Gandalf the White, an even more powerful figure.

Straczynski was certainly not afraid of being accused of plagiarism – but I truly would not do that, absolutely. These are all obviosly not coincidences, but I see them as good references – much as most RPGs in the world have dwarves and elves.

The reason for this post? I am tired of pondering about the meaning of vesper the evening star in accordance to the view of the essay authors who consider the poetical art divided in two poles of conception and construction consecrated through tradition. In other words, I hate Antonio Candido with ultimate passion (and his parallel Bosi, too). Thus I needed a moment of break to ponder on truly important things – and my background music gave me just that.

Years ago, there was a time when AudioGalaxy was the best way to download Mp3 files. It was a great service, and not only did it allow trade, it also hosted files for artists trying to get into the market. One day I noticed a nice band described in their main page, and downloaded the two songs available from them. The band was Breech, and the songs where “Charms” and “Awful Spill”. I was impressed – no, I was in love. That very week I ordered their CD from Amazon – it cost only U$ 5,95 at the time (fair, since it only has 27′30 of audio). That was one of the longest odisseys in the history of imports – it took this CD three months to arrive, and the one I ordered with it was here six months after I ordered them.

“Breech” is probably the best album in its style, in my collection. I showed their songs to two people, and both liked them as much as I do – actually, one of these cases happened precisely two minutes ago. I am no good at spreading memes.

In fact, I only remembered to mention the album to a second person because I was listening to it, after so long. And I was listening to it for a particular reason. In “Charms” there is a verse that goes like “I realize tonight, two beers and one cocktail later, that you’ve been that dead now for three months”. I remembered that line tonight, three beers and one champagne later.

The champagne was an unusual case. It was afternoon, I skipped work today – oh, really, I can play Solitaire at home without getting insulted. I needed white wine – no, really, I did need white wine right then. In honor of King, partially – although I believe she prefers red wine. But I wanted white. As I hope you know, white wine must be served cold. I looked in the refrigerator for my always present Riesling – and found none. None, none! What bothers me the most is that I know there was at least one bottle in store somewhere – then why was it not cold? Well, there was a bottle of white wine in the refrigerator, but not Riesling. I chose not to open it when I noticed a smaller bottle of what I thought was white wine nearby. I find these small bottles funny and cute – they hold exactly two glasses. I looked closely at it, and all signs pointed to white wine – but it was written in German, so there was no way I could tell for sure. Let me end this paragraph, it is too long.

The label was in German, and naturally I understood nothing in it beyond the “21%”, which is obvious. “German, eh? Fitting!”, I thought. I would remember to offer my first toast with it to all Valkyries and Norse Gods represented in the Cycle of the Ring (or rather, “Der Ring des Nibelungen”) – the other toasts had their subjects already. So I opened the bottle, and it acted like a bottle of soda. I poured it in my glass, and there were bubbles.

“I opened a bottle of German champagne,” I shrieked, upstarting. I wanted anything but champagne. Champagne is no good for toasting alone, in the name of Bacchus! I wanted wine! Wine! But it was already open, and the only thing to do was drink it. So it was done. Champagne has never been among my favorite, but it was not bad – I just wanted something else, that was all.

The day went by in a silly way, spent mainly in downloading and listening to remixes from OverClocked Remix. Truly, it was far better than playing Solitaire and/or reading fanfics all day at work! Then night fell. “Are you going out tonight?”, I was asked. Why would I, I considered. I was short on money, having spent more than I planned to during the day, and had no company. The one place I could visit was my friend’s restaurant, although I was sure I would not get another job this time. But I did want to talk to him, no less; off I went.

Troublesome it is to be a friend of the owner; more troublesome still to be a friend of someone who is a friend of everyone else. I sat down with my beer and had endless minutes to ponder on the situation. I like thinking over beer, but somehow that beer, which I find so good, never tasted worse. Besides, people singing in the karaoke were particularly bad tonight – so bad that I nearly went up there and gave it a shot myself, just so they would learn! There was one good song the entire time I was there – New York, New York. Frank Sinatra is always good, always good.

As I said, the beer was awful. “Maybe it is just the first one”, I thought, and ordered another. No better. “Fine, but it is too early to leave.” I still had hopes, so I asked for another beer. Gods, what lack of luck, still no good. I stood up and left, mere minutes after I arrived, much to everyone’s surprise.

Of course, all was not bad; beer is not too good, either, for toasting alone, but I paid homage to a number of things with each sip. And at the end it brought me the thought of “three beers and one champagne later”, which led to Breech – and now I have a second soul who likes it.

Sum this to a good morning, a delightful lunch, and a pleasant afternoon, and we have a very good day.

(Just so people do not think I only write to complain about power supplies – I do the trivial, too.)

The fan in my power supply box is making funny noises.

Hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah!!!!!

I am cursed. These power supplies will probably drive my sanity off faster than anything else. Given the irony of life, I am likely to suffer an accident and get hooked to life support machines, and then I die because the machines’ power supply boxes all fail.

And my CD burner will only recognize a CD in it in one out of each fifteen attempts, more or less. And when it does, it will only record at 8x, when the maximum is 16x. And it keeps failing and retrying during burning. But HP’s support site enjoys being cyclic and not telling me where I can take it for repairs.

But hardware problems are not the subject I chose today.

I have three ideas for fiction texts. Short stories. The first one that I thought of was “Wind Chimes”, the most fantastic one (fantastic in the sense of “fantasy realm”). It would only make sense in Portuguese, though. The second story should be titled “Shutdown”. When I first thought of it, it depressed me instantly. I was in fact scared. But to fully reach that effect with a story I would need to do some research and put a lot of effort into it, and probably rewrite it a few times, which I hate doing; therefore, “Shutdown” is not coming out anytime soon.

The third idea is what has been echoing in my mind the most lately. “Ambulance”, it dawned on me while driving back home from work one day, when an ambulance came rushing by, I made way for it and noticed I would go through the same street it did. It would, however, need a tremendous psychological side to it to even touch what I want it to be. Therefore, “Ambulance” is the hardest of the three: I keep thinking about it all day and get nowhere.

All in all, these three stories are unlike anything I have ever written. “Dream Debris”, “Fireflies”, “Elise”, those were easy, linear, obvious: I just created the characters, put them in that long gone world of Temuair and said “go, do what you must”; there was next to no intervention from myself – and where I did meddle, it shows, for the quality of the narrative drops – really, two suicides? crying for three days and nights? lesbian incest? “I did it for love”!? I thank the gods for “Four Far From Formidable Fables”, which were short enough to prevent me from ravaging them.

“Wind Chimes”, “Shutdown” and “Ambulance” could be nowhere near the Temuair three. They are closer to real literature, the kind that I have not read enough of to do it myself. Poe, Salinger, Machado de Assis, all masters of short stories. I have not read nearly enough of them. It is a shame, a shame.

Yet this goes on, unchanged. Maybe soon I will have another idea to archive and regret not putting to paper.

By the way, I am tired of listening to “Thanatos – If I Can’t Be Yours”, the ending theme of “The End of Evangelion”. Yet I can find the will to play no other song. This should not be so.

But the night waned and he sat upon the rock.

Hoje escrevo em português.

Cheguei em casa pensando em falar sobre o paradoxo de um botão de elevador. Antes de fazê-lo, por hábito, dei uma olhada nas páginas que visito com freqüência (hábito, freqüência: redundância).

O Alexandre Soares Silva falou hoje (e o link deixou de existir, ou deixará nos próximos anos e já me precavenho) maestralmente sobre Buffy e Angel. Eu precisaria assistir quatro vezes mais episódios do que vi para comentar à altura, então fico apenas com o simples “muito bom”. Merece um elogio maior, mas é no mínimo muito bom.

O Polzonoff tem dois textos hoje. Sobre o Papa, nada digo. Já o outro texto, sobre o triâgulo lampertiano, valeria a leitura, mais pela forma que pelo conteúdo – adoro ver um jornalista que não soa como jornalista. Especialmente considerando que a maior parte dos jornalistas com os quais trombo pelos corredores do departamento seriam os primeiros a citar Chomsky, não importando o assunto. Em todo caso, ambos os textos devem ter saído do ar alguns anos atrás, numa das vezes em que o autor deixou a internet pra sempre.

Voltemos à figura central desta página, aquele que queria escrever sobre o botão do elevador. Por pouco não desisto – face a esses dois textos, como poderia eu riscar umas dez linhas em português sob um título em inglês e chamá-las de “post”? Mas pensei melhor, e decidi fazê-lo. Na pior das hipóteses, esse post fica como caminho aos outros dois.

Ponto-e-vírgula.

São Paulo, Zona Sul. Apenas uma avenida separa os Shoppings Morumbi e Market Place. Algum tempo atrás, existia um semáforo nessa avenida. Ele foi retirado ao término da construção de uma bonita passarela que hoje une os dois templos.

Essa passarela, em respeito às minorias deficientes, foi projetada de modo a não ser sacrificante para usuário algum. Possui escadas de degraus largos, e elevadores grandes. Dentro dos elevadores, ao lado dos botões, a função de cada um é descrita em braile.

Os botões não são muitos. T para térreo, S para o nível superior,um para manter a porta aberta, e um para acender as luzes.

Sempre me perguntei: por que o botão de acender a luz tem código braile ao lado?