The face of words:

The beginning is in the end

And the end is in the beginning.

The question is in the answer

And the answer is in the question.

Whoever doesn't understand it, 

Understands not what I say.

 

How do you find this?

A fish inside a book. 

Look!

K. Alves G.

Abstraction of forms

God is time. But time is money.

Do you believe in God?

K. Alves G.

Fluid Flow in the world of linearity

"How big is it? How long does it last? These are the most basic questions a scientist can ask about a thing. They are so basic to the way people conceptualize the world that it is not easy to see that they imply a certain bias. They suggest that size and duration, qualities that depend on scale, are qualities with meaning, qualities that can help describe an object and classify it.(...)

It is hard to break the habit of thinking of things in terms of how big they are and how long they last. But the claim of fractal geometry is that, for some elements of nature, looking for a characteristic scale becomes a distraction. Hurricane. By definition, it is a storm of a certain size. But the definition is imposed by people on nature.(...) Categories mislead. The ends of continuum are of a piece with the middle.

It happens that the equations of fluid flow are in many contexts dimensionless, meaning that they apply without regard to scale." - (Gleick, J., 1998 - p. 107-108)

"Still, Scholz considered the tools of fractal geometry indispensable.

'It's a single model that allows us to cope with the range of changing dimensions of the earth,' he said. 'It gives you mathematical and geometrical tools to describe and make predictions. Once you get over the hump, and you understand the paradigm, you can start actually measuring things and think about things in a new way. You see them differently.  You have a new vision. It's not the same as the old vision at all--it's much broader.'" - (Gleick, J., 1998 - p. 107)

 

Comment:

The problem of bias. In every linear interpretation of reality, we are assigning discrepancies to nature. To think that dimensions are stable scales that you can fix on a linear equation is to dwell on illusions of reality. Even if we can explain how a rock rolls down a hill, doesn't necessarily mean we know how to start the movement of the rock rolling down the hill. We may have some idea, but not the whole picture. As, for example, we cannot even grasp the meaning of gravity. We can only assign discrepancies to it and hope we are getting closer to understanding the problem of space and time.

Lápis e abismo

 

Pomba gira

Dois rios ressoam

"Abismo, abismo!" - Canta.

Uma roda e uma boca

Ressoam também.

 

Estrelas caem sobre cabeças.

Lua lacunar e agulha.

Nós todos.

 

K. Alves G.

 

Reference: Gleick, James, 1998 - Chaos, The Amazing Science of the Unpredictable. Vintage Books.

Are we?

 "The poet is outside language." - Jean-Paul Sartre (in What is writing?)

Are we really? Can a fish be outside of the water? 
The fish may project its mind outside the stream and dream of being another or nothing, but can it really be out of the water? Isn't the fish water itself?

"For the poet, language is a structure of the external world. The speaker is in a situation in language; he is invested with words. They are prolongations of his meanings, his pincers, his antennae, his spectacles. He manoeuvres them from within; he feels them as if they are his body; he is surrounded by a verbal body which he is hardly aware of and which extends his actions upon the world. The poet is outside language. He sees the world inside out as if he did not share the human condition, and as if he were first meeting the word as a barrier as he comes towards men. Instead of first knowing things by their name, it seems that first he has silent contact with them(...)"*

Does the poet die every time we speak? Is it common to all humans to experience a constant clash of the internal and the external worlds? Why should this happen?

Maybe if we got used to speaking with silences in images instead of certainties in abstractions we would reach a far more conscious state of being. Less clashing and more embracing between brothers and sisters, of the so called human condition.

What do you think?

K. Alves G.

*Excerpt from What is writing? by Jean-Paul Sartre, in The Continental Aesthetics Reader, 2000, Edited by Clive Cazeaux - Routledge.

Perfect Circle - The Contrarian

"Hello, he lied." The man who bombs everyone (and himself).

 Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZnraQmPFq8&list=PLBzBwYhHpqLLaSl_y2JvaLjasAEfwJj98&index=3

Retrograde

 Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XClvMMxBg1k

Monetisation is, in spite of I am.

Monetisation is, in spite of I am.

 

It is interesting that to get to fully understand how the society works structurally in regards to sexism, we need to undress ourselves of all our stocked prejudices, hoarded throughout our lives and hidden under the romanticised terms like naivety and innocence.

Women have long been capitalised as stock for the maintenance of patrilineality. No wonder this has been the rule, especially after the spread of Christianity, in which the Holy Trinity includes only males (i.e. the father, the son and the Holy Spirit). Women have been relegated to invisibility for millennia, even though their bodies are incredibly valuable to human kind. However, for their invisibility, they could only be monetised once, that is in marriage. After that, her body would become property of the husband’s family, to do with her as they wished, and to produce males, of course-- the real valuable being that can be monetised from for his whole life.

 

Honesty be told, men are not well treated in this patriarchal society either. They have freedom, if they are free. They have justice, if they are on the right side. Have they a true soul, however? Or do they romanticise their own prison in innocence, by subjecting their selves to grandiloquent circumlocution? When do they practice their humanism? Perhaps, only individually, whenever they can gain the blessings of a God-like or an un-God-like immortality in name.

No, I am not a man hater, although I do criticise them. How can I hate men, when I have a son I love? Do not confuse my thoughts, when in truth all I despise is monetisation of human lives and thoughts. Monetisation of food and animals too, meanwhile many fellow humans die of starvation. And that all comes from the same source, and it’s vile. Honour, greed and hoarding. The unholy Trinity: the true sins of our patriarchal society.

 

The whole of the capitalist society has been created to fit men. All the health advances so far have been to treat the male body only. As for women, they are a mystery to be paid no attention, as long as they can keep their sole function, which is to care and breed.

Women can hardly keep up, dealing with period pains, children and parents to look after or even dealing with unsolved chronic illnesses that affect them more often than men. In addition, the more individualistic and fragmented the society is, surely the more the women will struggle, and I don’t think we can be more individualistic than we are to this day. On top of that, the super women that do keep up with men in the unfair work environment also have to be extremely strong mentally, to deal with social mining, sometimes for not being able to or not wanting a family. It seems almost impossible, if not a utopia, to be equal in this unfair society and women who want to feel as valuable as men, but in many ways cannot achieve this goal, end up with feelings of depression and self-loathe.

In the bare reality of things, the only real choice a woman has in her material life is either sacrifice or resignation. A choice that can only be consciously made if she removes the veil of innocence and naivety from her face. And whatever difficult path she finally chooses, she will definitely be criticised by her surroundings. It is the apogee of hellish individuality; that is for sure. Nothing really supports a woman but herself. Her solitary, dependant, unstable self. Even so, she still cares and men should be truly thankful for that. More so, because in her caring is the answer to all our troubles. 

Care is not something that can be well monetised. Either because love can’t be bought, as they say, or because it is a stigmatised job, for women only. Even so, still here lies the way out of our individualistic self-impoverishment. Every individual in this world, either man or woman, can be and move forward because they have had someone who cared for them, in some way or another. We don’t have elderly people being abandoned in the streets like useless piece of equipment simply because someone chose to care for them. And, most of the time, this someone is a woman, for the greatest part because the patriarchal society believes it is her job, the un-monetised job, I mean. That way she cannot be materially free.

Although in many cases she is unfortunately dependant financially, I believe that by finding her value in the un-monetised world or paradigm and consequently fighting for this un-monetised world, without expecting moral support, the woman, and also the men who thereupon follows, can find the way out of this hellish paradigm of living, even though slowly. It is not resignation. It is the contrary. It is finding value not in what men do, but in what we as women do. Finding value in what the women’s body can give us and understanding the female body, instead of trying to follow men’s body as a universal model. The value we give ourselves matters, and that not counting on stock interests, bank interests or religious interests. Whether we can monetise our lives, or how much, does not influence on our value as a person. It may seem obvious to some people, but our capitalist society works by closely relating one to the other. And many people suffer for that.

Everything that cannot be monetised is so valuable, please believe me. An extract of a poem is much more valuable than any millionaire or billionaire businessman, who sold his soul to fit in the best he could and survive as the fittest, at the top layer of this horrible pyramid of self-oppression and dehumanisation.

The answer is to be, disregarding monetisation. Like a homeless man or a hermit, who duels in the home of his soul, but even better would be in a community of equals that support each other. We can always fight for a more hopeful future and it starts by looking for a different, counter-current path. Definitely not by competition, though. And I don’t want to compete with men, as I don’t want to sell myself for the highest bid, without thinking, and wait for a freedom in money that will never come. I don’t believe that work ennobles men, and even less women. What ennobles men and women is care. And I want to care. Care for myself, my family, and other women and be cared for.

By Karinna Alves Gulias

Maciço ainda: n

Maciço ainda: n

Sen
t – Aquele que entra
Com imagens cheias de sentido.
 
Uma projeção de desejos
Que ainda não nasceram. Nas mãos carregam flores
Que ainda não existem.
Vertigem perturbada.
 
Braços parados.
E os olhos olhando o céu, buscam um descanso.
Oscilações de um pêndulo
Que não se percebe. Ainda.
 
Acumular pedras à distância
E duvidar. n,
Não esculpido.

K. Alves G.

Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkiyWhETiJw

Serenidad

Esta lluvia nocturna dice sí,
un sí multiplicado
que insiste al ritmo unísono
de su fina caída.
La noche ritual es gota inmensa,
opacidad de agua en las ventanas.

Aquí, a mi alrededor,
se rubrica también, en paz y en sello,
la tarea licuada de lo oscuro:
en esta tenue luz sin conjeturas
flotan, igual que polen
de flores categóricas,
las certidumbres del instante.

Y a la vez
en la lluvia nocturna se oye un no,
un murmullo de algo en retirada,
algo disuelto
en el tañido de las gotas.

La certeza que había
huye como huye la acuidad
de las sombras.

Este insistir y este escaparse
me han envuelto en un paño
muy liviano,
no hecho con la lluvia enteramente
ni enteramente con reserva o eco.

Yo soy un sí y un no,
como el agua en la noche.

Poema de Antonio Cabrera (Piedras al Agua, 2010)

Universal soldier

 Direct link: https://youtu.be/5Xq831b2tPg?si=1OKz9Vy393ftDgEh

Hoje eu sou Araponga

Hoje eu sou Araponga.

Analogias de Araponga.

Um canto de juntas quentes. Talvez inchadas.

Analogia com dor, aleatória. Conservadora de algo.

Uma perna dobrando-se, devagar. 

Aguenta-bico. Murcha.

Pior de cativeiro, sempre.

De Karinna A. Gulias 

A resposta

Dentro de qualquer conflito, seja contra outra pessoa ou contra si mesmo, seja uma batalla desleal e exagerada, a resposta de um deve ser sempre: humanizar. Humanizar.

Quem humaniza cultiva o bem ao mundo e a si mesmo.

E os desgostos transformamos em lágrimas e já está...

(Estou contigo Pedro Sánchez) 

Três épocas

 

Há três épocas na memória,

E ontem mesmo, me parece, uma delas

Ocorreu.*

* Minha tradução de:

There are three epochs in the memory,

And only yesterday, it seems, the first

Ocorred. – translation by D.M. Thomas 

(extract from Anna Akhmatova Selected Poems – Vintage Books, 2009 - "The Sixth", 78) 

Amor a todas elas

Dos jardins que poderia fazer crescer, se esquece às vezes.

Ressuscitada do avesso. Avariada. Não se podia consumir sempre.

E pausa para fazer nada. A mulher.

A dieta dos deuses é sustentá-las e desvirtuando o espaço.

Medidas de uma erosão.

O espírito de um fóton sem tempo -- volva tempo. Volta, amor.

Seus dedos esticam junto com a luz

depois que já passou.

A dedicatória de todo um mito esquecido

a elas. Fica, por favor. Em uma foto.

de K. Alves G.

O valor da voz

Cuida do

T Tempo

A velha abre a boca --

Calem-se todos: É

Um sopro sem ouro. Dura pesada

Para o sempre.

Um entre-mundos.

de Karinna Alves Gulias

On the judgement of loopholes

There has been a time when we spent our free time in our bedrooms together with our journals, writing and thinking about the meaning of life in quiet, comfortable boredom. When we experienced our subjectivity to great extent, explored in its highest form either from reading poetry and its ambiguities or from not understanding something.

Loopholes. Let’s read this word without its pejorative meaning. Rethink it. What does it mean? A hole though which we may see light coming in and that permits eyes to observe. An ambiguity or omission that allows for escaping something. Could it be the unquestionable objectivity we are escaping from? Our rational thoughts? Or reality as we know?

Loopholes. What can someone NOT say and consequently make us feel it is about us, always? The silence of subjectivity. Always present. Loopholes.

Before the advent of internet, when we met ourselves alone, quietly, with a book, we found those moments of subjectivity in the silence of poetic metaphors. Who has ever read a poem and found not themselves there? Always in the silence of the loopholes. I will find I there, in the cracks of the text. From that moment onwards, even though with sane skepticism, I will believe the author knows me better than my mother. Or do I know myself better than my mother?

In the age of online social network, however, the loopholes are in everyday written social interactions. It is very hard, although a superficial window of interaction. What an acquaintance says indirectly on his or her wall, may they know or not, will affect absolutely everyone that reads it. Every single day, when we log in to the written reality of social life and see a  judgemental message thrown onto their wall to no one and, at the same time, to everyone, how many will suffer by finding in it their superficial I being judged? How can I not find myself in it? It is a loophole! It is like asking humans to go against their nature, by avoiding finding their subjectivity while dealing with the unknown.

But what kind of silence do you think we humans should be focusing our selves to reading or listening to? Superficial judgements sent out into the air by acquaintances or deeply thought metaphors from a poem or poetic prose?

We hardly talk to each other anymore, as in debating and exchanging ideas. We now throw superficial ideas, (judgements, stereotypes or citations) and react. Still, our generation and the ones before and after are not equipped to deal with a written reality. And if we can't deal with the ambiguities of written text, without suffering with our subjectivity, how can we deal even further with the ambiguity of reality itself? Now that we can have AI generated videos that easily pass for recordings of facts and phenomena. 

I think this is time for us to rethink our educational system and the way we interact with each other and reality. Interpretation has been and will always be key to human development and personal happiness. And so our understanding of how the silence of words affects our subjectivity and the way it helps us construct our identities.
 
 
by Karinna Alves Gulias
 

The colonizer mindset - The Eurocentric (and North-American centric) view of everything.

I am a woman who was born in Brazil, an extremely social and friendly country, I possess a white skin complexion, even though I'm incredibly mixed, (to my personal pride,) as all of us Brazilians are, which is something that anyone can see just by walking in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, for example. However, only in the decades I have been living as an emigrant/immigrant have I really come to grasp the reality that I lived and live as part of a somewhat privileged group. I say somewhat because I am not living in my motherland anymore, and even though I have skin on the lighter range, I too experience the oppressing airs of the active xenophobia and colonial mentality in Europe. 

 I believe that the biggest mistake of a person, be that a common or clearly erudite one, who comes from a privileged group or powerful "first world" country is to think that racism or xenophobia are ideals that come from an individual perspective. I will give examples of this way of thinking: 

 - I don't think I'm racist. (Therefore, racism is not a thing). 

 - I have black friends. (Therefore, I don't practice racism). 

 Or even more individualist ways of portraying racism: 

 - Racists are evil. (And because I'm not evil, I cannot be racist). 

The biggest problem about conceiving "racism" in the third way mentioned above is that it makes people believe that being racist is an act that does not come from society in general, but from individuals who actively choose to do bad things towards others. When, in reality, racism, sexism, or xenophobia are culturally, socially, and historically built in the foundations and structures of society, especially the oppressor's society.

Everybody practices racism, both the ones who do not belong to the lesser group and the ones who do. Simply because it is a cultural reality, not an individual choice. I am sure most people nowadays do not want to belong to either group: the oppressor or the oppressed. Both groups dehumanize us, but they are a thing and it is here in our daily rituals, without us realizing.

It is hard to hear this, but any interest a person who belongs to the privileged group may have in treating the minority, which means the historically oppressed, groups with kindness or equality, without opening themselves up to accept our play in this non-equal, non-meritocratic reality, will be but superficial generosity. A vertical charity either to fulfill a personal emptiness or an individual conflictive self-image. 

If you want to be seen as good but do not want to venture into losing your romantic ideals of Patria or your properties to include others, who have been dehumanized and violated for centuries, if not millennia, then it means you chose to live a false reality: a capitalist, individualist fairy tale of a supposedly meritocratic reality, built by the oppressors to pretend they live fairly in a fair world.

Karinna A. Gulias

Poetry

 I, too, dislike it.

***Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
***it, after all, a place for the genuine.

By Marianne Moore 

From the 1967's "The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore"

O acordo do ser menos entre Israel e Palestina

Dentro do pensamento Freireano da vocação do ser humano para o ser mais e a busca da liberdade, Israel e Palestina se deixam pecar. 

Que existe lá uma relação doentia de opressor-oprimido é inquestionável. Seja de que ideologia um seja, negá-la é negar a realidade por uma falsa sensação de segurança e defesa de uma verdade política manca. 

A política de desumanização é castradora, pois só cultiva o ser menos do ser humano. O agente opressor desumaniza o oprimido, para que seus atos não sejam criticados ou julgados de maneira justa, mas ao fazê-lo, o opressor também desumaniza a si mesmo, mesmo que de maneira distinta. É uma relação sórdida e inconsequente para com qualquer das partes envolvidas, que vem da falta de auto-questionamento e um medo ignorante da liberdade.

Qualquer ser humano ou grupo ou facção que se usa da retórica da desumanização para afirmar uma verdade ou uma ação se faz automaticamente um ser menos e, portanto, merece e deve ser questionado.

Citação de "Pedagogia do Oprimido" de Paulo Freire, 2022: 40-41.

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