Strange thing grief is, seemingly never reaching its end. My dad left. My grandpa died. My relationship ended. My dad died. My book was done. My friend was no longer my friend. Things changed, just a little. Things changed a whole lot. I was broken by a relationship. I am still in mourning. In waves. Once in a while. It’s soft. Then heavy. Then heart-wrenching burning crushing my stomach punched in like when: your grandpa died. Each ending a little harder because with it everything else, again. More each time. I say goodbye with fast food and have a taste of what was what could have been had we been a little more ready for each other. The dead father the one who left, the one who died reborn into something hard to recognize, time and again. My best friend and lover and our many goodbyes over and over. I wrote them a letter. I write everyone a letter. I’ve written so many letters on so many notebooks on my computer on my phone in my mind but they don’t quite seem like enough to put outside what eats my insides some nights. The nightmares of old fights even after I thought I’d figured that out that I had let go that what was left was soft and slow I am visited by ghosts of what made us take different paths. I didn’t notice until I did. What if I could have been a better kid to my dad? It’s all entangled. My friend’s dad died a few years later, I wrote some words by the water I took some pictures of moss I gave him all that for his birthday. I knew his grief he knew mine.

I grieve when I look inside. I mourn a writer. I mourn a dancer. I mourn a dreamer. I mourn the long-form fiction the discipline the dedication. I mourn my joy in all of it, today very hard to tell apart from a need to deliver –

I grieve an openness to each connection, now tainted by suspicion that this new stranger I am learning will also show me wounds too large for mine; that mine will eat theirs up. That we won’t make it work. That I’ll see the relationships that broke me the dad that died the grandfather that left me stomach-punched for the first time – the second time. That I’ll be visited by ghosts of books I wrote so I would be liked. Or so I would survive.

I had a long phase after my father’s death when I was fascinated by moss and how things grow from death and rupture. I tried to find in this loss some inspiration I wrote some poems some letters. I don’t know where they are. I find myself now, after a few years of multiple broken or bent (or paused?) relationships and one death later, looking at the moss again. Finland was wet and left me dreaming of fairylands and mushroom friends and missing all of these people who touched me and whose departure I still don’t quite understand. Why do things end? Do they end? I try to find in me the parts that know I am never really left by things I love, that I am in them they are in me that once touched by their collision with my path I am different they are different we are still all made of the same stuff. I recall those words from that book: whatever our souls are made of his and mine are the same. I think that concept is flawed; we are whole because we are plural. Those walls an illusion. Every time I take a trip I see the universe as it holds us and is held in us. There is no death or death never ends. None of this is new but repeating it makes sense because each time those words are written down is a reminder to let go of attachments to a state of things that does not exist. I know this. I grieve.

2025 was a year of grief. It started with me in trauma rooms reconnecting with those parts of myself most young and hurt and unsure how to help them feel loved. I took all those strategies I had learnt and they didn’t seem to quite fit. I came back on that plane sick sleepless scared. I waited for a message that did not come. I fought myself I lived in my shame. I hid I bent I kneeled. I lived far away from my body I could not come down. For a while I could not come down. Why can’t I come down? And now I grieve. I grieve those months of pain I grieve the person I lost in the aftermath I grieve how much of myself I lost in the aftermath. I grieve the before and I am in awe of the after the bravery the anger the love for self and other – same thing. I write here words of mourning and I notice they live next to a hope for renewal new versions of old things bits of love that come again.

we grew and grew apart 9^th grade tears on that 10^th grade break I am hugged and held in my pain

I don’t really understand why things change.

I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I don’t understand.

It’s impossible to hold – change. But change is always you told me. I don’t really know how to let go. Embrace. Moments of softness and love without attachment visit me when I’m alone at the beach. I wish you well. I kiss the air I notice the spikiness of the trees I am hugged by the sand. It doesn’t have to stay the same to exist. I am reminded. I forget again – or it just doesn’t feel palpable I can’t hold it I am visited by the stomach-punch pain:

his voice on the radio from before

that day he left us for some new lover in another city I don’t remember but I do

my dad my best friend

died over and over again until only bits of him left by the time he went swimming

his poems are the moss

I write what he would have written me had he read what I wrote that day that he probably died

I grieve that it’s not the same

that book I finished that part of me that died underwater that day when I wished for death and to be moss I guess to be moss sounds like the answer to most things

my best friend my first love my soulmate if there ever was one

all those goodbyes over and over again

the person who waited for a message that never came

my partners; those letters unanswered all seem ok when I think of how much love:

compassion shared pain grief held

if only our wounds hadn’t met each other then maybe we wouldn’t know them so well

and we wouldn’t have had to say goodbye that day with fast food and again on the phone

but we wouldn’t know them so well

but we wouldn’t have cut deeper into the skin either

So I guess there is no point in trying to understand. I mourn I grieve I make the funerals over and over again because nothing really ends there is no such thing as time I hold all of these souls that have touched me all of these things I have done that had an end they sit on my bed with me we share touch and softness we fall apart together our tears join in a glass we celebrate the love the loss; and we try and carry each other

we try and carry each other

“We noticed it's been 8 months since you last posted on your Substack, Hungry”. This email from Substack, like any reminder of projects on standby, leaves a bitter after-taste. Life gets in the way, my struggles with self-discipline and motivation take new shapes, and most of all, priorities change. This particular outlet became less important and the draft I have been working on since July remained a draft. Seeing as the main reason I decided to write Hungry was for myself, in the hope it would motivate me to write more, dive deeper into my interests and spend my free time with forms of entertainment alternative to mindless binge-watching, it has been more or less successful. Still, it frustrates me that the main reason I have made time to write here again is that work is slow. And work being slow is also the reason writing feels like a waste of “productive” time I should be spending on job search, bureaucracy and worrying. I worry that being a freelancer is no longer the best option for my mental health. I worry that any alternative will be worse. I worry that it is near impossible to prioritize my needs and make ends meet at the same time. I worry about the growing feeling that I am going at a different speed than most of the world and I can’t keep up, that it will just get harder to keep up. I worry that most of the world might feel the same. It angers me that most of the world might feel the same. It angers me that we operate in an absurd system that leaves us either exhausted, unfulfilled or broke so much of the time.

Today I decide to use my anger as fuel to write about something very close to my heart.

diagnosis

In the summer of 2019 I let go, I blew up, burned, flew, I returned to childhood, I traveled out into the universe and through my own mind, I discovered overwhelming love for all beings and all things. In the summer of 2019 I had my first - and so-far only - full blown manic episode and it has thus far been my most life-changing experience. I have since found myself filled with questions about the nature of mental, but also of physical illness (aren’t they the same?), about conventional and unconventional treatments, about the validity and fallibility of psychiatric diagnosis, about the human mind as a whole. Questions surrounding life and death, pleasure and pain, and whether we have any control over what we do or who we are have also gained new attention. So I read and watch and listen a lot and then I think some more. And now that I want to write about it, it’s hard to know where to start. I am not a scientist nor a specialist of any kind, so it seems to make more sense to start from my subjective experience.

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I would say I experienced a markedly lower mood for a “longer” period of time for around age 8, although my memory of it is of course flawed, it could have lasted a week or a month, and however meaningful it was to me, I would hesitate to call it depression. When I was 13 I had what I would not hesitate to call depression for about three weeks. My symptoms included insomnia, intestinal stress, inability to focus, memory lapses, and anxiety, accompanied by emotional numbness, low self-esteem, low appetite and a mind filled with overpowering existential questions. I have since experienced depression a few times, usually about 4-5 years apart, usually with the same symptoms, twice with the added bonus of suicidal ideation and/or suicidal impulses. I took SSRI anti-depressants for the first time when I was 16, and three times since then. There had also been periods when my mood was more elevated than average, my desire to/need for sleep and appetite decreased slightly, my social energy and creativity increased. It felt a little like being in love (in two cases, this state was in fact likely triggered by infatuation). But it generally lasted for a couple of weeks and it was rarely noticeable to any one other than myself. I am not sure whether these moods look any different on someone with a bipolar diagnosis than they do in the general population.

In the spring of 2019, a soon to be “proper” manic episode started with one of these “just a little happier” moods. And it kept building up until the summer. It’s easy for me now to see the likely triggers: I was having more sex than usual, I took a small dose of MDMA, I went to a very stimulating 4-day festival where I slept less than 6 hours a night (my usual is 9) and drank a lot of coffee and quite a few vodka-redbulls, and two days after that I was travelling, sleeping again very little, dealing with the end of a relationship and the beginning of a new infatuation, smoking weed and drinking a lot more than I would normally. I then went to another much shorter festival and by then my mind was faster than ever. One puff of a joint and I was convinced I could understand the universe. Colors became much brighter, especially the blue in certain flowers, I felt my body lighter, I slept like a baby (or so it felt) but for only 4-6 hours a night, I was approaching strangers on trains and telling them how they could improve their lives, my libido was out of control, I was having epiphanies every day and I became obsessed with analyzing photos of myself as a child. I was writing a lot, and was convinced everything I wrote was brilliant (if I read it now, it makes little sense). I developed theories about the human psyche, I felt love and compassion for everyone I came across, while at the same time being fairly quick to scream at and (perhaps unknowingly) manipulate others. I finally understood my father, who also had a bipolar diagnosis.

This was a difficult time for those closest to me and that is the main reason I can (not without a little hesitation) say I would not like it to happen again. Yet, despite the inflated ego and its negative consequences, the dangers to my physical health and the depression on the other side, I believe I gained a lot from this experience and I would be lying if I said I don’t miss it. If I was told I can be manic for a day or two and it’ll be just like when most people do a recreational drug, I would do it. A lot of people who’ve experienced it feel the same. The insight this experience gave me into my own subconscious, the way my mind works and what I need for my well being is invaluable. At the same time, when I look back at a lot of what I did and the way I behaved during this period, I do not recognize myself, and the same goes for the person I became when depressed. This has lead me to seriously question human nature, if we have any power at all over what we say and do, and if people who do harm can be truly blamed for it, or if its just a natural consequence of the cards they were dealt. I have no answers for this. I am most of the time inclined to believe that, if we do have some free will, its power over who we are is minuscule. At the same time, I have to believe this cannot be used an excuse, that we can always try to be better and kinder.

This mental health roller coaster and my contact with people with the same or different diagnosis has also lead me to realize that psychiatric labeling is still extremely flawed. I’ve heard of the same person be diagnosed with depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, ADHD and autism. More often than not, this is an attempt to figure out which course of pharmaceutical treatment will relieve their symptoms the most. With some people an apparently more-or-less successful solution is found rather quickly, as is my case, while other people report feeling like lab rats for years at a time before they find the cocktail of pills that makes them stable. Should stability even be the goal?

Before my manic episode reached its peak, I went on a little journey of self-diagnosis online and found that I tick every box on the Cyclothymia/Bipolar III list of symptoms (I since think I am closer to the Bipolar II label). But when I think back to the triggers that lead to my depressive and manic episodes, I have to ask if I am that different from everyone else. In my case, vodka-redbull and lack of sleep seemed to be enough to push me over the edge, but in another case I know closely, a very high consumption of cocaine for an extended period of time was necessary. I have seen people who do not have any psychiatric diagnosis behaving very similarly to the way I did when I was manic after taking Ecstasy and other party drugs regularly for a few months. In some cases, stress and over-stimulation or even an extreme change in diet can be enough to trigger mania. I remember reading one report on reddit of a bipolar person stating that the fact they were served a coffee instead of a decaf was enough to trigger hypomania. So it seems to me (of course, I base this on very little more than my own subjective experience) that people who are told by psychiatrists that they are on the bipolar spectrum are just more easily triggered into these states than others. Could it be that, in many cases, removing the stressors and triggers, and making serious life-style changes would be enough to keep depression and mania at bay? Or is everyone who is taking bipolar medication necessarily better off on it than off it?

I don’t ask these questions to oppose psychiatric drug treatments altogether, but a quick google search into the active component in one of my medications (oxcarbazepine) is at best a little puzzling. “Here is a drug for epilepsy that stabilizes moods maybe, we are not sure why or how, the research on it is inconclusive and the side effects are not the best, but here take it anyway.” Some argue for its efficacy and a 2022 study found it to be similarly helpful to sodium valproate (the first mood stabilizer I was put on) in manic patients. The last psychiatrist I talked to expressed a dislike for both, and seemed to find them outdated. My experience with the drugs I take now has been positive, I have very few side effects and I have been stable since I started taking them, but it’s also true that there have been few things in the mean time that would have triggered depression or mania. Or did I just get better at dealing with the triggers because I am stable and that is thanks to these drugs? It’s hard to know. I believe asking these questions is worth it, that we should keep looking into what we know and what we don’t know about these drugs. Are they helping more than they are in the way? Is there any truth in my suspicion that the relative emotional plateau my medication probably puts me in is sometimes a hindrance to overall motivation to make changes in myself and in my life, that it could be keeping away emotional states necessary for reaching more challenging goals? Or is the difficulty in making and keeping these changes a sign I am missing a diagnosis and its helpful medication, as recent conversations I’ve had about ADD/ADHD have made me wonder? (I recommend Sluggish for ADHD-related articles)

I think anyone asking themselves these questions should be very careful. I saw up close what happens when someone who needs medication (maybe not forever but at that moment in their life) stops taking it, and the instability that can put someone through is not worth it. But that doesn’t make me less curious. And in asking about possible alternatives, I’ve been finding myself more and more obsessed with psychedelics and psychedelic research. On this topic, I recommend listening to the episode “Microdosing Psilocybin with Dr. James Fadiman” from the Mushroom Revival Podcast and looking into Benjamin Mudge, who is researching the therapeutic potential of Ayahuasca for people with bipolar disorder.

In this video, Benjamin Mudge talks about his research on how the different components of Ayahuasca and the Ayahuasca ceremonies could be manipulated in a way that would make them a safe therapeutic experience for people with bipolar disorder. After listening to Benjamin (around min 30) say that he could not help the people who asked him to share the Ayahuasca components he has access to for his research due to it being deemed unethical by the ethics committee, and that those people have since committed suicide, I cried. And I felt angry. And I wrote this.

I wanted this post to be well-researched and filled with useful links to studies and other bipolar people’s reports, but after being in the drafts for months, I decided it was time to publish it. I hope I get around to doing all the research I initially intended to and maybe it will lead to writing more about the subject, but until then I felt that my story had value and my questions were worth asking.

I’ll leave you with a recent poem, born out of feeling all-too overwhelmed.

cog

I scroll down your art

I fall apart

so I scroll down your art

Or I scroll down your art

and so I fall apart

8 months since I last told the internet about my latest obsession

I would like a moment to breathe

There aren’t enough moments to breathe

Instead down my neck breathe the deadlines of some machine

The machine won’t go you are just a cog it screams

just a cog

What if I want to be water;

melt

I scroll down your art I fall apart so I scroll down your art so I fall apart

It’s the 9h30 exhaustion

It’s early 9h30 is early to be exhausted it’s too early

Where did the flying horse go

It flew the horse flew and I had to find ground but I feel buried now I don’t feel I can walk I don’t feel I can make

And if I can’t make what’s left

A beating heart:

I need the rhythm and I need the warmth,

I scroll down your art I fall apart

I don’t want to be a cog

I want to do like the horse and be like the water;

melt;

bridge;

become whole.

But these poems are broken I can’t make with this clock breathing down my throat it’s hard work they say I don’t want hard work I just want to breathe I just want to breathe I can’t breathe sometimes I can’t

I fall apart your art my art you saw it I fell so I fell apart your art my art

I don’t want to be a cog

After asking where inspiration comes from, it feels important to ask who inspiration comes from. I have had the fortune of coming across many inspiring souls, whose words and actions have helped pave my creative path, but it is with no hesitation that I say that none compare to João Bénard da Costa, my grandfather.

On his 73rd birthday, I, 11 at time, gave my grandfather a text I had written for school about Tim Burton’s Big Fish. To my surprise, he was so touched by it that he wrote me a letter. I go back to it whenever I need a special kind of inspiration or just a little bit of strength. Here an excerpt:

A Maria é não só alguém de muito especial – todos somos e por isso é que viemos a este mundo – como alguém a quem foram dadas capacidades muito especiais de imaginação, sensibilidade e criação de magia. Como a Maria diz no seu texto: a magia está na vida e daquilo que dela fazemos. (…)

Acho que a Maria pode vir a fazer coisas muito grandes e muito importantes se acreditar em si e trabalhar muito para avançar muito no desenvolvimento da sua imaginação, da sua memória e da sua sensibilidade.

Dou-lhe agora um presente: o texto que eu próprio escrevi, no ano passado, sobre O Grande Peixe. Nele cito uma frase de Edward Bloom, que pode levar como lema para a sua vida: “Desde que nasci, nunca fui senão eu próprio. Se não és capaz de perceber isso, a culpa é tua, não é minha.” (…)

and an attempt at a translation

You are not only a very special person – we all are and that’s why we came to this world, – but someone who was given very special skills like imagination, sensitivity and the creation of magic. Like you say in your text: magic is in life and what we make of it. (…)

I think you might do great things and important things if you believe in yourself and work very hard to develop your imagination, your memory and your sensitivity.

Now I’ll give you a present: the text I wrote, last year, about Big Fish. In it I quote one of Edward Bloom’s sentences, which you can use as a motto for your life: “I have been nothing but myself since the day I was born. And if you can't see that, it's your failing, not mine.” (…)

There is great tenderness in these words, but they are unlike most other encouragement or praise I have received: instead of merely boosting my ego, these words challenge me. They hold me accountable. And in moments where believing in myself proved to be an impossible task, these words felt heavy and uncomfortable, but necessary. Am I working hard to nurture my imagination, my memory, my sensitivity? As I grow this question has become linked with a more complicated one: do I want to do “great and important” things? A better phrasing may be: What are “great and important” things to me, and am I doing them? For the time being, writing about a person who touched and inspired so many seems quite important. So here I am, letting my grandfather’s words push me once again, sitting in the discomfort of knowing that to write about him and do him any justice is an impossible task, and trying to anyway.

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Memory

In writing about João Bénard da Costa, I draw inspiration from his style. Whenever he would write about any topic (and there were many), it would be with great affection, never shying away from the personal and the emotional. And it seems pointless to attempt an objective biography as I cannot separate the figure of influential cinephile from that of loving grandpa, nor do I want to. This is in no way an attempt at a biography, and I will very much focus on the points of his life and work that mean most to me, perhaps leaving out other very important ones. However, finding it inadmissible that the internet has so little about him and so little of him in English, and as way of introduction, I will start with some facts.

João Bénard da Costa was born on February 7th 1935 and died on May 21st 2009, at age 74. Wikipedia describes him as a “professor, cultural manager, film critic and essayist” but these titles seem reductive, seeing as he went about everything he did in very unconventional ways. After writing this, I did some research and realized the same point has been put in perhaps better words by Ana Bela Morais (a biography is worth reading):

João Bénard da Costa, as he is commonly known, is regarded and remembered today as one of the most notable personalities of Portuguese culture who made the greatest contributions to the history of cinema. Stating that he was a professor, writer and above all, a cinephile, falls short in light of his uncommon culture, coupled with immense creativity unleashed by a sensitive and passionate way of expressing that which is almost impossible to put into words: the universe of human feelings revealed in (and through) art.

The sign outside the house where he lived reads “cinéfilo do coração”, “cinephile at heart”, which seems a fitting description, as my grandfather’s love of film seemed to move every other one of his passions and endeavors (and there were many) and he used the language of cinema to express himself in endless ways. Texts about films quickly became texts about personal experiences and texts about personal experiences quickly became texts about films. An amazing example of this is the text he wrote after my cousin (3 years old at the time) drowned and almost died, connecting it to Carl Thedor Dreyer’s Ordet:

Foi há 15 anos (29 de Julho de 1988). Foi n’ O Independente. Texto sobre Ordet (A Palavra) de Carl Th. Dreyer. E eu escrevi, sobre a sequência da ressurreição de Inger: «No cinema não há nada mais fácil do que conseguir um milagre. Todos sabem que a actriz que está a fazer de Inger não está morta e que ressuscitá-la depende apenas de uma ordem do realizador. Mas o prodígio […] é fazer-nos acreditar que, na verdade, vimos um milagre e vimos um corpo morto ressuscitar em toda a glória da vida […]. A única vez que vi isso acontecer […] foineste filme. Se me disserem que é cinema, eu respondo que não é, não.»

Foi no domingo passado. 22 de Outubro de 2000. Não foi no cinema. Foi em Sintra. A Leonor morreu. E todos sabíamos que a Leonor não estava a fazer que estava morta e que ressuscitá-la era impossível. Mas, dez minutos depois, vimos um milagre e vimos um corpo morto ressuscitar em toda a glória da vida. E a única vez que voltei a ver isso acontecer foi no domingo. E se me disserem que é a vida, eu respondo que não é, não.

Ordet. Leonor. Deus.

A translation:

It was 15 years ago (29th of July 1988). It was in O Independente. Text about Ordet by Carl Th. Dreyer. And I wrote, about the sequence of Inger’s resurrection: «In cinema, there is nothing easier than creating a miracle. Everyone knows that the actress playing Inger is not dead and that bringing her back depends on nothing more than a director’s order. But the accomplishment […] is making us believe that we truly witnessed a miracle and that we saw a dead body be reborn in all of life’s glory. If you tell me it’s cinema, I will answer that no, it isn’t.»

It was last Sunday. 22nd of October 2000. It was not in the cinema. It was in Sintra. Leonor died. And we all knew that Leonor was not playing dead and that bringing her back was impossible. But, ten minutes later, we witnessed a miracle and we saw a dead body be reborn in all of life’s glory. And the only time I saw that happen again was on Sunday. And if you tell me that it’s life, I will answer that no, it isn’t.

Ordet. Leonor. God.

João Bénard da Costa’s cultural activities came hand in hand with his political involvement, particularly in the years previous to the 1974 Carnations Revolution. Seeing as my knowledge of this time in my grandfather’s life and in Portuguese history is still strongly connected to a drawing I did in primary school of my grandpa hiding people from the political police (PIDE) in the attic (which might be lacking some context), I will go back to Ana Bela Morais’ text for this:

His biography would be incomplete without mentioning the political persecution he suffered. In 1957/1958 he was President-General of the Juventude Universitária Católica (Catholic University Youth) and film society leader at the Centro Cultural de Cinema (Cinema Cultural Centre, or CCC) between 1957 and 1960. Between 1960 and 1963 he received a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The film societies were very important to his training as a cinephile. João Bénard da Costa stated that it was in these societies that he started to learn about the cinema: "I learned a lot and a generation - mine - owes its love of cinema to these historic film society screenings, which beginning in the late 1950s were relentlessly persecuted by a regime that was increasingly leery of them." (Os filmes da minha vida/Os meus filmes da vida, 'The Films of My Life/Films of a Lifetime', 1990, p. 7). (…) The film societies were publicly accused by the Salazar regime of being connected to the Communist Party, and therefore were persecuted by the political police. His programming exhibited films from Italian neo-realism, French poetic realism, some American films, Mexican realism and British films – as long as they were able to get past the censors. (…)

The Cinemateca Portuguesa, of which my grandfather was the third director, was born amidst the dictatorship, in 1948, which of course meant that much of its programming was limited by censorship until the Revolution in 1974. The Cinemateca’s current director, José Manuel Costa, talked about this in detail in 2016 at the Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival in Bologna:

João Bénard da Costa managed, however, to screen movies that would have otherwise been banned at the time at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, thanks to the Gulbenkian’s exception status. Among others, he did a screening of Rossellini’s Roma Cittá Aperta (1945) during which Rossellini was present. José Manuel Costa’s retelling of the moment (watch from 39:07) when, after the screening, the audience cheered so much that Rossellini could not speak, left me once again in awe at the importance of the steps my grandfather took. It was the similarities between the reality depicted in the movie and the reality lived in Portugal at that time of this screening that brought on a demonstration-like reaction in the viewers, José Manuel Costa says. Surely enough, six months later the Revolution took place.

My grandfather’s main focus since he became deputy director of the Cinemateca Portuguesa in 1980, and then as a director from 91, was on programming. And after such a long dictatorship, this meant screening movies that no-one had ever seen (certainly never seen uncensored). The audience gained access to much of international film history through long cycles that showcased all or almost all of the movies of great names such as John Ford or Alfred Hitchcock. And each movie would then be accompanied by a piece of paper written for that screening about that movie, often by João Bénard da Costa himself. These became the “Folhas”, that still accompany each screening at the Cinemateca Portuguesa today.

The “Folhas” written by my grandfather, together with other texts about films, are being compiled in large volumes, in alphabetical order by director last name, under the title João Bénard da Costa - Escritos sobre Cinema. Volume four gets to letter O, so you can imagine just how much my grandfather wrote about cinema.

A man of many crafts, I would say João Benárd da Costa’s writing is deserving of special praise. He wrote, always by hand, about numerous topics ranging from art, to music, to traveling, to politics, to religion, to personal anecdotes, and of course to cinema. Always cinema, a language that seemed to tie every other one together.

My favourite movie (I think it’s my favourite) is Bergman’s Persona. And I fell more in love with it after reading my grandfather’s text about it. I decided to make a small contribution to translating his work into English and translated the whole text. I have added it at the end of this post, but here is an excerpt:

PERSONA is Bergman’s masterwork. I say it now, so we can get straight to the point.

In no other of his films – whatever the subjective preferences – was this movie-maker able to accomplish such simplicity and such complexity, in no other was he able to say so much with so little. All of Bergman is in it, in it is all of Bergman. We stand before an example of finished perfection. Everything that came before it – and, my God, it is so much – was a prelude. Everything that came after – and, my God, what great films they are – was coda or afterword. Were this the only film left, we would know everything about Bergman.

IMAGINATION

My grandfather went about everything he did in his own very peculiar way. He was indeed a peculiar man, and I’m sure that came with its disadvantages but it also made for thousands of often hilarious stories that my family members lovingly share at dinner tables.

To think of my grandpa is to think of a terrible driver, who oblivious to this fact, believed that the honking came from his fans. His clumsy distracted self also made for ever-present soup in his beard during meals and shoes worn in the wrong foot, that left him wondering at the end of the day why his feet hurt so much. He found creative ways of escaping my grandmother’s friends (or of making her laugh?) by hiding behind the bed when they came.

To think of my grandfather is to think of a storyteller, enchanting and perhaps scaring his grandchildren with versions of Homer’s Odyssey - the image of the cyclope’s blinded eye will forever mark my childhood - or by giving them questionable history lessons that always steered far off from the contents of the upcoming test we had to take. He would pretend to eat sand in front of children, tricking them into actually trying it.

To think of my grandfather is to think of a man of traditions, rituals, ceremonies. Every weekend, there must be a family dinner. And every weekend he must bring his grandchildren candy. When on holidays, he would always wake up in the afternoon and have the same breakfast, making it to the beach around 4 pm. He would then swim with his grandkids and teach us to catch sand from the bottom of the ocean - a skill that saved his life once. He would also often pick one of us to go on a one-on-one swim, during which he would float next to the lucky grandchild and recite entire poems by heart as we swam next to them. I remember these as very magical moments, and I think it taught me something very important about listening, about memory, about poetry.

SENSITIVITY

It comes as no surprise that a movie has been made about a cinephile. Manuel Mozo’s Outros Amarão as Coisas que eu Amei (Others will love the things that I have loved) is a carefully crafted poetic collage, and manages, through photographs, shots of Arrábida, Sintra, and of the Cinemateca paired with clips from my grandfather’s favourite movies and excerpts from his texts read by his son (João Pedro Bénard da Costa), to create a loving portrayal; one that leaves me with the feeling he is here again every time I watch it. It certainly does a better job - a very different job anyway - at painting a portrait, not of what my grandfather did but of who he was, than this messy attempt of mine.

Here, the trailer:

The letter my grandfather wrote me speaks to the personal, but also to the universal. A lot of it could be applied to anyone. I hope his words go on to inspire many, as they have me. I hope to have helped a little to broaden the public that he might continue to reach.

Before his death, my grandpa wrote our family a long letter, the third of three, he explained in it, for it was the third time he was in close corners with death. It is nonetheless a letter full of life. It ends with the words “Foi tão bom!”, “It was so good!”.

Writing this has made me miss my grandfather in a new way. I miss the person I did not get to know, I miss the future his death took away. I ask myself, what would he think of me now? What would he have to teach me now, what could I show him now? Who would he become in a world like today’s and how would he react to our reality? How many conversations am I missing out on?

Grandpa took many generations of family and friends on hikes through Arrábida, whose many hidden paths he knew by heart. Learning them was no accident but it did come very close to causing accidents several times. Once getting lost in the woods after dark almost led to my cousin falling off a cliff. But surely enough the group made it home safe and my grandpa got to hear a lecture by his daughter (said cousin’s mother), much to his indignation. I notice in telling these stories that my grandfather made adventure something you pass on to the next generation. Looking for the road less traveled to experience first hand why it should be so became genetic. Every year there are walks in Arrábida that at the very least leave someone covered in blood because of the brambles, near death experiences occurring far too often - yet we always go back for more. It’s almost as if going into the mystical Arrábida woods and coming back without a scratch means you didn’t do it right. But we don’t do it for the thrill. We do it because there comes a moment, usually high up in the mountain looking out onto the ocean, when grandpa asks us to stop and listen to the silence. Then, he asks us what we heard.

It’s no wonder I am writing these last paragraphs in a tent with no outside cover hoping that the rainfall doesn’t get worse. Of course I saw the weather predictions and came anyway. Of course I heard “the tent has no outside cover” and gave it no second thought. Of course it started to drizzle and I decided to wait it out until it was pouring to build my tent in a rush. Of course I am doing some less-than-legal camping alone in a place with little to no cellphone reception, clearly unprepared for the storm I knew was coming.

But look at all this silence:

I’ll keep listening, avô.

Foi tão bom.

What you can find about João Bénard da Costa in English (I will keep updating this list as I find new things):

• A reading of his own text about Pedro Costa’s O Sangue (Blood, 1989), with English subtitles

• Reviews of Mozos’ Outros amarão as coisas que eu amei (Others will love the things that I have loved, 2015)

• João Bénard da Costa’s text about Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954), translated into 11 languages!

• João Bénard da Costa on Pedro Costas’ Ossos (Bones, ) which seems to be unavailable in Austria.

• Portuguese Cinema? Dialogues with João Bénard da Costa, with English subtitles

• Short biographies

• A longer biography by Ana Bela Morais, in English translation

PERSONA

PERSONA is Bergman’s masterwork. I say it now, so we can get straight to the point.

In no other of his films – whatever the subjective preferences – was this movie-maker able to accomplish such simplicity and such complexity, in no other was he able to say so much with so little. All of Bergman is in it, in it is all of Bergman. We stand before an example of finished perfection. Everything that came before it – and, my God, it is so much – was a prelude. Everything that came after – and, my God, what great films they are – was coda or afterword. Were this the only film left, we would know everything about Bergman.

That is why I am annoyed – I shouldn’t be, but I am – by the meticulous exegeses that, shot by shot, step by step, explain – or overshadow – the meaning behind each image. One can write detailed and insightful essays that clarify each shot, commenting them in texts that take much longer to read than the 80 minutes of the film. One can continue to “psychoanalyze” ad infinitum the relationships between Johan (that’s the kid’s name) and the mother, the mother and Alma, the mother and the husband, between Bergman and all of them and his own mother (who died the year of PERSONA’s premier, in March of 1966). We will then have wonderful living room conversations, but we will not have the experience of being, for the first time, confronted with PERSONA. Confronted with whom? With a person (a mask, which, as the intellectuals say, is the root of who we are), that one day, on a stage, lost their voice and never spoke again.

Who is it? An actress, an actress called Elisabet Vogler. She was famous enough that the most ordinary person would have seen her and admired her on stages and in movies. But, one day, she went silent. She was playing Electra (we see her, dressed as Electra, many times throughout the movie). And, when she was begging Orestes for forgiveness (…), she suddenly let out a laugh. Then, she went quiet. Then she was put in a hospital. She never moved again, she never spoke again. At one time in the film, she starts to walk, but continues without talking until the end. We believe – as does Alma, the nurse assigned to her – we can hear her here and there. But no one is sure of it. No one is certain (would they swear?) that, just before the end, she repeats “Nothing”, as requested by Alma. It seems – it is the only time that it seems that way, it’s the only time that it doesn’t seem to be the voice of Bibi Andersson – but at this point all hallucinations are possible, to her (Bibi Andersson) and to us. And, at the end, the actress Elisabet Vogler is as still and as quiet as she had been in the beginning, once again in her hospital bed. What happens is a movie, just as what happened in the beginning, a movie directed by Ingmar Bergman (we see him), with Sven Nykvist by the camera (we also see him). The noise – at the beginning and at the end – is the noise of the projector. 24 frames per second.

Did we dream all of it, or was it Bergman who dreamt it? That is the question of PERSONA and it envelops us all, seeing as it doesn’t appear that animals are let in the theater room. Who is the I here? The director, portrayed and potrayable, filmed and filmable, present at the beginning and at the end? The film, running in the room, but also running on the reels, as an echo of its own noise, of its own slide? Elisabet Vogler, the actress? Alma, the nurse? The kid, who, on this side of the glass, does not touch the picture (blurry and blinding) that is beyond him? Or are they all one person, as they seem to want to be and seem to not want to be? Are there several characters in this “story” or is there only one, Alma-Elisabet, with other eyes watching her, our eyes, the eyes of the director? How do we know? We swear they are two – the credits confirm it and give them the names of Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson – but we can also swear that on one shot – one famous shot – we see them become one, only detachable by reminiscence (we then say that half of the face was Liv Ullmann and half of it was Bibi Andersson). This kind of vertigo can also be found in literature, for example in Camilo Castelo Branco’s novel (I can’t remember which right now) where he writes What’s his name (it’s not What’s his name, he has a very beautiful name, but I can’t remember it now), What’s his name is me. The sentence is shocking and disturbing. But, grammatically it’s correct. A matter of subject and predicate. «I am», more common and mundane, would also work. But it’s not the same thing. And that’s where we start to falter.

In the movie – this movie – we take much longer to falter. It’s true that the opening sequence is very strange (it’s been called, and rightfully so, the strangest opening sequence of the history of cinema, […]) but it is also true that when the noise of the machine stops, everything seems to reenter a movie’s logic. A psychiatrist tells us (tells the nurse) a coherent and logical story about a patient that she must care for. It’s a difficult case, the nurse is 25 years old and does not know if she is ready, let’s see, we’ll see. And the nurse is totally nurse-like (impeccably professional) and the sick patient is totally sick (sick as the psychiatrist had described her). Both are likable. Alma (it’s better to call her that already) is kind, discrete, efficient. Elisabet (the actress) is those things, too. But, when Alma says (speaking of Elisabet) that she has the face of a child, but a hard expression, if we notice the eyes well, we can only agree with her if we are already entirely projected (or huddled over). That is true for Elisabet, but it’s also true for Alma. But at that point in the movie the long shots of Elisabet (and you have never seen sadder shots than these) are in much greater number than those of Alma. If we think of that sentence later on, we’ll think that it could describe either one of them. It’s all in the time we get to look them in the eye. And, despite it not seeming that way, it is very rare to look into someone’s eyes. Very rare and very difficult. It happens, sometimes, in beaches, in the sun, when we lay down side by side, and open one eye to look at the other’s eyes. Otherwise it rarely happens. That’s why, in life, unlike in cinema, wide shots (created by cinema and not by painting) are so rare. Bergman who invented the wide wide shots (count how many are in PERSONA and you will not believe it) knew this and knew of our delay in getting to them. That’s why Alma’s first sentence might seem so ordinary, so objective, so oblivious. A fait divers. But it’s not a fact and it’s not diverse. It’s a film and it is one. Even if, after that clinical confirmation, after the radio (…), after the first notes of Bach, we have already seen – seconds? Eternities? – that wide wide shot of Liv Ullmann lying on the bed, on her side, before falling asleep and before someone (who?) puts their hand on her face. After that, a light is switched on, Bibi Andersson says something like “damn!” (I have to trust the subtitles) because she forgot to set the alarm. She looks at us and says it’s funny. Asks what her problem is. Hers. Elisabet Vogler. Elisabet Vogler. The next sequence (supposedly, the next day) is Elisabet without Alma. Television, Vietname, things from the 60’s. The actress must have political problems (we think), like Max von Sydow had with the Chinese in Winter Light. But there’s also talk of “powers we cannot control”. Bergman, tel qu’en lui-même… We knew it already. Like we knew (or we thought we did) about the stories with the child and the husband, Oedipus things, conjugal things. Until the off voice informs us that they both went to the beach, to the ocean.

The “realistic” tone continues, with one of them pretending that she does not notice the other’s silence and the other pretending that she does not notice the first’s talks. They change colour (white bathing suits, black bathing suits), they change hands, it’s so good to listen, and so good to talk. And because it’s so good, the person talking dives into confessions and tells, tells, tells intimate and personal stories. While we are entertained by them (what can be more entertaining than talking about sex?), we don’t even notice the shot changes, and continue to take as a fait divers that the speaker says it must be good to be two people in one, the soul [alma] full to bursting.

Until, suddenly, we hear someone say: “you need to go lay down”, “I need to go lay down”, Alma corrects herself immediately. She merely traded you for I. The voice is the same. But, while it rains, and we hear the wheezing of the soundtrack, we falter, for the first time, on the identity of the speaker. And, during the night, both fuse into one-another for the first time, in Liv’s vampire kiss to Bibi. And it dawns.

A dream, we think, comforted (Alma thinks so, too). But from then on, nothing is certain. Not even the fabulous apparition of Gunnar Björnstrand, that goes to one of them as if she were the other and to the other as if she was the first, not even the famous sequence (Persona’s most famous and most copied one) where we hear the same dialogue (the famous dialogue about maternity), through Elisabet’s viewpoint and then through Alma’s. And when I say “viewpoint”, I say it wrong, because there is no viewpoint, there is the absolute absence of one or the other (that’s why the immitators make so many mistakes).

Who is it, who – at night – gains a very relaxed face, swollen, who smells of sleep and tears? Who strikes whom? Who listens to declaration of conjugal love? Who is Elisabet Vogler and who isn’t Elisabet Vogler? Who repeats the Electra’s plead for forgiveness to Orestes? To whom does the blind man speak? Can two people turn into one? And, if they can, can Alma and the Mask (the Person) continue to split, as does the image in the film?

Persona is like a mosaic that makes no sense. Sitting before this film, I feel like the little boy that appears there, touching the film (the screen), without entering it. Beyond it (and beyond that great maternal and feminine image, the feminine and maternal image), there might be the meaning of it all, but one cannot go beyond a movie, like you cannot go beyond a screen, without destroying the picture.

As Pérec wrote: “We are alone and we do not know anyone. We do not know anyone, and we are alone.”

My God, if only something of this could be shared. But would it then

exist? No, it comes only at the price of being on one's own.“My God, if it were possible to share all of this with someone. But if it were, would someone be it, would someone still be it?” This is Rilke’s question, in Malte. Elisabet’s answer, begged for and exorcized by Alma, no it isn’t, it’s no-one. It’s nothing.

The genesis of this film – Bergman told us – started the day that Bibi Andersson, casually, introduced him to an unknown Norwegian actress named Liv Ullmann. And he noticed – “unconsciously” – the “diabolical similarity” between the two women, not when he saw them, but when he saw a picture of them, at the beach, sunbathing. Then he fell ill, then he was three months in a hospital (Meniere’s disease, a problem in the inner ear, that causes, among other things, vertigo and loss of balance). Then he thought he would never film again. Then he felt “empty and dead”. And one day, he started thinking about that picture and about two women, in bathing suits, comparing hands. Then, he began to write the script. Then, he stopped. He thought he was mad. When Bibi, desperate after the first rehearsals, told him the exactly that, he started to film. Liv was very nervous. Suddenly, the two faces were mingling into one another. “It was the first shot of the movie. As for the rest, you can interpret it any way you like. Like a poem. For different people, any image has different meanings. (…) In Persona, like in Beckett’s plays, there are no two sets of images, like there are no two series of words, that can be put together.”

On my end, I simply add that there are no two sets of people. Not even one person. If there is, as Rilke also said, it – still – doesn’t mean more than what Elisabet Vogler didn’t say: nothing.

Write drunk, edit sober

My room has more clothes than floor and I desperately need the shower I postponed yesterday; it’s about three hours after my usual wake up time and I haven’t even peed yet, but Bo Burnham’s “Art is Dead” wakes me up and pushes me down my mezzanine stairs and into my keyboard. I had forgotten what it was like to not only want to write but to need to write.

An astrologist once told me, after going on about how Water drives my soul, that Picasso used to stand in front of a canvas every day from 2pm to 10pm whether or not an idea came. And this was, the astrologist claimed, the kind of discipline I was lacking as an artist. Instead of being a slave to this near-fall-out-of-bed rush to write, which I know has an expiration date coming, I should probably learn to tame the inspiration beast, so I can still be writing Hungry when I am a little less starving. That process might not mean eight hours in front of a blank page for me, but it probably includes something like not ignoring my other needs and responsibilities. There is however undeniable beauty in trying to catch an idea before it swims away, in being a willing slave to this hungry beast.

I was on a tram back from the supermarket, slightly caffeinated and listening to Romare, when I had to grab my phone and start furiously spilling out words all the way into my house. I then quickly put away the wine I bought and went into my room, continuing to write on my phone because changing to another medium would interrupt the flow. Hemmingway says “Write drunk, edit sober” and while he was known to be a heavy drinker, I believe he is also (if not only) referring to the manic state we call inspiration. (It turns out one of my favourite quotes is a misquote). Any text written under the influence of the Hungry beast needs to rest before I can calmly turn it into something other people can actually read. And that’s what I did with my first entry of Hungry, edited and published the next day.

Sex, Shame and Slugs

Where are ideas born? It’s hard to say. They are fish that need bait, as David Lynch puts it. I believe the idea to write Hungry was partly lured in by the artistic input I was exposed to throughout the last couple of weeks of April, in particular by the Vienna Porn Film Festival and later by the Long Night of the Sex Columnists.

I have noticed a significant increase in the sex-related cultural and leisure activities I attend since I moved to Vienna from Lisbon. I’m not sure if there’s just more of them or if I feel more free to attend them here – a bit of both? As I write this I notice a small yet very present sense of shame enter my body. A sense of shame that has been more or less a constant in all things sex pretty much since I’ve been a person. Maybe working through that feeling is one of the reasons that lead me to volunteer at this year’s Vienna Porn Film Festival. It was certainly inspiring to meet festival founder and director Yavuz Kurtulmus and hear why he created this festival five years ago: he loves porn and he loves sex. The unapologetic nature of this explanation made me notice how much I would sugarcoat what I was doing that week, for example when I told my mom it was erotic cinema I was watching and emphasized the artistic and political components of the movies like that was the only way to watch porn at the cinema without feeling ashamed. Don’t get me wrong, the festival was a wonderful showcasing of creative minds and brave political statements (what stayed with me the most was Polish directors Rafal Zwirek and Aga Szreder’s Understanding Patriarchy), but it was also an unapologetic celebration of porn. So why did I almost apologize for being there?

Sex is probably what I think about the most in my day to day. Sometimes about how I wish I was having it, in a pure my-sex-drive-might-just-be-too-high kind of way. Sometimes in a more abstract, what-is-sex kind of way. And what is sex? A question appropriately put on the Porn Film Festival’s tote bags and which has been on my mind a lot recently. It was once very clear: I didn’t, in my mind, “lose” my virginity (a problematic notion to begin with) until I had penetrative sex, which I waited until I was 18 to do like a good Christian girl. But what of every other sex act? What of self-eroticism? What of explorations of the body in early childhood? What of activities where genitalia is not at all a key part of the equation, but to the parties involved there is clear sexual energy involved (think many BDSM practices)? Can we please as a society learn that sex is more than the old penis-in-vagina? And if this is true, if human sexuality is diverse and filled with possibility, should there not be spaces that allow us to celebrate it as much as any other component of our multifaceted human existences? Why is the idea of a porn film festival still shocking to some (in a way to parts of myself)?

I watched a lot of porn that week. And in the movies I watched heterosexual penetrative sex was the least common act depicted. There was a 53 seconds long animation film depicting two intertwining tongues against a black background, a psychadelic animation of silluette sex and, my favourite, a queer-feminist poetic rant about Holes and how they are everything but passive vessels, as one female presenting performer fingered and dildo-fucked the other to orgasm. The festival closed with RAW! UNCUT! VIDEO!, a documentary about how Jack Fritscher and Mark Hemry turned “a rural ranch in Sonoma County into a safe-sex porn studio that offered viewers new sexual possibilities in an age of plague”.

RAW! UNCUT! VIDEO! is both a testimony to the political importance of porn and a great showcasing of the diversity of human sexual behaviour. I never thought about hairy men smoking cigars as a specific fetish before, but there you go. Sexuality is endlessly fascinating, and not just human sexuality. I have gone on a few internet rabbit-holes (see what I did there?) about animal sexual behaviour and I can tell you that we are not the only ones that get freaky in strange ways. Think of the romantic leopard slugs:

“Under the cover of night, two large leopard slugs begin to court, circling each other, before climbing single-file up a tree or onto a rock. They lower themselves on a mucus rope, while entwining their bodies in a strictly anti-clockwise fashion.

Both slugs then push out and entwine two overly-sized penises from openings on the side of their head, before exchanging sperm that may later fertilise each of their eggs. Or, perhaps be eaten. Eventually, one slug crawls off and the other follows, eating the mucus trapeze as it goes.”

in https://theconversation.com/leopard-slugs-mate-in-the-most-beautifully-bizarre-way-and-nobody-knows-why-128284

Then you have ducks, whose corkscrew duck penises go into corckscrew duck vaginas. Or gay penguins that mate for life, create nests and attempt to hatch rocks. Did you know the only animals in which exclusive homosexuality (i.e. no interest in the opposite sex whatsoever) has been observed besides humans are domestic sheep? Doesn’t this make you want to know all about (animal) sex?

It’s curious to notice that even the study of animal sexuality has been tainted by taboo and shame:

“The field of study of sexuality in non-human species has been a long standing taboo,[1] with researchers either failing to observe or mis-categorizing and mis-describing sexual behavior which does not meet their preconceptions. (…)

An example of overlooking behaviour relates to descriptions of giraffe mating:

When nine out of ten pairings occur between males, "[e]very male that sniffed a female was reported as sex, while anal intercourse with orgasm between males was only [categorized as] 'revolving around' dominance, competition or greetings." [1]

How much more would we know now about ours and the sexuality of other animals had this topic been spared the taboo status?

BDSM and Catharsis

I am not sure how much I believe the popular notion that humans are the only animals with an erotic life, as I think the sexy slug dance goes to show we don’t understand other animals much at all (and it appears animals can be kinky, too), but it’s true that have our own particular way of making things complicated.

It starts early. It is not uncommon for instinct to become entwined with some form of shame or trauma in early sexual development, before puberty makes things truly messy. As far as I could find out, there is little scientific research about sexuality in childhood that does not center around abuse, meaning there are few resources for parents, generally inept when it comes to talking to their children about sex (at any age, but particularly very young children). This is a topic that is close to my heart because of how early my sexuality became connected to feelings of guilt and shame. As an adult, I ask myself why humans make such a mess out of something so natural. The birds do it, the bees do it, and hey, sometimes kids do it. We need to be able to talk to them about it.

Maybe the problem starts with grownups not being able to talk to each other about sex either. The mating dance is complex and we all seem to go around pretending we learnt the choreography. So many people are having bad sex because they do not feel they can talk about what they actually like, or they do not feel like they can ask what their partners actually like, or they do not feel like they are allowed to find out what they actually like. Or maybe they are ashamed of what they actually like because maybe what they actually like is hairy men smoking cigars and what if their partners think that’s weird? In learning about the BDSM community, I have found that there is a general effort within it to fight against the obstacles laid out by society and reinvent what sexuality can be, building in radical communication and care practices. No one’s cigar kink gets shamed, boundaries and desires are negotiated openly. The word “play” is more than appropriate, as these are spaces where curiosity replaces shame and we welcome in our inner child, as well as our inner demons.

I learned a lot about community, communication and compassion at Andy Buru’s rope workshop Freedom Through Surrender last January. Demons unleash as kink and catharsis mingle and I watch the person I am tying shed tears of tenderness. I understood then, truly, that my relationship with rope is not always sexual and that it follows that any BDSM practice can be a means not only of expressing sexuality, but of going beyond it. The question “What is sex?” takes new shape. What is connection? What is intimacy? What is shame? What is surrender? Where do they meet and where do they part ways – build new path ways of communication and compassion?

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On April 29th, I watched seven writers talk about sex and intimacy in varying ways before a crowd. Some read from their sex columns, some performed stand-up. One did a hilarious PowerPoint presentation about eating ass. I noticed that day how far away I am from being able to read in public, let alone read my most unfiltered thoughts on a topic as emotionally charged as sex is to me. I was filled with an urge to overcome some of these fears. I hope to get on a stage soon, read some poetry, some fiction, and who knows maybe some shame-free reflections on sexuality, but for now it feels scary enough to publish this.

I leave you with a poem I posted on Instagram last year, and one of the photos that accompanied it.

Why is it so hard for me to share art if the canvas is a body?
Is it the fear of finding myself naked in a new way,
of showing new layers of my own skin
or is it that instead of being taught that bodies are warriors
I learnt they are a place for hiding and shame;
I learnt to pretend
that my body does not sweat and hurt,
that it does not know ecstasy and orgasm
that it does not fart and drool and smell
that it does not age and stretch and cry.
This time my untrained lens saw beauty in the body of another and then in my own.
The desire to share pictures of skin shouldn’t be this complicated.
So why is it so hard to share art if the canvas is a body?

It’s been like this for a while now. Since my use of social media (Instagram, I blame you) increased, my time spent reading decreased and my already weak attention span suffered. As a person who was called “Book girl” by children younger than me when I was in fourth grade because I would often prefer reading during break time to spending it with my classmates, that has understandibly lead to a few identity crises (more on that in another post?). I’ve struggled with this on-and-off since I finished my Bachelor’s Degree and decided to take a year off from studying, so I believe academia was keeping the bookworm in me alive.

I often think back to the first year of my Bachelor’s when I was reading a book every two weeks and wonder how – mind you, I am a very slow reader. This was also the year I wrote my last book (which has been in the list of projects I will pick up again soon for a few years now). It’s easy to forget that this was a time when I had very little social life and that that might have had something to do with my intellectual productivity. The current on-and-off period of intellectual idleness has come hand-in-hand with discoveries in realms of life I had always had trouble exploring, and I am thankful that happened. After numerous attempts at a healthier routine – one that makes room for meditation, reading, going to the scary outdoors, and writing – which seem to always fade out, I am also left questioning if I will ever find a balance, a space for my creative self that does not lead to having to let go of the other things I fill my time with now. It could just be that between having to be a grownup (ew) with a job and having new hobbies and people around me, there is no energy at the end of most days for more than mindless entertainment. This newsletter-blog-chaotic-medley-thing you might be reading is my newest attempt at refusing to believe that is true.

As I write I get more and more excited about this because I realize I can write about anything I want, including those hobbies and people and thoughts that occupy my mind and didn’t use to. This can be anything I want. After trying to write fiction again a few times and seeing nothing but writer’s block come out, it feels relaxing yet challenging in a whole new way to just write about s t u f f. Since I started writing this, my mind has been flushing out ideas for the next post and the one after that and it is amazing to be inspired again – it is also terrifying.

I find myself thinking about a text I wrote when I was 11 years old and much wiser:

(…) Mesmo que assim seja continuarei sempre a desejar que os dias tenham o dobro do tamanho para fazer tudo num dia. Mas depois percebo de repente que se assim fosse já não haveria nada para fazer, porque quando se tem tempo para tudo, deixa-se de ter tempo para nada. É verdade que devemos aproveitar cada momento ao máximo, mas por vezes a preguiça leva-nos para o maravilhoso mundo dos pensamentos.

Cada pensamento que existe dentro de mim tem vida própria e mostra-me aquilo que quero ver, ser, viver, sem ter de estar a acontecer mesmo.

in “E eu danço” (2008)

A rough translation: “(…) Even so I will continue to wish that days were twice as long so that I could do everything in one day. But then I realize that if it were that way there would be nothing left to do, because when you have time for everything, you no longer have time for nothing. It’s true that we should cherish each moment to the fullest, but sometimes laziness takes us to the wonderful world of thoughts.

Each thought that lives inside me has a life of its own and shows me what I want to see, be, and live, without it actually having to happen.”

I notice in reading these old words of mine that the always-in-your-pocket tool that makes sure we don’t have any dull moment what so ever has robbed me of that wonderful world of thoughts. I used to get excited about going to bed because it was the time of the day I would daydream my way to sleep. I would also daydream my walk to school, and any back-seat one hour drives would fly by in my mind. I listen to YouTube interviews to fall asleep now. Or I think about sex (more about that particular pass-time in another post). I don’t think my mind-wandering nature has died out, but I do think the things I expose myself to, and the decrease in the amount of moments spent doing nothing, have significantly stifled my creativity. When I stumble upon a beautiful piece of art I am immediately filled with a new desire to create, but seeking those things often feels like a chore.

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“E eu danço” also reminds me that I have not changed much, really, and that holding on to that inner child is always a good start when trying to make art. My worries were similar then to what they are now: how can I make the best use of the limited resource that is time. I go back to wishing I could stretch or stop time, only to remind myself it wouldn’t make any difference. I am also as hungry for validation as I was at the age of 12 – throwback to 12-year-old me eavesdropping on my dad as he read someone something I wrote and talked about how proud he was, and feeling like I was on drugs. I love attention. Which makes writing this all the more scary and dangerous. Every time I post anything on social media I quite obsessively watch the “likes” or “views” come in, and that is part of why I stopped. What if someone reads this? What if someone likes it? What if someone hates it? What if I get (constructive) criticism? I don’t know if I can deal with any of it, and it certainly feels very vulnerable to put something out into the world that is so raw, instead of telling my stories through poetic metaphor, as I normally do. I have fully let go of the idea that I have some kind of gift I owe the world, that very romantic notion I was fed growing up, but the “please love me” inner child that dreamt about being interviewed about their new book is still very much alive inside me. I have to be careful if I want to make this for reasons other than to feed my ego. I would like to primarily focus on writing this as a way to keep myself motivated and my creativity alive. I would also like to find myself writing things that interest others or that resonate with them. That being said, Please love me.

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