Pausa para Sorrir

É com enorme orgulho que notifico aos meus leitores e leitoras que ganhei meu primeiro prêmio literário em Inglês (vide foto).


Hoje, diante de aproximadamente 50 pessoas, seguido do presidente do North Campus, Dr. José Vicente, e outros oficiais de alto escalão da faculdade comunitária do Miami Dade, aceitei o prêmio e li o texto “Becoming” (Transformações), publicado na revista Axis, obra que reúne talentos fotográficos, artísticos e literários.

A competição organizada pela FCCPA (Florida Community Colleges Activities Association, Division of Publications) engloba 28 faculdades do estado da Flórida. Ganhei o terceiro lugar na categoria de poesia e textos poéticos com as obras “Becoming” e o poema “Faceless Dead” (Mortos Sem Face).

Aqui publicarei o texto, em Inglês, para que quede de lembrança virtual.

Agradeço, de coração, O Miami Dade College, a professora Lisa Shaw, e todo o departamento de Inglês da faculdade. Agradeço também à FCCPA pela tremenda oportunidade. E, não podia deixar de agradecer aos meus leitores/as, amigos/as, família e amada. Que seja o primeiro de muitos, diriam, e digo eu.

Aos abráx,

RF

O texto segue:


Becoming

Slowly, but suddenly, I realized that not only my clothes, my perfume and my shoes were becoming, but I was becoming as well. An inevitable transformation transformed every inch of my body into me, but I as I remembered had not always been who I am now. The sound of a perfect North-American accent persuaded my ears that I was American, and American I became for that single instant. But instants tend to vanish.

Amidst the cold, sweet breeze of New York, the paleness of my brown skin became. The sunny skies became intrinsic with the darkness inside my eyes, and I could see brighter horizons. In and throughout the flaps of my kitschy shirt and around the woolen fabric of my cheap scarf, the linen became. Everything about the person that had been me for the past twenty-seven years became. Even if it became what it simply was.

When the sidewalks narrowed and the beach intertwined with the long, shredded, sandy passages, my heartbeat became Floridian. The toeless sandals and the baggy Hawaiian mimicked my tourist habits, even though I don’t know how to be, and never was, a tourist. Las Olas broke and kissed the cheeks of my feet, and the pleasant, soothing, flashy tropics became. I became the tropics.

I remember the soft rains of São Paulo, and I remember intact memories, untouched by time’s frailty. Time struggles against the smell of the gutter, rising and spreading throughout broken knees of homeless mothers carrying thousands of hungry children in their warm laps. The cold, then, becomes my bones as they bake inside my skin and puff and grow and become who I am, even if I do not want to remember who I was. And when I think of it, the trains were always rapid and the nights were never black, but I can feel the spastic tracks and several mulattos greeting me in sheer happiness. I don’t remember the metallic texture on the pistol that crushed my forehead, but I do know the sound of the subsequent apology:

“Your curse is my curse, sir. I am so sorry to have to rob you for a piece of bread or a huff of crack.”

Does anyone really describe the texture of a pistol when there is an apology to depict? At that moment, the apology became, and I became the apology. A crying, angry stomach lied before me, and suddenly…

I became the breeze that shook the palms of Sunny Isles, and saw them eaten in parsimony by tall, concrete buildings. I saw the view deteriorate at the brick pace and “rah-ta-ta’s” that perturbed my ears on a daily routine. They also became. My eardrums became accustomed to the sound of natural destruction. I became an angry witness of a disappearing habitat for the sunshine beach in the sunshine state. Instead, the shadows are becoming, and I became the shadows just to see the bathers perpetuate a paleness that no longer dwelled within me.

In the round-about circus of the Kikar Ben Gurion, in Israel, I became the lonely audience of the movie theaters, watching inexistent characters perform on screen. The rusty boy who sold cigars in Russian became. I became the lazy woman in high heels, who waited an hour to cross the street, just until the police removed the unidentified object from under the bench on the other side. It could have become a bomb.

I think of natal lands, and I become the conqueror of foreign lands that become mine. When I try to grasp the meaning of what I become, it becomes a memory. I begin to remember it only to realize, suddenly and slowly, that I am now becoming someone else.