What I will say when the sun goes down
and the grieving faces scattering dreams of little stars
in stained ground
bones in ragas
smelling memories
Who will say the names
and count the shoes
There´s another one of you
-Do you have any ID with you? (librarian)
- Oh, yeas, my UCSD card (me)
- Hummm, I´m afraid there´s something wrong… (librarian)
- What could be? Maybe my passport could solve …(me)
- No, it seems you have already been using our system, you´re already a member (librarian)
- Must be some mistake, I never been here before, my teacher told me about the Public Library, this is the first time I´m here (me)
- hummm, yes, that´s strange, let me check something …. (she again, the librarian)
she went to talk to another guy in the back and I noticed they were looking at me… argh, creepy, I had a feeling that they were discussing “who would call the police”, maybe do they think I´m a missing person? nah, maybe they´re thinking I have a stolen passport? nah, maybe…
- Definitely , miss Bernal, there´s another Sara Bernal in our system, she´s not you!!! (librarian)
In this moment it started my long lost searching for the other Sara Bernal
Earth Spy
Yesterday I was laughing about google sightseeing.com. I received a few e-mails from friends telling me about this site and some crazy people which the best hobby now is to spy on naked people using google earth as the main source.
Curious, I am for sure and made myself spying on some of that pictures of European people sunbathing and what kept me most on this site was the investigative comments.
The images captured by google maps became a hit for the discussion Top 10 Naked People.
What on earth, oops, some people have really funny ways to spend their time, I think most of them are from US where naked bodies are total prohibited to be shown in TVs. I remember when I was studying in UCSD we had to watch some television programs as part of our studies and I was angry to see a documentary about Indians tribes where they were shown with that black strip (so normal in American TV) ,and I could not understand why even American comics had this stupid “parental control” in their cartoons.
Nudity in Austria (in summer specially) is just something that is part of the culture. Around the Danube River is very common to see naked people , topless is normal in public swimming pools and also in parks. Austria has the craziest art ideas to gather naked people in cultural events and competitions. I already saw naked crowd going to the museum, naked bikers and even in the most traditional ball it is possible to meet a naked crowd (not just in the regenbogen parade).
I think the best of google earth is to use as a tool to help the environment , to control the forests, fires and deforestation, spy on countries that does not care for the forests, rivers, and gas pollution plants.
*Regenbogen (Rainbow)
Caetano Veloso – Singing along
What´s wrong with me? or you people?
I was with this question during the Caetano Veloso concert in Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna Opera House), last Saturday.
The house was full, many Brazilians expats, Austrian fans and tourists who happened to be here and like Caetano Veloso music.
I was asking myself before `why Opera House`? , the traditional Jazz Festival in Wien (Vienna) made some mistakes -Sinead O´Connor – among jazz artists(?) for instance was just one of that mistakes.
I went to the concert not because he is from Brazil but for my own musical pleasure, I admire intensely Caetano Veloso music .
As soon he appeared at the stage the crowd went wild and I was for sure very happy, nice enough I can sing together… oops -
I don´t know if it was the wrong crowd or the space (but even in jazz concerts the audience can for sure demonstrate their enthusiasm , different from classical or opera concerts).
I would like to think I was the only one who had to shut up , – what´s wrong with You ?-(I am very polite but I wanted to make this question to the people who were staring at me when I was “singing” along) …So, I had to watch the show with my mouth closed and just imagining what was Caetano Veloso thinking about the icy atmosphere .
Many people were taking pics and filming (this was a surprise), strictly Verboten , ok I was also doing this and didn´t care about the Opera House policy or the embarrassed situation (if I got caught) .
Oh, what a amazing voice, without band! Just his guitar and his voice. “I love you Caetano” ! Yes, I was brave enough to say this to him in a very loud acoustic noise, it was embarrassing seeing everybody looking at me.
The guy in the front row looked at me and I said,“just to break the ice“!!!
The couple who was sitting close were delighted – Bitch! (I was thinking about the girl, she was for sure from Brazil and just started to show some enthusiasm after my screaming ).
It is really strange to act different from what or who´d you really are in a cultural event just because you feel ashamed to show your identity – I don´t see a relation in this case with the space – it is a Opera House but the concert was not!
Ok, I did not go to the Sinead concert, but would like to go to see Interpol or Muse there- and I would not shut up!
Suddenly, we heard a bang. It sounded like a thunder storm.
The musician didn´t stop. Weird noise.
The end of the show was the best part. Some people didn´t realize he would come for another one and just left. With some space between my chair and the front of the stage I went to sit in the stairs that leads to the stage.
What?
The girl followed me (that bitch one) , and soon a big crowd went there also, singing very loud!.
Caetano smiled and went to shake our hands, gentle!
Today, I was reading Die Presse and the journalist who wrote Weltoffenheit und wärme in Brasilien about the show was very accurate . About the noise, he explained he saw a fight between two guys , all because one of the guys was taking too many pictures . The other guy said he was annoyed by the noise and asked for silence and then pushed the photo man who let the camera fell down. That´s was the noise. what a shame!
Nevertheless to say, Caetano had to came back to the stage 4 times and it was not enough, hard to let it go !
Football brings histories
UEFA Euro 2008, ok, I told myself I should not write about football even tough It is almost impossible not to think about it here in Vienna.
The matches played in Vienna brought me many memories from my childhood, time when already in my school, boys and girls were introduced to sports – and I hated it. Being a Brazilian it is inevitable not to run away from the cliche “samba and football! . This is just unreal, I think most of my friends from Rio just can not stand to be in the city during carnival and most of them had never been in Maracana .
Growing up at least made me a little bit more “sensitive ” about football and I started to follow some matches during the world cups – and this was some kind of silence hysteria . well, I was not a hysteric but the way Brazilian people reacted to football gave me the “click”. And it was interesting for me because what motivated me to watch some games was just the way people in Latin America deal with this sport, in a very passionate way.
Experience 1_
” Hiiiiiiii” – (a group of boys (the older must be 8 or 9 years old) (boys)
- Hi (I was surprise), what the heck do they want, Saturday 8:30 a.m (????).
- “We want to decorate the whole street with green and yellow and paint a hugeeee Brazilian flag in the ground ! -(boys),
- Ah, ok. Nice idea, but it is too early.
- Oh no, the whole neighborhood will help us (boys)
- What?
- “Oh yes, and we are asking for your help (to paint the street with us”)! …. boys….
Experience 2 -
- How much is the book? my friend asked the lady in the bookstore in Brasilia Shopping Mall
- Something really strange is happening here don´t you think? I said to my friend.
- Yea, what´s going on? Where´s the attendant, the customers? The shoppers?
We couldn´t understand, suddenly the store was empty and…
we left the bookstore and I was really surprise to see a big crowd in the shopping mall lobby watching TV . They were there – managers, attendants, customers … silent and vibrant crowd .
Brazil X Argentina.
Another lesson,never do this again – shopping’s during Brazil games does not work! In Brazil!
Experience 1- I helped the boys
Experience 2 – Nothing happend
What makes people happy?
Again I returned to my favorite subject – people – Yesterday I was talking to some friends during our seminar interval and, I don´t even remember how or whom complained about the day and how depressed it makes you feel when you´re not treated well. I was a everyday complainer on this subject, living in a different country it served me as a click , a new point of view about my own way to consider people and things , a challenge to my own private world.
What is wrong with rude people?
I had my own moments in Europe when I just could not accept the way people talked to me, “it is so rude” I said to myself so many times.
I can not say I came from the paradise, no way , but one thing for sure , being a Brazilian at least meant you can count on others people politeness and sensibility.
I lost the count of the times I said Hallo, Good morning….everywhere… sometimes people would just pass by without even replying ,,,
The problem it is not me… bingo! I started to paid attention whenever I went to the people reactions to each others in many awkward situation.
Inside U3 , direction to Stephansplatz – The wagon was not full and the next stop would be Stubentor.
Excuse me, excuse me… a lady said to a men who was blocking the doors. He moaned something and gave her a nasty glance . Next stop, Stephansplatz City, as soon the subway stopped it was already a real crowd waiting in the station and they just could not wait to all the passengers to leave the wagon… ok, this happens all the time in every place around the globe but, not in this way, people pushing each other. There´s no policy that guarantee priority to old people , disable people, pregnant woman… does not matter, nobody gives a chance to help.
I remember once I was in San Francisco, waiting in the lane in Macy´s and I saw a heavy pregnant woman with a baby in her arms. I was very upset to see her in the back and I went to the cashier and asked him to attend her first. -She is with you? – No, I said, but she can not wait, she has a baby and is pregnant. Ok, he said, we can do this. Then he called her . Yes! I was happy.
In Brazil this is a law, everywhere you go banks, supermarkets, shops, bus….Old people, disable, mother or father with child and pregnant woman.
I remember once I was in a big lane inside a bank. At that time, around 4 p.m. almost closing time just 2 cashiers were available. I just could not contain my impatient because all the time the preference were given to the “priorities” customers. When it was my time to be called… another old men just arrived. – He smiled at me , sorry lady , its me.
-Ok, go ahead I said.
Well, I was kind of tired and at the same time relieved. Why Europe still so behind in good manners?
One friend was searching for a street (in Germany) and could not find it (she is Italian) and asked for help. The guy shouted to her go get a map.
Last month I had such a strong fever with sore throat and decided to go to a doctor. I took a bus and sat next to a men who was holding a X-Ray big envelop. When I pushed the stop button he was already looking at me. We got out together and I was walking a little bit ahead of him. When I pushed the doctors inter phone button, I could not believe. This old guy started to run and, in front of me he opened the doctors practice door. Smiling at me – Entschuldigen Sie !!!! (Sorry, in German) and gave his e-card to the nurse.
I could not stop laughing, should be angry but it was something out of Seinfeld.
GAZA – BLAST FROM THE PAST
I spent years of my life being involved with Palestinian solidarity groups, researching Palestine history and following very close their drama and suffering.
How hypocrite is our recent history , the governments and organizations behind Israel foundation.
After 1948 millions of families became refugees in their own (before) country, enduring daily humiliation under a gun point Zionist power system.
Nobody cared about Palestinian situation before the Establishment of the Jewish country, nobody was concerned about the future of that nation, its population, cultural identity or its lands, still, the world gives a shit about their situation today.
Overnight lands were stolen, houses were demolished and millions of people became homeless , prisoners among others millions who run away from the Israel daily incursions.
It happened to me , when I was 5 years old my mother became friend to a Palestinian family in Brazil, they owned a small shoes and clothes shop and I always liked to go there, while my mother was trying to choose some shoes for me or my sister I was just fascinated by the posters and maps on the walls. Old maps from Palestine. Once I grew, I did not go there just to buy shoes, I liked to go to talk to Marian about her country. One day I noticed she was wearing a very nice necklace with a interesting round little globe as a pingent . I asked what that little globe meant. She carefully opened and show me what was inside. A small picture.
Who´s him?
Yasser Arafat.
From then on I was into her world. Reading Palestinian history, poetry and listening some music.
I was really naive , for so many times I had such a strong hope I would see very soon Israel´s settlements dismantled , Jerusalem back as a Palestine capital, Gaza open, free of bulldozers .
I know also people in general just see Israel as a victim and it is almost a cliche to hear they are the “people of God” and after the Nazis they deserved to go back to their lands. What? and the Palestinians? So, you just can guess if one is God the other is the Evil…. and this is the image the media pictures Islam, Palestine, Iran.
For how long the history can be wrong?
How it is possible to create a such a strong and powerful state as Israel in such a small period of time? Just in the 1948 year Israel seized almost 80% of Palestinian lands, forcing more than a million people to the exile and in the 1967 war 950.000 became homeless and confined in Gaza. In the aftermath of 1967 war there´s not a precision statistics able enough to measure how many are living in exile, estimates says it reaches around 7 million, living in many countries and, still today dreaming to return home.
Army, hospitals, schools, water, shopping malls, supermarkets, kindergarten, parks, electricity… you name it you will find in Israel.
And the humiliating lives on the other side? No water, no food, no jobs. Palestinian children in Gaza does not have even one playground. Medical care? Don´t even think about it.
What they don´t tell in contemporary history books or in the media is that Palestinian people were living in peace with Jewish people before 1948.
what went wrong? Ask UNO and USA. I ask myself.
It is a real media manipulation to show images of Palestinians trowing stones to Israelis soldiers , what is never shown is the poverty and inhuman condition in Gaza where just a few meters of distance away happy Jews families are celebrating a new home with swimming pool.
Every little excuse is made to delay and to ignore Palestine cause and to increase the oppression and retaliation toward them.
It is a hypocrisy the 60 years celebration of Israel, how dare they , forgetting the world longest and systematized open sky prison. How dare to continue the occupation of robed lands and houses?
How dare Israel makes business, exporting fruits harvested in the Palestinian lands?
In the past Yasser Arafat was the main target used as a excuse to delay any peace negotiation, today Hamas is the excuse and the western boycott is just as irrational as it was in the past when Israel was created despite Palestine claims .
It was right for Israel/USA/UNO to establish Israel State and to support the new nation to become one of the most powerfull in the world but is is not right to stop and to demolish the wall of apartheid. Just in the past few years this racist Tel Aviv wall erupted a new wave of exiled palestinian, families lost their only way of survival (many of them lost their small agricultural business) and families got detached from each others between the 2 sides. Cruel!
When this will stop?
Reviving old feelings and questions , for how long this situation will continue?
My old friend Marian got lost in my past but I still kept memories of her. I just could not understand (how did they lost their house
Who´s living in your house now Marian? …
In such a young mind I found really strange how did they travel so far away, carrying nothing more than their own clothes, a few photos and keys.
It was in a hurry. Without warning, without care.
And the keys?
It is the dream…..
Silence
Friday in the main street
with look in madness
little to say – unless
to drink in lips the last sips of wait.
The next moment gets depressed
I’m here in challenge
Marking the time
Swallowing silence
Swallowing silence
Marking the time
Swallowing silence
Swallowing silence
