08 July 2008
From Blindness to Memory
)Published on July 8th, 2008 @ 10:07:35 pm, using 799 words, 42 views
A dez metros, um cego estava deitado em cima de uma cega, ele enganchado entre as pernas dela, faziam-no o mais discretamente que podiam, eram dos discretos em público, mas não seria preciso ter o ouvido apurado para saber em que se ocupavam, muito menos quando um e outro já não puderam reprimir os ais e os gemidos, alguma palavra inarticulada, que são os sinais de que tudo aquilo está prestes a acabar. A mulher do médico ficou parada a olhá-los, não por inveja, tinha o seu marido e a satisfação que ele lhe dava, mas por causa de uma impressão doutra natureza, para a qual não encontrava nome, poderia ser um sentimento de simpatia, como se estivesse a pensar em dizer-lhes Não liguem a estar eu aqui, também sei o que isso é, continuem, poderia ser um sentimento de compaixão…
(Ensaio sobre a cegueira / Blindness - José Saramago)
Funny how lines can jog you back to a memory.
Wait. Funny? No, not funny. Sly and steadfast how lines can jog you back to a memory - lead you to it in a steady pace as though the words fell onto the ground like alternating steps or maybe like the links of a chain, devoid of an automatic line break, extending beyond what the eye can see, leading you back to something that came and went and somehow stayed.
Leading you to that homeless couple you still see through a bus window… in your head, in the past, on a Sunday, now mirrored in a book… while waiting for the whim of a near useless red light on an eerily deserted downtown street.
Red light, the bus stops, your window frames them. The world stumbles along in fits and starts, the dice are rolled and those two souls are framed.
This couple. This man and this woman. Disheveled, homeless and visibly in love. Cuddling on a makeshift bed with wide smiles on their weary faces. Happiness set to travel like ink through every vein-like wrinkle, branching out and inwards, seeping through their skin like abundant water on fertile soil. Spreading out and sinking in. Finding a safe home when none is visible. Making you question the matches you’ve made in your head, what goes with what… and whatnot. The mysterious ghost of Auden’s Unknown Citizen smiling at you. Making you want to stare and avert your eyes, out of surprised delight and ashamed compassion, respectively. Wanting to afford them the dignity you bestow on privacy, the comfort you equate with right angles, adjacent walls and a roof.
And thinking to yourself with nomadic eyes, a smile of your own and a little bundle of sadness tucked away, that these are people at their best and worst and happiness is both everywhere and mystery itself.
(To JS/07/M/378 This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Installment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
– W. H. Auden
This post is the creative work of Iris Watts Hirideyo and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Cegueira, Saramago, memory, lines, words, passages, homeless, couple, love, happiness, Auden, unknown, citizen, mystery, comapssion, privacy, bus, witness
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