Written

Tonight, Monday, I had the luxury of not having to work late and to sit and watch a movie I haven't seen in years. In fact, the last time I watched it was when I was 17, in the deep south of Brasil with one of my aunts who claimed that I was about to watch a movie that could quite possibly have the power of changing my life. Ironically, it landed in my hands once again, ten years later, to change my life yet again. Il Postino.

The first time I watched it, like the character Mario, I realized that I was meant to write. That there was nothing more I wanted in the world than to write so beautifully and delicately like Pablo Neruda. And like Mario, I expected nothing more than to simply be heard by the person that could love me for the metaphors and words that I could conjure. I never expected to be published, I still don't. I find it more enthralling that those that know me best are the ones that read what I write, whether it is in this blog, in the brief emails I send out, the periodic poems I send to you from time to long stretched time.

And again, I am in love with the idea of words, with the possibilty of writing, with the innocence that you must observe life with in order to come up with emotions or the descriptions to create the surroundings I see and feel on a daily basis. I am also saddened that the world we live in doesn't lend space to the written language as much as it should. That time, work, daily needs, consumes and constrains us so much that we can't stop to look, to feel for a moment of what is around us and to express it, verbally or written. I long for more time to sit and write, to meet people who are just as addicted to language, to see beyond simply acquiring a language as a tool and instead using it as oxygen, realizing that it has more power than we care to give it. My job is to teach people to speak a language that is foreign, that is worth money, but I also want my students to know that it means more than that.

I wonder what happened to the notion of writing a letter. Why is it so scary to express to someone how much you care with language, why people think it is much too romantic or unnecessary when actions can speak louder than words. And yes, actions can speak louder, but I believe that words are just as strong and for me, they tend to be even stronger. I mean what I say, I choose my words carefully, and when I tell someone I care, I miss them, I love them, I mean it from the center of my being, because I know they are worth more than what money can buy.

I may never be published, my words might forever remain locked in the pages of my diaries, lost in the world of blogs, but the words I write, the time I do take to write them is worth gold.To me. Because I don't want language to be lost. I want to keep falling in love with metaphors and with words that open my eyes to notice an orange sun on fire at dawn and to somehow hand it to you via language.

And it was at that age...Poetry arrived in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don't know how or when, no, they were not voices, they were not words, nor silence, but from a street I was summoned, from the branches of night, abruptly from the others, among violent fires or returning alone, there I was without a face and it touched me. Pablo Neruda