Sick of Smelling Sanitizer

So many people seem to love all that’s going on.

The restructuring of life around working from home, family time. There seems to be a fallacy that we have all this free time now. The world is filled with articles screaming out “Here’s how to fill your free time when you’re bored.”

I hate all of this. Every part of it.

Yes, there is good that has come out of it. Yes, there is PLENTY to be grateful for and look forward to. No, I am not grumpy and miserable all of the time. And also, YES I am incredibly lucky to have plenty of kind and caring friends who continuously reach out to check in and make sure I am ok. As an extrovert I’m sure the introverts in my life have plenty of concerns for those of us who don’t know how to get by without social contact. Us extroverts appreciate the effort you guys are making, truly.

Now I spend my entire day on social media of some sort, not to keep in touch with people I love who live far away. Not to reconnect and find some form of grace from the normal churning of life. No. Now my skype, my phone, whatsapp, instagram, any form of chat, email, it’s all filled and invaded with work. No matter where I go or what I do, the anvil of work surrounds my life.

At work all I do is reach out to my team, video call people to talk through problems, troubleshoot, get updates, run meetings. Everything is a video call, a text, and email, a chat message.

What I miss in all of this is the way that people smell. There’s a richness in human interaction that goes beyond sight, and sound, or even touch. You can taste a smell, you can feel it on your skin. Someone told me there’s a way that sounds in English that comes across as unpleasant, but it’s different in Portuguese. The literal word for “smelly” (cheiroso), in Portuguese denotes something pleasant, and appealing. There’s a presence in people’s smell. A richness, a personality. I can recognize most people I know by their smell.

Maybe I’m just a creep. But in all of this that’s what I miss the most. My sense of smell.

Famine

How strange to eat when food has no flavour.

How laborious to bite into every texture.
How heavily each morcel drops into my cavity, sinking me down with every swallow. Giving full weight to what I am. Weighing me down with all I’ve done.

Maneiras de Crescer

Vi um menino de galochas.
Ele havia se plantado.
Sem metáforas, ele havia realmente se plantado.

Em pé, em cima de um vaso enorme,
Cheio de terra e lama, em um dia chuvoso.
Outro menino tentava enterrar seus pes. Bem delicadamente.
Com um taco de hocquei!
Imagine só, que bela maneira de tentar crescer no meio do inverno no Canada.

Sense of Direction

When I was really quite small (I’ve never been very tall), someone pulled Earth right out from under me, and gave me nowhere I should go.

So I asked all around, asked where I could be found, and they told me “No one really knows.”

But then someone came, I can’t remember their name, who said “this is the path you should follow.”

They pointed me right along, and told me to go on, and I travelled far in that direction.

Then one day I got lost, that road came to a cross, and I took the one marked “self-deception.”

Now I sit here alone, think of all I’ve been shown, travelling backwards in my recollection.

Trying to find where I turned, where directions got churned, how I got here, how to find reconnection.

The Silence of Mourning

Celular silencioso
Sem mensagens sem alertas. Sabendo que não vai ligar, e entendendo que com razão.

Uma dor tão silenciosa quanto a inércia da própria máquina.

The silence of mourning. The silence of goodbye.
O silencio da saudade.

Nunca gostei muito do silencio,
mas por ele hoje tenho mais respeito.
É no silencio que se encontra o verdadeiro valor das palavras.