Hey cuz,
I guess I should apologize in the first place for not having taken the time to send you a letter before. Reason is, well... firstly i'm one of those idiots that still refuses to acknowledge the irreversible nature of time, and secondly, i have this tendency to postpone things that i really don't know how to do or just want to do really well, which is basically one of my - multiple - persistent childish traits. As a 12 year old in a body of a 28 year old, I rather ignore stuff I can't cope with, and to be honest i've never had (and still don't have) any idea of what is a good letter to write to someone in the shit situation you're in. Particularly when we haven't talked in more than a decade and i can't really think of a topic no one has ever written to you about 10 million times before. So here, I've said it, i have no idea of what i'm doing.
I want to know how it is, what you feel and experience right now, but I think you discuss that often with people very close to you. It would be selfish of me to expect or ask you to focus on that so i'm going to do something else, i'm going to bring a bit of the outside world to you, a part of it that you don't know yet - what goes on in my life and my mind - whatever the nature. Not because i think it's interesting at any level, but because i'd like this letter to be a window to something outside the context you are right now.
To be honest, I really wish I could be a good writer so i could write something enjoyable to you, but instead of being really good at something in specific, i'm kind of average at everything. It was a conscious personality choice, it actually came by design: i've always been scared of honing myself too much into something and losing the broader perspective over what other things life has to offer. I'll never really stand out at anything, which is just fine, because since i was a kid i've always hated to not feel normal. Either way, I guess I earned this aversion to unidimensional dedication from people around me who have lead linear lives, and who have became experts at something - people who know too much about too few and do too many of too little. And by leading linear lives i don't only mean sticking to a handful of objectives and pretending nothing else exists, but also making sure a very fine and narrow range of emotions is targeted and, eventually, observed upon reaching very precisely planned milestones.
(Moment of Zen: I think the way you lead life is a bit like the way you carry yourself on the beach, you either swim and feel in control, or you surf the waves and ride an incommensurably superior force and feel alive. It's a humbling experience, i guess. Should probably mention now that it's really ironic that i don't know how to surf.)
Going back to the life philosophy rant: well, with these deep-linear-life-scuba-dives into a single direction, you feed so much of the same shit to your neurons that they carve powerful, hardly-bonded neuronal domains that strongly stimulate and get stimulated by your emotional circuits, in a process otherwise known as 'having a collective and/or individual ego'. Then stuff like beliefs, fundamentalism and pride by association to ideas, practices or groups comes along naturally and you can't really grasp the world without escaping these. So, even though it's often difficult, i guess it's interesting to remain at the highest abstraction level possible, just free-thinking and steering well away from the possible inflation of one's ego and hard-wiring of the mental-mesh, which in my personal case I consider a dangerous meta-entity and, to be quite honest, kind of a meta-asshole.
I also wish I could do a really cool and inspiring drawing or shit, but i'm absolutely terrible with arts, not because i had an 'analytic' education, but because everyone else always said I was the 'analytic' kind, so I just never tried to develop artistic skills (there goes my 'average at everything' claim). What no one told me was that there's no such thing as a kind of person - despite the fact that everyone is constantly pressuring everyone else to fit into square, easily identifiable categories etc etc. But what do you know, people regularly fall for that, and eventually just squeeze their individuality - how they look, how they act, how they sense the world - into those categories, either voluntarily, by trying to belong to a group which they feel expresses the way they are or want to be, or involuntarily, through peer pressure. And then every unique person in the world gets killed and it just becomes boring and predictable. At first I thought this was pretty much a 90s thing but it kind of got worse in the 00s. Very fortunately, das internet and it's crazy infinite flow of self-detaching neo-liberalism has made people understand this psycho-sociological mistake more and more, and i have recently been tempted to feel that people are actually starting to emerge from that diluted, homogeneous mass of normalization and learning to love and respect themselves by what they essentially are, which in some cases, is very admirable, given the degree of douchebaggery involved (you could argue that a self-respecting douchebag is, in essence, an arrogant prick, which can, in essence, be conveniently shortened into simply 'douchebag'. From my experience, society takes great pride in taking these down, and being a douchebag these days is a short-lived adventure unless you are really really stupid to the point of oblivion).
I've had quite a few problems in the past with self-esteem and shit, and if there's one thing i learned is that in my case it's justified. No, just kidding, what i really learned but sounds too much of a cliché to go around promoting is that it really really is important to feel good with yourself, with what you are, with all your flaws and qualities, which isn't something that you can easily convince yourself into - despite often you getting the illusion that that is the case. Anyways, I always think of anorectic people.. how their mind always fucks them really hard into believing they're fat, until they actually physically die. Well, i guess it's the same thing with people with low self-esteem, only that it's the mind that dies from starvation at some point. In general, I guess that the lesson to be learned is that our minds are generally scumbaggy, and we should always be weary of whatever the fuck it is convinced of at any given time. Constant struggle.
In retrospect, I can imagine all this might sound rather obvious to you, but in the time and place i grew up in, it wasn't, we basically had to find it by ourselves, and with the internet in it's early stages, there weren't really that many references we could use in order to independently validate what we felt was right. And our semi-closed society didn't really help, for that matter...
Wow, this definitely sounds negatively charged so far. Which takes me to electricity, which takes me to science, which takes me to something interesting i read today. Apparently there are more stars in the universe than there have been words or sounds uttered by every human being that has ever lived on earth. Pretty sure they didn't count my grandma's moaning on that calculation but nevertheless it's an amazing fact. Once, i dyed my hair orange and when i went to visit my grandma the same day, she started shouting with her christian cross held up high, claiming i was possessed by the devil and that she never wanted to see me again. The next week everything was ok and we spent an afternoon in which she was asking me science stuff all the time. Her main hypothesis for how spaceships would fly to the moon was by 'drilling through the roof of the sky'. No opportunity to get an education in the Portugal of the 1940's. But again, her not being normal - by today's standards at least -, just makes her funny, unpredictable and sweet. She often mispronounces stuff beyond understanding, particularly when ordering stuff at restaurants. It's hilarious and she just goes with the flow and laughs about herself, which makes it altogether the more positive.
The last memory I have with you is by the seaside in Funchal. I remember your smiling face, with the city's mountain amphitheater set on the background, eternally venerating the deep blue Atlantic painted by the steep underwater cliffs that surround Madeira and crown it as the pearl of its ocean. A tiny mass of volcanic rock, apparently made from carefully crafted dried magma, and isolated from the rest of all land masses in the planet. A place to which I, your mom, my mom and one million other people can trace back their roots to. That day that i remember, it must have been something like 10 years ago but i really can't be sure. Anyways i remember laughing a lot and feeling that you guys had something special in you, by the way you could empathize with me, with others. This is a rare quality (i should know, i live in Germany...) and one that often ensures success in whatever you want do to throughout life. People long to be touched, to feel connected. And some people have that ability, to make others feel wanted and important without even trying. It's a beautiful thing, of extreme value, and formally underrated. Society teaches us to be aesthetically and intellectually attractive, which i guess is ok but we really tend to forget how much important reaching deep into people is. Intelligence, beauty, they're pretty much the most valued characteristics in western society but i'd say they're pretty much overrated comparing to the ability to empathize with others.
Anyways, excellent memories with you guys, always channel me through a stream of positivism. Not only my own memories of you, but memories of memories of others. Everyone in the family gets inspired by and admires you. Needless to say, this admiration is unconditional, in every possible sense. As is the distant but implicit and perseverant love bridge we insist in keeping solid across the Atlantic, despite only sporadic contact.
People are worried about you right now, how you are dealing with being there, but people are NOT worried about your future. I guess you've had time to think about your future. Wouldn't be surprised if you concluded that your future should be to cherish every moment of your life and be as free as you can be, just following the shit out of what you actually want to do. This probably sounds really stupid coming from someone outside but there are people out here that set themselves into mind prisons their whole life, unknowingly - you have the absolute best of your life coming ahead of you, consider being free in every dimension possible. I cannot imagine at all what is your situation but i can imagine that one thing you might have an advantage over all of us is that you will probably now know how to value shit we take for granted every day. And that we still moan about. People here go on whining for hours when the train is late for 10 minutes when 500 years ago you'd have to walk. Shit, what i just wrote really sounds something like you might have heard 10 thousand times already so i'll just stop.
Talked to your sister quite a while the other day, on facebook. She told me a bit about how you were doing, she told me you were standing strong and how much she felt inspired by the way you are dealing with it all. Your sister turned out to be what i thought she would be. Caring and intelligent, sweet and strong.
I have always thought about you guys often, specially after we linked through facebook, naturally. I haven't tried to approach you more often on it because i understand how we all have our own lives and that sometimes the priorities we have leave little time, energy or patience outside the scope of those priorities. By this i mean that me being almost like a far away stranger probably doesn't make me the most desirable person to chat with so i'd rather save you guys the effort :) But probably i'm just stupid and probably a bit socially awkward also (that's a semi-fact).
Which leads me into my blatantly-about-me paragraph, in which i'd like to present myself as a carbon-based bipedal primate subject to the virtues and frailties of the human race. I work for a big corporation, which makes me kind of a hypocrite, because i'm
kind of pissed with the socio-economic system. But i also love what i do, and it actually helps people around the world find their way around (i do R&D on a GPS navigation system hehe). Guess you can never have a perfect situation, let alone a perfect job. Either way, rules of the game are clear: $ is needed in order to survive and, most importantly, to travel. Alternatively i can just walk to Tanzania feeding off dry nuts and dead camels on my way before settling on a hut in the foothill of the Kilimanjaro for the rest of my days. Will surely try that someday, i always take these dramatic exits from my life stage when everything goes wrong (aka girlfriend leaves). Yeah, that's another thing, i have a very strong level of detachment from the past. Sure i get my occasional runs of nostalgia, but by this i mean that i don't really see now as a collection of befores. When i was younger i used to collect a lot of shit on my computer. At one point i had 12 years of my favorite pictures and videos found on the internet (basically porn, jk), personal pictures, songs, etc. One day i decided to try to install linux just for the sake of it and didn't realize it was going to overwrite the previous hard disk partition in which windows was installed, plus everything else on it. Went to the toilet and when i came back i realized i had just lost everything collected through those 12 years, including chat logs with soon to be ex-girlfriends. Now, don't get me wrong, it wasn't the best of feelings i've had in my life, but the actual feeling of freedom that i started releasing after that was revealing. I learned a lesson that day - it doesn't really fucking matter what has happened thus far, you can lose all of it at any given time, by whichever of any of the billions of stupid accidents that can happen. It's not a matter of collecting and recollecting past shit, it's a matter of permanently looking forward with your chin up, accepting every new challenge, circumstance or adversity that might cross your way, without regard for whatever has happened before.
Besides this, I've had a few interesting life experiences since i left Madeira. If you're interested i can try writing some sort of memoirs as partial topics to subsequent letters, or something. I did two eurails (2007 and 2008) in which i roamed aimlessly on a train around remote parts of Europe (balkans and east) for a couple of months, always sleeping in the streets or train stations. Basically surfed life for that period of time. In the meantime fucked up a 7 year relationship and shortened my life expectancy by about 10 years. I regret none of that shit :)
I wonder if these letters are inspected before? If yes, i'd like to say two things: Merry Christmas everyone reading this and FORÇA BENFICA, VAMOS PARA CIMA DESSES FILHAS DUMA GRANDA PUTA, CARALHO.
If you have time to answer back man i'd love to read from you and your plans for the future and anything you have to say or ask. You must already be reading a lot of stuff over there, but if you have time and the opportunity, I would really recommend you to read one of the greatest writers/poets of all time, in my opinion, just because he's portuguese hehe. His name is Fernando Pessoa. An absolute genius with multiple personality disorder, that ended up having several heteronyms - distinct writing personas - that would interact and discuss with each other over several philosophical quadrants of life. (Question: can i actually send you books?)
For now i'll leave you with a small poem by him that i remember from elementary school by heart (remember being inspired by it at the time hehe). This was written in the beginning of the 20th century as an ode to the bravery of the portuguese navigators and discoverers of the 15th century :
Oh salty sea,
How much of your salt,
are tears from Portugal?
Because we crossed you,
How many mothers cried?
How many children in vain prayed?
How many brides were left unwed?
So that you could be ours, oh sea.
Was it worthwhile?
Anything is worthwhile, when the spirit is not small
Who wants to go through the Bojador,
Will have to go past pain,
God gave to the sea perils and abysses
But it was also in it, that He mirrored the sky.
[Bojador is a cape in western Africa, considered impossible to go through, at the time]
Regardless of what happens in the future, i really really really wish we meet soon again cuz.. i definitely owe you guys a visit, and i wanna cross the US at some point, so that's an idea there. Alternatively, you could always come on an european tour :)
And well i guess this is my attempt at writing a letter to you. In retrospect, it doesn't make much sense in terms of structure but i would much rather send it as it is, at is came from my heart, than to improve it iteratively by study. In the end, I really hope this wasn't a complete waste of your time. I took a while to write this, and reason i wanted to keep going was that it somehow made me feel closer to you.
Very big emotional hug, with the promise of a physical reenactment of it in the near future.
Love you man, you can count on me for anything within my reach.
Pedro :)
