Natimorto

Categoria: Chronicle

  • Learning to Walk Without the Map I Drew for Us

    For a long time, loss did not feel like an ending. It felt provisional, temporary, as if life itself were holding its breath with me. I carried the quiet conviction that what had been interrupted could still be resumed — that there was an earlier version of the world waiting patiently for my return, unchanged, intact. I moved through days as though rehearsing, not living, convinced that at some point the doors would reopen and I would simply step back into the life I had imagined continuing.

    That illusion was difficult to surrender because it was gentle. It did not scream or collapse dramatically; it lingered. It asked very little of me except patience. And so I waited. I walked streets whose pavements remembered our conversations. I crossed intersections where I had once pictured our shadows overlapping. The city became a museum of anticipated moments, and I behaved like a devoted visitor, preserving what was never fully real.

    What finally dissolved the illusion was not a single event, but exhaustion. The fatigue of waiting without being met. The dull ache of directing energy towards someone who stood still, not out of certainty but fear. I began to see how much colour had drained from my days — not because the world had dimmed, but because I had narrowed my gaze to a single, unresponsive point.

    Letting go was not heroic. It was quiet and almost accidental. One day I stopped imagining explanations. Another day I stopped checking. Then, without ceremony, I stopped arranging my life around a possibility that refused to choose me.

    The streets changed after that. Or perhaps I did. The same routes began to show details I had overlooked: the uneven rhythm of footsteps at rush hour, the sudden brightness of shop windows at night, the way the city breathes differently when you are no longer waiting for someone to arrive beside you. I had to relearn colour — not as nostalgia, but as presence. What once felt washed out by expectation regained texture once I released the future I had been postponing myself for.

    I started listening to new music, not because I needed novelty, but because my ears were finally open. Sounds no longer had to compete with imagined conversations. I walked unfamiliar streets without assigning them symbolic weight. Cafés were just cafés. Parks were simply places to sit and exist. There was relief in this ordinariness, in allowing spaces to belong to themselves again.

    I finally ended that wait that arose purely from my hope of seeing you. Now I hope I never run into you again, because I have finally accepted that all our business is finished. I don’t want to see you. Not in the square, not on the street, not at the market. I no longer waste my time dreaming of meeting your gaze among the lights of dusk.

    I realised how deeply being ignored had shaped my perception. How the absence of response had trained me to doubt my own vividness. Now, without that constant background noise of waiting, things appeared sharper. Light reflected differently. Words landed more clearly. I did not feel louder or more urgent — only more real.

    Melancholy remains, but it has changed its posture. It no longer pulls me backwards; it stands beside me, observant, almost companionable. It reminds me of what I once hoped for, without demanding that I rebuild it. The past is no longer a destination. It is a reference point, useful only insofar as it clarifies what I will not repeat.

    I am beginning again, not dramatically, not triumphantly, but honestly. I walk forward without rehearsing reunions that will never happen. I make room for memories that have not yet been lived. And in this unclaimed space — free of expectation, free of silence imposed by another — I feel something steady and unmistakable.

    Not the joy of return, but the quieter happiness of arrival.

    
We take a chance from time to time
And put our necks out on the line
And you have broken every promise that we made
And I have loved you anyway

Took a fine time to leave me hangin' out to dry
Understand now I'm grieving
So don't you waste my time
Cause you have taken
All the wind out from my sails
And I have loved you just the same

We finally find this
Then you're gone
Been chasing rainbows all along
And you have cursed me
When there's no one left to blame
And I have loved you just the same
And you have broken every single fucking rule
And I have loved you like a fool
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  • Zugzwang & Zwischenzug

    In chess, zugzwang is a peculiar and tormenting position: the player compelled to move finds themselves inevitably at a disadvantage, while stillness would be the wiser course. Each available move brings deterioration, each gesture hastens defeat. Philosophy, particularly in the existentialism of Søren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre, resonates deeply with this condition. In life, too, we are often compelled to act, to choose, even when every option seems to estrange us further from our ideals. As in zugzwang, existence obliges us to move, to participate in the unfolding of being, and this compulsion to action is inseparable from the weight of responsibility and the anxiety that accompany it. Inaction would seem the safer path — yet life, like chess, rarely grants us the luxury of remaining still.

    The zwischenzug — literally the “intermediate move” — represents, almost paradoxically, the opposite principle. It is the art of acting at precisely the right moment, of inserting a subtle, unexpected move that transforms the situation entirely. It is patience and foresight rendered into motion. Philosophically, it recalls Aristotle’s notion of phronesis — practical wisdom — or the Hegelian dialectic, where each gesture, however small, serves as a bridge towards a higher synthesis. Zwischenzug reminds us that not all action is virtue, and that true strength often lies in waiting, in discerning the rhythm of circumstance. It is a lesson in temporality: that wisdom is often a matter not of what we do, but of when and how we choose to do it.

    Placed side by side, zugzwang and zwischenzug sketch the fundamental tension of existence — between existential necessity and strategic freedom. Zugzwang teaches us that movement is unavoidable, that to live is to bear the burden of decision. Zwischenzug, conversely, teaches the artistry of timing, the grace of deliberate motion amid inevitability. Life, like chess, unfolds between these two imperatives: the pressure to act and the lucidity to act well.

    Ultimately, the philosophical board mirrors the chessboard: each position contains both the shadow of zugzwang and the promise of zwischenzug. Life forces our hand, yet within that compulsion we may still find the slender space of mastery — the ability to transform necessity into intention, and suffering into understanding.

  • Parallel lines

    Morning quick-jerk bus lurch and she gripping metal cold rail, thought running slip-slide down again to him him him, white shirt sleeves shove up elbow maybe or grey jumper itch at the neck, coffee steam cloud on lip—he’d puff puff, too hot always, secret breath quick hush—see it smell it taste it, gone now, nothing on the screen blank dumb light dead stone, why not him answering, why silence, why?

    Thursday bakery maybe, crooked wood sign, nine past ten rye loaf he buys, she could cross by, heel click pavement, oh hello there what a chance—never, never only faces blur umbrellas turn inside-out rain slant collar trickle wet, him not there, never him. Desk maybe neat square papers, finger tap tap not her, name gone untyped, her gone.

    Too much she said? too plain love shown open raw wound shining, maybe fright, maybe dullness—what was it, what? Café window steam smear, inside heads bent spoon clink not him not him only her looking.

    Map in her head tracing his feet, train time 7:52, lunch 12:15, steps across street red light green flash, never crossing hers, lines lines lines that run beside and never touch, cruel joke it is. Nail bite palm press hard sting—yes here I am, flesh still here, heart beat still tick-tick, waiting waiting for crack in silence stone wall never break, never.

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  • Friday night friday nothing

    Him? Was it him? The corner, the night market, the coat — no, fog, fog swallowing, swallowing everything, the mist curling, curling like memory, like smoke from a cigarette I never smoked there, never. Years. Years away. Oceans folding, folding under, under the moon, the moon like a watchful eye, is he looking? Would he? Did he ever? Did I?

    I stop. No, walk. Walk faster, slower, too slow, too fast, the street moves, they move, everyone moves, everyone except me, except the maybe, the maybe of him, the maybe of us, did we? Could we? Should we? Call out? Laugh? Pretend? Pretend we don’t remember each other? No, he remembers. Or not. Or does he? Perhaps he never even — no, no, stop.

    The rain, the rain that never fell that day, dripping, wet, soaking the coat I didn’t wear, the scarf that was never his. Heart, yes heart, slippery, twisting, twisting like the river in the letters I never sent, letters folded, unfolded, folded again, unread. Tea, cold, trembling hand, trembling thought. Did he think of me? Or not? Was I ever a thought? A maybe? A shape in the fog, the mist, the gaslight, the mist curling, curling, curling.

    I see him. Or not. The face — was it? No, just shadow, just shadow playing, playing tricks, maybe. He doesn’t know, doesn’t see, doesn’t care? Or cares too much? Or cares too little? Why didn’t he come? Did he think I wouldn’t be here? Did I think I would be? Did we both think, think, think and forget? Or forget too soon?

    The street moves on, they move on, they breathe, they laugh, they exist. I — pause. Breathe. Hesitate. Maybe. Maybe not. Memory, memory, memory folds into memory. Smell of wool, wet hair, that laugh, that smile, the way he looked — or not. Did he look? Did I look? I did, I did, and yet — gone, gone, gone, swallowed by fog, by mist, by maybe.

    Tomorrow? Maybe. Never? Perhaps. Love? Always maybe, always shadow, always hesitation, never certainty. Always the corner, the shop, the street, the fog curling, curling, curling, me, me, me, question mark, question mark, heart clenching, twisting, slippery, slippery, slippery.

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  • Maria Maria: Fragments for a Country Still Waiting

    This text refers to the following song and is a historical and interpretative analysis.

    Maria Maria cannot be understood solely through its lyrics or melody. To truly appreciate it, one must consider the silence between the words and the historical context in which that silence was formed.


    Brazil, 1978. The country was breathing with borrowed lungs. Although the dictatorship was slowly decomposing, it still ruled the pace of public and private conversations. Although there was a promise of “opening up” it was made by those who held the keys to the door and reserved the right to open it at their own pace.

    In this atmosphere, singing about the lives of working women was a political act in itself, though not in the inflammatory sense that the word ‘political’ would later take on. It was political because it restored dignity to ordinary life, which did not make the headlines. Official history dealt with presidents and generals, but Milton Nascimento sang about what history never wrote about: tired bodies, persistent voices and resilient tenderness.

    What fascinates me is that “Maria Maria” is not built on the idea of victory or defeat. It describes a permanent state of living in spite of. This condition — living in spite — does not fit well with the logic of progress because it implies that time is not taking us to a better place; it is merely moving us around. When sung, the song denounces this circular displacement: a Brazil that changes decades, currencies and governments, yet preserves the same daily efforts of the Marias intact.

    In 1978, Maria woke up before sunrise, travelled across the city on crowded buses, worked all day and returned home when the streets were empty again. She heard “Maria Maria” on the radio for the first time and wondered if the song was about her or if she herself, without realising it, had inspired it. In 2025, another Maria — with a different face, accent and transport app — repeats the same journey. Perhaps she has headphones or perhaps she listens to the radio, but she has the same feeling that life demands a strength that she has not been given and that she must invent day after day.

    The line that connects these two Marias is not one of progress, but of survival. In between, there have been direct elections, impeachment, redemocratisation, globalisation, the internet, and promises of inclusion and labour reforms. But at the core of the experience, nothing essential has changed: the relationship with work is still shaped by physical necessity and the discipline of the body, and by resistance to fatigue.

    I think that, in the late 1970s, there was a kind of collective fatigue in the country. It was not the exhaustion of those about to collapse, but of those who had already become accustomed to hardship. In 2025, fatigue goes by other names — burnout, emotional exhaustion and depression — but the essence remains the same: a body that keeps going because it cannot stop.

    Time reveals itself here as a cruel trick: it advances, changing the landscape and replacing those in power, yet preserving the weight on our shoulders intact. This is why “Maria Maria” sounds like a mirror that refuses to age today. When listening to the song, one does not feel nostalgia, but discomfort; the realisation that the song belongs not to a particular time, but to time itself.

    In this sense, memory is ambiguous. For Maria in 1978, remembering was an act of resistance: keeping the names of her factory comrades, muffled cries and songs sung in low voices to avoid attracting attention. For the Maria of 2025, however, remembering can also be a burden, as she realises that the dreams she inherited were partly illusory and that reality requires not only persistence but also reinvention.

    Democracy has fulfilled some of its promises over the decades: freedom of expression, periodic elections and the right to protest. However, for Maria, who counts her coins at the end of the month, democracy is not a daily experience, but rather a distant concept. It is as if freedom had been distributed in the form of language, but not in the form of time or rest.

    This is why Maria’s story remains an undated chronicle. Its setting is the space between two breaths — the moment when the body remembers that it is alive but also that it must keep moving. What Milton perhaps unwittingly captured was the fact that, when prolonged for decades, resistance ceases to be a conscious action and becomes part of the definition of being.

    The most disturbing thing is that even when we are free to speak, we still speak softly. The habit of protecting oneself from power does not disappear with decrees or constitutions. It lodges itself in gestures, in tone of voice and in the way we avert our eyes. Perhaps that is why, more than forty years later, Maria Maria still seems to have been written yesterday: because the country has changed its clothes, but not its skin.

    The lyrics, in their original form and in free translation, can be found here

    portuguese

    english


    Maria Maria, é um dom, uma certa magia
    Uma força que nos alerta
    Uma mulher que merece viver e amar
    Como outra qualquer do planeta

    Maria Maria, é o som, é a cor, é o suor
    É a dose mais forte e lenta
    De uma gente que ri quando deve chorar
    E não vive, apenas aguenta

    Mas é preciso ter força, é preciso ter raça
    É preciso ter gana sempre
    Quem traz no corpo a marca
    Maria, Maria, mistura a dor e a alegria

    Mas é preciso ter manha, é preciso ter graça
    É preciso ter sonho sempre
    Quem traz na pele essa marca
    Possui a estranha mania de ter fé na vida

    Mas é preciso ter força, é preciso ter raça
    É preciso ter gana sempre
    Quem traz no corpo a marca
    Maria, Maria, mistura a dor e a alegria

    Mas é preciso ter manha, é preciso ter graça
    É preciso ter sonho sempre
    Quem traz na pele essa marca
    Possui a estranha mania de ter fé na vida

    Maria Maria, is a gift, a kind of magic

    A force that alerts us

    A woman who deserves to live and love

    Like any other on the planet

    Maria Maria, is the sound, the colour, the sweat

    It’s the strongest and slowest dose

    Of a people who laugh when they should cry

    And don’t live, just endure

    But you have to have strength, you have to have spirit

    You have to always have desire

    Those who bear the mark on their bodies

    Maria, Maria, mix pain and joy

    But you have to be clever, you have to be graceful

    You have to always have dreams

    Those who bear this mark on their skin

    Have the strange habit of having faith in life

    But you have to have strength, you have to have spirit

    You always have to have desire

    Those who bear the mark on their bodies

    Maria, Maria, mix pain and joy

    But you have to be clever, you have to be graceful

    You always have to have dreams

    Those who bear this mark on their skin

    Have the strange habit of having faith in life

    Read a short story inspired by the song

    Maria Maria — Two Times, the Same Body

    The damp, early-morning wind blows through the cracks in the shack, mingling with the scents of burnt coffee and wet clay. Maria wakes up before sunrise, feeling the weight of years of unseen effort bearing down on her. Her arms ache, her body is weighed down by memories and fatigue, and her chest is burdened by silent guilt: her children are still asleep, and the time that should be theirs will be taken up by others. She puts on her apron, adjusts the bag of clothes to iron, and crosses the muddy street, feeling the difference between the two worlds beneath her feet. On one side are shacks and barefoot children; on the other are tall houses with iron gates, closed curtains and armed security, exuding an air of cold order and control.

    Upon entering her employer’s kitchen, Maria is hit by a mixture of scents: coffee, wax, cleaning products and perfume. Her every gesture is measured and her every step is observed. She watches her employer’s children grow up — every laugh, every discovery, every achievement — and she feels the weight of her own absence. Meanwhile, her own children, left in the care of neighbours or relatives, grow up in silence, learning to cope with her absence. At that moment, a silent question arises: what justice is there in a country that consumes some people’s time to sustain the lives of others? The strength required for invisible work is not heroism, but obligation. The song on the radio — You Have to Be Strong — sounds almost ironic, reminding Maria that the lives of women like her are measured by the service they provide, never by their own existence.

    Memory mixes with the perception of the present. She remembers the dictatorship: constant repression, surveillance, silent fear and censorship permeating newspapers, radio and books. While the country grew economically for some, the majority remained invisible, deprived of opportunities, education and a voice. Domestic work, almost exclusively performed by women and black people, was a space of silent domination. Maria wonders: does the freedom promised by the country only exist in official speeches? Is there any value in democracy if time is stolen from people to fulfil the functions of others?

    When she goes out to catch the bus, she is overwhelmed by the stifling heat, the mingled odours of sweat and cheap perfume, and the jostling of fellow passengers. She observes the other women around her, all of whom appear similar and carry the same invisibility. Another natural and inevitable question arises: if freedom is a right, how can it be guaranteed when one is forced to exist for another? When the time that should be spent with one’s family is consumed by the work of others?


    Decades later, in 2025, life repeats itself in another form. Maria, still young with small children, makes her way to the upper-middle-class apartments with her backpack on her back, her shoes changed and her apron clean. The smell of alcohol, cleaning products and expensive perfume surrounds her. Children run through the corridors demanding attention, and Maria realises that the weight of the past has not lifted: the silent demand persists. She thinks of her own children, growing up under outsourced care and learning to cope with her absence. The music plays in her headphones: You have to have grace — Maria smiles, but it is an ironic and aware smile: grace and strength continue to define her existence, while real freedom remains out of reach.


    Brazil has formally changed: there are elections, freedom of the press and a democratic constitution. But the mechanisms that perpetuate inequality remain: poor education for some, elite schools for others; limited public healthcare, with private access denied to many; unequal housing; and a lifetime consumed by the need to survive. Maria realises that political freedom is merely a façade and that her children are still denied her presence, affection and time.

    Every daily gesture, every piece of clothing washed and every meal prepared is also an ethical and conscious act. Resistance is not heroism; it is a silent obligation to exist in a world that renders bodies and experiences invisible. Maria understands that life is measured not only in days and years, but also in consciousness: in perceiving injustice, reflecting on memory, inequality, absence and resistance.


    As she watches her children sleeping on the bus seat at the end of the day, Maria feels that there is something more; something that does not change. The invisible yet firm line that connects 1978 to 2025 crosses generations. The two Marias do not recognise each other in their faces, but in the way they carry time, in the weight of absence and the silent presence that persists despite everything. The song “Maria Maria” is not just a song; it is a thread that spans decades, recording memory, resistance, restrained love, and critical awareness.


    Then, in a sudden, almost poetic realisation, Maria understands that life, with all its injustices, is not just suffering. It is also the music that crosses time, the memory that refuses to fade and the moment when she breathes and realises that she exists, even if she is invisible. Amidst the scents of coffee and clay, the feel of fabric and the breathing of her children, there is an intimate, secret space where strength and grace converge, where Maria is finally complete, even if the world remains imperfect. Existence is an act of resistance and consciousness, and at the same time, living literature — written in time, in the body, and in silence; that which persists despite everything.





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