The Inverted Journey

 


1.

 

I was born and grew up next to an industrial cemetery.

Part of my childhood and teenage years were spent next to this cemetery.

I copied the movements of the cranes with my arms. Suspended. In the wind.

Hearing a constant noise.

The color was a mixture of reds and copper oranges. The shades of hair dye and paint.

The sky was grey and orange, the clouds reflected the colors of the shipyard and the street lamps.

Breathing a dense air.

The water left on the muddy pools.


My first wounds were made by the rusty metal, but also by the lines written in pencil which only grew together after I started reading.

To perceive letters as drawings, as figures.

Reading a bad translation of a tragedy as a children’s book.

Waiting for the words to stick to each other as if that would be their only

chance.

To breathe.

Opening the window and looking at people passing by.

That was always my biggest vice.

And it still is.

As a spectator I was always a coward and a traitor.

I wait for the events to unfold in front of me.

I wait for the moment, after everyone has spoken, to make myself clear.

As if that was possible.

I stutter.

I speed up the pace.

To this day I keep trying hard to make myself clear and I still don’t know why people stop and listen.

I would like to stay here in silence, after a stupid laugh.

I would rather stay awake and catch all the night hours.

But this is a drawing, not an action.


The crane that became obsolete is still there, in the same place.

My favorite sculpture. And like all sculptures this one was made to fall.

The hands. The feet. The arm. The head. The torso of the sculpture.

The feet. The head. The torso. The hand of the sculpture.

The head. The torso. The hands around the waist.

The legs. The arm. The legs. The feet. The head of sculpture.

The legs. The feet.

The head.

The arms.

The left and the right side. The rotation on its own axis.

Magnetic fields in a constant shift between north and south.

The earth rotates at a speed of 1666 km per hour.

Even when they explain it to me I still can’t understand. How is it possible to sleep quietly while the planet rotates at such velocity.


There is no beginning.

All beginnings are an illusion.

There is no end.


This is my voice. The voice that embodies my body. The two chords I’ve learned to shape in order to reproduce what I want and what others want to listen to. Repeating the same words a thousand times more.


At the age of 13 my voice stopped developing. Along with my facial hair. As if my voice could demonstrate my relation with the world. I stayed there, at 13.

Looking at things around me while drawing. Without knowing who I was. I still don’t know. I don’t want to define myself and I refuse identification that isn’t particular and specific. They say my name comes from the word petros. In fact there are stones being produced inside my body.


There is no beginning.

All beginnings are an illusion.


How does one start writing without having in mind all the things written before, and not making it look like it was taken from a dream or from a song?


That which is written.

Refusing to do what is programmed.

Writing with a pencil without using the rubber. No erasure.

Doubting words.

This isn’t science.

And I would like to save on words.

I try to make a barrier, a dam. Waiting for the moment in which words gain form in and of themselves, just like a sculpture building itself.


The endless wait.

The way leading home.

Going through the door as if in a ritual.

The chair.

Turning off the computer. Turning off the mobile phone. Turning off all the household appliances.

Seating at the desk writing.


The most important thing about a chair is the moment we get up.

 

2.

 

It means stone, from the Greek lithos. In 1790 Portuguese-Brazilian statesman and poet José Bonifácio found a mineral that changes color once thrown into the fire.

The biggest lithium mine in Europe is located in Guarda, Portugal.

The search for lithium has been growing due to its use in the making of batteries for mobile phones and other electronic devices, as well as in batteries for electric cars.

The use of lithium in modern medicine started in 1949. Lithium can prevent episodes of mania and depression, stopping its recurrence, correcting unbalances and therefore stabilizing humor.

The white gold, as it is called, is one of the lightest and less dense among solid elements.


The metal in the mobile phone touches our hands and it alters the nervous tips of our fingers, calming and stabilizing our relation to the world of images and sound. The energy granting us access to the data in our feeds. The metal close to our ears, mixing with the WIFI connections entering our dreams.

The fall of the object. The broken body. The accelerated decomposition of any living matter, its end.

The attempt to escape gravity. Abandoning the idea of the body is impossible.

That is the limit.


The inverted journey starts with a circle drawn on the forehead. 

A finger pressing lightly but consistently.

The inverted journey is the space of non-acceptance of a set of rules that do not serve the purpose of the collective and the individual, while pretending to return the desired image. A very loyal copy of ourselves, a projection.


There is no place for false copies, they are all real. Without yes or no, without parallel, without balance, without repeating the behavioural pattern.


I will start losing words.

What we teach algorithms.

To lose words while they desperately try to find them.


We’re not accomplices,we’re displaced.

Outside the land, outside language, outside the text.

There is no dialogue but with ourselves.

The screen that hides and reveals all images and their innate violence.

The violence of language.

The gratuitous game.

The ego.

The ego is nothing.

It's an echo.

A resonance box.

Parts of a broken mirror.

Parts of the mobile phone on the floor.

Lost photographs and videos.

 

I try to talk to you.


You open your mouth.

You open your mouth.


I repeat the sentence.

I repeat the sentence so it isn’t lost.


This is endless.

This is endless.


We understand the implications.


And still we’re paralyzed.

We are trapped in the chorus, in the loop.

We are trapped in the chorus, in a loop.

Just like in a song.

We need that song.

We are amazed by technique.

Spell ridden.


Trapped inside a sentence.

Trapped inside a sentence.

The chorus.


You.

You.


Monsters.

Survivors.

Phantoms.


“Everything passes but what I write to you remains.”

It’s a sentence that chases me. I’ve read it many times.

It was written as a love letter.

And all letters are love letters.

Because the hands and their fingers are just like a sexual organ with small brains on the tip of each finger.

An octopus and its nervous and sensitive tips.


We close our eyes and open them again. We’re in the middle of a piece of paper.

Lips.

Mute celebration.

Meaningless celebration.

Repeating the things that have no meaning.


Not wanting to identify all gestures.

Not wanting to answer all questions.

Crossing the street without looking at both sides.

Being calm and agitated at the same time.

Sleeping on the same bed but never sharing the same dreams.

Never.


This is the place to question narrative, western mythology, the cliches repeating mathematical formulas. We use the voice to escape, the invisible hand, the arms around the waist, the legs against each other.


Desire in absence.

Desire as absence.

Interior absence.

Mirror on the mirror.

The chorus.

The window of the house.

The hands.

The dense air.

The hands.

The shopping list.

The song.

The list of names.

The chorus.

The song.

The chorus.

The song.

The chorus.

The chorus.

The song.

The chorus.

The chorus.

The chorus.

The chorus.

The chorus.

---

 


This is a version of The Inverted Journey edited for the March New Moon of misted.cc. The Inverted Journey is a performance and installation commissioned by BoCA and first presented on the stage of Sala Garrett of Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, Lisbon, Portugal, April 2019. It was read by Lula Pena, performed by Luís Guerra and Pedro Barateiro, and with live sound performance by Margarida Magalhães (Raw Forest).

 

 

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