No one ever caught me. And to this day I feel no remorse. Anyone who steals roses and cherries deserves a hundred years’ pardon. Besides, cherries would prefer to be eaten once they ripen rather than be allowed to rot on the branch, their virginity intact.
SELF-INFLICTED SORROW
Having been through the experience of having a skin-graft, I realize that any idea of a skin-bank is impracticable because a donor’s skin will not adhere for very long to the skin of another person. It is essential that the skin should be removed from another part of the patient’s body and then be grafted on immediately wherever needed. In other words, skin-grafting means donating one’s own skin to oneself.
This led me to consider other instances where people have to donate things to themselves. And this might bring solitude, riches, conflict. I began thinking about kindness which we would naturally like to receive from others. — Yet sometimes only the kindness we extend to ourselves exonerates us from a sense of guilt. Just as it is useless to win the acceptance of others so long as we are unwilling to accept ourselves for what we are. And as for our frailty, this is the strongest part of our nature, and brings us reassurance and satisfaction. And there are certain sorrows which only our own sorrow, if intensified, can, paradoxically, assuage.
Fortunately, when it comes to love, riches come with mutual donation. Which does not imply there is no struggle: we have to grant ourselves the right to receive love. But the struggle is worthwhile. Just as certain problems, simply because they are difficult, heat our blood, and fortunately this is something we can donate.
And that reminds me of something else we can donate to ourselves: artistic creation. For this also initially involves one in removing skin from one part to graft on somewhere else. And only once that grafting has succeeded can there be any donation to others. Perhaps I am getting confused. Artistic creation is a mystery which happily eludes me. Better not to know too much.
THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING FOOLISH
— The fool who pursues no ambitions has time to see, hear and touch the world.
— The fool can remain seated for hours on end without stirring. And when anyone asks him if he cannot find something to do, he replies: ‘But I am doing something. I am thinking.’
— To be a fool sometimes offers an escape route because the astute only think of escaping through their astuteness, while the fool is original and ideas come to him spontaneously
— The fool has the chance to see things the astute fail to see.
— The astute are always so busy paying attention to the wiles of others that they relax in the presence of fools and the latter simply regard them as human beings.
— The fool gains the freedom and wisdom to live.
— The fool never seems to get the chance to shine. Yet the fool is often a Dostoevsky.
— Obviously there can be disadvantages. A foolish woman, for example, trusted the advice of a stranger when buying a secondhand air-conditioning system. He assured her the equipment was almost new and had scarcely been used because he had moved to Gávea where there was plenty of fresh air. So the foolish woman bought the machine without even inspecting it. As a result, it did not work. She then called in a technician who warned her the machine was so badly damaged that it would cost a fortune to repair it: much safer to buy new equipment.
— In compensation, however, the fool always acts in good faith, never mistrusts anyone and lives a tranquil life. While the curious man cannot sleep at night for fear of being deceived.
The astute man pays for winning with a stomach ulcer. The fool does not even notice when he has won.
— Warning: do not confuse fools with donkeys.
— Disadvantage: the fool might receive a knife in the back when he least expects it. This is one of the hazards the fool cannot foresee. Caesar ended up by uttering those famous words: ‘You, too, Brutus?’
— The fool voices no protest. But how he shouts!
— Incorrigible buffoons, all fools must go to heaven.
— If Christ had been astute, he would not have been crucified.
— The fool is so endearing that some astute men even try to pass for fools.
— The fool has to be creative but, like any creative act, playing the fool is not easy. That explains why the astute do not succeed in passing for fools.
— The astute gain at the expense of others. In compensation, fools are simply rewarded with life.
— Blessed are the fools because they know without anyone suspecting. Nor do they care if people know that they know.
— Certain places are more congenial for the fool (not to be confused with donkey or simpleton or good-for-nothing). Minas Gerais, for example, is most receptive to fools. Oh, it is amazing how many people lose out because they were not born in Minas!
— Chagall is a fool when he puts a cow into space, flying over roof-tops.
— It is almost impossible to avoid the excess of love a fool arouses. For only a fool is capable of excessive love. And only love makes the fool.
FORGIVING GOD
I was strolling along the Avenida Copacabana and looking distractedly at buildings, a strip of sea, people on the pavement, thinking of nothing in particular. I still had not realized that I was not really distracted but effortlessly observing things. I was being something very rare: free. I was looking at everything and at my leisure. Little by little I began to realize I was perceiving things. My freedom became a little more intense without ceasing to be freedom. It was not a tour de propriétaire, nothing of what I perceived was mine nor did I covet it. Yet it seems to me that I felt deeply satisfied with what I saw.
Just then, I experienced a feeling which I had never heard of before. Out of sheer affection, I felt myself to be the mother of God Who was both earth and the world. Out of sheer affection, without any suggestion of arrogance or vanity, without the slightest hint of superiority or equality, I had become the Mother of all that exists. And I knew that if all this were what I really felt and not some false sentiment, then God would allow Himself to be loved by me without pride or pettiness and without any compromise. He would find the intimacy with which I loved Him acceptable. This feeling was new to me but unmistakable and, if it had not occurred to me before, that was simply because it could not be. I know that one loves what we call God with grave and solemn love, with respect, fear and reverence. Yet no one ever told me about loving Him as a Mother. And just as this maternal love does not diminish God but makes Him greater, so being the Mother of the World released my love.
Just at that moment I stepped on a dead rat. I bristled immediately with the terror of being alive; in a second I felt shattered by fear and panic, struggling to suppress the piercing scream inside me. Almost running, oblivious to everyone around me, I ended up leaning against a lamp-post, my eyes firmly closed and refusing to look any more. But the sight of that dead rat was engraved in my mind: a reddish-brown rat with an enormous tail, its claws crushed, as it lay there dead, silent, reddish-brown. My uncontrollable fear of rats.
Shivering from head to foot, I somehow managed to go on living. Totally bewildered, I walked on, the expression on my lips almost childish, such was my surprise. I tried to sever the connection between the two facts: what I had been feeling some moments earlier and then the rat. But it was useless. They were linked at least by their proximity. The two facts were illogically connected. It terrified me to think that a rat should harmonize with me. Repugnance suddenly overwhelmed me: was I unable to surrender to sudden love? What was God trying to tell me? I am not the sort of person who needs to be reminded that there is blood in everything! Far from ignoring that blood, I acknowledge and desire it. There is too much blood in me to allow me to forget blood. For me, words such as spiritual and earthly have no meaning. There was no need to confront me so brutally with a rat. Especially at such a moment, when I felt so exposed and vulnerable! You should have considered the terror that has haunted me since childhood; those rats have already persecuted and mocked me. From ancient times those rats have been devouring me with impatience and loathing! So, was it to be like this? My walking through life asking for nothing, wanting for nothing, loving with a pure and innocent love, and God confronting me with His rat. God’s cruelty wounded and outraged me. God was a brute. Walking with a heavy heart, my disappointment as inconsolable as those disappointments I suffered as a child. A child grown prematurely to escape the injustices of childhood. I carried on walking, trying to forget. All I could think of was revenge. But what revenge could I hope for against an Almighty God, against a God Who only needed a rat crushed to death in order to crush me? While all I had was my vulnerability as a mere mortal. In my thirst for revenge, I could not even confront Him. Nor did I know where to find Him or where He might be concealed. Looking with hatred at some thing, would I finally see Him? Perhaps in the rat? … in that window? … in the stones on the ground? For in me, He no longer existed! In me, He was no longer to be seen!