1/3. Neurosis made in Sao Paulo
The reasons for isolating yourself are blatantly obvious and repeated ad nauseam in the press, WhatsApp groups, and social networks.
Yes, you have to protect yourself, protect your family, your employees, the elderly, the immunosuppressed, and above all, do not join the throng of idiots who would like to see the Brazilian public health service collapse!
Having said that, now I feel obliged to warn you of something else: in these days of lockdown, do not be afraid to discover how low you may feel at times. Relax, buddy, we can all make it through this.
If you found motherhood to be the supreme joy, the apex of your life, you will start to understand that it only works that way because you are able to leave home a few (precious) hours a day.
If you thought your marriage was going reasonably well, you may nevertheless start to do the math to see if breaking up is financially viable!
If you entertained the illusion that your little corner of pot plants was “a delightful excursion into nature”, you may finally wake up to the fact that you live like a rat, holed up a shitty flat, in a suffocating city. Your plants only fooled you because you left early and in a rush, and came back late, exhausted.
Yes, my friend, life is just a drag. That’s all there is to it. And deep down inside you always knew it, but you were too pissed off by the traffic and your problems at the office to notice.
I’m saying this because I sincerely feel for you and because I’ve been working from home for over ten years, sharing a desk with my husband for about three. I’ve been through my share of wanting to dump everything and run away. So I can confirm: you won’t avoid it.
There are people who are seriously ill, unemployed, bereaved, and raising three children without help from anyone. If you’re one of these, then I beg your pardon for my rather frivolous chronicle.
But for me, and perhaps for you, these days of quarantine will only highlight just how ungrateful we are and how much we cling to escapism as a means for staying sane.
Of course I love my daughter and I love my husband – ok, I admit, I love my daughter much more – and I enjoy my little corner of pot plants a lot. But having those feelings does not equate with being constantly filled with enthusiasm. And I only really feel fulfilled when I have a meeting planned. I’m sorry, but it’s true.
I am only happy on holidays because I am thinking about all the work I will be able to do when I return, feeling more rested. I managed to feel a little less crazy while breastfeeding because I kept a notebook handy in which I could jot down ideas.
I feel immense pleasure playing with my daughter because in the eight hours that preceded that moment I accomplished tasks, studied, read, kept projects moving forward, received praise for my work, paid my bills.
Now, with my courses suspended, with work that depends on face-to-face meetings also suspended, the one thing that I can still do is write. In other words: I have somewhere to run to. For your sake, I really hope you’ve got an escape like that too.
Calm down, OK! Before you tell the love of your life how much you detest him, before you traumatize your teenage child with a sentence like “what the hell have I done with my life?”
and before you go crazy and start smashing your stupid pot plants, breathe deeply and repeat after me: life sucks for everyone.
My life sucks. Your neighbor’s life is unbearable. Stuck in meetings, breathing air-conditioned air, I wanted so badly to rush home to this tiny flat and to this life “where each day is like Groundhog Day” that I just didn’t realize it.
You wanted more from life, I know. Oh, how nice it was to be on your own, do whatever you wanted, go on a date, to travel without needing to be back on any particular day or time. Wasn’t that great? Or was it? Not at all! It sucked, too. Fucking loneliness. You just didn’t realize it because you were in meetings. To cut a long story short, just stay home and wash your goddamn hands.


Last week I bought a flute. I don’t play an instrument and I have no intention of learning how to play the flute. I don’t even know where I can buy one. I don’t remember what it’s like to wear makeup and shoes anymore. “Ah, you poor little thing! Such big problems you have, princess? Trapped in your white-lady’s neuroses over on the west side, life’s so tough, isn’t it sweetie?” That’s one of the many voices in my head. At least “the superego has a social conscience” is a friendly voice. Sometimes friendlier to others than to me. The worst is when I suddenly hear, “Get down! Ten push-ups, and get rid of those flabby arms!”, or “without basic notions in philosophy you will never understand anything, ignoramus!” I’m going stir-crazy, locked up in my office all day. I don’t even know what I’m writing anymore. Are you going nuts too?
The voices “sorority is in fashion” and “compassion & psychoanalysis” recriminate me every time I dredge up lists of petty hates. But, by God, it’s Day 28 of lockdown here and I’m going off the deep end. While I’m taking a shower, crazy anger flares up just thinking about people I fought with in high school, in college, in my first jobs. Yesterday I called Luis, my best friend, and I started going on about a colleague of ours: “She thinks I got the job because I had dinner with that horrible guy. Well I’m calling her RIGHT NOW and I’m going to let her have it! He was silent at first, probably incredulous, then he burst into laughter: “But that was 11 years ago!” I know, I know, but it’s all coming back. Do you also get the feeling that the longer you are isolated, the more you are shut up with the past? Yesterday I remembered that, in the second week of my relationship with Pedro (over seven years ago), he took me to a party full of “movie people” and then disappeared. We fought for two hours about it. “Who do you think you are? You made me look like an idiot! You better not pull a stunt like that again. The next party we go to, if ever we’re allowed to go to parties again…”. Pedro made me a cup of tea and said he hoped that they’d find a vaccine in the next 18 months or so.
Do I really have any reason to be distressed, crazy and suffering? Most of the voices in my head say no, because I am privileged. I should make donations and take care of the family’s elderly folk. I have no right to think of myself at a time like this! But for you, dear reader, I can confess that I have been thinking about myself a lot. In every decision I’ve made since I was six years old until this very morning. And I ruminate and ponder and try to decipher everything from my appearances through to my secret motivations lurking deep in my character. And I push my body to reach into every last corner of the house. To scrub and clean again, convincing myself that it’s still dirty. Me and my flat in a kind of obsessive vigil. Each week I buy storage boxes over the internet. And when they arrive, I wipe them down all over with hydroalcoholic gel. Several times over. I know I can go out at five in the morning and enjoy the empty streets. I could even dance and do cartwheels. But who wants to wake up at five in the morning? I’m not in the mood to dance and I don’t know how to do acrobatics. The only time during the quarantine that I dared to venture down to the street, the next day each apartment got a circular saying that the hall is not a place for taking your clothes off. Someone was very offended by my sagging ass. I used so much hydroalcoholic gel that I started to feel guilty, like I was the world’s biggest consumer of the product, that I started to spray myself with Listerine. I have even started to smell like the restroom in an expensive restaurant. My whole Sunday was dedicated to inventing a way of ensuring that fruit and vegetables are not covered in bleach water. I spend my time googling which vegetables and fruits are porous because I’m afraid of getting an ulcer through ingesting bleach. And there goes another a day. No time to play the flute, and I don’t even want to. Is papaya porous?
*
I loved my grandmother, but I had to kill her. In front of the house there’s a bank I like a lot. That’s where I go when I need to withdraw money from the ATM which, unlike my late grandmother, works 24/7.
My grandmother would start yawning already at six in the evening. By 9pm, her eyes were closed. Her operating hours were incomparably lower than that of an ATM machine. So when our president told me to choose between my grandmother and the economy, I killed my grandmother.
Grandma would often stroke my hair. She also praised me: “My child, you are more beautiful with each passing day”. But frankly, the beauty salon at the mall does a lot more for me. It cuts, washes, moisturizes, brushes, does hair botox, highlights and Californian tie and dye. When I pay on the way out, they tell me how chic, divine and powerful I am.
So when our president told me to choose between my grandmother and the economy, I killed my grandmother.
I miss her, for sure. But she already had trouble with her walking and, according to the doctor, this wasn’t likely to improve. Our minister, “Chicago boy,” keeps saying that the Brazilian economy, which is limping more than my grandma, will soon be running marathons. That’s why I killed my grandmother. You should do the same.
It’s no use just dressing up in green and yellow and going to Paulista Avenue to show that you’re not afraid of the “flu”. Waving a gun around is for amateurs. You actually have to prove that you are a true patriot by killing your grandmother.
Grandma bad-mouthed her brothers and sisters, friends with whom she went on outings to Serra Negra, and -keep that to yourself- she put the boot into my mother a few times. Unlike the local pastor here in our neighborhood. He has nothing but good to say about everyone. He says we are chosen, blessed, wonderful.
The president declared that we must keep filling the churches… even if he didn’t explain exactly what this has to do with the economy. But I know it does because I’m not a complete moron.
So, between a gossipy old lady and a redeeming tithe, I’d rather kill my grandmother. Between the R$ 100 she gave me for Christmas and the credit card payment facilities, I decided to kill my grandmother.
Between her lovingly baked codfish cake and Baby Back Ribs with delicious Madero Steakhouse barbecue sauce, I chose to snuff the old lady out.
Oh, and I got tired of being locked up here. All for what? To avoid, as that businessman-TV host put it (no wonder he carries the word Justice in his name), the deaths of 10% to 15% of the elderly?
I read somewhere that young people can also die of it, but, frankly, only if they are not athletic. Really, they should try to be more like the businessman-TV host and our God-like President. People don’t want to bother exercising and it’s the economy that takes it in the neck?
Some days I leave very early and come back real late. On the way, I find a lot of oranges and bananas, a divine sign that I’m on the right track. Of course, it’s not easy! I feel terrible, depressed, full of remorse.
Nothing in the world could buy the feeling I had lying on my grandmother’s lap (and even if I could buy it, since everything is still closed, and buying online could take a while). But I see light at the end of the tunnel: I think it’s an advertising agency that’s open. Everything’s going to be fine.


2/3 History without a hero
I know a lot of people, especially in cultural circles, who are prejudiced against soap operas. They criticize the stupid, easy plots, full of rehashed characters, “good versus evil” stereotypes and simpletons.
I have to admit that, nowadays, I don’t watch any of them -and I don’t have any particular opinion- but it is undeniable that many of these characters have influenced us somehow.
Let’s start with Malu, Regina Duarte’s role in the series “Malu Mulher”. It was the beginning of the 80s and my mother was trapped in a toxic, limiting and unhappy marriage. It was thanks to those dialogues, in the energy of that unforgettable protagonist, that she found the strength to separate from my father.
She went back to work, studied English and in no time her salary had already leapfrogged that of many of the family’s male chauvinists.
She got into fitness, and was able to wear miniskirts without having to put up with any unkind remarks, she rebuilt her self-esteem, had a few boyfriends and, thanks to having become a more fulfilled woman, she also became a better mother.
Years later, during my pre-teen years, I remember the obsession with “Vale Tudo”. A soap opera in which Regina Duarte played a poor, upright battler named Raquel Accioli.
Who doesn’t remember her dreaming of a fairer country for everyone, especially for the underprivileged? Her daughter, the ambitious Maria de Fatima, full of prejudices, hated “those people” and would do anything for money and power.
If the series were adapted for today, Odete Roitman, another character memorable for “hating the poor”, would certainly be applauding the lines of the super-minister Paulo Guedes.
In the last episode, the powerful millionaire (and bandit) Marco Aurélio, played by Reginaldo Faria, sent Brazil to hell while fleeing the country with impunity.
This went against all the principles of Regina Duarte’s character in “Vale Tudo”; however, when we think about the real Regina in 2020, I wouldn’t even take the risk of asking her for a selfie.
I spent a good part of the 90s dressing up as Porcina (even if only to go from the bedroom to the kitchen), Regina’s character in the soap opera “Roque Santeiro”. I had, in the children’s version, her “turban tiaras” and exaggerated clothes.
The fiery widow was a real “lady”, who extended her hand to be kissed. How nostalgic to see Regina making a Sinhozinho (master’s son) kneel before her, rather than serving this depressing Sinhozinho, the shame of an entire nation. Or, to be more precise, I miss when her “fiancé” was a Sinhozinho who existed only in an imaginary world.
But my favorite character appeared during my teen years: the spectacular Maria do Carmo. I was a student at a school for rich people and they spent their time snobbing me like I was a piece of trash. I swore to myself: “One day, these bastards will beg me for help, for a job (and to be my friend on Facebook)”!
Thank you, Regina Duarte, because I’ve already received many CVs from acquaintances from that epoque. “Rainha da Sucata” (or Trash Queen), in my humble opinion, was the best soap opera in the history of Brazilian public TV..
But our future Culture Secretary, due to take office on March 4th, is unfortunately no longer a Helena who does everything for love.
And I, one who places such importance on well crafted, well told stories, suffer when I see the face of so many heroines supporting a fascist, misogynist, ignorant president in league with militias (to cut a long story short).
A man who refers in such a grotesque and criminal way to one of the most serious and respected journalists in Brazil. One of the worst chapters of all time has turned out to be reality, a soap opera starring only villains.
*
When I was a child, at the time of the World Cup, I helped to paint the Brazilian flag on the street in front of my grandparents’ house. I gathered a lot of people from the family (more or less everyone who lived nearby), like that I could spend more time playing with my cousins. We also made little flags and strung them across gates as decorations. When the match started and the anthem was played, we’d be piled up in the living room singing along with the players (who weren’t yet billionaires and supporters of a genocidal president).
My grandfather would put his hand on his chest and my grandmother would ask, worried, “is it your heart?” but he was just being very patriotic. I, who had always been very emotional, cried like a baby and had my standard upset tummy, sick from happiness.
Then, when I changed schools, I found out that every day, after recess and before returning to class, we had to sing the anthem and watch the flag being raised. I have to admit that the mid-afternoon heat made me terribly sleepy, but we girls took advantage of the situation to hold hands with the boys we were lined up with. And the teachers let us do it, because they thought it was love for our country. I suppose you could say it was. A lot of romances started thanks to that.
At 20-something I entered the Young Creatives awards, the fantasy of any aspiring advertising executive. I got 11th place, and only the top ten would go to Cannes all expenses paid, for an endless schedule of amazing lectures and promising parties. I cried so hard for a whole morning. So much so that my boss at the time, Pedro Cabral, decided to send me on behalf of the agency and I stayed in a much better hotel than the flea-ridden one that the others stayed in (sorry about that!).
I was in a phase where I loved my life so much, my work, the bright future beckoning and this opportunity (my first great professional recognition), that when I saw dozens of Brazilian flags along the French Riviera I was afraid that my heart would stop. I know that what I’m going to say will sound a little kitsch, but it’s a long way from Tatuapé to the world, and it felt like I was walking on the moon and about to plant my flag proudly on its surface. After so many mornings purging my sentence like a convict and being bullied (because 1- I carried my lunchbox to school and 2- the lunchbox lid bore a leopard skin print), I admit that I was moved by the proverbial wisdom that goes “I am Brazilian and I never give up”.
It was then that I decided I really wanted to be a writer, and it became my obsession to obtain the respect of the literary milieu, more specifically within the closed circles of bearded boffins proud to earn a few measly dollars for a translation and feminists with a posh school accent. And once again I got sidelined. I hadn’t studied Arts or sociology at USP and I still dyed my hair blond. They hated me as much as they could until they realized I was actually really cool.
Once I was “accepted”, there was an unforgettable barbecue to watch Brazil play. Although the letters CBF (Brazilian Football Federation) were already emblazoned on the players’strips, it wasn’t yet a bunch of ignorant, fascist and disgusting people. I think it was the last time I wore green and yellow with a kind of romantic national pride, without fear of being associated with truncheon-waving Nazi-style nationalism.
Today I watch my country agonize in the cruel corridors of negligence. My anthem is used by criminals who fire shotguns at the windows of family homes in suburbs like Perdizes. My flag is brandished by demented people who criticize nurses and democracy. Pity upon you, poor psychopath who will never feel sorrow and despair.
*
Our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, will one day study what the history books should call the “one-third phenomenon”. It was in Brazil, in the 20s of the 21st century. A man who lived under the protection of a notorious torturer, who taught children how to pretend to hold a gun using their hands, who told a woman that she did not even deserve to be raped. I foresee this progressive and democratic future and the disbelief of its children and teenagers: “And why didn’t anybody make him leave, professor?” And the teachers, and perhaps children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren of this hideously ugly period, perhaps even the direct survivors of this dark phase, will simply respond: “Because of the one-third.”
*
“History of Fascism in Brazil – The Bolsonora Era”, chapter “Coronavirus”: “And he ended up decimating tens of thousands of people by encouraging them to go out and meet their own death”. “But, professor, even with that the people didn’t manage to bring down this clown?” “No, because, as I explained in last class, and it was the subject of the last exams, in that period the so-called ‘one-third phenomenon’ managed to go down in history, in Congress, and everywhere.”
Of course, the country wondered: what more could happen? What could be even worse than the worst thing that anyone could think, say, talk, do and be? Next to his exploits, Dilma’s economic cockups and Collor’s playboy shenanigans could be sold on the newstands as a “coloring-in history book”. People were unable to sleep: what if he started to shit on our heads today? What if today he incited people to beat gays and women? What if he machine-gunned a labrador puppy outside a supermarket? What if he spread coronavirus among old, sick, slum dwellers? What if he made the main stories of the evening news disappear simply with the power of his macabre mind? What if he changed the whole Constitution, or tore it up, or tattooed a new Constitution on his chest with the simple words IT’S ME, GODDAMN. What if he strangled to death a pregnant woman from the suburbs just because she didn’t want to be a mother? What if he placed the health of Havan’s stores ahead of the health of human beings? Wouldn’t that lead people to rise up and react? But wait a second, hasn’t he already done all that?
In any event, the “one-third phenomenon” rolled on, unwavering. Barbarity was renamed “the will of the people”. Murder became “free trade.” Fascism “Right-wing”. Unscrupulousness was simply “what he does.” Calling the saddest attacks on the foundations of our country “faith in God”. Calling the most terrible, rotten and vile of our primal instincts “blocking previous policies”. Calling filthy, unresolved and unquenched sexual fetishes
“Conservatism”. Organized crime was called “Crime for the whole family.” Calling dictatorship and torture “no bargaining.” No bargaining became “for the people”. Calling perverted psychopathy “condensed milk on bread.” Calling the big excuse for being an asshole “PT (Labor Party) rage”. Calling the end of humanity “a fresh start.”
“But, professor, were those in the ‘one-third’, stupid, filled with evil intentions, or were they simply sad and completely lost?” I wish I could hear the answer.
We, the “66.6” (the number of the beast: who would have known it!), are shouting “Out!!”, while they, the “33.3”, stick a stethoscope up our ass and command: “Say 33, say 33”. I only hope I have a lung tomorrow and the day after. And I hope you do too.
The bell rang for the end of the period. At last! Next class, we’ll see how this all ends.
3/3. Is God still Brazilian?


As recommended by the pediatrician, we chose a nice deserted street to take our daughter for a walk. It was a beautiful day, but all I could think about was my dog rubbing herself against everything and bringing the evil virus home.
I kept imagining that the sporty young guy five meters away could, at any moment, release a quick, deadly sneeze in our direction. The beautiful day only exacerbated the terrible feeling that there would be no more beautiful days.
My daughter was frightened by the wind shaking the trees and by the “vicious dogs” in some backyards, and I wanted to tell her the most comforting phrase I remember from my childhood: there’s no need to be afraid! Whenever my parents or grandparents said this to me, I saw sunshine, even when there was a storm brewing.
However, I could not open my mouth. I hadn’t had a panic attack for years and I could feel it coming, speeding up my feet while going soft at the knees. My hands froze while my chest boiled. Grinding my upper teeth into the lower ones until my face looked like a staved-in doll’s head.
I was taught, as a child, that God exists. My friends raised by intellectual parents always laughed at me. But I, deep down, was laughing at them. I believed in God every day of my life, but in that second, seeing my pulsating city transformed into the set for a zombie movie, when I should be tossing a few coins to the boy begging for money for food (how can you get close to people without fear of dying?), I felt, for the first time, that we are alone on this planet.
Because my father, at almost 80, can’t do anything for me. Because my country, led by a demented psychopath, elected by everyday fascism, can do nothing for me. That science (OMG, how frightening!) repeats daily that it doesn’t know either.
I remember the millions of times my mother told me to face life. Get out of my bedroom, take the plane, don’t cancel parties or meetings. Fight with all my strength against my panic attacks. “So what if it’s too crowded?” And I struggled and did so much therapy and studied so much psychoanalysis that in the end, things were going well. And now what? Now I’m even scared of the condo invoice slipped under the door.
I apply so much hydroalcoholic gel that barcodes stop working. Being locked-down in my apartment is like going back a thousand steps in a board game. My panic is no longer simply an egocentric phantasm; it has entered our collective consciousness.
My daughter’s still scared and she looks at me. Her father picks her up in his lap and says: “There’s no need to be afraid, it’s just the wind. I think the dog is barking because it wants to play”. She calms down and thinks the branches are dancing. She waves hello to the dogs. Or am I just imagining it? Her childhood is safe for now. So is mine. I remember that God isn’t there, but at least I have this guy. In a little while, he’ll lie down next to me on the couch, a little bit anxious, and be glad that I’m there for him too.
In the absence of God and without heros to believe in, people are all that remain. I think of friends, and however much I love them, I still keep pinching their chubby arms, and of my parents who make cheese-stuffed pastries for my lunch. My head returns to human proportions and I stop being a hollow plastic toy, ready to be forgotten in a box.
I do “everything that can possibly be done”, as if this were my new religion. Now I pray every day to this deity called “everything that can possibly be done”. I want to raise a shrine to Saint “everything that can possibly be done”. The sum of my “everything that can possibly be done” and the “everything that can possibly be done” of everyone who wants to do something good is what I now call faith.
Help us tell the world to you !
Frictions is launching its club : by supporting Frictions, you’ll be supporting a community of authors and journalists who tell the world through intimate stories!

*
“Baby, you have to believe me. No one can destroy a great love like that”. In the words of Gal Costa, from the album “Gal a Todo Vapor” (Gal at Full Steam). Hold on to that song, that lyric, that voice. Lie down in the dark, turn up the volume. “Baby, baby, baby, I love you.” I know, friends. It’s chaos here too, inside and out.
In Perdizes, fascists now shoot from their fashionable balconies at the chorus of democratic pot-bashers. I’m afraid my daughter will play in the tiny sliver of sunlight that penetrates the curtains. We can’t go out, and now we can’t stay near the windows. But my answer is Gal singing in my headset, loud and clear.
I’ll hold on to that and to everything that’s beautiful in this world and one of these days, the virus and vermin will disappear. Then my daughter and I and the most beautiful songs ever written will joyfully meet the birds and the streets and the friends and my mother and father.
Watch Nanni Moretti’s film “Caro diário” (Dear Diary). And when you hear Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man, embrace beauty. The following scene is an excerpt from Keith Jarrett’s “The Cologne Concert.”
Squeeze, cajole, cover beauty with tenderness. Then Google Keith Jarrett and see the musician climbing all over his piano. OMG, what a pianist! Do you have a musical instrument? Try climbing on it!
How beautiful are the words, so excruciating in the ears of the fanatics who blast out the national anthem every day at 8:30pm for the benefit of their neighbors’ ears. But that’s not the subject here. I was in the second row when Keith Jarrett played the São Paulo auditorium. He groaned while playing. He became one with the piano. I’m embracing that memory now.
My daughter likes to lie with me in bed looking deep into my eyes. We stick our faces close together and playfully gaze deeply and intensely at each other. And just when I think she’ll laugh, she lingers for a few more seconds and strokes my hair.
I say, “I love you so much,” and she says, “mummy darling.” In the space of a second, I die and am reborn 489 times. The most incredible hit of love you could imagine. Hold fast to this moment. We’re going to make it through this, for sure. “I’d be crazy not to follow. Follow where you lead. Your eyes. They turn me.” Radiohead is such a downer, but it makes me so happy. I’m gonna cling to Thom Yorke’s drooping eyelid to get out of this. Because despite his weird fish face, I see so much beauty.
One day the cinema will return, and our lives with it. Theater audiences will cheer and laugh. When someone in the audience coughs we’ll be annoyed instead of being afraid.
One day my mother and father will walk through my front door again, and the world with them. I will go with my daughter to buy pasta in a big, colorful and noisy supermarket. And I’ll regret going to the mall, rather than to the park. That I bought Peppa Pig’s School instead of going to see real ducklings at the lake. Because outside there are so many options, and I miss the anxiety of having to choose. I even miss being a creep living “in the fake plastic Earth”.
Against the virus and the vermin, let’s embrace beauty. The violin scene in the film “Love in the Afternoon”; the clip at the beginning of the film “Closer”; being invaded by vertigo when reading “The Unbearable Lightness of Being”; Clarice Lispector shattering the silence of her words by clumsily declaring her love for him.
Those who wish for victory lose the glory of weeping. They are about to invent a sea big enough to scare me into giving you up. Throwing my body to the world. I went outside and saw two suns in one day and life burning without explanation. Snap out of your depression, stand up straight, resist evil. With art, the victory will be ours.
These texts were previously published in the Brazilian newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo