the bottom of the issue
Chronic | Ana Paula Nascimento
I decided to go down. Maybe it wasn't a decision, but a necessity, despite still doing weekly fairs. Lately this can be characterized as my distraction and leisure, as I developed a predilection for what happened from the edge of my house to the outside. I changed my shirt for something else. I chose that white one to stay indoors, in my new routine, with the new experiences that needing to be at home has been teaching me. Keys, mask and alcohol gel were the only things I needed with me for a minimally fair ride. And then I went down. I went downstairs looking like I was at home: t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops; that as soon as they arrived they would become clean again. New habits for an immune environment.
With one eye on the steps and one eye on the key fob I'm trying to fix, I make sure I've actually caught the mask. I realize that the way of dealing with the delay and the lack of time of the time that was said to be normal has not yet disconnected my overlapping activities. Even before reaching the gate, I notice that the noise of the motorcycles that I hear from the window has increased and it even seems to be coming out of the square backpacks, and not the actual flush. I observe that in addition to the motoboys, supermarket employees and police officers continue to work. On the corner I manage to fix the key ring and only now do I realize that I still haven't put on the mask. This was my first time in a repeat that will take a while. I agreed that I would do this walk as carefully as possible, considering that I would infringe social security with a short walk in the neighborhood - details to be noted. Then I realize how much it suffocates. It makes me associate why I've seen so many people with their noses out over the course of these days. Often only experience makes me understand, so I dare in some situations.
The first blocks of my route transport me to the sensation of a rainy Sunday in the middle of a sunny day with mild temperatures and make me welcome the orderly and generic way of life of the city. It only lasted until he passed the House-Without-Wall. Well, I imagine that the characterization of the house has already been made from the name I gave it; I only did so after being occupied by residents who use this remoteness as part of their home. I've seen a barbecue happening right there, in that half-public part of them, where property is diluted by use. Here they are again, communicating that resilience and resistance are cracks in the turbulence that endures in the structure.
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Finally, I see the square. It never seemed far away but apparently the dynamics of things influence spatio-temporal subjectivity. Sun Square, as I call it. Despite not being a square with many people, on this day there were fewer. Great! (?...). Still approaching, I see juggling at the light and decide to go there. Good Morning! We exchanged glances and some energy. I gave some money too, but in the order in which things happened, he seems to have been more grateful for what is not commercialized. Looking into the eyes was one of the approach strategies I adopted along the streets and, therefore, I abandoned the sunglasses. For now, just one mask would suffice.
My vulnerability as a woman and a pedestrian allied to the unfolding of my pleasure of experimenting, of making my body present and of giving myself to the unpretentious, indicated to me the need to convey my respect and some degree of equity. I believe that the eyes are really the window that allow quick access to another layer of sensitivity on both sides. I said goodbye to the juggler with a smile that he might have noticed from the rise in my cheekbone.
Turning around the square to go back along the parallel street I came from, I see Judite. Judith!! Hey! It's me, sunbathe here! Take off the mask. Hey! It's… It's still hard to recognize just by the eyes. Judite is the companion of a woman whose name I don't know and I always meet them around here. It would be strange, in fact, to go to the square and not find them; I almost never see the square without them and never one without the other. We met while sunbathing around there, more in the middle, when I felt more comfortable. There were two of us, in bikinis, in a middle-class neighborhood, in the playground of the traditional Minas Gerais family. We were another House-Without-Wall and I hadn't noticed such a similarity yet.
With no club quota, no beach, no open and clean river in BH, I just had to enjoy the summer sun here. It was like this: the union between personal desire and raising the possibilities of using a public square, feeding and satisfying my ego and my sensitivity about the city. I understand that seeing two tanned bodies in the square when leaving mass were not events of articulated contexts (nor planned), but it makes me ticklish to imagine that this action may have been the agenda of Sunday lunch. Many came to us to tell us that this is common abroad and we even received congratulations followed by a negative response to join.
I decided to go downstairs because I would like to imagine a possible yes the next time the invitation was made; that it was a farewell to the time when spaces were monotonous and monofunctional. Perhaps the resilience acquired from this pandemic will develop out of bounds and make us enjoy free and open spaces in their collective fullness.