Theosophists say, to my amusement, that man is given the freedom to choose his birthplace. My mind flies… The veracity of this curious revelation matters little: the fun is to reason about the hypothesis. I imagine myself, in front of a supreme entity, pointing out, on a map of the world, the city where I was born. Infinite options and, by simple volition, I choose a city in the interior of São Paulo—a city of which I have not a single and solitary memory. I want to believe that the entity has presented me with other places, exposed me from its geographical to its cultural aspects and that, even so, I chose to be born where I was born. The next question is: why? One single justification seems reasonable to me: my pride—and correct me the theosophists if manifestations of pride are possible in these spheres of existence—must have thought something like: “I will prove that I am capable of developing in an environment hostile to my nature.” Very well! Then have I and my analytical mind, after long and careful meditation, judged this one to be the most interesting of all the possibilities? Or maybe, if it is true what the theosophists say about us being born and reborn numerous times, I got sick of paradise beaches, varied architecture, high HDIs and all the rest? No, no, not “get sick”. What to conclude?
Orthographic Reforms
Reflecting superficially on the orthographic reforms that the Portuguese language has gone through, the impression is that the language has become uglier, poorer, and sometimes confusing. It is always a pity for any language when “authorities” sit down to regulate it. It is as if the work of grammarians, who progressively record the mutations that the language undergoes, has no value whatsoever. The pattern, whose evolution is the work of centuries, is suddenly broken: time is scratched, and a “right” and a “wrong” are established, with the naive hope that a living language can be tamed by conventions… The result is something that sounds unnatural. The consolation is to know that, although abounding in defects, Portuguese is strong enough to overcome these deliriums and nonsenses…
The Future Is a Hypothesis
The future is a hypothesis; concretely, it does not and will never exist. To understand it is to orient oneself. Possibilities open up to the man in a fleeting lapse and continually demand immediate action to materialize, until the day when they all close forever. Meditate, and thought points to the best path: then it is to act, or annul itself in uselessness.
The State of Mind That Favors Good Manifestations…
The state of mind that favors good manifestations is not reached in a sudden burst, it is a long, daily and fragile construction, extremely fragile… One slip, and one returns at square one. After a long effort, it becomes commonplace in the transformed daily life what once seemed impossible. Stumbling, throwing oneself back to the previous paltry reality, what one experiences is an affliction that weighs heavy on the back and smashes the face against the ground…