All my still tiny literary production is the fruit of a perseverance that I never had for any other activity. I must, I admit, pay honors to the ear plugs and muffs, an invention infinitely more useful than, for example, the telephone: when units of different models overlap, they produce peace and solve a large part of my problems. However, if I analyze more carefully, I find all reality hostile to my act of writing. It is Saturday: the day of alcohol and socialization. I find myself, at this very moment, with my computer on top of a shoebox, and it, in turn, is on a bedside table at the end of my room; I sit on a chair that looks more like a stool: low, uncomfortable, with no support for my back; and my legs are immobile, each one embedded in a space of no more than fifteen centimeters in the gap that opens, on one side, between the wall and the bedside table and, on the other, between this one and my bed. “This is a joke. From a place like this, no art will ever come out…”—but it’s not over: a car, in the street, plays loudly any sertanejo music; a neighbor screams on the phone—obstinate, she wants to penetrate my mind, but I smile, for I know she will not…—I thought a few months ago: “In my present condition, it is impossible to write”. But from here, from this tight, uncomfortable, and noisy space came almost all my few hundred pages, in poetry and prose. There is no silence—never!;—there is no waterfall rumbling pleasantly close to me; the view, from my window, is of a vandalized grey, electric and spiral fences, tangled wires hanging from poles, windows broken for years and never restored, among other unpleasant details. To write, to concentrate on writing, to produce art, is an act of rebellion against all that surrounds me; it is, essentially, a definitive and complete refusal. And I have, in this short time of work, paid the price in different currencies. There is no reward, no favorable prospect, and the time employed along these lines would be infinitely better employed, in the eyes of the world, in any other activity. Well, stupid world: I have never felt my efforts as honorable as now!
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