saga city - uma amostra

Part 1 – the scenery

São Paulo is made of tons and tons of meat, iron and concrete. Every little portion of these is not a cell, as the metaphor would demand, not a piece of the whole, they are all me’s, me’s, me’s. That’s why the city is so big and horrible, because every building is me, every wall is me and all the me’s close themselves from the others, hide themselves, expose themselves as me’s.

São Paulo has too many walls and they speak. It is not the horns, it is not the engines nor the screams, it is not the laughs that can still be heard, it is the walls who speak for São Paulo. It is the plain concrete that darkens as the motorcycles zoom by, it is the brick, bare under the ink that gets older with us, that receives new coating because it lies, in which the dogs and the drunken men piss, at which the old ladies and the ones waiting for the bus stand, all of that is screaming. And so are the drawings, some more beautiful than anything, some like dirtiness made of letters with acute angles proclaiming loves and hates.

São Paulo has too many cars and they don’t move. The flow is organic, the paths are all the same, the destinations, too. In São Paulo, that’s how it is: the destiny is either Downtown or the Suburbs. And it always takes a long time.

São Paulo has too many people, and, no matter what is said, too many humanity, too. The city tolerates everyone — sadly, even the intolerant. There’s people of every kind; kindness, though, is sometimes lacked.

São Paulo has too many types of food and they come from everywhere. And they stay here, they grow, they blend like everything blends in São Paulo, like the recipes that are born and die one in another and of which we’re so proud just like we are ashamed of our hunger, of which São Paulo also has too much.

São Paulo has too many problems and they are as ours as everything else. Other cities have their problems, too, their Godzillas, alien invasions, nazi invasions, sexual tourists invasions, bike thieves invasions, their perverts on the subway or whatever it is the other cities have, but we have our immense smallness, our richness of poverty, our collective individualism, our underdog pride, that is: all of our oxymorons.

São Paulo has other things, too, but they are too many.