Desde o momento em que você nasce as pessoas começam a falar sobre você umas com as outras, sem que você tenha acesso direto ao conteúdo do que elas dizem e sem que possa interferir com a mesma liberdade criativa nas concepções que desenvolvem a seu respeito.

Com o tempo, os rumores a seu respeito tornar-se cada vez mais associados a você; quando você chega, o que as pessoas de fato enxergam é uma complexa obra de ficção, uma impressão formada tanto ou mais pelo conjunto total dos rumores a seu respeito quanto pelo que você de fato já disse ou fez.

Somos, cada um nós, uma obra coletiva.

___

Since the day you are born people begin to talk with one another about you – you don’t have direct access to the content of their talk, and you don’t really have a say (with the same creative freedom they enjoy) in the developing notions about you.

With time, the rumors about you became more and more associated with you; when you arrive [at the room] what people actually see is a complex work of fiction, an impression formed as much by the total mass of rumors about you as by what you actually said or did.

We are, each of us, a collective work.

Sensible English tips
provided by Maeve Vella

The patient enters the doctor’s office and closes the door behind him.

“Good afternoon”, he extends his hand. “How are you?”

“Fine”, assures the doctor, but he shakes the patient’s hand with a sweating hand, his voice revealing a cultivated anxiety.

“Please forgive my delay”, the patient says, making himself comfortable in the available armchair. “I was seeing the doctor in the room next to this one”.

“Dr. Renato? Is he OK?”

For answer the patient shakes his head in a pendular movement, a gesture that the doctor interprets as meaning “so-so”, or perhaps “none of your business”.

“What about you?” The patient wants to change the direction of the conversation. “Are you alright?”

“I was hoping you’d tell me”, the doctor nervously discloses, reclining a bit in his black leather chair, his very hairy hands crossed on the table.

“We’ll see to that presently” the patient says, lowering his eyes and starting to examine the stack of magazines on the nearby coffee table. ” You may take off your clothes, please, and sit on that examination table over there.”

The doctor gets up and, without a word, starts to take off his clothes: white jacket, streaked tie, linen shirt, t-shirt, German leather shoes, English stockings, Italian pants, black underwear – placing the folded pieces methodically on the table’s glass cover, next to the plaque which witnesses his name and specialty. continue lendo>

I admire trees. They have the ability to grow without rushing into things.

For the benefit (?) of my English-speaking friends, I’ll start posting in this section of the Basin some English translations of selected texts of mine. The first is The Prince and The Palace. The translation is mine, but my Australian friend Maeve Vella gave me a tip or two in the polishing of the “A far greater injustice” sentence. The translation has now a touch of my dear Jinny Brown as well. Se você não fala inglês, em Bauru tem uma escola muito boa.

___

There’s also the story of the prince who thought it unfair to live in such a magnificent palace, so wisely built and richly finished—and being unable to admire it in its entirety because of living in it.

“The poorest citizen has a privilege I don’t”, the prince said. “He can admire the beauty of my palace from the streets, the fields, from any window. I claim that right for myself”.

He asked the three wiser men in the kingdom to come up with a solution for his problem. continue lendo>

His wisdom was legendary.