|O lObO mAu|

|O lObO mAu| is a tale of enchantments and disenchantments about humanity and its journey as a species and society on the planet Earth and Water, Air and Fire. Between fiction and reality, between Gardunha and Estrela, it brings visions and reflections on life and death, on the certainties of the present and the uncertainties of the future, from Alcina, Ana and Maria da Conceição, women and shepherdesses of our mountains.

|prEfAcE|

§ it is time

#1
It is time for us to readsten to a story.
We all have a place at the table, for isn't this the ground of the mother earth, alma mater, yes indeed!
We widen and we tighten the circle to welcome and to bid farewell, both to the important and the ridiculous.
The soup is served.

#2
The broth of life: let us appreciate its colours, its scents, its flavours. First, we breathe in lightly; then, we aspire to greater depth. With mouths blowing with vibrant tongues, let us also open our ears, all astounded: the wolf's tale will howl to us.

#3
Once upon a time, twice and thrice – ten thousand times, perhaps.
At five in the morning began the toil of shepherding, hand in hand with agriculture: the delight of culture in the dawn of humanity, wearing out youth so prematurely that it was already born old just like paysans, but with a vigour capable of maintaining the rigor demanded by full time paradise, alternating between cold and heat in a rough manner.

#4
The herds graze as do the carefree humans, both parties under coverings. But the law of the horn strikes abruptly: when the ram bellows, take heed – lest it butt you in the side or in the coffer!
Fend it off with the firebrand, while the fat rises from the turf in the form of spiritual grease that smears with carnal.

#5
The springs also gurgle, streams and brooks, diamond sources of crystal waters. They flow away from the village, fleeing to the coast, to prostitute themselves on the coastal roads.
Perhaps one day floating sheep will migrate to the sea, fertilising the path with the faith of faeces, as if to mark the way back under the Milky Way without prophylactic shame – the night in the mountains is warmed by another kind of wood.

#6
There on the slope, the law is that of isolation in the moment, bordering on a cheerful slavery.
Perhaps island creatures resist with fantasy, enveloped by the high pollution of the high seas.
But from Gardunha to Estrela, the ocean is pure air, serving as a wall to the sea spray where all the filth floats like scum. In Cova da Beira, the being roots itself, sharing with the fungi the vital force extended horizontally while aspiring to the spiral, never ceasing to imagine the voices that silence can entwine with dashes and crosses.

#7
Hence the long conversations between beasts and boulders, between hollows and massifs, between wear and lushness, floating in a kind of eternal dream, that scratches heaven and hell, between the inner and outer fire, between freezing and thawing, between the blossoming and the hardening of the heart.

#8
How to express all this, how to articulate it without squeezing it into a rooster’s death rattle? Even with seventy tongues of seventy beasts: skilled words would be lacking and the sentences would show poor and rotten modulation.
But to counterbalance the indifference of consonants, there is the fecundity of vowels, which under the visual orchestration of Pushkhy draws us to dance, not quite knowing how understanding progresses – we can only be carried away by the magic of poetry with elasticity and mastery, with sensitivity and a restless serenity.

Where were we? Ah, we got lost...

#9
No matter. Let us begin again, giving birth to new creatures, readying themselves for the usual hardships, or else those who preceded them would not have been moulded by them.
Those who took nothing for granted survived, fighting instinctively in nakedness, hiding nothing but their worries – for humans and animals have sensitivities beyond the gastrogenital.

#10
Granite forebodings, decomposing in a ritual of lichens and mosses, slowly round out the tales that are revealed when we prepare to listen as the deaf would make themselves deaf to their own deafness, daring to split the atom-maybe, thus releasing tremendous energy, with the aesthetic force of a thousand genetic shearings.

#11
And what would stop the process once it is set in motion?
What makes us mad is not so much the end, but being stuck in the middle, unable to see the show in full – we catch only a part, of which we aren’t even a part. Or so we believe. Nothing more than another point in some long ellipses, which hang indefinitely...
But at a certain moment, the paragraph gives way, for the next one to come, or with greater finesse simply bring to an end the interpretation of existence by our imagination, leaving it to those gathered around the embers, while the tale of the bad wolf darkens without balance.

#12
Each will continue, or start anew: just gather kindling to rekindle a flame: behold, a call soon emanates across the firmament.
Others approach, each bringing their own bundle of wood picked up along the way. They gather, without much association or cooperation – they all came for the same reason: to listen to the howl, then to howl themselves, dreaming of embodying at least the skin, if not the flesh, of that animal within which burns an inextinguishable spark.

#13
For wouldn’t it be incredible if the tale were an invention of the villain, who feigned such an ending only to hide away in order to continue the journey throughout eternity, from dawn to dawn, without claiming authorship of events, but masking them as entertainment?
At the mercy of fate: nothing that everything cannot bear, as long as what matters is keeping the bean of traditions within the glassy womb of acculturation, germinating punctually when it comes to showing it to those who wouldn’t be indifferent to such a stem.

Rodrigo Santos

|rEd & blUe|

Blue is cold , red is hot.
The sky is blue, blood is red.
The sky is blue but not always cold.
Sometimes it is hot when it is hot it's warm.
Blood is red but not always warm. Sometimes it is cold, when it's cold it's dead.
It has been increasingly hot, increasingly red, increasingly dead.
Warm-blooded beings are becoming extinct unforgivingly and irremediably.
Cold-blooded beings are becoming extinct in an utmost feverish fit, in the indulgence of a final shrill.

In the end it all comes down to cold. When the ice melts leaving all debts exposed it will be one more step towards universal coldness.
Until then everything will drown in a broth much hotter than the primordial soup. Four eons ago.
After the entertainment comes the disappearing act. Amusement is followed by extinction and sapience, or the lack thereof, is followed by non-existence.
Until then let's put our last breath towards archaeological excavations. Finding loads of bones!
Breathing Carbon-14 sighs of relief for the time that has gone by. Panting in the monoxides and the dioxides for the time we have left.

\Maria da Conceição/

At 5 AM we get moving and we feed the animals. Later, they have their certain places for shade.
Afterwards we have to care for the potatoes and the beans to eat. Since we are in a very dry area, we need to sow grass for cutting, also sorghum which we need to water daily, but we take advantage of the mornings and afternoons to stay out of the sun.
Very very bad, we can't take it, that’s it, we can’t take the heat, due to our age, because we are no longer young, but the heat is so unbearable, it’s unbearable mainly in this area, at its worst from 10:30 AM to 5 PM.

With the cold, now it isn't as cold as it used to be, we are not as cold as we were before. There is so much more warm clothing plus we are always moving around. We don’t stop from when we rise until we go to bed, we don't stop.
People, sometimes everybody, like going to the city. Everyone likes to be in the city. Everyone goes to the city - but it is a mistake. They’re all mistaken. I don’t think it's worth it. We - here in the village (People are afraid of villages, but villages are paradise. No hunger, and everyone has something - that’s the main thing. We have it all. Villages are clean, they have all the comforts at home. People that go to the city are afraid of villages ... It isn’t like 50 yrs ago. Everyone complains about doing an 8hr shift. We do 16hrs. I even did 20hr days for many years and I’m still here, I haven’t died yet.
Everybody is tired after 2 or 3 hrs. Everyone is tired.

|thE Extinct|

They are quite the funny mammals,
Those - the extinct!
The mammoth of the Beira Baixa used to live here some eras ago sometime after pangea's pulverization, when the mantle was still jelly.
It would be groomed every first full moon, after the snow melted. Here in Gardunha rugs of its wool were made for the cave's doorsteps.
Over in Estrela, burel(1) rugs were made for the brothel's doorsteps. They were always more libertine on that side of the canyon. On this side they hunt and also gather but it is said that the world's oldest profession is to shepherd.
Our ancestors (the ones that sheltered in caves and domesticated fire) perhaps did not imagine what their discovery would catalyze in the next 300,000 years.
Our species life would come to change radically, deeply and irreversibly. Once upon a time there was prehistory.

Up until the advent of writing and history many sheep had yet to be born, many lambs yet to be born, many teats to be milked. Because that is what this story is all about, extinct beings and beings on their path to extinction.
Ascendant, descendant, all fruit of a genetic mix, some even indecent.
Alpha mercenary is probably the oldest of all professions. Sharing the hunt was not gentle nor altruistic nor was the woman emancipated, she was beaten. But that was thousands of years ago, customs say.

Let's go back to our story: what would they have mastered first, fire or flock? Fire of course! So they could mark the flock, roast and socialize around the barbecue of the livestock that they would yet come to master. Beer succeeded naturally along with commerce and the wheel and sedentarization.
Obesity would still take a few springs to appear prominently with the help of cheese from our mountains and our shepherdesses evidently, who are the oldest professionals in the world, also endangered and yet to unionize.
Even the pioneers of transhumance are transient in the time diluted by polluted waters that slide languidly under the road to sea level quota.

\Alcina/

We still have a lot of springs in our region. Those who come from Videmonte and say: “Videmonte is such a rich area because of its water with fountains running year round”. Down here, the village has about 7 or 8 fountains flowing year round. But those are plumbed sources out there, good springs. Generally water for irrigation is scarce. For example: The pastures uphill - that water is for irrigation. My pasture hasn't had water for a month. People want to water crops so they send the water down to the town, it goes to the dam. The dam has been full lately. Whoever is below the dam that now overflows is alright. Now in my case, since I’m above the dam level, I end up without water. Our wetlands have not had water in about a month. It may seem like we live in a water-rich area, but that’s the fountains in town that give that impression. Because otherwise it is as dry as anywhere else.

The Ocean? I know it, but I don't see it often.
I like the Ocean, it's not something that I would... Like some people who vacation by the seaside for a couple weeks or a month, that wouldn't mean anything to me. Or it doesn’t because there is no time, no opportunities, neither for the sea nor for anything else, there’s no possibility for vacations. We can’t just lock the sheep in the barn and say: “Stay here while we leave for the weekend”. That can’t happen.
It doesn’t happen, they need to go out every day, they need to eat everyday. There were times that we had to get up quite early. Not now (because we live here), but for many years the animals were up here while we lived in the village.

It was different, transporting the milk, one thing and another, we got up very early. Now (even in the winter) I don't have to worry about getting up at 6 AM. I don’t care if I finish making the cheese at 10 or 10:30 AM, I can get another hour of rest in the morning. At night, we never go to bed before 11:30 or midnight. For instance, yesterday we were having dinner at 11:30 PM. In the morning, if we are getting up at 6, it’s too early, so we take a bit more time in the morning because as I say, it doesn’t matter if I finish the cheese at 10 or 10:30 AM. It ends up being the same thing. We know we have this life to live and we must live it, no matter what.

|mAgic mYcEliUm|

From the opposite direction came the trout looking for the cold and clean waters where they were born in order to spawn the next generation. But the water is no longer cold or clean and it doesn't run, it oozes dense and green like hope.
Fresh "Agua das Pedras" (sparkling water) found only bottled and in a plastic bottle, in fact the bottle was an invention of our friends the Neothlithic shepherds. Plastic would come later, many lambs and sheep had yet to be slaughtered, mechanical milking had yet to be invented, along with powdered milk, slaughterhouses, butchers and cannibal feed and zoos that have no logic whatsoever.

Who would have known that scatology by the river would take us so far? That the bucolic would be reduced to colic, not always, but sometimes alcoholic since spirits followed beer, followed by the tinned and smoked, the perfumed and processed, the packaged and the wasted life, philosized and the adulterated, the tagged and the discriminated, the criminalized and the locked up, the hooded and the decapitated, the crucified and the mummified, the circumcised and the sterilized, the slaved and the humiliated, the colonized and the decolonized, the entrenched and the institutionalized, the robbed and the counterfeit, the literate and the unemployed, the moneyed and the gentrified, the censored and the terrified. The silent, the pouty, the nauseous, the bitter and the anesthetized at last, perhaps tired from all the data, selflessly surrendered to submission. It could have been foreseen that the tides would open widely to receive the outpour of our creativity without modesty. It was the beginning of civilization, a glimpse of future cities within megalopolis incubators that had yet to know diapers but that recognized in the generosity of rivers the fabulous absorbing power of the latrine.

It was an omen of the large voyages that were yet to happen, when they would turn trees into oars, bushes into boats, forests into fleets mooring towards the unknown in an impetus of courage, bravery and boldness. And as if mooring wasn't enough for such a volume of creativity they started landing.
Out of sight out of mind they say around many places.
Who would have said that one day after mooring and landing they would still moonland and marsland.
Just like the universe, creativity has no end.
Some will say that one day curiosity inebriated creativity and that mushrooms collected in fresh mammoth manure brought, besides abstract art, the perception of heaven’s tri-dimensionality and an unmeasurable will to explore it to the center of this society. The mega fauna had originated a consciousness of its own consciousness, besides a mega-high not due to the flatulence of coincidence.
Once upon a time, there was magic mycelium

\Ana/

Silence allows us to be more present in our day-to-day, more connected with what we are doing. All those sounds of nature; wind, rain, animals too. This more conscious and different presence also makes us more familiar with them, it gives us more connection to them. There‘s a lot of communication with them, even if they don't speak, even without making any sound, just through gestures, movements or expressions, we start to understand what they are thinking, what they want to convey. We are speaking of as a human being, we are communicating with them, yes!

I like rocky areas, they are indomitable, aren't they? I like this! It's nice to think how they are always there, not always, but they are the landscape’s oldest element, having been a basis of the landscape throughout all of the people who have been here, all that has happened here, those rocks have always been the base of the landscape. That is beautiful.
I come from a biology background and botany was always a favorite. I love observing plant communities, the flora that keeps showing up and disappearing. For instance now, after the fire, it completely changed. Even though people see fire as a negative element, it's a part of what we have and does not only bring bad things. Actually the sea of broom we had around here was not a sustainable situation. This is fertile land and we had such a dense broomfield that it challenged the trees. They would have had to rot, to die. Anyhow, just saying that without a fire it would have happened one way and having had the fire, it reset the system, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

There was soil erosion, of course, the recurring fires we have today are bad because it creates a lot of erosion and it won’t allow for rapid tree growth and therefore everything suffers from all that. However, right here it hadn't burned in... I don't think anyone remembers a fire here. It was abandoned. Most of the lands without agriculture here were abandoned over 20 years ago; they have now accumulated a large amount of organic material.
It wasn't necessarily bad, it created other opportunities, now I see plants I didn't see before, there are lots of saplings that were all shrugged up that are coming in stronger, some are already the size they were before, others not, they died.

Everything has its pros and cons, not all is bad and not all is good. But getting back to the plants (I detoured a little) I like to watch and observe how plant communities evolve seeing what they also have to say about the land. We look at a pasture or at a forest and through that, and which species are there, we can tell if the land is deeper or more shallow, if it has more or less water. It’s all so interesting. To see diversity is also nice, the diversity of life. Since the sheep came... oh, I apologize, only botanics now, I am glad this will be edited, that's a good thing. About trees, only a few are left but we do have some natural regeneration - lots of holm oaks. There used to be a big oak forest nearby and the birds would bring acorns. There were loads here, well not loads but it's what we had most of - Holm Oak trees.
A lot of it is recovering, some is not.
What I like doing most is to plant acorns around and see the results - to watch the oaks growing from the ground and imagine what it could be some years from now. That is what gives me the most pleasure in all of this.

|mAtErnitY|

But what matters is the mammoth's wool and the quality of life it brought to our shepherdess. The female mammoth and her friend sharmuta(2) did not have the unhappiness of knowing mechanical milking, nor mastitis, nor synchronized estrus nor artificial insemination. Consequently the male mammoth had the joy of never knowing the electro-ejaculators, those bipolar electric probes used for rectal exploration.
Back then, love was electrifying, not electrified, the animal orgasm was not only sensual but consensual.
The probes were not the only bipolars and at some creative moment they observed that electrification of the temples could depolarize the most impatient patients, the demented or sick ones.
If the mammoths were confronted with such creativity they surely would have migrated to the poles and be possibly known today as “pole-seekers” within the more sarcastic veterinarian community.

Our shepherds respected their animals' physiology, they were interested in transhumance not in transhumanism and in truly caring for their offspring, however transcending that may seem.
Nevertheless it was the beginning of the end of freedom for all species contiguous to ours.
Maybe this is where the toasting expression “TO US” comes from. Let us toast only and exclusively to us.
Off go the rest of them, and, as they say around here, whoever stays , stays and whoever goes, goes, bye bye! Bai bai(3) as they say in Porto and Bye bye is said in London, because in the meantime languages appeared. They all say the same thing differently and they all say different things but the same way. For example: when mountain folk from either Estrela or Gardunha are not slightly interested in a subject, they use the expression to give a crap upon it while those beyond the English channel in an identical situation, despite an equally scatological reaction, say they dont give a crap at all. It doesn't make any sense.

Anyway our shepherdess’ animals all spoke the same language. Maybe that's why they don't travel much, because they know what they will find beyond borders that don't exist.
Or is it because of the fences? Or like the painful probes, the sometimes electrified fences? Or maybe it's due to the guard dogs or the one-way trips to those houses where they enter in single file?
An ancient war strategy, the one where warriors walked in single file and the last would erase their footsteps. However our shepherdesses’ animals were not warriors nor were they at war with anyone but someone was at war with them, with not few of those adding uselessness to the unpleasant.
Their creativity would lead to laboratorial replication, from electro-forced premature ejaculation to smoked in-vitro fecundation, to pass unnoticed through vaginal traffic.

\Maria da Conceição/

They don’t even allow it, but animals are also like human beings, just like them! Animals are everything, many have offspring, well some of them, not many but some of them have offspring and abandon them... off they go. One in every hundred. Now the other ones are like human beings. But a good kind of human, not one of the evil ones. Oh, that is the best, children, My God !
For humans, maternity is the most beautiful thing on the face of the Earth.
To have a child with plenty of love is the most beautiful thing there can ever be. One thing there should be more of is love between parents and children, that would be the most beautiful thing. I get very sad when (because this is how it goes sometimes) there are parents who maybe are bad parents or due to a bad relationship they didn't get their deserved affection.

Men sometimes can also oblige a woman to certain things, treat her badly beforehand and then force her.
He must not do that. There is no male animal that mistreats a female. Stop the music! Well, females are terrible too, especially nowadays. Give me a break.
Sometimes I think, well Aaaah I don't know, look, the world is crazy. I had words but I won’t say them. I had words but I won’t say them because I think there are words that should not be said, but the world has been completely destroyed, by itself. No sir, people only look at another if they are well dressed, “I’m better dressed than that one and my clothes are better than hers” and they forget about things more important than garments.

\Ana/

They took maternity away from women. A woman is just something that is there, that has had a baby inside her and some doctor goes over and thinks he does the work. A woman can't be as she wants, she can’t walk, can’t squat, she can’t be in the most natural position for her to help the birthing, all because it's not convenient for mr. doctor or whoever is there assisting. Like once I saw one saying he didn’t have to be subjected to the pregnant woman’s fluids. The pregnant lady had to lie down - even though that is the most uncomfortable for her, it didn't matter because the doctor is the one who needed to be comfortable and not the one giving birth. That type of vision outrages me. It's deeply imprinted in our society - the way we devalue the woman’s role in maternity and in life. Everything is technological, all controllable, it has to be all planned out. This is a little abstract but it's not good for anyone, not for the babies that are coming, not for the mothers, not even for men as it ends up. It results in us being decompensated and tired and irritated because this system is out of balance but it's something that comes from a dark depth, from control and evil, people don't even realize that this is very ingrained into the system we live in.

\Alcina/

It’s like that. These days, save breastfeeding, the fathers are doing it all - just like the mothers, aren't they? What happens? The animals, no, the ram... So, animals like the ram don’t have any affinity to their offspring, it's just an animal to them. For example, we have the swallows here and we notice there are couples who stay around. They both work to feed their offspring. On the other hand the ram doesn't have that worry, it's none of his business. His function is to make sure the ewe gets pregnant.
Afterwards that's it. He doesn't do anything else. He is lazier.

|AdÃo & EvA|

Our shepherdesses were born just as their cattle but one day they would cease to be. In the alchemy of modern times , when flint was replaced by stainless steel blades, and birthing was replaced by a synthesized sleep.
In the disposable and general anesthetic age, inside and outside the corrective plastic surgery rooms for malefic aesthetics .
In the celebration of sterilization, most likely on the verge of illness, guaranteed by the irresistibility of antibiotic gummies, taken without moderation or any kind of ceremony.

Gratuity was granted in some kind of incinerator and served cold to help indigestion and promote general indisposition.

The gift of life would be divided in parcels of debt. An open bellied birth would be worth more than a skinned and wine garlic marinated goat. It's unknown at which time the braised placenta was abandoned as well as the blood stew to go with and celebrate the successful birth.
The doulas would be abandoned too, never achieving unionization. Now they work at the trash dump that can be seen from here halfway to the, not falling and perhaps decadent but surely carbonized, Estrela(4).
They just finished a meal drenched in boiling olive oil to recall the times when they would invade castles and burn reckless scientists in public and not at all prudish pyres.

Gardunha's air smells like granite even to those without a refined sense of smell.
It is a pleasant smell for someone who is 300 million years old. Calm and tranquil, it emits an inexpressible serenity with its solitary monologue.
To hear it one cannot be deaf but indeed a little crazy.
And how many stories it has to tell! It witnessed the emergence of complex organisms to the sprouting of sexual reproduction, to reproduction without sex, passing through sex without reproduction.

To get to extinction reproduction must be played with. It witnessed many that wandered here from reproduction to extinction and will carry on to watch in its unshakable calmness. It is also not unionized but is rich in silicates and consequently, silicon. Besides its magnanimous equanimity, it processes a lot of information, 300 million years of information. Taking into account its glacier aspect, it doesn't need external cooling, it is an authentic molecular memory processor in digital semantics, whether quantum or not. What matters is knowing what irradiates from it. The knowledge of shining from its atomic vibration is not apparent due to its coldness. Inside its electronic core lies our Alexandria library, with the advantage that it won't burn, despite the successive and uncountable attempts that left Gardunha and Estrela bare. A pleasure for the more perverse finding satisfaction in their deviations.

“Carry on! You're right on track”, say the granite's atoms, experts in cataclysmic events and mass extinction.
And we will see what the mass of money can do for you on the verge of Extinction when you feel the gray matter dried like bakelite in the ultimate encephalitis, at the last spasm of your golden age, in the final chill, dark and terminal.
So, carry on as if there were no tomorrow and one day there really may not be. I will be here, on the road to Aurica, which I prefer to call Americalia in tribute to your Amália.

I leave you with this question: Do you know how many atoms exist in one cubic meter of granite?

600 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 6×10^23
600 millions of millions of atoms!

If I were not granite I would like to be a photon so I could travel to the Sun in 8 minutes, live forever and print vibrant exciting and luxurious colors on the retina.

\Maria da Conceição/

Humanity wants to be the owner and when humanity wants to own something, it invents it. One invention is that of Jesus Christ, another is the Church of the Kingdom of God. One is this, another is something else, another one is Christian, the other one is not Cristian, another is Jehovah’s witness. Religions are all beating the same drum, just with one living on this side and others on another. To me, I'm nobody, and I would like to learn with people that... Well I’ll tell you something and I’ll tell you frankly: if they believe and preach then when they put themselves in front of others, they should comply.
I’ll tell you one other thing: I can’t listen to anybody anymore, I don't believe in anybody. They’re up there bla bla bla-ing and when they get off the podium and it's savagery.

\Ana/

To me, the interpretation of the Bible could perhaps have been, I don’t know I’m not studious in such things but it seems that the Garden of Eden could have been our tribal life in community, when we didn't have agriculture. It was all from the abundance of forests and what nature gave. If we look closely at tribes that still exist they don't have nutritional deficiencies, they live well unless they are killed by a leopard or one of those animals. Besides those things they live a healthy life and live well. They don't have to work that much, not as many wars and such things. Maybe that was what the Bible spoke of in the Garden of Eden. That phase where we want some agriculture but the goal is a pre-humanized relationship with the ecosystem . For instance when we had a lot of native forest we could live more off what the forest gave than what agriculture yielded. An example is the food of our ancestors - acorns.

Historically I cant say when but I believe up to very recent times, acorns were still eaten in the Alentejo. My mother says her father would buy the oak’s acorns to eat at home and she liked them. So anyway, there was a whole relationship with what nature gave us that has been disappearing with agriculture. Here, we would like to get back to that Garden of Eden , so to speak, where we can go into the forest and live off what it gives; berries, acorns, chestnuts, even a little hunting , if there is an abundance of animals. In my perspective only if there is abundance because there are so many of us now, that if we all were to hunt, we would kill off the wildlife. Ethically speaking, in my view, it's better for an animal to do what it wants than have us decide everything about their life. We are going back to what we spoke of before, it's not unethical but from
the animal’s viewpoint maybe better, I don't know, it's different.

\Maria da Conceição/

What I know is, I happened to have read the whole Bible, I don't know enough to explain those things, where we came from, how we are. But I believe in something supernatural. I believe that sometimes we are not at all in charge. Things happen because they need to. I don't know, I don’t have the knowledge but I will say it again, I do believe in scientists but how are they going to get from a billion year old bone... ? I don't know! I don't have the capability to.., I won't criticize anyone, we have this doctrine and they taught us that there is a god, and that god is not any god. What is it? To me it's a title that they gave it except nobody saw it. The existence of Jesus Christ nobody can deny…

\Ana/

Here, we want to go back to the garden of Eden, within reason, Yes that relationship with nature that existed in the pre-civilization phase.

\Maria da Conceição/

\Maria da Conceição/
Each thing, a monkey is a monkey, a dog is a dog, a cat is a cat,a hen is a hen, this or that. How did we appear? Nobody knows...
People and scientists should just be quiet, because they don’t know. Nobody knows.

\Alcina/

The one I was brought up with was what catechism taught: God created heaven and earth. I don't have many studies in the matter and cannot express what I do not know either. But of course there are two versions. Which one is more.... I don’t know. I do believe we are taking big steps to an end. Maybe I do believe that. As for the reason of the beginning, I believe it because it’s what I was told as a child: God created heaven and earth.

|thE fUtUrE|

Are we all deeply alienated to the insurrection coming our way?
As they say: Nothing is lost, all is transformed. Maybe we will become the fuel of a gentle species yet to come? Would it be difficult for them to understand how fissile a biomass is and how easy it is to destroy it?
What fits in a 792 meters(5) sided cube? 8 billion Humus sapiens in their slow fossilization process and transformation into fuel.
It's not that much if you account for the fact that since 1850 we’ve consumed a 2779m sided cube, a cube three and a half times the size of the human cube. We hope, for their own good, that the gentle people yet to come are fewer in number or that they burn something else to get warm, to cool down, to move around and to entertain themselves. And if not, good luck on their journey!

After us there will be a planetary coma but not final, only temporary as we all were. Passengers of the mothership till the last individual and collective breath. The ship will stay on its tranquil journey throughout the universe digesting the waste of our unsustainability and remains of our industrial creativity with the enzymes of time because it has all the time in the world...
Registering in its records a moment when some mushrooms that were picked from fresh Mammoth manure would change the course of history for a species and those who cohabitated with it during their journey through sidereal space.

\Alcina/

I believe the cheese will always be there but I also believe the traditional way to make it in this fashion will be lost.

\Ana/

Better not to talk until this [dogs barking] passes or should we carry on? Government work: bureaucracy is limited too, within bureaucracy I couldn't do much. I started to see the only way out was to work with a private association. With more freedom and still quite conditioned, as associations also have to, everyone has to obey State rules. On the one hand that could be a good thing to protect certain natural patrimony, but on the other hand it can also be limiting and not let anyone do anything. We have come across that a lot. An individual can have more freedom, to find new pathways and such. I started to realize these things along the way, I started to see that this was the way for me to feel accomplishment.
That was, this is what drives me, to be here and to see our work, seeing the trees grow, the sheep, the work they do on the earth, to see culture disappearing, for example, with cheese making, or traditional agriculture, things that are also disappearing which I think are important to our future - by preserving this know-how, we are working towards doing that which also gives me encouragement. There was no other way out than this one for me. There are more exits but none that would be good for me.

\Alcina/

We are quick to learn what makes life easier for us. Right? What makes things easy for us? Riding in a car, riding this or that, we pick that up quickly. Now going from easy to hard is more difficult. I believe it will be hard for society to go back because society is not ready to sacrifice anything. My daughter gets angry over everything and nothing, sometimes at home she gets angry and tells me off when I don't separate the recycling like sometimes when I’m in a hurry. She yells at me and sometimes I say: ”Oh Simone, stop it, look it was just one bottle”, “Yes but if everyone thinks like you... yada yada” she will tell me off right there. Sometimes I say: “Nobody says anything to the truly guilty ones”, it is what it is.

\Maria da Conceição/

Everyone will finish life, life ends. There it is, we have a cycle to live and it's very sad, death is very sad. Death to me is , I'll say it again, it's very sad. When we lose, we lose everything. It's very sad.

\Alcina/

Sometimes I think when we hear or talk of... for example we can use a concrete case of the war in Russia; sometimes men have so much power and misusing that power can destroy everything around them and we can all get dragged in. It can happen, I don't know. Now speaking of war, I believe that if they are doing as they say they are, and who am I to speak of certain things, with these atomic bombs, those things, if a conflict starts and those things are used, I think that could be the beginning of the end to everything.
Maybe that's just my opinion but it still could be a reason for these powerful people who want to have everything to finish it all because they have the greed and the power. My most convinced side so to speak says these people, well there it is... Wanting everything will lose everything for them and for us and we will be lost in the middle of all of these conflicts.

|EssEncE|

From the Picturesque Southern, to the Knowing through the Erect.
From Paleolithic to Neolithic, through the rickety.
From Flint to Silicone through Granite.
Had only powdered water been invented and the desert would have never been a threat. But the ignorant riparians liked to deplete their rivers of resources and sewages, as is obvious given the redundancy, and from humanity’s militancy for water as a vector in its inherent lack of moral and social hygiene, expert and scholar in bad environments till death do they part.
In the meantime we can plant a tree, have a child and write a book. Why not? Tsunami My Love! A love story of course and one of incest, of a species who is singular by its plurality and promiscuity, a story of persistent harassment, a story of bored lovers, bloody diamonds, a story of a planet that appears to be vindictive but is really only claimant.

Tsunami my love would end with a howling she-wolf that had been indulging in a warm jugular of a now cold goat. While the wolf is smeared in red, the goat defunct in blue, because blue is cold and red is warm.
This may be why the other one's hood is red to attract the bad wolf. Beware, he may come with his pack and this is a very social creature, the bad wolf. It is a creature that is very bad but that knows that the lack of blood leads to the lack of life.
And he knows that flocks are not abundant out there. Abundance is not the absence of scarcity, it is the consciousness of scarcity, the perception of finite, often carelessly ignored. Careless is the mind that ignores the finiteness of others’ lives in its infinite affinity for itself.

\Alcina/

Look, speaking for myself, I have been very happy. Sometimes we say: “I was so happy and I didn't even know it”. But we only realize that after we have lost. When my daughter, the oldest one, was 4 years old she had her first performance with the rancho folclorico (Folk Dance group) of Videmonte, she was 4 years old, so small, her and a little boy her age. She dragged us all in. She was the first, then her sister 5 years younger - then we all followed. All four of us were in Videmonte’s rancho folclórico.
And we were happy like that, I can tell you we were happy. Often at night, imagine when we had Saturday or Friday night rehearsals, I had to get the sheep in early, do everything an hour earlier so we could go. We would rush through our chores but we did it for the fun and pleasure of going out and meeting new people and being with people for a little bit. It was great, well that part was great.

Unfortunately I lost a daughter and along with my daughter the rancho folclórico also died. There was never another performance or rehearsal. Everything stopped in time. Not sure if I have the strength to go back, not sure, time will tell. Maybe there are people waiting for me to say yes, or that my husband says yes for it to revive. But it is hard. It's very hard ... what used to pull us in is gone. My daughter would have given her life to the rancho.
I remember after her funeral, I had some of her friends over. Old co-workers of hers or friends from university who visited about a month afterwards. The accident was in November, they came by in December.
They got in touch with my other daughter, spoke to the priest, he gave a mass and her friends and people came, then they all went to the cemetery, from the cemetery here because I made lunch. They came up from Alentejo. My daughter studied in Idanha, she had lots of friends from that area down there. And one question one girl asked me I’ve never forgotten, we were in her room. We had taken everyone to Raquel’s room and told them they could pick something of hers to take as a memory. Her friend said “I have a question to ask you” “If I know the answer” I replied, “When Raquel parted was she wearing her rancho attire? ”I said no”, she continued saying “you know the last time we had a friends dinner she did not attend because there was a rancho performance, Raquel would give her life to the rancho, her eyes shined whenever we spoke of it”. That really left an impression on me, sometimes I still look at her scarf and things and I say: “Wow, really?!” but we don’t think at the time, there is no brain power to think, so from there I draw my conclusions, I was so happy and I didn’t even know it .

When you were talking about a relationship with silence, it made me think how, I love being in the countryside. I miss shepherding the sheep, if one day or week goes by, I won’t be ok because I miss it, I miss it. I miss my relationship with the countryside. After the accident and everything I went through I learned that the sheep understood me. I saw that if I was down, some days I cried a lot and they would come up to me with their little snouts nearly licking my tears, while they were sniffing me. I said: “Wow, how is this possible? One has to go through something very strong to understand how much these animals have feelings like ours”. Even though it is said they don't have feelings or anything like people do. If you hit a dog because it misbehaved, it will stay right? They have feelings. When my dogs saw me sad, this one we call him Teodoro, would throw me to the ground to lick the tears off my face so I had to stay sitting or crouch down. Impressive, how he could feel our pain.
It was hard, very hard and the good things in life are people’s friendships, because if we all gave a little bit of ourselves... we had to learn. I often say this to my daughter and I believe she may say it now too: “we have to learn to give, if we learn to give, I think God gives us back double fold”. Now she says: “May God give to us so we can give and not ask”, and it's true, we all have to give even if only a hug.

So many times I’m feeling sad and I go see a friend and maybe just a simple hug, we don't need words, maybe just a simple hug is already a lot.
Value is not the amount of money that we can carry in a wallet or purse. This is why we say that no matter how much money one can have, although it helps a lot, quite a lot but would that give us happiness? I don't think so.
I can go in and... we always were, me and my husband we were always easy to get along with and everyone, for example when my daughter left us, she... I had so much support from the entire village and that is unexplainable, you can't explain that. Sometimes I dont have the words to explain that. We still have our ritual of going to the cemetery every day, me and my husband. Our ritual goes like this: we milk , we do this part here, we have breakfast , we go to the cafe, we have a little coffee and we go to the cemetery.
We have to go! A couple times people have asked me “What are you going to do there?” But I must go, Period. I go there and when I leave I carry a new air around me and I can't explain it.
And my withdrawal was after the accident, I stopped going to the cafe, I didn't go out at all, I didn't go to mass unless it was a service for my daughter. One thing though: I am a believer. Everyone has their mania and I have mine. I completely stopped going, questioning many times I would ask “I have so much faith in Our Lady of Fatima, what was all this faith worth” ?
That is how I would question.

One day I was questioning like that and it felt like something hit me in the chest and said: “ Slow down, Our lady of Fatima also went through her son’s death, she watched it all”. Sometimes I ask, should I be criticizing anyone? My pain is so strong at times, but I don’t know your pain. Why should I always be lamenting mine, mine, mine? I don’t know what is under your shirt or another’s person’s.
I think if we stopped being so proud and learned how to give, the world would be a much better place.
That’s all I’m saying. Having to give, we don't have to give a coin. But I think we should give a smile, a handshake, a hug at the right time, I think that is all priceless. At least that is what life taught me and that money is indeed useful, we work all day to make it. If you ask me if I have anything, my answer is yes I have. If you ask me if I have money, my answer is, I don’t. “But do you have many friends?” I say, “yes” I have good friends.
Overall that's what I can say. I have everything I need. God took a daughter, yes, and it's a moment that I can’t explain. To get a phone call saying “Your daughter has died in an accident” is something of.... I can’t explain. I don't even really know what I went through. I think we have some internal injection that anesthetizes our whole body. I recall some moments when I pick up the phone and someone says something like Raquel had an accident, and then I call a number and they tell me on the line:
“Alcina, your daughter is dead”.

After that I feel we have a grinding inside that gives us an injection which... I don't know sometimes I would like to be able to explain. From there we draw our own conclusions - My daughter was a very simple person. Any upsets I had with her were over her simplicity. I have learned these days and I've even said this on TV, I learned how to know my daughter after I lost her. Why did I get so angry if she was really just humble? She got a solicitor’s license, she was working in her own office, things were working out well and I never needed to give her any money and she left me no debt. Right ?
I used to get angry “Raquel, go get your nails done” “Eeeuh” “Aren’t they clean mother?”
Or I would say: “That shirt is getting old”, she would wear lots of blouses and shirts. “Oh Raquel, That...”, “Oh Mother, isn't it washed and ironed?”
From that moment on I learned to see the ... and believe what I say even if they say I’m crazy, I talk to her. I do. I found out how her simplicity revealed itself after we lost her. These days I have learned that Raquel, as the older ladies who are in their seventies and eighties would say to me, “Raquel was not only yours, Raquel was ours. Raquel is missed at church. Raquel is missed here. Raquel was the soul of the rancho because after she left the rancho was no more”.
I don't know, the simplicity of that girl, she would come out here , we have a mill behind the cheese dairy where we mill rye and corn for the sheep. She would go in there and get all floured up, all white and dusty.
“Oh Raquel look at yourself”, “I don't care Mother”.

Many times the arguments I had with my daughter were about how little care she had for herself.
Then I saw how much care she had for others. And that's what made her a great person. Just this year I walked to Fatima and one of her godfathers said “Raquel was only 28 years old but left a meaning in the village of Videmonte, a meaning that we won't have even if we die at 80, 90 or 100. Therefore we see, my daughter was a giver, I’d get angry and tell her “Raquel you will end up without your own things” Mom, I don't care“
So there it is, if everyone gave, because giving is not just giving out money. A hug counts, support, affection counts, a visit. Don't they? I think that would be it - all we would need for a little change in this society of ours.

|thE End|
|thE OnlY End|
|mY friEnd|

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