I’ve waited through your drinks all night bent over
(Seated though this patience grown, we slept inside the ocean)

Decided phantom cards were talkative and late
(Tarot; the boulder’s light tonight, you say what wants to say)

I’ve waited in a dress and I’ve waited in a suit
(I carried masks of silence limping cornered in the pew)

To not the friend is none, the lover sighed in wait
(I’ve never met a heart of glass to shine behind a day)

Your back is moving forward, I’m still in place
(Try the talk on end of peace, we treat the year, the face)

I am still here, and I’ll be yet and all
(Will you move from beyond your fears, or will you only sing the songs?)

About the text:

I’ve reached out to a friend from back in 2014. She was one of the only girls on our internet friend group back then, and because of some immaturity on everyone’s part she ended up leaving the group and for a while I didn’t speak with her anymore. We kept at it for a while, but always at a certain distance.

This time, though, when I called for her, we had some deep conversations. She told me about some issues she had with the people back then, and with myself, and also about her mental health and people in general. She’s from São Paulo, but she’s coming to Rio at the end of the month for her birthday. She called me to go to the beach with her, I said yes. It’s been a while since I’ve been to the beach. I’m pale. Will the water be too cold? Will the wind be air or wave? And how will my friend be, after twelve years?

But today’s experiment on language wasn’t about her. When I was talking to her, she mentioned the divide she has between herself and other people. Many friends of mine express this problem. I face this problem, in fact. There is sometimes a space too large between myself and other people, and I can’t be listened to, I can only be heard.

But I thought about it and told her something. I told her that I love other people and the world. It’s a very recent feeling, it’s hard to know if it was born with me.

First of all, I love kindness. I love other people when they are kind, or when they have kindness in them. Kindness, as I said to her, is a very primitive, instinctive thing to me. It’s an immediate reaction; true kindness can’t be performed, imitated or corrupted. And it’s not about an action. You are not kind simply because you think being kind grants you something in the world. Someone who’s kind, to me, does something kind simply because it made sense to them. But it’s before any doing, it’s a feeling irradiating from you. It’s the electricity moving your body to care.

But lastly, I love the world. I love it because I see kindness in it. I think the world, the nature and even manmade structures, the places we live in and what we can see when our eyes are open, is wonderfully kind. Maybe we’ve lost what brought us here, and we’re seeing more and more that what is hateful must spring and that we’re supposed to last only in memory. But I’ve seen trees green like fire red, I’ve seen the world move around every moment I care for. I see something that must be, at the very least, the landscape for a dream I wish I never wake up from. Yes, the world is so kind, because reality’s power of torture grows the scars we call our mind. At the very least, the world is a cloud in the sea.

And I told this friend that this is what connects me to other people. I see kindness in the world, and I see kindness in some people; the connection is made. Even if I can’t understand how the other mind function, I am as part of the world as the world is a part of my body. If I can find kindness in the roots of the tree in a human being’s mind, I follow the kindness in the roots in the soil around me.

And I told her that I only see it this way because someone else helped me. She was a very kind person, and she had a very kind vision. She saw things in a very kind way. And she would tell me how structures and buildings would actually have a meaning beyond servitude, and I started to see the world through her kind eyes. There was a reason for places to be, but before there was a reason, there were the places. And even if she disagreed, even if the world would not be a kind cloud to her, she contaminated me with the thought that we’re supposed to care about it. The world is kind and people can be kind, and I learned that because I met a very kind person.

I was really close on calling her and saying something the other day. I’m not sure if she wants it. I’m not sure if I’ve shown her the world is a kind place at all. I’m not sure if she would read a word alone of mine. I wish I could get a sign she’s waiting, and not another tarot video on instagram; there’s been hundreds of those already. I wish she would talk to me. But I think I wore her kindness thin.

So this text is about waiting. As my friend says, what we have with some people ends up showing up when talking to others, it’s inevitable. And I think, by how much I tire my friends with her, she became my favorite subject.

About her: please don’t judge me for my falls. you haven’t been to the heights i’ve been.

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