This is the fourth of a series of pieces written earlier in the pandemic by Portuguese writer Gabriela Ruivo Trindade. They appear here in my translation. Both original and translation can be found together on the author's blog.
6 April 2020
I don’t want this to turn into a diary. I don’t know what name to give it. They are just things that cross my mind. Quick thoughts. The world is at a standstill and only our thoughts run free, besides the rivers. Or is it the other way around? We find ourselves stagnating at home; the body insists on going out and running to keep up the illusion of movement, but deep down everything is static, the gaze fixed somewhere in the distance, trying to glimpse a shimmer of hope; as we remain motionless, the dizzying world continues its crazy dash around the king star, bodies fall on the battlefield but we are not there to see, there is only silence, and absence is quickly mistaken for indifference, our heart is bewildered, should we cry, squeeze out every last bit of anguish, or just be grateful it’s not us? Thoughts form in straight lines and curved ones. The other day my boys were talking between themselves; one said that thoughts remain devoid of morality if they do not become actions. An action can be deemed good or bad, but it makes no sense to classify a thought this way. The other disagreed. I entered the conversation and explained to them that, in terms of mental health, thoughts are innocuous; they do not themselves cause damage. Indeed, the more freedom of thought, the better our mental health. Obsessive ideas, those which torment and cause terrible suffering, are nothing more than a doomed attempt to imprison thought, to police it; the fear of thinking is proving one of the most virulent illnesses of our time. There are those who wish to purge negative thoughts and emotions as once we did with the sins of the flesh – we have moved from body to mind, compulsively fleeing everything that is essential to us, our deeply human core. Denying humanity would be the worst possible fate. We need our whole selves, more than ever.
Translated from the Portuguese by Andrew McDougall
Gabriela Ruivo Trindade (Lisbon, 1970) graduated in psychology and has lived in London since 2004. She was the winner of the Prémio LeYa in 2013 for her first novel, Uma Outra Voz, which was also awarded with the Prémio PEN Clube Português Primeira Obra (ex-aequo) in 2015 and published in Brazil in 2018 (LeYa – Casa da Palavra). Her other works include the children’s book A Vaca Leitora (D. Quixote, 2016). Between 2016 and 2020 she contributed to a number of poetry and short story anthologies, and her first poetry collection, Aves Migratórias, was published in 2019 (On y va). She manages Miúda Children’s Books in Portuguese, an online bookshop specialising in children’s literature written in Portuguese.