quarta-feira, 27 de abril de 2011

Teoria da Ponte, ou hipótese da ponte

Conversando com um novo possível amigo, ele falava que todas as relações - o foco da conversa eram os relacionamentos amorosos e de amizade - terminam de alguma forma frustrante. Ele pedia para que os presentes dessem exemplos de pessoas que eles conheciam desde a infância e que ainda estavam ali, ao lado da pessoa. Ou foi algo assim. Não vou lembrar das palavras exatas dele, mas o tom resignado dele me fez pensar sobre aquilo nos dias que se seguiram.

Eu sempre fui defensor da hipótese de que as coisas podem sempre dar certo, de que se você investe energia, tempo, arranja um tempo na agenda super cheia e tal, qualquer relação pode se manter, já que os dois lados obtêm algum tipo de satisfação ou realização.

O problema é que eu também sou adepto do mutatis mutandis. Acho que "tudo está na natureza e em movimento", como diria a Joana n'"A gota d'água". E esse movimento faz com que tudo vá mudando: nossos gostos já não são os mesmos, nossos padrões de julgamento, nossos sonhos. E com a velocidade com que as coisas estão acontecendo hoje em dia, mal a gente consegue acompanhar o passo das nossas mudanças. quantas vezes você não se olhou no espelho e não se reconheceu? Olhou pra dentro e falou, meio assustado, "Meu, quem é você?". Mas a gente tá ocupado e mal se pergunta isso, de forma verdadeira, querendo saber a resposta de fato. (Medo, né?)

Daí,lembrei da teoria da ponte. Já falei dela em outro post. Ali eu falei que alguém tinha me falado da teoria, mas na verdade acho que gostei tanto que prefiro dizer que é minha hoje. Como ele não vai se opor a mim nem aqui e nem em lugar nenhum, eu sinto que posso.

A tal da teoria se diferencia um pouco de outra com o mesmo nome. Talvez seja melhor eu chamar a minha de hipótese da ponte. Fica meio pseudo-científico, mas evita confusão pra quem for googlar a palavra.

Sem muito mais rodeio, explico o cerne da minha hipótese: todas as pessoas são mais pontes do que portos seguros. Como assim? A gente conhece alguém, ela mostra algo pra gente, algo sobre eles, sobre nós mesmos, nos leva a outros lugares, lugares nunca antes imaginados, nunca antes adentrados, ou nos levam a lugares onde sempre estivemos, mas olham pra eles com olhos diferentes. Até aqui, tudo lindo. Isso é a amizade, o amor, não? Pois bem, o que acontece é que uma ponte serve pra gente cruzar um certo espaço, água ou terra, por onde a gente não poderia passar sem ela. E de repente, a ponte acaba. A gente chegou ali do outro lado.

O que fazer? Abandonar a ponte? Ela foi tão importante pra fazer você chegar ali do outro lado, ela foi tão carinhosa, tão paciente. Ela já sabe de todos os seus problemas, de todos os seus defeitos e te aceitou mesmo assim.

Mas ela é ponte. A caminhada continua do outro lado. E assim deveriam ser as pessoas. Tem gente que é pinguela, tem gente que é a Ponte do lago Pontchartrain.Não dá pra saber logo de início. Afinal, a gente muda e a ponte muda.

Assim, quando uma pessoa passa, assim como a ponte termina, como eu posso ficar frustrado, aborrecido que ela passou? Vai deixar saudade? Certeza. Vai ser diferente das outras pontas todas, única? Sem dúvida. Mas olhando a sua volta, tantas outras pontes no horizonte.

Isso significa que se deve amar menos cada ponte, caminhar mais rápido de ponte em ponte? Não. Significa que a própria efemeridade de caminhar por sobre ela, sabendo que ela chega do outro lado, que ela tem um fim, é exatamente isso que faz com que você a ame mais (pelo menos em teoria).

Então, não, querido. As amizades e as relações amorosas nunca terminam de forma frustrante porque elas terminam. Afinal, você nunca está no mesmo lugar em que estava antes ao cruzar a ponte, nem ela é a mesma depois dos seus passos. E a caminhada em direção ao horizonte continua.

domingo, 17 de abril de 2011

Travel log - Europe - Day 6

Day 6 - Bruges

So this was our last of Belgium. Again, we would travel and Louis would stay home. But it was some practice for the rest of the trip, as we would then be on our own. We woke up early and had breakfast. He took us to the station and this time we bought the right (though not so cheap) ticket to Bruges.
We boarded and now we would not mistake the station. However, do you know when you think you are in the wrong place, but you cannot be really sure until someone comes and tells you that? So, we got on the train in the first class and, of course, our tickets were second. It was not deliberate, but the guy gently told us off and we headed for the place we belonged.
As soon as we arrived in the city, we bought a map and asked for some nice places to go. I guess after our experience in Antwerpen, Louis had decided not to do the planning with us (as we did only 3/11 of what he had planned). We started walking toward the city center and we fell in love with it just then. The weather was not so good, it was cold and wet, it snowed a bit, sometimes it looked like a drizzle. Later, when it was getting dark it also got foggy. It gave the city an atmosphere and we just loved it even more.
The streets were narrow and the buildings were short and made of apparent bricks. There were small bridges and canals. We visited one monastery and it was funny because there was a church there and it was empty. So even tough there was a sign of no pictures, Carol could take one. She told me, no one saw me anyway. I answered: God is watching. We laughed out loud. But she stopped with the pictures. And she is not even that religious.



After some walking more, we got hungry and we started the process of choosing a place to go. There were a bunch of small restaurants, and one nice thing we have there is the menu by the door so we could check the prices before entering. We selected one which was fancy but not expensive (most of them were like that). So we chose our dishes. I had some wine with mine but Carol didn’t because she thought some orange juice would come along with her dish. But in fact it was the dessert that was orange whatever... a kind of pudding. As the magnanimous person that I am, we shared my wine (OK, as Carol remembers it, she only had a drop of it). I ordered some chicken with a strange sauce. It had a lot of bones, which I don’t like so much. I thought it was fillet or a steak. Carol preferred beef, but the meat was hard and dry, in spite of the sauce. So the lunch was not a top one, but we had fun and it was a moment to get warm.



After that, we headed for some museums. The day was getting dark. We saw some stores, bought some chocolate and got to the museum of chocolate just 15 minutes before closing, so the guy didn’t let us in. We went to a museum which we knew would close later and although it was a bit expensive (10 euros), we had a lot of fun in the Museum of Salvador Dali.



Then we got to the main square and there was a street market there. Besides, there was a ice-skating place, and I told Carol I wanted to go. She told me she was not into it, but I childishly insisted, so I was going and she would stay outside taking pictures and all. I discovered it was very cheap to stay there for 1 hour. And that’s what I did. I put on the skates, and I didn’t bind them correctly. It was easy when they were a bit loose, but someone told me I could have an accident and I went for help in order to tighten the boots. After that, things got a bit rougher and they were removing the snow on the ice so I got more slippery. But the thing is it was my first time ice-skating (here in Sao Paulo you can find places to ice-skate indoors, but I had never had the opportunity of trying it) and I didn’t fall even once. I nearly did several times, but I managed to maintain my balance and avoid the fall. Meanwhile, Carol went for some shopping. She found a FNAC and she was paying 0,40 without complaining. But I guess she had what she wanted without having to pay (later, in the train station, the toilets were closed after 7pm, to our astonishment, and the restaurant inside there was charging double fee - that’s capitalism - but when we got out nobody was there to charge.) One interesting thing that happened is that I was wearing borrowed shoes and as soon as I left Belgium I would have to return them. So in Bruges, we found some shoe stores. I was going through some boots for snow and the saleswoman was very kind and gave me some options. When she discovered we were Brazilians, she got extra nice asking questions and the first one was ‘what are you doing here in such a cold weather if you have all the sun and hot back home?’ Well, my sweet lady, I wondered the same thing several times later. And she kept our shoes while we walked a bit more, so that we wouldn’t have to carry them around.
***
The way back was fine. A group of girls sittten across the aisle and who were probably American had to pay an extra charge of 50 euros each because they had the wrong tickets with them. Ours were correct so we just had to feel sorry for them.
When we got home we had dinner, and there were, among other things, reindeer meatballs. I had already tasted it, but Carol was not so comfortable tasting it, but she, as the real adventurer she is, did it without a frown.
We said goodbye to everyone as we would wake up at a not very humane hour to get to the airport (who had bought the tickets for so early a flight?). It was the time to give the gifts we had brought to everyone. We were not very sure on what to take and we took some simple things, we should have been more sophisticated, but we had no idea about anyone of them, so it was fair enough. The last memories we had there was Louis going upstairs with us and talking and talking like we used to do in Brazil, about the future, about the expectations of the rest of the trip. It was so nice. Packing and packing and of course I forgot my sneakers there.

domingo, 10 de abril de 2011

Travel log - Europe - Day 5

Day 5 Namur and Louvain

We woke up and I realized something curious during breakfast. The other days there was one thing I could not identify bothering me during this meal and when i saw what there was to eat I finally understood: the previous breakfasts had no salted ingredients. They normally have sweet breads and cookies with jams and chocolate. And for me if there is no rotisserie, there is no breakfast. Cheese, ham, salted butter are a must. I don’t know if this is something Brazilian, but I got so happy to have bread with ham and cheese.
So, we got in the car and set off for a different city which would be our destination: Namur. It is a city not so far from Brussels again, but different from the others, it was in the French-speaking part of Belgium. However, the city itself was not our final destination. We had to pick up our friend’s girlfriend, somewhere near the city and we would have lunch with his grandmother.
Besides his girlfriend, his brother was going with us. It was a sweet surprise to discover he was not what we imagined. By what Louis had told us in Brazil, we had an image of his brother as a too serious person, a kind of suit-and-tie yuppy, who would barely talk to us. But he was so nice and talked about everything. After that day, we felt sad we didn’t have more time to spend with him.
So the first place we went to was a fortress from where we could see the whole town. The snow was high and it gave us ideas and we started playing with it but Louis - with his 13-year-old spirit made poor Sara almost roll in the snow and she got really wet.




We got to grandma’s house and the house was very interesting - old architecture, a lot of pictures and small details, it seemed we had entered another century. She was a very sweet old lady, she even resembled a little Queen Elizabeth. And there were a lot of rituals we had to follow, she told us where each should sit when we got to the table and some people were lucky to eat watching the river just outside the window.



Carol and I were not the lucky ones, as we sat back to the windows. Something interesting was that whatever was served there was grown in their gardens and the meat had been hunted. It was the first time I tasted pheasant. During lunch there was a funny moment because they were talking about history and they asked me to tell them in French some details about D. Pedro II. I had no idea because it had been more than 10 years I had studied and read about Brazilian Imperial history. After lunch, we went to the living room and not even the coffee they served helped Carol not doze off while they were going on and on in French.
***
After leaving Namur, we set off to another city on the way back to Brussels. It was a special place beacuse it was the city where our friends study. It’s called Louvain la neuve.



It was built in the 70s after a kind of dissent that teh French speaking people wanted to have classes in French but the university is in a Dutch speaking place so these Franco-Belgians went for it and had their own university city. It was quite different from a university city, but it was just lovely. The buildings were low and the apartments seemed small but cozy. We tried to visit a museum that there is there - a comics museum - but it was closed. There were some stores, we spent some time in a comics store. We also got to know the library of Engineering and Math. It was getting colder and colder so we decided to go home. We were invited to a party by one of Sara’s friends and it would be in a bar. Carol was not in the mood of going and I wanted to stay and talk more to Felix, but we felt it would be very impolite of us not to go. we had some hours for showering and resting. And it was time for another movie. This time it was Corpse Bride - but again, it was never completely watched in the middle of it we had to stop because it was time to go. So we went. When we got there, it was a bar where there was a conveyor belt which would continuously keep bringing dishes. There was a big menu with color codes on the wall and you would check out the dish you want, just grab it out of the belt and remove the plastic transparent lid and have fun eating it. After some time we were told we should pay by each dish we had. I learned that the bad way. But, at the end, they had some kind of discount and we paid less than we were supposed to. There were some interesting people that night but most of them were not into talking to us, so we were having fun ourselves. One of the guys was really messy and did a lot of stupid things, we didn’t know if he was just a jerk or if he was trying to get the attention. Afterwards, we walked a bit and ended up in a bar with some of the people who were there with us. I had a chance to have a different type of beer which came in a quite exotic glass.




And I talked to Sara in French for about half an hour. Quite challenging. Carol had stuck to English and she made some new friends as we sat far from each other. She would only speak non-stop French as soon as we set foot in Berlin, but this is another story. We still would have our last day of Belgium. And what a day.