Why me! -Jade da Rocha

Suddenly after months in silence he decided to sail toward her land, it was low tide when he arrived.    Although he was very engaging and careful; to her was a flake approach –just an excuse for a clean cut, an insatiable journey of collectible moments. She could not know if were fake or real. In that moment he was like a squid that lives in most oceans but rarely seen. The taste of doubt was rushing through her veins with insufficient evidence to seal his fate. In a stranger way it seemed to become irrelevant to her and she followed her intuition giving herself entirely to this fantasy that she could have chosen to never be part of it.

I saw this woman heart bleeding, overflowing love. I could hear the echo of her weak voice deafening silence thought the ferocious venues of life. It was if I witnessed an unpleasant alienation of a crying soul genuinely crashing in a life’s corner.

Why me? Why I have to cross her path at this late hour of this harshly yet, cold night in Deer Valley, Utah?

I was hoping she was looking to the opposite side of the valley.

I recollected no one other than me noticing her hurt feelings. Everyone else was sporadically transpiring the adrenaline rush of a Bloody Mary, mingling around the Garden of Fire; the smell of burning coal fusing with the snow-covered mountain.

But what impressed me was that no one could see the fear in her eyes. No one could sense her undeniable sorrow. Nobody had ever seen her again, no one cares. Why have to be me interpreting her pain?

Why me?

Breach of life! –Jade da Rocha

In the greenroom the performer grieve in front of the mirror;

He is curling in fetal position,

He is in excruciating pain, miserable games

    disposable possessions. 

He is screaming in front of the fire, fervent impartial feelings

    profane, shameless ode.

The mind running like a fox tangled in a line cut of unnecessary ado

 to continuously build a fence; iron coated with rust corrosive remains

 of a pity, misunderstood soul searching for guidance.

Get up, look outside the fence.

Indeed, between Earth and Mercury; Venus reflect brilliancy

Brighten the river

Infusion to the perennial fragrant water lily

     Breach of life!

-Jade da Rocha

Memories - Jade da Rocha

Several years ago, when I was just a teenager I lived in Governador Valadares a city of eastern Brazil. During that period my family had a financial crisis and as a consequence to that, I used to walk for about 40 minutes to go to school every single day. One of my favorite spot was “Praça Serra Lima”; One of the most traditional praças (square) in town, with a fountain in the center.  On Sundays after church I used to seat in a bench with my friends and watched the Capoeira group dance and sing with a berimbau (percussion instrument). We had so much fun hanging there for awhile.

 Around the “praça” was this wrought iron structure mixed with terracotta bricks of a 12 floors unfinished building. So, every day throughout several years the people’s town passed by around this giant skeleton. Evidently, an expression of fragility on the profitable business of the hospitality industry of a small town; there might have had other reasons for not having completed the construction of the building.

In middle of the Seventies, with the creation of the trade association the businesses had heated and the city started to grow again and eventually they had started the construction again. It was no small challenge and investment for this audacious project at that period of time.

In 1979, they were willing to change the atmosphere of a small town to a sparkly hotel as in a metropolis, completing the construction of the hotel and named it “GPH Hotel” offering an extensive selection of professional services with an upper class shopping center and a night club that became a sensation back then.  After that was stimulation for investors to invest in the civil construction resulting a boom in the financial scale of the city.

The old, unfinished building marked so many people’s life; ones with hopes of a better life, others enjoying a satiated life; many dreams. The modern construction brought the evolution, the progress, a new beginning for so many residents.

Many years had passed and every time I go to Brazil and visit Governador Valadares, I remember the old times and in those moments, that grotesque structure always returns to my memory.