We have had the Devil to pay lately, here in Maringouin. We have lost some people and a program. The above song sings to the 1964-84 Brazilian dictatorship that in spite of it, tomorrow is another day.
And in life generally, we had so much advice on how to get things done. I, however, have known how since elementary school – public elementary school in a decent district, in a rich state, in the sixties – so well that I did not need further advice in college, or in graduate school, or beyond.
It is not a question of how to get things done. It is a question of having a work, and of having license to work on it with your own expertise. This is what I did not quite learn in a public university, in an excellent district, in a rich state, in the eighties. I needed it to learn it.
It is also a question of having peace of mind. This was a need I had met and could not have imagined not having, in a decent university, in a decent district, in a poorer state, in the nineties.
It was a right I relinquished in Maringouin. Peace of mind and a work, and license to work on my work are the things I have at last attained, malgré tout and apesar de você. These are the things I guard, paying the Devil, here in the backlands.
I am prepared at last to seriously read Grande Sertão: Veredas, in which the backlands become an abstract, philosophical landscape. The characters walk through the world, a sea of words, on paths of blood, lung, heart.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 