Yorkshire Sagarana

We sailed down to the n'even-margins of the oneiric backcountry, me and the British co-captain, to visit writer João Guimarães Rosa (1908-1967) in his farm in Minas Gerais, Brazil. We walked along the windows of the white house from which Rosa greeted us, and I greeted him: “É Dia de Galinha! é Dia de Galinha!” — very aware of the capital letters — or was it “It's Chicken Day! it's Chicken Day!” that I said; even I know not no more.

It rained. The three of us sat outside, on a plastic table, for the prose. Rosa mentioned his upcoming trip in November, to Berlin or to Paraty. It seems that this November they'll all be going, I said, yeah, perhaps I'll go; I'd like to. Such and such writers, our common acquaintances, I saw that they will go too. And which language we spoke I still don't know, but I recall considering whether my companion, with whom I communicate in English solely, might be feeling estranged in face of my talking in that manner which he'd never witnessed before. Manner Brazilian Literature. Which he was however comprehending, participating of, by way of his listening.

João Guimarães Rosa seemed healthy, was sun tanned, youthful and very smiley, as in the photographs of his research period amidst the Brazilian backcountry cowboys. I know his voice intimately; in my human magma.

The word 'Sagarana', title of his consecration book, registers the amalgam which is the mark of his writing: based on the countryside orality, he makes use of regionalisms and archaisms there preserved, dedicating himself equally to adapting foreignisms and creating neologisms, polyglot was he — and so he sums the germanic saga (= set or series of stories) plus the tupi suffix -rana (= in the manner of).

In the previous day to our oneiric literary visit, us co-captains had been to the beach at the coast of North Yorkshire. To get to the sea from my companion's home village, one drives along farms and wheat plantations. The drive was soundtracked by the album 'Plastic Beach', evoking Gorillaz's virtual island, an airspace which both our adolescences frequented with their heart's magma, which remains.

In my Brazilian childhood, Yorkshire stood only for our terrier Zezinho, short for Zé, nickname for José — who lived, though cadaveric, up to his nineteen, my eighteen; and who fell from the sailboat some times: on the first ones being able to save himself, on the last having to be saved: Yorkshire overboard, Yorkshire overboard!...

The beach is called Hunmanby Gap. Which I read Human by Gap. Which is the empty space between two entities, through which they can mix themselves; translate; unite: the amalgam of their human magmas. In the manner of, there I lived, in our midst, my human magma; I, who dream of water almost every night; be it sea, river, lake or lagoon; or the backcountry ocean, of which I have only sniffed the edges, in the Ibitipoca, Minas Gerais.

Being the northern sea too cold, I didn't swim as I'd have liked. But in the evening I swam — in the hot bathtub while we watched 'The Embrace of the Serpent': in the manner of, were we amalgamated in the aquatic gap; our shared ship on the acoustic river. Such as are, in the film, the paths of the germanic anthropologist and the indigenous shaman, while they slide together on the Amazon waters. In the film, their magmas are set wide-open in egality — through their amalgamated destinies; guided by symbols outside and inside their dreams. The jaguar's eyes advising this and that, the amazonic serpent eating her own eggs. When the tapir dives in the river, it's time to give oneself fully to the paired saga.

Rosa said of his writing of 'Sagarana': that when the time came for it to be written, he thought a lot. On a little boat, which was coming down the river and would pass where his hands could reach, he would be able to put whatever he wanted. Especially, in that boat could board, whole, at that moment, his conception-of-the-world.

But my co-captain said that this airship, differing to that little boat, is infinite, continuous, and there's no limit of space or time to what can board it.

Getting out of the bathtub and getting out of the river, the Yorkshire Sagarana, this double captainship vessel, slid on the no-word of every idiom. We silently watched the night sky.