A Floresta Submersa

Minha auto-crítica adverte que não tenho qualquer pretensão de escrever em inglês. Tratava-se de uma mera redação que devia ser feita na língua de Shakespeare, Robert Wyatt e Bob Dylan acerca do lugar mais remoto a que já fora. É a Amazônia na época de cheia. Se o Luiz não tivesse aprovado, provavelmente nem me daria ao trabalho de publicá-la. É uma descrição. Tem uma penca de palavras repetidas. Poderia ter feito com mais capricho e enfatizado algum estilo. Nem parnasiano deve ser. Mas como faz algum tempo que não homenageio as redações de escola, por quê não? Espero (esperemos) que o Luiz esteja certo.

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"The most far-flung place I have ever been to is, most likely, Amazon. We couldn't sleep in the jungle, of course, nor did we spend the nights at the community that we were visiting. We would sleep on a boat, in the river or some marsh, thus we'd have the impression of waking in the sea, so vast and enormous we couldn't see both banks (if any) at the same time. And, at night, the Milky Way would be sprayed in the sky, something pollution and electric light took from our sight and hadn't yet reached Amazon. Saying it is gorgeous, amazing, unusual, etc, etc, etc, is unnecessary. Or perhaps we thought so because we had never seen it before. We would bathe in the river itself at the sunset (yet another beauty was to see the sun diving), and I still imagine a sunken forest far below the water: patient trees waiting the dry season to allow them to surface again. The forest is, needless to say, something else. The most striking feeling was that you could walk forever and never find a way out. There was hardly any wind, the sun would often be eclipsed by the oh-so-many trees. What would we find at the darkness as black as a man's soul, I can't even wonder (albeit it cannot be more frightening than something that has come from our imagination, can it?). I would not be surprised if your dreams get more and more unusual there. I know mine did try to explore the mysterious forest that creeps inside anybody's thoughts and curiosity. I am afraid it is impossible to satisfy this curiosity: the mysteries must be infinite. Thousands and thousands of secrets by square meter, what a wonder is it. Perhaps I understand why people describe the trip to Amazon as a return to our animal origins... everyone keeps their own sunken forests beneath the tiny surface of consciousness."