roads in prison

By Chico Alencar 

(article originally published on the website) the earth is round)

During the dictatorship, initiated by the business-military coup of April 1, 1964, many friends were arrested, tortured and “disappeared like that, never again”. But other companions, who survived, had to endure three, four, six years in the dungeons of the obscurantist regime.

I learned a lot from them – and from life. Above all, I learned that no one can take away our inner freedom. The human being – the one who “is the only living being who refuses to be what he is,” as Albert Camus said – manages to forge paths in prison and see the universe in a grain of sand.

This is how I have been trying to spend these days of isolation, in a situation that is not only unexpected but unprecedented. A new meteor that could fall to Earth has always been a threat, gigantic, apocalyptic, but we believed that space science, with the help of the tremendous weapons developed by nuclear powers for the destruction of "rival nations and peoples," would be able to hit and fragment it.

With the microscopic new coronavirus it's different: nobody yet knows for sure how to stop it. Faith in science, faith in research, faith in the common sense of those in power – yes, some will never have it and need to be isolated and quarantined. Faith in what is to come! Faith, above all, in what is up to us and nobody will do for us: our ability to survive. In the minutiae of daily life, in the absolutely necessary isolation, only a few fools in the world haven't understood.

Surviving in isolation is also about creating roads within the "prison." Making your room your temple, a space for prayer and/or meditation. Turning the potted plant, watered every day, into a garden. Making the daily tasks of washing, cooking, and sweeping an exercise in discipline and even your leisure time. Making reading a magic carpet, where you travel the world without leaving your place. Making physical exercise, essential and so beneficial, a preparation for the Olympics you dream of competing in, as if you were a young man.

More: to make your window the best human and astronomical observatory. And also to make it your place in the solitary rally of the multitudes. Virtual multitudes that sing and applaud those who cannot stop to save us. Scattered multitudes, but united to boo with all the strength of their lungs the executioners of logic, the merchants of faith, the gangsters of politics, the executioners of science, the murderers of hope.

One day, a "tomorrow that will be another day," we will meet again in person, grown through suffering. "New water springing forth and us loving each other without end!"