Last Monday, I decided to delete the Twitter app. I had been thinking about deactivating it for some time. Most of the people I followed are journalists, commentators, newspapers, etc. Thus, for a long time, it has been working as a news program. Of course, among the news, there are also memes, images and funny texts, but Brazil – I'll name it that way to be synthetic – has not allowed them to stand out. Sleeping in this country is a wonder every night what absurdity or atrocity we will encounter tomorrow. There is no rest.
After two days without having the Twitter app on my phone, I found myself several times looking for it. In one of them, I actually looked for him, not understanding where he could be, until I remembered that I had erased him. Anyone who has had the experience of deleting a social network realizes how many times they access it and at what times. In a few days, you have the dimension of the addictive and automatic functioning that we do. This is nothing new.
The fact is that I decided to delete the app because I've been feeling very intoxicated, as if the news were poisons that I'm not able to metabolize. They accumulate in my body and mind. I let myself be affected by almost all of them, some to a greater extent, others to a lesser extent.
It was then that I came across a video of an interview given by Rubem Alves to Antônio Abujamra on the program Provocations , presented today by Marcelo Tas. In this short excerpt, the writer says that he has a "cricket" with the convent people, who when making promises, promise that once grace is achieved, they will climb 40, 400 steps, instead of promising, for example, to read a poem by Fernando Pessoa a day. For Alves, this vision would be of a sadistic God, who is happy with human suffering. He recalls that, after all, God created a garden of delights. "Delicious," he repeats, savoring the word.
After seeing this video, Fernando Pessoa's name stuck in my head. I then took the Book of Disquiet , a book to which I must remember to return more often. I like to open it at random, like an oracle. So I did and was, once again, reminded of Pessoa's unique ability, of his grandiose talent for handling words. I read a few pages and soon had to close the book and look away, both because I was transported to other places and because I needed to absorb those sentences. I wonder how anyone can write in that way.
That was how I imagined, inspired by the speech of Rubem Alves and the power of Fernando Pessoa, a "literary prescription". Dosage: 2 poems by Fernando Pessoa, upon waking up; 1 short story by Lygia Fagundes, right after lunch; 3 poetic prose by Manoel de Barros, at bedtime and 1 chronicle by Clarice Lispector, day in, day out. Better results can be achieved with only moderate use of social networks. Within a week, the symptoms should have subsided.
The "literary prescription" is an antidote to toxic news, but also a way to survive affectively to be able to change things.
