Razors, Devils, and Hearts

What do razors, devils, and hearts have to do with Brazil?  For that I have to go back to the beginning, which is a fairly short story.  I was born with tachycardia, rapid heartbeat, which has been fairly easy to treat.  I take a beta-blocker three times a day, and my heart rate usually stays within a normal range, at least until about ten months ago when I had my first bad episode.

My pulse jumped about seventy beats per minute in the span of seconds, and then it dropped back within a normal range, but it was startling.  My head pounded.  I realized I could feel my own heart in my toes, a weird sensation, and I thought I was having a heart attack.  It was the first sign of things to come over the past few months that have included many tests and few answers.  Technically, I still do not know precisely what is happening to me or why.  I only know I don't have heart disease, but I am constantly anemic and don't appear to absorb B-12 well.  My doctor tells me they'll figure it all out eventually, and perhaps this is true.  In the meantime, my heart is the catalyst to go to Brazil.  It's what reignited an old desire, just a small thought after pulling the poem I keep in my wallet out to read for the ten millionth upon millionth time.  The idea to go to Brazil and learn more was always there, steadily burning a hole in my brain, but now my heart is involved.  The episodes continue to happen, pulse skyrocketing and then plummeting, and I'm sure I'll have more tests to take over the next few months.  That is life.  Since I spoke to another doctor, I am not as panicked about all of this as I was in the beginning; that is also life.  Learning to cope better daily.

This brings to me to an old phrase, "Tell the truth and shame the devil."  My truth is I am a little scared this is going to end before I even get a chance to buy a plane ticket let alone discover more about the poetry of Adélia Prado and whether the translations I have are even close to accurate.

"The Dark of Night"

I'm singled out by flashes
embedded in half-sleep,
pre-dawn, Gethsemane hour.
These visions are raw and clear,
sometimes peaceful,
sometimes pure terror
without the bone structure
daylight provides.
The soul descends to hell,
death throws its banquet.
Until everyone else wakes up
and I can doze,
the devil eats his fill.
Not-God grazes on me.

Adélia Prado
translation by Elle Doré Watson


Late at night, all my thoughts drag me back to Occam's Razor.  The idea is that the simplest explanation is usually true, but not always.  I apply the razor to the problem of my heart, it leaves me to wonder if it's all in my head.  If I'm doing this to myself, which is a lot scarier than the medical complications of tachycardia.  Still, it's the heart-literally and figuratively-urging me to press forward. If the mind is soil, is the heart a watering can and the blood the flora?  No, that doesn't work.  I'll have to give that a bit more thought before committing to it.

Written in a garden, though certainly not at the "Gethsemane hour", but I imagine Brazil is as interesting a garden as the one we call the United States.

"Oblivious"

She sits, legs folded beneath her, staring into worn out pages
of a dog-eared tome the color of old wheat.
Slim fingers, unadorned and pale in sunlight, turn pages rapidly, 
nearby a man mutters he’d like to be the book.
She holds it gently, a curious quirk to her lips, gasping aloud,
oblivious to her admirer angling himself for a better view.
Once she stops to sip some water, pondering a lifetime, and
the man looks away, as though caught stealing.

Tara Saint-Clair

This is how razors, devils, and hearts can be related to one person's need to live and breathe words that aren't her own, in a place she's never seen outside of photographs and film, but she'd love to know it all better.