The impossible world

The impossible world

São Paulo, September 19, 2084

“ Are you sure about that?”, the man asks the woman, while holding their three-year-old son in his lap. 

“There's no turning back now. Maybe Jimi can come back, but only if Earth improves.” She caresses her son.

“I'm scared of the trip,” he says.

“You won’t even see it, we’ll be in the cryoimmersion,”she responds.

“True,” he says. But the whole idea does not please him, he imagines them entering the camera. This image keep petrifying him and it leaves a silent void in the conversation. 

“At least I booked the three of us together in the same camera,” he compliments himself, thinking of the extra cost for a family camera.

The woman sighs and says sharply,”Why do you always have to be so weak? There is nothing to do, the Earth is not a human place anymore.” ,“I know the Earth doesn’t work anymore, that's why we're boarding here. But I'm gonna miss it.” he says with his eyes downcast.

“You miss a place that no longer exists, look out the window, she says skeptically. He looks out the dry window, his eyes are dry, the cough is dry, the air is dry, life is dry.

“Earth has overheated and nature will have to make peace with what humanity has done. We are making the right decision and we have money to get a good condominium on Mars.” She holds his hand. 

“We live in an impossible world,” he says, repeating the Mars Travels Company advertisement that enters through his retina. He even begins to remember the arguments that it is good to leave Earth; to let it rebuild itself andone day humanity will return. A part of humanity stays, he thinks. In fact, those who do not have the money stay will continue to live in the impossible world. Only a few poor people who get scholarships from Mars Travels get to live on Mars. So the company avoid taxes and does a "good deed”.

He closes his eyes, but even so the image of the dry land disappears. He still remembers 2040 when he was younger and was able to see some of the nature in the parks, his mother said to him that it was not so beautiful anymore, but even so when it rained he smelled fresh from the wet earth. Now it just raises acid that burns the nose.

“Passengers on flight MT1984 please proceed to gate B24 for Boarding. Please have your international passport in hand. First will be the boarding plus and priority customers,” says the woman’s voice on the speaker.

English Review Alice McGushin

Flying hugs,

Mayara Floss

The Conference I want

 Para ler em português clique aqui. 

This text will be a little different from the others. I wanted, in some way, exteriorize a little from this space I’ve been dreaming about. I wanted that my next congress of Family and Community Health were within family and community. Better: if the congress was in rural medicine I wanted it to be in the rural area, in a partnership with the community in one of these places in the countryside. I wanted it to have public participation. The speeches would be a mix of speeches for the community and for the academics. 

This congress would have a varied line-up and the hosting would be done inside the community people’s homes. Lets discuss Family and Community Health within the community, in community. Use the income and expenses with the community. The coffee break and alimentation would be done in the community centres of each place, and not in classy hotels in a sea of inequality. This is not a crazy dream (just a little), but a good logistics, integration, safeness and leadership can change this perspective.

 The intention of all of this would be to integrate the different mediums. Share a little of this knowledge, open other dialogues. In my dream I see the artisans discussing health with doctors and managers. It would be living and not just passing through the congresses. It would be changing perspectives. Picture this idea spreading across the world. I would not get to know India or China: I would live the reality of that community (a little of the reality of the country, but still). I wish that on Sunday, when the congress was done, people went to their houses not just full with ideas, but different. Wiser, with different knowledge and wisdoms.

 I also think that this would be complicated, because in the same time that all the lights would be in that community, they would be turned off and we would have to know how to handle this well. I do not know what would be the impact of it, nor do I know if this is madness, but I also see the madness of the tied-up congresses talking about everything with too much confidence, expensive places out of my reality and out of the community’s reality. Big coffee breaks, big openings, big hotels, many gadgets, purses produced in the big factories. How about the handicraft? 

However, I will not stop dreaming with something more tangible, more “community”, more real. I can even imagine the call: “Come and get to know Caratinga! Come and get to know the central square of the city with less than 100.000 inhabitants, in the countryside of the State of Minas Gerais (Brazil)!”. Or in the rural area of Croatia (in honor to Veronika).. 

Or “Family and Community Health Congress in the slum of Maria Degolada, in Porto Alegre”. Just getting there would be part of the learning process. Not all the population is in the big cities, in the big centres. The coffee break would be at the local bar, would be the food the community eats. We could have an experience of how the rural work in a determined region is, or have a speech given by the local farmer. It could even have the circle with local healers and benzedeiras, women that cure many things with the power of the prayer, and have a vast program discussing Health and the life within Health. These are the idea of the congresses I would like to see. Although they might look like a dream, they are more real than the congresses I have been going.

Mayara Floss 

Translation Portuguese-English Augusto Carvalho