MURMÚRIOS DE LISBOA CXVIII

The Secret Name of God

We call it God. We should call it something else ...

I know ...

I feel it. I felt the change. Every change in my own body.

I used to fall in love every week! I used to desire every day! I used to have ups and downs every hour!

And then they messed with my body. They put chemicals in it. A lot! A load of potent, strong, lethal chemicals, designed to kill the most lethal of deseases. In the process they also killed my good cells, my quiet cells, my secret cells.

I became clean of the cancer. But also clean of "vision", clean of depression, clean of highs and lows.

Then they messed some more with my body. They took my ovaries. They forgot to warn me. I became again clean of danger. But also of desire. And of life.

Now I feel empty. Life is less. I thought it had to do with my mother's death. I came to realize it had nothing to do with that. It's the lack of the ability to produce life.

They call it menopause. When a woman looses the gift of life she also looses the gift of enjoying life. It all makes sense. Life is now telling her - you're useless, because you can't procriate, so you're useless to me now, so now you don't need to feel anymore.

Empty. Devoid. Of everything. Not just desire for flesh, but desire for all things. Yellow doesn't look like the same yellow anymore. "Every breath you take" doesn't sound like the real "Every breath you take" anymore. New York is not the same New York anymore. Orange doesn't taste like orange anymore. Everything is less. And less is no longer more.

I don't fall in love every week anymore. I don't need that anymore, my body tells my brain. I feel like a serial killer, who has to go to extremes to feel something, so he kills. I don't kill. I've been killed. But I continue, like a zombie. Rubbing myself against life in a worthless effort to feel something again.

They call it God. They should call it something else. I know.

They should call it PTE - Periodic Table of Elements. They are our Gods. Tiny, invisible, powerfull, hipnotic gods. They rule our lives in secret. The irony of it is that they do it in the open, in front of our eyes. They are everywhere, everywhere we look, all around us, inside and outside of us. And yet we don't see them. We don't aknowledge them. We pass them, blind, deaf, like moths attracted to the light of an inexistent, worthless God we think lives above us, somewhere up in the sky. It doesn't.

They're right here among us. They are so many. They are so resilient. They are so flexible. They are so versatile. They are capable of acting their powers all alone and they can combine between themselves to create powers even greater.

Their names? Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon, Magnesium, ...