Maybe I have to take some pages out. Do you have any reservations about this type of intervention?
None. I would take several.
It's the editor's job.
Clear; mine too. It's not self-critical, maybe a minimum of hygiene.
Maybe I'll make a bigger cut than you expect.
I would actually like a reasonable cut.
I have never met writers with this good will.
No goodwill; I'm not a writer. I write. Writers give interviews, autographs, appear on TV. Someone has to just write.
The book may be smaller than you would like.
I wish it were tiny. It will probably get better, or even bearable, but brief.
I like irony.
I must take out many pages on my own. Maybe I'll take different pages than you would.
Perhaps. How would we get this right?
We'll keep the 419 at any price. Other than that, nothing matters.
Because? Is it great?
Not. But I want to have the illusion of control. And maybe the book will really shine.
With editing work?
Yup. See, if we take the same pages, possibly not. But if we disagree and keep taking out pages until only the cover, the index and the 419 are left, and we can never miss this opportunity to keep the 419, maybe then things will get great.
I don't trust what you say.
Me neither. I trust even less what I write.
This is common among authors. I trust what you write.
And yet, without reading, he has already decided to take pages.
Would you like a coffee?
If you can discuss the quality after taking it, always.
Honestly, I need professional help.
Any help. As long as they are professionals.
I believe we should talk. Remotely. We're coming out of a pandemic, and I don't want more guilt than I already have.
I wrote some books, many chronicles. I'm proud, maybe unduly but still proud, of what I still think is good.
I also wrote, and produced, many things that I'm not proud of, from commercials to goodbye letters, from impudent e-mails to SMSs with mistakes in Portuguese, or without mistakes, with the broker on, but with things I wouldn't write if had thought. I sent messages to WhatsApp groups when they were actually meant for a specific person. Perhaps a faulty act, perhaps incompetence, certainly stupidity.
I have awards, a few, but as a designer, art director, and with a work that is starting to have semi-ridiculous visibility as an artist. I have a lot more besides, it's worth reading my CV because it's long and I like to brag about nothing. My family still doesn't know exactly what I do. As I know they are busy, I summarized. You, I imagine, are busy, not my family. Follow the CV at the end of this presentation. I want confetti.
As a writer I have no awards. I have no agents, no editors. Not contracts. Not certainties. I could get all this done before our conversation, but it would take some time, and I'm in a hurry. I'm certainly in a hurry. We are on the 980th of March, and March this year, which is the same year as the year before, looks like it will go on until the end of next year. I won't wait any longer.
I have texts. Good. Best. Some great. Some that I don't think are great but you will find them great. Even if they deny it.
I wrote a children's story that I think will be a worldwide hit, if anyone can translate it. Otherwise it will be a success in two or three neighborhoods of SP, even so, a success. We will not research the opinions of other neighborhoods, and if we do, I will publicly criticize the methodology.
Modesty is useful for weaklings and journalists.
The story, THE FIXER, follows for your enjoyment, along with other excerpts from my work.
I'm looking for a conversation about how we can collaborate.
My intention is to dominate Brazil, Argentina/Uruguay, New York, Mexico, Alaska, Germany, Moscow, Sudan, Madagascar, Aral, Omsk, Vladivostok, all of Oceania, conquer 22 territories and destroy the red army or convince them to wear black .
Also, I want to find a(@) agent who thinks I'm great without questioning their own criteria and an(@) editor(@) who simply enjoys taking the same risks as me,
or at least allow me to break deadlines in peace.
I want many more things, I was born with ambitions much greater and more frequent than my occasional competences,
but I'm sorry, I don't know you, I'm suspicious, let's take it easy, I'm not going to tell you everything easily.
Biggest hug (now that we are vaccinated);
I wish you the best that we have available.
But receive me. We will rule the world.
Maurício Trentin
Instructions
Instructions for writing instructions.
1_Basically you should not be an expert in something, but in the description of anything.
2_Study how to forget what you know beyond the minimum necessary for brief instructions.
3_Remember, complicated instructions either don't work or they change their name to Stricto Sensu courses, and nobody wants that with a plane crashing or trying to put on a condom.
4_Instructions should be brief, clear and, whenever possible, in numbered topics.
5_Use few numbers. If the 10 commandments were 5, they would probably have twice as many followers.
Xeroxes
LOOKING FOR twins to work in a xerox place, better known as a copy shop. The machine that copies is actually from another brand, I don't remember exactly, so none of the twins would actually take any kind of xerox, they would make simple copies, never authenticated, copies will always be copies and everyone knows that the only authentic thing is the original, that when the obvious doesn't happen and the original is an absolute forgery. Experience is required, not in copiers, a ridiculous thing any idiot learns in semi-intensive 12-second training, but in being a twin, so we won't accept kids wearing diapers, even if they're pretty and smelling like baby powder. There are several benefits, but only for one of the twins, the other to wear the same clothes and come back after the consultation saying that it didn't work but that he would like to try again. The doctor, between embarrassed and satisfied, will love to spread surreal scribbles with no meaning for the pharmacist to call later confirming if the patient really should buy medicine for calluses and use it internally, who knows this will be the final solution for the big belly of the very thin but a little hunchbacked. The salary, as everyone knows, is a bargain, whatever that means in terms of callus medicine. So we agreed, we will pay with a note of any value, not huge but also not the size of the brothers who smell of baby powder, which can be copied as many times as necessary on the colored machine, which is obviously practical, since everyone knows a few months cost more than others. This ad is repeated, just below, in the newspaper. Please recommend reading to your twin brother.
Points
Today beyond the pain she breathed with her breath. Perfect next to my mouth as she squeezed my neck and the more pain. I felt as the softer the voice said. That I needed to relax and she knows. And choose the exact points. Certain deserts, junctions of my soul's barnacles that. Hurts like death in fascicles but she says it's drama and deep down. Feel sorry but. She goes on and tells me that she misses me and that now. It will hurt a little more because of. A small point, annoying according to her that. Husky hurts me. But she cuddles with her warm hand and she knows. Reasons that only maybe my collarbone can explain, not. Me, who am just pain and maybe I accept it in exchange for feeling her soul brushing against me. My back that aches as if somebody nail my faults and shames in one spot. Small but it hurts as if. All over, the hand slips and I know she would. More if I could, for now what I have is the heat. From the electric blanket and the certainty that I would have her. Hand hurting me every day if we in another time and in another place. We could but not for today that everything is. Shock.
New instructions
This book is to be read like any other, nothing new, follow the rules you were supposed to learn in school. Open the page whose number corresponds to your age, and go on from there until you find any numerical indication. Everyone knows that, of course. Two shirts (2), four houses (4), six bills of some money (6), 34 breasts (34) or 176 centimeters (176). Change as soon as you read the indication to the corresponding page, wait for the next one (it is worth trying). Leave unread pages for the end and under no circumstances read page 145. This is not a numerical indication, it is an order.
Order
So that any sentence would be in a specific order, somewhere between the dictionary alphabetical order and complete chaos. Writing, or writing well, whatever that actually means, seems to me the process to leave the stuff far enough from the complete chaos and at the same time far from alphabetical order, the organized stupidity that says it all while it means nothing.
Not exactly in the middle, but somewhere that makes sense and at the same time remakes the senses or undoes what is supposed to be felt. Knowing that writing in reality is a simple geographic problem, I bought two dictionaries. I left one in a corner, and one block away I left the other one, after tearing it to very small pieces; and if had not been the wind, everything would be there, in the most perfect mingling, complete chaos, a nightmare crowded with crosswords.
I then spread the other texts (all mine), so that the most ordinary and common, but strictly organized, were near the corner of the intact dictionary, and then the most inspired, and then the craziest, and henceforth those illegible not by my handwriting but because of the syntax, near the pile of the torn dictionary. I found that all my good texts ended up in front of a specific house, just concrete, stained by dampness and with a tree in front. It seemed abandoned if it were not for a swing that moved, alone, perhaps by the same wind that carried part of the destroyed dictionary. Reading all the texts, nailed all over the block on the walls, I went from crazy to idiot to genius and back to idiot, but now an organized idiot, as if nothing made sense but at least was in some kind of order that gave the unfortunate the illusion of a control he did not have.
The unfortunate man in the case was me, everywhere, but not in the wall of the house with the swing. There I was probably even taller.
I thought it made sense, although a kind of sense that cannot be understood very easily; I then cogitated, maybe to continue the process, buy a third dictionary, all sliced but redone with tape. It would have the words organized by size, something to occupy the next block; but no. It was done. I went to the house where the wall was nice with my work, and wrote in a last sheet: I, curator of my own literary work, do consider genius all the texts pasted on the wall of this concrete house, not because they are mine, but because they are in the perfect distance between the corner of chaos and the corner of alphabetical order. I reiterate that all the other texts pasted in this block, other than in this exact house, are not my own, but from my detractors, unfortunate envious of such a notion for the use of the measuring tape between different corners. This wall then becomes the repository of all my work, while the rest of this block must also be maintained, as proof of the human envy and suffering of those who have no talent when faced with brilliance. And so, lying without guilt or shame, but in a hurry, I turned the corner.
Infinitaries
Hence that meteorologists keeps studying rain and not meteors is one of the mysteries forever stuck in the area of stuck mysteries; wherever that may be, I tried to reason to the ridiculously beloved TV host about the injustice of separating the sky-watchers into three types; meteorologists, religious fundamentalists and nephelibates. These nephelibates, the ones who drool when looking at the clouds of so much enchantment and follow them without respect even from the fundamentalists, which is barbarity in itself. Perhaps they would deserve the respect of meteorologists, who study clouds and rain and would not object to studying human beings who drool absently when looking at the sky, since the wet and gaseous aspects would remain identical to that of pure meteorology, unless the nephelibate in question has eaten something odd, in which case he will be looking at the clouds alone. The ridiculous presenter but according to his own employees a genius said that I had forgotten about astronomers, and I agreed being nice but deep down I forgot nothing, no astronomer cares about the sky, they care about space, something very different and far beyond angels or thunderstorms. I lowered my head letting the ridiculous man talk well about himself for another 6 minutes and we resumed the conversation. I told the unfortunate that it was total injustice to the most important class that usually looks at the sky, the Infinitaries. Infinitaries, for you who eventually ignore the fact that not everyone dreams of being a trainee, are employees of the Infinite, they work for everything every day, and they keep chasing dreams and towing them to earth even if they struggle and complain, I mean the dreams and not the infinite ones who don't fight for anything but tickle with feathers, which we'll agree, would be evil enough and would easily justify the fact of fighting. People responsible for the wonderful absurdities that still exist on Earth apart from those provided by the Earth itself, Infinitaries remain disorganized, ununified, with no salary base, or in their case maybe salary cap, not low, but at a height close to their interests. This is the summary of my platform, and I promise that I will do absolutely nothing for any ridiculous person who continues to be a trainee, or who is from there promoted to the presidency, but that I will do everything, and little more, for the Infinitaries. And that not only because of the current trend of defending minorities I would I defend too the nephelibate, for centuries treated as suckers or madmen, two types who are by no means a minority and should never be confused with nephelibates in the first place. Nephelibate are, of all sleepwalkers, perhaps the only ones who are there in the twilight, on the edge between sleep and breakfast, in that state of alert torpor that cats spend most of their lives. If I have any hope that more Infinitaries would appear, they will only probably appear there, among the Nephelibates, finally wiping the drool and doing something with what they saw while looking up at the sky, as long as it doesn't rain and they don't suffer from stiff neck.
Copyright © 2022 TRENTIN, MAURÍCIO & Maurício Trentin. All rights reserved. The TRENTIN, MAURÍCIO brand, O CONSERTOR brand, all projects and individual texts, codes, titles, images, design and trademarks, this website and its contents are protected by copyright and distributed under licenses that restrict copying, distribution and decompilation. All rights reserved. Other companies brands that appear in partnerships or tech choices are either registered trademarks or trademarks of those various companies in the United States, Brazil and/or other countries. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2022 Maurício Trentin. All rights reserved.