This is not an academic text. Wow. It has been several months since I last posted something here in AD. It�s kinda weird trying to survive a pandemic amid a coup d��tat attempt here in Brazil. For that and...
This is not an academic text.
Wow. It has been several months since I last posted something here in AD. It�s kinda weird trying to survive a pandemic amid a coup d��tat attempt here in Brazil. For that and for my lack of productivity, I apologize. But I have to say that I feel no guilt for trying to find a new way to cope with academic life since the 2020 pandemic. For me, that represented less stress around writing stuff I did not want to write, and less stress on making myself participate in events/obligations I thought were not a priority at that moment.
As the year of 2023 closes, I find myself trying to balance things out and see that a lot happened in my personal and professional life. For starters, a marriage of 10 years that goes to waste. It�s too soon to think this properly, but it�s a huge change. From this on, this year I also quit a job teaching at a small College, got fired from a High School and continue in my main occupation as an Adjunct Professor in History at Unisinos. Otherwise, I did finish this year my PhD thesis. I�ts been twelve years since my first professional contact with Social Anthropology and a lot of it was permeated through the extinct Savage Minds, and the now soon finished Anthrodendum.

As an academic that inhabits the intersection between Anthropology and History, I find myself pending each time more for the latter. But, above all, I find myself more and more preoccupied� with the environment changes that I see in my native Rio Grande do Sul. It�s weird to be a historian that is mostly concerned with the future, right? At the same time, it�s Anthropology�s fault that I engaged with the field of Environmental Humanities.
The impression that I have is that I had given a lot of time and effort in all of these, and I feel a hollow inside. The space of all that was took from me. In a way, I have given all my energy freely, but in another way, now, I feel it was taken. Failed or finished projects can do this to us: left us with this feeling of nothingness.
What is funny is that I�m quite contempt with everything. For starter�s, I was hurting myself for too long to stay �married�. It opened a new perspective for me on what I think are my main concerns in life and how much I have deviated from them. On the other hand, I was captive of a structure of work that was hurting my body a lot (I have chronic back pain). New affections are coming and new job opportunities too. Next year I�ll be back to Instituto Humanitas Unisinos with new challenges ahead.
My hope, in the end, endures, and so do I. All that is on my head is that, this year, I was assassinated. But, next year, I will be not.
In way of a goodbye to this blog and it�s readers, I would like to let you a poem by the Brazilian poet Mario Quintana (1906-1994) badly translated by me:
The first time they murdered me,
I lost a way of smiling that I had.
Then, every time they killed me,
They were taking anything of mine.
Da vez primeira em que me assassinaram,
Perdi um jeito de sorrir que eu tinha.
Depois, a cada vez que me mataram,
Foram levando qualquer coisa minha.
Today, from my corpses I am
The most naked, the one with nothing left.
A stub of a yellowish candle burns,
As the only asset that remained to me.
Hoje, dos meu cad�veres eu sou
O mais desnudo, o que n�o tem mais nada.
Arde um toco de Vela amarelada,
Como �nico bem que me ficou.
Come! Crows, jackals, highwaymen!
For from this greedily hooked hand
They will not take away the sacred light!
Vinde! Corvos, chacais, ladr�es de estrada!
Pois dessa m�o avaramente adunca
N�o haver�o de arracar a luz sagrada!
Birds of the night! Wings of horror! Fly!
May the light tremble and sad as a woe,
A dead man�s light never goes out!
Aves da noite! Asas do horror! Voejai!
Que a luz tr�mula e triste como um ai,
A luz de um morto n�o se apaga nunca!
(Poem of Mario Quintana, in the book Rua dos Cataventos, 1940).
From the darker corners of my heart, I wish you Good Night and Good Luck. Love XO Caio