I turned the lights off in the greenhouse; turned the plants into picturesque silhouettes. Their artificially sharp edges cut through the blurry gray asphalt. And I know the gray is an illusion of grains, black and white pebbles packed together, refusing to melt and form a stable ground. 

The sky turns blue, purple, and dark. On the window-panes steam drops glimmer like little diamondsThe streetlights are soft and warm like the lights in          – estado de ouro. 

I forgot how to say silver in my father’s mother’s tongue. In my new home, the streetlights shine sharp like the midday sun. And the lamps here are efficient. We can afford to let them shine at every moment, everywhere. We illuminate the city. We are truly enlightened. We know how to work for time. We beat the lamps’ efficiency. 

We are light racing against time, driven by an optic illusion.

And we are oblivious.

“O tempo linear é uma invenção do Ocidente, o tempo não é linear, é um maravilhoso emaranhado onde, a qualquer instante, podem ser escolhidos pontos e inventadas soluções, sem começo nem fim.” — Lina Bo Bardi

“Linear time is a western invention; time is not linear, it is a marvellous entanglement where, at any moment, points can be chosen and solutions invented, without beginning or end.”

My thoughts are indefinite, and amorphous, they are the future and the past,

se afundando num delicioso melado. Sinking in. Slowly,

I turn my head and look at you, sitting there in the darkest corner of the greenhouse. Your body melts into the bulging sofa. Your image makes me light-headed and grounded zugleich.

 I become 

ein Gewächs, das sich hoch in den Himmel ragt, dass sich dicht and die gläserne Decke drängt. Hinter den Fensterscheiben bewegt sich das Leben oder ich bewege mich und das Leben steht still. Die Bewegung, das Jetzt ist schwer zu definieren, wenn es keine Reibung, keinen Widerstand gibt gehen Zeitpunkte aufeinander zu aneinander vorbei ineinander ein während die gläserne Decke und ich miteinander verwachsen. 

a vine that stretches high into the sky, pressing tightly against the glass ceiling. Behind the windowpanes, life is in motion, or I am in motion, and life stands still. The movement, the present moment is hard to define when there is no friction, no resistance moments in time approach each other pass by merge into one another while the glass ceiling and I become intertwined.

What is time without efficiency, 

without the glass that keeps me from growing where I seemingly do not belong, 

without the burns I carry from this efficient and perfectly forged sun?

You tell me that from where you sit you can see the sunset. But I don’t want to see it.