"There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road there to." - Cormac McCarthy BRAZIL He stood alone in the middle of the sea; the current immersing every man, animal, being with the same indifference. The waves resonated with a cunning vehemence, as if they were the messenger of the core of the earth itself, trying desperately to erode the drapery of the surface set in stone to become their own independent being. They were tumultuous, as was his heart. The sea flooded his iris with the same clear opacity, the same pure innocence that vehiculed their acts with such instinctive insouciance. In his eyes were a lifetime of emotions. He had no kin, nor felt any sense of belonging. He traveled the country like a nameless clandestin, devoid of any origin. The boy was fourteen years old. It was dusk. The evening sun embosomed the night like a mother would her child, engulfing the sky in a warm shade of orange. His horse trotted towards him and the kid caressed his muzzle. The horse exhaled, a stream of warm air going down the boy's cheeks and into the very ends of his soul. They were at peace, man and animal; Two beings caught at the crossroads of some agent of fate, made of dust, lost in the vastness of the sky. In those stars was the boy; atoms in fusion at his innermost core, burning; an anonymous spark maintained by a nameless ideal and a vague sentiment of yearning. The morning he rode on. The sun stood ubiquitous over a cordillera of mountains, a landscape molded by an intemperate but controlled erosion from the hands of an impulsive god. At a distance he saw a small village, melting in the paysage because of its precipitous attire. The houses, made of clay, seemed to have come from the soil of the earth itself, inconspicuous amidst the caatinga floor. He spent the day there. The darkness of the sky swallowed the night with a precarious indifference, the only remaining source of light being the few torches placed in front of the houses with a natural symmetry, as if a ceremonial hallway, leading its subjects to a precarious hermitage, distant and devoid of any order, perjuring them to eternity. Towards the back of the village there was a solitary fire; a nomadic fire in a peregrine cycle that no longitude or latitude could encompass. It stood there, a light amongst others, a spot on the troposphere of the earth, consuming its remains and transporting them, ember by ember, particle by particle, into the atmosphere, tying them into a transactional bind that could go on perpetually. As we cut to the face of the boy, we see nothing but the fire in his iris, submerging the blue of his eyes. As he approaches the fire, he hears a voice. A distant voice, yet with an acute proximity. “Do you see the light?” It was as if all laws of gravity succumbed to his every word; a black hole luring him into the darkness. “Do you see the light, Jorge?” For a moment, all is silent. The fire is no longer there. We hear a slow respiratory cadence, an imperceptible fiber amidst the daunting landscape. There is suddenly a light at a distance. An ember of fire, descending from the atmosphere, a messenger of microscopic proportions. It takes fire, spreading its indelible roots across the plain with furious anger. He could do nothing but bear witness. “A man cannot dictate his own fate, for it was set in stone from the moment he escaped his mother's bosom, and made his way, fragile and unwelcome, a frail passenger, into the hands of the earth.” There were about twenty men sitting around the man. He was bald, and had a scar that was obliquely engraved to the very ends of his face, and a crystal eye with no iris. “Had you not been a result of a certain circumstance you would not find yourself sitting here, at this crossing.” The gaze of the boy circles around them as the bald man gives his sermon. We hear a tribal drum, setting a raw and animalistic cadence. They were listening to him, hypnotized, drawn by the soothing intonation of his voice. “Until now you have been nothing but a witness to your own actions. A mere pilgrim, stumbling upon the ends of the earth, submissive to hazard. And yet you find yourself here, confronted by a reflection of yourselves, in that very fire. You ask yourselves, isn't every man born equal? For what is a man other than his luck? No, all a man can seek for is his freedom. True freedom, not in the form of economical entitlement, but by immersing oneself in the riches of our landscape. For nature is the purest form of beauty that no man can replicate, the truest form of power that no man can overcome.”