The Gum Thief

"A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age - regardless of how they look on the outside - pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives. They don't want to be who they are any more. They want out. (...) Do you want out? Do you often wish you could be somebody, anybody, other than who you are - the you who holds a job and feeds a family - the you who keeps a relatively okay place to live and who still tries to keep your friendships alive? In other words, the you who's going to remain pretty much the same until the casket?"

Começa assim o livro que estou a ler. Nada de estranho uma vez que se trata de um livro de Douglas Coupland que, para quem já tenha lido uns quantos livros dele (como é o meu caso), encontrar "pérolas" deste calibre é um destino quase inevitável. Que esta peróla tenha aparecido no dia de hoje, com todas as coisas boas que o dia trouxe, com toda a luz que invadiu o meu dia, com todas as conversas e desabafos que tão bem me souberam à alma, simplesmente adquire todo um outro significado, impossível de exprimir em palavras envergonhadas...


Valha-nos os poucos bocejos que demos ou ainda agora estaríamos no sofá. A idealizar uma qualquer teoria científica da treta, com resultados muito pouco credíveis...

"I was waiting for the bus this morning, and there was a sparrow sitting in the azalea beside the bus shelter. I looked at it and it yawned... this tiny little wisp of heated sparrow yawn breath rose up from the branch. And the thing is, I began yawning too - so yawning is contagious not only from person to person, but from species to species. How far back was it that our primordial ancestors forked into two directions, one that became mammals and one that became birds? Five hundred millions years ago? So we've been yawning on earth for half a billion years."