The seeds of Umbanda and the concentrical garden

...A man enters a strange and small shop in Paris, in a lost lane of suburbia: Rue D.....
the day it's too cold for October, almost a gray and frozen winter afternoon of 2004

someone appears walking slowly behind the counter, it seems to be a woman, her feet shuffle on the green carpet, silent

keeper and customer interchange some obscure words, the woman gives the visitor a box.

Eight masques brought from the pluvial jungles of the Brazilian Amazonia hang from the rugose walls, seeing without seeing, observing without observing...though those aren't masques, actually

the embalmed eyes still are in the ocular holes, beholding nothing
everything

with the vitreous and blurry humidity of the eyes of the dead sparrow

the intense smell of patchouli seems to indicate that the shop is in another dimension
this olfactive illusion is perceived by anyone who enters there: an almost imperceptible sheet of salt on the carpet covers certain angles of the shop.

The faceless customer leaves the shop: out in the street is raining now
his steps are as slow as the faceless crowd.


...9 hours later his hands open the dark-green box with impatience:
the box is full of light-brown seeds, similar to the seeds of the sunflower.

Some minutes later, the man (is dreaming he) sows the seeds in the soil of his garden, under the pouring rain of the night.

He sleeps:
out in the cold, the nyght is actually raining.




II)

In his dream, the man is now seated in a library behind Martha Nadie, she is blonde like the Brazilian sun, and is absent minded reading a passage of Lord Dunsany's "The man who ate the Phoenix"...suddenly the girl realizes that someone seated behind her is observing her back insistently

she turns her back with a smile in her face, her eyes clash with the strong stare of the individual who is dreaming:
the horror paralyzes the heart of the man when he sees the girl's face: is the face of his mother


from the hands of Martha Nadie a pocketful of seeds fall on the floor in slow motion.


In his reverie he's still seated in that library that looks like the shop he visited, but modified, and the name of the place is terreiro
the library and the girl disappear without a reason in a sequence of eight

the man seems to be into a huge seed now
the seed is gonna give birth: he is going to born, himself.

the pouring rain hits the exterior surface of the giant seed, and a gap is opened
a strange, centripetal force pushes him to go out, though he refuses to move, but the energy is pushing him with irresistible power out of the -now- dead seed.


The man realizes that himself is born from one of those seeds of the box
and he is born at a sunny garden, though the rain doesn't stop

from a distance he sees two women all in white walking under the sunny rain, they're coming closer

closer...they are Martha Nadie and the keeper of the obscure shop, but at every step their faces change

now the keeper has the face of his mother, then Martha Nadie looks like his mother

now their faces look like those ghastly masques of the shop: he remembers.



The closer they come the uglier their faces become, though their bodies look beautiful, and they are dressed in white-translucid clothings, light like gauze.

Confused, the man tries to wake up from that absurd, repugnant reverie: effectively he awakes.

In his awakening he is inside a huge seed...the seed is gonna give birth? He...is going to born, himself?


As the pouring rain hits the exterior surface of the giant seed, a gap is opened and a centripetal force pushes him to go out: the man observes the exterior world from the inside of the dying seed...it's a sunny garden under the rain.

From a distance he sees two silhouettes all in white.