Rana Bose is a founding editor of Montreal Serai and a Montreal author, poet and engineer.
Cato Oliveira was born in the womb of Francesca Oliveira, before she finally went off the deep end. Francesca occasionally surprised the whole world with her insane acts in the early afternoons. Cato could not figure it out. Was it the midday sun? Once, Cato remembers, she walked out into the street in front of their house and in what he later realized to be an incredible act of un-naturalness and embarrassment, started screaming invectives at the whole world. Cato’s father was not at home. None of the neighbours came out. Cato was eleven and he watched from behind the curtain on their second floor bedroom window. Then Francesca stooped down on the pavement and in a bizarre gesture of defiance, pulled down her panties and peed into the street like a cow. A jet of urine came out from in between her legs. Like a torrent, it was. It was magical, as she crouched and then let go the pee. Like she was letting go of everything, with contempt. An ultimate act of rejection. Cato still remembers distinctly the sound of his mother’s pee hitting the sidewalk almost like a fireman’s hose. Then she stopped, as if she had heard something inside her head, pulled up her panties and then she started walking down the middle of the street shouting the internationally acclaimed words that describe motherhood, downfall, professional and social alienation-- “ a sua mae puta !"”. Or was it something close to that? Then she went further down the street and started removing all her clothes. Cato knew, she was not drunk... It was then that one of the neighbours ran out and prevented her from degrading herself further and brought her home. She was not screaming, any longer, but she was definitely scowling. The moment she saw Cato, she took a deep breath, her eyes widened and then she went into her room. The neighbour left. Several windows in the neighbour’s houses then closed a little. They were all obviously watching through their green shutters, with the midday sun glowering at them!
When Cato left Rio, he remembered to carry this incident in his green diary. Insanity and ambivalence were art of a continuum.
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Nowadays, when Cato drives he talks to himself. He muses eloquently, unknown to the whole world. He does not do this silently, but with a confident voice inside the tinted windows of his car. Unlike his mother, he does not rage like a bull. He does not undress. He just speaks to himself, inside his car. Despite the distractive-ness of watching pedestrians, cross-traffic, museum signs and bawdy underwear ads on corner kiosks (that remind him of his mother), he chooses to settle into a very deep thought process. In his mind an interviewer asks him questions that he must respond to with the deepest sincerity available to him. From the core of his heart he must effectively distil all his deepest thoughts and expose himself. He cannot hide. Like his mother, he must release everything.
“Cato, with all your magnanimity towards the downtrodden, the wretched of the earth, how do you account for your inclination to creature comforts, for example, this car? In fact, you are driving a machine that has 32 valves, electronic fuel injection, about 25 micro-processors that keep feeding you information about tyre pressure, road grip, average speed, wheel balance, condition of your brakes and it even warms your butt, as required. Why do you need all this? How do you explain all this to yourself?
Cato grips the steering with much firmness. One after the other, the bus station billboards on Sherbrooke Street advertize the need to erase memory and dwell in displacement-despondency. How else to describe the ads that cover the range from the Montreal Casino’s whirling dice machines to jeans that aggressively spill out belly-buttons with pearl rings dripping pubescent dangerousness. His responses are slow and deliberate. He does not give a damn if the cars next to him think he is crazy talking to himself. Actually they can imagine that he is using a hands free set. But on the other hand, is craziness not an issue of lineage?
“There are really 3 reasons why there is this apparent unexplainable behavioural conflict in my style of operations. The first reason is that I do not want to go insane with my thoughts and be completely debilitated by my predicament. It is a very practical, rather pragmatic conclusion that I have reached about my predicament. We are not in control of our destiny. Wishing for a better world, hoping for solutions, believing in a way of life, an ideological view of how things must happen is ultimately not a controllable phenomenon. Belief systems, even intense involvement in change processes, do not result in changing one’s destiny. I do not mean collective destiny only, but also personal destiny. We have no control, no matter how hard we try, how much we hope—the final writ of destiny is just not automatically caused or affected by the sincerity and correctness of individual beliefs. There was a time when I firmly believed that personal beliefs were important enough to have a profound impact on those around me. That I could bring about profound change because of my personal beliefs, convictions and operational style. It was a time of revolutionary dedication. I believed that along with the concurrent beliefs held by others, along the same lines, a body of us could have dramatic effect on the world we lived in. It was a sincere belief that being a dedicated cadre, I was not only changing things around me but also capable of directing it.
At a later stage, one became a part-time activist. Not being an activist would be a negative force. It was thus fundamentally important to “activise.” This was already a few shades away from being a full-time rebel, when every conduct, every pattern of activity was governed by the code of ethics of a revolutionary. In the activist phase, one worked in “solidarity” with others. The code of ethics became loose. One was there when needed. Ones beliefs needed constant replenishment, reinforcement. Nourishment. So one must confabulate with others, with ones peers and keep oneself in a state of regeneration, health and hopefulness. In this transition period from rebel to activist, the loss of control in belief in ones destiny had already been initiated.
“Are you therefore suggesting, Cato, that you have moved away from your beliefs, you have drifted? Or, do you still hold onto to your beliefs, but can no longer live to your ideals? What is it?”
Cato slows down at a major intersection. Unlike Rio, there are fewer pedestrians here. He is now speaking loudly. Although no one can hear him inside his tinted bubble, he believes that in this wireless world, they will know that he is on a hands-free set again. There is no embarrassment there.
“What I have been trying to explain to you is that I have reconciled myself to the notion that I do not have the confidence that I once had that I could actually be instrumental in changing the world I live in. From rebel to activist, I have now reconciled myself to being an occasional “contributor”. It is honestly a redefinition of a has-been. Do you understand? From a firebrand to a fellow traveller. The journey has been completed.
When I began to respond to your questions, I thought of my mother. I also told you that I had 3 reasons for my ambivalence. First was this loss of control over one’s destiny. It was a slow process that resulted in my automatically trying to find other means of controlling what I could not seem to control. Figuratively speaking, I was no longer prepared to walk a mile and spend fifteen minutes doing so. when I could use a car and do it in one minute. I wanted more control over these non-intellectual aspects of life. I wanted to have the liberty to spend less time on the physical aspects of my existence, where I knew simple devices would allow me greater control. I could get over these “mundanities” faster, efficiently and get on devoting more time to the things of the “heart”, that were dear to me, that puzzled me, that made me angry and passionate.
“So what was the second reason?”
The second reason was a propensity I have developed to being multilateral and ambidextrous. I believe in having 10 hands, ten feet, many heads—a “god” of some sort that can dance, walk, talk, move and do many things at the same time. Perhaps it has something to do with the earlier point of a sense of urgency about getting things done, before it gets too late. My friends laugh or dismiss me when they see me doing so many thing at the same time. For me there is an urgent requirement for being practical and effective, for doing things ahead of time and getting on with the next important project. I revolt against the laggardness of left-wing laissez-faire. I hate for things to take their own time. This is apparently a schizoid complexity that I may have inherited from my mother. She was calm in the house, but then she would rush out and scream outside the house. On the one hand she had to deal with her in-house mundanity. On he other hand she had to deal with the world outside. The first with her exemplary solitude, the other with her contemptuous rejection. I have to deal on the one hand with the resignation about destiny, and on the other hand, with my refusal to being left behind, to be late and/or be an also ran. In other words, I have given up trying to affect my social destiny, but I am not prepared to give in to my physical destiny. This horse is not going to the water.
“What then finally, is the third reason for this ambivalence? Why this resort to sophisticated means when simplicity can take you there”
Cato breezes through the next traffic sign. His mother’s peeing torrent is audible like a waterfall in his ears. He wants to piss on all this too. The Olympic stadium’s funicular ride looks like the arching neck of a dinosaur looking down with contempt at the contrived forestry of social progress down below.
Yes, the third reason for this ambivalence is that I am endeared to technology. I feel that human development and the development of technology are the one and the same. Certain philosophers tend to take the stand against technology as a whole, as if, by itself it is regressive, nearly sinful. Fighting the steam engine, or the microchip or fibre-optic technology is a Neanderthal approach to civilization. Do you not think so? It’s like being a dog in a manger. What I do not comprehend totally, I must reject. Because something tells me it will have a bad impact. I feel that human development/social change/technological development is all congruous and inseparable. They are not segregated phenomenon. Too often, my friends who are activists, philosophers, academics of some stature and well-meaning friends, take a position of distance from technology. In fact, for me, technology is Human affairs. It is not technology and Human affairs. Technology is Human affairs. So that is why I am attracted to advances in technology—because they reflect the very quest of human kind to not be overpowered by destiny. Dangerous as it may sound to some, it comes from the fundamental need to be liberated. It comes from a quest to free ourselves from the shackles of our existence, to out manoeuvre the over bearing forces of naturality. This is not a question of overpowering nature. It is a question of not being a slave of nature. Technology is thus one way of outwitting the “given” in nature, the so-called indisputable truth about it, without in any way affecting the balance of nature. Technological advance is my third reason why I suffer from this apparent ambivalence. I see no virtue in extolling the virtues of an IBM Selectric, no matter how elaborate my writing skills, when even the Pentium V is becoming obsolete. This is how I have undressed myself. Now do you understand? I must park the car now. I have to pee.
A stop sign has been missed. A belligerent Honda Civic driver with racing sunglasses barrels through and clips the right side of Cato’s car. He breaks, but the car spins around and there is a bus coming from the other direction, again with the belly-button exposed jeans ad.. The torrent of haemoglobin pouring onto his lap is all he remembers.