Texto vencedor do Concurso "Creative writing"

1. Invisible Parks (and other barbarities)
What could have been just another ordinary day of an ordinary person in this
ordinary place, turned out to be quite an adventure, dear reader. Follow me and I will
unveil the unexpected mysteries that life sometimes has to offer, either we want them
or not.
To give you fair warning, this is not the regular kind of adventure you’re
acquainted with. There isn’t a special setting or chronological time, plot or characters,
and the writing is just dreadful (my horrendous writing style is what makes me express
myself by writing. If I knew how to write pleasantly I would express myself by painting
and drawing, and oh my, how awful I am at those.) It may cause disturbance and
confusion. Maybe some nausea. It’s always nice to start with a disclaimer.
There is something in my mind; it’s been there for quite some time. It is mostly
an opinion, although of those I have a million, it’s about this one I want to write. I truly
think that we, in order to be free, have to listen to each other. And my idea is the
following:
Our species is doomed from the beginning. We are doomed to continue sinning;
it is human nature to lie. We know it’s wrong to lie but we continue to do it (why?) as
the days go by. We lie to everyone; mankind, we are done, honest people there are
none, no mother no son. We lie to our mother (“I didn’t do it, it was my brother”) like
she was any other. In my job, I lied to my boss, Bob, and just an hour ago I lied to Joe.
I’ve been told that a story has to have a physical space, so why don’t you walk
with me in the park? I walk through this park many, many times, mostly because it’s
close to my home. I quite like to wander in these trails after morning rains, because on
days with rain nobody comes in here to walk, apart from the occasional old men that
remember where they were when Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth II was crowned.
There is a reason I like this park with few people – I give more attention to nature. Do
you see that little bird? The one getting closer to the tree? Beautiful bird. And the tree
has more birds (and the park has more trees). Hey, do you think the bird will lie to the
other birds? Do you think the bird will trick them? Will it say “Hey, there are great fruits
over there, just across that river” and send them in a wrong direction? First, our bird
can’t communicate in such a complex way to its peers, second, it has no need to. Why
would it lie? And that’s one of the reasons our species is doomed. Let’s continue
walking, dear reader, it is such a beautiful day in the park!
If you have an attention span bigger than a goldfish, you remember me saying,
and I’ll quote myself, “an hour ago I lied to Joe”. I lied to Joe. Subject, verb, object. I

2. lied. Pronoun plus verb. I’ve been here preaching that we are all doomed by our lies
and that lying is so immoral and so bad, but I lied too. It makes you wonder, I hope,
what kind of hypocrisy this is. And that’s the second reason our species is doomed. We
are cynical, hypocrite liars. Not even those preaching against the wrong follow a
righteous path. “Vos estis sal terrae” – you are the salt of the earth, said a wise man
three hundred and fifty years ago. And four centuries later, our salt is no better than it
was. People warning you don’t follow their own advice. You are now having and
assisted mental monologue (oh, what an expression!) with one of those horrendous
creatures – myself. You are in a park (is this really a park though?) with one of the
most cynical subhumans that has ever lived. And, oh, the horror, you are listening to
him!
My opinions are not worthy of followers and I cannot turn water into wine, but I
hope you have learned something from this small assisted monologue. I hope the walk
in the park (park?) made you question the way we act, how we interact with each other
and with ourselves. And how do we interact with ourselves? You’ve been doing it all
along. The park is your mind and we walked through it (and, like I said, it was a
beautiful day, which means you have a beautiful mind). Lying and hypocrisy is bad, but
you already knew that. This short story was just an instrument we used, wasn’t it?
The ordinary day was today, you were the ordinary person, this (this story? this
park? your mind?) was the ordinary place and your mind is the unexpected mystery.
The adventure? Well, I can’t do everything, can I, dear reader?
Miguel Cardoso, 12º CT3