I taught English as a second language, for many years, for a local community college, and traveled for about one hour, from my house to the basement of a large church that lent us space for the classes, in a nearby town. So, to pass the time, early every morning I counted gas stations, deer, insurance signs, occasional eagles, and once off the main highway, I counted churches... there were seventeen churches of all imaginable denominations, in the four-mile stretch between the main highway and my teaching destination…
My god, why so many churches? Why so much separate real state property? What separate secrets do they each hold? What inclusions and what exclusions?
The story I am sharing below is about another community, in another country, some five thousand miles away, in Brasil, but the church questions remain very much the same…
There are plenty of sources available about Ouro Preto, it was placed on the World Heritage List in 1980 and declared part of humanities’ cultural heritage. Some of the words justifying the choice are “outstanding baroque art and architecture, a treasure of human genius, pioneers in mining wealth and authentic universal values”... (sic)
Yet one needs to sift carefully through to separate shaft from seed. Not even the astounding tonnage of gold and other precious and semi precious minerals extracted from that place to adorn European royalty, Brazilian wealth and eventually fuel imperial democratic expansion, can give me an accurate feeling about what happened there... and about the enslaved people who worked so diligently “side by side with artists” to make it happen...
Today Ouro Preto has a permanent population of about 70000 and it continues to be a busy student town, housing well known geology, mining engineering and pharmacy schools. It also attracts a large number of tourists from all over the world.
Click on the photo for a bit about geology, mining and where the gold came from, in a recent article by a geology student. Fascinating to imagine how the multiple tunnels and old mining structures undermine the stability of the houses.
Maybe the unsolved inequalities from the past help to determine the enormous power that emanates, still today, from that place...
I wrote the story in 1999 and it was entirely propelled by the clear imagery from one powerful dream… the scary moment when you wake up and know you are maybe the only one hearing it and listening to the voices…the only way out then to write the words down and label it creative fiction... If I pay attention though, I might discover that I am entirely made of dream matter, albeit sometimes very fragile, still amazingly solid tangible and very virtual a-temporal fact of dream matter…
SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI
I saw the night in splendor, in the most expensive of all the colonial hotels, a remodeled mansion perched at the edge of the blue mountains, stern guardians to the perpetual earth colored tile roofs.
In perfect symmetry, a cover up for all that happened below, in this old city of ghosts, slaves to Black Gold.
Gargantuan fountains, one hundred and eighty Catholic churches, one thousand and one alliances of old brotherhoods, green of wild ginger, red of crumbly mineral dirt, gray of cobblestone. Revival stories of black ruling queens, revival stories of artists and artisans, revival stories of old women who saw it all, and told of it to no one.
Pure, dark, golden beauty of Black Gold, this “Ouro Prêto”, where eons ago, I had lost my innocence to the sorcerers.
They stayed somewhere else. Since they were paying the bill, dawn and sun not yet riding the night away, I woke up cocooned between four posts, soft pillows, four hundred and thirty-five count cotton sheets. Wet and drizzle outside, comfortable bed and breakfast, upscale, uptown, in a small town in the world of history, inside. "I must go up there. They are expecting me, and I don’t understand why. All I did was to write about my dream, that’s all I did. Well, I thought about it too, quite a lot, and I wished about it a little. But not this - I did not dream of all this. Not this full production. Not for them to hire me." At the breakfast table, I lingered in the pleasure laid out open, in wounded papayas, dark juicy seeds, red on black, the melons yellow-green, orange freshly squeezed, passion fruit and pineapple. A land of plenty, of this I knew to take, while I could. "I must go up there. It is time." Light had not yet entered. I made my way down the slippery steep hills in cobblestone. The stillness of milk bottles already waiting in front of sleepy gateways. Early chickens and gargoyles, ironwork still-life, framed in sturdy blue wooden portals - at this early hour, just quietly there, staring at me through the mist.
An old woman dressed in black scurried down by me, stopped, fumbled, and opened the Meat Merchant Shop - "Mercado de Carnes". Pleased in my translation, I greeted her – “Bom dia!” She grunted – too early to talk. Down the hill, by the green church wall, a drunk, or was it just a person at a place of instability, asked me a garbled question. I steered clear and continued my path around and up the meandering road. An old sign, something left from barely adult - "The Republic of the Free Students" - scratched in that scarred piece of wood, a forgotten place of loss - this was the place where I had met that student sorcerer, then, when I was sixteen, when we all loved and lived to know the wetness of new. "What a journey! But this is not about that! I'm already late, I must go up there!" I climbed further and landed inside the large colonial plaza, grey cobalt blue skies, dizzy surroundings for my destination for now –
Saint Francis of Assisi, the jewel of all the churches, in this old Black Gold town of one hundred and eighty churches. Commissioned by the Third Order of Saint Francis of Assisi to the First Order of the kind in town, around 1766. Architecture and sculpture by Antonio Francisco Lisboa, the famous "Little Lame Man”. Against all odds and handicaps, he built and carved this church. Exemplary tourists witness to the greatness of his enterprising art. "Nonsense! Built by "Aleijadinho", the little lame one! Built by slaves, more likely he himself one. Built by gold slave labor, and by the enormous mistake of that which is forgotten in your memory!" Certainly not the memorized litany I recited there for the French and German tourists, in my college student days, paying tuition as a guide. The whispering voices did not wish to hear my niceties. I tried to keep them down, but the other guides in me just kept on talking - "Did you know the sea shrimp you love from Sa Leone are carved in stone into these altars, these landlocked churches? How many symbols carved in blood inside the cornices, beneath the altars, here and there, hidden from you, acting up on you? How many meanings lost in connotations, in euphemisms and affectations? How much dampening in you, you do not know about? How many stories you do not wish to know? Who built this place and how?" I shooed the voices of the old guides and heard my own: “Is that why I accepted their offer, is that why I joined them? Knowing so little about them, wanting so much?”
I looked up at the sides of the church, at the twin canons aimed at the West and at the East - Jesuitical religious guardians. No war in sight here, in this little colonial global universal patrimonial art town. I saw nothing more than the good old Saint of All Animals and of All Creatures' church. Majestic thick-walled structure, exquisite cold carvings in soapstone, baroque gold trim, the church of peace built in a historical time of warfare. To the right, in the plaza, the rich composting debris of vegetable matter, not yet swept away by the street sweepers. Banana peels, xuxu chayote squash, discarded red watermelon, sliced open for the taste pleasure of daily housewives. Remnants of the fair "feira", this farmers’ market where only yesterday, I had seen the exquisite rare, native yellow orange beauty of a wild orchid and took it home. I looked to the left and I froze. They were at work. Had been for hours, huge cranes positioned. They had not waited for me. I had been hired but they had not waited for me. So big they seemed ethereal as they worked, the two machines, yellow painted. I could not see the drivers, way up there, but I knew they knew what they were doing. The steel cables caught the light of morning. There was still dew catching then. Around the wetness of the moment, carefully, they positioned the machines underneath that church. In tandem, they dug down deep, took buckets full of dirt out, huge bites spewing off around the foundation, the platform where the church rested. Then, in one smooth motion, they activated the cables. Tension at the highest tension cable can be, the steel tongues fully extended, they fork-lifted the place. Smooth as a marzipan gingerbread little church, as an effigy, a prop in theatre, smooth as a terracotta figurine, smooth as a crystal snowball enclosure shaken apart, smooth as that. They lifted that Saint Francis of Assisi church out of Old Black Gold town into I do not know where. It was difficult. I was stunned. Eventually, the proper systems and bureaucracies connected. Panic buttons, disaster containment I think they called it. I was detached from it all, by then. I do know the people in authority in town had hired experts. Archeologists, engineers of renown had found the ruins of another church, under the gaping hole, the emptiness of what the one lifted left. They did find a couple tunnels there, direct links to the Governor's palace, up above on the hill, and to the House of Treasuries, the gold coins way down below.
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