Dear Professor Noam Chomsky,
I am Alex (Alexandre), aged 37, based in Lisbon/Portugal – GMT+0) . This morning I saw the sorrow on your web page.
I was meditating before writing and I am going back to 1995, where this young woman (Margarida), to whom I did love deeply and couldn’t never forgot even if had several girlfriends further; well along my memories, I have 177 written letters on my wooden box of correspondence and I remember that on Sundays, I had one hour to see her, that was on church celebration (I am an anarchist, being activist since 1987) and walked into her house, she was 19, me 24, and I had to stand up and then sit down, according to the catholic preacher sayings. I looked at her arms, hands, her face, her long hair and for her devotion, we both respected each of one ideas, it was a mighty bliss love.
Now with a careful hand I spent my days writing things that nobody reads, thrown away from social life, cause for 9 years now I have panic disorder with agoraphobia and thrown from love cause I have 8,50€ per day, that my parents give me and Portuguese people are ultraconservative materialistic and rigid people, I will never belong here, even wrote an article asking for food, a laptop with a Portuguese keyboard and a place to stay, where I could eat, sleep and work somewhere in France or Germany.
Professor, I cried when I read about the death of your wife, Carol, I am crying now, it was strange because I add one of about 50 or more articles you wrote into a web page that I run and saw Carol there in one article, before when you wanted to live in Israel, I cannot be so precise about the facts but It touched me somehow inside me and far…
I added around 15 videos from your speeches into the same web page and you say in one of them and I quote:’ well like my wife always says…., every night I listen among music and videos, you come together on my pc audio/video library when I am thinking and writing and I can say that I will long for your show of strength and look for hope when the hope is you and Carol.
In my case it’s me and Margarida’s memories, where I was loved where now I am hated because of my ideas in Portugal.
My best feelings Dear Professor and thank you for being in my life,
–
Eduardo Alex. Pinto
I send you a poem of mine written in 1999, half on the streets of Lisbon and half at home:
Wide Music
Listen to the silence
even when it’s not there
like the wind
seen from the window seen it,
but not being touched by it
and slowly close your eyes
cause your son winter
whispers a sound
wherever it rains here
no one can be found
inside this tear
Noam Chomsky to me
Thursday, December 25th, 2008
Read your thoughtful and compassionate letter with much appreciation, and sympathy for what you have had to endure. And thank you also for the moving poem. I hope life’s paths straighten for you.
Noam
