Remembering.
Conrado de Quiros. Lost to the world but not forgotten. His was a mystery I wanted to solve.
De Quiros fell into a coma and has not woken up. No one knows if he will speak again in his voice, or if he will even remember or comprehend the visions he has painted with words, or love with passion – still – the country he has shaped with his pen.
He has, after all, put a president into power (which resulted in impotent uprisings against the writer).
I started to write because of him. With (and in) his writings, I found my voice – the first feigned interest (an opinion writer can write with an evocative, almost lyrical quality? really?), then the piqued longing to put thoughts into paper, test a storyline, hear it ring true. Like his. Although we were distant and unaligned, his writings always comforted me like an old friend. I – in my then-14-or-something years –somehow understood.
He inspired me without meaning to (or maybe meaning to). I found in his writing that putting words to paper could be solace, satisfaction, death, deliverance. That thoughts could brim until they overflow, speak a truth, be uncut, uncouth, yet strangely liberate.
I do not want him to be forgotten.
I will not forget.
We are grains of sand, soon to wither, weather, washed away by the sea/ocean/torrents of rain, tossed, forgotten, a fleck/dust/speck, imbued with meaning, meaning nothing, meaning everything, until we are hurled/guided/led – again – to shore.