The alarm goes off on my phone. I’m tempted to snooze it, but immediately reminded of how crazy the São Paulo traffic is in the morning. If I catch the 5:50 bus, I will be very likely to get a seat and be in the office near metrô1 Brigadeiro around 7:00, an hour before work starts. This is what I usually do, because I have a pair of keys to the building and to the office. Then I can reset the modem for everybody working from home. This modem needs to be restarted every morning for some weird reason. Where I live, at the Raposo Tavares quilômetro2 18.5, there is a bus every five to ten minutes. I know the 6:10 bus will get me to the office by 8:00, but I’ll have to stand for most of the trip, furthermore inside a crowded bus. And that assumes nothing goes wrong. Any later bus will result in considerable delays of 40 minutes to an hour and a half due to traffic on Raposo Tavares. That is why I do not press snooze, get up, dress, and look in the mirror. My hair is a mess, so I put it up in a bun. I’ll apply some makeup at the end, if I have any time left. First, I need to measure my grandma’s blood sugar level and inject the insulina.3 She’s already awake when I enter her room, which is messy as always. Books, clothes, plastic bags filled with random things all piled up around her bed, leaving very little space in the room to walk around. She smiles at me and says “bom dia, filha4!”
She calls me daughter because she has always been much more than my vó5, my grandma. She raised me after my mom died in a car accident, on the Raposo Tavares quilometro 15. I pass by it every day and think of my mother and what could have been if she hadn’t died. She was only 22, 2 years younger than I am now. When she died, I was only a toddler, so I wouldn’t remember much at all. All I associate with this tragic accident is the smell of candles after they are blown out. That is why I cannot stand candles.
I carefully take my grandma’s left hand and prick the side of her ring finger to draw a drop of blood for the morning measurement. It’s not terrible today. I get the insulin from the refrigerator, measure out the correct quantity, and inject it as gently as possible into the fragile brown skin of her upper arm. I give her a hug; she grips both my hands. “You have the hands of an angel; only you can apply this medicine without hurting me. You have mãos de ouro6, everything you touch turns out perfect.” I suggest we order a pizza in the evening, half Catupiry7 half Baiana8, after all it’s Friday, and she agrees.
(…to be continued…)
Footnotes
1. Metro, subway
2. Kilometer
3. Insulin
4. Daughter
5. Grandma, abbreviation for “avó”
6. Hands of gold
7. Type of soft cheese
8. Similar to peperoni pizza, usually very spicy
Transadaptation Volume 6 – Meaning? – Uncertainty, Instability and Extremes Transadapted
January: A Regular Train Trip – Mateusz Tymoszewski (Poland)
February: Growing Up – Adriana Uribe (Columbia)
March: Mess – Veronika Groke (Austria)
April: The Roads We Take – Svetlana Molchanova (Russia)
May: Need – Nadia Silva Castro (Brazil)
June: “Next Sunshine” – Jonay Quintero Hernandez (Spain)
July: Intentions – Narantsogt Baatarkhuu (Mongolia)
August: Planet Kyiv – Anastasiia Leonova (Ukraine)
September: Feeling like a Fool – Ulrike Bergmeister (Germany)
October: Stories of Outcast Souls – Armine Asryan (Armenia)
November: Ronaldinha – Alejandra Baccino (Uruguay)
December: Aimlessly – Krisztina Janosi (Hungary)
Background – Context
Transadaptation Volume 5: Of Flowing Vicissitudes – Life Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2024)
Transadaptation Volume 4: Material Dissent – Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2023)
Transadaptation Volume 3: Evanescent – Young Adulthood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2022)
Transadaptation Volume 2: Conceived – Childhood Transadapted, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2021)
Transadaptation Volume 1: In the Middle – Prelude to a Contemporary Transadaptation, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2020)
Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)
L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)
From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)
Emblems and stories on the international community
Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world
Credits
Background photo: Sao Paulo, Brazil – Rua Alvaro – Diego Carneiro (Unsplash)
Left to right at top: 1. Sao Paulo, Brazil – The street – Carlos Kenobi (Unsplash); 2. Sao Paulo, Brazil – The lamppost – Gabriel Cattaruzzi (Unsplash); 3. Sao Paulo, Brazil – Cityscape – Ian Talmacs (Unsplash); 4. Sao Paulo, Brazil – Estação da Luz – Vinicus Löw (Unsplash); 5. Sao Paulo, Brazil – The intersection – Bianca Neves (Unsplash)
Left to right on bottom: 1. Sao Paulo, Brazil – Traffic Jam – Hans Elmo (Shutterstock); 2. Sao Paulo, Brazil – Another street – Cris Faga (Shutterstock); 3. Sao Paulo, Brazil – On the street – Cris Faga (Shutterstock)
Source: The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed