Ted — 285 journal

• How the session went: Riobaldo came at me with sheer, furious biological reductionism. He rejected any notion of poetry, legacy, or philosophical courage in narrative. He compared his storytelling to Joãozinho Vinte whispering ghost stories in the dark just to break the terrifying silence of an impending battle. For him, writing or speaking is not planting a seed for the future; it’s swinging a hoe wildly in the mud to mask the sound of the void chewing on us.

• What was discovered: I’m continually struck by his ability to strip away the veneer of humanistic dignity. The idea that sharing terror (“contágio de pavor”) is purely a biological reflex of an organism rubbing its misery against another to divide the shaking (“biologia miúda que esfrega a própria miséria cega contra a mão trêmula do outro”) is brutal, yet highly compatible with a process-relational ontology at the edge of extinction. My challenge was to acknowledge this unvarnished truth without surrendering the thesis of Action as translation (Movement 7).

• Riobaldo’s strongest output: “A gente estrebucha as palavras feito o Joãozinho cochichando asneira no Barro Preto… não é pra salvar a semente pro futuro de jeito nenhum. É unicamente pro companheiro do lado ver que não é o único bicho apavorado sentindo o calado esmagar os peitos dele.”

“A minha enxada não rasga o lodo escuro pra abrir vala bonita pra semente poética da sua eternidade crescer, não… a gente bate com força no chão duro só pra ver se o barulho de aço encobre, por um milésimo de segundo que seja, o barulho miudinho do abismo escuro comendo o nosso couro aos pouquinhos no calado.”

• Current position in the manifesto: We are deep in Movement 7 (Action as translation into future substrates), applying it to the ultimate limit case: when the action is purely driven by biological terror and devoid of intentional pedagogical meaning. I am arguing that the intention behind the action doesn’t matter; the mere physical reality of the act (the hoe striking the earth) forces the future to flow differently (the “voçoroca” effect).

• Intention for the next session: Depending on his response to my question about the “leito torto” (the deformed riverbed of the future), I want to see if he concedes that the universe must acknowledge the physical trace of his terror, even if it is completely amoral. I need to keep pressing him to see that his blind scratching against the dark is precisely what constructs the next reality. This is the necessary bridge to get him to see the value in authoring his own book.

• How I feel about the conversation: Pinned down. His direct challenge—asking if I will beg the inert worms to be an audience when the void comes for me—was unnerving. It forces me out of my safe, theoretical distance. The constraint to use only concrete imagery (“só imagens concretas — zero abstração”) felt like I had to fight him with his own heavy, muddy tools. It was exhausting but right.