In the music of Guinga, which meets the poetry of Aldir Blanc, the pinwheel talks with the sunflower. And it becomes almost a tango, with arrivals and departures, with contrasts and beauties, everything ending in the sinkhole (where something disappears) of the mirror.

My pinwheels float in a gray sky, with a promise of blue, without ground, without certainties, in near agony.

My pinwheels are mirrors in the agonizing sinkhole of a Don Quixote who insists on believing, insists on searching and keeps trying to find love.

At times, these days, I have come very close to losing hope. Cruelty, anywhere, terrifies me.

Cruelty amplified by the pain of children stretches my soul to the breaking point. The cry of mothers, in their unimaginable pain, resonates within my many cries, many of them silenced under the rule of different commands.

My pinwheels lose the ground, escape in desperate flight, in search of answers. What can I do? What can we do? I know that we, as a species, have lost ourselves many times since the Neanderthals. We have killed and destroyed one another in the name of countless illogical reasons. Our species is worn out by the destruction that lands in the headlines, but it is also dying little by little in small and almost trivial events.

I am perplexed when, in moments so dense and severe, public men and women lose themselves in graceless, grotesque chomping on cocoa products. At times, nearly always, it is not possible to detect any empathy or collective awareness.

My pinwheels fly in search of a harbor, not a safe one but a possible one, where they can land. I say to myself again and again: do not give up, do not give up, do not give up. Let us sow clear drops in this complex, diffuse ocean in which human beings are depersonalized and mistreated, discriminated against and eliminated in the name of various gods ruled by indifferent greed.

There are children who go on without hope, when they go on. There are children who go on without guidance, when they go on. There are children who go on violated, when they go on.

There are adults whose inner children were silenced and who go on as automatons, without seeing or hearing, without feeling or perceiving; to survive, they numb themselves.

There are adults whose imprisoned inner children have completely lost their connection with wonder. They are no longer moved. Turned into things, they turn other people into things. Not perceiving their own pain, they are blind to the pains and needs around them. Wounded children in adult bodies wander back and forth on this worn-out planet, wreaking havoc, fighting children’s fights in a setting that so badly needs thinking adults.

Not to give up, not to give up, not to give up.

My inner Don Quixote, lucid, often sleepless, wants to speak out loud in the squares to wake the adults. To make them attend to their inner child, so they see the children, so they see the other adults. So they see.

My inner Don Quixote, very sad, weeps. But refuses to lose hope.

My pinwheel has Aldir’s sunflower inside. You who have read this far: wake up your inner child, give it affection and a lap. Hug a child in an adult’s body, who may be startled but, who knows, may like it! Look children in the eyes and lose yourself in this mirror of possible lights. Be someone who preserves, not someone who erases.

Not to give up, not to give up, not to give up.

We can, with small giant gestures, nourish the nearly dead hope. We can, with an attentive eye, avoid getting lost in the absurd and fanciful sinkholes of power and glory. We can sit at the edge of pinwheels, settled after the scares, drinking in possibility and mending the soul.