I almost stepped on my brain, but at the last moment I recognized it, and avoided what would had been a really unfortunate event. The Parque National de Sete Cidades is like a giant Rorschach test, where instead of ink blots, the erosion and other geological phenomenons have molded shapes that will trick the mind into believing they are something else. Signs painted on walls 3 to 10 thousand years ago by some drank disaffected youngsters, are just adding to the confusion.
The guidebook mentioned that 19th century explorer thought those were remains of a lost or alien civilization. I would like to think of this civilization as being alien and lost, and I would also like to call them: the Gngus. The Gngus built a metropolis, with stone walls similar to what their distant cousins the Mayas and Aztecs did, canalizations, statues at the image of their emperor (no lost alien civilization can exist without a leader).
And, in the mix of all this, lying on the floor, was my brain. Not a Gngu fossilized brain, not a giant walnut core, but my brain. What was my brain doing on there? This I’m still wondering. I’m also a bit concerned with the 2 big white spots that are covering a non negligible surface of my thinking power station. It looks like a seagul diarrhea, but because there are no seagull here, I will opt for a giant mushroom eating my brain. Probably nothing to be too worried about.
As I was cycling through the remains of the Gngus grandeur, I could not help but smile at the thought of the 19th century explorer. Like him, people from all over the world would come, and see the ruins of the lost civilization, like we would all see the butterfly in the Rorschach ink blot.
“What we see is not what we see but what we are.”
Pessoa
“All this, is just erosion”, flatly asserted my guide, as we visited the first Gngu temple. Randomness and erosion, all the rest is just illusion.
