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Although sometimes we could just swear our backbones would simply break in just a few steps from school to home, we continued to walk under the harsh cold of The South Region of Brazil in 99’s July. At this time, we were a group of three kids with open eyes and broken teeth. Wide streets, buildings worn by the years, but standing. Less urge to live anything. We just used to take one step after another hoping the dinner wasn’t green and Santa’d bring any gift at that year’s Christmas Eve. Cars were moving especially fast, and the old center was full of sounds from people inside big gray clouds. Aretha was the older of us and, firm and dressed with a pair of matte red sneakers, their feet formed a delicate contrast to the gray streets of Porto Alegre. At that time, Philosophy still did not put food on the table and poet contemplation was something for flying travelers and colorful astronauts. We watched without deepness; while we walked, we couldn’t meet sorrow - despite what awaited us at home. Robert was the middle one who smelled like a vanilla candy and had his head in a Christopher Robin’s planet. His daydreams were not conceived as ramblings but defended by him as facts. We simply loved this. He still carries this serious walk with perfectly aligned and bouncing shoulders. Whenever I visit the Rio Grande do Sul’s villages, I can hear our whispers about everybody’s funny faces and the games that would land us to a whole new world where treasures were waiting to be found and mysteries were just willing to be solved. Some of these things accompanied us into adulthood and disembarked with us at the final destination of a path with two forks: to find those rarities or to keep the unanswered questions just in our hearts. Amsterdam Airport Schiphol was crowded with people, and we tried to hurry up and do not lose the attention of the luminous signs. All the internship grants of that archeologist, physicist and journalist were used to exploring the Dutch floor. I know we love so slowly and, in our way, let ourselves fit in the world. I understand we all live in distant places and make friends with the hours so they accept to quickly pass. But when our hands got so close to Anne Frank’s walls and we saw each other standing at the streets were van Gogh asked himself if the intern crisis would ever leave, our chests danced, resembled a yellow bird. In the last degree of emotion, made it rain. Not so far from there, we were told to visit Assen, a Dutch city where the Drents Museum was located. That night, the same voice which whispered in Lovecraft’s ear an invitation to the wood’s thumb sent our legs a drunk call. We were promised a walk through the life of the Drenthe’s ancestors, a meeting with Georg Rueter’s “De verjaardagskroon” and an old symbol of marital bliss. By taking there, a statue of a sitting Buddha standing in one of the galleries caught our attention. Historical information revealed it made its way from a temple in China and was a well-preserved symbol of the ancient culture of the Buddhist monks. The piece was almost all made of gold and seemed to be smiling and looking down were meditating. These eyes appeared to see through our over-dressed bodies with overly composed cold clothes. We were just going to the next attraction when it happened. Right behind my head, I heard a hard, really deep breath. Next, the chocked voice uttered these exact words: “The hands that wash the blood, these are those that teach the dirty hands to wash up”. No one seemed to have felt the same. A few days later, we would be landing back in Brazil. I was too afraid to ask. That breaking backbone feeling came back alive when right into my screen, the main national television channel noticed: Scan reveals 1,000-year-old mummified monk hidden in a statue in the Netherlands.