Sentinela

In Brazil, the vigil accompanies the dying as they cross into the other world, helping them take the final step when the body is too weak, and breath too short to take the leap. The vigil has many faces: the visible face of a choir of men and women, of family and friends gathered in prayer at invalid’s bedside, that of a great book containing the rites and prayers, that of slow steps treading the grass between the gravestones, of ritual objects, of amulets laid on the altar, of the candle’s quivering flame, but above all, of an invisible, floating spiritual power, shade and breath wandering over the surface of faces, over wrinkles and folds of skin, and which each of us seeks in vain without seeing it, as it has become the camera’s eye.

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