About a year ago, I published my first contribution to this lush dream-action tree called SUMAÚMA. After asking permission to come in, I began our conversation with these words: “Though I was born in a bustling city and have lived in other cities throughout my life, in the end, men and women of wisdom, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, taught me to recognize an undeniable truth: cities are the downfall of the forest. Like any illusion that muddles figure and background, once you have seen the downfall, you can’t unsee it.” Just as time is a spiral in the conversation of Beiradeiros, I have wound my way back to the topic.

I used to like the city, any city. I was born in the planned perpendiculars of Brasília, where I learned to move among vistas of buildings, trees, and clouds. As I grew up, I became aware of the urban chaos brewing in Taguatinga and Ceilândia, the Federal District’s main satellite cities, as well as in the metropolises I visited on vacation: Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, and Recife. Impressive cities, frightening in their unplanned disorder, but powerful in the wonderful confluences of people they promote.

Then came Goiânia, São Paulo, Salvador, Buenos Aires, Santiago do Chile, La Paz, Quito, Bogota, Letícia, Tabatinga, Tefé, Manaus, New York, Mexico City, São Luís, Natal, and so many other cities on and outside the American continent — or Abya Yala, which in the Kuna language means “land of lifeblood.” Despite all the urban noise, filth, stench, mess, and risks, despite all the rude, annoying, and intolerable people, I always saw cities as rich in knowledge, vibrant centers of living culture, vortexes of symbolic exchange.

I appreciated the fact that the architecture and urban design of every city, each in its own way, reflected the legitimate history of the people who lived there. I believed that no matter how decaying or decrepit a city might be, each had its own charm, vigor, and indisputable worth. Attempting to live without cities seemed impossible, and in fact undesirable. That’s what I thought. Or, better put, how I felt.

Until I met Ailton, our beloved Master Krenak, who through friendship and truth has helped so many to stop illuding themselves about the critical situation of this planet. The first time Ailton and I spoke, it was like an earthquake struck my brain. Sharp as a wasp and patient as a tortoise, Ailton wreaked havoc with my optimism, rooted in scientism. Everything shook, and my ideas shifted places. Not a shift in what I thought about but in my very way of thinking, derailed, deranged, and thus finally sane. Not a change of opinion but of perspective. A disruptive arrow shot into the heart of unreason.

Ailton made me realize the complete absurdity of residential buildings, where some literally shit on the heads of others, all in scatological alignment, calculated down to the millimeter by construction engineers. An unfortunate uncivilization stretching skyward, piling up people who don’t know or want to know each other, neither in pleasure nor in pain. Exile in elevators.

We should pay careful attention to a question Ailton has posed: “With so much technological development, why haven’t sapiens been able to invent something other than a cave, a bunker? A building made of iron, cement, and concrete is a cave. And a tacky one at that. Can’t we create permeable environments, where we can feel we belong to the spaces, instead of being over these spaces, above them?”

The naked truth is that a city is a nightmare, an unspeakable ruin, a preposterous folly, almost entirely awash in brutality, harshness, exclusion, ugliness, and pestilence. The best parts of a city are the non-city, its parks, green areas, and vacant lots, where Gaia perseveres; the semi-wild territories that relentlessly manage to escape the fury of smoggy vehicles; narrow havens where life conquers death, bursting up through cracks in the asphalt.

There are around 30 cities across the planet that have populations exceeding ten million inhabitants. The crisis of this way of life is plain to see. It is estimated that 3.6 billion people lack adequate access to water for at least one month a year. In the Amazon, rivers have dried up; in southern Brazil and northern Europe, rivers have overflowed.

This was to be expected. As the planet heats up, the water cycle intensifies, growing more variable and unpredictable every year. More water evaporates into the atmosphere, which means in some areas water vanishes and the soil dries up, while in other areas the sky dumps down torrents of rain, inundating everything. Storms, cyclones, and hurricanes happen more often and more suddenly. Natural disasters? Or just what God wanted?

Age-old questions are now more topical than ever. How do we deal with droughts and floods? How can we live in human and non-human community, with equity, comfort, and safety? We must tread lightly, our footsteps gentle; cities must be almost invisible in the forest.

Ancient Amerindian experiences from long before the European invasion can point the way. The Amazon region was once home to huge, complex forest-cities that had raised platforms, irrigation canals, and ceremonial mounds, submerged in an ocean of leaves and roots, interconnected by roads and rivers, in apparent balance with the waters. These memories blend with more recent experiences in Asian living, called sponge cities. Spreading from China to Europe and Australia, these cities are designed to absorb, store, and reuse rainwater, preventing it from draining off quickly, which can cause flooding and overwhelm drainage systems.

In sponge cities, pavement is limited and made from permeable material, leaving plenty of space for green areas, where rainwater can soak into the soil. Lagoons and retention ponds reduce the impact of both heavy rains and dry periods by storing and then gradually releasing water. These natural and artificial systems avoid waste by fostering water reuse. As this green infrastructure—made of life, or bio-inspired—replaces conventional gray infrastructure, like concrete culverts, it restores biodiversity and improves the urban microclimate. Parks, gardens, and woods help absorb and purify water. Additionally, these areas enhance the quality of life by providing recreational spaces.

In her superb Cartilha de Mezinhagem (N-1 Edições, 2024), the Ribeirinha writer Raimunda Gomes da Silva shares her knowledge of medicinal plants and herbs from the rainforest and the healing power of our imagination. She also bears witness to how every tree is vital to keeping the dream alive:

“When I arrived in Pará, I saw it was completely different from Maranhão. I didn’t see the trees I’d seen there, so I was fascinated. I was fascinated by a tree in front of the basilica. There, every day at five o’clock, my boss lady had me walk her baby, and I saw throngs of parakeets flitting about the huge tree. They came every afternoon and left early every day. I said, one day I’m going to come and see those parakeets, but I just couldn’t imagine… But I dreamt about living somewhere where I’d be free, just like the parakeets, where I wouldn’t have a boss lady telling me what time I had to come back and what time I had to leave.

That’s what I dreamt of.

When I saw the jungle, the rainforest, I felt I was inside it, and it was inside me, because I learned its smell; I learned its sound. This was born down in my feet; from the bottom up I heard something telling me: this leaf is good for such-and-such because it does such-and-such.”

We need every single leaf to be able to dream, within reforested cities and people, not the beginning of the end of Gaia but the end of its beginning.