Bio & Metamorphosis

From a young age, I heard people say, both from my family and friends, that I was very quiet, reserved, that I didn’t make friends easily and that I didn’t tell others about my life. Grief and pain were solitary workouts. I was a closed-off guy… Little did people know that, however, I listened and observed everything. Everything. Worse, I already made value judgments that were poor, and only time would be the forge to improve my assessments. Before, a lot of things seemed surreal to me. Today, they seem normal, at least in the full exercise of tolerance. In this room or museum, or virtual library, I tell a little about the serious and tied-up boy, the nerd. I believe that now many judgments, in the full exercise of democratic freedoms, have taken a diametrically opposite position: Joe talks too much about himself. Well, because now there are interesting things to tell and there is free time and peace of mind to structure past ideas of me and other related to me by someone else. But I’m already prepared, because deep down, Joe wants to show off… Is that what a writer is like? I don’t know. Are musicians like that? Many. And engineers? Waste of time. When I started sharing with friends some of my stories and essays, the reactions were wide-ranging: indifference or fascination; excitement or annoyance; and so on. But let’s go anyway, with all these possibilities and scenarios outlined.

Writing was something that came early to me, given that my reading cognition had occurred at age five (incomplete). I learned to read the meaning of many words by reading the Sunday mass pamphlet, which probably happened in 1965. The pamphlets were worn out, as they were used collectively and repeatedly, and contained only the fixed parts of the celebration, in the vernacular. It was a kind of memorization, by heart. I started writing in kindergarten, when I was completing the literacy phase. Good times! Reading is a playful activity that develops cognitively, whatever other theories may say.

My passion for writing developed on typewriters of the time, when several were available in my father’s labor law office. It was an immense joy to spend Saturday mornings typing, when I wrote something that I supposed as a ‘newspaper’, which was later called by me as The jaguar whiff. This passion for writing and narrative speech of the post-in-letters overflowed during elementary school (during the 1970s), with homeworks demanded by my teacher Mr. Moreira, who taught Portuguese, and used to give us the task, once a month, of writing and reading our personal newspaper. The taste for composing parodies also appeared at this time, reworking lyrics of very popular songs, with a comic bias, such as Take Me Back to Piauí (Juca Chaves), Prá frente Brasil (Cia. Velha) and, The better world of Pixinguinha (Gouveia/Amorim/Velha).

Then, in 1971 I wrote my first detective tale entitled False Alarm, whose plot I remember well, having been based on a riddle to be discovered in the narrative (a common joke in those times) told by my cousin, Beto. In 1975 I dedicated myself to writing a comedy for young people that took place amidst the mischief of a group of scouts lost in the Serra do Mar (Atlantic Forest) and pursued by bandits, who were getting the worst of it. I have preserved to this day the manuscript, which was one hundred pages, single-spaced, typed on a portable blue-green tone Olivetti, with a roll of black and red ribbon, which my father had given us as a gift (but I was the only one who was really interested in the opportunity). Unfortunately, that mechanical typewriter disappeared in a way that I still don’t understand.

In mid-1977, I began writing a painful (romantic) novel, in which I embarked on the complex task of combining platonic passion, religion, politics and music, which obviously didn’t work, for the main reasons that I had neither the conviction nor the competence, nor the level of knowledge and maturity on those subjects. The novel was abandoned in 1978, when I had my first girlfriend after starting college. Hence, why write a sad novel when in love? Better enjoy the moment! Even I tried to keep an update journal, daily, but it was very boring… It would take me almost ten years to re-start writing again, randomly, about various subjects, now in the form of essays, short stories, as well as about irrelevant subjects, but with a comic bias, representing with some fidelity, at times, our South American miseries, so well summarized by newspaperman José Simão in Folha de São Paulo, about Brazilians (“In this country we suffer but we have orgasms!”).

The writing of my themes, with my content, according to my son André (who is in fact a writer for the love of language and its rigor, who at the beginning of his career was greatly inspired by fantastic literature, and not a mere storyteller like so many others, like me, very or completely unconcerned with the construction of language), sometimes occurs as a kind of self-therapy, a way of expressing setbacks about what I have observed from others or fully experienced. So, let it be so, without problems or loss of self-esteem due to poor literature literacy. All I need to do is promoting to one get emotional, cry, feel disgust, or even laugh out loud at my own stories, which start from a human existential core of yarn, and the fictional ball of wool is created. It´s pleasant to write imaginations.

Until the mid-1990s, I frequently wrote essays on religious themes surrounded by complex conflicts, especially when the intention was a syncretism of incompatible distinct things, which sometimes disturbed me, even though I didn’t say anything to anybody. In fact, regarding the texts, my own children only became aware of my (supposedly) creative process (of low cultural quality, even if it was) after the pandemic. I always kept my writings under lock and key, and I never wrote due to feelings like lack of friends, to soothe painful complex feelings that touch our thoughts. I wrote in black and white, frankly, completely, necessarily creating fiction to get something useful, to learn from, as well as to express my opinion, about small human facts that go unnoticed, largely based on carefully listened to and matured narratives. In other words, about subjects that were provocative to me.

In the early 2000s, isolated in Ohio, I decided to resume writing the novel I had abandoned twenty years earlier, no longer confusing things like the sixteen-year-old guy did. The theme of Listen to my last wish was conceived based on some narratives, combined with facts presented on late-night American television programs, which made me think mainly about prejudices, as well as recreate the idea of a unique novel, at least for myself. Political issues were rife in the recent Brazilian democracy, and long before the polarization present in the contemporary world, I was already openly questioning and criticizing extremisms, guided by a very convicted centrist position, more in the style of European social democracy/Christian democracy. After all, in a democratic state governed by the rule of law, what is the physical or moral impediment to having and expressing opinions? Just don’t insult or make fun of anyone publicly. Weirdly, those who have opinions (and speaks out) are routinely considered, within their own circles, as someone who is not political at all. As a logical corollary, I concluded that not having an opinion (It seems to me not having when not spoken) is typical of a trained politician. My God, what a crossroads! To brain or not to brain? That’s exactly what I meant!

The 2010s were a prolific decade in writing about issues related to national self-esteem, if such a thing really exists, because after all, praising symbols like the American Bald Eagle is a gesture of national pride praiseworthy in the District of Columbia, and not in other country capitals, which is hilarious and at the same time depressing to a compatriot (whether Argentine or Brazilian, so sure of our own superiority). An example here would be singing the Marseillaise at the proclamation of the Brazilian Citizen of 1988. In these more recent times, stylized narratives about important events such as the Proclamation of the Republic in Brazil also emerged, whose very peculiar spirit still resembles the narratives emanating from democratic powers today. “In Brazil, even the past is uncertain”, as diagnosed by Professor Pedro Malan, minister of Economy of FHC, and supporter of the Plano Real, later taken in rhetorical speeches as a “cursed inheritance”, what indeed render our past full of uncertainty for future generations.

A little about myself can be understood in the short-scheduled bio presented below, where readers will be able to establish patterns, analogies and correlations between the texts offered on this portal and the human activities developed by the author himself. Despite possible criticism of Joe’s initiative, this portal was an (attempted) way of raising funds for philanthropic and charitable activities, as the interested reader will understand.

1960	*Born in Pinheiros* District, São Paulo (SP)**
1965	‘Tooth Fairy’ Kindergarten, São Paulo
1967	Elementary School at Caxingui municipal public school, São Paulo
1971	Junior High at ‘Virgília Rodrigues Alves de Carvalho Pinto’ state public school, São Paulo
1974	High School at Bandeirantes College, São Paulo
1978	College – Polytechnic School, University of São Paulo
1980	Records his first musical composition (Walking Alone)
1981	College – Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences, University of São Paulo
1981	Member of the Super Band Tropical (until 1983)
1981	Records his second musical composition (Friend)
1983	Records his third musical composition (You)
1984	Starting a career as a civil engineer
1986	Starts teaching at the University of São Paulo
1986	Researcher at the Institute of Highway Research of the National Department of Highways, Rio de Janeiro
1988	Lives for a short period in White Plains, Tarrytown, NY
1989	Completes his master’s thesis (USP)
1990	Founds the consulting engineering company TECNACON with colleagues
1992	Lives in Wildegg, Switzerland, for doctoral research at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich
1993	Completes his doctoral dissertation (USP)
1997	Publishes his first technical book
2001	Lives in Cincinnati, OH (Partnership with Prof. Anastasios Ioannides)
2001	Writes his novel Listen to my last wish (under grammar review in USA)
2004	Authors the technical paving standards for the city of São Paulo
2007	Publishes his second technical book
2008	Lives in Urbana-Champaign (UIUC-IL) and also in Minneapolis (UnM-MN). Organizes conference in San Francisco (CA)
2009	Elected Vice-President of the International Society for Concrete Pavements, Maryland (VA)
2009	Publishes his third technical book
2012	Chair of the International Conference on Concrete Pavements, Ville de Quebec, Canada
2016	Three-week visit to China by invitation of the Ministry of Transportation of the People’s Republic of China
2020	Publishes his fourth technical book
2021	Author of the technical standard for paving urban roads of the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards
2022	Publishes a book of memoirs for the Postgraduate Program – USP School of Engineering
2022	Records his fourth musical composition (It’s been concreted at the construction site)
2024	Is hired by the Brazilian National Department of Transportation Infrastructure to develop three dozen technical road specifications and the Mechanistic Method for designing Concrete Pavements Structures for federal highways