For much of my childhood the north of Minas Gerais was a mythical place, the place my father came back from after long journeys, his luggage full of tales, adventure stories and unusual presents. Add to that the time spent on the farms of my mother’s uncles in the interior of Bahia, and there were the foundations of my magical childhood world. As a teenager I watched my mother become a great scientist who fell in love with the pictures distant ancestors had made on stone, and who gave her life to preserving them. When at last I could travel in search of those founding symbols of my imagination, I did not find them — not the ones that had made me restless and hungry to swallow the road, the dirt road. I looked for places, people and situations that I could already feel existed nowhere but in my imagination. I walked with no aim. But along the way there was also something worth keeping. I dedicate this book to my parents, Helena and Alceu, who out of a childhood full of ideas, fantasies and dreams have given me an endless collection of latent images.