Nostalgia

Velho, cansado, desesperançoso, sem perspectiva. Das alegrias e mazelas, só lembranças. Vagas lembranças. Cheias de melancolia. Um peso insuportável para os mais fortes lombos. Peso de nostalgia. Lembranças de uma vida que se foi tão rapidamente apesar das intensidades. Feridas que um coração parecia não ser capaz de suportar por muito tempo, mas que estiveram abertas por uma vida. 

Os parentes de gerações passadas já não existem. Amigos da juventude ficaram para trás. Uns evoluíram, passaram por uma vida com propósito. Pisaram cada degrau da escada da vida sem saltar nenhum. Tiveram uma vida com início, meio e fim. Outros se distanciaram pelas circunstâncias da vida. Lembram-se uns dos outros, mas estão muito ocupados para mandar mensagem. Às vezes temem já terem diferenciado muito e já não encontrarem assunto em comum. Ou às vezes se envergonham de não terem mudado nada. 

Velho, cansado, solitário. Assistindo a rua através da janela semiaberta. O que passava despercebido nos tempos da juventude, hoje são detalhes importantes: a chuva, o cavalo que passa na rua, o filho do vizinho que não trabalha nem estuda, a lâmpada do poste que essa noite não acendeu. 

Abandonado pelo destino e pelo tempo. Vivendo dias que se sabe serem os últimos. Últimos anos de uma vida longa sem sucessão de fatos. Uma vida monótona e estagnada nos primeiros degraus da escada. Olhar para o passado traz memórias da força e vigor que se tinha e que hoje se esvaíram. Olhar para o passado traz momentos de alegria e tristeza que hoje parecem não exalar sentimento nenhum. Feridas cicatrizadas num coração já coriáceo de sucessivos traumas.

O tempo já parece passar diferente. A idade está constante por não ter espaço para mais envelhecimento. A cadeira de balanço é confortável durante horas. A hiperatividade e a ansiedade deram lugar a uma pachorra cheia de indisposição e dores nas articulações. 

Figuras humanas que o cérebro gravou durante a caminhada só trazem nostalgia. Assim como momentos vividos. Quer bons, quer ruins. Pessoas com quem se viveu boas experiências já não são recordadas pelo cérebro já decadente. O tempo quebra laços e cria laços. Laços que não se queria quebrar. Mas o tempo é quem dita os eventos. Ninguém controla o tempo senão ele próprio. Uma vida pela qual tantas pessoas passaram está prestes a terminar desacompanhada. 

O dia escolhido chega. É hora de dizer adeus à rua por onde passa o cavalo e o filho do vizinho. É hora de sentar por uma última vez nesse sofá onde horas a fio costumavam ser expendidas em pensamentos nostálgicos. Dessa vez não dá pra quebrar o clima indo até a cozinha comer um pedaço de queijo e beber uma xícara de café. O peito dói. O peso de todas as décadas vividas e sofridas aperta o peito e não solta mais. Não há ninguém que se possa chamar e pedir ajuda. O momento da partida chega sem se dar conta. E nunca se saberá se um dia o corpo foi sepultado.

 Let's watch the lightnings

Maybe humanity was meant to be on Earth to watch the universe as a unity. A cluster of consciousness that gather together to see the world as one, but from different perspectives. Not just for a lifetime, but for eternity. Memories shared along several generations. 

Look at your body. The cells that saw your childhood are long gone. No cell alive today has been alive for your whole lifetime. Nonetheless, you can remember your childhood, for our body works as a unity. But we, as humanity, have lost that unity because of the written rules we've created to follow. Society rules. The very way we created to maintain that unity ended up killing it.

We don't take time to watch the world around us anymore. We don't take time to watch ourselves anymore. We work like a colony of ants to support a society and a way of living that we created and that has caused so much evil to ourselves. We've become unattached from the cosmos to tie ourselves to something that only makes sense if you're in the system and have never been out. 

We serve a god that we've created. We serve society and its rules so blindly that we can't see a whole world outside. A world that actually matters. A world that's pure and without any kind of prejudice. A world without specific rules. A world that's always been there for us to see. But we've enclosed ourselves in a coop we've made and sickened ourselves with our own venom. We've poisoned ourselves to death. And now we can't get out. We can't pull through that disease. We can't get to plenitude anymore. We're locked in a cage that we built ourselves with so much passion and devotion. We've created a monster inside of us and made it a god. Be an apostate to society and come out to the truth. Let's watch the lightnings together.

 Masochist

Love and happiness are so overrated. They say love is built over time. And that's true. I used to hate my suffering, but I've learnt to love it. Happiness must be so boring. So light. So smooth. So soft. I'll keep the darkness and heaviness of suffering and loneliness. I've grown fond of it. The difference between loneliness and solitude is that the former contains sadness and the latter contains happiness. I've always tried to transform my loneliness into solitude, but not anymore. I don't want the boredom of love or solitude. I don't want to live the illusion of happiness. Sadness is much more real and palpable. I love this masochist creature I've become.

 Life is a game that you enter to lose. I choose not to play.

 The purpose of life is to appreciate the grace of existence until it is no more.

 Água

Onde vais assim tão apressada

Se tua chegada não se atinge e tua largada não existe?

Corres para o mar sem respeitar parada

E voltas renovada pras poças de lebiste.

No som da cascata e no ronco do trovão,

No remanso do rio e na corredeira,

No pote de água, na fumaça do fogão,

No sabor da melancia, no aroma da chaleira,

Em qualquer forma e estado, 

Em todo tempo e lugar, 

Seja muito ou minguado, 

Água vais achar.

 I don't believe in love, but I like fantasy.

 We are the world

Is there, peradventure, any difference between what we and the rest of the universe are made from? It's all matter. Matter and energy. The same particles. The same elements. The same energy. We're just a tiny part of a great and immense universe. Our body is but a member of the universe. Although we're like a grain of sand on the beach, we belong to a greater body. Your pinky is small, but it's just a part of you, and just as important as the rest. You can either think of yourself as an unimportant wee conglomerate of matter or as a part of a magnificent whole. You can see yourself as nothing or everything. It's up to you.

 The love test

Life is a love test. In every incarnation, you get to live a particular life, with its own beliefs and truths and imperfect love lives. The last incarnation is when we realise what love is and that perfect love is impossible when you carry the burden of the earthly life. I reckon I'm in this last life. Can't wait for the afterlife.

 O futuro da infância

Talvez a maior causa de decepção na vida adulta seja a idealização do futuro na infância. Quando criança, eu tinha um futuro muito mais bem formado na minha cabeça. Um futuro vivo dentro do presente. Um futuro distante tão próximo e palpável quanto o presente. Um conto de fadas real. Onde o felizes-para-sempre existe e o sentido da vida é essa projeção de um porvir aconchegante muito mais interessante do que o presente. Afinal, a vida adulta vem trazendo liberdades e independências que não se tem quando criança. 

O futuro ideal da infância começa a se desvanecer quando se percebe que a rota que se está trilhando não é aquela que levaria ao futuro. É uma rota que mais parece te manter em movimento num presente ambulante. O futuro não se alcança. Quanto mais se avança, mais distante fica. O próprio movimento do presente empurra o futuro para longe. É uma perseguição sem fim que nunca se alcança.

Chega-se ao fim do jogo quando se percebe que o futuro não passa de conto de fadas. Sonhos são apenas devaneios. Só tem sonhos aquele que ainda está dormindo para a realidade. Só tem esperança aquele que vive uma ilusão de infância.

 The pianist

The universe is music. The pianist has fun playing the universe. The chords are everywhere: in the way the wind ruffles on the leaves, in the way the waves whip on the rock, in the way the clouds thunder on a rainy day, in the song of a songbird. Each landscape has a different melody. At the sea, there's a fixed background chord that represents the waves graciously hitting the rocks. Over that sound, there are the notes that represent individual events: the grave bass of the voice of the whales, the baritone of the thunderstorm, the soprano of the birds on the beach.

The pianist can have different moods and disasters and sadness are just a melancholic song played with great pleasure. After all, what's better than a sad song? And he has the right to play whatever he wants. Is he bad for playing a sad song? Of course not. Music is art. Sadness and disgrace are just an important part of it all. Our life is just music played by experient hands. Music that should be enjoyed whether it's happy or melancholic.

 Waves

The waves never get tired of hitting the sand. The wind never gets tired of blowing. The sound of nature plays forever and never gets tired of listening to itself. The wave, the wind, the sound, they're not really a thing. They're just movement. Just energy being carried on through matter. The wave can't exist without water; the wind can't exist without air; the sound can't exist without matter. They're nothing but a manifestation of matter. Yet they're quite a thing. The wind lifts up a frigatebird on the sea; the waves make up the surfer's pathway; the sound warns the prey of the presence of the predator. They're a lot more powerful than you can imagine. After all, they're energy that modifies the matter. The water, the air, they're just puppets in the hands of the energy that generates the waves and the wind. And they work nonstop. The day goes by and the sun hides itself in its cave beyond the sea, but the waves keep on whipping the rocks. And the wind keeps on ruffling the leaves. And lifting the frigatebird.

 Boundaries

A colony. That's what we are. A colony of unicellular beings, with work division like in a bee hive. Different types of cells, different castes, different roles. Each cell having maybe a consciousness of its own. Do unicellular protists have any consciousness? Do different species have different levels of consciousness? Do separate cells in the body have certain amount of consciousness? What's consciousness anyway?

At the end of the day, we're just conglomerates of matter conscious of its existence. What are the boundaries of the body? Each cell has its boundaries and so does each tissue and each organ. And same goes for the whole organism. But what are the boundaries of the organism? What's the difference between a colony and an organism? After all, life is a bit subjective. It's all matter. The difference is that a living being is conscious of its existence. Or is it always? 

The outermost living layer of our body is the epidermis. But it's not the end. It produces non living substances, such as a layer of keratin and hair. And we surely regard that as a part of our body and, therefore, our ego. A snail produces a shell that's not alive but is part of its body. Now a hermit crab also has a shell, but it doesn't produce it. It just uses an abandoned snail shell. Is there any difference between the way the shell is regarded by the snail and the crab? Do both of them regard it as a part of their body? Where's the boundary of the ego? 

We produce carbon dioxide during our breathing. Is that a part of us? We live on Earth as part of an ecosystem. Aren't we just a cell belonging to the body of the planet? Aren't the planets just cells of the universe? What are the boundaries of a living being? What are the boundaries of the ego? What is even life?

 The heart of God

A heart pulsing. Pulses that last eternities. Muscle fibers composed of dark matter and dark energy: dark matter for contracting and dark energy for expanding. Each pulse is a universe lifetime. A universe that contracts to singularity right before expanding again until the force of dark matter gains the battle against the force of dark energy. A heart that pulses forever creating a cyclic universe. The heart of God.

 The cosmic whale

What if the universe is an ocean and the planets and stars are just plancton? The stars are bioluminescent algae shifting around the immensity of endless dark matter waters. We, the earthlings, are nothing but molecules of a unicellular protist. Maybe membrane proteins. Our world may be complex for us and our lifetime seems to be a thing, but, if you zoom out, you see a huge mouth open ready to swallow it all. It's a cosmic whale, putting to an end the ephemeral life of the cosmic plancton. The end doesn't come to Earth only, but to a hole collection of gallaxies.

 Lost memories, lost worlds

I've seen worlds and been creatures that our restricted brain could never work out. I've travelled amongst the stars through the multiverse. I've seen different universes with different laws and different kinds of life. I've navigated with the help of the solar wind. 

Random and disconnected memories come to my mind and I don't know whether those are memories of this lifetime or another. Memories of a childhood I don't know I really lived. Toys and scenes I've never seen before. I've seen the world through the eyes of different creatures, like ants, shrimps, and some mind puzzling forms of life from different universes. Some are not recognisable to earthling eyes. Worlds that I can't even describe, because I can't understand. Beings that are weirder than anything you've seen on sci-fi. 

I can remember mushroom-like aquatic living beings that behaved like lotus flowers in a pond. Delicate and slim stems leading to even more graceful wavy white hats. It was a world dominated by fungi. A planet where atmosphere is liquid. Other species including pulsing transparent jellyfish-like mushrooms. 

Another creature in another world that looked like a mingle between a spider, a heron, a feather starfish and a horse. I was that creature. I saw that different planet in a parallel universe. It was a completely white feathery creature. The body was like an arch with two sets of feather starfish-like arms or wings; I couldn't tell. I couldn't work out if it was galloping or flying low through those green meadows. 

I saw a universe where the stars are a lot more numerous and close together. They shifted around like globe algae being carried by water. The universe had tides. Waves in the space-time fabric. Folders in space-time formed tunnel-like structures, like made of crystal ice, where the stars passed through. 

Certain planet without an atmosphere, reddish soil and blue sky, had tiny moons with orbits as low as to hit a person's head, coming like wrecking balls as fast as to be able to maintain in orbit. One had to duck not to be mown down. Those orbits were so elliptical that the moons only approached the surface of the planet at their perigee. 

In some weird parallel universe, planets are like spirals coiling around a nail-like star in movement in the same direction. The forces that actuate there, I can't even imagine. 

I saw the Earth be taken over by aliens that enslaved the earthlings. They couldn't communicate with us, for they didn't use words, but, instead, beams of telepathic messages. They deemed us simple-minded primitive animals. They floated proudly over the streets with their metallic non humanoid bodies watching and controlling the activities of the servants. 

I see memories out of order, merging past, present and future. There's no suffering or boredom in any of them, since there's no continuity or link between them. There's no feelings in them, because the memories were so fast that there was no time for bad feelings. The memories were like cards spread on a table, being randomly picked up for some seconds. There was no time, just memories from different timeless moments. Maybe different timeless lifetimes.

 Nirvana

If you're looking for me

If you wish to find me

Try where no one would be

Look on the beach at night

Follow a trail in the jungle

Go to the desert

Climb a high mountain

Find somewhere you can see the tide

Or the glamour of the sunset

Somewhere you can spot Sirius in the sky

Or trace a night storm in the distance

I'll be there watching

I'll be there loving

All by myself 

But in the company of the whole universe

Working on solitude

Tryna reach nirvana.

 Let's watch the lightnings

Maybe humanity was meant to be on Earth to watch the universe as a unity. A cluster of consciousness that gathers together to see the world as one, but from different perspectives. Not just for a lifetime, but for eternity. Memories shared along several generations. 

Look at your body. The cells that saw your childhood are long gone. No cell alive today has been alive for your whole lifetime. Nonetheless, you can remember your childhood, for our body works as a unity. But we, as humanity, have lost that unity because of the written rules we've created to follow. Society rules. The very way we created to maintain that unity ended up killing it.

 We don't take time to watch the world around us anymore. We don't take time to watch ourselves anymore. We work like a colony of ants to support a society and a way of living that we created and that has caused so much evil to ourselves. We've become unattached from the cosmos to tie ourselves to something that only makes sense if you're in the system and have never been out. 

We serve a god that we've created. We serve society and its rules so blindly that we can't see a whole world outside. A world that actually matters. A world that's pure and without any kind of prejudice. A world without specific rules. A world that's always been there for us to see. But we've enclosed ourselves with our own venom. We've poisoned ourselves to death. And now we can't get out. We can't pull through that disease. We can't get to plenitude anymore. We're locked in a cage that we built ourselves with so much passion and devotion. We've created a monster inside of us and made it a god. Be an apostate to society and come out to the truth. Let's watch the lightnings together.