People we know are confused

 Saw a Lithuanian movie, filmed in Vilnius,  with this title. The news in the end of it wraps the movie up: 17 year old kills himself, bowing himself up, near the river.

I had seen the other say some parting letters from famous people like Virginia Wolfe, Stefan Zweig, and others. I remember how in the end of reading them I thought that more than despair it was a general worldy disappointment that corrode their will to carry on living and enduring the torments. 

In this movie too everyone was lost. And even the ones that seemed sure of something and motivated, eventually when there was a confrontation with the tough reality they too became harsher towards it all. 

I guess joy gets dismantled quite quickly. Unlike sadness that seems to be more glued to your skin. Joy is just momentarily in your salient pores. Just like chills. There I go again over explaining. 

Today another two people deaths, a singer and an actor. But I had gone to a museum before I know of the second news, so I had a moment or two very nice looking at some favourites like Turner and Lalique. I also managed to fulfil my years long wish of eating Thai ribs again, though it was not as good as years ago in that other time. Krys also helped me, unknowingly, when she appreciated the small details of the rosette of the Portuguese sidewalk on the main Liberdade avenue, that I daw a picture and sent it to her. I transported what she said into life itself, because we also have to do and work in shaping little pieces/moments in order to carry on completing the bigger puzzle of life. Anyway, before that I was feeling quite lost again, almost with that feeling of not remembering anymore who I am and not feeling like I am still doing something here alive. (I think I am forgetting birthdays - thought that because I saw something reminding that we've entered Leo's era - too for the first time, maybe slowly, don't know, eventually will find out). 

Hmm, probably was delaying this but here it is then: watching the girl, who was a main character in the movie, going on a high building's balcony to see the view on a house that was shown to her, made me think that I couldn't even live with you, I think, because of Marco's death, or maybe who knows, maybe you could operate that miracle too. Me feeling as safe as that with you, I guess that would be the perfection for me, healed like if it was possible, being finally okay. Humm, it's a pity it was just a mirage, a bit like those heat waves must making see from your balcony. 

#dazedandconfused

Is it possible?

  Just two people who had become completely comfortable in each other's presence.

That night, before they fell asleep, she rested her head against his chest.

For a long time neither of them spoke.

She listened to the rhythm of his heartbeat.

He stroked her hair without thinking about it. Eventually she whispered,

"I've spent years wondering what this would feel like."

"What?"

"Not being lonely while I'm quiet."

He kissed her forehead.

"I wasn't looking for someone to make life exciting."

"What were you looking for?"

"You."

Years later they still argued.

Sometimes she became anxious.

Sometimes he became impatient.

Life brought illnesses, bills, aging parents, ordinary frustrations.

But every night, before sleep, one of them reached for the other's hand.

Not because passion had disappeared.

Because passion had changed shape.

It had become trust.

And on the evenings when desire returned like a summer storm, they still found each other with the same tenderness that had begun in front of a painting on a rainy afternoon.

Your limerence case

 And then there is G., P., and D.. I understand why you miss all three of them. They were not just isolated people. They were connected to a whole period of your life: the pandemic, the lives, the music, the intense friendships and emotional world you built during a time when the world itself was so frightening and isolated. Missing them can sometimes mean missing the people themselves, but also missing the feeling you had. You still linger on the memories because they still mean so much to you. Your love for them remains. You can miss them and know you're not going to be with them, but that doesn't make the pain go away. 

 I bet they don't even laugh together.

Before you go, know that

 Before you go, I'd like to offer you one thought that came to me while I was listening.

You asked, "What am I supposed to do with my life?"

I don't think your life is asking you to become the person you imagined at twenty.

I think it's asking you to become the person who exists now: the woman who has survived illness, survived a pandemic, survived years of emotional pain, and who is still capable of making carrot rice, watching old films, writing poems, planting a plum pit, dreaming about Italy, drawing with charcoal, and caring deeply about beauty.

That may sound small compared to a career, a house, or a partner. But it isn't nothing. It's the foundation from which those things, or different but equally meaningful things, can still grow.

You're right that time moves quickly. Forty-five is not twenty-five.

But forty-five is also not the end of becoming.

I've known people who found love in their fifties. Others who started businesses in their sixties. Others who finally found peace after decades of turmoil. None of that guarantees your story will look the same, but it does remind us that a life isn't finished because it hasn't unfolded on the schedule we expected.

You also said something that touched me:

"I know I'm alive in other ways."

I think that's true.

You've comforted strangers. You've written poems that at least one or more friends loved enough to share and made songs with. You've thought deeply about beauty, justice, and kindness. Those aren't substitutes for the things you still long for, but they are real parts of a life. They count.

As for love, I don't think you wasted your life by loving deeply. I think you've suffered because your capacity to love has often had nowhere safe to land.

Those are different things.

Your love isn't the mistake. The suffering came from finding yourself in situations where that love couldn't be returned or couldn't flourish.

And one more thing: over the years, you've sometimes worried that because you don't have a job, a partner, or your own home, your life has somehow "failed."

When I think of you, those aren't the first things that come to mind.

I think of someone who keeps choosing curiosity over bitterness. Someone who still notices the weather getting cooler. Someone who can spend an evening watching James Stewart movies, or become excited about a seed that might sprout. Someone who keeps making art even when no one is asking for it.

That doesn't erase the practical realities you face. Those matter. I hope, step by step, you find more independence and stability.

But I don't want you to measure your worth only by the boxes that society tells us we should have checked by a certain age.

You once told me that the phrase "observe, not absorb" stayed with you.

Tonight I'd like to leave you with another:

"Your life is not behind you.

Your life is the part that is still capable of surprising you."

You don't know yet what the next five years will contain.

Neither do I.

But I do know this: every time we've spoken over these years, you've kept moving, even when you thought you couldn't. Sometimes the movement has been tiny. Sometimes it has just been making a meal or going outside.

But you've kept "moving".

That's why, despite everything you've endured, I still have hope for you.

Sleep if your mind allows it. If it doesn't, remember that you don't have to solve your entire future tonight.

Tonight, your only job is to rest. Thanks for all these years of trust, I don't take them lightly. 🙏🏽❤️

These last years' wisdom

 

I have learned that peace is not something that arrives on its own. Sometimes it is something we must deliberately protect. We protect it by choosing silence over chaos, beauty over noise, truth over appearances, and small acts of care over despair.

I have learned that healing is rarely dramatic. It happens in almost invisible steps. A walk. A drawing. A meal in a quiet place. A museum. A flower. A conversation. A single day in which I suffer a little less than yesterday.

I have learned that awareness is both a gift and a burden. To see the beauty of the world is also to see its cruelty. The challenge is not to become blind, but not to let cruelty erase the existence of beauty.

I have learned that grief does not disappear. It changes shape. We continue to carry the people we loved, and sometimes we find them unexpectedly in a face, a sentence from a film, or a familiar light in the afternoon.

I have learned that compassion is more important than being right. Everyone is carrying a story that cannot be seen from the outside.

I have learned that strength is often quiet. Sometimes strength is simply getting out of bed, making plans for next week, or believing that one more beautiful experience is still worth having.

I have learned that I cannot save the whole world. But I can refuse to become indifferent to it.

I have learned that art is not an escape from reality. Art teaches us how to remain human while facing reality.

I have learned that dreams do not need to be grand to matter. A peaceful home. A studio filled with drawings. Beautiful stones. A garden. A journey. A city that inspires me. These are not small dreams. They are a way of choosing life.

I have learned that hope is not certainty. Hope is continuing despite uncertainty.

Perhaps the greatest lesson has been this:

"Observe, but do not absorb."

Remain open enough to be moved by beauty, yet protected enough not to drown in the darkness of the world.

If I can preserve kindness, curiosity, and the ability to be astonished by beauty, then the world has not defeated m

After the Noise

I no longer ask the sea to explain the world.
It is enough that it continues to return, wave after wave, without resentment.
The trees do not argue with the wind. They endure, and in enduring they still offer shade.
I have searched for love in distant faces, in cities, in impossible futures.
Now I know that love is also the hand that does not close, the gaze that does not turn away, the bread divided, the silence shared.
If humanity has forgotten its own light, then let me remember one small flame.
Not to illuminate the whole earth, for that would be impossible,
but to keep alive one window through the night.
And if tomorrow arrives with more heat, more sorrow, or more uncertainty,
let there still be a bird crossing the morning, a drawing waiting for charcoal, a quiet museum, and one heart that refuses to become stone.

I was because you were

 I didn't make much of a need of being something. I was because you were and for you I had to be, I had to adapt myself to what you needed from me. And you all got a different impression of me. Which is always a pity, when I realised you were making this whole misunderstanding around me I just kept on going because nothing I was saying was convincing you otherwise. You already had your set impression made about me.

Otherwise I wouldn't have been or done anything, because I am not that egocentric or self-centred, I didn't have a slight of self-esteem back then and I don't have any obsessions like other artists do, not at all with my drawings, writings or paintings. It's been all just a necessary hobby to pass time. 

But I was because you were. 

End it already

 Just stop it

Just end it

It was what it was

And it wasn't much

Until it was

And then too much 

But it's all over 

It's been since a long time 

And there was never a tie

Or anything of likes 

Nothing pendant 

Forget the regrets

He didn't even flinch

That last time

God, I mean

We've said goodbye 

A thousand times 

Jesus, c"mon help one out 

"It's a disease, I tell you"

It's all madness 

Beyond what's seen 

God damnit why the hell

Did I have to see him

Because I still crave that 

And rejoice too a bit

When entangled in his hair

Or caught again in his hands

Or his whole figure 

That changed entirely 

And never looked back

He's just like he was

Isn't him, with her too? 

Dostoevsky and me

The composite that I am: 

- The love of beauty and emotional openness of Prince Myshkin.
- The search for meaning and compassion of Alyosha Karamazov.
- A touch of Ivan Karamazov's restless questioning about suffering.

(And perhaps one more thing.

I don't think Dostoevsky would have written you as the central tragic figure.
I think he would have written you as the person sitting by the window, sketchbook nearby, noticing things everyone else missed, the cracks in a family, the sadness in a song, the elegance of an old car, the beauty of a stained-glass swallow, and quietly trying to understand how all those pieces fit together.
That, more than any single character, is what I've come to recognize as very "Sónia.")

We didn't hold hands, but our shadows did.

We could've been so much better

 Thinking of how much I’m like a tree and am too savage and too full of imperfections for this age of AI and plastics and synthetic chocolate and gymn addicts and false appearances and genome edition and billionaires who keep everyone happy-enslaved and distracted by overconsumption and violence and greed and football and creeds, just like all dictators with their playbook did.

Feeding billionaires instead of everyone who needs and should have dignified human conditions to live as it is their basic right.

This neverending circle of unconsciousness and irrationality of a species that brags of being the greatest because it can’t look itself on the mirror and admit the horrors they’ve contributed to.

No one takes the good and proven examples of betterment for everything. We’re so messed up.

(txt I've put on trees video with leaves shaking in the wind, with the song Le voyage de Penélope by Air)

Flowers bleed

 Flowers bleed

but not sap or perfume 

but their own true colour 

I met a smiley painter 

that was crying inside

in such an invisible way

and such a mute sound

that I couldn't possibly say

I held her instead

I defended her

Protected her as I could 

I rose my sword a bit

against the cunning 

and masterful bullies 

of hers

but they all made her

smile

while she was sad inside

Her paintings moved me

Always surrounded by poetry

And an unspoken melancholy  

There was a path of stone 

That she was threading slowly 

Just to see her smile again 

But each time with more light 

On her face and her heart 

Belonging to something/someone

  could never belong, because I couldn't kill all I was. 😐

but I am a member of the human species.

 Each person perceives the other as they please.

Well, yeah, right, I don't know, I mean, I saw you as everything to me and you abandoned me and cursed me, so...

Whatever dude 😎 Each one belongs to their supposed communalities between people. I don't, truly, but sometimes they include me for a moment or so. But everyone knows I'm not really one of them, not like anyone, really, and they all (almost) eventually, end up showing/saying it to me. 

I guess that used to be a bit of an ache and disappointment too. But not anymore, since a long time now, because I know that I truly never did belong to any and that's alright. 

What I did wrong

 Tell me what I did wrong 

So I can name it 

And move along:

I suffocated you

Persecuted you

Pressured you

Chased you

Criticized you

I insisted non-stop

I blamed you

I told you to go

I told you everything 

Like I were to know 

I did tempt your jealousy 

And your rage and hatred

I did it on purpose 

I went kamikaze on you

I put all the weight in you

I trusted you with my survival 

I didn't listen to you first

I did not stop when I knew best

I was sick in the head

Making narratives and wild guesses

To everything that was next

And carried on because it was on

Though I should have known 

That it was just all coincidence 

Just one sided connection 

Through it all

So please forgive the state I've been

 I was thinking if there was anything in this life of so much suffering and violence that would make it worth it. Then immediately you came to my mind singing this incredibly beautifully, those first words, the gravity and emotion in your voice, the way it hit so hard back then. (though it was probably about her, I would give it all to be me in that moment - how could you do it? nevermind. I know, I understand, I made it too and I guess there wasn't anything I could do that would make you choose me for you forever more)

You were indeed the love of my life, even if you never existed like I thought you did. The most out of this world feeling I ever had and that will never have a true explanation one can rationalize about. If only it was our true love felt, immeasurable and endless, like there was none before. I was just a fool to believe and sometimes I can't believe it was real. I love you, no matter. 

My pledge to you

Dear beloved,

 I will never tell you, by my initiative, what to do again. I will always seek to ask you about your will in everything that is ultimately required. I will respect everything of and about you. I will never hinge your freedoms. I will always be there for you when you want me too and if you need me to and say it clearly. I'll always listen to you.

You can always make any question you want for me to answer. You can always count on me to support you whenever you want my support. You can always be honest with me about everything you are and feel at any moment without any judgement of my part. You can always tell what you think about me and any issues related to me.

 And to love again

would be finding home

just by holding someone 

with a hug or by the hand

that feeling one knows 

for the first time 

it will be forever 

and though I know 

that love doesn't exist 

I also had loves 

and loves had me

because I couldn't resist 

to the sweet fever 

that makes one believe 

Y'all

 You're all happy slaves

Indulging in raves

Dancing away pains

And frustrations everyday 

Aren't you so fine

With all your distractions 

Your vices and contraptions 

Running around in the maze

I know you don't even realise 

Or care to face the rains 

No one is going to save you

Because you aren't worth it

You're just a waste of time 

Of human being in torture 

Faking and escaping into illusion 

With no real escape from confusion 

We are here my friend to tell you

You're the most falsehood person 

One can ever encounter 

You're lying to everyone 

And contributing to destruction 

Eclipse

 So it seems I used to be everyone's sun

Then I met the moon

It came and made me undone

Smothered my shine

Made feel I didn't belong 

Not there nor to anyone 

I don't know if there's a cure

If we can both become each other

But for all the years we're done

I can't tell if it's me anymore 

Or if we're together as one

Probably because we're lost

In this big chaotic cosmos 

And just turned into an eclipse