Stubborness

The sun was mocking me this morning. I ignored it, there´s nothing it can do. I am determined to be gloomy. I am enjoying cold, grey mornings. And that´s that. For as long as I like.

Lack of...

I miss the times when I would embrace things with enthusiasm, without second thoughts.

It´s the lack of three things that turns people bitter, I read in my book: love, attention and justice. Having one of them, doesn´t seem to compensate for the other two. It should.

Funchal

It´s a beautiful summer evening down here. People are having dinner on their terraces and there´s a huge moon on top of the city and on top of the immense sea. One mushroom risotto and one glass of cold white wine later, I feel dizzy, loose and happy to be back.

Words (more words)

"She´s back. It was one week ago, when we were descending on a wicker basket from Monte to Funchal, with the taste of disgrace in our mouth, that I noticed that Maria João had come back. To herself, to me and to the world she was living in. Even on the days she was sicker, she would visit me whenever she could. Now she had come back to stay.

On a terrifying turn, a well-planted photographer took a photo of us: the best we´ve ever had; a happy couple. In the risky run, in the acceptance of danger and in the laughs of fear and pleasure, someone had turned her back to cancer and death and had reappeared on my side, in front of me and in my heart, the same as on the day I fell in love with her, exactly as I remembered her and as she – even at the worst moments – never let me forget. In October she stopped being sick. More: she started psychoanalysis with Frederico Pereira, with the intention, dear to her since she was a child, to be a psychoanalyst too.

She has come back. And I´ve come back with her, not as the worried lover anymore who took care of her but being once again the passionate lover that knows nothing but love her.

Love is always here. Wherever we are, it doesn´t run away and it´s not taken by surprise. But it is she who has come back, and I – and the ungovernable freedom to love and be loved, without changing a bit how we are or how we behave.

Maria João is back. She brought me back with her. And we go wherever we want. Like before. Like from now on. She´s back."

Miguel Esteves Cardoso warmed our hearts and brought tears to our eyes. For what it is. For what it was. For what it might be, again.

Absence and silence

And I, that I like words so much, that languages fascinate me, that I infinitely admire those who know how to use them well... suddenly all I can think of is how much I would like to go to a country where I wouldn´t know the language, where nobody would be able (or willing) to communicate with me and I with nobody. Absence of words (but in my head, only those) and silence.

Words (again)

"I thought you woudn´t be coming anymore, it was late, I shouldn´t even be there, but suddenly, in the middle of the rain and the cold, you moved towards me, it was your hair, your tone of skin, a hat similar to yours, that covered the nose and the eyes, you moved towards me, in a flagrant diagonal, I jolted, or almost, there wasn´t even time, she lifted her head, she because it wasn´t you, and I turned the other way, ashamed, why the hell did I still think that you would come to me, on the twenty-fifth hour, in the middle of the cold and the rain?

While I am moving away, slowly, I think that during all this time I was like a man who asks God for a sign. A man who believes but cannot take the silence any more, or doesn´t believe and challenges a fictitious god. But this bravado isn´t telling us anything about God. It´s the man that has to come forward. He has to come forward to himself, choosing the life he´s leading. A man is not a divinity: there´s no doubt he exists and there´s no doubt he´ll stop existing soon. We just don´t know if he chooses freedom or despair."

Shameful, painful expectations. I whish I could write like this.

There´s more, here.

Envy

It was a beautiful autumn morning this morning. I looked outside the window, I saw the gardener among the trees and roses and yellow leaves on the ground and I envied her.

Later on, I thought about the young man who found out that he´s not allowed to dream of anything anymore. He just needs to put his affairs in order. How can that feel? I didn´t envy him, nor his loved ones.

I am a fool, I know. But it doesn´t help to know.

The Seventh Gate

"Efficiency as her antidote to despair".
I said it last week. I found it in my book today.

Words

Why do we get so attached to words? As if the truth lay within them. We go back to them, again and again. We read and re-read them, wanting them desperately to 'be' the truth. We close our eyes to everything else and we just want to believe in words.