A noite magoa
The nature of the being is filled with layers of heaven and hell, apexes, never-ending deserts.
There are those who agonise over their toothpaste first thing in the morning and those who agonise over the hours passing so slowly, turned into days, ruminated into years, digested into lives. There are those who delude themselves with ideals, those who idealise delusions, those who dwell on imperfection, those who do not let themselves dwell.
There are those who find smiles in setbacks and those who counter smiles for the deception of reason. There are the advocates of ‘yes’, the unfailing supporters of ‘no’. There are those who like sweets, those who prefer savouries, those who enjoy walking barefoot and those who like wearing shoes. There are people of faith and renegades, those in exile and those from council, those who are from nowhere, those who are refugees, the libertines, the besieged, those in excess, those in danger of extinction, the good, the bad, the so-so.
There are those who fit into the collective and those who are strangers even unto themselves. There are those who know how to swim in the social pool, those who walk on the thick magma of people, those who drown in the void. There are the rich and the poor, the wretched, the underprivileged, the hippies, the yuppies, the calm, the nervous, the unifiers, the sectarians, the brilliant, the dull, the travellers, the trapped, the fidgety, the quiet , those who yearn for the day, those who pray for the night, the sleepwalkers, the insomniacs, those who control and those who are controlled, the obedient, the disoriented, the disobedient, the defendants of fate, of the occasional, the intellectuals , the obscure, the bright, the victims, the aggressors, the castrators and the castrated, the wicked and the pious, the greedy, the generous, the sincere and the liars, the prey, the hunters, the trophies.
There are the attentive, the oblivious, the thoughtful, the outraged, the furious, the indifferent, the negligent, the thoughtful, the egocentric and the philanthropic, the doting and the extreme, the contagious, the infected, the satisfied, the avid, the direct, the stumbling, the insurgent, the reverent, the inspired, the deserted, the simple, the complex, the physical, the mental, the urban, the rural, the introspective, the testifiers, those who are lost and those who were found.
There are the scheming, the sensorial, the nomadic, the sedentary, the entrepreneurs, the lazy, the dispossessed, the vain, the perspicacious, the distracted, the beatified, the lustful, the loyal, the disloyal, the stubborn, the considerate, the exciting, the boring, the cruel, the magnanimous, the naive, the cynical, the sincere, the hypocrites, the benevolent, the malevolent, the narcissistic, the benefactors, the assertive, the sarcastic, the stable, the drastic, the altruistic, the monogamous, the polygamous, the monotheistic, the polytheistic, the masters and the slaves, the radicals, the moderates, the registered, those of the norm, the tramps, the gifted, the gregarious, the isolated, the contesters, the contested, the usurpers, the usurped, the rapists, the raped, the conquerors, the conquered, the affable and those of wrath, those who like petals, those who prefer latex.
There are the party lovers, the ones who like to be celebrated, the worshippers, the worshipped. the nihilists, the sufferers, the promised, the soulless, the salvific, those of catharsis, the prophetic, those who long for the past, the protected, the vulnerable, conspicuous, codified, allergic, immune, neurotic, sensible, indomitable, catatonic, endemic, remainders, invaded, evaded, transgressors, colonisers, despotic, sophistic, the trash and the sweepers, the students and the teachers, reducers, encompassing, owners, indigents, acephalous, insurgents, liquidators, consenting parties, the ‘perhaps’, the absolutely, the creators, the perfectionists, the convergent, the divergent, the idiots, the loan sharks, the empathic, the drastic, the magicians, the mythomaniacs, the agnostic, the impressive, the faithless, the depressive, the prevailing, opaque, transparent, intact, inconsequential, eidetic, linear, those of light, those of blackout.
There are the ones who transcend each of their natures, those who surpass their every greatness, those who become more beautiful than beauty itself, those who descend from their reminiscences, those who allow themselves to be overtaken by each of their weaknesses, those unable to go, those unable to stay.
There are the hysterical, the esoteric, the catastrophists, those of maintenance, the hyperbolic, the situationists. There are those who move forwards, those who move backwards, those who prove themselves, those who reduce themselves, the smart-asses, the thick, the foolish and the morons, the mutants, the needy, the wizards, the resilient, the shepherds and the sheep, the indoctrinators and the indoctrinated, the cold-blooded and the short-fused, those who dance in the rain and those who flog a dead horse, the filthy, the spotless, the neat, the scruffy, the nuisances, the settled, the ugly, the beautiful, the true and the false, the chicken, the brave, the calculating, the thoughtful, the upright, the iniquitous, the attractive, the repulsive, the assertive, the hesitant, the extroverts and the shy, the plausible, the insecure, the digital, the analogue, the surreal, the pathological, the transcendental and the translogical, the insane, the sane, the bizarre, the conventional, decent, indecent, toxic, loyal, the decadent, the whole, the unbreakable, the quitters, the blind, the visionaries, the sensitive and the brutes, those of rule, those of exception, the beasts, the crystals.
There are people out there who are so fragile they can endure all kinds of nightmares without a woe. And people who are so strong, they’re intolerant to the simplest breeze of misfortune. There are people who like to be handcuffed and those who like to handcuff others. There are absolute people and relative people, unpolluted people, corruptible people, there are the self-serving and the selfless, the intense, the detached, the urgent, the postponable, the pungent, the feasible, those who confess, the contemptible, the perpetual, the fleeting, the universal, the home-lovers, the restrained, the exacerbated, the romantic and the purists, the eccentric, the cerebral, the contemporary, the ancestral, the erudite, the unreal, the forbidden, the admissible, the damned, the remissible. There are people who remain in others and other people who simply dissolve where they are.
There are people who achieve nothing and others who attain extraordinary things. There are people who die in poverty and others who die filthy rich. There are things that cannot be explained and others that can be explained. There are people who like rice. There are people who listen to entire symphonies while sleeping and those who listen to nothing but nothing in their sleep. There are those who build allegories and those who inhabit nightmares. There are people who can't stand ties and others who hang themselves with them. There are the dystopian, the slaves, the freed. There are those who overuse aerosols, those who undergo plastic surgeries, those who like custard tarts, those who inject Botox. Some people were born to be young, others to be old. There are the stationary and the revolutionary. There are the philosophers, the apostles, the shits, the cool, the crooked, the straight, those who theorise about the end, those who believe in a fresh start.
There are people who like to taste like every flavour and people who like to have no flavour at all. There are voices that visit us in our dreams, others that don't. There are people who like porridge and people who like mushrooms. There are people who like to think, people who like to sit down, people who like to stop, people who like to never be present. There are people who amplify themselves, others who reduce themselves, those who never stay, those who never go.
There are loads of yins out there, yangs galore. There are nights, there are days, there are extreme opposites that attract, promised souls, all manner of opportunities waiting for their thief. There are people who like to wake up very early and others who like to sleep in. There are people who are giving, people who are private, captivating, unfriendly, approachable, unapproachable. There are people who distrust everything and others who trust nothing. There are people who are absolutely fine passing by nobody and others who manage to pass by everybody. There are people who don't like people, people who only like some people, people who only like themselves, people who only want to be liked.
There are people who turn their life into a religion. And other people who spend their lives in denial. There are those of luxury, the disenfranchised, those who like wine, those who like bicycles, those who know their neighbours through Google Earth and those who bring them a piece of cake, those who die early, those who arrive late. Some people like pets. Others are pets.
There are addicts and abstainers, debutants, recidivists, believers and non-believers, devout, agnostics. There are people devoted to the moon, others who lie down in the sun. There are people who like to read at dusk. There are people who are allergic to lactose. There are people who find hidden meanings in words, others who find them in figures. There are people who like balloons, slippers, spices, artefacts. There are people who like vinyl records, there are people who like pizzas, burgers, mashed potatoes. There are those who like isolation and those who enjoy company.
While some know the Koran by heart, others memorise the New Testament. There are people who control lipids and proteins. There are people who need carbohydrates. There are people who believe in water, others who believe in the wind, others in earth, others in fire, others in the sky. Some people believe in nature. Some people believe in knowledge. There are the theoreticians, the empiricists, the frivolous, the hedonists. There are people who can dance till they drop and others unable to dance a step. There are people who pursue harmony, others, utopia.
And there is an incredible stock of people to whom these prosaic indulgences are not allowed, whom the opuscules of prejudice enclose within their metaphysical walls, as their own prisoners, surrounded by paradoxes of individual freedom, in perpetual synaesthesia with reason, where truth becomes a dystopian version of reality, a kind of impossibility that the collective plays in a strange form of social egoism: dreamers.
Dreamers are the most fragile and strongest of beings. They possess a wonderful, almost Neolithic thing: magical thinking. They exercise their freedom in the darkest beauty, blossoming like magnolias in the infinite desert of people.
The voice inside, restless, lost in the sounds of thought, lost in a labyrinth of silences, in a labyrinth of skin.
The words appear as if they were secretly whispered from another mind, becoming clear, briefly, like neon visitations, leaving like maids fading out into the darkness, where instruments rest, as if they were memories, like divinities in a senseless medieval state.
Quietness is a utopia, as legitimate as silence, as real as that feeling of belonging to no body, no soul, no place.
We are all born for all and for nobody; we keep intoning the melody of life, decomposing the most egalitarian of compositions. This might be one of the only decent manifestations of equality, in living memory and beyond.
In the land of Humanity, the individual is less than an atom, universe dust, designation of animal origin, without possible salvation or hermeneutics. The most pronounced characteristic of solitude is its universality. A tear has a neutral PH between 7.0 and 7.4. Pain is indefinable. It is inopportune. It is an objective synoptic table. It is shadow. Meaning. Emotional loop. It is what is not. The intangible that stays.
The eyes tear through darkness, as if heavy vaults of sky were falling on stage. The metabolic expression of an incredible, unyielding strength that only dreamers recognise. That is why they are strong. That is why they are fragile. They seem bigger than time, bigger than life, solely craving for it, with the voracious hunger of dreamers. That's it, but that's not all that makes them different. What makes them different is the complexity of their innocence, the melody of their smile, the way they transport us to our true nature, the way they so clearly present us with a system of possibilities. The way they give themselves, the way they give - in their disarming generosity - what has been withheld from them so many times.
One day, they discovered their nature in music and, in it, a sublime demonstration of unequivocal love, of true art.
How wonderful it is to observe them. An immense, unifying, gregarious energy, stronger than any sect of subjectivities, detonating through each and every pore within the soul, in cosmic waves of fellowship. A bewitching osmosis functioning like a limbic system, in haptics of sound. Music, in its brotherhood, in its interculturalism, in its pure expression. The fury through which they release their sweetness, eliciting the choreography of the days.
Seeing them is like stopping time in its transcendent speed, like a bird flapping its wings to hover over a place.
There are dreamers and dreamers. Only the best dreamers manage to subvert the world into the same thing.
Their beauty is endless, truly multidimensional. Their beauty lies in the beauty of their innocence, the opposite being true and, the truth, a more beautiful, purer, harder thing.
Their innocence sometimes makes them prey to the most unsuspecting predators. Yet, this is the most ambiguous nature of beings. Our inability to be like them. We are never able to give as we receive. There is no retribution, no possible tribute to their genuine kindness, their art.
They are the tribute, a tribute to our limitations, to this concentric world where we walk and they fly. They don't need a tribute, they need others to be just like them. They are not an object; they are not a moment, a clipping, an aesthetic, a light in the light, a framework, a single dimension. They are more than just a person, they are families, they are memories, they are congregated lives, people in communion, sound, expression. Complete and uncluttered, that is how they give themselves. That’s what their incredible beauty is like. Capturing it is only possible if we free our gaze towards what cannot be seen.
Deep down, at the bottom of the still waters of this recreational society of ours, there is a kind of praiseworthy elitism, almost as dangerous as primal prejudice. Deep down, having that bottom as a background, it’s just flogging a dead horse.
The being is completely inexplicable, almost as ambiguous as pain. The being is a stage. A place without a place, multipolar, where all natures exist again. The nature of things and beings is something magnificent when they are crystal clear, as they are. Time is psychedelic. There are no prisons. There are no prisoners.
So it is:
There are those who merely fly. Those who fly over them. And those who let themselves be flown over.
The siege, as always, besieges those who besiege.
Luís Pedro Cabral
Translation: Tânia Simões
Proofreading: Jacqueline Sarbib
There are those who agonise over their toothpaste first thing in the morning and those who agonise over the hours passing so slowly, turned into days, ruminated into years, digested into lives. There are those who delude themselves with ideals, those who idealise delusions, those who dwell on imperfection, those who do not let themselves dwell.
There are those who find smiles in setbacks and those who counter smiles for the deception of reason. There are the advocates of ‘yes’, the unfailing supporters of ‘no’. There are those who like sweets, those who prefer savouries, those who enjoy walking barefoot and those who like wearing shoes. There are people of faith and renegades, those in exile and those from council, those who are from nowhere, those who are refugees, the libertines, the besieged, those in excess, those in danger of extinction, the good, the bad, the so-so.
There are those who fit into the collective and those who are strangers even unto themselves. There are those who know how to swim in the social pool, those who walk on the thick magma of people, those who drown in the void. There are the rich and the poor, the wretched, the underprivileged, the hippies, the yuppies, the calm, the nervous, the unifiers, the sectarians, the brilliant, the dull, the travellers, the trapped, the fidgety, the quiet , those who yearn for the day, those who pray for the night, the sleepwalkers, the insomniacs, those who control and those who are controlled, the obedient, the disoriented, the disobedient, the defendants of fate, of the occasional, the intellectuals , the obscure, the bright, the victims, the aggressors, the castrators and the castrated, the wicked and the pious, the greedy, the generous, the sincere and the liars, the prey, the hunters, the trophies.
There are the attentive, the oblivious, the thoughtful, the outraged, the furious, the indifferent, the negligent, the thoughtful, the egocentric and the philanthropic, the doting and the extreme, the contagious, the infected, the satisfied, the avid, the direct, the stumbling, the insurgent, the reverent, the inspired, the deserted, the simple, the complex, the physical, the mental, the urban, the rural, the introspective, the testifiers, those who are lost and those who were found.
There are the scheming, the sensorial, the nomadic, the sedentary, the entrepreneurs, the lazy, the dispossessed, the vain, the perspicacious, the distracted, the beatified, the lustful, the loyal, the disloyal, the stubborn, the considerate, the exciting, the boring, the cruel, the magnanimous, the naive, the cynical, the sincere, the hypocrites, the benevolent, the malevolent, the narcissistic, the benefactors, the assertive, the sarcastic, the stable, the drastic, the altruistic, the monogamous, the polygamous, the monotheistic, the polytheistic, the masters and the slaves, the radicals, the moderates, the registered, those of the norm, the tramps, the gifted, the gregarious, the isolated, the contesters, the contested, the usurpers, the usurped, the rapists, the raped, the conquerors, the conquered, the affable and those of wrath, those who like petals, those who prefer latex.
There are the party lovers, the ones who like to be celebrated, the worshippers, the worshipped. the nihilists, the sufferers, the promised, the soulless, the salvific, those of catharsis, the prophetic, those who long for the past, the protected, the vulnerable, conspicuous, codified, allergic, immune, neurotic, sensible, indomitable, catatonic, endemic, remainders, invaded, evaded, transgressors, colonisers, despotic, sophistic, the trash and the sweepers, the students and the teachers, reducers, encompassing, owners, indigents, acephalous, insurgents, liquidators, consenting parties, the ‘perhaps’, the absolutely, the creators, the perfectionists, the convergent, the divergent, the idiots, the loan sharks, the empathic, the drastic, the magicians, the mythomaniacs, the agnostic, the impressive, the faithless, the depressive, the prevailing, opaque, transparent, intact, inconsequential, eidetic, linear, those of light, those of blackout.
There are the ones who transcend each of their natures, those who surpass their every greatness, those who become more beautiful than beauty itself, those who descend from their reminiscences, those who allow themselves to be overtaken by each of their weaknesses, those unable to go, those unable to stay.
There are the hysterical, the esoteric, the catastrophists, those of maintenance, the hyperbolic, the situationists. There are those who move forwards, those who move backwards, those who prove themselves, those who reduce themselves, the smart-asses, the thick, the foolish and the morons, the mutants, the needy, the wizards, the resilient, the shepherds and the sheep, the indoctrinators and the indoctrinated, the cold-blooded and the short-fused, those who dance in the rain and those who flog a dead horse, the filthy, the spotless, the neat, the scruffy, the nuisances, the settled, the ugly, the beautiful, the true and the false, the chicken, the brave, the calculating, the thoughtful, the upright, the iniquitous, the attractive, the repulsive, the assertive, the hesitant, the extroverts and the shy, the plausible, the insecure, the digital, the analogue, the surreal, the pathological, the transcendental and the translogical, the insane, the sane, the bizarre, the conventional, decent, indecent, toxic, loyal, the decadent, the whole, the unbreakable, the quitters, the blind, the visionaries, the sensitive and the brutes, those of rule, those of exception, the beasts, the crystals.
There are people out there who are so fragile they can endure all kinds of nightmares without a woe. And people who are so strong, they’re intolerant to the simplest breeze of misfortune. There are people who like to be handcuffed and those who like to handcuff others. There are absolute people and relative people, unpolluted people, corruptible people, there are the self-serving and the selfless, the intense, the detached, the urgent, the postponable, the pungent, the feasible, those who confess, the contemptible, the perpetual, the fleeting, the universal, the home-lovers, the restrained, the exacerbated, the romantic and the purists, the eccentric, the cerebral, the contemporary, the ancestral, the erudite, the unreal, the forbidden, the admissible, the damned, the remissible. There are people who remain in others and other people who simply dissolve where they are.
There are people who achieve nothing and others who attain extraordinary things. There are people who die in poverty and others who die filthy rich. There are things that cannot be explained and others that can be explained. There are people who like rice. There are people who listen to entire symphonies while sleeping and those who listen to nothing but nothing in their sleep. There are those who build allegories and those who inhabit nightmares. There are people who can't stand ties and others who hang themselves with them. There are the dystopian, the slaves, the freed. There are those who overuse aerosols, those who undergo plastic surgeries, those who like custard tarts, those who inject Botox. Some people were born to be young, others to be old. There are the stationary and the revolutionary. There are the philosophers, the apostles, the shits, the cool, the crooked, the straight, those who theorise about the end, those who believe in a fresh start.
There are people who like to taste like every flavour and people who like to have no flavour at all. There are voices that visit us in our dreams, others that don't. There are people who like porridge and people who like mushrooms. There are people who like to think, people who like to sit down, people who like to stop, people who like to never be present. There are people who amplify themselves, others who reduce themselves, those who never stay, those who never go.
There are loads of yins out there, yangs galore. There are nights, there are days, there are extreme opposites that attract, promised souls, all manner of opportunities waiting for their thief. There are people who like to wake up very early and others who like to sleep in. There are people who are giving, people who are private, captivating, unfriendly, approachable, unapproachable. There are people who distrust everything and others who trust nothing. There are people who are absolutely fine passing by nobody and others who manage to pass by everybody. There are people who don't like people, people who only like some people, people who only like themselves, people who only want to be liked.
There are people who turn their life into a religion. And other people who spend their lives in denial. There are those of luxury, the disenfranchised, those who like wine, those who like bicycles, those who know their neighbours through Google Earth and those who bring them a piece of cake, those who die early, those who arrive late. Some people like pets. Others are pets.
There are addicts and abstainers, debutants, recidivists, believers and non-believers, devout, agnostics. There are people devoted to the moon, others who lie down in the sun. There are people who like to read at dusk. There are people who are allergic to lactose. There are people who find hidden meanings in words, others who find them in figures. There are people who like balloons, slippers, spices, artefacts. There are people who like vinyl records, there are people who like pizzas, burgers, mashed potatoes. There are those who like isolation and those who enjoy company.
While some know the Koran by heart, others memorise the New Testament. There are people who control lipids and proteins. There are people who need carbohydrates. There are people who believe in water, others who believe in the wind, others in earth, others in fire, others in the sky. Some people believe in nature. Some people believe in knowledge. There are the theoreticians, the empiricists, the frivolous, the hedonists. There are people who can dance till they drop and others unable to dance a step. There are people who pursue harmony, others, utopia.
And there is an incredible stock of people to whom these prosaic indulgences are not allowed, whom the opuscules of prejudice enclose within their metaphysical walls, as their own prisoners, surrounded by paradoxes of individual freedom, in perpetual synaesthesia with reason, where truth becomes a dystopian version of reality, a kind of impossibility that the collective plays in a strange form of social egoism: dreamers.
Dreamers are the most fragile and strongest of beings. They possess a wonderful, almost Neolithic thing: magical thinking. They exercise their freedom in the darkest beauty, blossoming like magnolias in the infinite desert of people.
The voice inside, restless, lost in the sounds of thought, lost in a labyrinth of silences, in a labyrinth of skin.
The words appear as if they were secretly whispered from another mind, becoming clear, briefly, like neon visitations, leaving like maids fading out into the darkness, where instruments rest, as if they were memories, like divinities in a senseless medieval state.
Quietness is a utopia, as legitimate as silence, as real as that feeling of belonging to no body, no soul, no place.
We are all born for all and for nobody; we keep intoning the melody of life, decomposing the most egalitarian of compositions. This might be one of the only decent manifestations of equality, in living memory and beyond.
In the land of Humanity, the individual is less than an atom, universe dust, designation of animal origin, without possible salvation or hermeneutics. The most pronounced characteristic of solitude is its universality. A tear has a neutral PH between 7.0 and 7.4. Pain is indefinable. It is inopportune. It is an objective synoptic table. It is shadow. Meaning. Emotional loop. It is what is not. The intangible that stays.
The eyes tear through darkness, as if heavy vaults of sky were falling on stage. The metabolic expression of an incredible, unyielding strength that only dreamers recognise. That is why they are strong. That is why they are fragile. They seem bigger than time, bigger than life, solely craving for it, with the voracious hunger of dreamers. That's it, but that's not all that makes them different. What makes them different is the complexity of their innocence, the melody of their smile, the way they transport us to our true nature, the way they so clearly present us with a system of possibilities. The way they give themselves, the way they give - in their disarming generosity - what has been withheld from them so many times.
One day, they discovered their nature in music and, in it, a sublime demonstration of unequivocal love, of true art.
How wonderful it is to observe them. An immense, unifying, gregarious energy, stronger than any sect of subjectivities, detonating through each and every pore within the soul, in cosmic waves of fellowship. A bewitching osmosis functioning like a limbic system, in haptics of sound. Music, in its brotherhood, in its interculturalism, in its pure expression. The fury through which they release their sweetness, eliciting the choreography of the days.
Seeing them is like stopping time in its transcendent speed, like a bird flapping its wings to hover over a place.
There are dreamers and dreamers. Only the best dreamers manage to subvert the world into the same thing.
Their beauty is endless, truly multidimensional. Their beauty lies in the beauty of their innocence, the opposite being true and, the truth, a more beautiful, purer, harder thing.
Their innocence sometimes makes them prey to the most unsuspecting predators. Yet, this is the most ambiguous nature of beings. Our inability to be like them. We are never able to give as we receive. There is no retribution, no possible tribute to their genuine kindness, their art.
They are the tribute, a tribute to our limitations, to this concentric world where we walk and they fly. They don't need a tribute, they need others to be just like them. They are not an object; they are not a moment, a clipping, an aesthetic, a light in the light, a framework, a single dimension. They are more than just a person, they are families, they are memories, they are congregated lives, people in communion, sound, expression. Complete and uncluttered, that is how they give themselves. That’s what their incredible beauty is like. Capturing it is only possible if we free our gaze towards what cannot be seen.
Deep down, at the bottom of the still waters of this recreational society of ours, there is a kind of praiseworthy elitism, almost as dangerous as primal prejudice. Deep down, having that bottom as a background, it’s just flogging a dead horse.
The being is completely inexplicable, almost as ambiguous as pain. The being is a stage. A place without a place, multipolar, where all natures exist again. The nature of things and beings is something magnificent when they are crystal clear, as they are. Time is psychedelic. There are no prisons. There are no prisoners.
So it is:
There are those who merely fly. Those who fly over them. And those who let themselves be flown over.
The siege, as always, besieges those who besiege.
Luís Pedro Cabral
Translation: Tânia Simões
Proofreading: Jacqueline Sarbib
