(the beginning the camera is moving, but on 0:44 it becomes still. Thanks Suzana Linhares for the video). Thanks my friends and readers for this moment in Melk.
Illustration created by Angelica Uranga
As I do every year, today we are going to celebrate (this time in the Abbey of Melk, Austria) the day of my patron, Saint Joseph. Together with 100 friends and 30 readers selected from Facebook, Twitter and this blog, we will say the prayer below at 8:30 PM. Be welcome to join us!
Glorious St. Joseph
model of all who are devoted to labor,
obtain for me the grace
to work conscientiously by placing love of duty above my inclinations;
to gratefully and joyously deem it an honor to employ and to develop by labor
the gifts I have received from God,
to work methodically, peacefully,
in moderation and patience,
without ever shrinking from it through difficulty to work;
above all, with purity of intention and unselfishness,
having unceasingly before my eyes
the account I have to render of time lost,
talents unused, good not done,
and vain complacency in success.
St. Joseph, inspire and guide me for the time to come.
by Fernando Pessoa ( Portuguese poet, 1888-1935 )
I am nothing
I shall always be nothing
I cannot wish to be anything.
Aside from that, I have within me all the dreams of the world.
Windows of my room,
The room of one of the world’s millions nobody knows about
(And if they knew about me, what would they know?)
Open onto the mystery of a street continually crossed by people,
To a street inaccessible to any thought,
Real, impossibly real, certain, unknowingly certain,
With the mystery of things beneath the stones and beings,
With death making the walls damp and men’s hair white,
With the Destiny driving the wagon of everything down the road of nothing.
Today I am defeated, as if I knew the truth.
Today I am clear-minded, as if I were about to die
And had no more kinship with things
Than a goodbye, this building and this side of the street becoming
A long row of train carriages, and a whistle departing
From inside my head,
And a jolt of my nerves and a creak of bones as we go.
Today I am bewildered, as one who wondered and discovered and forgot.
Today I am divided between the loyalty I owe
To the outward reality of the Tobacco Kiosk of the other side of the street
And to the inward real feeling that everything is but a dream.
I have missed everything.
And since I had no aims, maybe everything was indeed nothing.
What I was taught,
I go down from the window at the back of the house.
I went to the countryside with grand plans,
But all I found in it was grass and trees,
And when there were people, they were just like other people
I step back from the window and sit in a chair. What should I think about now?
I have dreamed more than Napoleon did.
I have held against the hypothetical heart more humanities than Christ.
I have secretly created philosophies no Kant has ever written.
But I am, and perhaps always should be, the one from the attic
Although I don’t live in it;
I shall always be someone not born for this;
I shall always be the one who just had qualities;
I shall always be the one who has waited for a gate to open next a wall without a door
And sang the song of the infinite in a poultry-yard,
And heard God’s voice in a blocked-up well.
Believe in myself? No, not in me and not in nothing.
May Nature be dissolved on my feverish head
Her sun, her rain, the wind that ruffles my hair,
And the rest, let it come if it must, it doesn’t matter.
Hearts in thrall to the stars,
We have conquered the whole world before leaving our beds.
But we were awakened and it was opaque,
We rose and he was strange to us
We left the house and it was the whole world,
And also the Solar System, the Milky Way and the Indefinite…
Eat chocolates!
Know there are no metaphysics in the world but chocolates.
Know that all the faiths don’t teach more than confectionery.
Eat, dirty one, eat!
If only I could eat chocolates with the same veracity you do!
But I think, and when I lift the silver paper of a leaf of tin-foil
I let everything fall to the ground, as I have done to my life.)
Musical essence of my useless verses,
If only I could face you as something I had created
Instead of always facing the Tobacco Kiosk across the street,
Forcing underfoot the consciousness of existing,
Like a carpet a drunkard stumbles on
Or a straw mat stolen by gypsies and worth nothing.
But the Tobacco Kiosk owner has come to the door and is standing there.
I look at him with the discomfort of an half-turned head
And the discomfort of an half-grasping soul.
He shall die and I shall die.
He shall leave his signboard and I shall leave my poems.
His sign will die, and so will my poems.
And soon the street where the sign is, will die too,
And so will the language in which my poems are written.
And so will the whirling planet where all of this happened.
On other satellites of other systems something like people
Will go on making something like poems and living under things like signboards,
Always one thing facing the other,
Always one thing as useless as the other,
Always the impossible as stupid as reality,
Always the mystery of the bottom as powerful as the mysterious dream of the top.
Always this or always some other thing, or neither one nor the other.
But a man has entered the Tobacco Shop (to buy tobacco?),
And plausible reality suddenly hits me.
I half rouse myself, energetic, convinced, human,
And I will try to write these verses in which I say the opposite.
I light a cigarette as I think about writing them,
And in that cigarette I savour liberation from all thoughts.
I follow the smoke as if it were my personal itinerary
And enjoy, in a sensitive and capable moment
The liberation of all the speculations
With the conscience that metaphysics is a consequence of not feeling well.
Afterwards I throw myself on the chair
And continue smoking.
As long as Destiny allows, I will keep smoking.
(If I married my washwoman’s daughter
Maybe I should be happy.)
Upon that, I rise. And I go to the window.
The man has come out of the Tobacco Kiosk (putting change in his trousers?).
Ah, I know him: he is Esteves without metaphysics.
(The Tobacco Kiosk owner has come to the door.)
As if by a divine instinct, Esteves turned around and saw me.
He waved hello, I greet him “Hello there, Esteves!”, and the universe
Reconstructed itself for me, without ideal or hope, and the owner of the Tobacco Kiosk smiled.
2006 Free copyright. To see this photo in a better resolution, click here
This is the first time I wrote a book in public (I mean, I wrote in private, but it was like many eyes were on me, because I was doing daily updates in Twitter about my emotional status while writing). I finished this Thursday, 11 March, at 2:00 AM.
In 2006 I was called to my 3rd sacred pilgrimage.
The first one, the Road to Santiago (1986) takes place in space , meaning that you have to cover a physical distance between two points. In my case, I walked from the border of France to O Cebreiro (Galicia), close to 600 kms. I wrote a book about it, “The pilgrimage”.
The second was in 1989, called Road to Rome, takes place in time. It is not a journey to Rome, but I needed to choose a place (in this case, the French Pyrenees) to stay for 70 days. I had to dream and follow the dream the next day, regardless how absurd it was (I remember dreaming with a bus stations, and I spent 3 hrs the next day in a bus station). It deals with the Feminine Energy, and I wrote “Brida” and “By the river Piedra I sat down and wept” while seeing my feminine side manifesting itself.
The 3rd sacred road Is called Road to Jerusalem. Again, you don’t need to go to Jerusalem, but you have to travel in space and time. The only task I was given was: stay away from home for the next 4 months.
I went to several countries, but the epiphany happened while crossing Asia in the Transiberian train ( 15 days, 7 different time zones, 9.2528 kms from Moscow to Vladivostok). I was travelling with a Turkish girl, Hilal (not her real name), for reasons that you are going to discover in the book. This point where time and space converge is called “The Aleph”(J.L.Borges has a wonderful short story about this point) . Therefore, this is the title of my new book: “The Aleph”.
Why did I take so long to write about this pilgrimage? Because it took me three full years to understand it.
It is not a travel guide. Of course I describe what does it mean such a long trip in a train, but the main goal is the long trip to my soul, past, present and future.
My friends in Facebook and Twitter are the first to know, besides a note today in Radar (Veja magazine)
The book will be released in Brasil very soon, and in the rest of the world in 2011. I wish it could be this year (a writer wants to see his/her soul unveiled the next day), but the publishing houses have a different schedule.
________________________________
Essa foi a primeira vez que escrevi um livro em publico (quer dizer, escrevi comigo mesmo, mas todo mundo sabia que eu estava escrevendo, porque fazia updates diarios no Twitter sobre meu estado emocional). Terminei nesta quinta, dia 11 de março, as 2:00 AM.
Em 2006 eu fui chamado para fazer minha terceira peregrinação sagrada.
A primeira foi O Caminho de Santiago (1986), uma viagem no espaço físico, cobrindo a distância entre dois pontos. No meu caso, andei da fronteira da França até O Cebreiro (Galícia), e foi tema do meu primeiro livro, “O diario de um mago”.
A segunda foi em 1989, é chamado Caminho de Roma, e se passa no tempo. Não era uma viagem para Roma: eu precisava escolher um lugar e ficar ali durante 70 dias. Escolhi os Pirineus. Tudo que precisava fazer era sonhar, e no dia seguinte transformar o sonho em algo real. Lembro-me de uma noite que sonhei com uma estação de ônibus, e fiquei 3 horas em uma. O caminho de Roma lida com a Energia Feminina; escrevi “Brida” e “Na margem do rio Piedra eu sentei e chorei” logo depois, enquanto essa energia despertava em mim.
A terceira peregrinação sagrada é chamada de O Caminho de Jerusalem. De novo, nao é necessário ir a Jerusalem, mas precisava viajar no espaço e tempo. A única tarefa que me foi dada: fique fora de casa durante 4 meses.
Visitei vários paises, mas a revelação aconteceu enquanto eu cruzava a Asia no trem Transiberiano (15 dias, 7 fusos horários diferentes, 9.258 kms entre Moscou e Vladivostok). Estava viajando com uma jovem turca, Hilal (nome falso) por razões que vocês irão descobrir no livro. O ponto onde o tempo e o espaço se encontram é chamado na tradiçao mágica de “Aleph” (J.L. Borges tem uma maravilhosa historia sobre este ponto) . Portanto, o título do meu novo livro é “O Aleph”.
Não é um guia de viagem (assim como “O diario de um mago” tampouco foi). Claro que explico um pouco o que é a longa viagem de trem, mas apenas para localizar o leitor. O livro é minha viagem ao encontro da minha alma, no passado, no presente, e no futuro.
Por que demorei tanto tempo para escrever sobre esta peregrinação? Porque demorei muito tempo, quase tres anos, para entende-la.
Meus amigos no Twitter e Facebook são os primeiros a saber, além da nota dada hoje no Radar (Veja)
Será lançado no Brasil no final de julho.
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