The possible answers: the present, listening to people and hearing what they mean, breathing, the pause, the silence, the impulses, the consequences, the tunnel I was getting in, not realizing I was that long dark corridor, the time, the good advice, the false one, that attention to details make no sense if you are not living in them.
Do not want, Lídia, to build in the ‘space
Odes de Ricardo Reis . Fernando Pessoa.
What future figures, or promise you
Tomorrow. Fulfill yourself today, not ‘waiting.
You yourself are your life.
Do not be destined, you are not future.
Who knows if, between the cup you empty,
And she’s filled up again, no luck
Interposes the abyss?
———————————
Não queiras, Lídia, edificar no espaço
Que figuras futuro, ou prometer-te
Amanhã. Cumpre-te hoje, não esperando.
Tu mesma és tua vida.
Não te destines, que não és futura.
Quem sabe se, entre a taça que esvazias,
E ela de novo enchida, não te a sorte
Interpõe o abismo?
References
“In any case, there was only one tunnel, dark and lonely, mine, the tunnel in which I had spent my childhood, my youth, my whole life. And in one of those transparent lengths of the stone wall I had seen this girl and had gullibly believed that she was traveling another tunnel parallel to mine, when in reality she belonged to the broad world, to the world without confines of those who do not live in tunnels (…)”
Stories from A Closet of Errors 