References
Fernando Pessoa, XIV – We are born at sunset and we die ere morn
Tag: Photography
The gliding Lethe leads her silent flood
The souls that throng the flood
Are those to whom, by fate, are other bodies ow’d:
In Lethe’s lake they long oblivion taste,
Of future life secure, forgetful of the past.
Photo: Ponte de Lima (2017) I have spent a lot of happy and not so happy days in this place during my childhood and teenage years. A village which is known for a legend of forgetfulness has helped me to know a little bit more of who I am.
References
The Aeneid by Virgil
I’d rather stop
This is not a good photo. I couldn’t get out of the car and attempt a proper photo, the letter box stands right by a traffic light and words on walls and urban equipments tend to vanish quickly, so you get them when you spot them.
Pause and reflect on the [your / mine] path
That’s how it reads to me. That’s what’s lacking, the time to stop and try to see the direction.
The world forgetting by the world forgot
even though it isn’t mine
even though I feel at home in most places I travel to, even though I can’t wait to leave, even though it now looks mostly as a theme park, I sometimes can’t help but feel that Porto belongs to me because I belong to it.
References
Truman Capote
I Know It Will Be Quiet When You Come
Take from my palms
Take from my palms, to soothe your heart,
a little honey, a little sun,
in obedience to Persephone’s bees.
You can’t untie a boat that was never moored,
nor hear a shadow in its furs,
nor move through thick life without fear.
For us, all that’s left is kisses
tattered as the little bees
that die when they leave the hive.
Deep in the transparent night they’re still humming,
at home in the dark wood on the mountain,
in the mint and lungwort and the past.
But lay to your heart my rough gift,
this unlovely dry necklace of dead bees
that once made a sun out of honey.
Inward and outward
I seem to be forgetting to live a little more.
No wrong notes
The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes – ah, that is where the art resides. Artur Schnabel
References:
“The piano ain’t got no wrong notes.” ― Thelonious Monk
Photo: Vintage market at Armazém, Porto, November 18, 2017
Exhaust the little moment
Material and infinite
are inseparable. Appreciating their interconnectedness is the gateway to understanding
Lao Tzu
Rounded path at Ciutat de les Arts I les Ciències (Valencia, 2016)
Deep red
It seems like I have watched too many David Lynch movies. The dark always brings out the brightest Glow
Why would you walk?
“But ballet itself – it’s important. Dance is important. It’s that language that everybody understands. It’s a powerful tool to open people’s minds. It’s some subconscious thing, a connection we all have. Kids dance before walking. It’s our truest nature of being. It’s true spirit.” He pauses. “And then, slowly and slowly, as we grow older, we get more and more baggage and life changes you. We are more scared of things, more fearful. So how to eliminate that? We have to go back to how we were as a kid, because that’s our truest nature. And with ballet, that is how I’m trying to come back to this state of mind. Because that’s the purest state. Tribes dance. Every country has a national dance. In the clubs we dance, we dance at weddings. Dance is a language. It’s a language that we need, like music, to survive.”
Sergei Polunin interview Another Man Magazine
If you could be dancing
Photo: Street Milonga in Porto (2013)
To see takes time
Through the many Windows of the Guggenheim (Bilbao, 2012)
I am not done with my changes
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
References
Stanley Kunitz, “The Layers” The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz. Copyright © 1978
Photo: Braga getting into Noites Brancas, September 2017
Stories from A Closet of Errors 