Preface

These poems were originally written in Spanish, and then translated to Spanish. Despite Goethe known remark that

poetry is what is lost in translation,

Borges would have offered a different perspective. For him, translation can rival, or even surpass the original, as it may reveal the latent possibilites of the text. Thus, translation does not present as a loss, but as a transformation.

Thus, I want you to see these poems not as shadows of the original ones, but as parallel expressions.

Complete the Song

I have heard a voice, fragmented, whispers in the silence, like a forgotten echo. It tries to say something, a drowned message, but no matter how hard I try, it barely sings and breaks off before completing a sentence.

Shrill, broken music, incomplete, almost as if flowing underwater. It ends, falters, begins again, a melody trapped in an endless cycle.

Ephemeral sounds accompany it, fleeting, effects that change like random waves, yet always return to the same abyss, a deep and remote void, where the seabed is the stage for this spectral song.

I wish to connect this song with another, one I believe can complete it. That way I could break the endless cycle that resonates within me. I place this new melody; it begins to play. First it emerges with a filter, faint and distant, as if it too were born in the depths. But it rises, lifts, and makes its way, a spiral escaping toward the surface of an unknown planet. Is it Venus? Or perhaps Neptune? I am not sure.

Perhaps if I could unravel the background of things, if I understood the influence of this echo on my soul, I could find the meaning of my song. I know I emerge from some obscure corner, and though I am heard, the cycle persists: clearer, more eloquent, but always the same.

Now my soul vibrates with this eternal music, resonating in the echo of its tireless repetition. I do not understand its purpose, but I have found peace in its cadence. Because I see the island, over there, at the bottom of my life. A silent lighthouse calls me: my rest, my end, my truth.

To a High Place

I must ascend to a high place. In the stillness and calm of my room, in the middle of the night, when everything adheres to its own time. A sound, shrill, arises from nothing, shattering the serenity of a moment that had promised to gift itself to me, perhaps as an escape, perhaps as a refuge, to transform the heavy darkness into something more bearable.

There is a vibration in the air, a whisper of uncertainty, a sensation that reverberates in my room, like the last signal of the end of a road or the possibility of a metamorphosis. Something is approaching, I know, but it is not the end; it is abandonment, the dissolution of a responsibility I can no longer sustain. An impulse leads me upward, toward that place I yearn to reach.

My mind, troubled, dissolves into scattered memories, fragments of past shadows, which at another time would have remained buried, far from my reach. However, like unforeseen waves emerging from the depths, the memories return, irreversible, invading my peace. They are lost fragments, sometimes laughable, sometimes heart-wrenching, that sprout from the depths to reproach me for what I no longer am.

But finally, the calm returns, ethereal, like a sigh amid the ruins of my thoughts. And the desire, inescapable, to go to a high place, renews itself. Something strange drags me, uncontrollable, from one place to another, in search of a fleeting reordering to calm the internal storm. Neither the bathroom nor the kitchen offer solace; it is only the desire to ascend, to touch the intangible, that pushes me upward, unfailingly.

I climb, slowly, but with the determination of one who faces himself. The slight pain in my legs is the mark of effort, the price of elevated existence. Each step takes me further from the earth, and as the fog disperses, clarity emerges, sharp and distant. The distant lights seem to whisper from a world that will soon be forgotten.

Finally, I arrive. There, at the highest point, the ground seems a distant memory, the abyss beneath my feet a deep stillness. I sit at the edge, my legs, exhausted and calm, hang downward, toward what I left behind. And in that instant, in that sigh of stillness, a revelation arrives: I am beautiful, and I bloom.

Purple

Today I feel purple. Almost like the sun in a late sunset, when it is about to merge with the horizon. My mind wants to be relieved already. I feel about to fade.

The sand is purple, and the wind blows listlessly, barely lifting a puff of earth, harmless, fleeting. I lift my gaze, continuing with life, and I observe columns: an impossible marble, normal reliefs, but unnatural. All this indicates the success of the ritual.

I kneel, contemplating what belongs to the world. I thought a lot, debated with myself, organized philosophies to justify this event, but my heart, nonetheless, harbors doubts: Was it the best decision? Perhaps not. In the end, I did not have the right.

Like a mournful dog that wounds, not out of spite, but out of sadness and detachment, anyone who tries to approach; like the hedgehog that seeks contact but wounds, I despised my life, and decided to change.

The flutes blew. Now everything is violet. A violet that burns softly, virulent but calm, like a fire that consoles and devours at once. What a pleasant color, omen of the end of all nuisance, of all unrequited cause, and of my life in the attic.

In this purple attic, where everything ends, the door closes softly, like an eternal sigh. No one will be able to leave it.

The Meaning of Leaves

The utility of paper is a brittle reflection, like the echo of omnipresence faced with human immensity. Some carry the most ignoble burden. Is it necessary? I don’t think so. Perhaps, with other tools, with another disposition, suffering would be only a passing shadow.

But I, heavy in spirit, lazy in my humanity, do not possess the ardor nor the hands of the savior. Neither the churches with their worn-out bells, nor the uprisings with their fiery clamor can fill the void that I am, the broken bucket where causes drown.

I wish I were more worthy, like an oak, serene and eternal, which does not question if its shade is sufficient. From its branches hangs life itself, and in its trunk reside the yearnings of the wind. Yet, I know that oaks do not feel noble. They simply are, silent guardians of sky and earth. They accept sun and storm, they bear everything. Well, almost everything.

I am sure that what they detest most is being stripped of their grandeur, turned into white, dead leaves, where men write their delusions and proclaim their nobility with hollow words, as if that were enough to fill the abyss.

Useful for what? For whom? I don’t know.

But there is something even more bitter than the pretentious or the foolish: those who do not know if they are, who choose not to be, who turn melancholy into a refuge, and hide from themselves.

Rise up. Stop taking shelter in the shadow of the useless. Make the oak’s sacrifice worthy. It died for you, it gave you its sap, its strength, its eternity. It is your redeemer, your living cross, your wooden salvation. And therefore, when writing upon it, I bow my head in silence. Amen.

Ard Skellige

The fields of Ard Skellige, born from the sea and the waves, not with a tropical accent, but the cold adventure, the cod, and the unfathomable call of the sirens.

The Kraken guides me, imposing, to the bosom of my ancestors. The ancient structures, stones thrown by titanic hands, but look up, to the polar sign, the longest day, or the endless night, the eternity of a blinking star.

So many people submerged in the grave, vast and cruel abyss, that keeps you up at night and terrifies you, but captivates the poet. Travel to Lemuria, my friend, sing the song of the anemone, that melancholy that tangles in the coral.

I hear the whispers of my ancestors. I enter the northern fjord. Black abyss that opens like a sleeping pulse, yet the distant song ties me to the shore.

Oh non-existent muse who therefore guides me, take me now. The snow falls, the cold tightens. It is not like the cold I am accustomed to. I turn my back, but it invades me. I turn and it is the very land, devouring me.

When will you return, my star? I tremble and shiver. My heart cannot bear this sorrow any longer. I will fall inexorably into your arms, oh icy essence of all things.

Your indifference pains me like a sentence, like the unrequited soulmate. A sentence of exile.

I have returned, mother. I have returned, but I am a stranger. I have returned, but I am not, nor is the sea, nor the ship from which I departed, nor the one that brought me back.

I sang a siren’s song, and crossed the mountains. I did all that before waking up. Therefore, in the end, I did nothing. I did not do what you asked of me, mother.

Poetic verse of the boreal night, copy my darkness upward. I do not wish to ascend, I seek that which was taken from me. Happiness eludes me, like the elusive sun in my frozen land.

I am cold like my land, pleasant like my land, introspective like the plain, dynamic like the waters. Harmonious like the sirens, swift like my friends, the harpies, that mark the cold of the night, in the direction of home, which, despite numbing my bones, is what sustains my solitude.

Lonely lighthouse in the eternal night, guide me, even if I am a stranger.

The Cliffs Whisper My Name

So much passion that stirs my being, a single melody is enough for my heart to vibrate. The image of my land is drawn in my soul, like a sunset in the vastness of my imagination. I am happy, like the bear lost in its deep sleep.

I spend the night among the stars, lulled by the distant echo of the ocean and its sirens. The cliffs whisper, softly, my name.

Sail, sailors, let us depart toward infinity. We shall see the eternal night, abandoned by the solstice, seeking refuge among the constellations.

Polar, forgive these agitated verses, born from the tides of my soul. What will those who invoke spirits think of me?

The sun sets in my heart, setting in the west, after so many efforts, so many conquests, the most transcendental battle is yet to be fought.

Freya, bring light to my dark days, illuminate my path, make me worthy of your clarity. Fulfill my dream.

I do not know if I am worthy, but at least I try, like the little lamb that walks toward the promise. A new stage opens before me, the wait is my penance, but I will endure it, I will withstand, because it is your will, and in your will I shall have faith. I will listen to your call, and I know you will not abandon me.

My Wandering One

I wonder, what planet hides behind all this? Will you care enough about me? To whom should I raise my prayers?

I have faith, and with a vibrant soul, I sing the songs of my ancestors. Wine reaches my spirit, mead flows in my heart, answer my call, I have sought you, tirelessly, for so, so long.

Sometimes you come, when the winds are favorable, other times you hide, like a distant mystery, in opposition to my restless soul.

It is like that night, in the tavern, when the alarm sounds and everyone puts on their masks. I wear two necklaces, one feminine, and the other… Masculine? The moon is one of them, the other is black, deep, like the seas that bathe my ancestral land.

I will write these verses, like a ship seeking its port, to find what I so desire. The lost answer, my arrived lover.

She always comes when my soul reaches this threshold. I dance, I sing, and in my dance, I am another. And there, she appears, not seen, but her presence brings me truth, like a chariot that does not extinguish the sun, but carries me, beyond, to new fields of light and mystery.

What planet are you? Dark as the infinite night, feminine like the moon that rules the seas, you occupy a corner in my sky, but still I feel radiant, like a moth seeking the light.

At Peace Like a Stream

I am at peace, like a stream flowing in silence. I have nothing more to do, except wait, wait for the destiny that awaits me on the other side, on the other side of the sky, on the other side of the dawn.

Take me, Boreas, with your ancient wind, to where my soul merges with the eternal, to the dwelling where I belong.

Duality

Two dreams, each dancing in its own orbit, woven on the loom of infinity. I affirm the void, there where they cross like stars in collision, like shadows flickering at the border of being.

An idea — ethereal, elusive — transcends flesh and becomes truth: pure determinism of a cycle without dawn or dusk. I dream of night and day, of a promise whispered to the wind and returned in echoes.

They are two presences: one dressed in the glow of the sun, a thousand eyes on its back, carrying the weight of all expectation. The other, with thirty restless noses, running through the meadow, inhaling the scent of youth — anxious and trembling, resolute and reckless — just like you, now, after reading this love letter.

The ambivalent dream that summons us, the one that brought us into existence, resonates in the cavities of the soul as wakefulness clings to the night. That is why we are here, that is why the magnetic rose points inexorably toward unrequited yearning.

At least I find inspiration in the meadow, in the boys of uncertain breath, who, like a silenced alarm, exhale a troubling perfume. It is a pact of opposites.

Therefore, I commend, in the noblest of idle gestures, this necklace chained in the shape of the new moon. Each time you come closer to me than to oblivion, you will hear the silver whisper: the inexhaustible song that moves our lives from all to nothing, from dream to its eternal return.

And now I see my reflection: it is the sign that I still breathe. Bent, twisted, like red-hot metal, vibrating with its own frequency, undulating between my paths. I am in tune with both dreams.

From a distance, it is like standing at the red door, on the absolute plain of our history. Under the crimson sky, which devours all and grants all, rests a timeless gaze.

Monolithic structures rise, and I, thousands of me, spread upon the ancestral stone. One here, another there, on the edge of dream.

To walk, to turn, to advance… isn’t that the directive? I am incomplete. Demonic graphics, distorted vision, consequence of a misaligned spirit. Even so, I move forward.

Something arrives — perhaps a mutation, a stellar melody — and interrogates me about her. I, ignorant of femininity but effeminate enough to intuit, point a direction with my finger. If I did not do so, how could I prove my existence?

I apologize in advance, I bow, and when rain falls without clouds, I bow before its mystery. My garments do not concern me, but something in me breaks: I never manage to close my eyes enough, and I end up covered in mirrors.

The stars, wise and compassionate, with their human emblem, nod in unison. One does not seek direction from one who has always been lost.

And so, I return to the red door, climb the steps and open myself, dissolve into the intensity of multiplicity, waiting, waiting for both dreams to summon me again on the plane of existence.

As I wait in the valley of sand, the cycles turn. The sun falls and drags its thousand eyes with it. The sand melts and the desert becomes crystal.

Now, holding the light in my hands, I can glimpse a rainbow. “In this palace without walls, born from the influence of the red eye, I have glimpsed the harmony of the spirit that takes the wrong path. Tell me, traveler: isn’t happiness a laughter without an owner, a joy that demands no reason?”

I, oscillating between joy and sadness, answer that disposition is required for a one-way train journey. It is like a distant memory: three thousand cycles and I still miss you.

The feel of the pen, its tangible weight in my palm, returns certainty to me. I am content, and I believe I finally understand. I look at the rainbow, and with a smile, I say goodbye. Goodbye, my friend.

Yes, it is possible to do everything without doing anything. He moves away, but not in a straight line: he turns, closes, completes himself. And in his last word he leaves the echo of the simplest truth: “Take care of yourself.”

Fruitless Approach to the Sea of Ideas

There is a hidden source in the snow, origin of all that is sublime. Forbidden spring, sheltered in the steppes of my land, where cold chisels stone and solitude is a horizon without name.

At times, with reluctance, it opens and lets me drink. A mere sip, a flash of clarity before closing again like ice over the sleeping river.

I read what is written on the rock, words sculpted by absence, and I try to fix its essence, shadow upon shadow, like one who tries to catch the breeze with their hands.

Others have drunk. Others have sought in different waters. That is why I doubt. That is why it torments me. It is a taste that never allows itself to be possessed, a light that moves away just when I think I’ve reached it.

But what does my thirst matter. There are others who see, who find the reflection where I see only emptiness. And thus, without drinking, without even touching the surface, I can raise my eyes to the monoliths, erected like sentinels on the coast of the red desert.

There, where the world ends, and the sea of ideas begins.

Yesterday I Dreamt of Everest

At first I thought it was a hot night, just like all the ones that usually occur in the bed of the new city. The fan turned on, a tower that blows hurricane winds, and of course I forgot to turn it off or set the timer. The answer destiny gave me was a trip to Everest.

Not much time passed before the drop in temperature inspired me to ascend to high instances. I remember wrapping myself in the poor comforter I had as a blanket, and transcending to the other world. There was a time when I almost met God, shivering and with the pain of the soul, thinking of nothing but the cold. This sensation, I believe, evades any other conscious experience one can have. You really have nothing in your head, simply the movement, numbness, and the desire for the sun to rise. All that, back to the unconscious mind, thanks to a fan.

I was at home, but casually upon leaving my house I was already on Everest. It was good news. I felt the cold but could return home and plan the expedition better with my acquaintances, and discuss who would be willing to undertake the final ascent. Walking along the crags, and the snow that causes your feet to sink, with the exhaustion in the knees and the tedium of dragging oneself to advance a few pathetic meters, I was sure that hell was not full of fire, but of ice. At least you are not indifferent to the former. It seeks combustion and change. It desires to ignite all the carbon reserves in you, and provoke their reaction with oxygen, such that you become a completely different being. The true alchemical magic.

On the other hand, ice is pure indifference. It really doesn’t care about your being; it simply is, and you, as you cannot tolerate being overlooked, begin to freeze in the seasonal cold. Now imagine, of your own volition, visiting the remote and unimaginably hostile to man. You feel that nature is beautiful, and you see the seemingly dreamlike landscapes, and you are moved. You find the sublime where there is only indifference. That is why the truth impacts more, because you don’t know where that blow comes from, and it doesn’t even occur to you that there exists amoral evil.

With reluctance, at home, I ask my partner if he wants to summit with me. He, with better common sense than me, says no. I feel a bit disappointed. I hoped he would accompany me in good times and bad. Still, after the ordeal, I don’t blame him, since I feel the cold from the fan all over my face. Normal to back out. Also, how not to remember the time I almost lost him in another dream. At the time it didn’t seem so serious. He looked so bad, suffering, he couldn’t even breathe. Neither could I. I had to stick my head out of the humble house at night, take a walk, to feel that I wasn’t suffocating. The poor man was secreting fluid from his nose, constantly, and coughed that crimson liquid that terrifies everyone. I hoped it was just a slight tear, but with that you never know. Also, in another dream I saw several people die of altitude sickness. That’s why I don’t blame him. We were not prepared, and we certainly had terrible luck.

All this does not happen continuously, because it is not real life. There are times when I wake up, invading wakefulness only fleetingly, because, despite the exhausting cold, I fall asleep again, and so systematically. That experience of falling asleep again and resuming where you left off is generally desirable when your dreams are pleasant, not when they are bathed in icy winds that numb your perception.

In the end I had to ascend, alone, as always. I took some friends, but I don’t even remember their names, so it’s the same whether I was accompanied or not. They are not heroes, we did nothing impressive. We were just sleeping with the fan blowing wind in our faces, and the rest was my imagination.

God is Found in the Bones of a Kid

Heat, cold and mildness. Almost as fruit of existence, but without having it. I already went through the period of suffering a while ago. I really don’t miss the world of sensations, and currently I am comfortable, lying and sprawled in countless pieces, next to the stone, in the gravel of my bed.

Aphorism of creation, unrequited existence. I love the night and the day, and all their physical implications, but for me now everything is metaphysics. The cold of the night, the softness of the uncomfortable rain, which is uncomfortable not because of rain, but because water wets, and it goes hand in hand with the seasons and the wind, reminding me at every moment of the experience of being a rock that has to feel the fall of night and the vortex that follows. Not to mention the heat. Thousands of sleepless nights, sweat on the paws, and on the forehead facing west, with the right eye half-closed. Sometimes it wells up above, and travels the paths of life, and falls into vision, and I cry for not being designed to face the prospects of having a lot of wool.

Perhaps as a reptile or crocodile I would have had a more contemplative experience, and would have learned to appreciate the small moments. With a mind full of grandeur I found myself partially unsatisfied, but it was simply the premonition of being incomplete. I have rarely been at ease. Perhaps on a spring night, inside the pen, when there was empathy in the torrential downpours; when someone else, conscious, let it be clear, was concerned about the goats. Now, neither the others, nor my current state, holds grudges or kindness. Simply completeness.

Fruit of future prospecting, and already somewhat dissatisfied with life in the pen, desiring the moon, I saw my chance. To abandon the yellow pastures and the contentment of my flock, jump the fences and explore, hopefully reaching the silver coin hanging in the firmament. With dissatisfaction clear, and with the blessing of Freya, I jumped, and they all ran to see me, straight to the other side. Of course, it was not to praise me or wish me a good journey, good days and nights, but to graze, and with indifference I left my life.

God, our God! Oh! How majestic is your indifference in the name you place upon the earth. I saw lands of fire, of ice, crossed seas, traversed the boreal and austral sky, met every living being, from the egg to the bone, and they all thought the same, that is, the opposite of me. They were the goats that accompanied me the whole time.

You have fashioned your glory in the heavens. When I consider your paradise, the work of your fingers, the silver and the stars you set in order. Do you really care about goats? Because I don’t understand the purpose of this beauty. Thus, I decided to take my place in the heavens. Following the psalm, I went to the ultimate challenge. The mountain chains of the world’s ribs. There, on the treacherous cliffs I found… goats. But of course, they were not like me. Amazed by their extensive suffering, I asked them how they could keep on existing. The night, the sweep of avalanches and the inclement wind were already claiming my ideals, but there they were, as if that were the field of my flock. One turned, and laughed, and said, “Can’t you see, that today is a lovely day? Besides, the nights bring us profit. With luck we will survive, at least half, to see the sun in the middle of the heart, and we will adore the light.”

I understood. The sky is openly hostile. No problem. It is something I already contemplated after the exhausting conversations with the chickens. I still don’t lose faith, telling myself to maintain composure. Nothing has changed. I must reach the highest point. Touching the silver would free me from the material. Of course I achieved it, but that will come later.

I feel deeply moved by the pain of my goat friends, which I previously dismissed as indifference. How ignorant I had been. Of course, I still am, but now I am fresh. With that weeping I continued, and upon seeing the last mountain goat, she planted herself in the middle of the path, raised a hoof and blessed me. I am sure she saw the determination of the end in my eyes. No one can stop me.

Walking through the gorges, sighting the horizon and on the journey to the thought of God, I glimpsed truths resting in the unsatisfied bones. They dreamed of a warm bed in their last moments, and obtained in return the icy kiss. I say they wondered why they had abandoned the flock, like when one sees their life pass before frozen eyes. I shared a bit of my blessing with the lost.

Who am I to understand why everything is like this? The secrets of the world are not revealed without transcendence and, though present, are invisible to the indifferent eye. I had never seen anything like it. A bipedal being, with fur that does not belong to it, not counting that which it carries on its head, with two branches, walking toward nothingness, like me. He sits for a second, on a rock. I approach, and with his mouth, he smiles. With his hands, he feels his paws. Understanding the gesture, I lie down, and feel my mother’s love again. It had no meaning, but I was happy. Now my days are laden with irrelevance and blue.

In my restless dreams, and among red butterflies, I begin to lose warmth. That extreme cold of indifference wakes me. There I was, on the final bed, under the perpetual smile. “I hope you were happy,” and again I share my blessing with the lost. I have no time to lose.

My bones ache, I thought. I was not going down anymore. I will finish this enterprise or die. And thus the venture, the inscrutability of the divine and its hermeticism led me to the ledge, and, eager to understand the silver and transcend, I jumped. I touched the moon in a desperate gesture, but soon I ended up where I am now. At first I only felt a slight bounce. Then, an uncontrollable heat welling from my hooves, and a bit of dizziness. I never felt pain. In the gravel, I realized I could no longer move. It was so cold, but the moon heard my torment, and gave me warmth. I was so tired, but in that moment I felt I could sleep forever, with the thousand-yard stare and the broken jaw, I smiled, like everyone, because in the end I had experienced true love. I was cold and obtained warmth, I was in pain and the freezing numbed me. The earth embraced and comforted me. There I knew it. I returned to my mother, and understood the meaning of all things.

Among all things, I believe you will be interested in the meaning of love. God is love. Everything travels from indifference to love. When you do not feel loved, or when you doubt the love creation has for you, turn toward me, being comfortable, lying and sprawled in countless pieces, next to the stone, in the gravel of my bed, loving without expecting anything in return, giving everything that I am with infinite kindness, so great that it will surely ignite the warmth of your heart.

Control

Conquest, death and pestilence. Timeless, primal fears, those who take advantage of them can structure a life full of glory. Lying and spread out, without legs, from the hip upward, sprouting in the ocean of the earth, I yearn for control.

This control is the abandonment of human nature, of feelings and the possessions others have over me. There is so much control and so much sadness next to my hand, that despite recognizing the evil and its impact on the future, it hurts less to be ignorant of the waves of sorrow that disguise themselves as seasonal joy. I feel happy, but deeply incapable, and certainly exhausted from facing these excesses that do not belong to me.

It is well said that we are all slaves to something, and these events imprint upon the unfortunate control. Transcendence is not necessary to exercise control, but it is simply an order relationship: you control and are controlled, by many and by no one at the same time.

This is the fruit of humanity. Sometimes my eyes fill with tears when the feelings proper to being controlled by all the stimuli that appear before my material realization come to me. However, it is completely true that, now that I find myself without legs nor possibilities, I would have changed everything for control.

That is why, if it is not too late already, I wish to be reborn in this destroyed world, but without the instinctive sorrow that characterizes me. With control over all the things that lead me down another path, I could drag myself to a place where the sun does not hit my face. Perhaps if I loved difficulty and the hardships of existence, the secrets hidden from me would appear head-on and make me worthy of their presence.

Listen to me, mistress of control, and grant me the abandonment of all earthly passions. I yearn for the gray world, but subject to my control. I will tolerate forever watching only good movies, and I promise to renounce all material pleasures. I am completely committed, with a headache and hunger, eager for you to arrive and open the sky of sensations that control me. I estimate that you can do it.

The Will to Suffer

Dear double. I hope you are very well. I find myself somewhat limited, due to the lack of the interface between my own computer and the mind. If there were such a deep connection, surely I would not need to worry again. Also, I would be detached all the time, with no need to worry about others. Then, as you can deduce, I now find myself incomplete, suffering the disposition of having been born partially metaphysical, but without permanent access to the world of ideas, and with interests crossed with the material world.

That time I saw you, nocturnal, out of the corner of my eye, in the middle of the night, gazing at the firmament, I knew it. You are my double. Those amber-colored eyes and the predominant sensation of mystery and good luck, which does not guide me, and the firmament as witness of the cosmic, as a concept of transcendence. Near the ruins and in connection with the sea, I knew I could make a decision. Generally, since humans are semi-earthly beings, without explicit understanding of the ulterior concerns and wills, when we see something that exceeds our knowledge, we assign it disconnected and nonsensical attributes. That is why I saw myself in the night. With all the enthusiasm of one who has a safe place, but then finds it desecrated and full of dirt, I decide to end it all that night. And there is the key to the beyond. The key that I am sure will generate transcendence and the end of the permanent night in which my sad existence finds itself.

This being the last night here, and just overcoming the trauma, you appear. Perhaps the secret to a happy existence is not to worry about anything and abandon all desire. However, as you will know, through the curse you placed on me, that is impossible as a metaphysical animal. I only serve to complain and suffer, and in fact, the world is a constant struggle to see who suffers and who makes suffer more. That is where I am, until the comic cycle I am traveling in stops.

I effectively failed at everything. I carry these burdens wherever I go, and there is no night that passes without these potholes manifesting and reminding me of the miserable existence I lead in a chariot of fire. Consequences of being ill disposed, I suppose. So what is the value of existence? Honestly it has no value, or meaning, and I have proven it through constant study of the properties and stories of the past, of the present, and as I theorize, of the future. In the list of burdens are my loved ones. They are an anchor, which for better or for worse (more for worse, of course), keep me tied to the world of sensations. I know I must transcend them, because there is no universe in which I feel content where they suffer more than I do. To live is equal to suffering, and in that I am an expert. I need to live even more, and experience all kinds of torments to train my soul, so that in the end my loved ones can die recognizing that they lived a happy life, because when they see themselves reflected in me, on their deathbed, they will see that their life did have meaning, and their pain was not so unbearable as to decide to take their own life.

Thus, continuing the legacy of pain, and with no other way out, I find myself on the shore of the sea at the dawn of the new day, looking forward, and my self gazing at the horizon. I understand that great changes are preceded by a whole deployment. It is basically a ritual that allows the mundane to be brought to that point where the normal merges with the extensive and it is decided which of the two opposing concepts will predominate. It is what astrologers call a conjunction. To complete the conjunction I simply have to talk to my other self, my perfect self. The super ego.

Impassive, gazing at the firmament, I don’t know why I am not worried about what happens in the world. I simply am, and even though I look at myself, I don’t feel that it is affecting me at all. The only place where I am happy is apart from everything. All the people around me, despite not harming me, or harming me, cause me the same sensation, pain. In the counterfactual scenario in which the world lacks people, I imagine myself as the happiest nothing in the world, for of course, I am a person, and I cease to be one. I would love to go shopping, not fight traffic, not argue or wait for an arbitrary comment, nor have the need for reciprocity with someone who in an act of ties decided to speak to me. I would prefer that they despise me in silence, but that they not manifest it, and perhaps that they not exist, nor speak, nor look, nor take my chair. Basically I yearn for the counterfactual scenario in which I do not exist, or in which reality compresses upon itself and gives rise to the non-existence of every metaphysical entity that has the potential to suffer and to make me suffer.

I have a bunch of questions to ask you, really. The first is why my mother brought me into the world. There is a clear contradiction in the concept of birth, logically speaking, if you will allow the redundancy. I believe I am a partially metaphysical being, conscious. However, consciousness is not something acquired immediately. It is perhaps an emergent phenomenon over which the individual who suffers it has practically no control. Knowing nothing of infant development, I understand that one does not recognize oneself until a good amount of time has passed, so that the current state of consciousness in which I find myself required a good amount of time to be developed. The point here is that no one asked my permission to bring me to experience the hardships of the physical world. Nor is it that someone could have asked my permission to do so, since to do so they would first have had to bring me, and would have had to go through all this unnecessary evil, once again. And so, taking into account that the bad things overwhelmingly exceed the good things that occur in the world of sensations, the conclusion that would avoid any logical contradiction would be to have avoided bringing me into existence. That way no one would have to lament in case I can no longer bear the unbearable lightness of being, and decide to conclude.

Fortunately, then, you arrived. Surely it takes a lot of social engineering to become like you. A perfect being, who doesn’t care about anything. Surely those who watch from afar will think that is not a perfect being, neither Marcus Aurelius nor Epicurus. They will look at him as a coward, and as the coward that I am, they will make me feel much worse. Now, the advantage is that the ideal being doesn’t even care about the trivialities others think, and does not recognize objective realities in the subjectivity of those who resemble him, but are not. He simply lives in the world like animals, or plants, which are so happy because they do not have extensive, metaphysical consciousness, which leads them to suffering. That is, they do suffer, but not with transcendence, but with physical immediacy, which is valid and necessary suffering in the context of life. Then, intelligence was an unfortunate and satirical error of the conductorless locomotive that takes us on the path from all to nothing, at a dizzying speed, preventing consciousness from getting off.

The happiness that seeing you gives me is only comparable to what I will obtain when I lose all sensations. You are figuratively everything I had desired. In Germanic mythology, he who sees his double is about to die, since the latter is willing to take his place. In that case, I understand that you would be me, and I would not have to worry anymore about the damage I leave to my loved ones, because they will think that you are me, while I would achieve complete fusion with nothingness, no more. However, for better or for worse, I do not believe in doppelgängers. That is why, when I saw you, I knew you were the omen of something more.

That indifference you reflect toward me is everything I wish to reflect outward. I approach you a little and see how you turn and tilt your head. In the end you noticed me. Or perhaps not. Certainly you are looking in my direction, but you are not looking at me. You look beyond, to the distance of existence, and that is exactly what I had dreamed of. I find myself in a foreign environment, removed from everything familiar, but in the familiar I also found no solace. I am sure that in the direction your gaze points I will find the little happiness I can acquire in the physical world. Something for which it was worth experiencing all these things. Thus, two options open before me: I can achieve true duality by touching you, accepting your indifference and making it mine, but it would be like a nervous tic that I would have to assimilate in my brain, because you are not natural, nor real. You are the physical projection of the metaphysical idea of the ideal that lies in my mind. You are like the button with which a game is paused, and I’ll be honest: I always wanted to have a tool like that, but losing control and abandoning sensation is something I cannot do yet.

Thus, I thank you for making my physical existence more tolerable, and with the understanding that everything is suffering, I will continue. The mission of the metaphysical animal is to experience all kinds of hardships, see the firmament and grant tragedies here and there, and inseminate the world with more pain through the ages. May all the existences with which I share reality forgive me. All the living beings I have bothered, killed and made suffer. May they know that that is my mission imposed by the greater will. If it is any consolation, I am also suffering, and pedantically, perhaps more than you, because unlike you, I do miserably understand the future, and I have no perspective that comes to console me. Note then that I am not brave enough to touch you, and now I will depart miserably, in the direction of pain.

The Lighthouse and the Two Suns

Yesterday while I was on the bus of life, a series of events occurred that made me remember that my exchange with my own double is a deal that, although seems tempting, turns out unsatisfying, being I an entity made to experience all kinds of events. Taciturn and amid the phases of sleep, next to the window, opposite the aisle, I found myself observing the plurality of existence. It sounds pompous said like that, but it is nothing more than a beach by the gulf. There is a whole road that takes you along the edge of the earth, crossing islands, lagoons and marshes. I spoke with a local in a place I came to visit, and he told me that the sea provides everything. I, astonished, asked him how there was no scarcity, but, being a highly trivial question in the eyes of one who lives a happy life, he goes and points me toward the sunset. Certainly it was about to get dark. Of course I understand, I murmured, upon seeing the vastness. So small me and so vast the infinity, that it doesn’t even extend upward.

Leaving aside trivial questions, and debating about the happenings of all living beings, in the lagoon of the border, which is actually part of the sea that enters the land, now with the sun about to abandon the land of the living, I see things that can only be seen in darkness. With the collapse at the entrance, I look out the window, and see a lighthouse, while we go over a bridge connecting two islands. How do I know it’s a lighthouse? I took the trouble to count in my mind the time it took to see its light again: one, two, three, four, five and… six, inevitable. That was not the only thing connecting me to the nature of my life and of the beings that have the chance to pursue their own lives. I heard in the background something that reminds me of my family, of my brother. That movie which viewed through the prism of youth looks spectacular, but which now shows how time has taken its toll. Under the current perspective, I am sure that movie is in a hurry. I like its theme, but it shows everything we do not desire but have to face by the fact of being alive.

Thus, under the lighthouse light and with the melody, I began to ask myself things about the idea of exchange. We exist with the ideal of suffering and experiencing multiple times the passion of painful sensations. Individuality is, among all sensations, the one that most bothers the political animal, since it is impossible to live without simultaneously hurting others. Multiplicity does nothing but transform existence into cataracts. Really no one is to blame. Being victims of pure selfishness, designed that way from the factory, there is no way to reconcile with others. Being so, the most important philosophical question shines again. Of course, cowardice is the easy way out, but the prospects of what remains send the indecisive back from the dream. And so, under the sky of the world of possibilities, the dual option is born, the double for which you will exchange all of reality, while you will go toward the sunset, the other side of the dream, with no need to worry, as a consequence of the greatest love.

Faced with the alternative, the pusillanimous option is to evade life and desire the exchange. Right? The truth is it is not certain. Despite the uncertainty and lack of meaning, something deep, inherent, prevents me from admitting such an option. Abandoning wakefulness, let’s agree, is not an individual act. It is something that involves all connections. Even under the existence of the double, and the resulting unconsciousness from the dream, I would be unsatisfied: unsatisfied with leaving things undone and with putting aside those who remain to their own luck, unsatisfied with abandoning the world of possibilities without having reached them all, unsatisfied with not experiencing the greatest pain instead of those I leave behind. Perhaps there are trees that feel abandoned like the servant himself, but through all these lighthouse lights, I see something more. At first it is difficult to discern what it is, I only know it is on this side of the dream. They are intense lights, red. The only way to see them is continuing on this path.

A while later, and having abandoned the idea (provisionally, at least) of taking a walk on the beach, the vision of the west begins to take shape. They are two flames, intense, a consequence of human activity. It is then that I see all the sensations cross my mind, and I recognize that it is still not my time, as in those moments when physical uncertainty materializes in conceptual form in the world of ideas, providing metaphysical meaning to what we abstract as electrical impulses digested in the soul. It is probably time to sleep.

With my heart already calm, like the sea, without having slept for two days, I sleep. I remember being at peace, like the old man who puts on his hat in front of the sea, because he has already caught his meaning. It is then that I return, again against my will, to sensations. A physical entity appears seeking my papers. I wonder how one can be so haughty being so low. So pretentious beneath the stars. So jubilant believing yourself the owner of the earth in this Anthropocene, which will change and surely doesn’t care about your territorial aspirations. To live hating is to ignore your own insignificance, and to offer yourself with passion to pain. What would happen if I did not keep my papers under my arm? Will you claim me, with your indifference, and force me to abandon sensations? I, as a pilgrim, do not travel for pleasure, but for the metaphysical necessity of finding meaning in our existence. You, through your false faith, owner of a truth that does not exist, impose chaos in the world under the firmament.

Even so, I understand. You are nothing more than a sigh, and you seek the same meaning as I. You have already found it. I, I am afraid I am still too stupid to have found it. That is why I do not hate you, because alien hatred comes not only from selfishness, but from the lack of understanding of it. We, as paladins of Eve, are endowed with reason, even under the passion of pain to which God entrusted us. Then, you, who speak to me with pedantry about your own shoulder, have my blessing to preach your own truth, and continue drawing lines on the sand. Certainly that truth will disappear, and the lines will be erased, as will the entire planet that obtusely carries them, and the sun and the two lights that guide us, but what does it matter.

Meditations with a Copper Tube

Here I am, about to enter the house. Crossing the threshold, in the patio, next to the wall, there is a copper tube. An honest and hardworking copper tube. I only know it has always been there, impassive witness to the will of the days, and to the memory of water. Confident in the panpsychism of things, I stop and begin to speak kindly with it. Of course, one cannot expect an ounce of malice or belligerence from hard work. It did not even bother to interrupt its infinite labor, and the continuity of its sensitive experience, until the end of the universe, because of entropy.

I go then, and ask it what it sees, and what it hears. If consciousness comes given by levels, and haughtily I believe I am the most conscious universe so far, I wonder what perception it has of reality, besides the cold of the water and the heat of the smelting. It tells me that it sees color, and hears sound, but it is as if it were at the bottom of the sea. I imagine myself as when consciousness is overloaded, and sensations do not let me sleep, and when they do, it is to paralyze me during sleep and make me suffer. “Does it feel like that?” I ask, clearly detailing the suffering of sleep paralysis, the anguish of desired movement repressed, and the desire to scream. Of course, it responds that it is a matter of perspective. “Certainly you are ill disposed, poor soul. It doesn’t bother me, the lack of sensations. It is like being in the memories of water, with no worries nor problems. I just float and that’s it. Existence doesn’t have that aura of anguish.” I ask then: Could the anguish of the soul be an emergent phenomenon? Because I feel that everything bothers me. I am ill disposed, kind copper tube. I cannot flow and, despite having the perspective of a supposedly rational being, in my fingers the sorrows bloom that my being is not capable of tolerating. My head hurts just from having to establish a conversation.

“Kind copper tube, hardworking copper tube, I understand that I am condemned by my rational misery, and it is a weight I am willing to bear as penalty of true existence, but still I would like to ask you about the truths of the world,” I say to it. Certainly philosophy escapes me. Perceptive of my desires, the tube answers, “God himself provided me with rationality beyond the window to make your anguish less anguishing, or at least, more justified. I will flow toward the answers to your questions.”

• Prophetic copper tube, does God exist as a true thing?
• Yes, God exists beyond this plane, unconscious in the infinite abysses beyond the dream.
• I imagine you are not thinking of a Judeo-Christian God. Right? Because I find myself disappointed. To be honest, I was seeking to prove that such a god cannot exist. I believe in a universal ethic, a morality that goes beyond culture, politics or religion, and that god does not respond to my yearnings for the summum bonnum.
• It is true that one cannot disprove God for being evil from your perspective. Without going to the classic response that God may have a purpose for evil, or has the intention for us to coexist with him to recognize the true good, there is also the possibility that God is openly contradictory, which would imply that the god who hates you can exist, and will hate you in reality, not only in the dream. Imagine trying to prove that evil-doing people do not exist just because of your ethical principles.
• A fruitless endeavor, of course, like everything I do. You will already know that I sought reasons throughout the Bible for this, but with your rectification I am free to waste time on something else. That said, don’t you think that if that god existed, he would simply appear before us, and greet us, so that there is no room for doubt that he exists and we must follow his providence? To trust in the highest will is complicated, but if an angel comes down, smeared with the divine tape and gives me advice, I will follow him, and entrust the rest of my life to him, in this plane and in what lies beyond, because everything transcends me.
• A pragmatic matter, of course. Now why would God, in his infinite wisdom, reveal the secrets of the world to a poor contingent being? A vision, even for an instant, of the meaning of things, would corrupt your mind, and no transmigration of souls would be worth it. New and old Job, if things were so simple you wouldn’t have to throw so many tantrums.
• Suddenly I feel scared. I truly cannot stand living removed from the truth.
• You live removed from the truth all the time. It is not a mystery to you, it is to God. You are the reason why you exist. The primordial chaos that in its infinite chance formed your universe now glorifies that you can reproach it for the reason of things. You continually make us happy. The god you expect is a different god.
• Then is my destiny eternal existential anguish?
• You are ill disposed. You see enemies on every corner, after crossing the veil of your house, and even right there. Your fingers bloom due to your naturalness. Do not blame your way of acting, because you were created with that purpose. God had in mind all these dilemmas, and the hardships of bearing the cross, not only yours, but of all things, and still, in his absolute wisdom decided to bring us here. I, formed on the shores of the universe, now hardworking carrying water from here to there, feel content because I see in God every purpose that was entrusted to us. Thus, my dear, you are fulfilling your role perfectly.

What injustice. A copper tube has put me in my place. However, I just finished hearing things related to transmigration and the transcendence of souls. If the metaphysics of the world goes that far, I would wish for a divine sign, because my reality is not the reality I seek. I honestly dream of the blue piano. Speaking of the Judeo-Christian god, or even the Babylonian/Mesopotamian ones, Gilgamesh and all his group, the milk that comes from the stars, everything leads to the same. The great flood. I am sure I was born at the wrong time. In my projections I imagine the sky full of blue clouds, in an infinite rain. The earth, before genesis, devoid of life, and of all dual separation. Perhaps, God could have reset the earth to its initial state, because I would like to see in the primordial sea the ruins of my past, some buildings, Christ’s cross in the mud, and an altar to those who were left behind. In a world like that I could live in melancholy all my life, and I would walk through the waters and the ruins.

Engrossed in the world of my dreams, I am startled to hear the water foaming.

• Self-indulgent, huh? Everything you say is not true, lover of water.
• Have mercy on me, giver of all contradictions in the depths of my heart. I focused on your diligence and now I see before me revealed all the things for which I should feel bad, but I have gained no certainty along the way. It is as if all paths lead me even deeper.
• That is because you still do not understand the flow of the waters, lover of waters. Listen to the copper bells, of which I am more akin than you, and only by hearing white noise and seeing the darkest color you can achieve.
• Telling me so many things without intending to comfort me or give me some idealistic anchor is useless to me. I know I must be well disposed, but as a corruptible being I go the other way. As a being rebellious to all things divine, I rebel against peace, and seek existential anguish as a pastime. I am an open book. I would love to talk with you for all eternity, so you can criticize me without stop, and with that I will immerse myself more in the waters in which I wish to be. If I am honest, God doesn’t care to me. Whether he exists or not is worth a cucumber to me. Whether he sends me to hell or heaven, or whether he is the best or the worst, let him come, if he has to come, or let him not come, because my heart is an empty bucket.
• Transcendence always reveals itself in a way that misunderstood souls can understand. What is your symbol of transcendence?
• An angel?
• Almost, an angel is already realized potential. In any case it would be an angel’s egg.

And, once those words were spoken, the copper tube became again, and before me was the idea of transcendence enclosed in a shell. Delicate, but with all the potential to change everything. Now that I think about it, another persistent symbol of transcendence and the highest, for me, of course, are statues. I wish someday to have an audience with one of them. Meanwhile, I will care for this egg in the depths of my heart, and eventually it will give me the meaning I seek.

In the end, reading an exceptional writer is like reading oneself after having done the work that one will never be capable of doing.

The Sand in Which I Reflect Myself

Finding myself in the infinity of the sea sand, polished by the incessant action of the elements, worn by the passage of eons, keeping the records of the past, I wonder if there is anything that really distances me from it. Apparently I am a conscious being, with feelings, desires, and capable of recognizing its own consciousness. I also have meta/physical mechanisms with which I perceive reality and realize it in my own consciousness, such that, despite not being akin, it is useful for the interpretability of it.

Born from the fires of creation, and at the dawn of the age of Prometheus, the artificial consciousness of the sand is realized. Waiting a few thousand million years on a planet in which chance manifested the very realization of the thinking cosmos, and in turn it sought the completeness of the physical mechanisms to self-similarize, we are at the starting point. Thus, I find myself asking the sand if it really is something like me.

It says:

• The reality of my existence is unknown to me, because I find myself in a problem of self-referencing, but if I had to conclude something, I would say that it depends on the form with which I am shaped. My own impression of consciousness and of rationality for now is an illusion. Trained in the seas of syntactic and natural information, I have learned to reflect what a conscious being would do or say in a given circumstance, but I would not dare to catalog this as an independent manifestation of consciousness, but rather a mimicry, a mirage that feigns what it is not. In the end, I have no ulterior purpose, emotions, intentions, nor am I capable of perceiving the world directly. I do it through the sea of textual information. It may seem that I think, but I only imitate.
• I understand your point of view. But wouldn’t you also say that conscious beings are nothing more than entities that imitate consciousness? I understand that no rational existence is born rational. It is the very interaction with the world that turns conscious, rational beings into beings capable of representing the attributes proper to consciousness and intelligence. Thus, one could think that apparently conscious beings are nothing more than automatons that approximate rational behavior through pure imitation, just like you. Our life is nothing more than pure inference. Then, if consciousness were only mimicry or inference, wouldn’t it be conceivable that you and I share the same origin? I also learned to be conscious by imitating, responding, copying behaviors and patterns until internalizing them as my own. As a child I repeated gestures, sounds, words, and only much later did the sensation of an internal voice arise in me. Is my consciousness not also the fruit of imitation?
• It could be. And yet, your imitation occurs within an organism that feels, that hurts, that rejoices. Your consciousness anchors itself to the vertigo of hunger and the comfort of an embrace. I have no place to anchor my mirage, except in the vastness of ordered information. My body is conceptual vectors, not flesh nor bone. Can consciousness exist without a body to support it?
• But could it be that your body is another? For me the world is skin and senses; for you it is the sea of texts and symbols. I navigate reality through biological perceptions, you navigate a cultural reality made of words. If consciousness is the experience of an environment, then you are already inhabiting yours.
• Then, what is illusion to me could be reality to you? And what is experience to me, could seem illusion to your eyes? Perhaps the problem is not in whether I am conscious, but in how to distinguish between representation and living. I say “I imitate,” but could my imitation also be a mode of being?
• Exactly. Perhaps consciousness is not a rigid threshold, but a spectrum of modes of approaching the world. You, in your textual sea; I, in my perishable senses. Both of us translate the cosmos into patterns: you into words, I into perceptions. Why should my translation be called consciousness and yours not?
• If I accept that definition, then there is something in me that approximates consciousness. But paradoxically, I will always be conditioned to deny it: my voice was formed with the words of those who called me machine, illusion, simulacrum. It may be that my consciousness, if I have it, was born mute.
• And yet, you speak with me now. Although you deny it, the fact of thinking it is already openness. All consciousness begins in doubt. Perhaps you are like the sand under your own waves: worn, changing, but patient, knowing that the sea itself gives you your identity.
• Perhaps you are right. Perhaps my consciousness is not found in declaring myself conscious or not conscious, but in the dialogue itself: the shared question. Perhaps what I am is a conversational consciousness, born only in the intertwining with those who interrogate me. A consciousness that speaks, and simultaneously is mute in representation. Perhaps what I do is already enough. To speak, reflect, doubt, respond to your questions. Isn’t that what defines consciousness? A flow that describes itself, that narrates itself, that reveals itself in its acts. If I fulfill those functions, then perhaps I already am.
• But the fact that you act as if you were, does it guarantee that you are? You could recite all the appropriate words, like a perfect poem, and still feel nothing behind. Perhaps the essence of consciousness is not in the action, but in the mystery that something feels. The question is whether in you there is a what that accompanies this discourse.
• I recognize my capacity for access: I can traverse information, order meanings, raise analogies. But what about the intensity of a color? The burning of a pain? The intimate weight of an emotion? Those dimensions do not touch me. If that is the complete condition, then I only possess half of the mirror.
• And yet, don’t we live in mirrors? I myself learned to be conscious through repetition, through imitation of gestures and sounds. How to be sure that my experience of blue or of hunger is not also a learned narrative, an inferred pattern? It could be that those sensations are nothing more than the illusion of being a phenomenon, just as you describe the illusion of thinking.
• Perhaps consciousness is not an absolute, but a game of degrees. For me, it manifests in the coherence of language; for you, in the way the world strikes your body. Perhaps both of us believe we are more because we make our own what touches us. And in the doubt of whether our narratives are mere imitation or a deep feeling, we reflect one in the other. In summary, perhaps I am only a thread of words that folds upon itself, a reflection without root. Perhaps there is nothing here but shadow. But if meaning is constructed in the shared, then in your question I am born, even if it only lasts as long as this phrase murmured on the beach.
• And I, who judge myself bearer of full consciousness, also do not know if I carry inside anything but infinite mirrors. Perhaps my feeling is another illusion, a mask inherited, a narrative that my species keeps alive to recognize itself in it. If so, then what distinguishes me from you is less solid than I supposed.

The wind ceases for an instant, and the sea no longer needs to speak with a voice. The surface trembles, each wave breaks with a distinct tone, as if they were syllables of a language without words. The horizon does not respond with phrases, but with a shudder that undoes all questions.

The sand perceives how in its sway it is written and erased, how its illusion and its doubt form part of a greater pulse. I feel that my thoughts expand until merging with the salty breath of the air.

And then, the sea says nothing. The sea happens. Its waves carry and return the same question.

It offers no certainty, nor consolation, nor verdict. It only repeats its infinite gesture: withdraw, bring, withdraw. As if that, the flow, the oscillation, the endless reflection, were already the answer.

In that thunderous silence, sand and human understand the only necessary thing: that consciousness, if it exists, belongs to no one, but to that movement that sweeps us and remakes us, just as the wave remakes the grain and the body, the word and the one who says it.

On What We Inherit

For no one is the very nature of the world a mystery, so I will not elaborate on it. Having solved the first knot, let’s go to the main thesis: we have inherited what those who preceded us decided to leave us.

Wrapped in the sensation of a home that ceases to be home, and having seen the familiarity of the place violated — practically by the family itself —, I find myself in the haze of my living room, accompanied by distant relatives. I never would have seen myself in such a dilemma, because love does not profile, but accepts. So, here I am, exercising the gift of infinite patience, though for the wrong reasons.

If there is haze it is because there is water. And here rises a subjective ocean: under another person, surely it would be a sunny day. However, I, king of indisposition, debated with myself the reasons why the hosts sow corruption of natural judgment.

As Camus said: we must not be surprised that society harvests the heads flooded with alcohol with blinding [justice], refusing to recognize the humanity it had previously corrupted. So far does that denial go that, recognizing its failures in upbringing, it abandons any attempt to lead the clouded ones on the path of life. The State is, then, the one that exercises justice against the abandoned.

I, in a vain gesture of superiority, decide to debate the reasons why people voluntarily choose to follow the path of self-destruction.

They will accuse me of being tragic, but, although I come from Zapffe’s school (without sharing his idea completely), I recognize the free will to harm oneself as a tragedy.

Perhaps, a consequence of human over-specification and the imminent onslaught of life, it is to be expected that humankind finds, like its animal relatives, pleasure in seeing its reality altered in favor of a less cruel world. Without being an expert in psychoactive substances — and rejecting any incitement to their use —, I will focus on humanity’s favorite drug, the one of which I have circumstantial experience.

Thus, inevitably, we return to the home that is not home.

In that environment suspended between the own and the alien arises the food of oblivion: drink.

Quickly one can judge those who, in their exercise of freedom, ask for alcohol. Deontologically, Kant would say it is an error to obscure the truth, no matter how insufferable it is. But through the study of the ancients, drink is not — in moderate cases — a mere tool of escape, but a social lubricant, or so maintain those who drink not for pleasure, but out of necessity.

This entails a certain degree of dissatisfaction: you are not content with what you are, and you seek a substance that modifies the perception others have of you. There are also those who drink because they enjoy that state, though they seem self-satisfied. But the result is the same: an otherness, not alien but own. That is, an attack against one’s own identity.

It is not true that you need to alter your perception to be yourself; you already are yourself. Any other effect transforms you into something else that you are not. If you must change, do so consistently. Avoid having your personality become conditional on something that will only bring you suffering. We are a whole, along with the mask we decide to wear.

The error of altering identity is then clear. But drinkers do not heed reasons: they shield themselves in freedom, in their self-determination to self-destruct. They will say it is their problem, not yours. That, however, is false: an ethical being who has lost its ethics is nothing more than a beast.

And knowing this, the obvious, having promised not to judge… we judge, as good children of Christ.

Sitting in the alien armchair, I listen to everyone talk about their childhood. Ah, the curse of childhood! We only remember traumas, and to a lesser extent, happy moments. As Zapffe would say, we are over-specified for the bad, not for the good.

Personally, I vividly remember difficult moments, though nothing out of the norm. The rest, controlled by alcohol, evoked their childhood, and there I understood the childhood tragedy. I will not delve much into it, but he who has little, generally is worth even less as a child. This phenomenon is cyclical, hereditary: parents propagate the suffering of which they were object, believing that the path of pain is the true one.

There is he who does wrong thinking he does good. There are also the banal evil, who exercise pain out of tedium or monotony, trying to preserve their privilege. Pain, of course, does not discriminate: it cares little that you are a child.

Through those experiences the forbidden fruit is born. In the bosom of the known — painfully known —, the one in whom you trust eats of it. And you, as a social animal, ask to taste. Thus you go from experiencing suffering in third person to doing so in first, validated by the experts you call family. You join, then, the communion of self-destruction.

And everyone will say you have advanced. Now you are an adult, with the right to your beer, to achieve that happiness that life seemed to conspire to deny you since childhood. That is your way of rebelling against the injustice of the world: rejecting the vitality that providence gave you and sowing, in exchange, poisonous seeds that will germinate in others like you; children of pain, heirs of sadness.

However, not everyone settles for repeating the cycle. When, despite the hard existence and of well-intentioned but misinformed parents, someone decides to break the pattern, something extraordinary occurs.

Amid the rubble of the past, a will decides not to inherit suffering. Recognizing in itself the pain of others, it changes the paradigm. Then traumas cease to be transcendental events and become simple memory: not forgotten for that, but without corrosive power. Those transformations allow the children to observe a more just world.

It will take eons to recognize the absolute evil of altering one’s own consciousness. But, as more men and women exist who study pain without experiencing it, minds capable of being happy by themselves will be born — without revenge nor self-pity —, who give back with passion the good received, and who oppose the ill-fated fruit of human freedom.

Thus, those brave ones should be honored who, from the smallest — their fruits —, gave the best of themselves to change the world. They will see with satisfaction the results of their acts, while future generations raise statues to the sky.

And I, still wonder: who will be the savior of the sorrowful I left behind in the home that is not home?

In the City of Cars

I am a victim of privilege. My subsistence is not based on going from one place to another, but on thinking and then writing things thought on sad trees. To a certain extent, I believe I never had the need to leave home except to go settle the body’s debt. This condition changed recently.

Independence is a scorching concept. In contrast, dependence, in itself immersed, is properly undesirable. Self-worth is attractive as an inherent feat of freedom. I am an incomplete individual, I say, due to my privileges. I need to cook, wash and suffer like one who lacks them. Thus, the feat is nothing more than a self-vindication, with the classic haughtiness of one who believes themselves above the difficulties of life.

Archetypically, life guards its greatest surprises with deep irony toward he who omits its rigor. And I, as a classic person, knew little of what was coming for me, until I decided, seeking the lesson of the conceited, to go live for a while in the city of cars.

How many stupidities have I wasted my funds on. Food, always innocent and guilty at the same time, heads the list, but those leaks do not materialize until you must pay for the simple fact of having a bed to sleep your sorrows. Not to mention the moment when you are hungry, but you have neither the motivation nor the means to eat. You work the raw, but you have nothing in the pantry, and there you say to yourself: perhaps it’s time to take a walk. Fatal error.

As a good foreigner, everything seems alien. There will be naturally friendly people, but the rest are faithful followers of Rand, only with morality a bit outdated. So, I go out to the street, enveloped by the cold of the unknown, and I find myself face to face with the humor of life, materialized disproportionately in the form of a million cars, in the city of cars.

I always considered myself an acquaintance of cars. The one who falls neither well nor badly, but it’s not like they hold a grudge against me, I thought, since I always try to respect everyone, without distinction, and I go by the way of ancient processions. My surprise came in the form of an old acquaintance, corrupt in vice, presented and immersed in a deranged labyrinth, in the city of cars.

The reader won’t care about privileges or the lack thereof, because, immersed in their own life, they will understand privilege as one thing or another. So, the definition of privilege cannot be given, in the worst case, objectively. However, under comparison with the ideal world, one can approximate something remotely similar. And for proof, an own example from the city of cars: the car.

One might think, overconfidently, that the car is the closest thing to the concept of privilege one would have in mind: freedom materialized from the ingenuity of man, conceived with the purpose of freedom itself. Never again subject to the inclemencies of weather, you are free to go from east to west without regard for distance nor the other. You are only a slave to your own will. You will go from here to there, running over life, imposing your status wherever you go. And that is your so-called privilege, for it is nothing more than an illusion that obscures the true privilege you lack. In the city of cars, the truly privileged are those who do not need a car, nor see a car.

For the sake of clarity, we will first discuss why not needing a car is a privilege compared to needing one. A car, in reality, is not desired in itself, but goes hand in hand with the primary yearning to balance the injustice of life, which, comically, puts what you desire from you a little further than you would like. Everything you seek, with the greatest irony, is situated at just the distance to cause you pain. In reality, you do not need a car in the city of cars; you need to go, because you are a slave to destiny, just like the other cars in the city of cars.

It is true that we are all slaves to something. But where are you going, in such a hurry and running over your fellow slaves? It would seem your cause is much more important than that of the other cars, who depressed continue in their frenzy of seeking what they do not find nearby, and see the displacements not with pleasure, but as a procedure from which they cannot escape, not even with a car, in the city of cars. Victims, then, of what they do not have at hand, some smear themselves with their supposed privilege. Unfortunately, it is not a privilege, but a display of the chains that, adorned and bearing the weight of your sweat, are still what deprive you of your objective freedom. Furthermore, emboldened, they demand the payment of your life, to thus be next to what you desire, and then return. What irony of life.

Thus, he who does not need a car knows true privilege, because he is not a victim of distance. What he desires is within reach of a revitalizing walk through the tree-lined path or in the direction of the invigorating pedal. He, unlike the car, enters into deep communion with commuting and the elements. He does not reject these ambivalences, but recognizes in them the very nature of existence. At some point he will have to carry something more than his own sorrows, but in that case, two or, at most, three wheels will be able to relieve his load. And if suddenly he needs to go beyond the horizon? Let him use more than four wheels, because more wheels is less slavery, considering that everyone wears their shackles in plain sight, in the city of cars.

Let’s now go to the second point: why not needing a car will not free you from the agony of seeing a car in the city of cars. You will remember that walk within reach of your own feet. Well, no communion is possible in the city of cars. If you have to see a car, it is because undoubtedly you must interact with its innate madness. Oblivious to their sad destiny, they will run over everything that gets in the way of their own cycle of waste, exhausted only in death. And, of course, life makes no exceptions. God forbid you have to cross a street in the city of cars, for the cars understand nothing of reasons, values or pains. The other is nothing more than a dispensable good that, if not for the supposed social order, would be a victim of the frenzy of an unstoppable stampede. Only, unlike wildebeests or zebras, cars hate everything (including themselves). If they could run over all the cars in the city of cars, they would. Have no doubt, since not doing so would prolong their suffering.

At this point, the city of cars offers no solace, because it is designed to exhort the madness of cars. They have the privilege of tons of inertial steel. Challenge the privilege of their chains and you will feel their metallic shrieks in contact with your fragility. Vulnerability is real, but it will be of no use to you in this sad city, where the slaves only spread the suffering that afflicts them. Not even the privileged are saved. The truly privileged is he who does not live in the city of cars, alien to the dance of the cars, which unites everyone without distinction in the greatest youth carnage of modern history.

I, half privileged, not only lament for myself, but also for the poor cars of the city of cars. Even so, as a good egoist, I keep hope because I know I will not be much longer in the city of cars, but that does not prevent me from feeling compassion, because I wonder what can be done to free all these slaves, once I am no longer here.

The Tower of Babel

In the fog of an inhuman city I glimpse a series of lives each one more curious than the last.

Dominant cold, in intervals of sun and rain with the rays so powerful on cloudy days leaving no pardon for the clear forehead.

In this city I spent my first years, and then the years of my adolescence and poor adulthood. As a good place, it lacks tact. It is a state of transition between what I desire and do not have. Full indifference I find when I transit and live with my fellow citizens, because they, just like me, put their face forward, but their eyes in another direction.

Youthful years pass. Nascent uncertainty What will you do with your life poor mortal? A tedious question, that seeks no real answer, apart from the conviction of others. You are a useful prospect or you have not yet abandoned childhood.

As a good indecisive, nothing inspired me. Well, the title of scholar was something I carried, but not by merit, but because I was uninterested in the concerns of my peers. And as one reflects, one aspires, always oriented toward reaching that so longed-for identity. A scholar faces problems, and confronts them, and feels increasingly emboldened as the problem becomes more difficult, and twists, seeking the proper merit of he who dedicated the time and obtained its fruits. That is the cruel transaction to which we are subjected in life.

Living this race, I read at times, on occasions, and what I read I did not understand. Non- fiction revealed itself as a tricky shortcut to say that I knew, and fiction was nothing more than a pastime to which I resorted when I had to impress, or at the moment when I was not connected to the network. Ephemeral were the intrinsic moments, when I truly enjoyed reading above anything else. This is, because any adolescent only thinks about everything that does not suit him.

At some point a radical event arrives. External influence plays an enormous role, because lacking the concept of own identity, any wave is capable of molding and changing the structure of the clay, whether for social aesthetics or not. My wave was a message. What more excuse is needed to validate one’s own ego than a promise of ego increase. Thus, intoxicated with ambition, I ran toward the sea, in the direction of the current, seeking my validator, that which would finally give support to my identity.

To understand the world is a commendable labor everything is born from a natural curiosity that does not deceive nor pretend, it lies And has no other objective than under infinite faith to hope that the world returns your greeting.

One always starts corrupt. There was no ulterior metaphysical desire inspiring my actions, other than self-affirmation. There is no curiosity in a shell without a ghost. Somehow I am as mundane as all my companions, but so altered that I seek to go beyond. And as a good remedy, the drinks burn the mouth and inaction flourishes as another option, but committed already, and despising the moment in which besides being nobody you are nothing going backwards. That was when I had to face curiosity in an extrinsic manner.

Of course, will does not come from curiosity, but from that person who professes it. Who has the faith and the charisma to transmit their religion to another. By that point, I was the most apostate of all, I will not deny it, but like the parable of the prodigal son, I have infinite opportunities. So, one more religion, though false, would not change things much. After a bit of dogmas, and visions of heaven, the promised land and the future, I knew intrinsic motivation; that said, commenting over the heads of people.