A Something

There is something in the act of writing. A something one hopes to reach, yet it is already here, floating in front of me. A something in opposition to a nothingness. A writer’s longing. A sphere of whitish smoke in front of my eyes. It is not enough for me to contemplate it, I need…

Read More

A world of our own

I am fascinated by idealisation, the way the mind changes reality to suit its needs. We have limited senses and a limited capacity to interpret the inputs we receive, with which our mind must draw a picture of our surrounding reality. Our mental representation is our only reality. Things are as they are, but not…

Read More

Death of the hero?

Am I to die, then? – asked the ego. I, the ego, the intelligent mind who carried myself around, walking the unfulfilled path. Am I the only source of suffering? I can see my own spiral thoughts. The categorisation of the classification… Every thought is analysed, conceptualised, labelled and stored. And that is who I…

Read More

The Narrator (III/III)

(continues from here; begins here) To come here in the mornings to sit before this Rothkian void. A filled void that contains everything. The narrator wonders, do I care? But there is nothing to care about or not, there is nothing to feel. That seems to belong to another reality. Here is everything that is.…

Read More

The Narrator (II/III)

(Continues from here) The narrator sits and stares into the darkness. The characters have stopped moving. He picks them up and looks at them as he holds them in his hand. He puts them back on the floor. They looked so alive… more alive than he himself. And yet, here he is. Alive. Sitting. He…

Read More

The Narrator (I/III)

I think about those writers today. Not about their characters, but as the voice-over, the narrator recounting the inexorable succession of events. I wonder if the narrator suffers more anguish than the characters. If he knows what is going to happen, if he feels he cannot feel as his characters do. If deep down he…

Read More

How do we know that we don’t know?

Our knowledge is stored in memory, classified, at least partially interpreted and ready to be used to predict future outcomes. But how do we know that there is something we don’t know, that something is missing? I know the basics of how a car engine works, but I ignore the details. I am aware of…

Read More

The familiarity of the distant world

Sometimes we fantasise how it would feel to live in a world full of elves, trolls, fairies, giants, hobbits, unicorns and, of course, dragons. We see ourselves drifting towards that realm of fantasy, which we idealise as a much better world than our own. More suited for our spirit. But if we had been living…

Read More

The blind hero

I have often wondered about Odysseus’ last words to Penelope before he left for Troy. How would the ultimate hero say farewell, how to explain the necessity to leave? It may be easier to use the excuse of duty than to explain the powerful attraction of the other side of the world, calling his name.…

Read More

The lingering question

We spend our lives asking ourselves who we are while, at the same time, we try to become someone else through every single action that moves us from here to there, as if ‘there’ were any different from ‘here’. Asking myself who I am used to lead me to a brick wall that seemed to…

Read More

The desireless self

Ask yourself, “What is the real motive behind everything I do, think, want?” You’ll see that your real desire is to be desireless. Your real desire is peace. Jean Klein, The Ease of Being The main aim of each want is to end the want itself. To be desireless, as Klein says. Once we get…

Read More

The soil, the seed, the gardener

There was a moment a few years ago when I stopped defending from the world. When I understood my aim was not to look for a more appropriate place, different from this one, but to fuse myself with this world to which I belong. To be one with it, accepting life as a permanently changing…

Read More

The beauty of the empty space

I have a mug on my desk with blue stars on it. Each star occupies an empty blank space in the shape of a star. Some blank spaces lack their star. I had this silly feeling that those spots had not yet found their match. But then I saw them for what they really are:…

Read More

Of course you’re different… but you do belong here

I’m a CreepI’m a weirdoWhat the hell am I doin’ hereI don’t belong here Radiohead, Creep For many years I felt like this, in a life that now seems a million years ago, as if I were someone else back then. I felt different from ‘the others’, I wouldn’t fit. I reached the conclusion that…

Read More

Ode to being lost

We spend most of our life searching, trying to fill the void we are born with. The original sin of the separation of our conscious and unconscious minds. We enter the labyrinth of the million corners, lanes, and fake lights. Just some sugar to get us going until our next ‘discovery’. To no avail. Why…

Read More

Drifting on an idea

Reading Hesse’s Siddhartha again, I realised that I read books as I look at a river. I read and read until I find a sentence, a paragraph that resonates with me. Then I stop. I wonder why my mind focused my intention on that idea. I immediately discard it… ‘No, that cannot be me’. But…

Read More

Jump

We are prisoners, well guests maybe, of the way our bodies and minds are built. We live in a tension of opposites. Logos and Eros, body and mind, good and evil. This is why the cross is one of the main symbols of humankind regardless of religion, the conjunction of opposites. The only way to…

Read More

The lightness of music

Nothing represents the lightness of being as well as music. If you focus on ‘now’ while listening to music, you only hear one or a few notes, disconnected from the rest. Disconnected from everything else, except for the other sensations experienced during that very second. Music comes and goes, it cannot stop. It only makes…

Read More

Unfolding inside out

It’s interesting that the word universe, which integrates all the diversity that exists, etymologically means to pour/transform into one. Humans, at least in the West, have chosen a word that means ‘one’ to define that which contains everything. Poetic and powerful. Who am I? I remember asking myself this question so often. Maybe it is…

Read More

Our better world

If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change Michael Jackson, Man in the mirror If someone had told me that I would cite Michael Jackson… A few days ago I heard someone asking what would make the world a better place. I thought about…

Read More