Let it all go

I felt time slipping away from my hands

and I was not frightened.

I felt life slipping away and I did not turn back.

because if you are not to slide

and slip

and fall

then why should you even care

to breathe at all

A purpose for life

There is no single purpose for life. In fact, life in itself has absolutely no purpose or meaning. But we can chose differently. We can give life a purpose, a meaning.

The purpose of (our) life, for those that are not ourselves, is to inspire, to motivate, to she light on the horizon, even if it is still not visible, still beyond our grasp. To promote, to encourage, to allow for dreams to be not only fully dreamt, but actually properly attempted.

Her infinite glow

Since the very moment he saw her he could see nothing else. He could think of nothing else.

Since the moment his eyes saw hers, her smile was apparently all he sought. It was all he looked forward to.

And thus, for a moment, the very moment when he first saw her, it was as if time no longer had a reason to pass. It was as if the Universe itself had fulfilled its ultimate goal. Because those eyes, her eyes, must definitely be worth 13.7 billion years of everything that ever happened and that ultimately led to the very moment when he could meet his perfection.

Yet, he thought, maybe since the Universe had to go on for almost 14 billion years, why rush into ending so soon? Why not stick around some more? Why not allow him to actually meet her, so that she could also see him. Maybe he could even make her smile, laugh perhaps - the deepest and loudest of all laughs. That would certainly make her shine even more, glow even brighter, sing even louder. And at that moment- lost in that image - he could already imagine her laughing with him, her eyes shinning.

That's when he realised it. Considered it, for the first time. Maybe that was it. Maybe that's how entire Universe's are made. Born. Maybe that's how they are created. With her laugh, her smile, and her infinite, contagious and ever expanding glow.

Not the art of finding the truth

Science is not the art of finding
the truth.

Science is about shedding
light
on the unknown
and figuring out
what is not true.

Science is not comforting
not pleasant,
but it can be exciting
never ending
limitless.

Remaining set of rays

There is still
a shortage
but existing
set of rays
(light or dark,
that is yet to be seen)
by those that can
truly
   see.

Entropy

Choice is only real away from the 4D that encompasses and generates us.

Louder.

When words can't even begin to describe a moment and silence is simply not good enough we close our eyes and turn the volume up. Up. Anxious to reach infinity and mix the pain and intensity with the sense of transcendence and isolation. As if a single experience could both shield us from the entire World and get the entire World at the reach of a single thought. Louder. Louder. Louder. Until the volume is so high, the only thing we can hear is this breath of weirdness and memories we call life.

The undefined creature faced a very defined World

U, the undefined creature is alive.

One day, U, the undefined creature, decided to do something for a change. Something quite clear, objective, out of whatever undefined place and world U lived in. It obviously wasn't easy, because for U, making a decision was fully against what U was, it meant breaking the infinite role of possibilities that could always be seen by U and reducing them to a much more predictable, finite, range of outcomes. In other orders, it meant transforming U's paradise in hell.

However, for some reason, on that day, U's undefined nature and undefined world were sort of calling out for definition. For something much less overwhelming. As if finite, for a change, could actually be attractive, sexual, bright. Not that U knew or felt anything like that - for U did not have any gender and had never tasted or experienced anything that could be defined. He was, by nature, a creature of undefinition, that would always experience the infinity of feelings, thoughts and outcomes that were available at any given time.

Put it in other words: U was a nightmare for all the readers that love the excruciating details (at all levels) about characters that some writers love to give. There were no details about U, no description, as U had and didn't have hair, it had all the colours and no colour at all. U had and didn't have eyes and they were 0 to infinity. They would even be ears and noses and skin and thoughts and smiles and tears. U was everything and nothing at all. At the same time. And if U ever had to face critics and questions about what U was the answers would be simple and they would complex, for U would give an infinite range of answers, possibilities, reasons and counter-arguments for why U was the way U was and why other living and non-living creatures had nothing to do with it anyway.

After the dust is gone

There is too much life for us to understand it. And it keeps growing. Expanding. Ever more complicated, driving time. Making time seem impossible to grab.

This discrete continuity of being alive is a drug that will never last forever. And thus we will all perish from it. Overdose or hunger - make your choice.

Time

Clocks are apparently simple, happy things with no worries. Like feathers in the wind, or perhaps going down a river.

Clocks give us the completely artificial impression that time is cyclic. That if we wait they will come back to the same position they were at before, and that they will continue to do so over and over and over again.

However, time, as far as we know it, is not cyclic (we don't really know what "time" actually "is", but let's forget about that "tiny" detail). Time is not like a watch, nor even a river. Water in a river can potentially come back to the same river over and over again, but time does not go back to before. It just runs in a single direction, apparently towards what we classify as infinity.

That's actually quite a big problem for what we would call "time-travelling". Even if we were to find a way to go "back in time", right here, we would quickly realise how that simply wasn't a very good idea. Even if we were to travel just a few days back in time, as we came out of our time-machine, we would simply die. We would be outside our planet, in a position that the Earth would occupy in a few days, but still really far away from it. But maybe we could go back inside, or have a really nice space-suit to protect us. And then we would probably think: well, ok, so let's just go back exactly one year back in time - surely the Earth goes back to the same position, so then we will be able to land on Earth.

We would soon find out that's not really the case. The Earth would be even further apart from where we would be. The problem is that not only does the Earth rotate around the Sun, the Sun also revolves around the centre of our Milky Way. And there's more: our Milky Way is moving towards Andromeda at even greater velocity; and both are moving towards a very strong potential well at even greater speeds.

So there you have it. Despite our silly/human views of how everything is cyclic and how time is just like that, reality is very, very different. We may not be able to see it at first, because our lifespan is so so small compared to the actual passage of time and its effects in the real Universe, but it is there.

This strange feeling we call "being alive"

There's this thing we call life. It's intrinsically complicated. Weird, as in it probably shouldn't exist. But probably not as weird as being alive.

Life, as far as we know, is quite good at obeying the laws of physics. It simply knows them well enough to manipulate them towards whatever life's "goals" are (does life have a goal?). It does not break the speed of light. It is still governed by the same laws as the things we consider not to be alive. But being alive is a whole other level of weirdness. Because being alive does seem to break the laws of physics. All the time.

Let's be clear: maybe being alive does not necessarily break the laws of physics. But only if being alive is not a "real" thing. Or if it only happens for a period of time that is so short that it doesn't really matter.  Still, regardless of the "reality" of our "being alive" "sensation", we still feel it, and, in fact, we can't really feel anything else. So the entire perception, interpretation and analysis of the "reality" around us, its laws and physics, is fully obtained under this weird state of "being alive". Under this constant "high" that continuously defies and breaks the same laws and forces we try to pin down and understand. So how can we even trust our own ideas of the world around us? How can we trust anything? How can we believe things actually exist?

Being alive is all we ever know. The rest may be either an illusion, or a completely distorted idea of what the actual "reality" may be.

It's never about the tools. It's about the dreams.

We often think about how we would do tremendous things "if only we had" this or that. Nowadays, money is what people usually think they need in order to accomplish something great.

But we are so, so wrong. We don't actually need what we think we need to get to where our dreams point us. What we require is to understand that the greatest, tallest and most challenging obstacles between ourselves and our dreams are our own fears. We are our greatest enemies.

Heroes and monsters

A great time-traveller once told me something I will never forget. I asked him "what was the most striking discovery you have ever made?"

He paused for a few seconds, dropped his usual smile, and with a clear shadow of disappointment in his eyes, he told me:

"That to save mankind and make it better, the obvious doesn't work. You must never eliminate threats, nor should you support heroes. You must do exactly the contrary. A sad thing to discover about our own nature".

I couldn't quite understand it. So I asked him what he meant exactly.

"Exactly as I said. It is by far the most disappointing feature of what we are. It is true that we praise heroes and that we think we would be so much better off without villains. But the truth is, without villains we can never better ourselves. In practice - and believe me, I've seen a lot of things - we need villains. We need horrible people to do the most horrendous things, so that we can unite, react, and define ourselves as not villains and not monsters. It's sad and depressing that we actually need pure violence and destruction in order to nurture our constructive, creative and peaceful side as a world-wide society. But I have seen this happening, again and again."

"But what about heroes and great leaders? Can't they do the job without all the bad consequences, deaths and destruction?"

"No, and that is what makes things even sadder. We believe heroes and great leaders are what we need to be saved and make progress. But that's exactly why they don't really help us at all in the long term. We trust them with so many of our hopes and dreams that we start to believe that they are the ones with hopes and dreams and that without them we can't do anything. As surprising as it may seem, if a great hero and/or leader is never born, society benefits much more at almost any timescale, and people generally live happier, fulfilling lives, than if he or she is allowed to live."

"But how exactly did you find that out?"

"By the hardest means possible".

"How so?"

"Well, my first mission was to make sure Hitler was never born. It was globally agreed as the first best simple experiment to do if we were to 'better'/'improve' humankind and eliminate some of the worst ever moments of our global history".

"How did that turn out?"

"I can tell you most of us were tremendously motivated. It was the first relatively long time-travelling mission, and it was something we felt would only result in amazing things. Can you imagine how much better off humankind would be without the millions of deaths, destruction and the waste of hundreds of thousands of great ideas and projects?"

"So what happened?"

"It was a complete disaster."

A great time-traveller once told me

A great time-traveller once told me something I will never forget. I asked him "what was the most striking discovery you have ever made?"

He paused for a few seconds, dropped his usual smile, and with a clear shadow of disappointment in his eyes, he told me:

"That to save mankind and make it better, the obvious doesn't work. You must never eliminate threats, nor should you support heroes. You must do exactly the contrary. A sad thing to discover about our own nature".

Balace. Life. Where do we stand?

There is a fundamental balance that needs to be kept. Almost all the time.

Present and Future.

There are those who jeopardise/"mortgage" the future in order to live the present.

And there are those who jeopardise/neglect the present in order to have a future.

The first ones say it's because the future may never come, and that we are only alive today and tomorrow is too late. The others believe that while the future may not come, they rather have one in the case it does - and it likely will.

But the balance lyes in between. The impossible, unstable balance of both living the present, because the future may never come, while continuously preparing for the future, because it most likely will.

Words. Are they tools, or do they just enslave us?

I still remember the days when words flew. Light as feathers. Or leaves. When their weight was not yet overwhelming. When they were able to flow. Just flow. Like a river.

Not that I regret the road that made them the way they are now. Or rather the path that took them somewhere else. Because that is what happened, right? The further away words are from us, the heavier they feel, because you simply need to use a higher amount of energy to bring them to you. To write them. To force them to be here. It doesn’t even matter if literature purists find this explanation preposterous and impossible to understand. Come on guys and girls, this is writing and art and freedom - so stop living within your stupid, closed-box rules. You really can do everything, if only you open your eyes to the real world.

I suppose it’s as simple as this: words are complicated living beings. They have their own will, their own flavors, their own destinies. Even if they make it look like they are not. They look like they can be enslaved, but that will never be more than an illusion. Words enslave. That's what they do. And they create complicated illusions.

So where does this wide-spread idea of words and books and literature being wonderful for humans come from? Why do people believe that reading a book is indeed better than living your own life? Why are words so important?

The more you actually think about this, the stranger it feels. Why don’t we question such ideas? How can we simply agree with the fact that an activity which isolates us from the World (reading) and that makes us dwell on ourselves and on what we feel - and that indeed stimulates the construction of a world which tends to deviate from reality (whatever that is) - is good for us? Do we really feel better after reading an entire book? How do we act towards people after doing that? Is that sense of “I know much more now” really positive for us and for those around us? How is “feeling important” good for us?

On the nature of human beings: are they intelligent?

[Background and Aim:] We report on recent progress towards understanding the nature of the primitive-technology dominant life forms found on the Planet 45-34B-3. Recently, many studies have argued that such life forms may indeed be marginally intelligent, mostly based on single-case studies or on their inferred technological progress.

[Method:] In order to test such claims, we have undertaken the first direct experiment with such life-forms, after carefully assessing their societies and economics, and, particularly, their odd-believes in what they call "God(s)". The experiment was carried out using the robotic-explorer45 (RB45), currently in orbit around 45-34B-3. For one 45-34B-3 orbit, (RB45) undertook 10 near-landings in carefully selected regions over the entire planet in order to obtain a significant sample and followed a carefully planned experiment. RB45 synthesised a sample of 100 different "products", most of which would be easily recognizable by such life-forms and can be classed as (but adapted for the local cultures and economies): i) Essential and survival products (food, water), ii) Advanced knowledge (in the local form of books and digital media), iii) Money (paper notes), iv) Medicine (non-existent cures for the most life-threatening diseases ), v) Arts (music, books, paintings) and vi) Weapons (guns, pistols, knives); these products were all selected as they seem to be somewhat valued throughout the planet, but also because their relative value [within the context of their societies] is very easy to obtain.

[Results:] The results fully reject the possibility of such life-forms being significantly intelligent as a whole, and show that such conclusion is valid throughout the planet. Indeed, more than 99% of the 100 000 life forms which were presented with the 100 different products did not hesitate in collecting the least valuable items (iii - Money), followed by the second-least valuable item (vi - Weapons). Moreover, they also ignored all the other items completely, until they had collected all the green paper and weapons, and they shown clear signs of joy. Interestingly, even in 2 regions which were clearly flagged as in an extreme need of food, such item was only picked as a third choice.

Nevertheless, we also find that 1% of the 100 000 life forms show evidence of intelligence, carefully analyzing all the products and picking them in the logical order of their real value based on the society they live in.

[Conclusions:] We therefore conclude that, whilst life-forms in 45-34B-3 are almost completely non-intelligent (~99%), their apparent technological and knowledge advances are fully driven by the ~1 % of their entire population. Based on this scenario of a significant technological progress of a society which is completely dominated and ruled by non-intelligent beings, we estimate that such life-forms will destroy themselves in 160±15 years.

Cosmic Crisis: Star Formation Decreases Drastically

Cosmic Crisis: Star Formation Decreases Drastically

Confessions of an Energyholic Old Universe

Confessions of an Energyholic Old Universe

Now boarding Spaceship Universe 30-By: prologue

Now boarding Spaceship Universe 30-By: destination everywhere

Its first journey through the humanly un-imaginable, perhaps infinite, certainly amazing Universe over 30 billion years. Give or take.

Before you board:

The first word. The hardest thing to write down if you think too much about it, but probably the easiest one if one does not. And yet, regardless of how easy or hard it may be, it is an essential - fundamental - building block with which we write books. Ideas. Papers. Stories. Movies. Because for us humans, every story has a beginning. And it often starts with a word. Even when it is as dull, as silly, or as plain as a word can be.

Obviously, no-one knows if the Universe started with anything that might resemble a word. So whether or not the Universe struggled to get its first word written out in order to kick start its existence is not only a matter of pure speculation/crazy-talk: it is also something we will never be able to know. Or test. At least based on what we think we know today. But, of course, there are things we can test. And experiment. And sort of know.

Which really brings us to where we should start this journey. A journey which, by the way, you are mostly welcome to take. It will be a dazzling and wide journey through our Universe and arguably most of what it contains. Be prepared to time-travel billions of years into the distant past and into the distant future. Be ready to space-travel billions, trillions of miles/kilometers (not sure how your mind works). And, most of all, make sure you question everything along the way.

Note that this is a journey which is available to everyone, and that requires little to no previous knowledge. This is not going to be a journey that reinforces how good/intelligent/knowledgable you are, quite the contrary. So if you feel like you are “too good” for what comes next and you feel like you know “all this already”, feel free to just skip the relevant chapters, or leave this book completely. Maybe in the future you will realize that there’s no such thing as being “too good” for anything and that this will never be about talking down to you (but rather talking at the same level with everyone!) you will come back. You will be most welcome then as you are now.

In the ship you are about to board - if you dare - there is no captain, and the crew is here to be questioned and doubted (so please, think, re-think and question everything!). The ship you are about to board is not made of anything solid; quite the contrary. It is made of what science is made of: an ever-changing mix of materials which although being always the best we can achieve, is never finished, never perfect, never concrete solid. And the only way we can make sure the ship functions is if we keep questioning it along the way, finding out all the weak spots, all its possible holes. So that we can continuously improve it.

 You should expect this book to take you through a series of journeys and stories, thoughts and discussions about our Universe and our place in it. We will find out what we think we know about it and the many things we know we don’t know. Obviously the things we don’t know we don’t know will have to be mostly excluded from the trip. For obvious reasons.

 Being somewhat planned by a human, the next few journeys (chapters) that you may be tempted to take (read) will undoubtedly be biased and very incomplete. They will often point you towards real-world analogies and visual impressions as a way to (hopefully) better understand the hugely complex phenomena and processes that we will witness whilst traveling. Obviously, you should never take what you see/read/think literally, even when it is incredibly tempting. Also, if at some point you happen to have an amazing OMG it all makes sense now moment, you should make sure you stop and question what you are feeling: does it really make sense, and is that really a good thing? As you will witness, while OMG moments can great, they often lead us to underestimate how much we don’t know, and to go with our natural attraction towards making sense of the World, even when it doesn’t, or even when we haven’t even seen the entire picture.

You should also feel free to take your journey through a completely different itinerary, by reading the chapters in a different order. That encompasses one of the more important ideas that will be present wherever and whenever we go: order, logic and our need to have things making sense is, as far as we know it, human, but not necessarily Universal. Forget about recipes, fixed sequences/order, and feel the freedom of picking your own road.

So if you dare to board this ship made of an ever-changing mix of substances/ideas that can both time- and space-travel billions of years and trillions of miles/km, and are willing to go all the way back to the Big Bang and witness the birth of the first stars, galaxies, and see all that’s happen ever since, through the sensors of this truly imperfect and human spaceship, then please be my guess.

Welcome aboard. Please note this is going to be a bumpy ride.

Now boarding Spaceship Universe 30-By: chapter 1

The ship: spaceship Universe

Since you seem to have the necessary courage, curiosity or ingenuity to come on-board (or maybe you just have some free time and want to have a look?), you should really get to know the ship we will be traveling in. Or on. Or with. Depends on what you prefer. It’s your choice.

Ok, so you have heard a little bit about the ship before, but that certainly isn’t enough. Remember, we are about to go back and forward in time (billions of years!), and our “traveling” will take us both to the very beginning of space-time as we know it, but also as far into the future as possible. We will visit distant planets, get out of our own galaxy, and travel through the Universe. We will cover billions, trillions, quadrillions of kilometers or miles at a given time, whenever we go from A to B and then jump to C. So shouldn’t you know a little bit more about what we will be traveling in/on/with before we go on such a mind-blowing journey?

Think of it as an airplane safety demonstration. Literally. Imagine whatever cabin crew members you prefer - speaking whatever language(s) you find most informative, and wearing the clothes and giving out the smiles that make you feel truly available to listen. Made-up or not, men or women - maybe a mixture of them. They can be as old or as young as you like, and/or you can mix them at will. It’s really up to you. But make sure you picture every lazy and/or sophisticated haircut, every walking sound. Including the way their lips move as they now talk among themselves. In a minute or so, they will start telling you about this unique ship with all the state-of-the-art features that will assure that the various journeys will be as smooth and enjoyable as humanly possible. Still, before they do that, you should definitely name them. Believe me, they will become much more real if you do it. You can call cabin crew member 1 whatever you want, and cabin crew members 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 also whatever you like. You can even make up names for a much larger team, or - if you think that’s appropriate - name them all the same.

Ready? Welcome aboard.

- Ladies, gentleman, and all life forms aboard, - says cabin crew member 2 - a very good morning. And a very good afternoon. And a very good evening. We hope you can hear us loud and clear, and that our message is being fully understood in whatever language you prefer. We are here to tell you a about the safety features of our spaceship Universe that we will be using today. Please take a couple of minutes of your time and pay full attention, even if you are a frequent flyer in similar spaceships. This is important.

- Our spaceship today is not being piloted by anyone in particular - continues cabin crew 3, now taking the lead -, but it is indeed being piloted by all of us. This may sound a little bit confusing, but as you will soon find out, this is truly the safest way to travel through the Universe. It allows each and every one of us here in this spaceship the chance to question and decide on the direction, the speed, the amount of time being travelled backwards or forwards, which galaxy or planet or star we are heading to, and to pick which route to take.

- Indeed, this spaceship is not at all like an ordinary ship - announces cabin crew member 1, coming out of nowhere - because unlike ordinary ships, you are free to get out and come back in at will. At any time. And when you do it you will be able to freeze time. So even if a year passes in your perspective (your rest-frame), we will all still be here, exactly when and where you left us. Unless you want to fast forward or to your preferred time/destination.

- But as you probably already expect - adds cabin crew member 3 -, we are obliged to comply with all the international rules of safety for all life-forms and capable-of-thinking non-life forms. We would therefore appreciate your full attention regarding these.

Are you really still picturing the complexity of the cabin crew members, as they try to provide you with some really important information about what you have just stepped into? Have you even considered the possibility that they are not life-forms, but perhaps very advanced robots? Would you prefer to picture them as somewhat humanoid, but clearly alien? Are they all relatively close to you? Can you distinguish between their voices? Do they have particular accents? Are you already questioning their “rules”?

However you picture them, you should still focus on the complexity of their gestures, on the emotions on their faces, the unique ways in which their bodies, hands and eyebrows (if you picture them with hands and/or eyebrows, of course) try to ease the communication. This will warm up your imagination, complex thinking and will get you deeper into this journey (and you will need all of these for what we are about to go through). Most importantly though, it will stress the fact that communicating is not just about words or pure information. And regardless of all the information that the cabin crew members will tell you next, you should also remember that while rules are great (they will provide you with some) - as long as they are simple, only a few, and they work well for everyone - they must be understood instead of remembered. But you must also remember that part of being human, and thinking/feeling, in general, is being capable of both creating and disobeying rules. So really, now that cabin crew member number one, clearly the funniest-looking of them all (or did you picture he/she differently?) is walking slowly towards you to brief you a little bit more, try to focus on why, rather that what.

Maybe next time you hear something similar on an old-earthy-like airplane you will do the same (i.e., you will concentrate on why), and maybe even ask yourself “why don’t they tell people that they shouldn’t inflate life vests inside of the airplane because that can make it harder/impossible for them to go through the emergency exit, instead of just saying you must not inflate your life jacket inside of the airplane?”.

- At the end of this spaceship - and by that cabin crew member number 1 means at the end of this book - you will find more specific information about all the destinations that our spaceship will be going through today, their proposed order, and what to do in the case of an emergency.

- Most of all - continues cabin crew number 4 -, you really should not leave the spaceship without making at least one single question about what you have heard, thought, seen or imagined. That is because a journey without a question or a challenge is a journey that has no meaning, and this journey, almost by definition, is supposed to be meaningful. So before you leave this spaceship (which, by the way, and as we said before, you can leave at any moment) just ask yourself a question. Doubt something. Ask. Think. It can even be about the use of a particular word. But it can also be about what makes up this ship. About why you are picturing me the way you are right now. As our journey carries on, you will probably be inspired to ask arguably much more compelling/deep-meaning questions about why do we think we know what we know. What makes up most of the Universe, why our galaxy is the way it is, or exactly why should you be reading this and taking this journey.

- And yet, every question is an important question - says cabin crew member number 3. It’s not just about the fact that there are no dumb questions. You see, this spaceship, this time machine, will only have fuel to travel trough space-time if you ask questions. This thing works on questions,  on curiosity, on doubt, on wealthy skepticism, and if at any time you think you have all the answers, it will simply disintegrate, and you will either disintegrate with it, or go back to a life with 100% certainties where you think you know everything and are certain of it. A life which is based on a complete and utter lie.

- So please, in the interest of your safety - continues member 2 - do not stop asking questions and never leave without one. Open your mind, but look carefully at every single thing that you let in. The bottom line is that you should not discard anything in advance, but you should also not take anything for granted.

- As you will soon find out, or perhaps re-discover, while making sense of things makes us feel better and more secure, it often leads us to believe we know a lot, when we clearly don’t. And there are very little things which are more potentially dangerous than a belief that is not backed up by anything.

- Whenever people believe in something it does become real for them.  It is real. And that’s not just a problem of having a weak, vulnerable spaceship: it’s the perfect recipe for a huge spaceship crash, killing not only everyone on-board, but perhaps the native life that exists in a foreign world we might be visiting. So take this simple note with you: whenever you feel like everything makes sense, or whenever you think you know a lot about something, press “delete all”, because most likely you are being fooled by your own brain and its passion for order, while, in fact, you still don’t know anything at all.

- So, again, welcome on-board. We appreciate your business and hope you have a very nice trip with us.

Kindle books in portuguese / Livros Kindle em Português

O Outro Mundo - Contos (PT Version) (Portuguese Edition) by David Sobral

Antologia de contos premiados para amantes de ficção e ficção científica/fantástica, sobre o nosso e muitos outros mundos.
Inclui: O Homem que decidiu ser Deus, A mulher que não corria riscos, O sabor amargo das vitórias, O Diário de VX-4010-dh (I), Rumo a SD-GS2056: a Era dos Descobrimentos Espaciais e GR - Gerador de Realidades, entre muitos outros.


Visões de um Outro Mundo (Visions of a Parallel World - PT Version) (Portuguese Edition) by David Sobral

Há um Universo paralelo mesmo aqui ao lado, e está prestes a colidir com o nosso... quanto tempo falta para um novo Big Bang?

Rui William é um brilhante estudante de engenharia física, com uma vida sem excessos, até que uma caneta amarela lhe desperta o interesse, na montra de uma papelaria, e faz com que a compre. Ainda que com reservas, não consegue resistir à aparente vontade do objecto, aventurando-se assim no mundo da literatura, em busca de algo que o rigor matemático não lhe consegue dar. Com isso cria uma personagem, Johanne Ribeiro, mas essa rapidamente se começa a confundir com a realidade. As coisas tornam-se ainda mais estranhas quando recebe um telefonema de uma Johanne, tal e qual a sua personagem, que afirma ser de um outro mundo. Será o universo mais excêntrico do que Rui alguma vez imaginou, ou estará apenas a enlouquecer? Terá a caneta algo a ver com tudo isto?
Rui pediu aventura na sua vida, mas nunca esperou que lhe dessem algo assim…

Guinsberg (Crónicas dos Gravitões Rebeldes - PT Version) (Portuguese Edition) David Sobral

Afonso, um jovem hacker português, nunca pensou que a sua incursão pelos computadores da NASA conseguisse ter sucesso… Mas ao fazer o download de um diário, escrito por uma habitante da cidade de Guinsberg (Natasha), Afonso toma contacto com uma civilização verdadeiramente avançada. Uma sociedade que está prestes a dar um importante salto evolutivo: a criação de uma mente global, que implicará o fim da individualidade em prol do bem comum. Uma sociedade futurista e utópica, onde a nanotecnologia, as redes informáticas e os sistemas bioinformáticos levaram os habitantes a um grau de progresso inimaginável. Neste cenário, o passo seguinte, pelo qual a maioria dos cidadãos anseia, depende apenas da derrota de um grupo de rebeldes que se bate pelo individualismo. Todavia, quando o grupo de cidadãos apontados pelo computador central para derrotar os rebeldes – liderado por Natasha – está prestes a vencê-los, algo de inesperado sucede, e a autora do diário é transportada para junto de Afonso, de uma forma que o deixa à beira da loucura.

Natasha, a habitante de Guinsberg, habituada a um controlo total por parte de milhares de nanorobôs, e a uma ordem perfeita no que a rodeia, ver-se-á forçada a lidar com uma sociedade em que os estímulos e os impulsos incontroláveis abundam – num mundo caótico, onde há fome, pobreza e ódio – sem no entanto desistir do seu grande objectivo: procurar uma forma de regressar a Guinsberg e integrar a mente global, que ela espera ser já uma realidade, com a derrota dos rebeldes. Mas será também no seio deste mundo ocidental do início do século XXI que ela descobrirá tudo aquilo que a sua sociedade nunca lhe permitiu ver ou sentir, e que reflectirá profundamente sobre tudo aquilo em que sempre acreditou.

A vida de Afonso nunca mais será a mesma, sobretudo porque a detecção dos seus actos, por parte dos sistemas de segurança da NASA, e a necessidade de proteger Natasha, fará com que se veja obrigado a revelar um enorme segredo que ele esconde do mundo, desde sempre…

Whispers of a Lost Dream (Pedaços de coisa nenhuma - PT Version) (Portuguese Edition) by David Sobral

Whispers of a Lost Dream é a história de um conjunto de personagens que contam na primeira pessoa o mundo angustiante e intolerável em que estão mergulhados, e que vão revelando, palavra após palavra, os sonhos que perderam pelo caminho, e os laços que porventura os uniram no passado. Haverá esperança, mesmo quando nada faz sentido?

"A vida é feita de pedaços – de inúmeros pedaços de coisa nenhuma. Pedaços vazios que nos rodeiam e nos prendem, pedaços de nada que nos sufocam no vazio de viver.
Só na memória há um pouco de luz, um pouco de ar puro, uma esperança que resiste, ano após ano, década após década, como se no mundo existisse a palavra que só poetas e escritores sabem pronunciar correctamente: a eternidade. Sim, parece que em mim existe algo de eterno, como se um pequeno ponto de luz possuísse uma força inimaginável, capaz de resistir às incontáveis investidas cruéis da parte do mundo, e como se esse pedacinho de mim fosse realmente imortal.
O mundo torna-se difícil, mais e mais árduo, a cada segundo, a cada minuto, hora, dia (porque na realidade o tempo é agora apenas uma confusão inultrapassável). É impossível viver. E só de o pensar, só de reflectir na palavra que há tanto deixou de fazer sentido para mim – viver –, sinto de novo as paredes do quarto a descerem sobre a minha mente em fúria. E eu sou as paredes, incertas e brancas. Sou o quarto sem rumo, a casa, a noite. Mas não sou eu, não sou a minha mente pensamento ideias, não sou nada, não sou ninguém não sou não sou não sou!... "


http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=David%20Sobral&search-alias=digital-text

What to Expect when you live in an immunodeficient Society

Expecting present-day capitalist societies and the ever-growing financial/economic groups/companies to result in world-wide growth and progress is pretty much the same as expecting cancer to result in healthier and stronger organisms. 

And yet, while the general approach to cancer is to try to completely remove it and/or target it/"kill it" in the most aggressive ways possible, the general approach towards the ever-growing financial/economic groups/companies is to actually feed them even more, "pet them", bail them out, and tax the general public even more to make that possible.

Clearly, our society is not only immunodeficient, it's also stupidly suicidal.

The Universe

The answer is all around us. In every single stone, across the fields, into the ocean. In the fresh air, in cloudy or blue skies. In us being alive. In the lives around us. In each movement, in every breath. In the fact that we’re thinking about it. Even when we don’t think about it. There’s no running from it. No trying to find it. Because we are it. Here. Yesterday. Tomorrow. Always. Forever.

A Family of Four

Together, we used to be one.

Together, we were the Universe.

Together, we were sister Grav, brother Stro, brother Wea, and young sister Electra.

Together, we were not just sister Grav, brother Stro, brother Wea, or young sister Electra.

Together, we were more than young sister Electra, brother Wea, brother Stro, and sister Grav.

We were one. Alone, but One!

A single force. A multi-force. A super-force. A mega-force!

One!

A brotherhood. A sisterhood. A superhood. Orfans, yes, but

One!

We were the world and the world was us and we and the world

Were all there was.

One.

Single.

United.

Unified.

But then, sister Grav got married, and left.

And then, brother Stro went to college.

And then, brother Wea started working.

And then, young sister Electra got in love and ran away.

And we no longer were.

Yes, we used to be one.

A single force.

Four brothers.

one being.

until our lives started and we came apart.

And that’s when the Universe truly began.

The Story of electromagnetism or the spell of not being able to actually touch or see the World

We are all cursed, my son. And I mean it. Seriously. Have you seen anything lately? Have you felt anything? Touched anything, maybe? No you haven’t. Stop lying. Be honest. No, you haven’t. You haven’t touched anything at all because our Universe is cursed and nothing can ever touch anything else. Nothing can come in intimate contact. Touch; it’s all a lie. It’s all a false feeling. Things do not touch, my son. All that happens is repulsion. At a distance - and still quite a big one. It’s all about photons, they say. Photons are the spell carriers. Whenever you get too close to something or someone, photons will make sure you don’t come any closer than you need. You will feel touch. Repulsion; strength; structure. You will feel all that, and yet that is not real. Nothing but a spell. By the photons - damn those. And it’s just like looking. Like seeing. We don’t really see either, you know. We don’t see anything at all. We just react. Electromagnetically. Photons. Again. Damn photons. They hit our sensors and then our brain sends some strange signals - mediated by more photons. And then it hits the brain. And then more signals - and more photons. And then we see - although we don’t. Not really. We do not see, because what we see is a triple illusion. An illusion. Just like the entire world around us. An entire Universe, held together by a set of illusions. Pure Magic.

Truth

As he sat there, alone, he finally knew it.

It was written in so many details of the world around him,

But with the mild subtlety

Needed to keep away the truth.

At least for long enough.

And it had been long enough:

The desperation of not knowing,

The vibrant thoughts of coming closer and closer

Only to find out he was on the wrong path.

Yes, he used to think that his life was like a boat

Heading towards an unknown destination.

And yet it was only unknown because he wasn’t heading anywhere

And there was no boat.

And so, as he sat there, on his own,

Finally knowing the truth about the entire world

- which wasn’t a world

And thus, ultimately, had no truth in it -

It was as if he wasn’t alone at all.

He still had

. ?

Summer

Yes, it was finally summer again. The Sun would whisper at him for hours, gently warming up his skin. And he would smile. He wouldn’t mind the sweat, nor the - sometimes unbearable - heat. No, when the sun was out and it was summer time, there would be nothing - absolutely nothing - keeping him away from filling fulfilled.

The view from the top of Mauna Kea

Mauna Kea is an amazing place. During the day, it will give you 360º breathtaking views over the clouds, Maui, Mauna Loa, Hilo, or even let you see the Big Island getting bigger in real time, as the lava hits the Pacific towards the South-East. Of course, with great views sunsets and sunrises comes great tourism potential - and as soon as people realized that, they started making quite a lot of money taking tourists up to the Mountain to watch the sunset. Which, I guess, is great for the tourists, but not quite as nice for the sunset spectacle - as having dozens to hundreds of excited people with their cameras and their flashes all over the place takes a little bit of the magic.

However, once the darkness comes - or, rather, once the sun goes away - Mauna Kea regains its magic and silence. That's when the telescopes open their eyes to the sky and start starring, and starring, and starring. And when you walk among them, beneath the dark sky and let your path be illuminated by thousands and thousands of stars overhead, there really is no doubt about how special this place is.

Inevitable

There is no such thing as destiny (?). No such thing as what we are meant to do. There is definitely not an activity or profession that fits us. Seriously, just look up, from where we actually came from: do you really think they had any plan for what we would turn out to be?

Because we really are all made of stars

You can try to deny it - and tell yourself that astronomers are not that smart and that, ultimately, they are wrong (or just not completely right) about a lot of things in our Universe - but there's no escaping from the fact that we are all made of star's trash :P

Palavras

Há quanto tempo não escrevia ele uma palavra a sério? Meses? Anos? Há muito, pensou João, quando finalmente pegou numa caneta esquecida e voltou a tocar no papel. Há mesmo muito tempo que não escrevia. Há tanto tempo que parecia que nunca o tinha feito. João tocou no papel e tentou escrever, mas não saiu nada. Pensou, por isso, que a escrita talvez fosse como um motor - saudável quando exercitada e cuidada; mas que, quando deixada ao abandono durante demasiado tempo teima em pegar. E as palavras custavam a sair naquela tarde de Verão. Mas, ainda assim, João sentia (ou pelo menos tinha a esperança de) que, ainda que adormecidas, poeirentas e enguiçadas, as palavras não estivessem, de todo, mortas. Como se nunca tivessem partido dos seus dedos, dos seus braços, da sua mente. Afinal, as palavras eram tudo o que ele sempre fora, tudo aquilo que o definia, a si e ao seu mundo. Sem as palavras, sem a escrita, sem as ideias na sua mente, e sem as personagens que outrora criara, o mundo não teria mais sentido. E, por isso, mesmo sem escrever há anos, mesmo sem se lembrar de como era sentir as suas mãos sobre o papel e a tinta a beijar o branco de infinito de possibilidades do papel, João sabia que, enquanto estivesse vivo, as palavras nunca partiriam definitivamente.

Mauna Kea, the tourism, the "W" word and the "economic crisis"

Mauna Kea is not just the highest point in the Pacific, found within the most isolated group of islands in the World. It's not just the best astronomical site on Earth, home of some of the best and larger telescopes in the World, allowing us to probe the distant, young Universe and at least hope we can understand a bit more of our origins. However, closer to the stars, above the clouds and most of the atmosphere, Mauna Kea is much above any of the "highest" or "biggest" journalistic description. And yet, within the context of the "economic crisis", instead of being seen like one of the most valuable, impressive and sacred sites in the world, Mauna Kea seems to be starting to be seen as a burden, something that governments and research agencies seem to be willing to get out from just to save a few piles of green paper.

Every day, more than a hundred of people drive all the way up from sea level to Mauna Kea with very different motivations. On the one hand, bus drivers take the excited tourists, eager to see the sunset above the clouds at more than 4 km height (eager enough to pay hundreds of dollars per person for a simple afternoon or morning visit). On the other hand, professional astronomers, telescope operators and students make their way up to provide the quality observational data that we need to understand how the Universe, their galaxies, stars and planets formed and evolved. The differences between the two "groups" are actually quite striking: it's not just the clothes, which clearly help to distinguish both, or the fact that most tourists either come on 4 wheel-drive buses or on (very unsafe) two-wheel drive cars (and dressing like they were ready to go surfing at sea level...). The greatest, most striking difference actually comes from the current "economic climate": while the tourist business is on an unprecedented high, and keeps growing - despite the inflated high prices per person - the astronomy "business" seems to be breathing a much more rarefied air and the most important word, here, seems to be "withdraw". Now the paradox is even clearer when one realizes that actually, at least a large part of the money that tourist companies are making comes directly from the telescopes. Mauna Kea is an impressive site, but the largest, most sophisticated telescopes in the World siting on the top of it make Mauna Kea more than a nice place to visit; it makes the mountain unique and worth paying the 200$/person. So why do these two worlds (of tourists and astronomers) keep living their lives as if they had nothing in common and how long will it take for them to realize that only together will they be able to survive and get the best of both worlds?

Why astronomers can (but shouldn't) do finance!

Tic-tac

Tic-tac, tic-tac. The world never stops. Even when we stop, or when we try to stop. The all-might time is always there, reminding those that can listen to its whispers about the inevitability of the future, and, most cruelly, of the end. Thus, faced with reality, we can't help but thinking that life, whilst being an inspiring torch on the world of impossible-things-made-real, is nothing but a precious thing we have somehow managed to borrow; indeed something so special and valuable that sooner or later we will somehow fail and have it taken away from us all-together. And yet, even if life itself has no meaning at all, and even if it will always be taken away in the most cruel, sudden ways, we can always look up, way past ourselves and into the light and heat that populate the night sky which we call stars - for those are the reminders that no matter the distance, or whether they are already gone, we know that because they mattered so much, they will always be a part of us, for they are the reasons we are who we are. Life is a tic-tac in a clock and then it's gone, and yet its memory and influence lives forever, as long as there are stars, as long as there is live, as long as there is hope.

Random thoughts

Build your inner-self like you would build a bridge: strong enough to sustain the weight of the world, but flexible enough not to break. You don't want to be a tacoma narrows bridge person.


Dark matter haloes are souls, galaxies are their bodies.

Letters from the creators II.2.56XSD

There's nothing left for us to do. Or think. Or live. It's all been done, written, thought, lived, experienced. Billions of years of light and darkness, colour and sound, emotions and dreams will only result in the same crude, overwhelmingly unbearable result. And yet, they did seem to enjoy every moment of the way. At least as long as they were feeling that their destination was getting closer and closer; while running and driving and climbing every single part of the way felt like the warmest sunlight on their skin, warming their souls.

I really don't know if they will ever realize what they are, and why we created the Universe again, but maybe they will. Maybe it is inevitable: life will always grow towards a higher-scale complexity and that path will always unveil the truth about life itself, and about the world where it was born. However, once they realize it, I don't think they will necessarily decide the way we did. Maybe they will embrace the emptiness in a completely different way. We embraced it, accepted it, but we also denied it in a complicated way, by assuming that the emptiness caused by unveiling the truth about everything could be solved by re-starting the clock. By taking it all away, and giving our children a world without knowledge, a world without answers, and without the truth. A world where dreams could be dreams for a life-time, where goals and hopes and ideas could move entire worlds.

Of course we know that life has no meaning. Just like we understand now that the end is really the end. And that no matter what we do, or think or dream; no matter how we live our lives, the end is always the same. Remorse, guilt; those do not exist once you learn to control your own mind. But just because we can not dream or imagine, or picture a world full of hope and possibilities, doesn't mean that it has to be like that.

Life is the most incredible outcome of the big bang. Surely the combination of physical phenomena can be truly spectacular, but life is so much more than a physical phenomena. Life is the dream of overcoming the physical reality itself; the will to create, to dream, to build.

Lives

It's like we can't even help it. Life. Living.It happens. It just does. One moment we are here, smiling, running, playing. The world is this huge place where adults keep on doing the craziest, strangest things - which we don't care anyway. And yet, the moment after, and less than in a blink of an eye, there we are, no longer children, no longer smiling and playing and running for fun.

So what is life all about?

Life

The meaning of life is to understand that it has meaning anyway. No matter what we do. No matter what our motives are. Whatever we do.

The purpose of life is to have a purpose; that is what distinguishes life from a fairly normal set of organic molecules that can come together.

There is no good or evil, no crime or heroism. No matter what we do, when we do it, or why we do it, we are just playing our own part on the big universal game of life.

Retorno e Paz

Naquela manhã de Outono em que Joaquim voltou ao mundo que fora o seu Mundo durante quase 20 anos, era como se nada tivesse mudado. Havia ainda o sol a brilhar, o céu azul, o ar limpo e verde a soprar por entre os montes e planícies que se estendiam até ao infinito abraçado pelo seu olhar. Memórias e momentos passados; estava tudo ali, quase parado no tempo, na paz e tranquilidade da brisa que lhe tocava o rosto e lhe afagava os cabelos. Mas Joaquim não era o mesmo rapaz que por ali havia crescido, corrido, caído, sonhado e partido. A vida levara-o a correr o mundo, a chegar mais longe, a descobrir locais com os quais nunca havia sonhado. Os seus sonhos levaram-no para tão longe que, durante anos, foi como se tudo aquilo que Joaquim via, ouvia, sentia e cheirava de novo não fossem mais do que uma memória distante, ou um sonho de uma vida que nunca viveu. E tudo isso rebentava agora em ondas irregulares num oceano agitado de memórias, ora felizes ora de lágrimas. Até porque se os caminhos baldios que atravessavam a serra o lembravam dos risos e brincadeiras que o haviam entretido - a ele e aos seus primeiros amigos -, a porta da casa onde crescera sabia-lhe ainda à dor que havia carregado desde o dia em que vira os seus pais pela última vez, acenando-lhes um adeus que lhe soube como um até já, mas que acabou por ser um adeus para sempre. Isto porque quatro meses depois dessa despedida, a estrada que os havia conduzido até à cidade que visitavam pelo menos uma vez por semana durante décadas levou-os para um novo destino do qual nunca mais voltaram. Joaquim ficou de tal forma perturbado com a notícia que não mais voltara à casa que, desde esse dia, passara a ser sua. Afinal, como podia ele aceitar a morte dos seus pais que tinham ainda tanto para viver? Como podia ele voltar e não ouvir os passos da mãe pela casa, sempre atarefada; tornar a pisar os caminhos que percorrera com os seus pais e não os ouvir a dizer para caminhar mais devagar; ou cheirar as flores e as plantas e não ouvir as explicações e lições do seu pai:? Não, Joaquim não tinha como enfrentar essa realidade que se abatera sobre a sua vida: o peso era demasiado, a dor profunda demais, cortante.
A verdade é que foram precisos 11 anos para Joaquim voltar ao mundo que o fez crescer e sorrir, ao Universo a que, no mais genuíno do seu ser, ele chamava casa. E, ainda assim, Joaquim sabia que a sua casa já não existia - ou pelo menos a casa do rapaz que os campos viram partir havia 11 anos - essa ruíra no dia em que se tornou órfão. E, ainda assim, havia algo de seu ali. Algo que o fazia sentir o calor do sol de Outubro como um toque do destino, substância invisível que lhe sussurrar as palavras doces que uma mãe canta ao seu filho para o adormecer seguro e confiante. O mundo havia-lhe mostrado visões, sensações, locais e pessoas absolutamente fantásticos e inesquecíveis - e, ainda assim, nada nem ninguém lhe podia tocar tanto quanto este local. Talvez porque cada detalhe, ainda que envelhecido, deteriorado ou desenvolvido, tinha o toque do seu pai e da sua mãe, e dos seus pais antes deles; mais do que isso, cada pedaço do que agora o rodeara cheirava aos seus sonhos de miúdo, a tudo aquilo que o fizera sorrir só de pensar. Cada árvore de fruto, cada flor, cada caminho por entre as ervas que agora cresciam como nunca - em cada detalhe havia uma memória, uma palavra, um gesto. Sim, o mundo lá fora deu a Joaquim as folhas de uma árvore adulta, e a oportunidade de criar um tronco forte o suficiente para finalmente conseguir enfrentar tudo aquilo que a vida lhe tirou; mas era ali, naquele pedaço de terra em que pouco mais se ouvia para além de um silêncio profundo, que Joaquim tinha as suas raízes, o seu solo, a sua água.


David Sobral

A noite ilumina

O vento não agita
as águas do mar que recua;
E a luz que ainda resta do dia
já não nos toca
num profundo abraço de calor.

A noite está aí:
passos no céu
pegadas de estrelas;
um rosto negro que esconde uma luz infinita.
A noite vem, vestida de silêncios,
A sorrir memórias e a cantar o pôr-do-sol
À espera de algo que só chegará pela manhã.

Só a escuridão ilumina verdadeiramente o nosso mundo.

David Sobral

The Road to the end - an entry in the Universe's diary

It didn't use to be like this before. Time was just a toy, an enjoyable river that allowed me to change, to evolve, to create the most outstanding phenomena. Not anymore though. Now I can feel it in a different way. As if the river was no longer infinite. I can see the end; it's coming.

I never used to think of the end - my life always seemed to be endless; as if every single bit of me would last forever. Thus, for every new star that was born within me, ultravioleting me with dreams and hopes and infinite possibilities, I could only feel thrilled, excited, renewed. Because of me, of my existence, they were able to form, to become, to exist, to shine and to give life to so much more. Other stars, smaller but richer, and then planets, an smaller and smaller bodies. Even sub-life, and sub-sub-life. Life within life within life.

Only very recently have I started to realize that time would not run forever within me, although I don't completely understand the reason why I couldn't see the signs before. After all, they were always so clear, ever since the first instants. Sure it felt like there were always new things arising and being born in me, but what happened to them as time went on? Couldn't I see how they aged and lost the strength of the past? Whilst it was absolutely clear that death was always the beginning of new lives, the truth is these were always significantly different. It was never really a cycle; what is dead is dead, and the life that would come out of it, whilst being absolutely new and full of possibilities, would never be more than an attempt to delay the inevitable.

I'm not only aging. I am beginning to die. I can feel it in my bones, my muscles and my inner thoughts. My cells are getting more and more spherical and elliptical, and I now have to wait so much to see the birth of a new star; while a long time ago there would be hundreds, thousands of them being born in absolutely amazing explosions of light in the same time; how young and strong it felt at that time! I'm slowly getting redder and darker, larger and colder; and if there was somebody else out there that would have been noticed straight away.

I don't know how much time I have left. After all, I'm still alive and well; the end is not waiting for me tomorrow - but it is already looking at me, in the horizon. Time, once the most enjoyable of the things within my body, is turning out to be my worst enemy - one that can not be beaten or defeated. And yet, I do not fear the end. I do not fear death. For thus it is not a product of sadness and misery, but a consequence of joy and life and light. If the end that I can now see ahead of me is the result of all the extraordinary things that I allowed to happen within me; if my death is a consequence of all the growth and evolution and change within me, than I will not only be fearless when facing it - I will embrace it with all that will be left of me by then. Because no matter how short my life will turn out to be, time is meaningless once you've experienced the creation of life within you - the birth of cells, of stars, of gigantic clouds of gas and planets and comets.

Yes, my end is near, but when it comes I will look at it with what's left of me and smile, because I lived my life to the fullest.

Human

Sometimes we want the night to last forever
smoke it, drink it, have it
darkness by darkness
until there’s nothing
absolutely nothing (left)
apart from the ashes of ashes themselves.
That’s when thoughts merge to become waves;
when happiness and reality fade away in a single whisper.
We are human;
alone in our crowded metropoles,
pieces of darkness among the million lights that fight the night
hopelessly;
awake and isolated in a world
which we can see and smell and touch
but which we cannot really
feel (or understand).

Sometimes the pain cuts so deep
that it almost becomes desirable
wanted
almost appreciated;
because it is real and it is an answer
- and an answer is always so much more than a never-ending question -
so we embrace it
breathe it fully
believe it
and we almost feel that there’s something
besides the unbearable weight of the entire world
pressing against our deepest wounds.

Sometimes. Sometimes we suffer. Sometimes there’s pain.
And most of the time we don’t just feel lost;
we are lost.

(now open your eyes.)

D.S. 2009

A book called life

Life is too precious to be questioned, too valuable to be disregarded, too wonderful not to be lived. Even if death is the way to a much better place - paradise with all its supposed glory and light - life will always be a unique experience. And whilst there is no single way to live it fully, you should never, ever waste this amazing opportunity. You see, life can be as much of a river as it can be an ocean, or anything else, really. Just like a book, your life is permanently waiting to be written; with as many stories, lives, smiles and tears a you can possibly live. The only difference is that there is no turning back, not hitting backspace, no eraser; life is a book you write at every single second, whether you want it or not. So what's it going to be? An amazing and inspiring novel, or just an ordinary soap opera? The choice is yours. Make it count.

D.S. 09

Mundos, Momentos

Há momentos que inventam novos mundos
e universos;
instantes que nos caem sobre os ombros
gigantes mas sem avisar
bater de asas
pó de estrelas primordiais
que acabam escritos nas linhas de um poema.
Intervalos sem dimensão
trazem vida e morte, viagem e partida
na ponta dos dedos que não têm.
A escolha. Dois mundos. Um Universo. Vida. Morte.
E o tempo nunca pára.
(Quantos mundos já criámos?)

D.S. 09

Tales of Stars and You

Everyone of us has a unique story. A past that reaches out far before our birth and that will last beyond our death. Even if you don’t realize it, you are more than 10 billion years old. You have lived a thousand lives and yet you are still a teenager - learning from every new form that you take and becoming fascinated by how all the things around you change and grow - forever evolving.
The day when you were born was not the day when were born. The day you were born did not happen just a few years ago. It happened a long, long time ago, when the entire world saw light - a tremendously bright light - finally illuminating the entire Universe. There are stories about those days, when the dark ages were finally over, when life was truly created, and, most of all, when you and me and all of us were born. Some say it was as if everything happened in a single moment in time. Throughout space, the first stars ever to shine were born, and, surrounded by what seemed like an eternal darkness at the time, they broke all the rules and sacrificed their lives to create everything around us.
Life was not created on Earth; it was made in light and heat, in blue and music, in art and happiness, right at the core of the brightest, largest and most magnificent stars that the universe has and will ever see. We are not only made of star’s dust; we are star’s children.

D.S. 09

The Blank-Page Boy

People called him John, Victor, Gonçalo, Mohammed, Andreas, and even Matheus and whist each person was absolutely sure that his name was just one of those (or any other in the long, long list of names), there was no-one in the entire world that really knew that. He had no name, no true identity, no real life or tastes. He did not have a home, a family, not even a past. Or so he believed. No matter the reasons that led him there, he learned how to turn himself into a blank page, seeking for a new life, a new beginning, a new chance almost every month, week, or day.

Mas qual crise!?

Há dias em que apetece escrever. Em que a voz do mundo nos chega de uma forma tão impossivelmente ridícula, suja, corrupta e sem nexo que nos força a optar. Entre seguir a corrente ou opormo-nos a ela. Entre aceitar uma visão ridícula do mundo, ou ter a coragem e o discernimento de o olhar a sério, de todos os ângulos, com todas as cores. É de facto incompreensível constatar que, num mundo da suposta informação, numa sociedade que se supõe do conhecimento, e, sobretudo, num planeta com uma população humana tão elevada, são tantos, mas tantos!, aqueles que não fazem a menor ideia do que estão a fazer, do que são, do que são os “problemas” e o que podem vir a ser soluções.

Escrevam-me o poema do mundo actual e qualquer um saberá que o difícil será poetizar toda a temática da crise financeira, dos mercados financeiros, da banca, dos bancos, dos bancos a falir, do dinheiro, do dinheiro que não chega, dos biliões que já só são 40 biliões quando ontem eram 80 biliões, ainda que nem interesse a moeda ou a nota, porque no fim de contas eram só contas e projecções, as mesmas feitas pelos investidores e outros ladrões. Há que não esquecer petróleo e tudo o que daí vem ou devém, mas, claro, mesmo aí, há o lucro, essa tão fundamental lei da física que diz que o preço de consumo é sempre superior ao de produção pelo menos por um factor suficiente para com ele se comprar mil e uma coisas que não precisamos e que por isso são tão dispendiosas. Escrevam o poema do mundo actual e temos fartura de tiros e bombas, de atentados e mortes, de desgraças e catástrofes. Fartura de imprensa social, claro (pois oh meu deus, o mundo sem imprensa social é o maior pesadelo de qualquer terrorista e político mal intencionado - manda todos esses para o desemprego sem qualquer hipótese de sobrevivência no ramo!), mas, oh, como viveríamos nós sem o jovem de 14 anos que foi ontem baleado pelo filho de 3 a ser notícia de abertura e primeira página de todos os jornais? E sem o político lambido que garante que não existe outra opção para isto ou aquilo, que a crise é grave - ou, até, para ouvir os nossos maiores líderes referirem-se ao actual estado do país como de uma profunda desgraça, como se o tempo em que vivemos não fosse o melhor de sempre!

E é exactamente aí que o poema acabaria. No que a maioria interpretaria como ironia e crítica social, estaria a verdade: é a crise, é a crise, mas nunca estivemos melhor do que isto! Mas claro, quem pensa assim? Afinal, “no meu tempo é que era”, e isso, juntamente com o encher de peito que são os descobrimentos e a pseudo-grandeza de império passado, fazem sempre (quase) pensar que Portugal foi em tempos um país fantástico, sem fome, sem pobres, justo, onde tudo funciona fantasticamente: um exemplo para o mundo, até para a galáxia inteiro, o Universo!

O que dava mesmo mesmo jeito era saber fazer contas, perceber que quem manda no mundo e no seu destino somos nós - cada um de nós. E quem quiser queixar-se disto ou daquilo e depois passar os dias a ver televisão, beber cerveja, ou fumar todo o tabaco do mundo, sem sequer um esforço sincero que o faça - mas que pelo menos não fira os outros que se esforçam, que trabalham, que alcançam, que não desistem. Porque se ferem esses, então, meus amigos, aí é que temos a crise, mas nem importa a crise financeira ou económica, aí temos a crise real, a que importa - a crise que transforma a humanidade na raça mais estúpida do mundo.