Mens agitat molem

Following one reverie that I always wonder about since my childhood, I came up with a quite interesting question on my demented mind: What if a person with “Capgras Delusion” entered an eternal house of mirrors? What would happen to that person’s sense of being? Would that person starts to ask himself about the veracity of himself? That question always hunted me… Like a demon in a world without candles…

“Capgras Delusion” is a rare mental illness, or disorder according to more political psychiatrists, in which the “haunted” one holds a deep belief that other people, or people that are around them are in a certain manner impostors, or more commonly have being replaced by an identical-looking impostors. In general cases, the syndrome is related to a paranoid nature where the delusional person truly believes in its dementia.

But returning to our main topic, image a poor haunted soul entering a place where even the best cognitive system would be putted at test. Someone that is doubtful of his closest friends is faced with its most inner self. As a grain of sand drops, the soul that once questioned the veracity of his own family now starts to look inside itself, and as Nietzsche would probably say: The abyss gazed back into him.

Suddenly all that was inside that needy soul gets released, like a inner Pandora box, all his villains, fears, sensations, emotions, memories, sins, knowledge and information converted into one and many person as his ego, id and superego were liberated to participate in his walk through the valley of mirrors. Now he is not alone anymore, there are several “me’s”, formed through the mix of his ego, id, superego in a never ending dance as they shape-shift from one reflection into the other as the haunted soul just stares through the looking glass trying to get familiar with all this “new” impostors that have being replaced, and now surrounds him.

As the person starts to walk deep inside the maze of mirrors delusion and beliefs regarding him are at clash. Every time he looks at a different mirror the reflection shows itself as a new “him”, or more properly said the reflection brings light into a new side of his personality that was up to now in a deep shadow. Every single stare at the mirrors is a window to his haunted soul, and so as the reflections are replaced by impostors, id, ego and superego take turns or commingle in a venture to expose its truly identity. As the journey continues, I can only imagine that questions regarding the “true me” start to pop into his head. As Id, ego and superego starts to make the mirrors become more and more alive and one starts to ask himself whether the reflection is the real self and the flesh and blood is an impostor. And in this exact moment is where the subject is faced with probably one of the most difficult choices during his walk into the self-awareness: “Who am I?”

Sartre would probably argue that deep down this appeal to a transcendental ego, or a true me, conceals a conscious flight from freedom. Our pour soul quest into knowing the veracity regarding himself is truly a search for authenticity, as it is the true virtue, in a society marked or defined by oppression and exploitation. The foundation remarking our subject quest, again, is the basic ambiguity of human reality that in the darkest hours “is what it is not” and “is not what it is”, an eternal motor of internal negation. Sartre would say that authenticity, or in our case the search for it, is fundamentally a condition where the human kind remains in a deep sleep state dreaming about the basic ambiguity that states that one is never identical with one’s current state but remains responsible for sustaining it. And in that way, the claim “who I am” would be tantamount to a manner of self-deception or bad faith as would all forms of determinism, since both instances involve lying to oneself regarding the fact that one’s nonself-coincidence and the concomitant responsibility for “choosing” to remain as one self.

Given the essential division of the human condition into factice and transcendence, bad faith or in-authenticity can assume two principal forms: one that denies the freedom or transcendence component and the other that ignores the fatidic dimension of every situation. Sartre talks as if any choice could be authentic so long as it is lived with a clear awareness of its contingency and responsibility. But his considered opinion excludes choices that oppress or consciously exploit others. In other words, authenticity is not entirely style; there is a general content and that content is freedom.

So as the “Capgras Holder” ventures into the jungle of self’s, realities, choices and thoughts translate as impostors reflected in every single mirror, deep down his journey into reveling its truly form turns into a quest for freedom. A quest for learning how to live with his choices. As certain as he is about a particular decision he becomes aware that no other alternative is possible, when a particular decision is made a new path is set. And since each path is full of possibilities, it seems that he cannot accept the responsibility for his choices, the responsibility of letting others paths go, or more likely of not exploring every single path possible.

And as a Salomonical curse, the feeling and memories of missed paths and opportunities will eternally hunt the “Capgras Holder” and all his inner self-reflections seen as impostors, but truly representing all dreams, emotions and sensations stored deep down at the holders id, ego and superego that were not properly followed…




"In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny." - John Stuart Mill




Listening to "Dr Jackle" - Miles Davis feat. Milt Jackson Quintet

Saepe creat molles aspera spina rosas

There must be a place, space or time
Working like a kind of special bazaar
Where all our lost and broken dreams
Go to rest in a never-ending symphony…

Made of absences, draining out of excess
The dreams and fantasies are not straight.
Not fitting in straight lines or concepts
They are made and live in the extremes…

Opening each single bottle, yes, do it,
Let all that inner geniuses leave, free…
Courage must be wear all the times,
To tear, cut, burn, so we can start over…

I never wished or wanted to be always right
I sincerely prefer to be right and wrong
It’s always better to be complete, dual
And the first step is wanting to…





“In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.” William Blake





Listening to "The River" - Bruce Springsteen

Fiat Lux

There is a certain art in drawing with light, of searching for the perfect balance between light and shadow, brightness and darkness, a balance that just that exact second will reveal. This certain art presents a unique opportunity to play with the shape of objects, with the colors presented and reflected; and as said a unique opportunity to commingle with life, being able to shape shift these social construction call world memory. And this journey through the realm of light and shadow end up being a eternal quest for one’s soul, just as one starts to dig into their conscience, going into places where he do not know that were there, experiencing with unfamiliar events, facts, dreams, memories and feelings, one discover itself trapped in a realm where light and shadow are one, where much light represents a greater darkness to be discovered. While looking through that magic rectangle where the sensitive soul frames the beauty of the simplest day-to-day activity an entanglement of emotions and sensations take apart in that process. In that exact moment beauty is not just at the eyes of the beholder. Beauty now is part of a different spectrum of realities; beauty is now an amalgam between the figurative representations in the subconscious of the artist and the viewer. A construction forged inside two separated bodies, set apart by singular convictions, realities, knowledge, beliefs and experiences. A composition, so ephemeral, delicate and special, that only exists at the exact moment of the first gaze, vanishing like a mist in the hot morning as the viewer walks way from that particular angle, time and set of thoughts that were present in that exact second of the first gaze. Being able to imagine and experiment, only for a second, this sensation of being part of a production alien to my body and mind, that can only exist at the wiliness of two complete distinct set of minds and bodies, and so momentary that only the true look can captivate it is what delights me in the pursue of the perfect light-shadow combination. Or going further into this dream, being able to construct a so everlasting creation that the first gaze will be just the propelling vehicle where this two bodies will further develop a unique set of fantasies, dreams, emotions where that first gaze will forever renovate itself into a cycle of same gazes being seen by different angles, time, emotions and viewers that end up at that unique first gaze by this two special actors.





"Hay que ser realistas ...soñemos lo imposible." - Ernesto Guevara de la Serna






Listening to "Anos Dourados" - Chico Buarque & Tom Jobim

Memoria in aeterna

Is the price of living a dream greater than the price of living without venturing to dream?

The dreams have always been part of people's lives, from ancient Greece, where Pythias interpreted them, to the more recent theories that express the neurological phenomena. Also we can find innumerous definitions to the word DREAM. Ranging from the merely scientific angle where it is seen as a series of psychic phenomena that occur involuntarily during our sleep to more religious ones that includes the sincerely manner of which God could communicate to the prophets, state of partial emancipation of the soul, occasion where our perceptions would be sharpened, and several others.

But one thing is universally known about dreams: the fiction, or that other reality if you prefer invented by us, humans, using our lived experiences mingled with the leaven of our unfulfilled desires and imagination, has joined us as our guardian angels since the depths of prehistory, what began as a winding road, after millennia, would take us to the stars, to dominate the atoms and other several prodigious achievements in the domain of knowledge, lead us to discovery of human rights, freedom, but also the destructive brutality, shown the way to better understand the same desires and sentiments that help create it, it created the SOVEREIGN INDIVIDUAL. Dreams were the corner stone of our civilization.

Dreams were the fundamental paradigm revolutionized in idea of the civilization’s birth, or dawn of the civilization, and are deeply identified with a common ceremony that took place in a deep cave or in the clearing of a forest where we see humans, squatting or sitting, around a campfire which helps them repel insects and so called evil spirits, men and women of the tribe, attentive, absorbed, suspended to a state that would not be a exaggeration to call religious trance, kind of a daydream, of the words they hear coming from the mouth of a man or woman who would be fair, though nor sufficient, to call it witch, shaman, healer, because although it would be considered to be one, he is someone that also DREAMS and communicates their DREAMS to others, making the entire tribe to DREAM in a unison with him, after all he is a storyteller.

And the man and woman who are there, while, witched by what they hear, let their imaginations run wild, flying out of their precarious and simple existences into another life – a life of lies, not common or ordinary lies, but truly lies, which they build in a silent complicity with the man or woman who, at the center of the scenario, tells fables out loud – performing, without warns, the more exclusively human endeavor, the one which more genuinely and exclusively defines the human nature, that it is yet in formation: The possibility of living their common place lives to live for a couple of minutes or hours a substitute for the “real” reality, that they do not choose, the one that is fatally imposed by any given reason at birth and random circumstances of the so called life, a life that sooner or later feels like an easement or a prison from which we wish to escape. Those who are there, listening to the storyteller, lulled by new images that his words poured over them, as before, in solitude or privacy, were perpetrated, by minutes or burst, this live exorcism and abjurations of the real life, by fantasizing and DREAMing.

And this complex procedure of turning that into a collective activity, a social event, institutionalized into the tribe life, is a momentous step in the process of humanization of the primitive, is the start of their spiritual life, the birth of culture, of the long road into civilization, and the most important feature that has its ignition in this moment is our: MEMORY. A common memory to our whole kind, a collective DREAM that we can share, use, add and modify in a single movement where every aspect of the civilization is changed by the slightest modification in our perception of life.

DREAMS while helping us to face our fears and desires, made us more resilient and ambitious, also gave a transcendent meaning to our freedom by giving birth to a wish to live differently from what common day circumstances forced us. Therefore, although the millennial passage of human events have obliged us to strip of many things – prejudices, taboos, fears, habits, beliefs, Gods and demons – which were important obstacles in order to reach new heights of progress and civilization, we remained faithful to this particular ancient rite.

It was, and is, the most powerful tool that allows us to escape our fears and frustrations, helps fulfill our desires, outwit old age and overcome death, live the love that was over, and the mercy of our enemies and lost friends; it was, and it always will be the cruelty and excesses that we call angels and demons that live within our cores, and thus multiplying the possibilities of our lives in the crackling heat of the fire of that other life, impalpable, witched and essential that we call DREAMS.

Living the DREAM or abandoning it probably costs the same, usually a very expensive price. But the first act leads us to commune with the miracle of life, and the second is not useful for anything.

But no matter what you choose, be sure to enjoy every single second of it… After all DREAMS are, by definition, cursed with a short life…




"Dreams are the touchstones of our character." - Henry David Thoreau & "All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible." - T. E. Lawrence




Listening to "Brothers in Arms" - Dire Straits

Ad Libitur

Deep down in the cold abyss of your gaze
Lie thousands of silly silent temptations
Amazing how some girls are so women…

With mad and wild tricks of mere confusion
Spreading through her hair, mouth, skin
Destroying my complete body and mind…

Some women, ephemerons like you are
Just can take me wherever they want to
As boys just cannot resist your mysteries…

Such an entanglement confusion of smiles
And eyes capable of devouring all my senses
That I just don’t care about myself anymore…

After all, boys just cannot ever say no…

Some naïve pretentious boys just like me
So used of being always right
Near a real women like you
Are just young kids…




“The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.” - Johann von Goethe




Listening to Soulive – “PJ’s”

Pacta sunt servanda

After being circulating around for a few years
Lonely in the less traveled road up ahead
One’s magical soul end up discovering
That he should have loved even more…

Wishing to see that especial sunrise often
Taking more riskier and wilder decisions
Like accepting people as they are and will be
Even if you end up crying your eyes out…

Everyone is responsible for every single joy
As well as pains that they have in the heart
Consider caring less to day-to-day problems
And dying more of love as it were all over…

Randomness will always protect myself
Even in my wicked and sweet decision
Even when I walk totally distracted by your smile…





A minha realidade interior vive abaixo no nível da realidade que me cerca. Para restabelecer o equilíbrio, num contato normal com os demais seres humanos, tenho que escrever, porque a recriação da realidade pela imaginação, através da linguagem escrita, é a maneira que tenho de me comunicar.¨ - Fernando Sabino.





Listening to ¨Carnavalia¨- Tribalistas

Nihil est ab omni parte beatum

Awake, arise, and evolve
There's a war coming our way…
At the edge of infinity,
In the narrow paths of the universe,
I see the ashes of time…
Renaissance through fire dances
Leading to Purification…
In the vastness of your eyes,
Transportation to the closeness…
Listen, see and escape
Like a thunder that got away…
When darkest night falls
The gap between the Worlds opens
And loneliness absorbs ones soul...
The night is long, sometimes cosmic
But there will always be a dawn…
And just when sunlight resurfaces
Ones gypsy soul awakes refreshed…






“Há certo gosto em pensar sozinho. É ato individual, como nascer e morrer.” -
Carlos Drummond de Andrade





Listening to “Tempestade” – Cordel do Fogo Encantado