* From “The Keeper of Sheep, XLVI” by Fernando Pessoa writing as Alberto Caeiro.

In this way or that way,
As it may happen or not happen,
Sometimes succeeding in saying what I think
And at other times saying it badly and with things mixed in,
I keep writing my poems, inadvertently,
As if writing were not something requiring action,
As if writing were something that happens to me
In the same way that the sun reaches me from outside.

I try to say what I feel
Without thinking about what I feel.
I try to place words right next to my idea
So that I won’t need a corridor
Of thought leading to words.

I don’t always manage to feel what I know I should feel.
Only very slowly does my thought swim across the river, Weighed down as it is by the suit men forced it to wear. I try to shed what I’ve learned,
I try to forget the way I was taught to remember,
To scrape off the paint that was painted on my senses,
To uncrate my true emotions,
To step out of all my wrapping and be myself – not Alberto Caeiro
But a human animal created by Nature.

That’s how I write, wanting to feel Nature not even as a man but merely as someone who feels Nature.
That’s how I write, sometimes well, sometimes badly, sometimes saying just what I want to say,
Sometimes getting it wrong,
Falling down one moment and getting up the next,
But always continuing on my way like a stubborn blind man.

Even so, I’m somebody.
I’m the Discoverer of Nature.
I’m the Argonaut of true sensations.
I bring to the Universe a new Universe,
Because I bring to the Universe its own self.

This is what I feel and write,
Perfectly aware and clearly seeing
That it’s five o’clock in the morning
And that the sun, although it still hasn’t raised its face
Over the wall of the horizon,
Is already showing the tips of its fingers
Gripping the top of the wall
Of the horizon sprinkled with low hills.

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The saddest thing in the world, for me, is to have lived and not have known, at least a bit, what Life is about.

Not to have consciously known the primordial forces shaping me: the call of the blood giving me ancestry, character, intuition; the urge of the instincts taking me through the labyrinths of passion, love, hate, fear, happiness, survival.

Not to have known the immense power and vision of my mind, so vulnerable it can be horribly bent and controlled, so intelligent and limitless it can discern the universal processes from which it comes into being.

Not to have looked at the beauty of a starry night, and feel the ancient particles streaming through my eyes to caress and challenge my mind.

Not to have known the Natural Order that connects me with everything through a universal mandate: Consume energy sources to empower my constant transformation.

Not to have fully comprehended the fact that, when a sperm and an ovum fused together to unleash the creation of my body, both cells carried the blueprint to configure a form of existence endowed with a degree of freedom to manipulate and be manipulated by its environment.

Not to have known the Primal Universal Process that takes me through physical and mental interactions (positive, negative, weak, strong, transformative), and through the physical dissolution of my life. Nor to have known that in the same measure to the significance of my life … what I did do or did not do, what I destroyed, what I created … I will transcend into a new configuration of existence, a new player in the unfolding of the Universal Process. Think of Einstein, Darwin, Beethoven, Socrates, the ancient lineage of motherhood; the energy they generated and continue to generate with the significance of their lives is a part of who I am, how I think, how I feel. This is the true meaning of Transcendence: To continue to be a part of the Universal Process after my body dissipates; albeit in another form.

And so, the saddest thing would be, for me, to have lived and have never pondered about what it means to be a participant in the unfolding of a magnificent and highly creative Universal Process.

Revised June 2018

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Our most fundamental function, although we do it mostly unconsciously, is the constant transformation of energy into mass and mass into energy. We cease to exist when we can no longer do it. As organic systems, we require a steady supply of energy sources … oxygen from the air, nutrients from food … to fuel our development, growth, motion, existence, and are therefore totally dependent on the environment.

It is the same with the species as a whole.

The most fundamental function of the human species, although it is mostly imperceptible from individual experience, is the constant transformation of energy into mass and mass into energy. The species will not exist without a steady supply of energy sources and is therefore totally dependent on the environment that provides them. But although this is incontrovertible, we continue to perceive ourselves as independent from Nature.

We are stuck in a Paradigm that discourages our capacity to introspect about what we are in the scheme of the natural world, while encouraging instead the destructiveness, cruelty, divisiveness, and irrationality of our economic and religious doctrines … my ‘god’ is the true god, the measure of my success is how much more than others I can consume. These doctrines lead us to negate the devastating impact we are inflicting with our constant conflict and exponential growth on the environment that allows us to exist.

It took us eons of time to evolve the skeletal structure to stand erect; it took us millennia to become aware of our own awareness and start making tentative conjectures about Reality; it took us centuries before we could accept the fact that it is our planet that circles the sun. These facts undeniably demonstrate our capacity to alter the way we are and the way we perceive Reality, and yet, although intellectually we know we are just one manifestation of Life’s evolving processes, emotionally we still think that we are Life’s zenith.

Life is primeval, self-generating, self-perpetuating; it is the transformative Force that, in symbiosis with environments, experiments with myriad manifestations of existence … of which we are one … implanting everything with the urge to adapt and self-generate, so it can perpetuate itself into greater complexity.

Unlike any other creature we know of, we can purposefully fashion our neuronal connections through sensory perception from our internal and external environments: This is how we have developed the highest capacity we know of for introspection and rational thinking; it is how we can conceptualize the possibilities of the human potential; it is how we are capable to comprehend the clear signs of a species in crisis; it is how we can foresee the impending and life-threatening changes we are bringing about. But we are not encouraged to reflect upon these facts because they threaten the domination of irrational beliefs and an unsustainable economic doctrine.

As we incorporate and transform substances from the environment to substantiate our development, our exponential growth is dramatically changing the chemical composition of the planet’s atmosphere.  It is thus we are facing a crisis as Humanity has never faced before: Like a human being who is unable to accept the devastating impact of destructive excesses on his/her own body, the negation of the impact of our destructive paradigm has taken us to a point where we are irreversibly tipping the equilibrium of the narrow planetary band in which we can exist.

If we are unable to overthrow the domination of our dark, irrational, and destructive Paradigm, we will lose the amazing opportunity of delving into the knowledge that we are the creation, and co-creators, of a Primeval Order that not only builds our self-generating bodies out of microscopic cells … step by step, deftly, thoughtfully … but endows us with a mind that can discern that Order, and affect it.

Share the knowledge.

Revised May 2018

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