hate won't improve you

thankfully, i've undergone many mental transformations since my first contact with western thought of existentialism. it's terrifying to be 15, wake up one day, and realise so many things at once. to find out how enormous the universe is, how small you are, how it is all so random/unfair/inexplicable/insert any other adjective. but it gets better, it really does.

when i was in high school, i was a very active student in my ethics class. of course, as any other high-schooler, i also had existential crisis (if not crises) going on 4 business days non-stop on average. it was after finishing neon genesis evangelion (duh!) that i came up with the idea of non-physical existence. this thought of leaving my own body per se, and somehow existing somewhere as something purely abstract, was very important for me back then, so naturally i shared my concerns with my teacher (who was amazed to have someone actually listening to her on those monday mornings, and even say something of their own). i was very sceptical to her response for a long time, and basically thought she knew shit. it took me some time to realise she was right.

you don't love them, but it's fine

ricardo reis wrote:

No one loves anyone else; he loves
What he finds of himself in the other.
Don't fret if others don't love you. They feel
Who you are, and you're a stranger.
Be who you are, even if never loved.
Secure in yourself, you will suffer
Few sorrows.

(10 august 1932)

and he was right.

fernando pessoa, but not exactly (part ii)

Let's fulfil what we are. / Nothing more are we given

what i found the most interesting in ricardo reis' poems was the matter of one's identity. he doesn't ask about what we are, he answers this question unasked like it's a truth that has been given to him without the strain of existential crisis. reis is very concise, he says exactly what he thinks, and doesn't search for the depth that may or may not exist. for him, it doesn't. for caeiro this profoundness didn't exist as well, but reis' aesthetic is more neutral in its tone, more down-to-earth. i'm unable to properly verbalize it, i suggest reading a few of his, and caeiro's poems, to experience this difference yourself.

fernando pessoa, but not exactly (part i)

how did i find fernando pessoa? i'm not sure, but it doesn't matter, it's not about him. it's about alberto caeiro. because truth be told, i didn't enjoy pessoa's poems nearly half as much as i did caeiro's. it's beautiful how one can know oneself so well to be able to distinguish, i'd even say distil, each part, in order to let it fully flourish.

in the introduction to A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems Richard Zenith writes:

[W]hat Pessoa did not believe in was unity. "Nature is parts without a whole" was, according to Pessoa, Caeiro's greatest, truest verse (from the forty-seventh poem of The Keeper of Sheep), and in Reis ode he proposed that "as each fountain / Has its own deity, might not each man / Have a god all his own?" The phenomenon of heteronymy reflects Pessoa's conviction that even at the level of the self there is no unity [...]