Tag: human condition

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Limpidity

Photo Sixteen Miles

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There is only one dependable way to love life: to draw near to the limpidity that asks for patience, courage, sacrifice, and so often silence and self‑denial. And also for defeats, for the encounter with what contradicts us, for the labour of continual learning. Zbigniew Herbert, in a remarkable poem, writes, “I would like to describe the simplest emotion,” trading “all metaphors / for a term / torn from the chest like a rib / for a word / that fits / within the limits of my skin.”

With age we learn that nothing is quite as difficult as the limpidity of childhood—an equivocal yet precious gift. We learn that truth (like the sun) still casts its light and warmth, though it has shifted its place upon the horizon. The irony could hardly be sharper: as we grow older and confront physical short‑sightedness, we look more deeply into things, into the character of others (and of ourselves), into the perplexity of life, into the feeling stirred by little beings, into the pain dealt to us by ignorance and human savagery; we look more intently into the depths of the cosmos, of death, of the genuine happiness born in a poem; we look towards the comfort of friendly voices, towards the solemn wisdom of Vilhelm Hammershøi’s paintings, or the enchantment of the guitar chords of Isaac Albéniz or Joaquín Rodrigo. Life does not require wealth or genius to be worthy. It asks only for kindness and stillness. And with age we learn that nothing matters more than drawing close to our destiny, even if that destiny is a mirage. We recognise it by the confidence and quiet joy with which we open the door each morning. In the end, compassion is the reward of our discovery.

I write these words on a bright December morning, a cup of coffee warming my hands. I feel, far beyond myself, the harmony of space and the mind’s impetuous surge of effort. I might have taken up pencil and paper to write something entirely different. But I needed to set down this thought. Life chose us, as love chooses us, or as the gaze of someone seeking ours. I suppose that responding to such devotion is worth not only the effort, but above all the heart.

29.12.2025

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A Beggar

Photo by Ray Clarck

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Certain phrases sound like the cold gleam of churches, Ricardo Navajo thought, as he stroked, lost to himself, the small dog at his side.

In this corner of the city, alms are, in a way, less miserly but far noisier. A man pressed to the ground hears everything, including words articulated with rote wisdom.

“We should feel grateful for what He has set aside for us and recognise that a crust of bread is as important as the beauty of the saxifrage.”

Whoever said it did so with a calm assurance that was at once the outward expression of a frantic search of the soul. Then, turning to his listeners in a kind of improvised sermon, he also said,

“Behold: there is a depth towards which the body weighs, and a whole sky towards which we must raise the soul. Beneath us the earth to cover us; above us the galaxies that shall guide our spirit for evermore.”

Ricardo Navajo scratched his chin with frozen fingers and long nails. Then he scratched his belly, unsettled by hunger. Next, he began to massage the nape of his mongrel companion, forgetting the plastic bowl where a few cents slept in peace.

At this corner of the city, people almost always walk in haste and almost never with pity. The conversations flung into the air are very much like fireworks: brief flares that glitter without warming.

The speaker has just gone into the Seminary with his disciples; cars blare their horns with steady ferocity; traffic lights open and close with the indifference of ancient gods.

Navajo has the habit of brooding on what others leave hanging as they pass by. Human thought, if there is any left, is organised like a structure of scaffolding. Each man sees the world in the way that suits him, supposing it to be unique and universal from the height, or the depth, of his own vantage point.

That there are beautiful flowers and stars around us, the beggar did not doubt. But a crust of bread and money so that the earth may receive our bones with dignity are another matter altogether.

Just now Navajo received the firm clink made by a one-euro coin. The Christmas season is a good harvest, he would reply, if anyone wished to know how life is going. He thanks it with a studied bow, while the palm of his hand runs along Riquinho’s back. That is the name of his best friend.

That is what he would say, if anyone asked him.

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Something happened

Photo by Pranav Adarsh

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Suddenly I grasp the bestiality of humankind as I never had in nearly half a century of life. What is desecrated is the commonplace, the place of others, one’s own place. Each person becomes a latent enemy, a possible hatred, a quarrel, an insult, an act of aggression, a predatory gesture. I see how easily someone is wounded—without cause, without reason, without any concern for what each act is or signifies: a driver abandons his car to raise a violent arm against the one behind him; a ten-year-old hurls a death threat in class, at a fellow pupil or at the teacher; a patient dies on a hospital stretcher before the very eyes of the doctor meant to heal him; a president slanders and divides his people, scorning the oath sworn upon the Bible; a once-decimated nation commits mass murder, justifying force with the cowardly, hypocritical justice it claims to inherit. And suddenly I realize that the clear sun spilling across the windowsill and the blank page of my notebook is impure, unbearable.

I turn to Johann Sebastian Bach as a leper to his refuge. I turn to childhood, to the memory of good friends, of the idyllic walks to primary school, of the ancestral scent of herbs along the streams. I turn to the rigor of colors, the unequivocal weight of words, the care of nails, the truth in the eyes. Then, there was an immeasurable sense of hope. I learned to respect, to give thanks, to be gentle, to cultivate humor, to cherish the rare, beautiful objects given to me, to read books with delicate care, to press my spirit into the considered phrases I was asked to set down—one after another—in school compositions and in dialogue of subtlety. I turn to silence to remember all of this, to listen to the guitar suites, to step away from the noisy patina the days secrete.

The other day a student asked how I find inspiration. For an instant a banality hovered on my lips, a cliché, a ready-made reply. We were in a long room lined with state-of-the-art computers, breathing the air steeped in cables and devices. We were speaking of António Vieira, and of the courage to preach on the edge of the abyss. «I don’t know», «I never knew». That is the certainty. Inspiration—like opening one’s chest to the clean October air, brushing against dew, against the bright green of fennel and lemon verbena—I cannot explain it. Unless, perhaps, as a vast nostalgia, a melancholy urge to reinvent the days backwards, as when the pencil snapped along the nervous line and I thought «this is not the way». Suddenly humanity crumbles on the page, swollen with stupidity and perverse pride. And it is necessary that someone say «this is not the way».