Things to understand...

Afonso Almeida Brandão"

(To Journalist Salomão Moiana, with an affectionate hug) Wlike, for example, the flow of Time, the smell of the Sea, the fascination of the Light, the hollow of Longing, which is a bitter cake, the mystery of the felled trees, the gallop of the Wind at six in the morning, the running bath, the feet in the wet sand, the magnificent Sea, intent, frightening, solemn, calm, lost in the Womb of the Clouds that descend and chirp like seagulls or like defeated wallflowers, the Afternoon lost in the dunes, the flight of the birds, the Sun that licks, the Salt that burns, the Skin that spills light and fresh against the Mist of the Evening. The Music. If we understood all this and so much more that crosses our path through the silence of blood, we would be much wiser and perhaps less happy. The enveloping secrecy in which we wrap ourselves, just as we choose the clothes with which we disguise ourselves, gives us the delicious charm of an equivocal solution, yet necessary for the survival of an Ego often mistreated, sometimes plundered. The Game remains to be understood. The Power. The Theft. Vanity, the other side of a half that never finds itself, no matter how much we digress into lessons from Kafka, Eça, or Aristophanes. The egocentric composition we unravel into bonds and agreements and advantages and knots and plots and losses and profits, is nothing more than a rent paid at sky-high interest on the scale of a precarious Eternity that we misunderstand. Misunderstand. Just as we don't know who commands us to the Flame of Passions, to the Delirium of Feelings, to the Web of emotional Blackmail to which we accede, giving way to Commitment, Defeat, and Victory, over the fragile triangle of Life. In the name of what we don't know, we name order or disorder. Apparatus or Humility, the Eclectic or the Classic. Scarcity or hidden pride. And we advance in retreats like the Wind or the Summer Storm, which is gentle and as dangerous as it is wild and sweet. Today we say YES to what YESTERDAY was MAYBE, just so we don't feel the weight of a guilt of unknown origin, but which almost always arrives comforted with injections of Hope. We know absolutely nothing about anyone. Instead, we create images. Sculptures of mud, cubes of drool, steel blues that tinge with red. We mistake Night for Day. We exchange the hypothetical for the next. We are divisible and fragile. Chaste and Dry, profane and angels who seek themselves on the other side of the mirror, as if from the reflection came the Plumb Line that straightened the profound meaning of an untouchable life. Serious, sweet, bitter, chaste, prophetic, profane, hard, foolish, we insist on Lies, on Spirit, on Petty Wars, on the Tragic Loom of a Sick Narcissism. And we laugh. And we fail to understand such simple things as Fruits, Rivers, Shells, Foggy Days. And thus we arrive at the Clarity of Unwisdom. Anything goes, everything stretches, nothing repeats, everything is forgotten. Just like the City. An immense Cathedral where we search for contours and fantasies, surprises, arenas, vows, weariness. We remain to be seen where we live when we lose our footing, the thread of all things. Here there is only Lisbon, which dares everything, which recovers nothing, which sometimes discovers what it cannot, does not want to know, and which almost always reveals the EXTREME NAKEDNESS OF BLINDNESS. Here is just the RECORD of all the things we will never stop trying to know and eventually Love, My Dear Friend Salomão Moiana.

2025/12/3