An Ode to Pessoa

by A Distant Muse

I cannot help but to dream. To melt away from the weight of the life-world¹ into a more perspicuous haze of spirit, ruminations and looming possibilities.

This morning I dreamt of love, of a boundless recognition through an act of a connective convalescence. An impossible possibility; a transmutation of the most profound relationship that I never even knew in the first place. Could I not - know it? A gift of roses and truth; to show her I cared, to tell her that I saw myself in her. From her bloomed a beauty that was truly her own and, in a familiar wave, through the eyes of my own mosaic: I saw her again for what she was. But I could not tell her. And this might have broken my heart - at least for a moment.

It occurred to me: there exists a perennial pendulum within each of us that swings between that which we desire and that which is “best” for us. Humorous how, that which would bring the truest satisfaction is often that which we know, through no true fault of our own, was not meant to be. Today the pendulum was pushed by a muse ever so distant, yet ever so near. Don’t we all have such muses?

What was it that said Rumi?

“Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost.”

I returned to our quaint, thrown² world. Where even the absolute source is limited by its facticité³. I cannot help but to dream.

Could it be that, in the spirit of dreams, life was written?

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). A poet, a lover of Lisbon, a dreamer, a lover of truth. RIP.

1. Heidegger’s “Lebenswelt”.

2. Heidegger’s “Geworfenheit”.

3. Ponty’s “Facticity”.