
An author is a company to the nothingness, indigent because it is company to nothing, and possesses that nothingness, imperious, impermissible, obedient to the reasons of things, bled-out in the salts of colours while assuming itself king and progenitor of them. It is a whimsy, being an author, authorise the creation of nothingness and gift it the vehemence of being; if I was prohibited of writing as soon as the following dawn, I would not see it as an act of injustice. I would simply say that I have nothing to write, that the particles of water scintillating in my breath exist as towers, as trees, streams, which collect within me in murderous stance yet refusing to kill me (being that the ultimate trick), constituting nothing more than the nothingness I accompany, otherwise written there, in lithology, where earth whispers with impenetrable force, or there, in walls made goldener with the torpor of times, or there, in a book, in any book written, in any book unwritten. It is a nothingness which is unique only while it is nothingness — because nothing is unique — and soon collapses within the banality of conveyance. One who writes of nothingness has nothing else to write about, and is, truly, creatively hindered, for it only receives a casuistry in assemblages of casuistries laid upon an arid ground; we are of philosophies while we rehearse interrogations, of cement in the architectures of fiction, of soundly banisters in poetry (and only of banisters), and we inflate nothingness with leagues of meanings, of personal mythologies, images of dragonflies in the thawing boughs, pine-cones floating over the equatorial seas, the lugubrious quality of facts which soon cease to be facts under the gravity of other facts, and noble horses, beaten, hungers and terrors and pestiferous qualities of loving, of what we intend to love, of what we intend to understand in the qualities of loving, all laid as flagstones to be danced upon as a divine coalescence of what is because it is and what it is because we generate it being so by measure of feeling it. Enumerations, many, all within the same nothingness, an infinite parenthesis that fits perfectly in the spiralled-hole made by a closed fist; but let me revise what-is, if truth is creative and dream its destruction, let me revise the subterranean of things, because all of them bubble with the meaning of everything, seethe as a compass of light in an interminable condensation of phenomenon, and not seeing the crushing dimension of everything but only the replica of a constant reductive exercise — a simulation of essence — is a wound extended to the horizon, because we are fragile, our bones cinders easily turned to dust, and because all which contains meaning is perfidious in that meaning, and that ash penetrates our lungs, within nothingness, within all, within meaning which is nothingness of all, a panic, a neurological tuberculosis, a paralysis.
And then, there is a destruction which isn’t reduction, olive oil over the sting of a bee, the youth and the regeneration which takes itself in such an unstinting and clear meaning, which is akin to the glisten of a tear in immense darkness. We return home. The world regains sense, and is absent of meaning and nothingness and everything, resistant to such adornments, and we are made-whole by the levity of the air itself, the stark colours of florets, and all light resounding in shaded walls. There is, perhaps, a mother and a father, siblings, or the limpid memory of them, of where they stood, where they observed this domain with endless complexities which not even dream purports to understand. There is a dog, perhaps a cat, a canary, and their phlegmatic enthusiasm bleeding from their spirited eyes. There is that foolish night and the ill-starred end of that antiquity, which I did not see pass, because I never stopped being anything that I was, and I shall never not be anything that I was.
We return home, where world and language live in profound reciprocity, and we may contain libraries within, we may have never written anything leather-bound, we may have written twenty meticulously woven narratives, but here, we are not authors, we are not writers, we do not accompany a nothingness which is yet to be described. Here, we are that nothingness, that meaning, we are the shadow the author plies to accompany.

Long before physics and psychology were born, pain disintegrated matter, and affliction the soul.
All Gall Is Divided, Emil Cioran.
PORTUGUÊS
O autor é a companhia do nada, indigente porque nada acompanha, e possui nada, imperioso, impreterível, obtemperando as razões das coisas, sangrado nos sais das cores enquanto se assume rei e progenitor das mesmas. É uma veleidade, ser-se autor, autorizar a criação do nada e dar-lhe veemência de ser; se me coibissem de escrever já na próxima manhã, não seria um desvario. Diria apenas que nada tenho a escrever, e que as particulas de água que rútilam na minha respiração existem como torres, como árvores, regados, aquilo que se colecciona em mim a poste de me matar mas que não me mata (sendo essa a sua manigância), constitui apenas um nada que acompanho, que outrora fora escrito ali, na litologia, onde a terra tuge uma força impenetrável, ou ali, nas paredes douradas na modorra dos tempos, ou ali, num livro, em qualquer livro outrora escrito, até ainda por escrever. É um nada que é único enquanto é nada — porque nada é único — e deixa de o ser quando deixa de ser nada. Quem escreve sobre o nada é o autor que nada tem sobre o que escrever, e está, deveras, criativamente estropiado, pois é-lhe dada uma casuística que coaduna com as outras casuísticas de viver num campo calvo; somos da filosofia quando ensaiamos as perguntas, do cimento nas arquitecturas das ficções, dos balústres do som nas poesias (e apenas dos balústres), e vamos entumescendo o nada com léguas de significados, de mitologias pessoais, imagens de libélulas no gelo das árvores, de pinhas flutuando sobre os mares equatoriais, a qualidade memorial dos factos que logo deixam de ser factos sobre o peso doutros factos, e cavalos nobres, espancados, ludismos, lajedos de fomes e terrores e qualidades pestíferas do que amamos, do que pretendemos amar, do que pretendemos entender na qualidade de amar, uma coalescência divina do que é porque o é e do que engendramos ser por medida de sentirmos que assim o seja. Enumerações, muitas, todas dentro do mesmo nada, num parêntise infinito que assenta perfeitamente no buraco-espiral dum punho cerrado; mas deixem-me rever o sí-mesmo, se a verdade é criativa e o sonho a sua destruição, deixem-me rever todo o subterrâneo das coisas, porque todas elas borbulham com o significado de tudo, fervem no compasso de luz numa condensação infinita de fenómenos, e é uma ferida que se estende ao horizonte de não ver a dimensão esmagadora que têm, é a réplica de um exercício redutor constante — uma simulação de essência — porque somos frágeis, os nossos ossos cinzas que se esmagam com a maior facilidade, e porque tudo o que significa é pérfido no seu significado, e essa cinza de ossos penetra-nos os pulmões, dentro de nada, dentro de tudo, dentro do significado que é um nada num todo, um pânico, uma tubérculose da mente, uma paralisia.
E depois, há uma destruição que não é redução, o azeite sobre a picada da abelha, a juventude e a regeneração que se toma por um significado tão concreto e claro, que é reflexo de lágrima numa escuridão imensa. Voltámos a casa. O mundo faz sentido, e não tem significado nem nada nem tudo, nem se resigna a tais adornos, e somos preenchidos pela leveza do próprio ar, as cores das próprias flores, e toda a luz retumbada nas paredes sombreadas. Há, talvez, uma mãe e um pai, irmãos, ou uma memória límpida deles, de onde se postavam, de onde observavam o mundo com infímas complexidades que nem um sonho suporta entender. Há um cão, talvez um gato, um canário, e o seu entusiasmo fleumático que sangra no espírito dos seus olhos. Há aquela noite estouvada e o fim malogrado dessa antiguidade, que não vi suceder, porque nunca deixei de ser nada do que outrora fui, nunca deixarei de ser nada do que já fui.
Voltámos a casa, onde o mundo e a linguagem vivem em profunda reciprocidade, e podemos conter bibliotecas cá dentro, podemos nunca ter escrito obra, podemos ter escrito vinte. Aqui, não somos autores, não somos escritores, não acompanhamos um nada ainda por descrever. Aqui, somos o nada, o significado, a sombra que o autor acompanha.
Nothing is but everything we fail to see,
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Thank you for this enjoyable read, equally pleasant in both languages. Apreciámos parar para pensar no nada que é pleno.
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Oh, muito obrigado!
Tenho uma quantidade de leitores em Português tão diminuta, que me exulta de maneira absoluta quando me lêm na minha língua. Afinal de contas e de acordo com a ideia textual, só somos plenos no nada quando estamos em casa, e a nossa língua é, indubitavelmente, uma casa mais que plena.
Agradecimentos infíndos, e que continuem a produzir arte gráfica e narrativa tão bela quanto a que têm gerado até-então.
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The language you speak is the same one I spoke.
The world you devised is the same my mind trod.
As always, beautiful sound.
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Thank you, Taylor!,
curiously, I don’t write prose with sound in-mind. I suppose I’ve attuned to it, perhaps over time, as it seems inextricable from most of what I write.
As always, it is great to hear from you. I devotedly conserved the poem you recommended the last time we exchanged, Rock Bands.
Time, at times, can be such a magnificent thing.
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Very well written 👍🚩
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Thank you so much.
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Profound … for all has been written before ……
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English is your second language? You are worded so impeccably.
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In theory, my third, but if I do not count with my native language, English is my favourite.
Thank you so much! I know I can be a little circumlocutory at times, but I tend to really adore the words I use.
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Johnny, it is cold here this morning but the sun rises on a soft clear day. I feel very quiet and a touch weepy. Your thoughts are as my own. As though I’ve lived the words of the nothingness. All that I write and all that I never do, nevertheless it fills my heart, at times too much and I wonder where it all will go. I read you first in English and then wander over the Portuguese. even though I don’t understand your native language in the traditional sense, you help me to, and I feel the rocks and the trees, bound by leather or not. It must be very beautifully spoken. I needed your words this very day, thank you kindly 🌷
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Suzanne, I wanted to reply to you with celerity, but I’m afraid, sometimes, words shed off my attic-of-a-mind, hitting every floor and dissipating altogether. To know you’ve come purposefully to my read me, and found solace in such action, it feels eldritch, alien; it is a taste of a dream which is hard to recall but ever so vivid, seething and vivid.
I adore you, Suzanne, you bring upon the last udder interiors of my soul a flame and warmth of green hues, a hopeful and decisive blossom, for which I’m profusely grateful.
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Loved this dance in the rain! Thank you for the cleansing “wordful” shower! ☺️
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