A meaningful walk

Sometimes I wish upon a life without expectations. Knowing not where a path may lead, whilst embracing uncertainty as a precedent behaviour for an enjoyable walk. Enjoyable as it leads nowhere. Enjoyable as there's happiness in solely walking.

A life without expectations, without owning or wanting. Seeing beauty in appreciation and in simply being. The more I love life, the less I need it. The less I need it, the happier I get. Loving is living, and more importantly, living in independence. Knowing we are one and one only, all travelling across the same path ignorant to its final destination. Enjoy the walk, among friends and foes, equally appreciative of both without needing either of them. In the end our footprints are the same and as they disappear in front of the oblivious Universe, they were only meaningful to the joyful walker travelling nowhere.

Tomás Roda

In the light of Being

The mere idea of being is tiresome. Breathing per se is exhausting. Thinking breaks me down even further. I've never been fond of realisations, of knowing who I am or where I am going. Knowledge is an addiction and a painful one. Loving is a form of knowing. Becoming aware of how much we care and how much we can give to someone or something. It's the most selfish of all feelings. We love to be loved back. We love to feel happy. And so we build our existence attached to this idea of fragile joy, a naive certainty that it will never fade away. We live the day never expecting the sunset and when the sun does set we get lost in the dark forgetful that the most intense of the lights resides within us. The sun is no more than a wanderer among stars, let your inner light guide your own way.

Tomás Roda

Explicações

Não sei que de mim quero.

Na luz da vela que se apaga,

Silêncio que veloz se propaga

Sei que na escuridão não desespero.

Desconheço quem serei.

Dormir sem sonho a recordar,

Barco velejando sem saber o mar

Em ver demais eu me ceguei.

Nunca soube quem era.

No vermelho do Sol que escapa,

Agarro o manto negro que me tapa

E voo; sabendo que a vida não espera.

Tomás Roda

From above

When the world is seen from above, problems are mere wrinkles in the face of the Earth. Wrinkles like roads. Roads like veins. Veins that carry the blood of the wanderers, the despair of the lost. Closer to the sun in a place where raindrops are smaller than your own tears, there is nothing as beautiful as seeing the world from above. Enjoy it, with the certainty that you will soon fall back into reality.

Tomás Roda

No title

Knowing you don't know,
When you try to stop trying.
When you've gone but you didn't want to go.
When you cry and you keep on crying.

It's when you lose what was already lost
And you find what has never been found.
Pay the price, unaware of the cost,
Silence wishing you could make a sound.

When you repeat what you have repeated
And you do what can't be done.
Try and cheat with no chance of cheating
I can't say goodbye to what's already gone.

I can't.

Tomás Roda

Blank

There is nothing more difficult than looking at a blank piece of paper. A desire to write but no idea of what words to use or how to stitch them together. Focusing on the content and on making writing aesthetically pleasing to the hear, the author forgets the reason that brought this piece of paper to life. Be aware that whatever is put into words will not be as raw as it should be. Words, sentences, paragraphs... these vehicles of thought are just barriers to the full expression of an ill mind. While it should be the cure to sickness, writing becomes the origin of self-destructive human beings. It's a maze one can't get out of. There's always a better way of expression, all of them faulty representations of a bleeding soul. The writer will settle to swimming in a glass of water knowing there is a river. Lost in the maze.

Sometimes I wish there was no blank piece of paper. But it never happens. So while I am listening to the drops of water harmoniously flowing across the river, the nightmare begins again. Here I am, a bleeding soul, with just a pen to fight my demons. There is nothing more difficult than looking at a blank piece of paper with a bleeding soul and an empty mind.

Tomás Roda

Letter

If I ever write a letter to you it will be short.
Emotionless. I don't like emotions of any sort.
It won't be about love, either lost or found,
Nor about how the world revolves faster when you are around.
It won't make you happy or sad.
I am not writing a love story either, they always end bad.

No memory of what I wrote or who I am you will hold.
It won't leave you warm inside, neither it will leave you dead cold.
With "Dear", written above.
A letter that will not end in "Love".

It will have no ending whatsoever.
If I ever write a letter to you it will be short... but I will make it last forever.

Tomás Roda

 

Conquest

Life is not a learning process. It's a continuous acknowledgement of what we are, but we don't know yet. Words are cheap, and they are useless. They can't conquer anything or anyone. Never live to conquer as what's easily conquered is also easily lost. Remove "possession" from your distorted idea of "love" as there is no love in having. Happiness will come with the unselfish appreciation of freedom. Love is in being, leave the castles to be conquered.

Tomás Roda

Liberdade

Inspira: é certo que o Sol nascerá cedo e se porá tardio. Expira: o Inverno será sempre mais frio que o Verão. Respira: não existem ramificações neste rio.

Sem liberdade em respirar, apenas são livres as escolhas feitas entre cada respiração.

Tomás Roda

Light

I'm guided by the light of being. I am not myself when I write. Like a string-puppet I just let myself go. Words are written, things are left to be said. But what is worth writing and what is worth silenced? What is worth silenced is more than worth writing. But I don't control the pen. Neither do I control the pain. Or even the joy I try to tame.

Writing is not fake. It's not real either. I don't want to be myself when I am writing, while I'm guided by the light of being.

Tomás Roda

Vacation

I wouldn't live without time off. A vacation of the mind. Vacating the mind. Listening to the wind blow, the water sailing across the horizon, as if time had stopped. A second turns into a water drop and water drops are countless. They are timeless while they set the pace. They are a living clock. I wouldn't live without time off. Everything is empty and the water timelessly falls.

Tomás Roda

A Message

A message to the meticulous minds of men that merge with the meaningless and most mundane myriad of misappropriated maneuvers of much machiavellic mankind. A message as a miracle mustn't make up for this mess.

Tomás Roda

Pai

No deserto não nascem flores. Não nascem porque eu não quero. Nascendo uma flor se perde o deserto. A beleza se tem em não se ter. Beleza é perdição. Não há palavra mais bela que "Adeus".

No deserto nasceu uma flor. Nasceu uma flor porque não quero dizer "Adeus". Nascem flores no deserto porque eu quero.

Tomás Roda

Pai, desejo-te um feliz aniversário, sabendo que a distância que nos separa é meramente física. Devo-te a ti os valores de que me gabo. Isto não é agradecimento nenhum, só agradece quem se contenta com o que lhe é dado. E tu ainda tens muito para me dar.

Um grande abraço!

Knowing

I miss being lost. The feeling of onement with just being somewhere, with simply being. I really miss being lost.

Not knowing where or who I am. Not knowing, often described so negatively, is the elixir of happiness. The most genuine smile is one that appears on your lips without you noticing it. It's the unification with a moment and the expression of an emotion. A smile is a word beyond meaning. Powerful because it requires no explanation. 

Dreaming is the closest we can get to being lost. We have no expectations when we dream. No path, no barriers. Just a complete void of ideas and an intense fulfillment of self.

I am lost.

Tomás Roda

Perfection

It's not breathing, neither my heartbeat keeping me alive. Those are just ways to sustain a faulty physical self. Physicality, the physical materialisation/embodiment of an idea, is detrimental. We are walking ideas, walking wishes, walking souls and we are lost. Lost searching for perfection: a perfect life, a perfect love, a perfect story to tell. Nothing good ever comes from perfection. Not because it is unattainable, but for its relativity, unstability and more importantly the need of possession that it creates in us, imperfect physical materialisations of ideas.

But if we need perfection to live, then how are we still alive? Aren't we searching for it our whole lives? We forget that perfection is only immediate and short-lasting. It's a moment, and it's ours. It's a smile and it's mine. Life is not a search after all, it's an avoidance of acceptance that perfection is already within us. An easy answer... and no one likes easy answers.

Tomás Roda

Sunset

Rise sun, it's dark and I can't see.

The only thing I ask of you is to rise for eternity.

You can't? Then just pretend,

Why live for something that soon will end?

Eyes shut, full of regret.

Please don't rise sun, I don't want you to set. 

Tomás Roda

Purpose

No purpose. Even the ramblings of the mind are both useless and counter-productive. They serve the egotistical purpose of feeding the pretentious mind of the individual. A way to attach words to a vain sense of awareness of the surroundings. Settle with a life without a purpose. In search of a meaning it's easy to get lost in meaninglessness. No, a second is not a moment of joy, it's a second. It's not a drop in the ocean of time, it's simply a second. Happiness is not a goal, neither it is a byproduct of actions, it's a way of the weak to wander around in the safe routines of life. Joy comes both in the form of tears and smiles and finding the right path just obliterates the existence of the remaining ones. It's like going to a buffet and only eating chocolate cake because it tastes good. There's more than chocolate cake. Sweet, bitter, salty foods, willing to stimulate all your senses if you give them a chance. And you settle with chocolate cake.

But this is just a useless and counter-productive rambling of the mind... lost in the search of words forgot the reason why I'm writing this. Maybe there is no reason. Or maybe I just don't feel like writing anymore.

Tomas Roda

Fantasma

Ser fantasma,
Segundos perdidos na perdição de cada hora,
O passado quero-o onde o tenho,
Sempre um momento antes de agora.

Tomás Roda

Under the rain

Under the crying cloud:
empty tears,
haunted by fears,
a symphony, a blind sound.

Under the rain:
a sad silence,
unbreakable chain,
No sense in pain.

It's all pretend,
Under the rain,
It all comes to an end,

under the rain.

Tomás  Roda

In the light of being

I've never known...
It's simple,
I never cared...
I mean,
I still don't know...

And in not knowing
I feel so scared.

Tomás Roda

Perder

Perdi-me.
Perdi-me nos teus lábios.
Perdi-me nos teus cabelos.
Perdi-me...

E em perder-me,
assim te perdi.

Tomás Roda

Na jaula

Na jaula,
Na jaula não há poesia!
Não há rima, não há cantar.
Nem há cheiro a maresia,
Da jaula não se vê o mar.

Na jaula,
Na jaula nada se diz!
Só vive quem respira,
e em respirar se tem feliz,
na jaula a vida expira.

Na jaula,
Na jaula morro.

Tomás Roda

Quero

Amor é querer.

Na ausência da certeza,

a garantia do prazer,

ensinar é aprender,

e amar...

Amar é viver.

Tomás Roda

De volta...

Muito tempo depois das minhas últimas publicações, decidi voltar a escrever.

A realização dos desejos começa na exteriorização. As emoções moldam e enriquecem o mundo.