On October 1, 1917, eighteen years before his death, Fernando Pessoa wrote a poem called “On This Whitely Cloudy Day I Get So Sad It Almost Scares Me“, in which he describes the errors of man, how man understands things to excess, how the only mystery of the Universe is not what’s missing but what’s been added, and just as words fail us when we try to express a thought, thought fails us when we try to express reality.
The day is whitely cloudy here as well. The rain has been falling since late Friday. Somewhat unusual for the desert, but not terribly so. Many of the streets flood because the ground is too hard to absorb a lot of water at once.
I sit at home safe in the damp and dreaminess of it all and write you a letter.
Pessoa states: the Universe is not an idea of mine; my idea of the Universe is an idea of mine.
Just like: You are not an idea of mine; my idea of you is an idea of mine. I understand this. It isn’t just a concept. I don’t have a knotty ego that needs intersecting. I know what matters, what counts. I have no notions. No illusions.
Every now and again there is an uprising in criticism for these letters. Shallow minded people who fail to look beyond the surface of words. They assume and take me for someone I’m not. Don’t criticize what you can’t understand, you sing. How few actually take heed of that advice.
How do I unlock the reason? How do I get people to recognize this for exactly what it is. A simple letter, word after word, scattered sentences, something given I do because it pleases me to do it.
That’s it. Something given because.
Pessoa writes, these truths are imperfect because they were spoken.
Among all the poets I’ve read, Charles Wright always manages to fill in the right words.
In his poem Black Zodiac he writes:
The unexamined life’s no different from
the examined life—
Unanswerable questions, small talk,
Unprovable theorems, long-abandoned arguments—
Perhaps it’s a question of what people are capable of. Many, not much.
If a woman loves wholly, with a heart full of gratitude and in this place of gratitude while sitting in the dark sidebar room of her house on a cold and whitely cloudy day to utter some words, with nothing but her own life to live, why shouldn’t she do it? If she has something to say that might outlive the always smaller voice of those with nothing to say, she should say it.
I’m not trying to revolutionize anybody’s life.
I just think of you sometimes. Behind the glass door of your examined life where you will forever be impervious to argument, yet people will continue to argue. Where the causes you sought or seek will be scrutinized. Where one finds you charming, another strange.
What can ever be thought or said about you, each will translate what you mean for themselves. Regardless my wonder will not diminish. What you make of any of this, peoples’ blinding self-importance, the coverage, the sentient and sentimental drive, occurences and God knows what else is anybody’s guess.
When I think of you I write it down.
