EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS NOW

I told you once before:

"Now" is "always"

"Never" is "not yet

"Everything" is "Always Now"

Now i add:

Silence is a dead end

a black hole

a muted cry

Silence is perhaps 

the noise your fears make, 

Oh dear dear

Or if you prefer,

the white backdrop 

I will use to paint the words

that will reach your heart,

eventually,

again and again, 

now, and 

      always...

EVERY HOUR

Visiting my dear ocean. Early fog, everything hidden by the mist, but your blue.

By your stairs, I stop to offer you a sunbeam, something to help you enduring this rainy day. 

Just giving you back some of the light I steal from you every minute, every hour. 

Sándalo Naranja

BY THE GARDEN

Revealing or Concealing, they both are carved in the workings of desire. They both arise from an elemental longing for play. The way I see it, Revealing and Concealing form a unity. 

By casting a shadow on something, other objects are revealed. The reverse is also true. No need to complicate further this question. There is no possibility of playing without a blend of light and shadow.

When we start playing, there is a longing for lightness, and there is also a fearsome feeling of panic. By being light we find our real height, and we overcome fear. Lightness is a true revolutionary. By suffering from panic, we stay silent and quiet, and all those sacred things around us are conveniently preserved (this is why the system promotes panic so efficiently!). 

Each one has his/her nuance for fears, but being wrong, disappointing someone or being rejected are probably the crown’s jewels of fear.

Both lightness and panic can cause some vertigo, ranging from mild to unbearable, but only lightness will give you butterflies on your belly.

Lately, I have been enjoying the play of revealing and concealing. I wrote a little game as a way of proposal. A game with no rules, to be precise, since the playability of the game depends only on the playfulness of the player. Sometimes we have one definite player in mind, sometimes we leave that to chance. We make the rules as we go along.

I have recited a monologue for the world at large, but secretly aspiring to be seen only by the eyes than could understand, and eventually play along with me… Like a goldsmith, I have taken every word, made delicate calibrations on its power to reveal or conceal. Like a painter, I have stepped backwards to judge how a garment should fall to show more of a female shoulder, or to protect that shoulder from lustful regards.

Writing can be an exhilarating game, like anything we do that touches the borders of the unknown. I have lived in the delicate frontier between revealing and concealing, drawing shadows and blazing lights like the ones the wanderer in my story had to face in his quest.

I may have found what I need to keep playing, to maintain that fire of my own lightness. One never knows, since the participants of the play have their own nuances, visions and desires. Just like fictional characters, they have a volition of their own (plus, they are not fictional). That area of uncertainty is, perhaps, the great beauty of the play.

All I wish is to land in my garden and feeling light and simple again. Reading my book, inhaling the flowers... perhaps being pulled out of my thoughts by a greeting.

Sándalo Naranja

A DAY ON THE RACES

I am amazed at how much is going on behind the scenes when I am with you. You'd be surprised. And that has been already happenning since the first coffee I shared with you.

Like a net, made of connected points. A little pressure in one point and everything shakes. I cannot separate your words from your eyes. The diminute coordination of words and gestures. The hesitations, the sideways glances, the change of skin coloration, the tone of your voice.

The surfacing conversation and all the stream of things I think and feel simultaneously, like a dance.

Today I wanted to take your face in my hands, very quietly, barely feel your skin, see your face of surprise, your eyes widening, maybe a sudden blush. Sometimes you look like a little girl.

How I would love to make your heart race with mine. Could yours ever win mine?

Sándalo Naranja

LONGING AND BELONGING

Beauty, life, love itself, all have to do with the sadness we find present in all forms of joy. We will always miss those beloved who died; also those we love but are away from us. 

Longing is a form of celebration. Love is a form of denial: we love in order to deny (or at least to delay acknowledging) the fact that we are alone in the world. And from our love comes all the good there is in us. Our love is home for ourselves and for the loved ones. The place where we belong.

Opposites. I will need to learn your beauty through your mistery. There is an element of "not knowing", a dark side of your magical moon. Beauty is beautiful, but not necessarily pretty. 

Hey boy, you better remember that.

And to go on with the astronomical metaphor: as we keep following our orbital path, some dark places may receive light. The areas that I see clearly now may be swallowed by new darkness. Overtime, we change, like the stars above.

Since I know you, I feel attached to life in new ways. Too many to say now.

You brought, among many others, two radically new things to my life: longing and belonging.

Sándalo Naranja

TREASURES NEVER TO AUCTION

1. One sketch of your backyard, big willow tree, some birds with a very limited vocabulary, very haunting indeed, the sketch I mean, one could smell the coffee, the quiet road, such an artistry with a few carbon strokes!

2. The humour-driven costume of adding periodic decimals over and over, because things never come out even in this life, anyway...

3. "Sunset souvenir": silvers, gilded, blues, orange and coppers, all in powder, somewhat extracted by complex chemical processes from your last blush, mmm so adorable...

4. A collection of assorted shells, vulgar-looking, but it has been said this collection was treasured by the owner as if they were a gift sent by Neptune himself.

5. A compass, very antique piece, but -alas!- limited functionality I'm afraid, since polar magnets went nuts when you appeared, arrows forgot the North and pointed ceaselessly to your figure... therefore, regrettably, the Rose of the Winds cannot be trusted anymore unless you happen to be north of the observer... Anyway, it is still a very interesting piece for collectors.

6. Another drawing, representing a bizarre hopscotch, complete with its heaven and its hell... the bizarre part comes from... well... instead natural numbers, it has what appears to be, uhm, the fibonacci series, uhm, very strange indeed.

7. A battery-powered lantern, perfect for domestic blackouts, it carries this inscription in gilded letters: "The memory of your light is the beacon that carries me through the darkness".

8. Note in a paper napkin, with this handwritten text:

"Two thoughs: 1. To this day, I believe you are both the seed and the ground; 2. Days are a thousand-hour long without you, which is ridiculously long... when all I need is a second of eternity with you".

Sándalo Naranja

THE BAREFOOT DANCER

Everyone knows how dreams
are fragile and ephemeral things

But

H
O
W to forget her feet, ever...

the dancer's, the one at the left

[the charming one with the peacock feather
and all the air to be very clever;
she has all the features a dancer may need
but right now I am totally in love with her feet...]

[... released from their shoes to play naked,
white and free in their lustful gleam
I am already feeling half-baked
in this foolish charlestonian dream]

Wondrous Woman
On a
Wordless Wicked White Walk

Someone stop her please
Or then
Someone stop me!

[to tease me dearly she goes
Spirited and Wild and Tender
with those Mesmerizing Toes
I am ready for a Sweet Surrender]

And here I am,
her true Footman

Literally
Unashamed
Slave
The Man at her Feet

[left me wondering how would it all 've been
if I had dared to barely brush her skin
or to accompany her hands' joyful dream
or to glance at her aquamarine]

Goodness me,
such steamy thoughts, what a sin!

Oh my, please god please

Gorgeous Glamorous Danseuse
Ocean Child Délicieuse
Don't ever allow this dream into oblivion

ESTRELA DE MAR CAINDO DO BICO DE UMA GAIVOTA

shooting star

(but this time 

now 

no no no

never again will I forget

my wish)

YOUR NACREOUS LOVE

Your love is a young preciosity, made of nacre. If you wonder where I keep it, as I wondered where do you keep mine, well, the truth is I don't have it yet with me. But I feel it, this is certain... or then how could I speak of it?

As now, you are yourself the keeper of your love for me. Some days, a new fine layer of aragonite and calcite covers its young nucleus, making its nacreus heart grow very very slowly, almost unnoticed.

Your love for me, like mine for you, is a natural pearl, although they both are "cultured" by the action of communication and metaphor between the two of us. Our words, hopefully, triggers the secretion of mother-of-pearl which makes our loves a little rounder and perfect, each minute, each hour.

So you see, all is made of thin layers of affection and attention. Suffering too, I guess, anything truly shared.

Many layers! The thinner they are, the finer the luster the pearl will show. The elements must be deposited with love and care. My love, for instance, has already many tiny layers. You can only see that with X-ray, right? Your memory of feeling will help you to remember which emotion made each specific layer.

Forgetful lovers are the worse. I know you remember.

This is how each pearl earns its beauty, for the light will reflect, refract and difract as it hits these translucent layers, like meanings, creating a love that is unique - and thus precious. The glow and iridiscence of our loves is due to the overlapping of the nacreous layers, which forces the light to break up. When the lovers feel the love in spontaneous spurs, this is in fact produced by rainbows of difracted light on the surface of the love/pearl. Simultaneous (shared) and multiple rainbows are the best.

You say you keep my love in your heart and I love you more for that (you see, another layer). I say you keep yours for me, and this will be so until you offer it to me for keeping. I trust you will take care of it, in the meantime.

In fact I am not sure if we keep and grow the love or we are kept by it. This is an issue very hard to research. I suspect that maybe the answer is polymorphic: we keep it and we are sustained by it, at the same time.

Love owns us just as a dream dreams us sometimes.

Perhaps this is why some researchers talk of precious love as a "flame", which is also an object we keep alive so that it keeps US alive. Maybe this explain this feeling of need, after all. This is why reciprocity is so important. What do you think?

In any case, love is about life and being alive. And rainbows without sharing are pretty dull things.

Don't you think so?

Sándalo Naranja

DREAMER

Lost in our shared whim, hungry of your nearness, time unfolds gently, playful, among memories (scattered, unarranged), and the poem turns prose as I fix your image with my mind's eye... 

... and how well I understand now this sweet longing for the future, less than waiting, more than hoping, yes, definately we will be needing new words for everything, here...

... but I digress, what I really wanted to tell you is this perfect idle moment I had moments ago, just me and the part of you who lives upstairs, precious tennant of my mind and heart, my inner house never was so pretty before you came to live within me, full of paintings and brushes and colors, and plants and trees, and this awesome National Geographic willow, where sometimes friendly parrots come to exercise their vocabulary and singing repertoire...

... and we close our eyes and think on the african skies, later I will be watching you while you paint, from my hiding place, this is me, exercizing my oh-so-neglected voyeur capabilities, and my nose almost getting the paint smell, and my eyes being mesmerized again by the beauty of your dazzling blue, eyes of unspeakable beauty looking intently at the model, then at the tip of the brush... your hand dances, so relaxed and wise and perfect...

... and this is such a serene moment of plenitude. I see you sitting here, madam, in this sofa, legs elegantly crossed, looking at me with a charming and fun expression on your face "and now what?", and I face you from my chair, and we start laughing, probably, because laughing is better than most things in life, and because this long-awaited rendez-vous will surely be as laughable as it is expected to be beautiful, and now I will kiss you good night, since I have a full dreaming agenda tonight, please do not forget to come and visit.

Sándalo Naranja

MY TENDER GLANCE

I imagine you, sitting alone in your bed, elbows on your flexed knees, nightwear still on, meeting the early morning sun filtering through your window. 

Very pictorial. Also a very peaceful sight.I have seen your dazzling blue lagoons reflecting the afternoon sun, and they were unbelievably beautiful. 

I am infinitely curious about observing your face caressed by sunlight at different moments of the day, particularly early morning and late evening.

Can those eyes be even more beautiful? I cannot conceive it yet, but willing to experiment with new angles and lightening, nonetheless.

Sándalo Naranja

THE THOUSAND HOURS

There are one thousand hours in a day without you, yet just one minute of your eyes on me, just one minute of your light, shining on me, would be enough to undo the thousand hours, to revert all the thousand small deaths, only that light, I say, would be enough to freeze that deadly time, that muted distance, perhaps to unlock the eternal now and here, so I will sit here, expecting at any moment that light flooding through my window, washing down all my shadows, all my little deaths.

Sándalo Naranja