This painting comes from a poem, a few words about emotions and remedies I can’t remember now, and some human landscapes lost in mind.
Here goes the poem:
O que nós vemos das cousas são as cousas
What we see of things are the things.
Why would we see one thing when another thing is there?
Why would seeing and hearing be to delude ourselves
When seeing and hearing are seeing and hearing?
What matters is to know how to see,
To know how to see without thinking,
To know how to see when seeing
And not think when seeing
Nor see when thinking.
But this (if only we didn’t have a dressed-up heart!) –
This requires deep study,
Lessons in unlearning,
And a retreat into the freedom of that convent
Where the stars – say poets – are the eternal nuns
And the flowers the contrite believers of just one day,
But where after all the stars are just stars
And the flowers just flowers,
Which is why we call them stars and flowers.
13-III-1914
Fernando Pessoa
chameleonian times 