"... we can know many things just by the look of the eyes when people are silent; ... their whole body is clear ... and each is like an eye, and nothing hidden or artificial, but before one speaks to another the other sees and knows." 

Plotinus, IV, 3 [27]

Love is a Sickness

LOVE is a sickness full of woes,
All remedies refusing;
A plant that with most cutting grows,
Most barren with best using.
Why so?

More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoy'd, it sighing cries—
Heigh ho!

Love is a torment of the mind,
A tempest everlasting;
And Jove hath made it of a kind
Not well, nor full nor fasting.
Why so?

More we enjoy it, more it dies;
If not enjoy'd, it sighing cries—
Heigh ho!
Samuel Daniel. 1562–1619

I wish I could post the song instead of the poem, because it is a song more than a poem for me, (I used to sing it), which portrays very well the perception of love as a sickness, but of the mind, on which a lot of Medieval scholars wrote treatises. They were trying to provide an analysis of its symptoms and suggest cures. And when they were calling it a sickness, they were not speaking metaphorically, No!; they were speaking of a sickness, just like any other sicknesses. For your enjoyment: "Questions on the Viaticum". The seriousness of their preoccupation and their explanations seem mostly funny from the point of view of our knowledge of medicine and human sciences. But I can't keep myself from asking: have we arrived at a better understanding? Have we moved any closer in explaining this feeling (or syndrome, depends on how you approach it)? Or, rather, have we gave up the effort of trying to give an account of it and left the concept (and the thing itself, I don't know what it is, this_thing_called_love) to be exhausted by the consumerism of advertisements and horoscopes? And, lastly, will there be an end to my rhetorical questions? And, loss of words, I sigh!

It has been only weeks since I wrote my autumn haiku, and now the time came for me to write one for the winter, for while I sit in my warm and softly lit room, it snows outside. But wait! The trees still have some green leaves. The trees still have green leaves.

These days I wonder which one is better: to dream during the sleep and be reminded of those left aside, swept under the rug in the light of the day; or better not to dream at all. But if everyone dreams, is it possible to choose not to remember? If dreams are gates to our hidden desires and fears, the things we would prefer not to be reminded, the judgments we flee to make, maybe the question is whether one wants to know or not. The curious thing with dreams is that one does not have the choice to decide on that. It is just there, right in one's face. What does it say? It says, "the more you run the more I'll come after you." It is like a psycho postman who is obsessed with getting his mails delivered to the right person by the hand. Ok. I got my mail. So what's next? I don't know.

"No, It's Not Fatigue"

No. Fatigue, why?
It's an abstract sensation
of concrete life
-something like a scream
to be screamed,
something like anxiety
to be suffered.
To be suffered completely
Or to be suffered as ...
Yes, to be suffered as ...
That's it: as ...
As what?
If I knew I wouldn't have this false fatigue within me.
F. Pessoa (Alvaro de Campos)