WATER IN MOTION

     She keeps moving, always moving in so many ways… the water, the water of life. Even when it seems completely static, is moving, assuming new shapes, dimensions and colors, purposes, ways of being water. 

     The Ancient Greeks identified the flowing waters of a river with the flowing of time and life. River Lethe (Letes), one of the rivers of Hades, was the river of oblivion; its flowing was the image of the irreversible passage of time and crossing it to the other side was the symbolic representation of the passage from life to death. It was necessary to cross the river of time, the one that fabricates memories and oblivion, to depart from life… probably as immaculate and pure as a newborn, without wishes for the future and no memories of the past. The crossing itself consisted mainly in drinking water from Lethe to forget all the life behind… So, dying is forgetting… and when you forget you die… I prefer a myth where dying is remembering, everything, without blanks, or cuts or missing pieces… I prefer a myth where water is life, truth and memory… even if you die drinking, walking along, over or across…

     Now let’s complete the open myth and add a few meta-facts and meta-symbols. The myth talks about rivers, water flowing in a single and irreversible direction… not about water itself. That could only be a sad story of endless loss, the kind of experience synthesized in aphorisms like «You can’t bath twice in the same water» or «In the same river we get and do not get in, we are and we are not» (Heraclitus of Ephesus, c. 535 BC – 475 BC) 

     From the peaceful banks of Alethea, I watch Lethe. I watch, I sail, I cross but I don’t drink. I only drink from the pure and inexhaustible sources of Alethea. Truth and reality are dancing by the pure water. They once lived by the Lethe. They drank its water and crossed its waters and followed its course in search of an endless, beautiful sea… But the days, the years, the centuries and millennia passed and they did not get to the mouth of that endless river. There was no end and there was no ocean. It was a long way back, but they came back to the fields of their beginning, the only place where they really belonged together, truth and reality. No oblivion here, only revelation, sun after sun, moon after moon…

       The trees and the grass were still there, deeply rooted on the ground, new roots in the same eternal ground. Each new Spring new birds came, generation after generation, to live in the same eternal nest. Drop after drop, the dew of the stars joined the breathing of all the living creatures, before travelling to the same eternal clouds… and rain, rain copiously in the morning cups of all human beings. Some used to drink each cup each morning as if it was the first and last, cup and morning… all along their lives, the first and the last each day. Other forgot many times to drink their morning cup of new life. And some others never drank their cup at all.

     In the banks of Alethea, I’m happy for revisiting the primordial light and life in all the new things around, unbreakable links with the distance, the unknown, the infinity of our souls. I recognize each leaf of each tree, though they are others and new. I recognize each blood vein of each leaf, though there’s now much more millions of leaves than there were then. I recognize each drop of rain and each sunbeam, dancing crystals falling softly in the abyss of the sea, the sky and Mother Earth heart. I recognize the same eternal sparkle in the old eyes of the new bird…   

       After many thousands of days and nights living on the borders of Lethe, away from Alethea, it’s good to be back. Since I recognize everything, nothing is lost. Here I really can drink twice, endless times, from the same perpetually new water, for the water is only one and the same. I can enter into and get out exactly from the same drop of water and fall in the abyss while I fly across the most deep blue sky. I can drink, breathe, bath in the new primordial light of each day, for the light is only one and the same. Here I am completely true and real, here I am and am not at the same time… Be and be not! What a perfect way of being…  

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Note 1: Alethea is one of the rivers of Hades in Greek mythology. Etymologically the word means “truth”, “supreme truth”, “reality”.

Note 2: The photographs below were taken at Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal in three different days of the beginning of September; one was very sunny, other was quite cloudy and in the other one the changed several times from cloudy to sunny and vice versa. That’s why the light is very different. In two of the days the sea was very rough and the waves beating against the hotel pool walls were gigantic.  

Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino. 

 Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino. 

 Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

 Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino. 

Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino. 

Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino. 

Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino. 

Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino. 

Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino. 

 Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

 Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

 Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

 Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino. 

 Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

 Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

 Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

 Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

 Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

 Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

Hotel Arribas, Praia Grande, Sintra, Portugal, photography by São Ludovino.

LEVELS OF REALITY

     Our heads are really interesting and unknown... a vast unexplored land. We live a whole life within our heads, using thought and reason to live and organize daily life but sometimes more than those 75% percent of unknown / unused land remain there untouched and unknown. What’s the role of imagination in the constant work of the mind? If we can imagine so many unimaginable things with only 25%, how much more could we imagine with the other 75%? And imagining is also a form of knowing, perceive and create beyond the limits of knowledge and reason.

     In a certain way, I always had the impression that we know more than 75% of our minds and inner activity. Imagination is an open door to that unknown realm. Imagination doesn’t belong exclusively to the conscious or unconscious, it lingers in a wide frontier between both and it expands indifferently in both directions mingling both worlds.

     Just like me, my brother, you were fascinated with the inner world, known and unknown, that we carry within through our lives without ever get to the bottom. You used your own methods to try to unravel the bottom and surroundings… some were right and some were “wrong”. And every time I told you that probably that wasn’t the better way, you always said: “Unfortunately, I’m not like you, I do not have your ability of imagining, feel and see beyond in a natural and spontaneous way… I need knowledge, reason and external chemistry…” And I always told you that you were wrong, that you had exactly the same ability I had, you had a huge soul and a sleeping imagination waiting to be awakened from the inside — even if it needed some external stimulus — and not from outside. But in your own way you were always able to understand my fantastic and unreal world. And that was the major proof that I was right. You got it all then and you got it ten thousand times more now, in your endless home and journey. If it wasn’t like that we would never understand each other the way we did.

     Yes, it’s true that I had a rebel, idiosyncratic and independent mind since I was a child. When you started your first degree in Psychology you used to make many tests to me. And you arrived to the conclusion that we were very different at least in two things: type of thought and memory. I had a “divergent” thought, you had a “convergent” one; your memory was somewhat weak unless you had the support of organized categories to arrange the data inside, I had an apparent chaotic memory but able of saving big amounts of information and “impressions” about many different things.

     Until around 15 you used to walk with the social herds and only after you discovered Philosophy and Science you began to walk autonomously and to use your head in an independent way, though not completely… somehow, you always needed the herds. I just watched, enjoyed the moment and followed my path; you walked amongst and sometimes your real identity seemed to solve completely in the undifferentiated predictable whole. Knowledge and reflection opened a thousand new windows in your mind. Those windows were the bridges that introduced you into the world of imagination and allowed you to understand everything in a completely new way. From then on, you became a voyager of the stars, much before you inhabited there. In my head all worked the opposite way; first I knew the world and reality through my imagination and the natural sensations and only then I plunged in the world of organized and intellectual knowledge. You chose specialization and knew a lot about the things you loved; I always remained in an eclectic opened field. Only much later I was aware of all these things, the way we apprehend the world and the evolution within our minds. I still don’t know and don’t understand the major part of this evolution, I just know it happened within us and somehow shaped our lives, our ways of feeling and thinking, our actions and our dreams.

     Were we so different, just because it seems imagination was born and working within me since I was a very small child and you seemed to discover it much later? I don’t think so. Even before you began to navigate freely in your imagination, you were already able to understand the imagination of others, including mine. Adventure books of our childhood filled your imagination. You didn’t feel the need to imagine and create because, in a certain way, it was as if what there was to imagine it had been already imagined.

     I was very different, wasn’t I, my brother? I know that sometimes, I was almost irritating with my tendency to recreate everything; either it was a culinary receipt or a simple story, drawing a tree or describe a cloud. I just had to do everything my own way, I couldn’t stand repetition or imitation… unless I was repeating or imitating myself. The whole world was my inspiration or just this or that fragment, but chosen by me. Repeating and imitating models was impossible, I wasn’t able to do it, unless it was in a humoristic registry. I still can’t draw what I see, only what I imagine and see inside. I still can’t tell the events of a common story in the regular way. But I still have a reasonable memory for real facts, but above all my memory still retains mostly ideas, symbols, concepts, mental images, inner sensations and a kind of “eternal present and presence” of everything that finds an echo within me.

     Yes, sometimes, my imagination and independent spirit almost seemed a kind of disease, a compulsive mental attitude that I tried to tame many times, because I live in the world of the others most of the time and not only in my own world… Without great success, you know that. And now, that I’m an “old child” I feel happy I didn’t change much…

     Just like you, my brother, I keep living and travelling in parallel and crossed worlds. And imagination is still a major part of my expanding universe with so many levels of reality. I know our worlds are traveling side by side, touching, mingling, being one in their immense diversity… We aren’t so different after all…

Soul Pact, photography by São Ludovino.

Infinite bridge, photography by São Ludovino.

East meets West, photography by São Ludovino.

Tree of Dreams somersault, photography by São Ludovino.

 Threads of Time I, photography by São Ludovino.

Threads of Time II, photography by São Ludovino.

Threads of Time III, photography by São Ludovino.

Interstices of Time I, photography by São Ludovino.

Interstices of Time II, photography by São Ludovino.

Interstices of Time III, photography by São Ludovino.

Hunter of Dreams I, photography by São Ludovino.

Hunter of Dreams II, photography by São Ludovino.

Preparing the Earth II, photography by São Ludovino.

 Preparing the Earth III, photography by São Ludovino.

Companion II, photography by São Ludovino.

Carrying the Seed IV, photography by São Ludovino.

 Flowing in Time I, photography by São Ludovino.

Flowing in Time II, photography by São Ludovino.

Flowing in Time III, photography by São Ludovino.

(Im)predictable pattern I, photography by São Ludovino.

Broken surface I, photography by São Ludovino. 

Broken surface II, photography by São Ludovino.

Intuition versus Neuroscience I, photography by São Ludovino. 

 Imitating the Moon II, photography by São Ludovino.

 Printed in the air I, photography by São Ludovino.

Living in the jungle I, photography by São Ludovino. 

Together in the jungle I, photography by São Ludovino. 

 Together in the jungle II, photography by São Ludovino.

 Together in the night II, photography by São Ludovino.

Aging together I, photography by São Ludovino. 

Aging in the sun I, photography by São Ludovino. 

 Seeding together I, photography by São Ludovino.

Untieable II, photography by São Ludovino. 

Catching the sun for the night II, photography by São Ludovino. 

 Catching the sun for the night I, photography by São Ludovino.

 Drinking the rainbow I, photography by São Ludovino.

Eternal moments I, photography by São Ludovino. 

Eternal moments II, photography by São Ludovino. 

Flying fish, photography by São Ludovino.