My first quatrain

I looked around with your eyes,

-which claim to see only blackness-

and found colours never seen,

but not the way to show you.

My first aphorism

I never thought I was able to write anything, much less an aphorism, but here it is!

"Fear turns you into someone different from whom you could be"

It is related to my "piece of wisdom". I hope you like it. 

The art of loving

The first chapter of this book is about love as an art.

According to the author, nowadays people don´t believe in love as an art and, in addition, most of us think that we know everything necessary about it.

This attitude is based on some premises, the first of which is that we are worried about “how to be loved” and not about “loving”.

Another premise is that we think that the difficulty is to find the right object to love or to be loved by and not the act of loving. The reason is the concept of “romantic love” in modern society.  This new freedom makes us being in search of the best “object” to love, and what makes a person the best depends on the fashion.

The last error is the confusion between “falling” in love and “being” in love. The initial experience is like a miracle until it dissapears.

Finally, the author explains the way to overcome the failure of love.

In order to this, it is essential thinking in love as an art and following the same process of learning an art, which contains theory, practice and the most important thing, which is that there must be nothing else in the world more important than “the art”, LOVE.

We are the world 25 for Haiti

I would like to share with all of you another song. 

"We are the world 25 for Haiti" is a song recorded by more than eighty artist in 2010.

The original song was written by Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie in 1985 and was recorded to benefit famine relief in Africa. Later, in 2009, it was suggested a new version under the title "Live 25", but when Haiti was destroyed because of a earthquake, producers decided to use the song as a vehicle for this catastrophe, as the song was written for. 

To my mind, it is a remarkable song with meaningful lyrics. What is more, the video, in which all these spectacular voices are singing at the same time, is powerful. But what moves you the most is the pictures of children from Haiti in the street among the rubble. 

"BLINDNESS", by José Saramago

“Blindness” is a novel by recognised Portuguese author José Saramago. It was published in 1995 and its original title is “Ensaio sobre a cegueira”. José Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1998 and this is one of his most famous novels.

The plot is set in an unnamed city and tells the story of a strange epidemic of “white blindness”.

The unexplained origin of the blindness causes panic and the government puts affected people into isolation in order to contain the contagion.

The story focuses on a group of these people in quarantine. The main character is “the doctor´s wife”, who is not affected by blindness. She passes herself off as blind and helps people in the asylum where they have been quarantined.

Since the beginning, the author shows us the human nature. As the fear grows, people are overcomed by self-conceit and the struggle for survival, but what strikes you the most is the way people come to horrible extremes.

Another interesting aspect is how a character, who was blind before the epidemic, turns into the luckiest in the new blind world.

The writing is, for the most part, particular. One reason is that Saramago omits names. The reader can identify characters by a meaningful characteristic, as “Girl with dark glasses”, “the first blind” or “man with black eye patch”, for example.

The plot is extremely thought-provoking and incredibly meaningful. All the characters, by which the author shows us the different stances facing with the same problem, are powerful.

If I were to make one criticism of the book, it would be that dialogs are not separated from the narrative, being a little hard to read.

All in all, it is definitely a book worth reading. Not only it is so memorable that you will not forget it but it is riveting. In addition, there is a film adaptation and a second novel, called “Seeing” or “Ensaio sobre a lucidez”.