credits: omzqkn.jpg, by Saint-Images.
Journal
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Journal
"We liked to believe we could write. You were my Fernando Pessoa, I was your Mario de Sá Carneiro; we lived in this kind of dynamic. Throughout some nights, we liked to spent hours and hours sitting in front of each other, knee to knee, just to talk out loud about absolutely anything that dared to come up our minds; we'd always end up in arguments about how biased the human mind is, just for you to, in the end, fall asleep. For the rest of the night, I'd watch you, as if scared of missing something out. So, then, right after the first greet of the dawn, I'd lie down upon you as if I no longer knew how to walk by my own legs and, as a child scared of the dark, I'd hug you, sleeping right after.
"The day I noticed I actually loved you were one of these mornings, where I, bleary-eyed, started prepearing myself to go to sleep.
"Overlying your body lying upon the bed, the hazy, foreign and unfamiliar sunlights from the bedroom window already claimed the space beneath and amidst the layers of air filling the whole room, creating those pretty sparkles that smell musty. The surrounding eiderdowns dunes largely concealed you, and the trees outside rose up in monoliths, tattooing scattered shadows upon you as well as the floor, covered with letterhead papers from the last night.
"I got up and walked around a while; looked outside a few times, seeing nothing at all. I took then a breath, collapsing in myself; felt, in the fall, the air rushing in, the pain in the lungs, my body compressing itself into itself -- felt alive, in short, truly alive.
"While I was falling into this intro-existence-specere, you woke up. I looked at you, scared as criminal caught red-handed; you did the same, but with your almond in honey eyes, dewy by the sleep. Your pale skin glowed and radiated in the cold morning sun, speaking the most intimate truths of you. And so, personificationing itself, you, in the space of a few seconds, became the Silver Angel."
Here is my journal page. Unlike the writing page, which is going to have more 'literary-focused' texts, the texts here are going to be more essay/blog like, so expect to find weird opinions, unrequested updates about anything really, and deliberately confusing texts. Enjoy.
> [July, 23, 2026] I am not afraid of learning anything.
I only recently realized that there are people who are afraid of learning. Many of them have this misconception that there are things too hard to be learned' -- and that's a very, very destructive ideia.
Learning is the endless process of acquiring knowledge about anything. It is the life-long exercise of observing, analysing and understanding reality, whether beyond or within ourselves. It is the beautiful act of becoming a child again and asking, "where do these ants go?" or "why do carrots get soft in boiling water, but eggs don't?". Nothing more.
For some reason at some point I am still trying to understand, many people have come to believe that there are ideas or systems too hard to be learned, either because these ideas and systems are widely considered "hard" or because these people subjectively believe they are too difficult for them. Here I am going to briefly discuss two questions: 1) Are there ideas and systems that are "too hard" for certain people? And 2) Are there ideas and systems inherently difficult for humans?
The first question falls pretty quickly: learning a system or idea will primarily be difficult for a student if they do not yet have the necessary background knowledge required to understand that idea or system. It may sound arrogant, as if I mean "Students are stupid and that's why things are hard for them", but not really. Every piece of knowledge requires a certain pior knowledge. Before riding a bike, you first had to learn how to walk on your own legs, thereby developing sufficient balance for the bike; before learning objects fall when dropped, you first had to watch them doing so. That's the whole process, repeated over and over again: observation, analysing and understanding.
In my view, most of the systems and ideas that seem too difficult to be learned simply require these first steps, this background knowledge, this repertoire -- and that can be only acquired by observing, analysing and understanding other, less complex ideas and systems. A problem I notice among people of my age -- including myself -- is that we often want to rush through these essencial first steps so we can get as soon as possible to the result; this is self-destructive and just leads to disappointment and dissatisfaction -- both with ourselves and with the subject in question. Learning is like building a house: it needs designing, preparation, foundation, framing, installing the rough-ins and finally completing the construction; if any step is skipped, the house will remain incomplete, unstable and unusable.
With that said, yes, ideas and systems are difficult for certain students, but only until those students learn how to learn, acquiring, thereby, the knowledge necessary to approach that particular subject. If I tried to play the drums today, it would be quite difficult for me, but only because I have no prior experience with percurssion instruments. What should not happen, then, is for me to become afraid of learning the drums because of that. My repertoire will grow with time and there is no reason for me to believe I am incapable of learning to play the drums. Before me, countless humans did learn to play that instrument -- why would I not? Before me someone not only learned to play the drums but also designed them and made them playable as they are today; someone before me developed the theory, the music and the techniques that allow others to play the drums, why would I not be capable of wrapping my head around them? Thinking this way is liberating because everything I once feared learning quickly becomes nothing but another subject in which to build repertoire -- another unexplored idea or system that I am not just merely going to try to understand, but will eventually understand, at least the parts that interest me the most in. Humans share broadly similar cognitive capacities, so there is no real good reason to believe that a subject mastered by millions others is inaccessible to me.
What should be noted, though, is that different students learn in different ways; the overall structure of observing, analysing and understanding remains the same, but the individual processes involved can change significantly; as Rubem Alves would say: "you cannot include a student who has only one leg in a ten-kilometer race". While some students learn better by reading, others may learn better by watching someone explain a concept or writing everything down. That is exactly why students should, before anything else, be taught to learn.
As for the second question, I still do not have an answer. Here, I follow the main principle that, for an idea or system to be inherently hard for humans, it must be unnatural to us. For instance, walking on all fours is extremely difficult for us because it goes completely against our anatomy and biology -- thus, it is unnatural to us. By that reasoning, an idea or system is only inherently difficult if it goes against our nature -- and that was my starting point. The problem of it is that humans are psychobiosocial animals and it is such a hard task to define what is and what is not "natural" to us. Neither chess nor mathematics envolved in the savana with humans, yet humans not only learn them but also completely master them. Additionally, thinking about "natural" aspects of humanity can easily lead to misconceptions and morally questionable conclusions if one projects one's own principles and ethics onto the subject -- for that reason, it must be approached carefully.
I once had a programming professor who loved to write. He was great and, as two writing enthusiasts, we often talked about the act of writing. One day, during the break between classes, in the cafeteria, we both were drinking water and talking about fiction. At some point in the conversation, I asked him: "if writing is so rewarding, why are people gradually stopping doing so, just as they are with reading?" And he replied that both writing and reading are unnatural because they consume a great deal of energy. He argued that the human brain, like all things, constantly seeks a state of continuous rest, whereas reading and writing demand sustained mental effort and, therefore, run counter to this universal tendency. To this day, I still don't know if I completely agree with him.
Perhaps I should have discussed, before all that, the difference between difficulty and complexity; that'll for sure be included in my TODO list. Futhermore, for you, reader who got interested in the topic, I would recommend you to read more about epistemic humility.
> [July, 20, 2026] I like butter.
I like butter, always liked it. Perhaps the unique truth I can tell about myself is that I like butter -- and I say so because all the people around me either were indifferent to butter or didn't like it at all -- so if I always liked it, I am original on it -- and maybe solely on it. I have being pioneer in liking butter, yes. Yes, yes, I like butter -- and thetruth that I write that is immeasurable. Perhaps I am performatic about everything I do, like, and live -- but not, absolutely not, by any means, about liking butter.