Paulo Seabra

Excerpts from Nostos 243. THE BAFFLED KING Where hast thou gone? When hast thou forsaken me? When I was crowned king I ruled over a vast kingdom. Now all have I lost, and all is vanity. The cold morning air creeps through my castle window so as to wake me. And the light that finds me is dark as the lightest dusk. Still, I rise and walk out into the world. Behold your king, I say to the deserted dew-covered fields through which my saddened voice echoes. There are no more steps in the long, winding corridors, no drowned voices through the stone walls, no tired hands building homes, no fathers wielding swords, no mothers tending children... I don my armor of heavy gold, silver and pride, and though I have no destiny, I carry on, leaving behind nothing but a bed half-cold. Lush ivy spreads in between the rifts of my castle walls, the grass outside grows tall and wild, the well overflows with the rain of days gone by. No war has my kingdom seen save that of time... Earth and wind will recla...

Excerpts from Nostos 182. THE ART OF PORNOGRAPHY Pornography is an art form. That is my thesis for this essay. I shall expose my argument regarding this strange subject, as well as explain how I understand its nature. The first counter-argument one needs to dispel is simple. It is the natural, almost guttural response one hears regarding the subject itself, understandably so, I'd say. Someone will ask, how can such disgusting, demeaning, distasteful acts be considered art? Simply put, pornography being art doesn't entail that all pornography, or rather, all forms of sexual behavior documented in images, still or moving, constitute art. In that same manner, one would argue that music is art even whilst acknowledging certain types of atrocious music. It follows with everything else. From this we can draw two implications – either we argue that it is bad music and therefore it can't be art, or we argue that it doesn't meet certain standards in order to be classified as pro...

Excerpts from Nostos 109. I wander through dreams in which I see evergreen meadows breathing in the wind, all while a soft tingling lyre whispers the thoughts of ancient nymphs, and the sun shines bright for you today... It casts cool, dancing shadows all through the olive tree of your comfort. And so as to evade all and any pain, I wish for you to imagine my lips upon your cheek, as I will imagine yours upon mine, and nothing more. All else fades away with each touch... Your beauty, forever fleeting, and mine, that never was, and then the moment becomes but a shadow too, the pleasure turns to bitter pain, and all the rest, a grave disappointment. For the beauty of a goddess is beseeched and dreamed of amidst the calm sleep of the naive soul, never to be truly embraced. We gaze at each other's lips and no more, so that this shall be our everlasting secret, the desire to kiss. For we never begun what was bound to end. All we had was ours, for we had nothing. 181. I spoke with a dep...

Às vezes, quando um sentimento de raiva se apodera de mim, imagino que surge na minha boca uma segunda boca que vem para me triturar os dentes todos, reduzindo-os a dez mil fragmentos que dão estalidos entre si com o ritmo de cada deslocação desse segundo maxilar estranho, e a minha língua é então dilacerada em pedaços de carne fria até se rebentar por completo, perfurada pela força implacável de uma mandíbula alheia, arrepiando-me com a pressão perpétua de mil esguichos de sangue que me arranham as gengivas, tudo para satisfazer a vontade de um outro ser dentro de mim... A minha língua é uma esponja velha, apertada com tanta violência depois de ter estado dormente num charco de águas verdes e estagnadas, durante uma eternidade mais dolorosa do que o próprio aperto. 14 de março de 2013 § ESTES DIAS ESCUROS DE CHUVA DE OUTONO Hoje pensei naquele que é o único problema da filosofia e não me consegui decidir. Não há nada que eu queira exceto tudo. Vejo mulheres no metro que usam lenços na...

Uma coleção de quatrocentos textos soltos, vinte e um deles em inglês, escritos ao longo de oito anos e perfazendo um livro de memórias, de ensaios e de ficção, com o objetivo final, mas sempre incerto, de encontrar não só um tempo perdido, mas também um lugar. Tal como escrevi uma análise assim da sinopse do meu primeiro livro, e também do meu segundo livro, escrevo agora algo semelhante sobre o meu terceiro. Para recapitular muito brevemente, não sou fã de sinopses longas, acho que uma sinopse que conta a história até certo ponto faz com que a leitura até esse mesmo ponto seja quase redundante. E hesito também em responder à questão comum – mas o teu livro é sobre o quê mesmo?... Acho que não faz muito sentido responder em detalhe, tento sempre escrever de forma a surpreender os meus leitores, de forma a que cada capítulo tenha o seu próprio estilo e as suas reviravoltas, por isso quanto menos o leitor souber, melhor. No entanto, para este meu terceiro livro uma sinopse detalhada ...

Seriously, I really didn't... It would appear that Norm, in typical Norm fashion, kept his illness very well-hidden, perhaps to avoid all those common platitudes that at best are vain, and at worst they're just dark voids where comedy goes to die. In a way it's almost as if he made his own death into a joke, what with his weird style of saying the most wicked things in such a blunt way that people couldn't help but laugh as a way to release the tension. I have heard it said, and wish I had been the one to come up with it, that Norm was the comedian that, not only willingly confronted the elephant in the room, but he actively hunted it down. Indeed, Norm's comedy style was often as blunt and as brash as an elephant rifle, and yet he was often at times so subtle you needed some deep soul-searching and a degree from the University of Science in order to understand it. In another saying that I also wish I had been the one to come up with, it was almost as if Norm was do...