Flow Like Water by Alfredo Tucci (E-book) Budo International OD

“What beautifies the desert is that it hides a well of water somewhere.” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry “What we know is a water drop; what we ignore is the ocean. ” Isaac Newton “Flow like water, slip as a cloud” (Yun Shui)… said the old proverb that my late and dear Martial Arts master, José Luis Paniagua Tevar, who left us this year, had chosen for his school. Difficult proposal, indeed! Constantly stuck in the small things and hindered by the branches, we can hardly see the tree, much less the forest. But flowing doesn’t mean being sloppy; definitely, water is not so, for it doesn’t leave any corner uncovered… it reaches everywhere! As asturian people say, “water has a very fine snout”. Unhurried, coupling to the circumstances, water is a metaphor for the persistence and extreme adaptability. It’s the paradigm of changing in the form without transforming the essence. Although no element is more important than another, we can appreciate the excess or lack of any of them in every moment. And in a world dominated by the element fire, the lack of water, from the physical to the metaphysical, it is a constant perverse; hence the importance of philosophizing about it, of learning from its power and its reasons; hence the importance of putting some of its force in our lives. Water catalyzes life; without water, the land dries and gets barren; and the fire, without a controller, spreads everywhere and the air, turned into a sandstorm, cannot carry the fertility of the clouds, or the force of the changes. Even iron is wrought by the use of fire in the forges! Water is the cradle of all life, the primary livelihood of both inanimate and animate beings, all of them “bags” of hotter and hotter waters, according to their degree of evolution, and adapted to a change that we accompany, of which we are part, and not guilty, as some would have us believe. The “terminal sin” is the Judeo-Christian guilt of environmentalism. Water comforts us, cleanses us, and blesses us. Wet in the rivers of the moment, we swim, fight, wreck… Today fresh water is scarce and becomes precious by default, when it was already precious by virtue. His negative counterpart, infertile and barren for the land because of salt, that is, the oceanic vastness, is slowly dying. The suffocated seas, reheated, landfills, keep the mysteries of the beginning of life and what will be its end. But, polluted and dirty, water keeps cleaning everything, because that is its nature. Flowing, adapting to the barriers, going down, not opposing anything, water is the perfect analogy of humility, adaptation and not conflict. The water wins aimlessly; following its nature, it surrounds any obstacle and teaches us how to overcome, but with wisdom, free from wear and tear, without losing sight of the goal. What is a rock on the road, a mountain…? Even trapped in between cliffs and narrow passages, water filters, or evaporates if such a thing is not possible; nothing stops its destination. It’s been the river of life that has left in my shores these texts, which today I share in book format. And I say “it left” because all authorship is at least confusing, since we are all debtors of those before us, those who inspired and keep inspiring us, of the floating clouds of the collective unconscious, and even, who knows!, of the spirits and the consciousness around us. This new book has no continuity, or times, and like all my previous work (already quite a few!), and it can be read from back to front, extemporaneously, or on a whim. Like the water that inspires its title, texts in this work are flooded with a time in transit through my life, where certainties, being few, are affirmed gently, without impositions or excessive enthusiasm. Will it be maturity? Life is something marvelous, an opportunity, a treasure, if we are able to stop our head and feel to accommodate the simple; a ray of autumn sun warming our skin, a drink of water when we are thirsty, a swim in the sea, a loving caress … If we cannot appreciate these things, it means we have lost our way, we have denatured the experience of living, and there’s no purpose, ideal, or anything that can fill such void. I can’t teach anything because I don’t know anything, but for those who wish to hear my poems, here I leave my sincere and truly felt thoughts, every time more felt and less thought, because mind is a deceptive device that sees what it wants to see and I’ve learned to be suspicious about it.  

FORMAT: Book is delivered in PDF format and readable on most e-readers, smart phones, tablets, laptops, or desktop computers.

Language: English

111 pages