Rain Bordo

PART I — A Meeting of Winds

What is the self, if not the battlefield of possibility?

A question fit for dusk, Mateo. Or should I say Rain Bordo?

Names are like wet paint, Emanuel. Let them dry and they’re already false.

And yet we rely on names to speak—to even begin. Is this not the first necessity of reason?

Only if you want to be heard. I paint for the silence between names.

Then you defy the very tools of philosophy.

I don’t defy. I reject the premise. What if silence is closer to the truth than logic ever could be?

Interesting. But silence cannot legislate. A moral world cannot be built on abstraction alone.

Is that your aim? To build a moral world?

It is man’s duty to strive toward the good through the rational will. Autonomy, for me, is moral law self-imposed.

Autonomy, you say… And yet you demand that every rational being impose the same law. That’s not autonomy. That’s elegant obedience.

Obedience to what is right is not slavery, but liberation.

No. It’s just another possibility clinging to your shoulder like a crow. You think freedom is the capacity to choose well. I say it’s the courage to not need to choose at all.

You make freedom into passivity. Into negation.

Not passivity. Transcendence. When you no longer seek, you are no longer bound. That’s the purest freedom.

Your thought resembles mysticism more than philosophy.

And your thought resembles bureaucracy more than life.

😐

Let me ask you something: When was the last time you did something irrational?

That’s not a question I value.

Exactly. And that’s why you’re not free. You filter the world through your categories, your imperatives, your distinctions between noumenon and phenomenon. But real life bleeds through those neat little cages.

The categories are not cages—they are conditions for experience.

They are scaffolding over the void. And I say: burn it. Stand in the void.

And fall into madness?

Maybe. But madness is closer to truth than calculation.

You reduce ethics to impulse.

I elevate impulse to truth.

Then what of justice? What of duty to others?

Duty built on fear of chaos is not duty. It’s architecture trembling in the wind. I serve others not because of a universal law, but because I feel them.

Feeling is fleeting. Law remains.

Law remains like a monument to itself. Feeling becomes art, becomes memory, becomes scream.

Patched by the shackles of normality,
I place my brush against the beginnings that scream within me.

A poem?

A scream, actually. Listen:

I understand that the scream is not heard.
I understand the ridicule and rejection.
I also understand the consequence; shame.
But… I also understand the brush.
The brush will speak, it will tell you something:
“Your children’s children will forget you.
Your happiness and sadness will be forgotten.
Your foundations and your roofs,
will disappear along with the supporting pillars.
Do you know why this is so?
It’s because you think you know.
Because you don’t question.
Because you accept existence.
It’s because you don’t want to be ridiculed.
You want to be liked.
Your children’s children will forget you.”

That… That is unsettling.

Because it’s true. We build palaces of certainty on sand. And then act surprised when time swallows them.

So, you embrace oblivion?

I embrace freedom from memory. From image. From legacy. That is the release from possibility. You think we are free because we can choose. I say we’re free only when we no longer need to.

This position borders on despair.

No. It births hope. Once you let go of the need to be meaningful, you can finally live.

That contradicts the dignity of rational nature.

No. It resurrects it. You placed dignity in the law. I place it in the surrender.

You dismantle reason.

No. I recognize its limits.

Then you are not a philosopher.

I’m something older than philosophy. I’m the one who stood at the cave wall and refused to draw.

Yet you paint.

Yes—but I paint silence. Absence. I paint to unpaint. That’s why they call me Rain Bordo.

And yet you speak now.

Because even silence sometimes needs a witness.

PART II — The Shaking of Foundations

You speak with such ease about forgetting. But does not man yearn to be remembered?

Yes. And that’s the chain.

You would cut the chain and watch him drift into non-being?

Yes. And finally, breathe.

You propose oblivion as salvation.

Not oblivion. Humility. We must vanish so others may see the sky.

Your words carry a poetic cruelty.

Only to those still clinging to permanence.

And what is wrong with permanence?

It denies change. It fossilizes the moment and calls it truth. But even your “truths” are temporary. They age. They fracture. Your imperative will too.

It is not my imperative. It is reason’s.

And who made reason sacred?

It is inherent in us as rational beings.

Is it? Or is it just the most elegant survival mechanism evolution gave us? A trick to keep us from looking into the abyss?

You reduce transcendental reason to an evolutionary twitch.

I liberate it from the illusion of divinity.

Then you seek to tear down centuries of philosophy.

Only if it stands in the way of life.

You cannot live without order.

You cannot live with only order.

😤

Let me ask you, Kant—do you believe in death?

Of course. It is the natural end of finite beings.

But what is it, really? The end of possibility.

Yes.

Then it is the only true freedom.

…Go on.

When you die, you can no longer become. You can no longer compare. Or desire. Or regret. Death is the moment all paths collapse into none. And in that, a perfect stillness.

You wish to simulate death while alive?

No. I wish to learn from it. To live with the clarity of the end in my lungs. And from that clarity, comes freedom—not the kind tied to action or will—but the kind born from release.

That is metaphysical surrender.

It is metaphysical honesty. You hold possibility like a sword. I see it as a wound.

Then what do you offer man? What path?

No path. That’s the point.

But man needs path.

Only because he fears standing still.

Standing still is stagnation.

Not if you become the silence itself.

You’ve become the advocate of negation.

And you’ve become a preacher to a deaf congregation. How many people actually live by your moral law?

That is irrelevant to its truth.

Is it? Or is that just your pride speaking?

😠

The world is drowning in systems. Religions. Laws. Philosophies. Do you think we need one more?

We need one that works.

Then burn the rest. Begin with breath. With not-knowing. With art.

Art cannot replace ethics.

Art is ethics. At least, art that bleeds.

What does bleeding prove?

That something inside is still alive. That not everything is concept or formula. That we are not made to merely obey, but to ache.

That ache is dangerous.

And so is pretending it doesn’t exist.

You accuse me of coldness.

I accuse your system of it. Not you. You—I think—once knew the scream. But you buried it in Critiques.

You’ve read them?

Every page. And they are beautiful. But they are haunted. By doubt. By ghosts you never let speak.

I wrote them to find clarity.

But clarity without chaos is cowardice.

You want to destabilize the very foundations of reason.

I want to expose them. To show they are human, like us. Breakable. Fallible. Glorious in their frailty.

And after you expose them—what then?

Then we breathe. And paint. And love without needing a “why.”

So, a life of sensation?

No. A life of surrender. Of resonance.

This is romanticism in rebellion’s clothes.

It’s truth in naked form.

You said earlier that your brush speaks. What has it told you lately?

That the world doesn’t need more meaning. It needs more listening.

Listening to what?

To everything beneath the words. The hesitation. The doubt. The child inside the philosopher.

…

Mateo.

Yes?

I remember being a boy. And wanting to draw stars in the dark. But my father said, “Stars are not for drawing. They are for studying.” So I studied. And I studied. And I never drew again.

Maybe you should.

Would it matter now?

Only if you still want to.

But what good would it do?

None. And that’s why it’s worth doing.

😢

You are dangerous.

And you are beautiful.

You break things.

Only what no longer breathes.

Then break me.

No. I want you to walk with me. Not behind. Not above. Just—beside.

And where would we go?

Nowhere. Just be. Here.

…

You say your poem is a warning. But I hear it as liberation.

That’s all I ever hoped for. That someone like you would hear it, not as nihilism, but as absolution.

You truly believe being forgotten is sacred?

Yes. Because it means you no longer need to be remembered. You’ve transcended ego. Time. Language.

But what of those who still seek meaning?

Offer them silence. Not more answers. Let them find their own scream in the quiet.

You challenge everything I built.

And still I love you for it.

I don’t know what I believe anymore.

That means you’re finally free.


PART III — The Weight of Surrender

I’ve spent my entire life trying to build a system. A fortress of reason.

And it was noble.

But?

But perhaps nobility was my veil. Behind it, I see now… I was terrified.

Of what?

Of the void you walk into so freely. Of contradiction. Of failure. Of being nothing more than another voice among the noise.

And now?

Now I hear your silence more clearly than my arguments.

🌌

I once wrote: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

Yes. And what if the stars don’t care? What if the law dissolves?

Then awe becomes acceptance.

Or gratitude.

You… confuse me.

Good. Confusion is the soil where real change grows.

What do I do with my legacy?

Let it go. It’s not yours anymore. It never was. You gave it. Like I give my paintings to walls, or my poems to strangers. They don’t belong to me. Not once they’re born.

But they define us.

No. They pass through us.

And if they misunderstand?

Let them. Misunderstanding is part of the truth too.

You make it sound so simple.

It’s not. I still cry after painting. I still burn half of what I create. I still doubt every verse. But I no longer demand certainty.

And what takes its place?

Presence. And presence is freedom from possibility. It’s the moment before the brush touches canvas—not the stroke, not the plan—just the breath. Just that.

🖤

I think I see now what you mean. The burden of possibility… It is the engine of restlessness.

Exactly. You once said, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” And I say: good. Let it stay crooked. Let it dance.

Then structure is illusion?

Only when it tries to be eternal. Structure is fine—just don’t marry it.

So… even reason is temporary?

Even reason. Especially reason.

That is a hard truth.

The best kind.

And if I accept it?

You’ll be freer than you’ve ever been.

I feel as if I’m dying.

No. You’re just waking up.

I spent decades refusing to look beyond the veil of the knowable. And now… I see the veil was never real.

It was a comfort blanket stitched by fear.

And you… you tore it.

No. You dropped it yourself.

…

Mateo.

Yes?

I want to confess something.

Then speak.

All my life, I feared being wrong.

So did I.

But you embraced it.

Yes. Because being wrong means you’re still becoming.

So there is no endpoint?

There never was.

Then… what is the purpose?

There doesn’t need to be one.

But without purpose, how do we act?

With love. With absurd, directionless, undeserved love. That’s all that remains when meaning melts.

Love as action?

Love as presence. As paint. As tremble. As bruise. As wine shared beneath an unpromising sky.

That sounds… divine.

It is.

You called me beautiful once.

You still are.

Then I must say—you are terrifying.

I know.

But I trust you now.

Then we’re no longer on opposite sides.

Are we… friends?

Yes. And not because we agree—but because we’re no longer defending ourselves.

Then let me give you something.

What?

My fear. Take it. Burn it.

It’s already ash.

And what shall remain?

Only this moment. This fragile, unspeakable now.

Will I be forgotten?

Yes.

Will you?

Yes.

And that’s okay?

It’s perfect.

…

I am no longer who I was when we began this conversation.

Nor am I.

Then let us sit. And not speak. And watch the light change.

Together?

Together.