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Live, you say, in the present. 

Live only in the present. 

But I don’t want the present, I want reality. 

I want the things that exist, not the time that measures them. 

What is the present? 

It’s something in relation to the past and the future. 

It’s something that exists by virtue of other things existing. 

I want only reality, the things themselves, without any 

    present. 

I don’t want to include time in my awareness of what exists. 

I don’t want to think of things as being in the present; I want 

    to think of them as things. 

I don’t want to separate them from themselves, calling them 

    present. 

I shouldn’t even call them real. 

I shouldn’t call them anything. 

I should see them, just see them, 

See them until I can no longer think about them, 

See them without time or space, 

See with no need of anything besides what I’m seeing. 

This is the science of seeing, which is no science at all.

- Alberto Caeiro, 20 June 1919