femaleness

"He was half-drugged and overwhelmed by the forest of Our Lady. There was a curious femaleness about the interlacing boughs and twiggs, about the long green cavern cut by the river through the trees and the brilliant underbrush. The endless green halls and aisles and alcoves seemed to have meanings as obscure and promising as the symbols of an ancient religion. Joseph shivered and closed his eyes."
J. Steinbeck, To a God Unknown

Is it me or is this utterly arousing?

Reading Steinbeck after meandering through diverse ways of writing, different time and space backgrounds, is an interesting experience. How well can writers master the skill today and what do they chose to do with their ability? I enjoy digital literature for its scattering feeling and for its sort of schizophrenia. But I haven't read any "of these "digital authors" that controls writing, much less content. Then there are skillful authors, best-sellers, who write emptied thousands of pages that mean nothing, the perverse consequence of market and marketeers on writing. Other very few writers do write but in "everything has been said already" times, cynicism taints their work, a sort of "I'm embarrassed of being honest". The excess of images has gotten to literature as well, life has been averaged by means of clichés. It's the big hypocrisy, hollow words.

"The western range was still edged with the silver of the afterglow, but the valley of Our Lady was filled to the mountain-rims with darkness. The cast stars in the steelgrey fabric of the sky seemed to struggle and wink against the night. The four men sat about the coals of the fire, their faces strong with shadows. Joseph caressed his beard and his eyes were brooding and remote. Romas clasped his knees with both his arms. His cigarette gleamed red and then disappeared behind its ash."

Fílmico. O segundo livro de Steinbeck depois de um primeiro de pouco sucesso, "To a God Unknown" levou cinco anos a ser escrito, mais do que qualquer outro de Steinbeck. Uma espécie de nascimento a ferros do escritor.

la fin du monde

"J'ai connu un fou qui croyait que la fin du monde était arrivée. Il faisait de la peinture. Je l'aimait bient. J'allais le voir, à l'asile. Je le prenais par la main et le traînais devant la fenêtre. Mais regarde! Là! Tout ce blé qui lève! Et là! Regarde! Les voiles des sardiniers! Toutte cette beauté! Il m'arrachait sa main et retournait dans son coin. Epouvanté. Il n'avait vu que de cendres. Lui seul avait été épargné. Oublié. Il paraît que le cas n'est... n'était pas si... si rare."
Samuel Beckett, Fin de Parti

Mister Silva

Descontinuando o mister silva.
Na estrada.
O das horas descontínuas.
Um nada.

"jack, valete de espadas - vivaldi da lavandaria a moedas - com um dicionário de ter onda - vemo-lo a lamber das botas aos cintos negros & aceleras rebarbados - a correr para um lado & para o outro como um uncle remus assustado... nos dias em que não recebe correio, levanta-se cedo, enfia papéis nas cabines telefónicas & burla as máquinas de pastilhas elásticas... 'o mundo deve-me um modo de vida' diz ele ao primo meio-havaiano, o meio-esperto, joe a cabeça que planeia igualmente casar-se com uma cantora folk no próximo mês - 'round & round, old joe clark' está a ser recitado nos degraus do prédio de água & luz quando o jack passa devagarinho com uma mala cheia de bolhas de plástico - as coisas correm-lhe de feição: consegue fazer uma bela imitação do cary grant. ele sabe todos os factos pelos quais a mabel do utah abandonou o horace, o técnico de luz do Teatro Altitude, ele até deu com uns quantos segredos tramados da sra. Cunk, que vende bolhas falsas na feira mundial - para além disso é capaz de tocar umas quantas canções legionárias estrangeiras com um iô-iô & consegue sempre parecer uma uva em situações de emergência... gaba-se da sua colecção de nódoas negras & rolhas & do facto de não dar atenção nenhuma ao mundo dos negócios."
B. Dylan, Tarântula

Sterling Hundley

As ilustrações de Sterling Hundley. No Lines and Colors, muito bom.

stranger (2)

When the crops were under cover on the Wayne farm near Pittsford in Vermont, when the winter wood was cut and the first light snow lay on the ground, Joseph Wayne went to the wing-back chair by the fireplace late one afternoon and stood before his father. These two men were alike. Each had a large nose and high, hard cheeckbones; both faces seemed made of some material harder and more durable thatn flesh, a stony substance that did not easily change. Joseph's beard was black and silky, still thin enough so that the shadowy outline of his chin showed through. The old man's beard was long and white. He touched it here and there with exploring fingers, turned the ends neatly under out of harm's way. A moment passed before the old man realized his son was beside him. He raised his eyes, old and knowing and placid eyes and very blue. Joseph's eyes were as blue, but they were fierce and curious with youth. Now that he had come before hos father, Joseph hesitated to stand to his new heresy.

"There won't be enough in the land now, sir," he said humbly.

The old man gathered his shawl of shepherd's plaid about his thin straight shoulders. His voice was gentle, made for the ordering of simple justice. "What do you wish to complain of, Joseph?"

"You've heard that Benjy has gobe courting, sir? Benjy will be married when the spring comes; and in the fall there will be a child, and in the next summer another child. The land doesn't stretch, sir. There won't be enough."

The old man dropped his eyes slowly and watched his fingers where they wrestled sluggishly on his lap. "Benjamin hasn't told me yet. Benjamin has never been very dependable. Are you sure he has gone seriously courting?"

"The Ramseys have told it in Pittsford, sir. Jenny Ramsey has a new dress and she's prettier than usual. I saw her today. She wouldn't look at me."

"Ah; maybe it's so, then. Benjamin should tell me."

"And so you see, sir, there won't be enough in the land for all of us."

John Wayne lifted his eyes again. "The land suffices, Joseph," he said placidly. "Burton and Thomas brought their wives home and the land sufficed. You are the next in age. You should have a wife, Joseph."

"No sir," Joseph protested. "The farm is too small and-" He bent his tall body down toward his father. "I have a hunder for land of my own, sir. I have been reading about the West and the good cheap land there."

John Wayne sighed and stroke his beard and turned the ends under. A brooding silence settled between the two men while Joseph stood before the patriarch, awaiting his decision.

"If you could wait a year," the old man said at last, "a year or two is nothing when you're thirthy-five. If you could wait a year, not more than two surely, then I wouldn't mind. You're not the oldest, Joseph, but I've always thought of you as the one to have the blessing. Thomas and Burton are good men, good sons, but I've always intended the blessing for you, so you could take my place. I don't know why. There's something more strong in you than in your brothers, Joseph; more sure and inward."

"But they're homesteading the western land, sir. You have only to live a year on the land and build a house and plough a bit and the land is yours. No one can ever take it away."

"I know, I've heard of that; but suppose you should go now. I'll have only letters to tell me how you are, and what you're doing. In a year, not more than two, why I'll go with you. I'm an old man, Joseph. I'll go right along with you, over your head, in the air. I'll see the land you pick out and the kind of house you build. I'd be curious about that, you know. There might be even some way I could help you now and them. Suppose you lose a cow, maybe I could help you to find her; being up in the air like that I could see things far away. If only you wait a little while I can do that, Joseph."

"The land is being taken," Joseph said doggedly. "The century is three years gone. If I wait, the good land might all be taken. I've a hunger for the land, sir", and his eyes had grown feverish with the hunger.

John Wayne nodded and nodded, and pulled his shawl close about his shoulders. "I see," he mused. "It's not just a little restlessness. Maybe I can find you later." And then decisively: "Come to me, Joseph. Put your hand here - no, here. My father did it this way. A custom so old cannot be wrong. Now, leave your hand there!" He bowed his white head, "May the blessing of God and the my blessing rest on this child. May he live in the light of the Face. May he love his life." He paused for a moment. "Now, Joseph, you may go to the West. You are finished here with me."

The winter came soon, with deep snow, and the air was frozen to needles. For a month Joseph wandered about the house, reluctant to leave his youth and all the strong material memories of his youth, but the blessing had cut him off. He was a stranger in the house and he felt that his brothers would be glad when he was gone. He went away before the spring had come, and the grass was green on the hills on California when he arrived.

Início de "To a God unknown", de J. Steinbeck 1933

Net or no net, my tiny spider webbing spirit has been joyously weaving, from page to page to page. Ever since I dropped the evening-newsy frame of mind, tiny spidery heart has been beating hard. I had thought it "strange" that Camus' masterpiece should be translated as "Stranger" and not "outsider", which made a little more sense to me. Now I can see the possibility of connections and the full meaning of the word, used here in a similar way by Steinbeck, a quarter century before. In a way, the French/European idealised new Man came to happen fully only in America, that whiteboard of opportunity.

stranger

"The Stranger" was the book I enjoyed reading the most lately. I'd read it before, too many years ago, when life was through books. Having lived the sensuous outside, "The Stranger" comes with more vivid colors, its paradoxes more accute, its influence more positive (I hope). It's interesting to see how we can now be free, how it just took a few for liberation. Even more interesting is how freedom of thought is such a painful experience that most people reject, and I mean atheism. Mersault is a character I'm disgusted by for his indifference but he's also myself: I owe my beliefs to Mersault more than I owe the bible. Somehow, fifty years later, there is a possible middle way for the absurd/existencialist man: he knows he will die alone but, every now and then, he's still able to reach through. We're island people.

Note: I wonder what went through Michelangelo's mind when he had the ideia for the touching fingers. Adam's Creation is now revised. The spark of life is no longer, but the spark of awareness (E.T.). "Hey, I think I nailed it!" And, one musing follows another, the backgroung behind "God" is the correct anatomically accurate shape of a human brain but also of an uterus, the green cloth standing for the umbilical cord. There was never any god at all was there...

Her eyes were sparkling

Yesterday was Saturday, and Marie came as we’d arranged. She had a very pretty dress, with red and white stripes, and leather sandals, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. One could see the outline of her firm little breasts, and her sun-tanned face was like a velvety brown flower. We took the bus and went to a beach I know, some miles out of Algiers. It’s just a strip of sand between two rocky spurs, with a line of rushes at the back, along the tide line. At four o’clock the sun wasn’t too hot, but the water was pleasantly tepid, and small, languid ripples were creeping up the sand.

Marie taught me a new game. The idea was, while one swam, to suck in the spray off the waves and, when one’s mouth was full of foam, to lie on one’s back and spout it out against the sky. It made a sort of frothy haze that melted into the air or fell back in a warm shower on one’s cheeks. But very soon my mouth was smarting with all the salt I’d drawn in; then Marie came up and hugged me in the water, and pressed her mouth to mine. Her tongue cooled my lips, and we let the waves roll us about for a minute or two before swimming back to the beach.

When we had finished dressing, Marie looked hard at me. Her eyes were sparkling. I kissed her; after that neither of us spoke for quite a while. I pressed her to my side as we scrambled up the foreshore. Both of us were in a hurry to catch the bus, get back to my place, and tumble on to the bed. I’d left my window open, and it was pleasant to feel the cool night air flowing over our sunburned bodies.

The Stranger by Albert Camus
The whole book online here (.pdf file)

And if anybody knows why eyes brighten with happiness, please drop a line..

things to perpetuate memory

IN ORDER TO LOVE
SOMETHING YOU HAVE TO
HAVE SEEN IT OR HEARD IT

FOR A LONG TIME YOU BUNCH OF IDIOTS
(F. Picabia)


Things to Perputuate Memory, Francis Picabia. 1915


INTERPRETATION
Whenever I come across
morality
I seek out instinct
(F. Picabia)

---
A propósito do lançamento recente (Outubro de 2007) de "I am a Beautiful Monster - Poetry, Prose and Provocation" pelo MIT, "a selection from all of his significant books, accompanied by their original visuals" (índice aqui, uma introdução muito boa mesmo, em .pdf, aqui). E como tudo o que não passa para a língua franca é quase votado à não-existência, Picabia passa agora a existir plenamente "do outro lado do Atlântico". Além do que, sendo esta mesa mais e mais um bloco de notas, já fica aqui anotado: se passares por ele... compra. Responsável: NY Arts Magazine.

E aqui, prenda a mim própria, uma incrrrrível lista de links. Uff

muffins: e agora?

...e agora, como é que me desgrudo dos doces... umas duas semanas, nada mais.
Até lá, fico-me com os muffins.



Fresh Apple Nut Muffins (check, check, quatro e meio em cinco)
Blueberry Muffins
Queques, pois
Lemon Poppyseed Muffins (check)
Lawsuit Buttermilk Muffins

construindo

"Ephemeral Creation"

Digging, digging Albert Camus. Come back, read again, reread, recall. Another author that is difficult to find on the Portuguese bookstore "modern" shelf. Best-sellers and TV anchors, starlets and celebrities, gourmet-wanna-be-picture-books. Paper waste. Here I leave a short essay, this and a few more here. The Paradox of Absurd.

Ephemeral Creation
Albert Camus

At this point I perceive, therefore, that hope cannot be eluded forever and that it can beset even those who wanted to be free of it. This is the interest I find in the works discussed up to this point. I could, at least in the realm of creation, list some truly absurd works. (Melville's Moby Dick, for instance). But everything must have a beginning. The object of this quest is a certain fidelity. The Church has been so harsh with heretics only because she deemed that there is no worse enemy than a child who has gone astray. But the record of the Gnostic effronteries and the persistence of Manichean currents have contributed more to the construction of orthodox dogma than all the prayers. With due allowance, the same is true of the absurd. One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it. At the very conclusion of the absurd reasoning, in one of the attitudes dictated by its logic, it is not a matter of indifference to find hope coming back in under one of the most touching guises. That shows the difficulty of the absurd ascetics. Above all, it shows the necessity of unfailing alertness and thus confirms the general plan of this essay.

But if it is still too early to list absurd works, at least a conclusion can be reached as to the creative attitude, one of those which can complete absurd existence. Art can never be so well served as by a negative thought. Its dark and humiliated precedings are as necessary to the understanding of a great work as black is to white. To work and create "for nothing," to sculpture in clay, to know one's creation has no future, to see one's work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries---this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on the one hand and magnifying on the other, it the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors.

This leads to a special conception of the work of art. Too often the work of a creator is looked upon as a series of isolated testimonies. Thus, artist and man of letters are confused. A profound thought is in a constant state of becoming; it adopts the experience of a life and assumes its shape. Likewise, a man's sole creation is strengthened in its successive and multiple aspects: his works. One after another they complement one another, correct or overtake one another, contradict one another, too. If something brings creation to an end, it is not the victorious and illusory cry of the blinded artist: "I have said everything," but the death of the creator which closes his experiences and the book of his genius.

That effort, that superhuman consciousness are not necessarily apparent to the reader. There is no mystery in human creation. Will performs this miracle. But at least there is no true creation without a secret. To be true, a succession of works can be but a series of approximations of the same thought. But it is possible to conceive of another type of creator proceeding by juxtaposition. Their words may seem to be devoid of inter-relations, to a certain degree, they are contradictory. But viewed all together, they resume their natural groupings. From death, for instance, they derive their definitive significance. They receive their most obvious light from the very life of their author. At the moment of death, the succession is but a collection of failures. But if those failures all have the same resonance, the creator has managed to repeat the image of his own condition, to make the air echo with the sterile secret he possesses.

The effort to dominate is considerable here. But human intelligence is up to much more. It will merely indicate clearly the voluntary aspect of creation. Elsewhere I have brought out the fact that human had no other purpose than to maintain awareness. But that could not do without discipline. Of all the schools of patience and lucidity, creation is the most effective. It is also the staggering evidence of man's sole dignity: the dogged revolt against his condition, perseverance in an effort considered sterile. It calls for a daily effort, self-mastery, a precise estimate of the limits of truth, measure, and strength. It constitutes an ascesis. All that "for nothing," in order to repeat and mark time. But perhaps the great work of art has less importance in itself than in the ordeal it demands of a man and the opportunity it provides him of overcoming his phantoms and approaching a little closer to his naked reality.

Let there be no mistake about aesthetics. It is not patient inquiry, the unceasing, sterile illustration of a thesis that I am calling for here. Quite the contrary, if I have made myself clearly understood. The thesis-novel, the work that proves, the most hateful of all, is the one that most often is inspired by a smug thought. You demonstrate the truth you feel sure of possessing. But those are ideas one launches, and ideas are the contrary of thought. Those creators are philosophers, ashamed of themselves. Those I am speaking of or whom I imagine are, on the contrary, lucid thinkers. At a certain point where thought turns back on itself, they raise up the images of their works like the obvious symbols of a limited, mortal, and rebellious thought.
They perhaps prove something. But those proofs are the ones that the novelists provide for themselves rather than for the world in general. The essential is that the novelists should triumph in the concrete and that this constitute their nobility. This wholly carnal triumph has been prepared for them by a thought in which abstract powers have been humiliated. When they are completely so, at the same time the flesh makes the creation shine forth in all its absurd luster. After all, ironic philosophies produce passionate works.

Any thought that abandons unity glorifies diversity! And diversity is the home of art. The only thought to liberate the mind is that which leaves it alone, certain of its limits and of its impending end. No doctrine tempts it. It awaits the ripening of the work and of life. Detached from it, the work will once more give a barely muffled voice to a soul forever freed from hope. Or it will give voice to nothing if the creator, tired of his activity, intends to turn away. That is equivalent.
Thus, I ask of absurd creation what I required from thought---revolt, freedom, and diversity. Later on it will manifest its utter futility. In that daily effort in which intelligence mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths. The required diligence and doggedness and lucidity thus resemble the conqueror's attitude. To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate. For all these characters, their work defines them at least as much as it is defined by them. The actor taught us this: There is no frontier between being and appearing.

Let me repeat. None of all this has any real meaning. On the way to that liberty, there is still a progress to be made. The final effort for these related minds, creator or conqueror, is to manage to free themselves also from their undertakings: succeed the granting that the very work, whether it be conquest, love, or creation, may well not be; consummate thus the utter futility of any individual life. Indeed, that gives them more freedom in the realization of their work, just as becoming aware of the absurdity of life authorized them to plunge into it with every excess.
All that remains is a fate whose outcome alone is fatal. Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty. A world remains of which man is the sole master. What bound him was the illusion of another world. The outcome of his thought, ceasing to be renunciatory, flowers in images. It frolics---in myths, to be sure, but myths with no other depth than that of human suffering and, like it, inexhaustible. Not the divine fable that amuses and blinds, but the terrestrial face, gesture, and drama in which are summed up a difficult wisdom and an ephemeral passion.

From chapter 10 of The Myth of Sisyphus: "Absurd Creation: Ephemeral Creation". 1942.

Arroz mexicano

Nunca acertei com o arroz, ou cru ou sem sal, ou cozido demais, ou isto ou aquilo. Mas este, hmmm, tem de vir para aqui para haver mais momentos de felicidade no lar.

Arroz mexicano
O quê: 1 chávena de cebola picada, 2 colheres de sopa de óleo de girassol, mais 3/4 chávena de pimento verde picado, 2 chávenas de arroz agulha, 3 chávenas de água em que se dissolveu um caldo de galinha, 1 lata de tomate em pedaços, 1 pacote de polpa de tomate (quase todo) e o verdadeiro segredo: 2 colheres de chá de chili powder, 1 colher de chá de sal refinado, 1/2 colher de chá de cominhos moídos e 1/4 colher de chá de pimenta preta moída.

Como: Fritar o arroz no óleo até estar dourado, juntar a cebola e o pimento e deixar cozinhar até a cebola estar transparente. Juntar o tomate todo, o caldo e os temperos e deixar cozinhar uns 25 minutos, aqui é que não contei bem! Até evaporar a água.

E pequeno-almoço: Lemon Poppyseed Muffins. que mais virão e mesmo estes talvez venham a mudar de post. Mas enquanto não chegam os líquidos com álcool mais de primavera, é o que se pode arranjar, com a minha queda para feiticeira sem nexo literal dos ingredientes. Há que trazer KAOS à cozinha.

Já agora: para o tal "Chili Powder", experimentar juntar 3 colheres de chá de colorau, 1 de cominhos moídos, 1 de pimenta de caiena, 2 de orégãos moídos e 1/2 de alho moído. Só para ver... Outras, muitas, e a história delas todas. Quem diria que esta mistura foi inventada por um alemão no Texas em 1902.

finalmente: 1 colher café chili, 1 cc alho, 1 cc cominhos moídos, 1 cc colorau, 1 cc orégãos, 1 colher sobremesa sal.

o equilíbrio do dia

Revisão, revisões. D'O Estrangeiro, Camus. Edição dos Livros do Brasil, data não encontro mas eu comprei-o em 90 porque queria uma cópia, a minha mãe sempre a reclamar que eu lhe tirava os livros e nunca mais devolvia. Queria tomar notas e sublinhar e pôr pontos de exclamação e marcá-los com guardanapos de papel de café. No liceu enchia as páginas de notas minúsculas a lápis, por todo o lado, na Faculdade a mesma coisa, a páginas tantas e tantas. Por acaso neste não escrevi nada. Nos anos oitenta o escrevinhar era mais compulsivo. Precisamente nove meses depois de comprar este livro, nasceu a minha filha. Não que me lembre, a única coisa que escrevi no livro, a caneta, foi o mês e o ano em que o comprei. Esta edição d'O Estrangeiro foi traduzida por Rogério Fernandes, informação que aparece minúscula, na página lateral. O árabe aparece umas vezes com minúscula, outras com maiúscula. Bem que a Cotovia lhe podia pegar. Por outro lado, têm um certo encanto estas edições baratíssimas de grandes livros.

___

Distinguia, de longe, a pequena massa sombria do rochedo, rodeado de uma auréola formada pela luz e pela poeira do mar. Pensava na nascente fresca que havia por trás do rochedo. Desejava reencontrar o murmúrio da água que dela brotava, desejava fugir ao esforço, às lágrimas de mulher, desejava, enfim, reencontrar a sombra e o repouso. Mas quando cheguei mais perto, vi que o árabe de Raimundo voltara ali.

Estava só. Descansava de costas, as mãos debaixo da nuca, a cabeça nas sombras do rochedo e o resto do corpo ao sol. O seu trajo fumegava de calor. Fiquei um pouco admirado. Para mim, era história antiga, e viera para aqui sem pensar no caso. Logo que me viu, levantou-se e meteu a mão na algibeira. Eu, muito naturalmente, agarrei no revólver de Raimundo, dentro do casaco. Então, o árabe deixou-se cair outra vez para trás, mas sem tirar a mão da algibeira. Eu estava bastante longe dele, a uns dez metros de distância. Adivinhava-lhe por instantes o olhar, entre as pálpebras semicerradas. Mas a maioria das vezes a imagem dele dançava diante dos meus olhos, na atmosfera inflamada. O barulho das vagas era ainda mais preguiçoso do que ao meio-dia. Eram o mesmo sol e a mesma luz, que se prolongavam até este momento. Havia já duas horas que o dia deitara a sua âncora neste oceano de metal fervente. No horizonte, passou um pequeno vapor. Adivinhei-lhe a mancha negra com o canto do olho, pois não cessava de fitar o árabe.

Pensei que me bastava voltar para trás e tudo ficaria resolvido. Mas atrás de mim, comprimia-se uma imensa praia vibrante de sol. Dei alguns passos para a nascente. O árabe não se moveu. Apesar disso, estava ainda bastante longe. parecia sorrir, talvez por causa das sombras que se lhe projectavam na cara. Esperei. A ardência do sol do dia em que a minha mãe fora a enterrar e, como então, doía-me a testa, sobretudo a testa e todas as suas veias batiam ao mesmo tempo debaixo da pele. Por causa desta queimadura que já não podia suportar mais, fiz um movimento para a frente. Sabia que era estúpido, que não me iria desembaraçar do sol simplesmente por dar um passo em frente. Mas dei um passo, um só passo em frente. E desta vez, sem se levantar, o árabe tirou a navalha da algibeira e mostrou-ma ao sol. A luz reflectiu-se no aço e era como uma longa lâmina faiscante que me atingisse a testa. No mesmo momento, o suor amontoado nas sobrancelhas correu-me de súbito pelas pálpebras abaixo e cobriu-as com um véu morno e espesso. Os meus olhos ficaram cegos, por detrás desta cortina de lágrimas e de sal. Sentia apenas as pancadas do sol na testa e, indistintamente, a espada de fogo brotou da navalha, sempre diante de mim. Esta espada a arder corroía-me as pestanas e penetrava-me nos olhos doridos. Foi então que tudo vacilou. O mar enviou-me um sopro espesso e fervente. Pareceu-me que o céu se abria em toda a sua extensão, deixando tombar uma chuva de fogo. Todo o meu ser se retesou e crispei a mão que segurava o revólver. O gatilho cedeu, toquei na superfície lisa da coronha e foi aí, com um barulho ao mesmo tempo seco e ensurdecedor, que tudo principiou. Sacudi o suor e o sol. Compreendi que destruíra o equilíbrio do dia, o silêncio excepcional de uma praia onde havia sido feliz. Voltei então a disparar mais quatro vezes contra um corpo inerte, onde as balas se enterravam sem se dar por isso. E era como se batesse quatro leves pancadas, à porta da desgraça.

De O Estrangeiro, Camus

error

Jack Ziegler, cartoonista do New Yorker

Visionaries from the New China

Aqui, um filme narrado por Britta Erickson, na revista Atlantic.

Rauschenberg's Cardbirds

No mês passado, vi a exposição de Robert Rauschenberg no Museu de Serralves (até 30 de Março). Com muitas obras expostas, vale bem a pena visitar. Impressionantes para mim as composições de cartão, caixotes de papelão, o que se deita fora e o mais perene. Pena que o folheto, o catálogo ou até imagens não estejam na página do Museu, ao contrário do que faz a National Gallery of Australia, com uma exposição de Rauschenberg que termina daqui a dois dias, mas que tem galeria online.

The Cardbird Series:
"Rauschenberg has suggested that his choice of cardboard as a material was the result of his wish ‘to work in a material of waste and softness’. The Cardbird series is a tongue-in-cheek visual joke. It is in fact a printed mimic of cardboard constructions. The labour intensive process remains invisible to the viewer – the artist created a prototype cardboard construction which was then photographed and the image transferred to a lithographic press and printed before a final lamination onto cardboard backing. By choosing the most mundane of materials, Rauschenberg once again succeeds in a glamorous make-over of the most ordinary. The Cardbird series is an exploration of a new order of materials, a radical scrambling of the material hierarchy of Modernism." do NGA


Cardbird I



Cardbird II

Cardbird III



Cardbird IV


Cardbird V



Cardbird VI



Cardbird VII

"Durante mais de cinco anos, aproveitei intencionalmente todas as oportunidades que o meu trabalho me proporcionou para chamar a atenção para problemas do mundo, atrocidades locais e, nalguns casos, celebrar os feitos da Humanidade. Esforcei-me por reunir influências com vista a fazer surgir uma relação mais realista entre o artista, a ciência e os negócios, num mundo que ameaça aniquilar-se por uma ninharia. O progresso não é possível sem consciência (...) Esta é a minha responsabilidade mas é esgotante."
"Passado algum tempo (...), cresceu em mim um desejo de trabalhar num material de desperdício e macio. Uma coisa que produzisse com a sua mensagem única uma colecção de linhas impressas como uma piada amigável. Uma discussão muda da sua história patenteada pelas suas novas formas. Trabalhando comummente com felicidade. Caixas."

Robert Rauschenberg, "Note: in Cardbirds", Los Angeles: Gemini G.E.L., 1971
Texto este na primeira página do folheto da exposição de Serralves.

a rainy night in Georgia

"Track 2 de l'album "Presenting the Gladiators" (1979). The Gladiators est un groupe de reggae jamaïcain formé en 1967 et toujours en activité. La formation initiale se compose de 3 amis issus du même quartier de Kingston 11: Albert Griffiths, Errol Grandison et David Webber. Ils enregistrent leur premier single en 1967 qui sort en face B du Train to Skaville des Ethiopians, ceux-ci étant crédités comme interprètes de la chanson. Leur premier succès est le single Hello Carol en décembre 1968. En 1976, grâce à la signature avec le label Virgin, la trilogie Trenchtown Mix Up, Proverbial Reggae et Naturality est distribuée partout en Europe. Beaucoup de leurs titres deviennent des classiques du reggae. Albert Griffiths a passé en 2004 le relais à son fils, Al Griffiths, avec l'album Father and Sons. "

Sexta, sexta. Através do the Goat Barn, "fresh organic ethnic cuisine for ears ",
música aos meus ouvidos gulosos.

The taste of Bread

"O gosto do Pão", um livro colaborativo de Jorge Molder e João Miguel Fernandes Jorge, de 1988. No site de Molder leio que estas fotografias nunca fora expostas e pasmo. Eu tinha já falado deste livro, através de outro de Fernandes Jorge, "Fins-de-Semana". Um livro objecto também: "Jorge Molder's most difficult book to find : One long sheet is accordeon folded between two black tissu covered boards, and slipped in a case. 21 b/w photographs beautifully printed in duotone." ("O Gosto do Pão", Jorge Molder com João Miguel Fernandes Jorge, Ed.EPAC, Lisboa 1989)







Voltarei de certeza a ambos: quanto mais os olho, mais vontade.


Depos de ter falado toda a manhã
com um estranho acerca daquela anónima
cabeça de rapaz do século dezasseis

sinto que é de matéria breve que
tenho composto todos os meus objectos
todos ordenados à vida e sem aquela

alegria que devemos encontrar
no que tentamos reduzir ao tempo.
Uma só hora daquela cabeça não
caberia em toda a manhã

porque ela é lisa como o vidro
e nenhuma dissertação de arte
a poderá tornar densa e as suas ideias
essas somos nós que

as fabricamos.

João Miguel Fernandes Jorge, do vol. I da Obra Poética
para ser reencontrado na Única quase todas as semanas.
E aqui, um texto obrigatório de João Miguel Fernandes Jorge sobre a obra de Jorge Molder.

back

Looking back at what was and could have been, could have seen, seemed at the time and now.
The distance between those dots.
The shapes of being.
And the major accident which I am, right here, tonight.

viagem

Um favorito de sempre, muitas vezes refugiada, João Miguel Fernandes Jorge.
Um post para descontrair enquanto espero pela Cândida.


A ave que paira
sobre as dunas, a corda
que ferimos.

A ilusão à entrada
do outono,
erro com que descemos
às praças e cafés.

De um antigo mundo:
um novo amigo
com traços de viagem
nos olhos e na fala.

Pensamos e agimos de modo
muito novo sobre a terra.
Pretexto de encontrar.

Do vol. I da Obra Poética

Daqui Pr'á Frente

Um bom texto sobre este filme, que eu quero ver, no blogue da Visão.
Uma conversa com Catarina Ruivo, a realizadora deste "Daqui Pr'á Frente" e de "André Valente", ontem dia 23 no Pessoal e Transmissível de Carlos Vaz Marques, aqui, para ouvir na íntegra.

Talking about Revolution, Zhou Lunyou

Uma das fotos de 2007 no USNews, the "Bird's Nest", o Ninho : o novo estádio olímpico em construção, e a notícia da morte de trabalhadores "olímpicos".

Zhou Lunyou
Talking about Revolution
In imitation of a particular ideological discourse (April 14, 1993)

Revolution is not a dinner party..... – Mao Zedong

Chairman Mao said only the half of it about revolution
I’ll supply the remaining half
First I want to say: This topic of revolution is very big
Very broad, we can’t get a grasp of it
We can only see a color (which makes us remember
That the blood of revolutionary martyrs did not flow in vain)
Red is the representative color of revolution. Hence the red flag
Is red, the red scarf is red, the revolutionary
soldier’s heart is red, the red sun is red
…..
Also the “two hands of revolution”: Conspiracy becomes an overt act
Treachery becomes virtue, it triumphs over honesty and intelligence
Anything can be said in the name of revolution
And it becomes irrefutable truth, not open to doubt

…..
….. These are all
Basic principles of revolution, inviolable
Born into New China, nurtured beneath the red flag
You and I grew up drinking the milk of revolution
Of course we know what revolution is. Revolution is
instantly effective when using the class struggle, when the three mountains
Are toppled, we stamp another foot down on them

A million feet, teach them that they will never stand again
Revolution is a political campaign, incite masses to struggle against masses
Fight yourself: Ruthlessly struggle against fleeting thoughts of the word “private”
Revolution is revolt to its greatest degree (combat imperialism combat revisionism
Combat leftism combat rightism combat liberalization combat peaceful evolution)
Only revolution cannot be opposed (counter revolution carries a death penalty)
This way of saying it is still too abstract, let me explain
More concretely: Revolution is to examine ancestry back three generations
There is theory of class status, but not theory of the unique importance of class
origins
…..
Revolution is overt plotting, is to lure the snakes out of their nests
Especially to attack snakes with eyeglasses (the more knowledgeable
The more reactionary) Revolution is the East Wind prevailing over the West Wind
Its “asking for instructions in the morning”, “reporting back in the evening”, the
fandango of loyalty
Mao’s quotations sung. It’s Attention Long Live Chairman Mao To the right Dress
Down with Liu Shaoqi Look to the front Forever loyal to Chairman Mao
To the left Turn Forever
…..
Chairman Mao waves and I advance
Revolution is a vast world that tempers red hearts
It’s to recall past suffering

…..
To adore New China even more. It’s Lei Feng
Wang Jie, Yang Zirong, Ouyang Hai, Guo Jianguang
Just before dying the hero raises his arm in salute and shouts:
“Long Live Chairman Mao! The diary is under the pillow.....”
Revolution is Xi’er not becoming Huang Shiren’s concubine
The ignominiousness of Wang Debiao as a traitor. Li Yuhe
Before departing drinking a bowl of wine to his mother, Thank you Ma!

Heroes always fall beneath the same pine tree
Accompanied by The Internationale, there’s no pain
The final victory must surely be ours
Revolution is not to allow monsters and demons to act and speak carelessly
Much less allow them to fart! Class warfare must be stressed day in day out
Month in month out year in year out (with regard to farting
Only later did we hear that it is beneficial to mind and body)
Now the wording is different: one center two points
Class struggle must still be stressed. Revolution is to
Emancipate thought, seek truth from facts, not to wrong good people
Initially it gave you hats to wear, now it gives you redress
All is correct, all is revolutionary necessity
Correcting one’s own mistakes is the equivalent of making no mistakes
Revolution is “dichotomy”, and the “seventy-thirty ratio”
Results are of paramount importance. Don’t get cocky
(Being more correct than chairman Mao is in itself an error)
Revolution is the reimportation and sale of exports, defective goods
Sold to Chinese, don’t worship foreign things
With foreigners you can transcend ideology
Not with nationals. Or in other words
Peacefully coexist with imperialism, with the people
Under no circumstances be soft-hearted! This is called distinguishing between
domestic and foreign

Government policy and tactics are the life of the Party, now
There’s no need to recite them, but they must continue to be carried out
The East Wind did not prevail over the West Wind, but
Certainly will never be overwhelmed by the West Wind. Future prospects
Are bright, the road is torturous
Revolution is like feeling for rocks with your feet while wading across a river,
suddenly left
Suddenly right, it’s difficult to avoid paying some tuition
It’s all a matter of dressing warmly and eating one’s fill. A comparatively well-off

level of living. Double it and double that again
Now we need to lengthen our strides a bit
Revolution is to get things moving, for a second time
Distribute land to the farmers (no change for fifty years)
It’s all the people going into business. A stockholding system. A market economy
Revolution is changing from agricultural to non-agricultural producer, the “54321
Office”
(Five stresses four beauties three ardors two civilizations brought together as one)
Possessing Chinese characteristics. Casual pissing and shitting is not allowed
But of a billion people nine hundred million gamble. Saunas at public expense
Blind wandering of the unemployed. Syphilis. Sexual diseases spread widely
Is revolution surnamed “socialist” or “capitalist”, it’s hard to say
Don’t argue anymore. Together all the people of the land look to money
Ultimately revolution is an issue about cats
I approve of this way of saying it: white cat black cat
If it catches mice, it’s a good cat. Finally, I want to say
Revolution is buying a cat over an open sack
Revolution is catching the mice

-
no livro, online, China's Second World of Poetry: The Sichuan Avant-Garde 1982-1992, para descarregar inteirinho em .pdf e ir lendo em papel.
e The Poetry of Zhou Lunyou, também em .pdf.


Zhou Lunyou was born in 1952 in Xichang, Sichuan province. Zhou began to secretly write
poetry in the early 1970s, and had his first Misty-style poems officially published in 1981. By
1984, however, he had lost interest in the official scene and was concentrating on the
modernization of poetics and technique, which led him into Sichuan’s unofficial poetry scene.
After taking an editorial role in the publication of Modernists Federation 现代诗内部交流资料
in early 1985 and contributing to other journals that year, Zhou set about establishing his own
poetry journal in the spring of 1986: Not-Not 非非. Between 1986-1989, he edited four editions
of the journal and two of the Not-Not Critiques 非非评论 paper. Yet, in August 1989, Zhou was
arrested for “inciting counter-revolution” and after spending a few months in prison in Xichang
was shifted to a labor camp in the mountains of western Sichuan until his release in September
1991. While incarcerated, he continued to write poetry (in 6 below) and in 1992 oversaw the reissue
of Not-Not. A second combined #6-7 edition appeared in 1993, but further editions were
delayed until 2000, and are now published in Hongkong, while Zhou splits his time between
Xichang and Chengdu. In 1994, a publishing house in Dunhuang, Gansu province, hired Zhou to
edit a series of books of post-modernist literature, which included a collection of Not-Not-ism
poetry and theory. In 1999, Zhou was able to have a volume of his theoretical writings officially
published in China and a collection of his poetry published in Taiwan.

Ouvindo... Lucky Dog Radio, "where the flame of freeform radio still burns".

Hoje, 23 de Janeiro

Hoje, em Gaza, depois de homens armados terem derrubado com explosivos o muro que separa Gaza (perto de Rafah) do Egipto, milhares de pessoas saltaram esse muro derrubado e saíram de Gaza, pela primeira vez em meses ou anos, nalguns casos na vida toda. Empobrecidos pela falta de tudo, medicamentos, comida, gasolina, cimento, que os embargos israelitas têm causado, é com avidez que os palestinianos de Gaza saltam a fronteira. Hoje, dia 23 de Fevereiro, há quem sinta isso e quem calce esses sapatos: um dia de liberdade em Gaza.





In pictures, na BBC.





E viva a internet livre. A AlJazeera no Youtube.

King Saud's got four hundred wives

___________ P a r a b é n s

Zhang Huan

No último número da DAMn cada artigo é para blogar, blogar, falar, ahhh, ohhh. Tirei emprestado Zhang Huan, um artista chinês que trabalha em Nova Iorque e Pequim. Gosto do que faz, quase incondicionalmente, no gume das ideias.

Por aqui, os bustos de cinza. De 2007, de cinza, aço e madeira.








Altered States: Art of Zhang Huan


12 Square Meters:
"What went through your mind during your performance piece 12 Square Meters, when you sat in a public toilet for one hour, covered in honey and fish oil?
ZH: During the performance, I wanted to transcend the environment. Flies were buzzing around my head and landing on my body, but I tried to forget the discomfort. Afterwards, I actually felt very calm." (a entrevista toda aqui)

literal people are scary, man

Ani DiFranco
"Literal" do livro de 2007 "Verses"





Um dia e pêras..

"Meanwhile wild things are not for sale Anymore than they are for show So i'll be outside, in love with the kind of beauty It takes more than eyes to know Just show me a moment that is mine Its beauty blinding and unsurpassed And i'll forget every moment that went by And left me so half-hearted Cuz i felt it so half-assed." da canção Half-Assed no último CD, Retrieve, de 2006.

A bicicleta amarela, de novo a melhorar o dia

Agora, que já aprendi o truque.


The Yellow Bicycle
Robert Haas

The woman I love is greedy,
but she refuses greed.
She walks so straightly.
When I ask her what she wants,
she says, "A yellow bicycle."
.

Sun, sunflower,
coltsfoot on the roadside,
a goldfinch, the sign
that says Yield, her hair,
cat's eyes, his hunger
and a yellow bicycle.
.

Once, when they had made love in the middle of the night and
it was very sweet, they decided they were hungry, so they got up,
got dressed, and drove downtown to an all-night donut shop.
Chicano kids lounged outside, a few drunks, and one black man
selling dope. Just at the entrance there was an old woman in a
thin floral print dress. She was barefoot. Her face was covered
with sores and dry peeling skin. The sores looked like raisins and
her skin was the dry yellow of a parchment lampshade ravaged by
light and tossed away. They thought she must have been hungry
and, coming out again with a white paper bag full of hot rolls,
they stopped to offer her one. She looked at them out of her small
eyes, bewildered, and shook her head for a little while, and said,
very kindly, "No."
.

Her song to the yellow bicycle:
The boats on the bay
have nothing on you,
my swan, my sleek one!

No livro "Praise" .
---
Entrevistado por Grace Cavalieri em 1997, para a American Poetry Review:
(aqui o texto completo, meus itálicos e negritos)

RH: Because of all that has been going on in Congress with the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, I’ve heard lots of speeches in which people say the arts in America in trouble and I always think, they are? It’s news to me. Do people really think that in the future they are really going to remember this as the age of Jesse Helms or the age of Toni Morrison? There are great writers working among us, doing great work. It’s not by accident that the last four Nobel Prize winners, none of whom were Americans, live and work in this country. Three of the four are American citizens. This has been a place enormously hospitable to poetry. We’ve had, after how many years between contact and 1965, let's say, there was very little Native American poetry in English. Suddenly there is a really interesting body of new work in poetry and fiction from Native American people. In my part of the world there has been the sudden creation of the voice of Asian Americans.

GC: That’s right. And a Latin influx. A second immigration. It’s incredibly influencing our work.

RH: Yes. And there an interesting new generation of postmodern writers, experimental writers, mainly concentrated in places like New York and San Francisco. I think that there’s a tremendous amount of liveliness in American writing right now.

GC: Is that what you call postmodern - experimental?

RH: Well I think there are different kinds of experiment but I would say that one quick way o thinking about postmodern work is that it always has an element of questioning the materials of the art, exploring questions around what the art can do.

GC: And accumulating a lot of it, different kinds

RH: There is dazzling work being done. I can name just a couple of writers and a couple of books for people who are interested in that sort of difficult, playful work at the edges. Work that’s like jazz. Some of these writers are going to be coming to the Library to read right now. I recently saw an anthology of poetry and poetry about jazz. And one of the things that struck me about it was there were an enormous number of poems about jazz and jazz musicians.

GC: Was that from University of Indiana?

RH: Yes, but almost none of the poems were like jazz. They were about jazz.

GC: You're right. Now who are the writers who are writing jazz, poetry like jazz.

RH: One is a woman named Lyn Hejinian, whose husband is a jazz musician. If you want to see what this kind of writing is like at its most dazzling and demanding. She has written a book which I think is one of the most interesting in my generation. It's called My Life. It’s a prose work, prose poetry I guess or in some borderland between prose and poetry. And the other is Michael Palmer. He’s like those jazz musicians who play chords all around the melody, never quite playing, don’t want to play the melody,and he’s extremely interesting in that way. There are at the same time powerful writers working in the realist tradition. So any way I would say a couple of other things. That there are 900 books of poetry published in this country every year. Three a day. There are 400 poetry magazines on the Internet. I think part of the ground work for this interest got laid by the work that’s been done by our cultural institutions including the NEA. (...)

GC: Can we have a final remark from you about American poetry?

RH: Poetry is alive and flourishing in this country, and people will find out just by going into their book stores and looking at the poetry shelves.

--
Robert Hass: "Eight years of activism, writing, and reflection":
outra entrevista, esta de Novembro de 2007, aqui:

"Some of the work I did during that period [1997-2007] was environmental work. In 1995, with Pam Michael, I started a nonprofit to encourage children to make art and poetry about their watersheds, as a way of encouraging environmental education of an interdisciplinary kind in the schools. That program, the Watershed Project, is now 10 years old."

A receber o National Book Award de Poesia:


A Story About the Body
The young composer, working that summer at an artist's colony, had watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she made amused or considered answers to his questions. One night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she turned to him and said, "I think you would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you I have had a double mastectomy," and when he didn't understand, "I've lost both my breasts." the radiance that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity--like music--withered, very quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said, "I'm sorry. I don't think I could." He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl--she must have swept them from the corners of her studio--was full of dead bees.--by Robert Haas

asas

Eram asas a bater no marfim.

Lousã

Lousa

mystic garden: basílico

Gravilha no fundo do vaso, composto vegetal normalíssimo, húmido, várias sementes por vaso com meio centímetro de terra em cima, pressionar. O vaso tem de apanhar umas 3 ou 4 horas de sol por dia, sem ser demaisado quente. Regar uma vez por semana na base da planta e não as folhas, o vaso deve escoar bem a água. Fertilizar uma vez por mês. É possível semear todo o ano, a planta deverá durar cerca de 3 ou 4 meses. Para manter: ir retirando todas as flores. Para usar, retirar folhas de várias plantas, e não só de uma, usar as folhas de cima e não da base. Para secar: cortar pela base do caule e pendurar ao contrário num local quente e seco durante uma semana. Guardar em saco hermético, dura até um ano. Tudo para dentro de casa, que na rua é diferente.

Isto podia ter sido uma resolução de fim-de-ano, mas na altura esqueci-me. Nunca na vida me dei bem com o mundo vegetal: toco-lhes e murcham logo. Não lhes deito água ou ensopo-as, não lhes falo (falo sozinha), ponho sementes ou o que seja na altura oposta do ano e luz ou sol ou a mais ou a menos. Só os cactos me sobrevivem e a custo. Mas que gostava mesmo muito de ter basílico na minha cozinha, ah isso gostava.

O melhor jardim do mundo, o da Júlia.

Trabalhando a ouvir Barcelona Jazz Radio.

on the red

so g-o-d damn annoyed I could f/ing explode.

publicidade doméstica

série pequenos mundos, na série porto de abrigo, na série eu sem medo.

Henna

"I get up, smoke a cigarette, and look out the window. I see a woman sitting on a balcony, coating her loose hair with henna. I's an erotic image. I think of her, not as she is now but after her bath; I can almost smell the scent of henna, the scent of her skin."

Tahar Ben Jelloun's Corruption, my new read. The broken man - L'homme rompu translated into "corruption": how it soaks the mind, silently, pervasively. A writer of people and their daily difficulties, I caught a rare moment of quietness in Jelloun's social argument. Will come back for more. A good summary here, in French.

The author on "Corruption": "Dans L'homme rompu, un roman qui raconte comment un honnête homme est poussé à la corruption par sa femme, je parlais déjà de l'usure de la vie conju­gale. Dans la société marocaine, le mal­entendu entre l'homme et la femme est permanent. [...] Le statut de la femme donne, à tort, l'apparence d'une société patriarcale." And a very tentative translation: In "Corruption", a novel that tells how an honest man is pushed to corruption by his wife, I mention already the friction in married life. In Moroccan society the misunderstanding betweem man and wife is permanent. The role of the wife makes it seem a patriarch society. Marriage. What a wonderful institution.

morrer e ir para o "céu"

"Nada é repetível, tudo é repetente? Era o que eu perguntava na catequese. E mais buscava, em clareza:
- A vida, Santo e Deus, tem segunda via?
O Padre Bento não queria nem escutar: só a dúvida, em si, já era desobediência. Primeiro, ninguém descasca duas vezes o gergelim. Depois, vale a pena o pecado se confessável. E Bento avisava: não se entra no Céu de qualquer maneira. Aquilo lá, nos portões celestiais, requer devida licença. E mais eu perguntava: quem executa essa triagem, à entrada do paraíso? Um encartado porteiro? Um tribunal com seus veneráveis julgadores?

Passaram anos, persistiram enganos. E ainda por esclarecer me resta o assunto. É por isso que regresso ao senhor para que me escute, nem que seja por religioso fingimento. Se faça-me o favor, senhor padre, me diga: cuja essa entrada no Paraíso é à moda da raça, ou das cláusulas de sermos um zé-alguém? Os pretos como eu, salvo sou, apanham licença? Ou precisam pagar umas facilidades, encomendar um abre-boca nalgum mandante?"

Mia Couto, do conto "Entrada no Céu" no livro "O Fio das Missangas"
Às vezes, várias, variadas, faz bem.

vulnerable

Lines darkening the skin. Palms up.
Voice tracks on the back of my hand.

Estas contas e as outras, dou daqui este pedaço, mas quero aquele, vou tomar nota de tudo no caderninho, para depois comparar e ter a certeza. Porque se passo para aqui depois tenho de ter a certeza que ali também dá, tenho que ver bem, ir com cuidado e murar a coisa. O que faria sem as notas que tomei, escrevi tudo ponto por pontos, iis e acentos, o que fizeram e o que fiz e onde fui e todas as coisas que passaram de mão e todas as lâmpadas que mudei, as migalhas, contei-as, as que apanhei do chão e as que deixei lá ficar de propósito para poder depois dizer que ninguém apanha a porcaria das migalhas, o melhor é mesmo medir melhor aquela parte da parede, e a janela, não vá ser um bocadinho maior ou um bocadinho mais pequena. Se eu pudesse ter tudo contido, contado, não vá agora dar o que não posso. Ponho esta linha e subtraio aquela, não era minha sequer: tomo nota.

Alexandre Orion

Alexandre Orion, graffiti artist de São Paulo. Gostei muito dos seus vultos negros, fotografados depois e gostei ainda mais da ideia do Ossário, cemitérios ao longo dos túneis de São Paulo, tirar sujidade em vez de acrescentar tinta. Desta vez, as imagens falam sem palavras.

navio

Short story, contos, curta-metragem das letras. Sempre o meu favorito das rápidas, Guy de Maupassant. Aqui, o início de "O Medo" de 1882 no nº 7 da Ficções.

Subimos à coberta depois do jantar. Diante de nós, o Mediterrâneo não tinha um tremor em toda a superfície, que uma grande lua calma fazia brilhar. O grande navio deslizava, atirando para o céu, que parecia semeado de estrelas, uma enorme serpente de fumo negro; e, atrás de nós, a água muito branca, agitada pela passagem rápida da pesada embarcação, castigada pela hélice, espumava, parecia torcer-se e revolvia tantos brilhos que se diria a luz da lua em ebulição.

Superfície niquelada. Já passei assim no Atlântico, o oceano prateado e liso como um espelho perfeito. Esses minutos inesquecíveis, imagens por que se vive.

Gémeo Luís: branco no preto

Descobri Gémeo Luís, outro nome para Luís Mendonça, por aí. As suas imagens não fossem já delirantes, ainda têm o desplante de o ser em recorte, a arma do crime um x-acto. O branco no preto de um grande ilustrador que me deixou sem palavras. Um post para ir completando, mas um site para ir ver já, já.


"As ilustrações de Gémeo Luís, professor na Faculdade de Belas-Artes da Universidade do Porto e na Escola Superior de Artes e Design de Matosinhos, são recortadas em papel "kraft" e imprimem forte movimento à imagem, como se os desenhos dançassem ou tivessem sido lançados ao vento. O fascínio por esta técnica foi reforçado durante a sua permanência em Macau, quando ali esteve três anos para implantar o curso de Design, a convite da Faculdade de Belas-Artes." Um texto do Alcameh, inteiro aqui.




Publicado por esta e por aquela editora, mas acima de tudo auto-publicado.


"Los recortes más bonitos que he visto nunca los hace Gémeo Luís." Disse Hiberno en Invierno.
Concordo!


"Algúns xa sabíamos que é o mellor deseñador de Portugal. Agora veñen confirmalo. Unha tarde de hai un ano, nesta mesma altura, pasei unha tarde de calor no xardín da súa casa de Porto. Sentamos ao abeiro dunha árbore, comendo ameixas e bebendo auga fresca do pozo. Tamén falamos de deseño (design, britanizan eles), amosoume as coidadas siluetas recortadas que agora lle valeron o recoñecemento e me agasallou cunha manchea de libros. Un tipo estupendo.", disse Cabaret Voltaire.


Outros desenhos, aqui. O site, aqui.

A Pérola

"Cresceu-me uma pérola no coração, mas estou só, muito só, não tenho a quem a deixar".
Al Berto citado no Público de hoje.

Fosse verdade, mas não é. Friday woke up bright and sunny. Day of "SOL", but all I could say is Público, Público! Today's issue of Público is a stunner. The "P2" supplement filled with bread, 4 whole pages on the inside that I could just stick on my wall and salivate on. "Ípsilon" is loaded full of stuff to read and graze... the return of the eighties, Ian McEwan, Larkin who I've been re-reading, the best of English lit. [task: check the Times], Sándor Márai, Magnetic Fields. Jackie Morris visited me (yey!!!) and left a note. T-h-a-n-k Y-o-u!! I appreciated immensely. My kids are back to being fine, the weekend is coming, I got the bread right after ten tries and a brand new wok to play with [thank you RP] - recipe follows. My daughter is flying over to England again and is euphoric about it. The dog is HUGE and I just got my order from Amazon. Happy as roses.

Wok. Wok.
O quê: óleo de amendoim, umas duas colheres de sopa 2 peitos de frango cortados em cubos, 1 embalagem de ervilha torta, umas 7 fatias de ananás também em cubos, 2 mão-cheias de amendoins descascados - podem ser picantes, molho de soja, sal, alho em pó e gengibre em pó. Arroz basmati cozido para acompanhar.

Como: Dourar o frango no óleo sem cozinhar demasiado, temperar com o sal e a pimenta preta, o alho e o gengibre. Juntar as ervilhas e deixar um pouco até estarem cozinhadas mas não moles. Juntar os amendoins e o ananás e regar com o molho de soja até o sabor estar a gosto... Tudo nuns 10 minutos. Servir em cima do basmati. E com o ananás que sobrar... mergulhá-lo num fondue de chocolate, pode ser com banana e morangos, o fondue de chocolate Guylian é como os bombons: de chorar por muito mais.

Imagens em palavras, que as palavras em imagens serão para amanhã

Green

The sky was apple-green,
The sky was green wine held up in the sun,
The moon was a golden petal between.

She opened her eyes, and green
They shone, clear like flowers undone,
For the first time, now for the first time seen.

D.H. Lawrence

A propósito de prepotênciazitas...

À minha cabeceira no momento, "O Homem Quebrado" de Tahar Ben Jelloun.
(as prepotências por aqui)

No escritório o contínuo mal lhe dá os bons-dias. Aqui, o calor do cumprimento não depende da graduação mas daquilo que o cargo rende a mais. Mourad é engenheiro. As suas funções no seio da administração são o estudo dos dossiers de construção. Sem o seu visto não há licença para construir. É um lugar importante e muito invejado. O seu título exacto é pomposo: "subdirector do planeamento, da prospectiva e do progresso". Era preciso justificar a sua qualidade de engenheiro formado em parte numa escola francesa e com o diploma de economia obtido na Universidade Mohammed V, em Rabat. Com o seu modesto salário sustenta a família, paga a escolaridade dos filhos, a renda da casa e ajuda a mãe. Não consegue. Vive a crédito graças ao merceeiro. Sabe que não pode ter um terceiro filho. Bem podem afirmar-lhe que todos os nascimentos são um capital, que Deus providencia às necessidades dos seres que cria, que Mourad fica intransigente e para pôr termo a essa discussão obrigou Hlima a usar um aparelho. Foi nessa altura que ela lhe disse, furiosa: " O teu adjunto é que é um homem! Ganha menos do que tu, vive numa excelente moradia, tem dois carros e os filhos vão à escola da missão francesa e ainda por cima ofereceu à mulher umas férias em Roma! Tu ofereces-me um aparelho e só se come carne de vaca duas vezes por semana. Quanto a férias, passamo-las em casa da tua mãe, naquela casa velha na medina de Fez. Chamas a isso férias? Quando é que te compenetras de que a nossa situação é miserável?"

"A minha situação é mais do que miserável", diz a si próprio. "Será culpa minha se tudo aumenta, se os ricos estão cada vez mais ricos e os pobres como eu estagnam na pobreza?"

--
E quem disse que a arte tem de ser sempre pela arte, que o escritor, o da caneta , não tem de fazer nada senão escrever, que pensar e o ser lido não carrega consigo a responsabilidade de denúncia e de através da denúncia tentar alterar. A boa story-telling, contar histórias, tantas vezes um livro não é mais do que isso, e quando essas mesmas histórias apontam o dedo e dão a conhecer, melhor ainda. Também gosto de me entreter com a forma das linhas e gosto de seguir o som dos ús e dos és, mas... contar pelos dedos os dias até ao fim do mês. Estas contas adulteram o som das palavras. Saramago.

Pulmões limpos

Clean Lungs

Ben Jelloun must have had some contact with less than clean lungs, breathing has been a subject-matter before in his work. Jelloun deve ter convivido com pulmões menos limpos, a respiração já surgiu em outros momentos da sua obra.

"Na última inspecção médica, o médico de serviço disse-lhe: "Para um fumador, como você, os seus pulmões podem considerar-se limpos." Só reteve esta frase. Mas quando anda muito tempo a pé ou quando sobe escadas, sente que lhe falta o fôlego, mas isso o médico já não viu."

"At his last checkup, the doctor at work told him, "For a smoker, your lungs are clean." That was all he wanted to hear. But when he walks a long time or climbs stairs, he's out of breath, and that the doctor doesn't see."

Tahar Ben Jelloun em "O Homem Quebrado"

Também me disseram o mesmo, quando já não fumava. Fui directo à tabacaria; se estava limpa podia começar tudo de novo. Voltava ao médico antes de passado um ano. E hoje: fumo um cigarro? Fumo-não fumo. Fumo-não fumo.

too many

too many words spoken. and not enough.
paralyzed frozen by the outflux.
coveting.

"The Lay of the Land" by Richard Ford, a reader's journal (16)

Suburbia

Hardly a reader's journal anymore, since I've finished the book a few days ago. I will come back to it, though. The afterthoughts are of some resentment. When, towards the end, storytelling grabs the narrative and kicks digression to someplace in the back, there's the improbability of it all - sometimes a seemingly cheap one (a dying man gets shot -!- by immigrants and is "saved" by another one) and there's the immigrant line of thought, one I did not enjoy and will pursue. Wade Arsenault's episode, the last one of genius in the course of the narrative.

Done with the suburbia, where all digressions are possible, done with the warm cozyness of looking at others from high windows, done with word play and punctuation, done with wit, I'm returning to the nauseating odours of real life, vein cutting, shame and self-facing/efacing. All in Tahar Ben Jelloun's "Corruption", an author not so beloved by the English-speaking. "Corruption", an extremely bad translation of "L'Homme Rompu", or broken man. Sometimes getting the heck out of America is sheer necessity.

Here, all my other reading journal entries about "The Lay of the Land". This one is the last, but I still expect to come back and write a small conclusion. How the immigration issue upset me and drove me away from the book.

O pequeno Hamlet, Luís Quintais

Podia ter escolhido qualquer outro texto de Luís Quintais, mas escolhi este. Já o tinha lido há algum tempo e ficou-me a imagem. Hoje, encontrado de novo, aqui o deixo. Dos de hoje - os poetas - talvez o meu favorito, Luís Quintais.

O pequeno Hamlet

O Tomás, o meu filho, brinca na velha ponte abandonada junto à casa onde habito agora. Gosto muito deste filho cheio de consequentes silêncios, reservas que lhe vêm do desamparo da infância – de toda a infância – mas que nele se sublinham como se um veio nocturno se acercasse das coisas que interroga. A mim tudo se me esquece quando olho este filho que espanca com um ferro o ferro da ponte. Observando-o na desatenção que o guarda assim no fotograma da memória, interpelo-o: “E leste O príncipe da Dinamarca?”, e ele responde-me seco, mortalmente evasivo: “Não é O príncipe da Dinamarca, é O cavaleiro da Dinamarca”, e volta a espancar, rebarbativo, o ferro.

Luís Quintais, in Canto Onde na Cotovia
Outros textos na sua página na PIW

Anarcas, hippies, contestatários e contras

Respeito e atraem-me as figuras do contra, os rastas, os posters de protesto, o barulho, o estar-fora-da-sociedade e contra tudo, a voz de protesto e o inconformismo. De tudo o que li, tirando talvez a atração pela morte que invade cada linha da Plath, Philip Larkin é o mais contestatário de todas as palavras. Ele, de fato e gravata, olhar cinzento, transparente na rua cinzenta, quem passa e não se vê. Ninguém esteve mais fora (cá dentro) e ninguém mais assassinou o próximo burguês com maior frieza. Engraçado e irónico que Larkin seja considerado hoje o poeta favorito dos ingleses, ele que é tudo menos favorito, quem sabe talvez seja pelos palavrões.

Ele próprio sem história, Oxford, bibliotecário. Nascido em 1922, em 1982 foi feito Professor. Tinha passado já por várias bibliotecas mas acabou na da Universidade de Hull. Recusou ser o poeta laureado e nunca casou. Morreu de cancro em 1985, aos 63 anos.

This be the verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have kids yourself.

Home is so sad
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the confort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.

XXII
One man walking a deserted platform;
Dawn coming, and rain
Driving across a darkening autumn;
One man restlessly waiting a train
Whie round the streets the wind runs wild,
Beating each shuttered house, that seems
Folded full of the dark silk of dreams,
A shell of sleep cradling a wife or child.

Who can this ambition trace,
To be each dawn perputually journeying?
To trick this hour when lovers re-embrace
With the unguessed-at heat riding
The winds as gulls do? What lips said
Starset and cockcrow call the dispossessed
On to the next desert, lest
Love sink a grave round the still-sleeping head.

Mr Bleaney
This was Mr Bleaney's room. He stayed
The whole time he was at the Bodies, till
They moved him. Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,
Fall to within five inches of the sill,

Whose window shows a strip of building land?
Tussocky, littered. 'Mr Bleaney took
My bit of garden properly in hand'
Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook

Behind the door, no room for books or bags -
'I'll take it. So it happens that I lie
Where Mr Bleaney lay, and stub my fags
On the same saucer-souvenir, and try

Stuffing my ears with cotton-wool, to drown
The jabbering set jabbering set he egged her on to buy.
I know his habits - what time he came down,
His preference for sauce to gravy, why

He kept on plugging at the four aways -
Likewise their yearly frame: the Frinton folk
Who put him up for summer holidays,
And Christmas at his sister's house in Stoke.

But if he stood and watched the frigid wind
Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed
Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,
And shivered, without shaking off the dread

That how we live measures our own nature,
And at his age having no more to show
Than one hired box should make him pretty sure
He warranted no better, I don't know.

Estes poemas vieram de Uma Antologia publicada em 1989 pela Fora do Texto. Tradução, boa, por Maria Teresa Guerreiro. Hoje pode comprar-se Janelas Altas, na sempre óptima Cotovia.