ivory & gold

2012 ou bónus ontológico.

2012-01-09T22:10:00.007Z

Tendo ontem começado o novo ano e considerando que estamos todos um ano mais velhos, recomendo que, em vez da esperança, que notoriamente desilude e não é de fiar, se adopte a atitude do "esta já ninguém me tira". Falo daqueles prazeres já realizados que já não nos apetecem - mas que já ninguém nos tira. É um consolo simbiótico: é porque já ninguém os tira que deixam de apetecer.

(...)

Por cada bola de Berlim, por cada vez que se desobedece ao dever e se cede ao coração; por cada indevida fatia de pão alentejano com innapropriate queijo cheddar devidamente envelhecido, numa hora do dia (como o chá da tarde) em que não deveria, dieteticamente, ter ocorrido, há um bónus ontológico, que rende na nossa alma até ao momento de morrermos, que é a verificação irrefutável que aquela alegria, por muito imerecida ou imoral, já ninguém nos pode tirar.

Miguel Esteves Cardoso, Público, 2 Janeiro 2012

tenho um jardim pequenino.

2011-07-24T11:35:00.004+01:00

We have a little garden,
A garden of our own,
And every day we water there
The seeds that we have sown.

We love our little garden,
And tend it with such care,
You will not find a faced leaf
Or blighted blossom there.

Beatrix Potter

2011-07-24T10:21:00.003+01:00

«And having grown tired of his empire, along with its sun that never set, Charles V installed his brother Ferdinand as ruler of Austria and emperor of Germany, and gave Spain and the Netherlands to his son Philip. He then withdrew, in 1556, an old and broken man, to the Spanish monastery of San Geronimo de Yuste. It is said that he spent his time there repairing and regulating all the clocks. He wanted them to chime at the same time. When he didn't succeed, he is reported to have said:

'How did I ever presume to try to unite all the peoples of my empire when I cannot, even once, persuade a few clocks to chime together.'

»

in A Little History of the World
E. H. Gombrich

how did you get to save me from this desolate wastland.

2011-04-17T23:56:00.006+01:00

(Birthe Piontek)

Woodkid
Wasteland

2011-04-01T14:00:00.000+01:00

amo-te.

2011-03-20T11:09:00.003Z

goddamn' Europeans
take me back to beautiful England
and the grey damp filthiness
of ages and battered books

2011-01-30T15:57:00.002Z

now when my baby kisses me
upon my rosy cheeks
I just let those kisses be
don't wash my face for weeks

and i pray for rest.

2011-01-13T21:15:00.004Z

anyone can find places, but the finding of people is a gift from God (reprise)

2011-01-11T12:06:00.009Z

«It was pleasant, too, to fling

wide the windows, pinching

the fingers in unfamiliar

fastenings, to lean out into

sunshine»

E. M. Forster
A Room with a View

1 de janeiro 2011

2011-01-07T20:11:00.001Z

2010-12-17T19:24:00.003Z

«oh the hills are groaning with excess
like a table ceaselessly being set»

2010-12-05T18:06:00.005Z

B Fachada
Enquanto temos boa mão

deus está em um, mas não no outro.

2010-11-16T19:56:00.004Z

...And then the sly arch-lover that he was, he said the subtlest thing of all: that the lover was nearer the divine than the beloved; for the god was in the one but not in the other - perhaps the tenderest, most mocking thought that ever was thought, and source of all the guile and secret bliss the lover knows.

Thomas Mann
"Death in Venice"

Marie Lavoisier

2010-11-16T13:28:00.005Z

Portrait of Monsieur Lavoisier and his Wife

Jacques-Louis David

"She is a marvellous woman, because they got married when she was only 13 years old and the first thing she did was to learn English so that she could translate between England and France, the two main countries where chemical research was taking place.

(...)

There's a marvellous double portrait of them in the Metropolitan in New York where he is dominating the picture with all his books and his instruments and she is standing there looking incredibly glamorous (she has obviously spent hours in the beauty parlour) and you would have no idea that, in reality, she was working in the laboratory with Lavoisier.

There are drawings of her sitting taking measurements and when you look at his notebooks they're absolutely full of her handwriting. It's clear that she was as it were the laboratory manager. When you look at his textbooks there's twelve very detailed diagrams which show the instruments in fine detail, so wherever you are in the world you can take Lavoisier's book and you can recreate the instruments and you can repeat his experiments exactly as he did them himself. And it was Marie Lavoisier that did all those drawings."

Patricia Fara, Senior Tutor at Clare College, Cambridge University

you're my favourite daydream/i'm your famous nightmare

2010-11-13T23:14:00.002Z

2010-10-22T11:39:00.006+01:00

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped in the comfort 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.

Philip Larkin
Home is so Sad

2010-10-11T23:59:00.005+01:00

O put your furry paw in mine.

2010-10-10T11:35:00.002+01:00

«

(...) I found a peacock, yes, a live one, standing on the margin of the road, looking a bit disgusted with the 20th century. Where it had come from I can't think.

»

Philip Larkin para Monica Jones
14 de Outubro, 1950

a decent wedding.

2010-10-05T23:10:00.005+01:00

«

Really you couldn’t say anything more to my way of feeling than that you don’t like the idea of getting married. (…) I remember saying to Kingsley [Amis] ages ago that I couldn’t stand the idea of “a decent wedding”. He replied that “you’d never marry a girl who wanted a decent wedding. So it’s all right, you see.”

»

Philip Larkin para Monica Jones
10 de Fevereiro, 1955

"and i will sing you songs"

2010-08-29T22:09:00.004+01:00

(kurt halsey)

quando olho para ti

2010-08-25T21:41:00.002+01:00

Heaven's On Fire
Radio Dept.

When I look at you, I reach for a piano wire
Fighting to keep it together, but it's pointless
One look at you and heaven's on fire,
Heaven's on fire

e eu a pensar que andar à chapada era feio.

2010-08-18T20:13:00.003+01:00

sobre a nudez.

2010-08-16T13:30:00.010+01:00

«

[I]t is reasonable to recognize a loss of mystery. And the explanation of this loss of mystery may be largely visual. The focus of perception shifts from eyes, mouth, shoulders, hands - all of which are capable of such subtleties of expression that the personality expressed by them is manifold - it shifts from these to the sexual parts, whose formation suggests an utterly compelling but single process. (...)

We need the banality which we find in the first instant of disclosure because it grounds us in reality. But it does more than that. This reality, by promising the familiar, proverbial mechanism of sex, offers, at the same time, the possibility of the shared subjectivity of sex.

The loss of mystery occurs simultaneously with the offering of the means for creating a shared mystery. The sequence is: subjective - objective - subjective to the power of two.

»

Ways of Seeing
John Berger

Simon and Jessika making love, Jessika coming
Paris, 2001
Nan Goldin

2010-08-16T12:49:00.008+01:00

2010-08-15T01:06:00.001+01:00

The Return of the Dove
John Everett Millais
1851

et c'est fini.

2010-08-07T23:51:00.005+01:00

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
[S]he that made this knows all the cost,
For [s]he gave all h[er] heart and lost.

W. B. Yeats

"quem foi que à tua pele conferiu esse papel de mais que tua pele ser pele da minha pele."

2010-08-07T00:34:00.003+01:00

2010-08-04T22:59:00.002+01:00

Parce que j'ai trop d'amour
Tu viens voler mes nuits du fond de mon sommeil
Et fais pleurer mes jours

também vou precisar de três anos.

2010-07-24T19:34:00.006+01:00

«

And yet the Terror passed. The year 1000 came and went, and the new 'open' society of the Middle Ages took root. As Bishop Glaber wrote, in the loveliest of lines,

"Three years after the year 1000, the Earth was covered with a white robe of churches."

»
The Songlines
Bruce Chatwin

solvitur ambulando.

2010-07-16T22:55:00.009+01:00

hoje sentei-me na praia às dez da manhã a ler isto

«

My two most recent notebooks were crammed with jottings taken in South Africa, where I had examined, at first hand, certain evidence on the origin of our species. What I learned there - together with what I now knew about the Songlines - seemed to confirm the conjecture I had toyed with for so long: that Natural Selection has designed us - from the structure of our brain-cells to the structure of our big toe - for a career of seasonal journeys on foot through blistering land of thorn scrub or desert.

(...)

From the Notebooks

The most convincing analysts of restlessness were often men who, for one reason or another, were immobilised: Pascal by stomach ailments and migraines, Baudelaire by drugs, St John of the Cross by the bars of his cell. There are French critics who would claim that Proust, the hermit of the cork-lined room, was the greatest of literary voyagers.

What is this strange madness, Petrarch asked of his young secretary, this mania for sleeping each night in a different bed?

Miami, Florida

On the bus from Downtown to the Beach there was a lady in pink. She must have been eighty, at least. She had bright pink hair with pink flowers in it, a matching pink dress, pink lips, pink nails, pink handbag, pink earrings, and, in her shopping-basket, there were boxes of pink Kleenex.
In the wedges of her clear plastic heels a pair of goldfish were lazily floating in formaldehyde.
I was too intent on the goldfish to notice the midget in horn-rimmed glasses who was standing on the seat beside me.
'Permit me to ask you, sir,' he asked in a squeaky voice, 'which of the human qualities do you value the most?'
'I haven't thought', I said.
'I used to believe in empathy,' he said, 'but I have recently moved over to compassion.'
'I'm glad to hear it.'
'Permit me to ask you, sir? At which of the professions are you presently engaged?'
'I'm studying to be an archaeologist.'
'You amaze me, sir. I'm in that line of country myself.'
He was a sewer-rat. His friends would lower him, with a metal-detector, into the main sewer beneath the hotels of Miami Beach. There, he would prospect for jewellery flushed, accidentally, down the toilets.
'It is not, I can assure you, sir,' he said, 'an unrewarding occupation.'

On the night express from Moscow to Kiev, reading Donne's third 'Elegie':

To live in one land, is captivitie,
To runne all countries, a wild roguery

My health was menaced. Terror came. For days on end I fell asleep and, when I woke, the dark dreams continued. I was ripe for death. My debility led me along a route of dangers, to the world's edge, to Cimmeria, the country of black fog and whirlwinds.
I was forced to travel, to ward off the apparitions assembled in my brain.

Rimbaud, Une Saison en enfer

On the ferry back from Manly a little old lady heard me talking.
'You're English, arenºt you?' she said, in an English North Country accent. 'I can tell you're English.'
'I am.'
'So am I!'
She was wearing thick, steel-framed spectacles and a nice felt hat with a wisp of blue net above the brim.
'Are you visiting Sydney?' I asked her.
'Lord, love, no!' she said, 'I've lived here since 1946. I came out to live with my son, but a very strange thing happened. By the time the ship got here, he'd died. Imagine! I'd given up my home in Doncaster, so I thought I might as well stay! So I asked my second son to come out and live with me. So he came out... emigrated... and do you know what?'
'No.'
'He died. He had a heart attack, and died.'
'That's terrible,' I said.
'I had a third son,' she went on. 'He was my favourite, but he died in the war. Dunkirk, you know! He was very brave. I had a letter from his officer. Very brave, he was! He was on the deck... covered in blazing oil... and he threw himself into the sea. Oooh! He was a sheet of living flame!'
'But that is terrible!'
'But it's a lovely day,' she smiled. 'Isn't it a lovely day?'

For a long time I prided myself I would possess every possible country.

Rimbaud, Une Saison en enfer

Solvitur ambulando. 'It is solved by walking.'

»

The Songlines
Bruce Chatwin

2010-07-05T23:07:00.001+01:00

acabei de ver um texugo verdadeiro, no meio da estrada!
é o que dá viver a cinco minutos do campinho.

i carry your ring as preciously as i would carry your heart (in my hands)

2010-07-04T23:29:00.001+01:00

e lembrei-me que uma vez me lembrei que tinha sonhado com isto

à falta que me fazes respondo fazendo amizade com variados gatos.

2010-07-04T02:21:00.005+01:00

Depois de se me partir o coração por ter de deixar para trás o preto e o preto e branco da Marston Street

(foram quatro meses de bela amizade, o preto olhava-me de longe, não procurava carícias e eu também só lhas dava quando ele estava no muro - não posso abrir portõezinhos e subir escadas de entrada alheios para fazer festinhas a gatos -, mas o preto e branco, pouco tempo depois de nos conhecermos corria para mim e estendia-se no chão como um tapetinho peludo à espera de festas. eram um pouco como um avô e um neto, estes dois)

estive um mês sem amigos gatos
mas na rua aqui ao lado vive um gatinho ranhoso preto, com pantufinhas brancas, e um amarelo magrinho (sem ranho) e vou lá procurá-los de vez em quando.

Depois perto de Port Meadow, numa das cottages de lá há um gatão (tem umas patarronas), também ele ranhoso, malhado-cor-de-burro-quando-foge, que mia como um gatinho velho e se senta em cima de um caixote do lixo.

Perto do trabalho há outro, o Gato-Fantasma (todo branco, um olho azul e outro amarelo), se eu apareço antes das nove da manhã, está pronto para encher meias e calças de pelinho branco.

Mas o meu amigo mais recente - este sim, num cenário um pouco mais entusiasmante - é o Gato-do-Rio, preto, de patinhas, peito e nariz branco, que vive sentadinho nas mesas da oficina da Cherwell Boathouse. No fundo, é uma espécie de gato pirata, mas um pirata de água doce, pachorrento, olhando devagar os estudantes saltando para dentro dos punts como quem diz "ah, a juventude, que bela coisa".

2010-07-01T13:27:00.003+01:00

No hall da estação constatou que faltavam trinta minutos. Lembrou-se bruscamente que num café da calle Brasil (a poucos metros da casa de Yrigoyen) havia um enorme gato que se deixava acariciar por toda a gente, como uma divindade desdenhosa. Entrou. Ali estava o gato, a dormir. Pediu uma xícara de café, adoçou-a lentamente, provou-a (este prazer tinha-lhe sido vedado na clínica) e pensou, enquanto alisava o negro pelame, que aquele contacto era ilusório e que estavam como que separados por um vidro, porque o homem vive no tempo, na sucessão, e o mágico animal na actualidade, na eternidade do instante.

"O Sul"

Ficções

Jorge Luis Borges

desta vez estou a falar a sério.

2010-06-25T18:52:00.004+01:00

Deus te salve Sol divino
Tu que corres mundo inteiro
Se viste lá o meu marido
Não mo negues não
E os raios que vens deitando ao teu nascimento
Sejam dores e facadas que lhe atravessem o coração.

Que por mim ele endoideça
Que não possa nem comer,
nem beber,
nem andar,
nem amar,
nem com mulheres falar,
nem em casa particular
e todas as mulheres que veja
lhe pareçam cabras negras, bichas feias
E só eu pareça bem no meio delas.

Responso para maridos transviados
B Fachada

(laura letinsky)

2010-06-04T21:29:00.004+01:00

it's gonna take a lotta love / to make it through the night

(my heart needs protection / and so do i)

Lotta Love (Neil Young cover)
She & Him

2010-04-28T10:33:00.003+01:00

The way lives touch,

touch and spring apart,

the pulse synaptic,

local, but its stretch

electric – as when cities

lose themselves in velvet

under winking planes,

binding black hostilities

with gold chains.

(Anne Stevenson, c. 1933)

vem depressa, terça-feira

2010-04-12T19:25:00.003+01:00

2010-03-31T19:55:00.001+01:00

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

A Drinking Song
W. B. Yeats

branches - mar de março from Carin Abdula on Vimeo.

WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

2010-03-19T13:53:00.000Z

(daqui)

nothing is wasted and life is worth living

2010-02-28T15:15:00.003Z

I Feel Better
Hot Chip

She said: 'How did we get ourselves so lost?'
And I said: 'I don't know, but we will not be leaving tonight, tonight
When you hold me I, I feel better'

2010-01-08T16:06:00.002Z

«

In reality, he also wanted to get away from Beatrice, because finally he had read somewhere that distance can cure the love illness (and he had not yet read other books where, on the contrary, it is said that distance is precisely that which fans the flames of passion).

»

Baudolino
Umberto Eco

2010-01-04T00:48:00.006Z

"Master Niketas, the problem of my life is that I've always confused what I saw with what I wanted to see."

Baudolino
Umberto Eco

'Passion has often worn our wandering hearts' ou 2010

2009-12-31T12:05:00.002Z

(Laura Letinsky)

We knew, though she'd not said a word,
That even the best of love must die

William Butler Yeats

«so won't you give her peace of mind»

2009-12-30T04:53:00.002Z

When my arms wrap you round I press
My heart upon the loveliness
That has long faded from the world;
The jewelled crowns that kings have hurled
In shadowy pools, when armies fled;
The love-tales wrought with silken thread
By dreaming ladies upon cloth
That has made fat the murderous moth;
The roses that of old time were
Woven by ladies in their hair,
The dew-cold lilies ladies bore
Through many a sacred corridor
Where such grey clouds of incense rose
That only God's eyes did not close:
For that pale breast and lingering hand
Come from a more dream-heavy land,
A more dream-heavy hour than this;
And when you sigh from kiss to kiss
I hear white Beauty sighing, too,
For hours when all must fade like dew,
But flame on flame, and deep on deep,
Throne over throne where in half sleep,
Their swords upon their iron knees,
Brood her high lonely mysteries.

"He Remembers Forgotten Beauty"
William Butler Yeats

2009-12-25T12:52:00.006Z

«

Though cold like you, unmov'd, and silent grown,
I have not yet forgot myself to stone.

(...)

Should at my feet the world's great master fall,
Himself, his throne, his world, I'd scorn 'em all:
Not Caesar's empress would I deign to prove;
No, make me mistress to the man I love;
If there be yet another name more free,
More fond than mistress, make me that to thee!
Oh happy state! when souls each other draw,
When love is liberty, and nature, law:
All then is full, possessing, and possess'd,
No craving void left aching in the breast:
Ev'n thought meets thought, ere from the lips it part,
And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart.

(...)

And if I lose thy love, I lose my all.

(...)

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!

»

feliz natal para ti, porque nem sequer preciso de tentar.

2009-12-24T19:03:00.007Z

aqui

2009-12-23T00:12:00.002Z

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

(Philip Larkin
An Arundel Tomb)

nem palavras nem exércitos.

2009-12-15T12:37:00.009Z

In The End
Charlotte Gainsbourg & Beck

But if actions can’t speak
And words cannot do
What ten thousand armies
Can’t even fight through

Who’s to say it’s all for the best in the end

vi que também estavas no escuro.

2009-12-14T00:18:00.002Z

Cosmic Love
Florence and the Machine

requiem.

2009-12-11T21:27:00.007Z

Avril 14th
Aphex Twin

Think not of it, sweet one, so -
Give it not a tear;
Sigh thou mayst, and bid it go
Any, any where.

Do not look so sad, sweet one -
Sad and fadingly;
Shed one drop, then it is gone,
O 'twas born to die.

Still so pale? then, dearest, weep -
Weep, I'll count the tears,
And each one shall be a bliss
For thee in after years.

Brighter has it left thine eyes
Than a sunny rill;
And thy whispering melodies
Are tenderer still.

Yet - as all the things mourn awhile
At fleeting blisses,
E'en let us too! but be our dirge
A dirge of kisses.

John Keats

e vão 22.

2009-11-28T17:46:00.005Z

Opus 36
Dustin O'Halloran

é melhor cortar-lhes as orelhas.

2009-11-22T21:03:00.003Z

"Those which will keepe their Cattes within doores, and from hunting Birds abroad, must cut off their eares, for they cannot endure to have drops of raine distil into them and therefore keep themselves in harbor... The familiars of Witches do most ordinarily appeare in the shape of cats, which is an argument that this beast is dangerous in soule & body."

texto e imagem de
The historie of foure-footed beastes (1607)
Edward Topsell

2009-11-01T22:30:00.005Z

Marrying left your maiden name disused.
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face,
Your voice, and all your variants of grace;
For since you were so thankfully confused
By law with someone else, you cannot be
Semantically the same as that young beauty:
It was of her that these two words were used.

Now it's a phrase applicable to no one,
Lying just where you left it, scattered through
Old lists, old programmes, a school prize or two
Packets of letters tied with tartan ribbon -
Then is it scentless, weightless, strengthless, wholly
Untruthful? Try whispering it slowly.
No, it means you. Or, since you're past and gone,

It means what we feel now about you then:
How beautiful you were, and near, and young,
So vivid, you might still be there among
Those first few days, unfingermarked again.
So your old name shelters our faithfulness,
Instead of losing shape and meaning less
With your depreciating luggage laden.

Maiden Name
Philip Larkin

(john singer sargent)

2009-10-30T22:01:00.001Z

i flew out with the cinders in the mighty black rush

malhada.

2009-10-18T19:10:00.002+01:00

«

Oxford is a place that comes in flashes - sometimes lovely, sometimes dispiriting: and in just such a mood of changeable emotions, in which ecstasy and disillusion chase each other through the narrative, should we venture down that hillside, take a red bus into town, and explore this piebald prodigy closer.

»

Oxford
Jan Morris

Botley Road it is

2009-10-12T11:33:00.003+01:00

«

I sallied out of the railway station on foot to find either a lodging-house or a cheap hotel; all agog for dreaming spires and last enchantments. My first disappointment at what I saw could be dealt with. Towns always show their worst face to the railway. But as I walked on and on I became more bewildered. Could this succession of mean shops really be Oxford? But I still went on, always expecting the next turn to reveal the beauties, and reflecting that it was a much larger town than I had been led to suppose. Only when it became obvious that there was very little town left ahead of me, that I was in fact getting to open country, did I turn round and look. There behind me, far away, never more beautiful since, was the fabled cluster of spires and towers. I had come out of the station on the wrong side and been all this time walking into what was even then the mean and sprawling suburb of Botley.

»

C.S. Lewis

la jetée

2009-10-11T17:28:00.009+01:00

La Jetée
Yann Tiersen

fonte inesgotável de felicidade para todo o sempre.

2009-10-03T16:21:00.001+01:00

(gatinhos.)

2009-10-01T13:12:00.003+01:00

He still thinks of the land as his, his to help or his to hurt, even now when it has proved itself to have a mind all of its own.

White Teeth
Zadie Smith

2009-09-01T21:01:00.000+01:00

bodleian.

2009-08-31T23:21:00.000+01:00

4 semanas.

2009-08-30T15:29:00.002+01:00

coisas portuguesas.

2009-08-05T00:22:00.001+01:00

[depois de uma recente reclamação, ei-las, as coisas portuguesas
que melhor expressão da pré-saudade de portugal do que este nosso clemente
especialmente porque é filmado na austrália.]

Vais partir naquela estrada
Onde um dia chegaste a sorrir
Vais deixar abandonada
Essa flor que era amor a florir

Lembras a manhã quando paraste no jardim
Era o Verão a nascer para mim
Lembro o teu sorrir e os teus cabelos a voar
Era o Outono do sonho a chegar

Era a Primavera em cada gesto do olhar
Nos teus olhos, a cor do luar
Nuvens de alegria e mil ventos a cantar
Era a força de querermos amar

Vais partir naquela estrada
Onde um dia chegaste a sorrir
Vais deixar abandonada
Essa flor que era amor a florir

Lembras a montanha que subimos a correr
Quando a noite já vinha a descer
Lembras a cabana e a velha rocha junto ao mar
Quando as ondas nos vinham beijar

Era um velho barco já sem remos para nadar
Nossa cama salgada de amar
Tinhas no teu peito o bater de uma canção
Linda, feita na palma da mão

Vais partir naquela estrada
Onde um dia chegaste a sorrir
Vais deixar abandonada
Essa flor que era amor a florir

Foste uma viagem sem fronteira e sem país
A princesa do quadro que eu fiz
Foste o meu castelo, o meu palácio de brincar
Fantasia de tanto te amar

Mas é sempre assim, o meu final de cada Verão
Pois termina com uma canção
Tempo que passou não volta mais a recordar
E no carro te vejo a acenar

Vais partir
Vais partir
Vais partir
Vais partir naquela estrada
Onde um dia chegaste a sorrir
Vais deixar abandonada
Vais partir
Vais partir
Vais partir

"a princesa do quadro que eu fiz" (?)

debussy.

2009-08-03T20:30:00.003+01:00

Estampes - I. Pagodes
Claude Debussy

tocata

quando tu tocas debussy
chove extraordinariamente
o sol as casas levemente doira
mas na saleta está-se bem
fazes sempre sempre assim!

por mim
sinto um duende benigno que sorri
não bem de ti!
nada de debussy!
mas do igual da hora
de sempre chover
de estar sempre frio lá fora
quando tu tocas debussy.

Mário Cesariny

2009-07-30T11:29:00.002+01:00

Cordelia
I've promised an outing on Mr Beelzebub tomorrow.

Lady Marchmain
Really Cordelia, what an unfortunate name for a pony.

Cordelia
You don't get the point, Mummy. Sister Bridget said that if you can ride the devil, you can ride anything.

75b banbury road, oxford.

2009-07-04T19:01:00.008+01:00

Forks and Knives (La Fête)
Beirut

«

(...) Come, my friends.
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are, -
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

»

Ulysses
Alfred Tennyson

o vestido branco como uma poça aos pés da emily dickinson

2009-05-30T21:28:00.005+01:00

e este é um dos meus poemas favoritos de sempre
(talvez esteja nos 5 primeiros, até)

«

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

»

Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes
Billy Collins

e lido por uma voz extremamente boa aqui

2009-05-21T16:21:00.004+01:00

(Deer Bed, 2007
Katherine Wolkoff)

"I can see you now walking our dog alongside
Their tall French windows on a lawn; a brimming sun
Scorching the paint and the tree-lined entrance.
It is a disgusting thought. To see you there
Your hands ungloved, the leather leash. And
all the while, they expect your swift return for tea
Under the weight of centuries of gentleness,
And your polite report of outside life – the fish, the pond -
Lined translucently with words they have ran out of
long ago."

'well i cannot tell you which way it would be if it was not this way too'

2009-05-14T21:51:00.008+01:00

The Wind and The Dove
Bill Callahan

«

I wish that laying my days around you could be as natural a thing
as opening a window, spreading butter on toast or dying
that is all.

So this is what I meant when I spoke
Of truth rendered at once futile and again believable
I meant I was bound to return, to weave my hope into everything
My summoning song into everything

»

(Nan Goldin)

destruição de pianos

2009-05-09T23:54:00.004+01:00

«

Naked and invisible, the lady flier tried to control and talk sense into herself; her hands trembled with impatience. Taking careful aim, Margarita struck at the keys of the grand piano, and a first plaintive wail passed all through the apartment. Becker's drawing-room instrument, not guilty of anything, cried out frenziedly. Its keys caved in,

ivory veneer flew in all directions.

The instrument howled, wailed, rasped and jangled. With the noise of a pistol shot, the polished upper soundboard split under a hammer blow. Breathing hard, Margarita tore and mangled the strings with the hammer.

»

in
Master and Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov

2009-05-04T23:19:00.005+01:00

dói aqui, aqui, aqui e aqui.

Cartier Bresson
Martine Franck, 1986

2009-05-02T12:58:00.001+01:00

«

How beautiful, if sorrow had not made /
Sorrow more Beautiful than Beauty’s self.

»

John Keats

das profundezas [do desespero] amamos

2009-04-26T14:54:00.005+01:00

«

(...)
Não
faz mal abracem-me
os teus olhos
de extremo a extremo azuis
vai ser assim durante muito tempo
decorrerão muitos séculos antes de nós
mas não te importes
não te importes
muito
nós só temos a ver
com o presente
perfeito
corsários de olhos de gato intransponível
maravilhados maravilhosos únicos
nem pretérito nem futuro tem
o estranho verbo nosso

»

De profundis amamus
Mário Cesariny

sobre Chopin

2009-04-26T12:17:00.007+01:00

Nocturne no.1 in B Flat minor
Larghetto
Chopin

Chopin é de veludo, porque não é uma seda vaporosa, como as Quatro Estações de Vivaldi, nem um brocado excêntrico como Mozart, nem cortinas pretas como Bach. Os nocturnos do compositor polaco são de veludo porque são um paradoxo: têm uma leveza própria e imaterial, de tocar ao de leve nas coisas para as deixar despertar por si, mas sem desaparecer em fumo logo a seguir, permitindo-se observar o movimento-consequência (como círculos na água), deixando que a sua presença se infiltre por todos os cantos e não seja de forma alguma possível ignorá-la.

Confesso que não conheço mais nada para além dos nocturnos (o que pode sempre ser remediado), mas isso também porque me chegaram sempre, passeando-se nos meus ouvidos desde os 12 ou 13 anos. E ainda guardo um rancor a mim própria por ter desistido das aulas de piano antes de ter acabado de estudar (começado?) o Nocturno nº. 20, em dó sustenido menor, hoje o meu favorito. Lento com gran espressione, ou, numa tradução caseira, lânguido e carregado de tensão.

E lembro-me agora (e quem não se lembra, de entre os pobres diabos do grupo de Humanidades no secundário?) da Cristina, a menina que tocava o Nocturno nº. 20 na “Aparição” de Vergílio Ferreira, a menina-veículo da transcendência da música - “alguma coisa, no entanto, a transcendia, abusava dela como de uma vítima, angustiava-me quase até às lágrimas.” -, que abria perante a assistência “o dom da revelação”, contido no espaço variável, mas curto, entre os seus dedinhos e as teclas do piano.

Chopin construiu-lhes, aos nocturnos, uma estrutura de sentimento, sempre inegavelmente meio sorumbática, e de tensão e deu-lhes uma espessura e intensidade (sempre graciosa) que é volúvel de significado. Chopin é audível em (quase?) qualquer situação, carregando-a instantaneamente de sentido, ganhando contornos tristes, concentrados ou mesmo alegres, electrificantes e/ou lascivos (sim, é possível). Uma espécie de simbiose momento/som. Os nocturnos emprestam dimensão e presença ao momento, que empresta significado aos nocturnos, como dois irmãos.

Posso dizer, então – com uma mistura de orgulho e paternalismo, como quando se fala das cidades por onde já se passou –, que já ouvi Chopin na rua, já ouvi Chopin com as costas, as pernas (ligeiramente afastadas) e a nuca assentes no chão de madeira e os braços confortavelmente distantes do tronco (chama-se a posição do cadáver, no yoga), já ouvi Chopin sentada numa cadeira, com os braços e a cabeça apoiada numa mesa, já ouvi Chopin enquanto estudava, já ouvi Chopin sentada num jardim e sentada na relva, já ouvi Chopin encostada a um ombro, sem roupa (talvez a melhor de todas as vezes). E é uma espécie de missão, fazer jus aos nocturnos, impregnando-os em muitos momentos, todos diferentes, provando as misturas de sabores (Chopin + relva, Chopin + pele, Chopin + concentração). E agora acabei de pensar que se calhar devia escrever em qualquer lado que quero os nocturnos no meu funeral (Chopin + morte).

Salvador Dalí
le piano sous la neige

2009-04-23T19:12:00.003+01:00

«

Cristina viera «fora de tempo». Ninguém a esperava já. O pai errara as «contas» da fisiologia, havia a lei moral - e ela nascera. Os amigos de Moura, risonhamnente, quando se referiam à filha, perguntavam-lhe pela «neta»... E ele sorria, inocente, porque a verdade da vida era mais forte do que ele, simples instrumento ou espectador...

- Cristina - disse Moura -, tu agora vais tocar um bocadinho para o senhor doutor.

A miúda fitou-me com os seus olhos azuis, sorriu imperceptivelmente e sentou-se ao piano. Ajeitou a saia à roda do banco e, de mãos imóveis no teclado, apesar do nosso silêncio, esperou ainda pela nossa atenção ou pela sua.

E então eu vi, eu vi abrir-se à nossa frente o dom da revelação. Que eram, pois, todas as nossas conversas, a nossa alegria de taças e cigarros, diante daquela evidência? Tudo o que era verdadeiro e inextinguível, tudo quanto se realizava em grandeza e plenitude, tudo quanto era pureza e interrogação, perfeito e sem excesso, começava e acabava ali, entre as mãos indefesas de uma criança. Mas tão forte era o peso disso tudo, tão necessário que nada disso se perdesse, que as mãos de Cristina se estorciam na distância das teclas, as pernas na distância dos pedais e toda a sua face gentil, até agora impessoal e só de infância, se gravava de arrepio à passagem do mistério. Toca, Cristina. Eu ouço. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin. Estou de lado, ao pé de ti, sigo-te no rosto a minha própria emoção. Apertas ligeiramente a boca, pões uma rugazinha na testa, estremeces brevemente a cabeleira loura com o teu laço vermelho. E de ver assim presente a uma inocência o mundo do prodígio e da grandeza, de ver que uma criança era bastante para erguer o mundo nas mãos e que alguma coisa, no entanto, a transcendia, abusava dela como de uma vítima, angustiava-me quase até às lágrimas. Toca uma vez ainda, Cristina. Agora, só para mim. Eu te escuto, aqui, entre os brados deste vento de Inverno. Chopin, Nocturno n.º 20. Ouço, ouço.

»

Aparição
Vergílio Ferreira

il me l'a dit, l'a juré pour la vie.

2009-04-13T02:46:00.002+01:00

let me not to the marriage of true minds/admit impediments (mas em lomo)

2009-04-10T23:43:00.012+01:00

Venice
Beirut

let me not to the marriage of true minds/admit impediments

2009-04-06T00:53:00.002+01:00

veneza.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

William Shakespeare

são muitas centenas de quilómetros, mas já não demora muito.

2009-03-16T11:44:00.011Z

Train Song
Feist and Ben Gibbard

é possível reclamar um pedaço
de músculo de osso de vasos sanguíneos
noutra pessoa
ensinar(-me) onde pôr os pés e por onde ir para poder varrer com o olhar tudo o resto que existe (aqui dentro) a partir desse mesmo ponto
e fazer essa ponte ruir (até voltares)

(como mostrar um sítio escondido numa cidade muito grande a uma pessoa que depois esquece o caminho e não sabe voltar lá sozinha)

(View from the Towers of Notre Dame, Paris, France, 1955
Cartier Bresson)

são vidas.

2009-03-16T01:48:00.000Z

.amanda. diz:
esta é outra que responde um cavalo às postas no forno
.amanda. diz:
JOANA
.amanda. diz:
já te fiz o jogo do cavalo?

it's a wonderful life.

2009-03-15T20:57:00.000Z

2009-03-11T11:34:00.002Z

(Elliott Erwitt)

cœur de mousse (modère ses battements).

2009-03-11T10:55:00.019Z

Mon Amoureuse
Mansfield.TYA

(Paolo Pellegrin)

isto é inacreditável.

2009-03-09T01:08:00.000Z

"Sleepyhead" by Passion Pit from Barker Gerard on Vimeo

el funilito - parte I e II

2009-03-07T22:48:00.002Z

«I like it when love borders on the anatomic: the undiscovered country held in that concisely architectural, and inhabitable, presence of the other.»

2009-03-06T12:42:00.002Z

Italy, 1933
Cartier Bresson

2009-03-04T01:28:00.001Z

«

Anyone can find places, but the finding of people is a gift from God.

»

e eis que talvez volte a tocar no piano.

2009-03-02T23:09:00.009Z

Sonata No.32 em Dó menor - I Maestoso
Ludwig van Beethoven

«
It so happened that Lucy, who found daily life rather chaotic, entered a more solid world when she opened the piano. She was then no longer either deferential or patronizing; no longer either a rebel or a slave. The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected. (...)

She was no dazzling exécutante; her runs were not all like strings of pearls, and she struck no more right notes than was suitable for one of her age and situation. Nor was she the passionate young lady, who performs so tragically on a summer's evening with the window open. Passion was there, but it could not be easily labelled; it slipped between love and hatred and jealousy, and all the furniture of the pictorial style. And she was tragical only in the sense that she was great, for she loved to play on the side of Victory. Victory of what and over what - that is more than the words of daily life can tell us. But that some sonatas of Beethoven are witten tragic no one can gainsay; yet they can triumph or despair as the player decides, and Lucy had deciced that they should triumph. (...)

Like every true performer, she was intoxicated by the mere feel of the notes: they were fingers caressing her own; and by touch, not by sound alone, did she come to her desire.
»

A Room with a View
E. M. Forster

and then leaning on your window sill / he'll say one day you caused his will / to weaken with your love and warmth and shelter

2009-02-28T16:18:00.003Z

Stranger Song
Leonard Cohen

2009-02-25T19:59:00.004Z

«
It was pleasant, too,

(...)

pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings
»

A Room with a View
E. M. Forster

hálito de biscoito.

2009-02-19T03:02:00.002Z

Cookie Breath
Nathan McKee

eu sei que isto é o paraíso.

2009-02-19T02:21:00.002Z

When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's
Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives -
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
And thought, That'll be the life;
No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide
What you think of the priest. He
And his lot will all go down the long slide
Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

High Windows
Philip Larkin

2009-02-16T03:32:00.003Z

«

truth slowly rendered believable.

»

(Nan Goldin)

pausa.

2009-02-11T20:00:00.005Z

(Laura Letinsky)

«
(...)
Não, tu és da cidade aventureira
da cidade onde o amor encontra as suas ruas
e o cemitério ardente
da sua morte
tu és da cidade onde vives por um fio
de puro acaso
onde morres ou vives não de asfixia
mas às mãos de uma aventura de um comércio puro
sem a moeda falsa do bem e do mal

Nesta curva tão terna e lancinante
que vai ser que já é o teu desaparecimento
digo-te adeus
e como um adolescente
tropeço de ternura
por ti.
»

um adeus português
Alexandre O’Neill

satine.

2009-02-06T19:21:00.004Z

«
Mas penso que é possível que a tenham separado da mãe demasiado cedo. Atrevo-me a sugerir respeitosamente aos peritos em gatos que talvez estejam enganados quando dizem que um gatinho pode ser separado da mãe no dia em que faz seis semanas. Esta gata tinha seis semanas, nem mais um dia, quando foi tirada à mãe. A base da sua esquisitice com a comida é como a hostilidade e suspeita neuróticas de uma criança com problemas de comida. Tinha que comer, achava ela; comia; mas nunca comeu com prazer, pelo gosto de comer. E partilhava outra característica com as pessoas que não tiveram suficiente calor materno. Ainda agora se esconde instintivamente sob a dobra de um jornal, ou dentro de uma caixa, ou dum cesto - tudo o que abriga, tudo o que cobre. Mais: está sempre pronta a sentir-se insultada; pronta a amuar. E é terrivelmente medrosa.

Os gatinhos que são deixados com as mães durante sete ou oito semanas comem facilmente, e têm confiança. Mas, é evidente, são menos interessantes.
»

Doris Lessing
Gatos e mais Gatos

2009-02-04T11:37:00.005Z

«

Um ano, ou menos, de recusa da minha mãe a funcionar como regulador, árbitro, equilíbrio entre sensatas e insensatas proliferações da natureza, tinha dado como resultado que a casa, as construções em volta da casa e a mata que rodeava a quinta ficaram infestadas de gatos.

(...)

Tinha que se fazer alguma coisa. Disse-o o meu pai. Disse eu. Diziam os criados. A minha mãe apertava os lábios, não disse nada, foi-se embora.

Antes de ir despediu-se da sua gata favorita, uma velha tigrada que era a mãe de todos. Afagou-a suavemente, e chorou. Isso recordo, o meu sentimento da gratuidade de tudo aquilo, porque não podia entender o desespero daquelas lágrimas.
Assim que ela partiu, o meu pai disse várias vezes, «Bom, tem que ser feito, não tem?» Tinha, sim

(...)

Por fim os gatos foram reunidos e colocados num dos quartos. O meu pai entrou no quarto com o seu revólver da Primeira Grande Guerra, mais fiável, disse, do que uma pistola. A arma soou uma vez, e outra, e outra, e outra. Os gatos que ainda não tinham sido apanhados pressentiram o seu destino e começaram a assanhar-se e a berrar por toda a mata, com as pessoas atrás deles. O meu pai saiu do quarto, a certa altura, muito branco, com os lábios apertados de raiva e os olhos secos. Estava enjoado. Praguejou um bom bocado, e depois voltou para o quarto e os disparos continuaram. Por fim saiu. Os criados entraram e levaram os cadáveres para o poço abandonado.

Alguns gatos escaparam - três nunca regressaram à casa assassina, devem ter-se tornado bravos e arriscado a sua sorte. A minha mãe, quando regressou da viagem e o vizinho que a tinha trazido já se fora embora, andou, calada e sem comentários, pela casa onde havia agora apenas uma gata, a sua velha favorita, dormindo na cama dela. Não tinha pedido que esta gata fosse poupada porque estava velha, e não muito bem de saúde. Mas esperava que assim fosse; sentou-se, e ficou muito tempo fazendo-lhe festas e falando com ela. Depois veio para a varanda. Aí estávamos eu e o meu pai, os assassinos, e como tal nos sentindo. A minha mãe sentou-se. O meu pai enrolou um cigarro. As suas mãos ainda tremiam. Olhou para ela e disse: «Isto não pode voltar a acontecer.»

E acho que nunca mais aconteceu.

»

Doris Lessing
Gatos e mais Gatos

acabou janeiro

2009-02-01T20:20:00.004Z

fevereiro é mais curto
mas tenho a certeza de que os dias são mais longos.

One Heavy February
Architecture in Helsinki

«in celebration

2009-01-30T15:12:00.000Z

of a woman whose laughter shattered white sepulchres»

29 de Janeiro 2009 (II)

2009-01-29T02:32:00.002Z

«
mas e deixa lá que tu às vezes também ouves coisas
que metem medo às focas
»

<3