Casas

Um palácio que nunca vi, mas que já me contaram.

E que está aqui:

Man Ray, aqui.

Do lado de lá

Frio.

Gaivota

Que perfeito coração
No meu peito bateria,
Meu amor na tua mão,
Nessa mão onde cabia
Perfeito o meu coração.

(...)
Que perfeito coração
Morreria no meu peito,
Meu amor na tua mão,
Nessa mão onde perfeito
Bateu o meu coração.

Alexandre O'Neill

Voa, Gaivota

Manhã de Inverno

Lembrança

Riding on a Railroad Train

Some people like to hitch and hike;
They are fond of highway travel;
Their nostrils toil through gas and oil,
They choke on dust and gravel.
Unless they stop for the traffic cop
Their road is a fine-or-jail road,
But wise old I go rocketing by;
I'm riding on the railroad.

I love to loll like a limp rag doll
In a peripatetic salon;
To think and think of a long cool drink
And cry to the porter, allons!
Now the clickety clack of wheel on track
Grows clickety clackety clicker:
The line is clear for the engineer
And it mounts to his head like liquor.
With a farewell scream of escaping steam
The boiler bows to the Diesel;
The iron horse has run its course
And we ride a chromium weasel;
We draw our power from the harnessed shower,
The lightning without the thunder,
But a train is a train and will so remain
While the rails glide glistening under.

Oh, some like trips in luxury ships,
And some in gasoline wagons,
And others swear by the upper air
And the wings of flying dragons.
Let each make haste to indulge his taste,
Be it beer, champagne or cider;
My private joy, both man and boy,
Is being a railroad rider.

Ogden Nash

Iguais em todo o lado

Este, está aqui: Unruly Things

A mulher ideal

Está aqui: The Ideal Woman e descobria-a indo por aqui: La Double Vie de Véronique.

Lembrança

Pennsylvania Station

The Pennsylvania Station in New York
Is like some vast basilica of old
That towers above the terror of the dark
As bulwark and protection to the soul.
Now people who are hurrying alone
And those who come in crowds from far away
Pass through this great concourse of steel and stone
To trains, or else from trains out into day.
And as in great basilicas of old
The search was ever for a dream of God,
So here the search is still within each soul
Some seed to find to root in earthly so,
Some seed to find that sprouts a holy tree
To glorify the earth——and you——and me.

Langston Hughes

Uma manhã

Fim de dia

Irresistível, mesmo fora de horas e fora de tudo, porque na verdade não precisa de horas nem precisa de nada.

Campo

Vale a pena clicar em cima da imagem para ver melhor.

Recordando os 255 anos de Mozart.

Bom por fora e por dentro

100 Lições

No Centenário da Universidade de Lisboa. 

Estudando as aliterações para o teste de português do jovem Maltez:

"Galgam os gatos, guturais, gritando,
Nas gotejantes, glácidas gateiras,
As julietas maltesas, namorando,
Em mios sensuais pelas trapeiras."

António Feijó

Fotografia

No Museu Arpad Szenes-Vieira da Silva:

Concerto Promenade no Porto

Grieg no Coliseu do Porto este fim de semana.

Não podendo ir, aqui fica:

A leal cidade

Aqui num breve trecho pitoresco:

Tirado deste livro que me encheu a alma:

Onde ainda aprendi porque é que se chama tripeiros aos tripeiros

Canção de embalar

Amanhã, na Gulbenkian: Yasmin Levy

Coisas para os pais fazerem com os rapazinhos

 Father and Son

Manhã

Durme durme

Holocausto

Dishes with Oysters, Fruit, and Wine

Osias Beert the Elder

Aqui: NGA

The Land of Nod

From Breakfast on through all the day
At home among my friends I stay,
But every night I go abroad
Afar into the land of Nod.

All by myself I have to go,
With none to tell me what to do--
All alone beside the streams
And up the mountain-sides of dreams.

The strangest things are there for me,
Both things to eat and things to see,
And many frightening sights abroad
Till morning in the land of Nod.

Try as I like to find the way,
I never can get back by day,
Nor can remember plain and clear
The curious music that I hear.

Robert Louis Stevenson

I am the People, the Mob

I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world's food and
  clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons come from me
  and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send forth more Napoleons
  and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for much plowing.
  Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is sucked out
  and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and makes
  me work and give up what I have. And I forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history
  to remember. Then—I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the
  lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year,
  who played me for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all the
  world say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a sneer in his
  voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.

Carl Sandburg

Leituras

Granada, Degrain

Introspective Reflection

I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance
Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance.

Ogden Nash

A data considerável

"Cedo, de manhã, recebera, com uma carta de Madame de Trèves, um açafate de camélias, azáleas, orquídeas e lírios do vale. E foi este mimo que lhe recordou a data considerável. Soprou sobre as pétalas o fumo do cigarro e murmurou com um riso de lento escárnio:

- Então há trinta e quatro anos que eu ando nesta maçada? E como eu propunha que telefonássemos aos amigos para beberem no 202 o champanhe do «natalício» - ele recusou, com o nariz enojado. Oh! Não! Que horrível seca!... E bradou mesmo para o Grilo:

- Eu hoje não estou em Paris para ninguém. Abalei para o campo, abalei para Marselha... Morri!

E a sua ironia não cessou até ao almoço perante os bilhetes, os telegramas, as cartas, que subiam, se arredondavam em colina sobre a mesa de ébano, como um preito da Cidade. Outras flores que vieram, em vistosos cestos, com vistosos laços, foram por ele comparadas às que se depõem sobre uma tumba. E apenas se interessou um momento pelo presente de Efraim, uma engenhosa mesa, que se abaixava até ao tapete ou se alteava até ao tecto - para quê, senhor Deus meu?

Depois do almoço, como chovia sombriamente, não arredámos do 202, com os pés estendidos ao lume, em preguiçoso silêncio. Eu terminara por adormecer beatificamente. Acordei aos passos açodados do Grilo... Jacinto, enterrado na poltrona, com umas tesouras, recortava um papel! E nunca eu me compadeci daquele amigo, que cansara a mocidade a acumular todas as noções formuladas desde Aristóteles e a juntar todos os inventos realizados desde Teramenes, como nessa tarde de festa, em que ele, cercado de Civilização nas máximas proporções, para gozar nas máximas proporções a delícia de viver, se encontrava reduzido, junto ao seu lar, a recortar papéis com uma tesoura!

O Grilo trazia um presente do grão -duque - uma caixa de prat a, forrada de cedro, e cheia de um chá precioso, colhido, flor a flor, nas veigas de Kiang -Su por mãos puras de virgens, e conduzido através da Ásia, em caravanas, com a veneração de uma relíquia. Então, para despertar o nosso torpor, lembrei que tomássemos o divino chá - ocupação bem harmónica com a tarde triste, a chuva grossa alagando os vidros, e a clara chama bailando no fogão. Jacinto acedeu - e um escudeiro acercou logo a mesa de Efraim para que nós lhe estreássemos os serviços destros. Mas o meu Príncipe, depois de a altear, para o meu espanto, até aos cristais do lustre, não conseguiu, apesar de uma suada e desesperada batalha com as molas, que a mesa regressasse a uma altura humana e caseira. E o escudeiro de novo a levou, levantada como um andaime, quimérica, unicamente aproveitável para o gigante Adamastor. Depois veio a caixa do chá entre chaleiras, lâmpadas, coadores, filtros, todo um fausto de alfaias de prata, que comunicavam a essa ocupação, tão simples e doce em casa de minha tia, fazer chá , a majestade de um rito. Prevenido pelo meu camarada da sublimidade daquele chá de Kiang-Su, ergui a chávena aos lábios com reverência. Era uma infusão descorada que sabia a malva e a formiga. Jacinto provou, cuspiu, blasfemou... Não tomámos chá.

Ao cabo de outro pensativo silêncio, murmurei, com os olhos perdidos no lume: - E as obras de. Tormes? A igreja... já haverá igreja nova? Jacinto retomara o papel e a tesoura: - Não sei... Não tornei a receber carta do Silvério... Nem imagino onde param os ossos... Que lúgubre história!

Depois chegou a hora das luzes e do jantar. Eu encomendara pelo Grilo ao nosso magistral cozinheiro uma larga travessa de arroz -doce, com as iniciais de Jacinto e a data ditosa em canela, à moda amável da nossa meiga terra. E o meu Príncipe à mesa, percorrendo a lâmina de marfim onde no 202 se escreviam os pratos a lápis vermelho, louvou com fervor a ideia patriarcal:

- Arroz -doce! Está escrito com dois ss, mas não tem dúvida... Excelente lembrança! Há que tempos não como arroz-doce! Desde a morte da avó.

Mas quando o arroz -doce apareceu triunfalmente, que. vexame! Era um prato monumental, de grande arte! O arroz, maciço, moldado em forma de pirâmide do Egipto, emergia de uma calda de cereja, e desaparecia sob os frutos secos que o revestiam até ao cimo, onde se equilibrava uma coroa de conde feita de chocolate e gomos de tangerina gelada! E as iniciais, a data, tão lindas e graves na canela ingénua, vinham traçadas nas bordas da travessa com violetas pralinadas! Repelimos, num mudo horror, o prato acanalhado. - E Jacinto, erguendo o copo de champanhe, murmurou corpo num funeral pagão:

- Ad manes, aos nossos mortos! Recolhemos à Biblioteca, a tomar o café no conchego e alegria do lume."

Eça de Queirós, a Cidade e as Serras

Travel experience

Norman Rockwell

Canzonetta Spagnuola

Reflection On The Fallibility Of Nemesis

He who is ridden by a conscience
Worries about a lot of nonscience;
He without benefit of scruples
His fun and income soon quadruples.

Ogden Nash

For the One Man Who Likes My Thighs

There was the expensive cream from France
that promised the dimples would vanish
if applied nightly to the problem spots.
Then, when that didn't work, Kiko, the masseuse
at Profile Health Spa, dug her thumbs
deep into my flesh as she explained
in quasi-scientific terms that her rough hands
could break up the toughest globules of cellulite.
I screamed, then bruised over, but nothing
else happened. When they healed, my legs still looked
like tapioca pudding. There was the rolling pin method
I tried as far back as seventh grade,
kneading my lumpy legs as though I was making bread.
Cottage Cheese Knees, Thunder Thighs --
I heard it all -- under the guise of teasing,
under the leaky umbrella mistaken for affection.
I learned to choose long dresses
and dark woolen tights, clam diggers instead of short-shorts,
and, when I could get away with it, skirted bathing suits.
The nutritionist said that maybe Royal Jelly tablets
would break up the fat. I drank eight glasses
of water everyday for a month. I ate nothing
but steak for a week. I had to take everyone's advice,
fearing that if I didn't, my thighs
would truly be all my own fault. Liposuction
cost too much. The foil sweat-it-out
shorts advertised in the back of Redbook
didn't work. Swimming, walking in place, leg lifts.
It's embarrassing, especially being a feminist.
I wondered if Andrea Dworkin had stopped worrying,
and how. If Gloria Steinem does aerobics,
claiming it's just for her own enjoyment.
Then I read in a self-help book:
if you learn to appreciate your thighs, they'll appreciate
you back. Though it wasn't romance at first sight,
I did try to thank my legs for carrying me up nine flights
the day when the elevator at work was out;
for their quick sprint that propelled me
through the closing doors of the subway
so that I wouldn't be late for a movie;
for supporting my nieces who straddled, one
on each thigh, their heads burrowing deep into my lap.
I think, in fact, that it was at that moment
of being an aunt I forgot for an instant
about my thigh dilemma and began, more fully,
as they say, enjoying my life. So when it happened later
that I fell in love, and as a bonus,
the man said he liked my thighs, I shouldn't have been
so thoroughly surprised. At first I was sure I'd misheard --
that he liked my eyes, that he had heard someone else sigh,
or that maybe he was having a craving for french fries.
And it wasn't very easy to nonchalantly say oh, thanks
after I'd made him repeat. I kept asking
if he was sure, then waiting for a punch
line of some mean-spirited thigh-related joke.
I ran my fingers over his calf, brown and firm,
with beautiful muscles waving down the back.
It made no sense the way love makes no sense.
Then it made all the sense in the world.


Denise Duhamel

Dias de Inverno

Um dia de luz

Winter Trees

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

William Carlos William

Tempos difíceis

Living with less

Soneto XV

When I consider every thing that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheered and cheque'd even by the self-same sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory;
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay,
To change your day of youth to sullied night;
And all in war with Time for love of you,
As he takes from you, I engraft you new.

           William Shakespeare

Adorando o menino

Brueghel

There's a certain Slant of light (258)

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are –

None may teach it – Any –
'Tis the Seal Despair –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air –

When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –

Emily Dickinson

Daqui: NYRB

The Good-Morrow

I wonder by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not wean'd till then?
But suck'd on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be;
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown;
Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres
Without sharp north, without declining west?
Whatever dies, was not mix'd equally;
If our two loves be one, or thou and I
Love so alike that none can slacken, none can die.

Jonh Donne

Banho matinal

Pierre Bonnard

Va pensiero

Coisas velhas no Ano Novo

Com comentários em ... russo(?).

Aditamento: Diz quem sabe que é polaco. Pois seja!

Nas nuvens

Wilson Bentley

"America's First Cloud Physicist, grew up on a small farm in Vermont and spent most of his life there. Home schooled by his mother, she instilled in him a love of knowledge and fostered his inquisitiveness. Bentley developed a lifelong passion for studying and observing water in all of its forms -- dew, frost, clouds, rain, and snowflakes. He graduated from observing and drawing snowflakes to taking photographs through a microscope, obtaining the first photomicrograph ever taken of an ice crystal on January 15, 1885. (A snowflake is usually composed of many ice crystals that collide and stick together as they fall. But with persistence one can find and isolate individual ice crystals.)

“Do You Have Any Advice For Those of Us Just Starting Out?"

Give up sitting dutifully at your desk. Leave
your house or apartment. Go out into the world.

It's all right to carry a notebook but a cheap
one is best, with pages the color of weak tea
and on the front a kitten or a space ship.

Avoid any enclosed space where more than
three people are wearing turtlenecks. Beware
any snow-covered chalet with deer tracks
across the muffled tennis courts.

Not surprisingly, libraries are a good place to write.
And the perfect place in a library is near an aisle
where a child a year or two old is playing as his
mother browses the ranks of the dead.

Often he will pull books from the bottom shelf.
The title, the author's name, the brooding photo
on the flap mean nothing. Red book on black, gray
book on brown, he builds a tower. And the higher
it gets, the wider he grins.

You who asked for advice, listen: When the tower
falls, be like that child. Laugh so loud everybody
in the world frowns and says, "Shhhh."

Then start again.


Ron Koertge

Do sótão do Boião

Dia de Ano Novo dos antigos.

Virar de página, mas bem longe...

Ano Novo

Tarde.

Ano Novo

Manhã