Old age

Quando formos velhos teremos convicções ou continuaremos a relativizar tudo ? Quando formos velhos teremos hábitos e honraremos costumes, ou deixaremos passar as ocasiões e aproveitaremos os fins de semana prolongados ?
Quando formos velhos, apoiar-se-ão em nós os mais novos, procurar-nos-ão para conselho e conforto ou continuaremos problemáticos e evasivos ?
Que será do mundo quando os velhos se forem e os velhos seremos nós ?

What will be of the world, when all the old people are gone and we will be the old people ?
Will we honour uses and traditions ? Could we dispense warmth and support or will we still be our doubtful selves ?

NEU !

See it all, here

Novalis: Hymns to the Night

Before all the wondrous shows of the widespread space around him, what living, sentient thing loves not the all-joyous light -- with its colors, its rays and undulations, its gentle omnipresence in the form of the wakening Day? The giant-world of the unresting constellations inhales it as the innermost soul of life, and floats dancing in its blue flood -- the sparkling, ever-tranquil stone, the thoughtful, imbibing plant, and the wild, burning multiform beast inhales it -- but more than all, the lordly stranger with the sense-filled eyes, the swaying walk, and the sweetly closed, melodious lips. Like a king over earthly nature, it rouses every force to countless transformations, binds and unbinds innumerable alliances, hangs its heavenly form around every earthly substance. -- Its presence alone reveals the marvelous splendor of the kingdoms of the world.

Aside I turn to the holy, unspeakable, mysterious Night. Afar lies the world -- sunk in a deep grave -- waste and lonely is its place. In the chords of the bosom blows a deep sadness. I am ready to sink away in drops of dew, and mingle with the ashes. -- The distances of memory, the wishes of youth, the dreams of childhood, the brief joys and vain hopes of a whole long life, arise in gray garments, like an evening vapor after the sunset. In other regions the light has pitched its joyous tents. What if it should never return to its children, who wait for it with the faith of innocence?

What springs up all at once so sweetly boding in my heart, and stills the soft air of sadness? Dost thou also take a pleasure in us, dark Night? What holdest thou under thy mantle, that with hidden power affects my soul? Precious balm drips from thy hand out of its bundle of poppies. Thou upliftest the heavy-laden wings of the soul. Darkly and inexpressibly are we moved -- joy-startled, I see a grave face that, tender and worshipful, inclines toward me, and, amid manifold entangled locks, reveals the youthful loveliness of the Mother. How poor and childish a thing seems to me now the Light -- how joyous and welcome the departure of the day -- because the Night turns away from thee thy servants, you now strew in the gulfs of space those flashing globes, to proclaim thy omnipotence -- thy return -- in seasons of thy absence. More heavenly than those glittering stars we hold the eternal eyes which the Night hath opened within us. Farther they see than the palest of those countless hosts -- needing no aid from the light, they penetrate the depths of a loving soul -- that fills a loftier region with bliss ineffable. Glory to the queen of the world, to the great prophet of the holier worlds, to the guardian of blissful love -- she sends thee to me -- thou tenderly beloved -- the gracious sun of the Night, -- now am I awake -- for now am I thine and mine -- thou hast made me know the Night -- made of me a man -- consume with spirit-fire my body, that I, turned to finer air, may mingle more closely with thee, and then our bridal night endure forever.

click here for the complete work

Gift

Here Is My Gift

Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,
not sticks of burning incense.
You lived aloof, maintaining to the end
your magnificent disdain.
You drank wine, and told the wittiest jokes,
and suffocated inside stifling walls.
Alone you let the terrible stranger in,
and stayed with her alone.

Now you're gone, and nobody says a word
about your troubled and exalted life.
Only my voice, like a flute, will mourn
at your dumb funeral feast.
Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I,
I, sick with grief for the buried past,
I, smoldering on a slow fire,
having lost everything and forgotten all,
would be fated to commemorate a man
so full of strength and will and bright inventions,
who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me,
hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.

Another day beauty

No highlights in the river today - layer upon layer of grey clouds, difuse the sun light, but it's not really cold, just a little sad.

Nada de altas luzes sobre o rio hoje, camadas de nuvens cinzentas, espalham a luz do sol, não está realmente frio, só um pouco triste.

"Eu oscilo ao vento, como uma erva. E não sei o que é a beleza nem para que precisa o mundo dela."
Sónia Tiaguina, Nina Berbérova "O cais das tormentas"

"I wave in the wind, like a weed. I don't know what beauty is neither why the world needs it."
Sónia Tiaguina, Nina Berbérova "O cais das tormentas" translation from the translation

Silence

Da árvore do silêncio pende seu fruto, a paz. Arthur Schopenhauer.

Diz um provérbio árabe que "da árvore do silêncio pende o seu fruto, a tranqüilidade". ...


From the tree of silence hangs it's best fruit : tranquility...

The tree of silence bears the fruit of peace. Proverb, Arabian.

misterious orb

Estou cansado e confuso - o trabalho parece vir de todas as direcções e não dá folga. Preciso de intervalos no tempo, pequenas praias ao longo do curso dos dias, onde qualquer coisa vai ganhando sentido.
O dia, no entanto tinha começado auspicioso, no local habitual o rio brilhava, com toda a energia do sol e forçando os olhos para o olhar, imaginava assim as minhas baterias a serem recarregadas. Eu preciso do sol que o rio me dá.
Todas as coisas contém uma harmonia, cada átomo de luz é perfeito em si mesmo.
Como nas pinturas antigas, as bençãos chegam sempre até nós vindas de cima, fecundam-nos e ao chão que cuidamos.
Toda a vida da Terra nasce no Céu.


I'm tired and confused - work comes from all directions and gives me no truce. I do need some suspensions in time, small beaches along the torrent of days, where something is struggling to make sense.
The day had a fine start though : on the usual place the river shone with all the energy of the sun, made my eyes keep staring at it, imagining my internal batteries being fully recharged by this. I need the sun that the river gives me.
Everything has a harmony, each light atom it's perfect in itself. As in old paintings, blessings always arrive from above, they fecundate us and the soil we care for.
All Earth life begins in the Heavens above.

Me in the eighties(2)

I'm the best letter writer you can get, but this is not my country, this is not my language, so I'm always getting fired on account of my errors. In my language I could write any kind of letter, satisfaction guaranteed.
Here I have this great talent and cannot use it.

Me in the eighties(1)

Creatures coming out of the water, just do die in the beaches
The beginning of the world, but backwards this time

Ursamaior

mezzaluna

Extasis

Mother and child

They're playing with a bird, aren't they ?

belo

Do yourselves a favour and see this, please

it looks so easy, doesn't it ?

Child's play

Joseph Low, an illustrator who did absurdist covers for The New Yorker and won Caldecott honors for the children’s book “Mice Twice,” died on Feb. 12 at his home in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha’s Vineyard. He was 95.
Mr. Low won Caldecott honors in 1981 for the book “Mice Twice.”
He died in his sleep of natural causes, said his daughter Damaris Botwick.

water as a byproduct in the desert

Simon Starling's Turner prize-winning motorised bicycle which, during a journey across the Tabernas desert, produced water as a byproduct.

books

La bibliotheque en feu

The library is on fire and you have to save all the books you love, carrying them in our heart, sharing them with anybody who cares.

it's a boy

I love good news

martirio