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Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Monday, May 31, 2010
THE DRESS
THE DRESS
by C. K. Williams
In those days, those days which exist for me only as the
most elusive memory now,
when often the first sound you'd hear in the morning
would be a storm of birdsong,
then the soft clop of the hooves of the horse hauling a
milk wagon down your block,
and the last sound at night as likely as not would be
your father pulling up in his car,
having worked late again, always late, and going
heavily down to the cellar, to the furnace,
to shake out the ashes and damp the draft before he
came upstairs to fall into bed --
in those long-ago days, women, my mother, my
friends' mothers, our neighbors,
all the women I knew, wore, often much of the day,
what were called housedresses,
cheap, printed, pulpy, seemingly purposefully shapeless
light cotton shifts,
that you wore over your nightgown and, when you had
to go to look for a child,
hang wash on the line, or run down to the grocery store
on the corner, under a coat,
the twisted hem of the nightgown, always lank and
yellowed, dangling beneath.
More than the curlers some of the women seemed
constantly to have in their hair,
in preparation for a great event -- a ball, one would
think -- that never came to pass;
more than the way most women's faces not only were
never made up during the day,
but seemed scraped, bleached, and, with their plucked
eyebrows, scarily masklike;
more than all that it was those dresses that made
women so unknowable and forbidding,
adepts of enigmas to which men could have no access,
and boys no conception.
Only later would I see the dresses also as a
proclamation: that in your dim kitchen,
your cellar, your bleak concrete yard, what you
revealed of yourself was a fabulation;
your real sensual nature, veiled in those sexless
vestments, was utterly your dominion.
In those days, one hid much else as well: grown men
didn't embrace one another,
unless someone had died, and not always then; you
shook hands or, at a ball game,
thumped your friend¹s back and exchanged blows meant
to be codes for affection;
once out of childhood you'd never again know the shock
of your father's whiskers
on your cheek, not until mores at last had evolved, and
you could hug another man,
then hold on for a moment, then even kiss (your father's
bristles white and stiff now).
What release finally, the embrace: though we were wary
-- it seemed so audacious --
how much unspoken joy there was in that affirmation
of equality and communion,
no matter how much misunderstanding and pain had
passed between you by then.
We knew so little in those days, as little as now, I
suppose, about healing those hurts:
even the women, in their best dresses, with beads
and sequins sewn on the bodice,
even in lipstick and mascara, their hair aflow, could
only stand wringing their hands,
begging for peace, while father and son, like thugs,
like thieves, like Romans,
simmered and hissed and hated, inflicting sorrows
that endured, the worst anyway,
through the kiss and embrace, bleeding from brother
to brother into the generations.
In those days there was still countryside close to the
city, farms, cornfields, cows;
even not far from our building with its blurred brick and
long shadowy hallway
you could find tracts with hills and trees you could
pretend were mountains and forests.
Or you could go out by yourself even to a half-block-
long empty lot, into the bushes:
like a creature of leaves you'd lurk, crouched, crawling,
simplified, savage, alone;
already there was wanting to be simpler, wanting, when
they called you, never to go back.
listen here
by C. K. Williams
In those days, those days which exist for me only as the
most elusive memory now,
when often the first sound you'd hear in the morning
would be a storm of birdsong,
then the soft clop of the hooves of the horse hauling a
milk wagon down your block,
and the last sound at night as likely as not would be
your father pulling up in his car,
having worked late again, always late, and going
heavily down to the cellar, to the furnace,
to shake out the ashes and damp the draft before he
came upstairs to fall into bed --
in those long-ago days, women, my mother, my
friends' mothers, our neighbors,
all the women I knew, wore, often much of the day,
what were called housedresses,
cheap, printed, pulpy, seemingly purposefully shapeless
light cotton shifts,
that you wore over your nightgown and, when you had
to go to look for a child,
hang wash on the line, or run down to the grocery store
on the corner, under a coat,
the twisted hem of the nightgown, always lank and
yellowed, dangling beneath.
More than the curlers some of the women seemed
constantly to have in their hair,
in preparation for a great event -- a ball, one would
think -- that never came to pass;
more than the way most women's faces not only were
never made up during the day,
but seemed scraped, bleached, and, with their plucked
eyebrows, scarily masklike;
more than all that it was those dresses that made
women so unknowable and forbidding,
adepts of enigmas to which men could have no access,
and boys no conception.
Only later would I see the dresses also as a
proclamation: that in your dim kitchen,
your cellar, your bleak concrete yard, what you
revealed of yourself was a fabulation;
your real sensual nature, veiled in those sexless
vestments, was utterly your dominion.
In those days, one hid much else as well: grown men
didn't embrace one another,
unless someone had died, and not always then; you
shook hands or, at a ball game,
thumped your friend¹s back and exchanged blows meant
to be codes for affection;
once out of childhood you'd never again know the shock
of your father's whiskers
on your cheek, not until mores at last had evolved, and
you could hug another man,
then hold on for a moment, then even kiss (your father's
bristles white and stiff now).
What release finally, the embrace: though we were wary
-- it seemed so audacious --
how much unspoken joy there was in that affirmation
of equality and communion,
no matter how much misunderstanding and pain had
passed between you by then.
We knew so little in those days, as little as now, I
suppose, about healing those hurts:
even the women, in their best dresses, with beads
and sequins sewn on the bodice,
even in lipstick and mascara, their hair aflow, could
only stand wringing their hands,
begging for peace, while father and son, like thugs,
like thieves, like Romans,
simmered and hissed and hated, inflicting sorrows
that endured, the worst anyway,
through the kiss and embrace, bleeding from brother
to brother into the generations.
In those days there was still countryside close to the
city, farms, cornfields, cows;
even not far from our building with its blurred brick and
long shadowy hallway
you could find tracts with hills and trees you could
pretend were mountains and forests.
Or you could go out by yourself even to a half-block-
long empty lot, into the bushes:
like a creature of leaves you'd lurk, crouched, crawling,
simplified, savage, alone;
already there was wanting to be simpler, wanting, when
they called you, never to go back.
listen here
Friday, May 28, 2010
by the sea
todos os carros tinham um par de namorados, bom, como dizer, bem namorando e eu que tinha ida até à beira mar para fotografar o reflexo da lua na água, fotografei a primeira coisa que me apareceu e zarpei rápido...
.jpg)
Thursday, May 27, 2010
list
Eero Saarinen, list of Aline Bernstein’s good qualities, ca. 1954. Aline and Eero Saarinen papers, 1857–1972. Archives of American Art. Smithsonian Institution.
Eero Saarinen (1910–1961)
Finish-born architect Eero Saarinen, the designer of such structural icons as the TWA terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport (1962) in New York and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis (1965), met his second wife, Aline, on January 28, 1953. Aline, then an art editor and critic at the New York Times, was writing an article on Saarinen’s new General Motors Technical Center (1955) in Warren, Michigan. They fell in love instantly. Saarinen, a great list maker, enumerated her positive traits.
Papoilas
Este ano as papoilas estão em força - sempre tive um fraco por papoilas, mesmo em miúdo já o tinha, penso que tenha a ver com o culto da seara, as papoilas sendo o sangue na seara, o belo no meio do útil.
tempos
No dia antes, duas nuvens baixas reflectiam o sol do fim do dia, enquadradando com simetria perfeita um grupo de árvores na outra margem. Hoje já não...
A fábrica parece sujar tudo, atirando o pó das suas entranhas para o céu, conspurcando a paisagem. A Terra trata de tudo, mas leva o seu tempo, o tempo das rochas e dos anéis nas árvores, um tempo que já perdemos.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
seeds depicting stars
- Why do we sometimes feel about to fall ?
- Why do we feel like a shift happened in the world ?
Nobody seems to notice anything, so we take small gifts,
tree seeds, found fallen, in gardens, depicting stars,
you keep or give to the one you love.
Water fountains running at a distance, birds of paradise displaying lurid feathers.
- Why do we feel like a shift happened in the world ?
Nobody seems to notice anything, so we take small gifts,
tree seeds, found fallen, in gardens, depicting stars,
you keep or give to the one you love.
Water fountains running at a distance, birds of paradise displaying lurid feathers.
found
For The Sake of Strangers
by Dorianne Laux
No matter what the grief, its weight,
we are obliged to carry it.
We rise and gather momentum, the dull strength
that pushes us through crowds.
And then the young boy gives me directions
so avidly. A woman holds the glass door open,
waits patiently for my empty body to pass through.
All day it continues, each kindness
reaching toward another - a stranger
singing to no one as I pass on the path, trees
offering their blossoms, a retarded child
who lifts his almond eyes and smiles.
Somehow they always find me, seem even
to be waiting, determined to keep me
as it must have once called to them -
this temptation to step off the edge
and fall weightless, away from the world.
by Dorianne Laux
No matter what the grief, its weight,
we are obliged to carry it.
We rise and gather momentum, the dull strength
that pushes us through crowds.
And then the young boy gives me directions
so avidly. A woman holds the glass door open,
waits patiently for my empty body to pass through.
All day it continues, each kindness
reaching toward another - a stranger
singing to no one as I pass on the path, trees
offering their blossoms, a retarded child
who lifts his almond eyes and smiles.
Somehow they always find me, seem even
to be waiting, determined to keep me
as it must have once called to them -
this temptation to step off the edge
and fall weightless, away from the world.
Sardine sadness
Goya's Burial of the Sardine
'Dear sardine,' wail the locals. 'Why have you left us, the poor orphans?'
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
I love thee with the passion put to use
Sonnets from the Portuguese, XLIII
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right,
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith;
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, – I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right,
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith;
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, – I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! – and if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Blue and Gold
James Abbot Mcneill Whistler
Nocturne: Blue and Gold - Old Battersea Bridge 1872
© Tate
interesting read here
Blue and Silver
James Abbott McNeill Whistler
Nocturne: Blue and Silver - Cremorne Lights 1872
© Tate
Oil on canvas
50.2x74.3cm
Gist
gist
Main Entry: gist
Pronunciation: \ˈjist\
Function: noun
Etymology: Anglo-French, it lies, from gisir to lie, ultimately from Latin jacēre — more at adjacent
Date: circa 1711
1 : the ground of a legal action
2 : the main point or part : essence
Tejo
Li a anedota sobre o grande guru, que escolheu viver num sitio inóspito,
apesar da distância as pessoas faziam uma longa fila para falar com ele,
Chegados à fala, ele dizia a todos : “- A vida é um rio.”
Todos os dias vejo o Tejo, todos os dias o sinto perto
É uma necessidade minha, manter esta relação vital
Com esta grande massa fluída, imparável, imperturbável, presente.
Hoje correm muitas nuvens pelo céu,
Enchem o rio de manchas, zonas de claro e escuro,
Lagos de luz intensa, onde brilham incontáveis diamantes.
- E se a vida não for um rio ? Se a vida for outra coisa, diversa
deste cenário grande, deste ser pequeno perante tudo o que nos contempla,
de fora, para lá da margem.
apesar da distância as pessoas faziam uma longa fila para falar com ele,
Chegados à fala, ele dizia a todos : “- A vida é um rio.”
Todos os dias vejo o Tejo, todos os dias o sinto perto
É uma necessidade minha, manter esta relação vital
Com esta grande massa fluída, imparável, imperturbável, presente.
Hoje correm muitas nuvens pelo céu,
Enchem o rio de manchas, zonas de claro e escuro,
Lagos de luz intensa, onde brilham incontáveis diamantes.
- E se a vida não for um rio ? Se a vida for outra coisa, diversa
deste cenário grande, deste ser pequeno perante tudo o que nos contempla,
de fora, para lá da margem.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Sunday, May 23, 2010
To My Wife
J. V. Cunningham: To My Wife
And does the heart grow old? You know
In the indiscriminate green
Of summer or in earliest snow
A landscape is another scene,
Inchoate and anonymous,
And every rock and bush and drift
As our affections alter us
Will alter with the season’s shift.
So love by love we come at last,
As through the exclusions of a rhyme,
Or the exactions of a past,
To the simplicity of time,
The antiquity of grace, where yet
We live in terror and delight
With love as quiet as regret
And love like anger in the night.
And does the heart grow old? You know
In the indiscriminate green
Of summer or in earliest snow
A landscape is another scene,
Inchoate and anonymous,
And every rock and bush and drift
As our affections alter us
Will alter with the season’s shift.
So love by love we come at last,
As through the exclusions of a rhyme,
Or the exactions of a past,
To the simplicity of time,
The antiquity of grace, where yet
We live in terror and delight
With love as quiet as regret
And love like anger in the night.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Hope/Wish
‘When life gives you oil spills, make molotovs!’ Mobile, Alabama, 2010
- Well, sometimes it looks like this is the best answer but I hope, I wish for some other way out of here...
stolen Pastoral
Henri Matisse - Pastoral - 1905
Meet my new Matisse, I had it stolen from Paris, so that I could hang it on the master bedroom at my villa in Tuscany...hehehe, so much money in the hands of so few, they will be bound to have what they shouldn't...
Thursday, May 20, 2010
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