Foi neste dia #344 (1345, 1391, 1838)

O dia 31 de Outubro conta com aniversários de três reis portugueses de três dinastias diferentes: a fechar a primeira dinastia, D. Fernando nascido em 1345; o segundo rei da segunda dinastia, D. Duarte nascido em 1391; e finalmente, quase a fechar a quarta e última dinastia, D. Luís nascido em 1838.

Cores de Outono #67

Ainda visíveis as belas cores de outono

Palavras lidas #435

Bondage Love
by John J. Brugaletta

Houdini’s audiences loved him.

They were poor people, illiterates:
hod carriers, icemen, washerwomen,
undernourished kids.

They understood what it meant
to have your hands manacled,
your feet tied,
to be put in a straitjacket
then in a box
and sunk.
They knew what it was like to have no way out.

It was the way the world made love to them.

So he showed them, without a word,
that one could have no way out,
not a single, possible way out,

and get out.

Foi neste dia #343 (1929)

Also on a Tuesday, 90 years ago, the New York Stock Exchange dropped $14b on a single day.

Inverno #60

Manhãs congeladas

Frosty mornings

Cores de Outono #66

October
Evalyn Callahan Shaw

October is the month that seems
All woven with midsummer dreams;
She brings for us the golden days
That fill the air with smoky haze,
She brings for us the lisping breeze
And wakes the gossips in the trees,
Who whisper near the vacant nest
Forsaken by its feathered guest.
Now half the birds forget to sing,
And half of them have taken wing,
Before their pathway shall be lost
Beneath the gossamer of frost.
Zigzag across the yellow sky,
They rustle here and flutter there,
Until the boughs hang chill and bare,
What joy for us—what happiness
Shall cheer the day the night shall bless?
‘Tis hallowe’en, the very last
Shall keep for us remembrance fast,
When every child shall duck the head
To find the precious pippin red.

Cores de Outono #65

Cores de outono molhadas

Wet autumn colors

Caprichos #564

Feeling spoiled

Cores de Outono #64

Slightly foggy, slightly wet, but very yellow

Nevoeiro ligeiro, chão um pouco molhado, amarelo constante

Coisas que não mudam #527

More brexit shenanigans

Coisas que não mudam #526

For a while now, the UK has been the laughing stock of the world

and no one is brave enough to call of this charade...

Coisas que não mudam #525

Quem deixou cair os cogumelos... um atrás do outro?

Who dropped the mushrooms... one after the other?

Cores de Outono #63

Amarelo em todo o seu esplendor

Yellow in all its splendour

Caprichos #563

Chá com história / Tea with history

Pormenores #158

And when you think you saw everything...

E quando pensamos que já vimos tudo...

Cores de Outono #62

As folhas pelo chão

e os cogumelos, que crescem como cogumelos :-)

Cores de Outono #62

Sonnet LXXIII

William Shakespeare

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish’ d by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Coisas que não mudam #524

Belíssimas cores ao final do dia, hoje em Barcelona

Beautiful colors at the end of the day, today in Barcelona

Coisas que não mudam #523

Manhãs fria, lago fumegante

Cold morning, smokey lake

Caprichos #562

Mito: gatos pretos não são fotogénicos

Myth: black cats are not photogenic

Ditto #420

We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have — for their usefulness.

--Thomas Merton

Palavras lidas #434

My First Face
by Sarah Wetzel

For fifty-five years, Borges slowly went blind,
losing first grey and green, the small fonts, the leaf’s
network of veins, then the difference between cerulean
and sapphire, between Chianti and claret. In the end,
it was every edition of Shakespeare, love looks not with eyes,
winged Cupid’s painted blind. Five years later, everything
black, Borges said, I’d always imagined that paradise
would resemble a library. No one asked, What, abandoned
to your labyrinth of darkness, do you imagine now?
A man I married told me one morning,
I don’t think I love you. We’d been married twelve years
though it took him another two years
to walk out the door. To be honest, I never loved him,
not even as I said yes. Yet I know, I’d still be with him
if he hadn’t left.

Borges knew from a young age he would, like his father
and his father’s father before him, become sightless. It’s why
he read every book, he said, before he was fifty.
Why he refused to learn Braille and how
he could tell just by listening how many books
a bookstore held. It’s how, even blind, he could draw
his own face––a scrawl without a mouth or eyes, a ball
of black string tossed on a white sheet of paper. The truth
is not always what’s written down––
I loved that man and, if only a little, I love him still.

Cores de Outono #61

As desconcertantes cores de Outono

Parece que estou a ouvir #300

Dead Combo

some of Zambujo's songs remind me so much of Dead Combo's sound that I didn't resist putting their image up!

__________

Se já não me queres

António Zambujo

letra Luísa Sobral

Se já não me queres Se já não me amas
Se a tua mente
Sonha apaixonadamente com outro alguém

Se já não me olhas, já não me desejas
Se quando me beijas não são os meus lábios que queres provar

Então meu amor, faz-me esse favor e vai ser feliz
Não quero ser lembrada
Como a mulher que amou quem não a quis

Se o teu abraço já é folgado
Ficas tão distante e o meu peito apertado
Se já não me pensas quando estás sozinho
Se não há saudade nem resta carinho entre nós dois

Então meu amor faz-me esse favor e vai ser feliz
Não quero ser lembrada
Como a mulher que amou quem não a quis.

Parece que estou a ouvir #299

Arrufo
António Zambujo
letra Pedro da Silva Martins

A julgar por esse teu olhar frio
Devo ter feito algum disparate
Ao chegar dei-te um carinho
E o meu mimo
Tu negaste
Eu fui p'ra cama sozinho
E acho que nem reparaste

Tendo em conta esta minha ausência,
Talvez o único motivo
Sim, passei a noite fora
Umas horas,
Tinha dito
E agora nem almoças
Nem te vens deitar comigo

Eu confesso não entendo bem
O porquê de um castigo assim
Sabes que há muitas mulheres também
Que queriam ser
O que és p'ra mim
Pois, então, peço desculpa
Por qualquer coisa que não fiz

Tendo em conta esse teu arrufo
É só o perdão que eu peço
Já pus leite no teu prato
Insensato,
Me despeço
Se alguém compreende um gato
Compreende o universo

Eu confesso não entendo bem
O porquê de um castigo assim
Sabes que há muitas mulheres também
Que queriam ser
O que és p'ra mim
Pois, então, peço desculpa
Por qualquer coisa que não fiz
Pois, então, peço desculpa
Por qualquer coisa que não fiz

Parece que estou a ouvir #298

António Zambujo esta noite em Barcelona. Quase duas horas de um espectáculo versátil em que Zambujo cantou músicas novas e antigas, algumas com um som bem diferente do que estamos habituados a ouvir (por exemplo, Flagrante sem ser samba, mas em tom jazz). Influências de Caetano nas músicas com sons do Brasil, de tunas académicas, salero na música cantada em espanhol, experimentação com novos instrumentos (por exemplo banjo) ou sons na transição de algumas canções roçando a música clássica (especificamente o bolero de Ravel) e até uma moda Alentejana. 

Zambujo canta muito e deixa saudades.

________

Amapola
by António Zambujo

Amapola, lindísima Amapola
Será siempre mi alma tuya sola
Yo te quiero, amada niña mía

Igual que ama la flor la luz del día

Amapola, lindísima Amapola
No seas tan ingrata y ámame
Amapola, amapola
¿Cómo puedes tú vivir tan sola?

Yo te quiero, amada niña mía
Igual que ama la flor la luz del día

Amapola, lindísima Amapola
No seas tan ingrata y ámame
Amapola, Amapola

¿Cómo puedes tú vivir tan sola?

Caprichos #561

Dióspiros / Persimmons

Palavras lidas #434

Small Kindnesses
by Danusha Laméris

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”

Espantos #594

Fascinated by early morning sky colors

Fascinada pelas cores do céu do fim da madrugada

Parece que estou a ouvir #297

Still thinking of Pulp Fiction. The catchy music in the famous dance scene is a 1964 song from Chuck Berry that reprised its popularity with the movie in 1994. Both events predate the launching of youtube in 2005, and yet, Chuck Berry's song gathers 20.2 million views and the movie scene 26.4 million... I had to double check if the order was not reversed. But guess what?! There's a version of the song that has even more views... 36.9 million with Bruce Springsteen improvising with his band live in concert in Leipzig in 2013. By then things could go viral on social media so 10m more views is not that surprising. Nothing short of remarkable. All of it!

_________

You Never Can Tell

Chuck Berry

It was a teenage wedding, and the old folks wished them well
You could see that Pierre did truly love the mademoiselle
And now the young monsieur and madame have rung the chapel bell
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell

They furnished off an apartment with a two room Roebuck sale
The coolerator was crammed with TV dinners and ginger ale
But when Pierre found work, the little money comin' worked out well
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell

They had a hi-fi phono, boy, did they let it blast
Seven hundred little records, all rock, rhythm and jazz
But when the sun went down, the rapid tempo of the music fell
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell

They bought a souped-up jitney, 'twas a cherry red '53
They drove it down to Orleans to celebrate the anniversary
It was there that Pierre was married to the lovely mademoiselle
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell

Ditto #419

When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else*, you surrender your own integrity [and] become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.

--Eleanor Roosevelt

_________

*on account of Kirkegaard a couple of weeks back.