Coisas que não mudam #595

Parque Terra Nostra

Espantos #636

14 Abril

28 Abril

Coisas que não mudam #594

A elegância dos gatos

Coisas bonitas #99

Camélias variadíssimas

Coisas bonitas #98

Azáleas em flor

Sem título #225

I do like them brussels sprouts!

Parece que estou a ouvir #356

Passam hoje 17,500 dias desde o 25 de Abril de 1974 que instaurou a democracia em Portugal, mais um dia do que os 17,499 dias que passaram entre esse dia e o golpe militar de 28 de Maio de 1926 que instaurou a ditadura. Democracias jovens (e antigas) cuidem-se! Fica um postal de agradecimento a Salgueiro Maia que personificou a luta desinteressada pelos direitos de todos e a letra de um poema de concórdia e paz.

__________

Traz Outro Amigo Também

de Zeca Afonso

Amigo
Maior que o pensamento
Por essa estrada amigo vem
Por essa estrada amigo vem
Não percas tempo que o vento
É meu amigo também
Não percas tempo que o vento
É meu amigo também

Em terras
Em todas as fronteiras
Seja bem vindo quem vier por bem
Se alguém houver que não queira
Trá-lo contigo também

Aqueles
Aqueles que ficaram
(Em toda a parte todo o mundo tem)
Em sonhos me visitaram
Traz outro amigo também

Coisas bonitas #97

(begonia) Perfection

Parece que estou a ouvir #355

Somewhat familiar ballad but not quite... just like Ukraine's historical path

Kiev

by Barclay James Harvest

(from the 1987 album Face to Face)

My friends it's not what you were famous for
But now the whole world's watching you
If we could help you then you know we would
But we don't know just what to do

Eye to eye our ways are not the same

We never tried to understand
But it could pass to each of us you name
Then who's the one to take the blame

Kiev, a candle with a flame
You'll never be the same
Our hearts go out to you
And what you're going through
They've thrown away your past
Just like an empty glass
Into the fire

Someone wiser took the Steppe from you
I'm sure with reason it was right
But now it seems the whole world's blaming you
And who's the one to put things right

Kiev, a candle with a flame
You'll never be the same
Our hearts go out to you
And what you're going through
They've thrown away your past
Just like an empty glass
Into the fire

Oh, Kiev, a candle with a flame
You'll never be the same
We all will understand
You're really not to blame
They've thrown away your past
Just like an empty glass
Into the fire

Oh, Kiev

Palavras lidas #508

Debtors
by Jim Harrison

They used to say we’re living on borrowed
time but even when young I wondered
who loaned it to us? In 1948 one grandpa
died stretched tight in a misty oxygen tent,
his four sons gathered, his papery hand
grasping mine. Only a week before, we were fishing.
Now the four sons have all run out of borrowed time
while I’m alive wondering whom I owe
for this indisputable gift of existence.
Of course time is running out. It always
has been a creek heading east, the freight
of water with its surprising heaviness
following the slant of the land, its destiny.
What is lovelier than a creek or riverine thicket?
Say it is an unknown benefactor who gave us
birds and Mozart, the mystery of trees and water
and all living things borrowing time.
Would I still love the creek if I lasted forever?

Ditto #507

Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

--Joan Didion

Sem título #224

Problem child...

Coisas que mudaram #16

A 17 de Março

Fátima chegou a Lviv. E em Kiev...

(imagem daqui)

Coisas bonitas #96

Kharkiv this morning

(photo from here)

Retirado do contexto #401

Thoughtful friends in Leicester

Espantos #635

Thoughts on the current refugee crisis

2.8 million have fled Ukraine since 24-Feb

Retirado do contexto #400

Sem necessidade de comentário

No need for comment

Sem título #223

Supermarket temptations... :-)

Palavras lidas #507

Imaginary Conversation

by Linda Pastan

You tell me to live each day
as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen
where before coffee I complain
of the day ahead—that obstacle race
of minutes and hours,
grocery stores and doctors.

But why the last? I ask. Why not
live each day as if it were the first—
all raw astonishment, Eve rubbing
her eyes awake that first morning,
the sun coming up
like an ingénue in the east?

You grind the coffee
with the small roar of a mind
trying to clear itself. I set
the table, glance out the window
where dew has baptized every
living surface.

Ditto #506

Where ignorance is bliss — 'Tis folly to be wise.

--Thomas Gray

Pormenores #175

So care free and so fixated on birds

Coisas que não mudam #593

Zelensky addressing the British parliament on 8 March 2022, 

quoted both Shakespeare and Churchill

(...) “Ukraine were not looking to have this war. The Ukraine have not been looking to become big but they have become big over the days of this war. We are the country that are saving people despite having to fight one of the biggest armies in the world. We have to fight the helicopters, rockets.

“The question for us now is to be or not to be. Oh no, this Shakespearean question. For 13 days this question could have been asked but now I can give you a definitive answer. It’s definitely yes, to be.

“And I would like to remind you the words that the United Kingdom have already heard, which are important again. We will not give up and we will not lose.

“We will fight until the end, at sea, in the air. We will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost.

“We will fight in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets." (...)

Retirado do contexto #399

"O povo ucraniano não existe"

--Vladimir Putin, fevereiro 2022

11 anos, um saco de plástico, um número de telefone e uma viagem solitária até à fronteira da Eslováquia.

Sem título #222

Squint harder...

Numa sala perto de mim #437

The Lorax (2012) is an animated musical based on Dr. Seuss's 1971 children's book by the same name. The colourful scenery, the catchy tunes, the lovable and relatable characters, all instil in children an environmental sense and a willingness to get involved:

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

--Dr. Seuss

Coisas que mudaram #15

Há coisas que mudaram em aparência, mas na realidade andaram foi dissimuladas por uns tempos. Refiro-me ao PCP e ao BE fazerem parte da solução governativa da defunta geringonça, sendo que agora votaram contra ou abstiveram-se na resolução do Parlamento Europeu de condenação à invasão Russa da Ucrânia. Nem o mágico António Costa conseguiria tirar esse coelho da cartola para tentar convencer que só negociaria com as esquerdas moderadas. Razão temos para dizer que "nunca nos enganaram" mas ainda assim não levaram arrepio suficiente nas recentes eleições que felizmente (para eles) aconteceram antes da monumental cara de pau que fizeram no Parlamento Europeu. É a decrepitude partidária de esquerda... que descansem em paz.

Quem bem o disse foi Manuel Carvalho num artigo de Opinião do Público (aqui na íntegra):

O voto contra uma resolução do Parlamento Europeu que condenava a invasão da Ucrânia põe o PCP onde, na prática, ele sempre esteve: do lado de lá da democracia liberal; no caso, do lado dos autocratas.

Palavras lidas #506

Vortex

by Laura Foley

Arriving early for a meeting
in a dim church basement,
I nearly stumble
on a dazed elderly lady
fallen prone on concrete,
beset by a deacon
fearful of lawsuits, who asks
who she is so repeatedly
he sounds like a machine,
heightening the scene’s
surreality, till she quavers
a name vaguely familiar
to my groping brain,
as sunlight fingers
through a dusty window
like a feeble god ray—
she’s my mother’s old
elementary school friend—
whose arm I take,
to walk her slowly home,
through city streets
so loud with hurry
their fury blurs my vision,
as we descend
through the eye of its vortex,
into the vast unspoken realm
of memory predating me.

Coisas que não mudam #592

Some places are sadly cursed with a history of violence

(photo from The Economist at the western Ukrainian border)

An excerpt from the article "Meatball soup and Molotov cocktails: a dispatch from Ukraine" from The Economist:

(...)

Then Oksana began to talk about her family. Her grandfather’s sister had been arrested in 1933, aged 15, for giving bread to children during the Great Famine and sent to a gulag in Kazakhstan for ten years. Her grandfather had fled to Moldova when he was denounced during collectivisation in the late 1920s and early 1930s, then returned after two years to find his fruit orchards had been ploughed up. She was telling us these things, said Oksana, because she wanted us to know that it was the communists who had brought war and suffering to this place. Now Putin wanted to turn back the clock and impose it all over again.

(...)

Ditto #505

We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

--Joan Didion