Parece que estou a ouvir #353

How we love

by Ingrid Michaelson

I knew a man who was afraid to love
To lay his heart on the bathroom rug
He drank his coffee in the same old mug
And sat in silence 'til the world fell numb

Until the day when a girl came by
She had eyes like the rising tide
He felt a sharpness deep inside
The kind of ache that can't be satisfied

We hate the rain when it fills up our shoes
But how we love when it washes our cars
We love to love when it fills up the room
But when it leaves oh we're cursing the stars

So he turned to the radio
And he went to a picture show
Tried to find someone else who knows
All the hurt that a heart can hold

She smelled like cinnamon and winter clove
And sparked like firewood inside a stove
Wanted to ask her just to sit and stay
Instead he watched as she walked away

We hate the rain when it fills up our shoes
But how we love when it washes our cars
We love to love when it fills up the room
But when it leaves oh we're cursing the stars

We hate the rain when it fills up our shoes
But how we love when it washes our cars
We love to love when it fills up the room
But when it leaves oh we're cursing the stars

Coisas bonitas #93

E por uns breves minutos tudo ficou tingido de cor-de-rosa

Sem título #216

😂😂

Coisas que não mudam #591

Ao sol e em companhia tudo fica mais bonito :-)

Caprichos #667

Perfume intenso na casa

Foi neste dia #380 (1945)

Há 77 anos era libertado o campo de concentração de Auschwitz

e 27 de Janeiro ficou para sempre o dia da lembrança do Holocausto

77 years ago Auschwitz was liberated

and the 27th of January became Holocaust Remembrance Day

Espantos #629

Um sorriso,

ou o vulcão de la Palma?

Coisas bonitas #92

Preseeeeentes!

Caprichos #666

Robert Burns dinner has to have haggis

... much better than it looks!

Sem título #215

Piece of cake...

Palavras lidas #502

The Call Away
by Robert Bly

A cold wind flows over the cornfields;
Fleets of blackbirds ride that ocean.
I want to be out of here, go out,
Outdoors, anywhere in wind.

My back against a shed wall, I settle
Down where no one can find me.
I stare out at the box-elder leaves
Moving frond-like in that mysterious water.

What is it that I want? Not money,
Not a large desk, not a house with ten rooms.
This is what I want to do: to sit here,
To take no part, to be called away by wind.

I want to go the new way, build a shack
With one door, sit against the door frame.
After twenty years, you will see on my face
The same expression you see in the grass.

Ditto #501

There are books in which the footnotes or comments scrawled by some reader’s hand in the margin are more interesting than the text. The world is one of these books.

--George Santayana

Retirado do contexto #398

A bela begónia gostou das férias!

Sem título #214

More cuddling!

Parece que estou a ouvir #352

Esta balada que te dou

by Armando Gama

Ela diz que eu fui um caso muito sério
Mas eu só sei que há algo nisso de anormal
Havia um tempo um olhar
Um sorrir, um começo
Mas agora tudo perdeu seu brilho

Na minha vida
Só houve um abraço como o teu
Um sonho, um livro
Uma aventura sem igual
Linda, linda
Esta balada que eu te dou

Podem até pensar que eu sou
Um pouco triste
Mas não há nenhum mal
Em ser assim
Pois tudo fica
Mesmo quando se acaba,
Um romance, uma paixão
Ou um caminho

Na minha vida
Só houve um abraço como o teu
Um sonho, um livro
Uma aventura sem igual
Linda, linda
esta balada que te dou

Quis escrever a mais bela canção
Que há no mundo
Olhando para trás
P'ra nos ver
Foi quando ouvi uma voz
Cantando baixinho
Esta balada que vinha
De longe

Na minha vida
Só houve um abraço como o teu
Um sonho, um livro
Uma aventura sem igual
Na minha vida
Só houve um abraço como o teu
Um sonho, um livro
Uma aventura sem igual
Linda, linda
esta balada que te dou

Numa sala perto de mim #436

The Courier (2020) is based on the true story of Greville Wynne, a British businessman recruited by British Intelligence to carry top-secret information leaked by Oleg Penkovsky on Soviet military assets to the West that proved crucial in the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Both men were arrested at the peak of the crisis in October and their fates notably differed.

Beyond the Hollywood effect, the film remains true to the historical outcomes. What I find most striking in movies portraying life under authoritarian regimes is the dissimulation of true feelings to the point where they are no longer visible upon simple observation and reality becomes a facade.

At the end of a meeting in Moscow a secretary comes to tell Oleg that he is not going to the upcoming London Fair. With an expressionless face he asks if the delegation is not to be sent, to which the secretary replies that a delegation will be sent but he is not to travel to London because the minister wants him to focus on other parts of his job. His response with the same emotionless face is simply that he will work hard not to disappoint the minister... when this was his last chance to defect together with his family so he's now sure his illicit actions have been discovered and it is a matter of time until he gets caught. His face remains motionless. Truly disturbing.

Inverno #72

Em dia de Santo Amaro,

até o gato tinha frio!

Retirado do contexto #397

Um gato preto, como presente de um gato preto

Coisas bonitas #91

Entardeceres cor-de-rosa

Sem título #213

Cute hedgehog...

Palavras lidas #501

Loading the Woodshed — 2012

by David Budbill

I finished loading the woodshed today. Every year
I tell myself, This is it, the last time. It’s just too
much work, too painful, and I’m too old.
And then, the next year, when fall rolls
around, the air gets cold, and the geese go south, I
load the woodshed again.

How long will this go on? I’m seventy-two.
Every year it takes me longer to recover,
yet every year I keep doing it.

It’s just, now that I’m done, I can go out into
the woodshed, sit in a chair, and look at all those
neatly stacked rows, six and a half feet high, six feet
long and sixteen inches deep, two sets of rows like that,
left and right, four full cord — not much by some standards —
but enough to keep us warm all winter.

When I go out and look at what I’ve done, I get such a deep
sense of satisfaction from this backaching labor that I can’t
imagine a year without going through all that pain again.

Ditto #500

Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

--Satan, in Paradise Lost, by John Milton

Retirado do contexto #396

Mais cor

Caprichos #665

Reconhecer paisagens aéreas

Sem título #212

Resolutions made, resolutions broken

Coisas que não mudam #590

Bolo-rei em Dia de Reis

Caprichos #664

Um café e um rim de sonho 😂

Coisas bonitas #90

Em flor, muita flor 💮💮💮💮💮💮💮💮💮💮💮💮💮

Caprichos #663

Diospiros bem madurinhos

Palavras lidas #500

Flying Over West Texas at Christmas
by Billy Collins

Oh, little town far below
with a ruler line of a road running through you,
you anonymous cluster of houses and barns,
miniaturized by this altitude
in a land as parched as Bethlehem
might have been somewhere around the year zero—

a beautiful song should be written about you
which choirs could sing in their lofts
and carolers standing in a semicircle
could carol in front of houses topped with snow.

For surely some admirable person was born
within the waffle-iron grid of your streets,
who then went on to perform some small miracles,
placing a hand on the head of a child
or shaking a cigarette out of the pack for a stranger.

But maybe it is best not to compose a hymn
or chisel into tablets the code of his behavior
or convene a tribunal of men in robes to explain his words.

Let us not press the gold leaf of his name
onto a page of vellum or hang his image from a nail.
Better to fly over this little town with nothing
but the hope that someone visits his grave

once a year, pushing open the low iron gate
then making her way toward him
through the rows of the others
before bending to prop up some flowers before the stone.

Ditto #499

If one can’t be happy, one must be amused, don’t you agree?

--Nancy Mitford