Parece que estou a ouvir # 6

Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though its breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
Youll see the sun come shining through for you

Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
Thats the time you must keep on trying
Smile, whats the use of crying?
Youll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

Thats the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying?
Youll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

(Por Nat King Cole)

Espantos #5

Imagens (em formato alta definição) em directo da estação espacial internacional. Aconteceu na passada quarta feira, no placard do NASDAQ em plena Times Square.

Cada um tem o que merece

"Sobre a questão do tipo de líderes que temos, é muitas vezes difícil dizer se são as circunstâncias que criam os líderes ou se são os líderes que ficam à espera de explorarem uma determinada situação para demonstarem a sua grandeza. Cada país parece ter os líderes que merece. Quando olhamos para trás, falamos de gigantes e de grandes líderes, mas eram também tempos de considerável confusão. Espero que os nossos tempos também venham a produzir alguns desses grandes líderes."

Kofi Annan, hoje, em entrevista ao Expresso

Espantos #4

Que cara de espanto tem a menina de Didika, um fóssil de 3 anos que viveu na infância da humanidade (há cerca de 3,3 milhões de anos). O modelo da foto foi construído com base num crâneo e outros ossos, encontrados na Etiópia.

Só a rajada de vento

Só a rajada de vento
dá o som lírico
às pás do moinho.

Somente as coisas tocadas
pelo amor das outras
têm voz

(Fiama H. P. Brandão)

No Times de hoje #15

O New York Times de hoje traz não um, mas dois artigos assinalando a morte de Milton Friedman (nobel da economia 1976) ontem aos 94 anos. Ficam as frases que marcam não só Friedman como a Escola de Chicago que ajudou a fundar.
_________

"'Most economics departments are like country clubs,' said James J. Heckman, a Chicago faculty member and Nobel laureate. “But at Chicago you are only as good as your last paper.'"

"Someone walked into our lunchroom yesterday at the University of Chicago and announced that Milton Friedman had died. Mr. Friedman spent his intellectual life here, so I started asking people here about him and what they remembered. It became clear that despite retiring almost 30 years ago (and despite being only 5-foot-3), he still casts a long shadow."

"Mr. Friedman loved to argue. They say he was the greatest debater in all of economics. As improbable as it sounds, given Mr. Friedman’s small frame and thick glasses, few who saw him would deny that he had an astounding amount of charisma. It probably explains why he was so successful on television. While being an academic powerhouse, he really could explain things clearly."

"Chicago remains a place with an intensity without precedent in the world of economics, where we seem to eat, drink and breathe economics*, and Mr. Friedman’s personality has much to do with that. He always wanted to engage in a debate on something (or, according to his detractors, to make a pronouncement about something)."

"Mr. Friedman’s legacy might mean laissez-faire politics to the outside world, but to economists — and especially Chicago economists — it is more about trying to understand how the world works and engaging in a debate about it."

"When we heard the news at the University of Chicago that he had died, we actually stopped arguing and were quiet for a moment. It was a most extraordinary event for Chicago economists. Each of us seemed to contemplate Mr. Friedman’s legacy for ourselves. After that bit of calm, the argument resumed. It was, perhaps, just what the old man would have wanted."
________

* Once I heard from a visiting professor in Chicago (PhD from Chicago as well) that he would miss Chicago when his visiting professor term would come to an end... "elsewhere, people talk about the weather at luch!"

É simples

Quem quiser ter a certeza de apostar na chave vencedora do Euromilhões desta sexta-feira «só» tem de investir 152,6 milhões de euros para cobrir todas as apostas possíveis no concurso, garantindo - se mais ninguém acertar - um lucro de 28 milhões.

Foi neste dia # 54 (1922)

Faz hoje 84 anos.

Ausência

The kiss, detail, Klimt

Por muito tempo achei que a ausência é falta.
E lastimava, ignorante, a falta.
Hoje não a lastimo.
Não há falta na ausência.
A ausência é um estar em mim.
E sinto-a, branca, tão pegada, aconchegada nos meus braços,
que rio e danço e invento exclamações alegres,
porque a ausência, essa ausência assimilada,
ninguém a rouba mais de mim.

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Tem a palavra o Sr. Presidente

"Concorda com a despenalização da interrupção voluntária da gravidez, se realizada, por opção da mulher, nas primeiras dez semanas, em estabelecimento de saúde legalmente autorizado?"

A pergunta passou, rés vés ... não em Campo de Orique, mas no Ratton.

Espantos #3

Quando a sede aperta... foto daqui.

Quase Elegia

Ainda terás nome?
Esse que te dei, chama
ou asa, ainda te pertence?

Se tens ainda nome
por que não respondes?, por que não
te aproximas para respirar

comigo o mesmo sol, o mesmo riso?
Também a transparência,
claro rumor de tílias, morre

quando se morre?,
ou só morre a espessura dos dias,
o peso do ar?

Com as mãos, com os olhos, seja
com o que for, dentes ou sílabas,
escavarei o chão até romper

a água - para sempre acesa.


Eugénio de Andrade
(in Os lugares do lume)

Parece que estou a ouvir #5

Like a Rolling Stone
by Bob Dylan

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kiddin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you're gonna have to get used to it
You said you'd never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You never turned around to see the frowns on the
jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain't no good
You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain't it hard when you discover that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They're drinkin', thinkin' that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you'd better lift your diamond ring,
you'd better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
_________________

E não parece... ouvi mesmo! Esta noite, Bob Dylan em concerto na Agganis Arena.

O teu riso

Tira-me o pão, se quiseres,
tira-me o ar, mas não
me tires o teu riso.

Não me tires a rosa,
a lança que desfolhas,
a água que de súbito
brota da tua alegria,
a repentina onda
de prata que em ti nasce.

A minha luta é dura e regresso
com os olhos cansados
às vezes por ver
que a terra não muda,
mas ao entrar teu riso
sobe ao céu a procurar-me
e abre-me todas
as portas da vida.

Meu amor, nos momentos
mais escuros solta
o teu riso e se de súbito
vires que o meu sangue mancha
as pedras da rua,
ri, porque o teu riso
será para as minhas mãos
como uma espada fresca.

À beira do mar, no outono,
teu riso deve erguer
sua cascata de espuma,
e na primavera, amor,
quero teu riso como
a flor que esperava,
a flor azul, a rosa
da minha pátria sonora.

Ri-te da noite,
do dia, da lua,
ri-te das ruas
tortas da ilha,
ri-te deste grosseiro
rapaz que te ama,
mas quando abro
os olhos e os fecho,
quando meus passos vão,
quando voltam meus passos,
nega-me o pão, o ar,
a luz, a primavera,
mas nunca o teu riso,
porque então morreria.

Pablo Neruda

No Times de hoje #14

Acerca da exposição de arte de Velázquez na National Gallery Londrina... fica a sublime descrição.

_________________

"She reclines on her side, naked, back turned, glancing into a mirror. Pearly flesh sinks luxuriantly into a gray satin bedsheet; it had been a deep mauve, before the color faded, which accounts for the pinkish reflections still cast on her inner thigh, ankle and buttock.

Her expression is ambiguous, the features half cast in shadow, catching our eye but blurred by a dim light, by the old mirror and by all the soft, veiled edges in the picture. It’s the stripper principle: show less, leave more to the imagination. There isn’t a sexier image in art. Perfect beauty, Velázquez implies, eludes strict definition."
__________________

Note: mauve (French form of Malva, "mallow") is a pale grayed pink-lilac color, one of many in the range of purples.

Ficava tão bem lá em casa # 18

Improvisation No. 23, Kandinsky

No Times de hoje #13

A história dos devolvidos klimts, terminou (até ver) ontem à noite com a venda dos quatro famosos quadros, entre outros, a leilão na Christie's. A noite rendeu $491 milhões, um máximo absoluto para a casa -- o anterior nível mais elevado de receita tinha sido atingido em Maio de 1990 com $269 milhões.

Vem tudo hoje no New York Times.
______________

"When “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II,” a 1912 portrait of Mrs. Bloch-Bauer in fashionable street clothes and a wide-brimmed hat, came up for sale, four telephone bidders tenaciously went for the painting, which was expected to sell for $40 million to $60 million. Mr. Burge carefully proceeded in $500,000 increments. When the price rose to $74 million and the competition was down to two bidders, Guy Bennett, head of Christie’s Impressionist and modern art department in New York, dramatically raised his hand and began bidding aggressively for an anonymous client on the telephone. Mr. Bennett’s buyer won, paying $87.9 million, a record for the artist. The salesroom burst into applause.

(...)

The three other Klimts, all landscapes, also brought strong prices. Five bidders went for “Birch Forest” (1903), one of the artist’s few woodland scenes, depicting an autumn scene of fallen leaves. Another telephone bidder finally paid $40.3 million, well above its high estimate of $30 million. “Houses at Unterach on the Attersee” (1916), a view of a resort town in the Austrian countryside that was estimated at $18 million to $25 million, sold for $31 million to an unidentified couple sitting in the front of the salesroom. Another telephone duel was waged for “Apple Tree I” (1912), a richly colored canvas that sold for $33 million, far above its estimate of $15 million to $25 million.

(Final prices include Christie’s commission: 20 percent of the first $100,000 and 12 percent of the rest. Estimates do not reflect the commissions.)"

Soneto do cativo

Se é sem dúvida Amor esta explosão
de tantas sensações contraditórias;
a sórdida mistura das memórias,
tão longe da verdade e da invenção;

o espelho deformante; a profusão
de frases insensatas, incensórias;
a cúmplice partilha nas histórias
do que os outros dirão ou não dirão;

se é sem dúvida Amor a cobardia
de buscar nos lençóis a mais sombria
razão de encantamento e de desprezo;

não há dúvida, Amor, que te não fujo
e que, por ti, tão cego, surdo e sujo,
tenho vivido eternamente preso!

David Mourão-Ferreira

No Times de hoje #12

O NYT de hoje traz um artigo sobre os leilões de Outono e os altos preços que atingem. Em particular fala do leilão de ontem na Sotheby's com a venda de cézanes, matisses e outros, que renderam à casa $238.6 milhões.

Vêm-me à cabeça os klimts, o pollock e ainda uma frase do filme The Inside Man (O Infiltrado) "When there's blood on the streets, buy a property" (quoting Rothschild).

The price (the difference between the money Sotheby's made last night and what it would have made if there was a war in NYC) of not having blood on the streets is quite high, but it's surely worth it... how beautiful it is to see the price of art skyrocket!!

Ficava tão bem lá em casa #17

Serpentes de Água II, Gustav Klimt