Sunday 9 November 2014

... at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance, prevails.
RAYMOND CARVER
KENDRA FOR ROOKIE
Uma parte de mim
é todo mundo:
outra parte é ninguém:
fundo sem fundo.
Uma parte de mim
é multidão:
outra parte estranheza
e solidão.
Uma parte de mim
pesa, pondera:
outra parte
delira.
Uma parte de mim
almoça e janta:
outra parte
se espanta.
Uma parte de mim
é permanente:
outra parte
se sabe de repente.
Uma parte de mim
é só vertigem:
outra parte,
linguagem.
Traduzir uma parte
na outra parte
— que é uma questão
de vida ou morte —
será arte?
FERREIRA GULLAR, Traduzir-se

I may have been your great-grandmother. Your face, passing by me, I know it.
MI-YEON
SHOHEI MORIMOTO

Solitude in the city is about the lack of other people or rather their distance beyond a door or wall, but in remote places it isn’t an absence but the presence of something else, a kind of humming silence in which solitude seems as natural to your species as to any other, words strange rocks you may or may not turn over.
REBECCA SOLNIT

Ask again later

KENDRA FOR ROOKIE

Far from laziness, proper idleness is the soul’s home base. Before we plan or love or decide or act or storytell, we are idle. Before we learn, we watch. Before we do, we dream. Before we play, we imagine. The idle mind is awake but unconstrained, free to slip untethered from idea to idea or meander from potential theory to potential truth. Thomas Aquinas argued that “it is necessary for the perfection of human society that there should be men who devote their lives to contemplation.” 
I’m convinced that time spent idle makes for a healthier state of mind. We want less and are more at peace when we get it. We sleep better and work harder. Simpler things bring us joy. When we daily observe our immediate surroundings, we are more grounded in our context, more attuned to the rhythms of whatever season or place we are in. Plus, the changing shapes of clouds need our attention

don't dismiss the humanities

GODARD, Notre Musique

The best lack all conviction, 
while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
YATES

 Literature, music and philosophy are necessary antidotes to today’s “follow the money” mind-set. What a sorry, shallow society we would be if we no longer cared about the things that essentially make us human: empathy, creativity and beauty.

nostalgia and its discontents

 EPSTEIN, Coeur Fidéle

Nostalgics of this kind are often, in the words of Vladimir Nabokov, “amateurs of Time, epicures of duration,” who resist the pressure of external efficiency and take sensual delight in the texture of time not measurable by clocks and calendars.
SVETLANA BOYM, Nostalgia and its Discontents

no, you're not commercial.