My mother died recently, at 87. I'm staying with my father now, trying to make his life easier, in my old hometown of Sibiu, Translyvania.
Going through old books and photos I've found a 37 year old sketchbook with my drawings from the army. I was a regular soldier for 18 months in Lugoj, Banat. A nice little town I liked very much since a lot of things were just like in Sibiu.
Do desejar ser
um ser perfeito
nasceu o nada.
Do nada, que é já coisa alguma,
brotou de novo o anseio,
o desejo
e a tentativa.
O que é um ser perfeito?
Nada!
O ser perfeito não é nada.
Da relatividade intrínseca ao conceito “perfeição”
resta apenas a constante angústia de o não conseguir,
de lá não chegar,
de o não ser, portanto.
E ai, pobre daquele, que se julga ser perfeito!
Sucumbe no interior duma imensa,
inebriante, nauseabunda e estonteante sensação de perfeição.
Embriagado está, embriagado é,
em permanente estado de levitação se encontra,
e as tonturas afligem-no, perseguem-no…
Mas, triste infeliz, julga-se dotado de poderes especiais,
e não desperta, não acorda.
Só não acorda e apenas não melhora.
Nem descobre que a perfeição não passa dum mero desafio
e que o perfeccionismo é um quase-defeito.
Um quase defeito, sim, sempre que dele se abeira o pernicioso narcisismo.
Há que o sacudir; há que continuar.
Há que evoluir para não sucumbir à perfeição que vive a paredes meias
com a ilusão,
a vaidade,
a arrogância,
o esquecimento
e o autismo.
Celeste Santos
Music is always welcome!
Life is kind of funny. Well, funny, as when you speak about a mad person in order not to hurt the feelings of friends & relatives...
I will start painting and drawing again (almost for sure) because my mother (87) got sick and her and my 84 old father need my help and assistance. So, I am now in my old country, in my old native town Sibiu (Transylvania) and since I am needed to stay here almost permanently and, from time to time, I even have some spare time I will start to draw and paint again...
I sometimes wonder why we spend most of our time running like mad. Are we really so busy as we seem? Are we fighting, living, surviving, or simply wasting the time we have with unimportant things? Or… are we so used to run, run, run that we no longer can do things differently?
“I have no time”, seems to be the perfect, suitable excuse for a wide range of situations these days.
But… What happens, late at night, when we meet ourselves and our pillow and are so damn tired that we can’t sleep? What happens then?
For quite some time I have been living as far as possible against the watch movement. And it is great fun. I have started to do it at weekends, trying to do everything I love the most, at any time. Even meals have now no specific timing.
This “time absence” has evolved to a higher and most developed level and I can now switch on and off whenever I wish to. I’ve noticed I’ve been learning to enjoy life the most, seeing it with other eyes, panting it with more beautiful colours.
I feel more relaxed and more attentive to what surrounds me. Sometimes I can be both absent and present, as well. And my mind travels a lot!!!
Surprisingly I’ve become a more open-minded and an even more communicative person. In a word, I can surely say I feel happier.
Time is somehow what we make out of it. It’s such a relative concept… Five minutes can last forever and a day can be two seconds…
Within time what really matters is how and what we feel. And it’s worth living 42 years till we meet, even if virtually, such a precious soul like some I’ve met here. Like yours, Ion Vincent Danu. Read the rest of this entry »
This is for anyone who thinks kids of today are out of control. They are nothing to the kids of the 19th century. Not sure why there were so many homeless kids in the mid century - possibly many were orphans in the wake of the cholera outbreaks which had raged from 1832, combined with urbanisation, lots of social disruption.
Perhaps we wouldn't have been so hard on Robson if it hadn't been for one central, unshiftable fact: Robson was our age, he was in our terms unexceptional, and yet he had not only conspired to find a girlfriend but also, incontestably, to have sex with her. Fucking bastard!
Julian Barnes, The End of TimesBetween the philosophically self evident events of Eros and Thanatos is a story.
Castanhas
The smell of warm roasted chestnuts being sold on the street reminds you winter is about to come.
You may look a bit puzzled ’cause looking at the first picture below people still wear T-shirts and Summer clothes .. This is Lisbon, people! Over there the weather is always warmer and most probably this photo was taken in an atypical Autumn day.
Anyway… Chestnuts are autumnal fruits, so don’t even dare thinking about them in the Summer, unless you keep them at home in the freezer!
Hopefully you’ve already experienced the unique sensation of walking along the streets and feeling attracted by that terrific smell…
Sometimes you don’t immediately identify it, once it’s mixed up with a lot of smoke or because you’re simply too busy, in a hurry or too distracted watching people passing by…
Other times you say at once: “Warm roasted chestnuts” and you hurry to the chestnuts’ seller. You do even wish to run!
First you ask for their price, usually for the dozen, and always tend to say: “too expensive!” Nevertheless you always end up buying them! They’re somehow irresistible and hypnotising. First the smell, then the taste. And once you’ve eaten them (they’re never enough!) you feel you’ve made your day!!!
