Minion

The immaculate - 10

2010-02-23T08:04:00.000-08:00

We had been neighbors for three years yet had hardly spoken to each other. After that, she had gone far off with her husband, and only later did we meet a couple of times by chance. The two of us - at an esplanade, the cinema-house, the mall. Today we happened to meet in front of the hairdresser’s, so close to the taste of roses, the smell of lavender and still-virgin touch. Everything was left unsaid, in a kind of suspended relief, an indescribable joy. Our encounters were a breed of temptation and confession, with definite risk crossing between our eyes. A risk with no name. A mutinous torrent looking for a name; and looking for itself.

(to be continued)

The immaculate - 9

2010-02-22T08:03:00.000-08:00

The greyhound ran round the house, in a rage. Then a car suddenly turned on its headlights and sped off, in a flash. Who was that? The dog went on yelping and running round in the yard, into the bushes, by the swimming pool. I thought about going down but honestly, I was scared. The shutters remained ajar and the curtains had returned to the stillness of life’s anchors: rigidly slow and quiet under the spell of the night breeze, like open sails on mellow sea. There was an apparent calm, tarnished solely by the greyhound’s frenzy, which after some twenty minutes went to sit next to the cypress by the gate.

(to be continued)

The immaculate - 8

2010-02-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

Sure, but what if life ended tomorrow, what would we do? When? Now? And I found myself sputtering out nonsense. That they wanted us guzzling inertia, our ability to act and state ourselves, don’t you reckon? And she agreed, nodding her head in the distance (this Christmas spirit thing really works). A faint wink in her eye, the wonder of her hands and the way they opened out on the table top. And then, without notice, but in a liquid, slow voice, she twice repeated that we would sleep our just reward away until it was daytime once again, until it was nothingness all over again and we could simply skip the phrase, imagination, world, whatever. What would this lifeless world be, after all, tomorrow morning? But would we really sleep? How, I asked myself. And no one else.

(to be continued)

The immaculate - 7

2010-02-20T07:59:00.000-08:00

The huge greyhound was as still as a sphinx, staring at the shutters of that quivering window. The curtain shook in rare turbulence and after the flash – was it a photograph, a lantern, a fire extinguisher? – there was only a speedy commotion of tones on the faint curtain cloth, and it looked as if a giant TV screen was on in a suddenly darkened room. The poor dog yelped and yelped, head high and with pointy ears. I stayed on the balcony, wary, restless, trying to unravel movement in the neighbor’s front door, in the backyard, the other windows, even in the narrow marquise - but saw nothing, nothing at all. For a moment I forgot the hills, lost as they were in that obscure outline where darkness dilutes darkness.

(to be continued)

The immaculate - 6

2010-02-19T07:58:00.000-08:00

We reached the coffee shop, sat in a kind of lobby and, maybe out of casual passion, I ended up asking her: what if life ended tomorrow, what would we do, now? And I can see her laughing and laughing without being able to discard an old bashfulness which consumed some of the fire in her gestures; laughing and somehow offering in that secret-sealed laugh the near sum of total surrender. It was barely a contention, more like an acrobatics of the inaccessible, a secret fearless art. She was herself in a way I had never seen before. And yet, very slowly, the meat-pie cracked in her mouth, invisible teeth chewed at the dough, lips dragging themselves with a fervent ardor that seemed to turn this Christmas Eve into a kind of D-Day. Some sort of challenge.

(to be continued)

The immaculate - 5

2010-02-18T07:57:00.000-08:00

When the greyhound ran out into the middle of the deserted street, I thought its owner must be near. But no, it broke into a whirl, with its huge Persian paws spread out in a tight ring of a race until a dog-sigh broke its stride and night’s calm wonder was able to creep in undisturbed. Out in the distance, the obscure and by now invisible hills; next to it, the eggy streetlight, wrapped up in mosquitoes and bizarre webs. And I remained stoically on the balcony, waiting for the phone call from America, standing guard on memories beyond confession, silent and prostrated under a moment of stillness. But in the house across the street, a blast of light went on and off between the shutters, in a close to nothing second. More a space between nothings, a now that flew by and back just like that. I looked again and the curtains were moving, as if someone were causing them to move. What the hell was going on?

(to be continued)

The immaculate - 4

2010-02-17T07:56:00.000-08:00

She had slow, pilgrim eyes, whirling doom. She pretty much hovered in front of me, warning me about the cold - the cause of her shaking, she said - passing her fingers over her waist as if to pale out distance, fear, any forgetful languor. She remained before me so, leaning against the steps, maybe so as not to interrupt the human blob carrying itself along the shop windows and the sidewalk, and the swirl which seemed to surround the birth of baby Jesus - or was it the mythical baby of golden ages? I could hardly answer, I seemed hypnotized, crystallized in some unaccountable manner, yet ended up following her, step by step, to the nearest coffee shop.

(to be continued)

The immaculate - 3

2010-02-16T07:55:00.000-08:00

Above the streetlamp facing me, somebody opened the shutters. I saw a silhouette leaning briefly on the window frame, which then proceeded to dart to and fro, jumping about in strange eerie motions. The curtains heaved under a seesaw of air and blows, while shadows wandered from side to side in the sudden scenography, without pause or explanation. Further out the blurred hilly outline was increasingly darkened out by some calm, quiet night ink. What on earth was going on?

(to be continued)

The immaculate - 2

2010-02-15T07:52:00.000-08:00

It happened on Christmas Eve, late afternoon. There was a stir of rubber reindeers and goofy lanterns flitting in harmonious chants. Lights arched out throughout the streets and hobos glided down the sidewalks, their foreheads reeking of stale cheese, while cabs honked behind the parade float on which a man with a red hood waved his arms about. Once again we met out of the blue. She was coming out of the hairdresser’s and there I stood in delight, enjoying my first end-of-year afternoon-off. I had thought on buying gifts, some pampering by the fire-place, of performing a sorcery of origins maybe, or just on enjoying my unexpectedly short holidays. She took off her glasses, shaking. Dressed in black and talking in perfect pitch, she was spellbinding and had a sense of provocation she probably was not even aware of.

(to be continued)

The immaculate - 1

2010-02-11T07:48:00.000-08:00

I reached the balcony and looked out into the hills. It was a dark blur, pretty much lost in the clouds and aural distance. A vision dilated with hazy contours which made me think of some imperiled animal, an abyss, a relentlessly pulling pit. Then the first streetlight went on up ahead, touching the air with a pale violet light. A few seconds later it stabilized in its oval yellow shape, levitating on the post. Yet, oblivious to those minute everyday metamorphoses, I could not stop looking at those small hills, that thin line which stood out in the distance, lying on the horizon and bouncing back echoes of old shapeless things.

(to be continued)

Remembering Palmstraat

2007-12-19T09:31:00.000-08:00

MOK

e
She was reclining on the night
glancing at broom shrubs and one of those blocks
of masonry that lead to the soul
e
there was a clear sense of nothing else existing
she said
e
Vermeer
the painter
would have liked to see it
e
he would fly through the oblique light
and from that shadow invent the night
the ancient river absorbed.
e
LC

Creation dilemma and the role of design

2006-05-29T03:20:00.000-07:00

The understanding of modernity was almost always presented through an initial war between myth and logos or, in other words, between the teo-semiotic interpretation of the world and the rational abduction combined with technological reproductibility (let us imagine that the original “punctum”[1] of modern history was like Blumenberg’spectator[2], when observing a naval battle from a quite distant place).
This almost cosmogonic fight that resulted in the aparent victory of reason was, in turn, folloied for the emergency of the idea of subjectivity (that went back at least to the 1600s). Since the Enlightment era, the self-enunciating of subjectivity has increased through a slow metamorphosis of the original representation – where everything was still considered as manifestation of a holy expression - to the ideia of a complex and constructed net of effects. Hume’ s definition of man (1739-40/1985) as a mere sum of perceptions and Kant´schema theory (1787/1988) integrate this kind of ‘desconstruction’.
All of a sudden - as Foucault wrote (1966) - in the 19th century, the man and the languages emerged to the surface of real existence and became both epistemic objects par excelence. Since then, man and languages were never again seen as something that God would have distributed calmly to the world, in the context of an unquestionable and innominable order and harmony. Since then, the representation started to be seen as a construction, or a designed and formed product moved by the creative effort of man. The modern subjectivity fulfilled thus the mission of a somewhat spartan initiation, but apparently full of beneficial results (above all in the field of material culture).
Little and little, the autonomous affirmation of subjectivity dissociated itself from the idea of being a simple part of a holy flock that would move towards eschatological salvation (Carmelo, 1995-1999). One of the most important impacts of this subjective affirmation was the new concept that defined culture as all that man does or has ever done (Herder´s “Kultur”[3]). Nevertheless, this emerging society (based on the construction) readopted a specialised metaphor: the creation. As a sign of this new age, Gropius started his known 1919 manifest underlying this normative trend: "the last end of all the creativity is to construct"[4].
During the 19th century, reflecting this modern cosmogony, the creativity was about to be understood in two major and distinct ways: or as a dynamic based in the experience that would culminate with Peirce´s pragmatic abduction (1996), or as a peculiar process that found in the artistic creation the reappropriating of the divine production, although dependent on the individual sphere of the "genius" (the term is Kant´s concept - 1787/1988).
In the former, the creativity was understood as a participated and guided movement around “inquiry”, “doubt” and the provisoriety of “belief”[5] (Steiner underlyed, instead of “creation”, the term of reference “discovery” for scientists and “invention” for technology – 1990/2000, p. 369).
In the last, after the romantic advent, the creation was understood as a revelation that tended to separate itself from the dominant technological and rational convoy that seemed to control the ordered landscape of modernity.
In the former, the creation was above all defined as a logical process of investigation. Its key element was the “interpretant”, a mental self-reproductive sign that translates the deepening of a previous sign creating therefore an addition of knowledge and experience. However, if the interpretant was refered by an argument, then semiosis, or the signic self-reproduction, changed into a permanent significafion and discovery process, in which “abduction”[6] formulated conjectures, after induction having tried them and before deduction necessary conclusion have taken place (“signs conduce to learning from experience by mediating between reality and our cognitions, and by storing learned material for subsequent interpretations and use”; Hookway, 1992, p.127). On the logic of abduction, the most efficient tool of human knowledge and creation, Peirce affirmed in his Sixth Conference of Harvard (1903): "the abduction is the process of formation of an explicative hypothesis. It is the only type of logical operation that introduces a new ideia” (1996, p. 324). Or, in other words: “Reasoning is of three kinds. The first is necessary, but it only professes to give us information concerning the matter of our own hypotheses” (...) “The second depends upon probabilities.” (...) “The third kind of reasoning tries what il lume naturale”, (...) “can do. It is really an appeal to instinct.” (Peirce, 1978, p. 98 - 1.630).
In the last, the creation is defined as an expression that refers different semiotic contents but always in the presupposition that, in its deep subliminarity, it is populated by a transcendent, intransitive and ineffable nature (Majewski wrote: “In his study of Balzac’s philosophy Henry Evans concluded that even Balzac, the self-appointed social analyst, had adopted the belief in art as “la véritable religion du monde moderne’” – 1989, p.1). This self-vision of the art seems to identify itself with the nietzschian definition of truth – “Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have”(...) “been drained of sensuous force” (Dayton, 1998, p. 119.). Such sacralised truths, as Shelley wrote, participate in the apostolate of the almost holy and creative poet:
e
“§30 Not that I assert poets to be prophets in the gross sense of the word, or that they can fortell the form as surely as they foreknow the spirit of events: such is the pretence of superstition which would make poetry an attribute of prophecy, rather than prophecy an attribute of poetry. §31 A Poet participates in the eternal, the infinite and the one; as far as relates to his conceptions time and place and number are not.”(1840/1986, pp.37-8).
e
Gasset (1925/1998) also redescovered this new intrinsic art content, when commenting Teodoro Lipps concept of “Einfuhlung” (or “affection”):
e
“Y aquello que acaso era un montón inerte de pidras, puestas las unas sobre las otras, se levanta ante nosotros como dotado de una vitalidad propia”(...)”En realidad somos nosotros mismos quienes gozamos de nuestra actividad, de sentirnos poseedores de poderes vitales triunfantes, pero lo atribuimos al objeto”[7] (1998, p. 112.)
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In other words: besides the labyrinth of interpretative curiosity (the refered “montón of piedras”), emerges the almost expressionist recognition of a creative illumination. This art “value of cult” (completed with the value of its proper public "exposition") is also, for Benjamin (1936/1992, p. 84), its great ‘isotopia’ and over all the way of ressacralising a time that seemed to have been defently separated from a mythologic and theocentric pathos.
e
Have this initial modern “war” - or this generally characterized shock between “myth” and “logos” - been exactly real?
Blumenberg (1981/2000, 1984/1985-2) preferred to understand myth as something that always survived through the times. Far from being silent in a remote origin, the myth would have been sedimented in the galaxy of the reason and, like the romantic and nietzschian flavors, it would have lead us to the temptation of the aesthetic judgment that surpasses - or skirtes - a necessary and analytical definition of values:
e
“The antithesis between myth and reason is a late and a poor invention” (…) which “forgoes seeing the function of myth, in the overcoming of that archaic unfamiliarity of the world, as itself a rational function” (…) “the boundary line between myth and logos is imaginary” (1985-2, p.48).
e
Design will probably appear before us today as one of the achievements of this theory of Blumenberg.
That´s why creation is not the same thing for artists and for designers.
e
Following this logic, art would continue to pursuit the ideia of creation that has its roots in the original opposition between myth and logos, assuming clearly the plan of the former against the rationality of the last.
On the other hand, design would be the clear evidence that such opposition never really existed, being its own forms the meeting point for myth and logos (getting thus together the pure creation’ tradition and the pragmatic effectiveness’ tradition).
More concretely: the speech on art, in the last two and half centuries, would have developed a creation pattern based on mistery and immanence, which can be reflected above all in “expressive” trends (expressionism, informalism, body art, etc.), in “oniric” trends (surrealism, etc.) and in “the reducionist” trends (minimal art, conceptual art, etc.), but also – although mostly less - in “formative” trends (cubism, stijl, op art, etc.), “social” trends, (expressive realisms: some Picasso, some pop art, etc.) and “useful art” trends (bauhaus, Malevich’ s constructivism, etc.)[8].
e
However, as far as design is concerned, the historic and inherited idea of creation seems to have its roots in the conceptual assumption formulated by Blumenberg: On one hand, sharing the same dimension of the creative poeisis that art demands, and, on the other hand, sharing abduction‘s rationality and effectiveness applied to the expression of material culture. When congregating the two aparent dichotomic terms - myth and logos -, design would be not only the full achievement of a metaphysical prophecy (going back to romanticism) but also the achievement of a logical and conjectural system. Besides that, design would be a kind of climax in our current and aestheticised world.
e
In such vision, design would find in nowadays’ technology its full accomplishment. Not only because it congregates what always was thought to be opposed (reason and myth), but also because it can help art to free itself from modern sacralising paths, mixing therefore their pieces with artefacts, objects, urban furniture and, in a word, with all material culture. The “hyperreality” (Merrel, 1995) would thus be, in such accomplishment, the product of the overcoming of exaust modern antinomies (fiction vs. real, public vs. private, emission vs. audiences, truth vs. sense and - of course - reason vs. myth) and would have its main visibility in visual global simulacra where design fulfills a prominent role (media, cyberworld, advertising speech, objects, hightech products, environment, material culture in general – Carmelo, 2005-2).
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In the current hyperreality is emerging a new hibridism that integrates, without central or referencial orders, what was enunciated in the beginning of modernity as fixed and agregated identities. In design, this “rhyzomatic” (Deleuze/ Guattari, 1980) spreaded movement is taking place through the emergency of new materials, which are presenting themselves to the new global emotions and functionalies as the real prothesis of our material culture. They are like tactile simulacra that we can enjoy with the body and the perceptions (flexible ceramic, metallic foam, plastic conductors, Solid-state light sources, carbon staple fibres, etc.). The case of the synthetic polymers is quite interesting, since it refers directly to mimesis of natural properties, preserving the tactile attributes and modifying if necessary the potential shapes of the products. Therefore, the products become more and more a kind of changeable features that are far beyond the form and function to which they would have been previously drawn (light vs. resistant, deformable vs. flexible, transparent vs. cloudy, etc.).
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The essays of Blumenberg, Work on Myth (1984/1985-2) and Imitation of Nature… (1981/2000), seem to be essential for the apprehension of this interface between underlying myth reality and the logos dayly life reality. The study of this encounter, applied to the complexity of roles and functions that design plays today in the technological and contemporary world, can be of major importance. This subject is part of a post-doctoral research that we are initiating and which also concerns the neurobiologic data that explains mental patterns of creativity, this are being made after previous researches[9] on this theme, more specifically on Damásio[10] mental semiosis.
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Hans Blumenberg myth conception, instead of barthesian conotative ideology (1957) or anthropology perscriptions, is based in historical processual patterns. Far from being a distant and unknown entity, the myth is seen by the author as a product that acts and reacts, or that implements itself always throughout the times, coexisting with all kind of live expressions. The myth is thus a deep imaginary product, invisible memory and evidence, but always concerned to the facts, to the questions and to all concrete states of thinks of all eras. "Reocupation" (Umbesetzung) is the concept name for this permanent adaptation that characterises Blumenberg´s myth, which is also seen as an acting inheritance of western culture.
The "mithologic reocupation" - in the case of design - would place the radical inventivity side by side: that of creative poiesis (when Romanticism hast mobilised all forces against Aufklärung) and that of material efficiency of creation.
C. and P. Fiell wrote in the recent Designing The 21st 4 Century [ ] : " Design must answer to technical, funcional and cultural needs and create solutions to communicate emotion and meaning in order to transcend his forms, structure and production." (2005, pp.11-21). We believe, however, that design is already breathing this transcendence a long time ago. It will not be either a coincidence that W. Gropius has written in 1919 manifest: "There is no essential difference between the artist and the craftsman. The artist is an exalted craftsman. By the grace of Heaven and in rare moments of inspiration which transcend the will, art may unconsciously blossom from the labour of his hand, but a base in handicrafts is essential to every artist. It is there that the original source of creativity lies" (2004/1919).
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REFERENCES
BARTHES, R., 1957, Mythologies, Seuil, Paris.
BENJAMIN, W., (1973) 1986, Le Concept de Critique Esthétique dans le Romantisme Allemand, Paris, Flammarion.
BENJAMIN, W., (1936) 1992, Sobre arte, técnica, linguagem e política, Relógio d´Água, Lisboa.
BLUMENBERG, H., (1979, pp.1-33), 'The Concept of Reality and the Possibility of the Novel', in New Perspectives in German Literary Criticism R. Amacher and V. Lange (eds) Princeton, Princeton UP.
BLUMENBERG, H., (1966) 1985-1, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, Massachussets/Londres, MIT Press.
BLUMENBERG, H., (1984) 1985-2, Work on Myth, Massachussets/Londres, MIT Press.
BLUMENBERG, H., (1979) 1990, Naufrágio com espectador, Vega, Lisboa. BLUMENBERG, H., (1981) 2000, Imitation of Nature: Toward a Prehistory of the Idea of Creative Being’ in The End of Nature, Dossier on Hans Blumenberg, Volume 12, Number 1, Spring/Summer.
BRAGANÇA DE MIRANDA, J., (1988, pp.53-62), Modernidade e linguagem: em torno das posição de Hans Blumenberg, Revista de Comunicação e Linguagens, 6/7, Cosmos/CECL, Lisboa.
CARMELO, L., 1999, Anjos e Meteoros . Ensaio Sobre a Instantaneidade, Editorial Notícias, Mem Martins.
CARMELO, L., 2002, Músicas da Consciência, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins.Lisboa.
CARMELO, L., 2003-1, Órbitas da Modernidade, Editorial Mareantes, Lisboa.
CARMELO, L., 2003-2, Semiótica - Uma Introdução, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins.
CARMELO, L., 2005-1, A Novíssima Poesia Portuguesa e a Experiência Estética Contemporânea, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins.
CARMELO, L., 2005-2, Viragem Profética Contemporânea, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins.
CRUZ, M.T., (1988, pp.173-190), Arte, Mito e Modernidade, Sobre a metaforologia de Hans Blumenberg, Revista de Comunicação e Linguagens, 6/7, Cosmos/CECL, Lisboa.
DAMÁSIO, A., (1994) 1995, O Erro de Descartes-Emoção, razão e cérebro humano, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins.
DAMÁSIO, A., (1999) 2000, O Sentimento de Si- O corpo, a emoção e a neurobiologia da consciência, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins.
DAYTON, E.(org.), 1998, Arte and Interpretation-An Anthology of Readings in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Arte, Eric Dayton,Peterborough (Canada); Hertfordshire (U.K.); Rozelle (Australia).
DELEUZE, G.; GUATTARI, F., 1980, Capitalisme et schizophrénie - Mille Plateaux, Minuit, Paris.
FIELL, C. & P., 2005, Designing The 21st Century, Tachen, Koln.
FOULCAUT, M., (1966) 1988, As palavras e as coisas, Edições 70, Lisboa.
(De) FUSCO, R. (1983) 1988, História da arte contemporânea, Presença, Lisboa.
GROPIUS, W., (1919) 2004 (p.28) in Bauhaus Archive Berlin, Museum of Design - The Collection, Berlin.
HOOKWAY,C., 1992, Peirce, Routeledge,London-New York.
HORKHEIMER,M., 1984, Origens da filosofia burguesa da história, Presença, Lisboa.
HUME, D., 1985, A Treatise of Human Nature, Penguin Books,London-New York-Victoria-Toronto-Auckland.
HUME, D., 1988 (pp. 491-558), An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding in Modern Philosophy - An Anthology of Primary Sources, Hackett Publishing Company Inc., Indianapolis/R.Ariew-E.Watkins (org.)/Cambridge.
JENSEN, K., 1995, The Social Semiotics of Mass Comunication, Safe Publ., London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi.
KANT, I., 1988, Crítica da faculdade do juízo, I.N.C.M., Lisboa
MAJEWSKI, H., 1989, Paradigm & Parody, Images of Creativity in French Romanticism – Vigny, Hugo, Balzac, Gautier, Musset, University Press of Virgnia, Charlottesville.
McHOUL, A., 1996, Semiotic Investigations - Towards an Effective Semiotics,University of Nebraska Press, Nebraska.
MERRELL, F., 1995, Semiosis in the Postmodern Age, Purdue University Press, West Lafayette, Indiana.
ORTEGA Y GASSET, J, (1925) 1998, La deshumanización del arte y otros ensayos de estética, Editorial Optima, Barcelona.
PEIRCE, C.,1966, Selected Writings (values in a Universe of Chance), Dover Publications,Inc,New York.
PEIRCE, C.,1978, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce,Vol. I e II, The Belknap Press of Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
PEIRCE, C. (Org./Tr. Deledalle, G.) 1978, Écrits sur le signe, Paris, Seuil.
PEIRCE, C.,1990, Semiótica, Editora Perspectiva, S. Paulo.
PEIRCE, C. (Org./Tr. Machuco Rosa, A.) 1998, Antologia Filosófica, Imprensa Nacional-Casa da Moeda, Lisboa.
SHELLEY, P., (1840) 1986, Defesa da poesia,Guimarães editores, Lisboa.
STEINER, G., (1990) 2002, Gramáticas da criação. Relógio d´Água, Lisboa.
VATTIMO, G., 1987, O fim da modernidade-niilismo e hermenêutica na cultura pós-moderna, Presença, Lisboa.
YOLTON, J.(org), 1991, Enlightenment, Blackwell, Oxford/ Cambridge – Massachusetts.
NTS:
[1]Barthes, R., 1980, La Chambre Claire, Gallimard, Paris.
[2]Blumenberg, H., (1979) 1990, (Schiffruch Mit Zuschauer Paradigma einer Daseinsmetapher) Naufrágio com espectador, Vega, Lisboa.
[3]“The definition of culture as that which both unites and differentiates humans into cultures in the plural became influencial especially throught the work of the german philosopher Johan Gottfried Herder (Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind, 1784)” (K.Jensen, 1995 (p.5), The Social Semiotics of Mass Comunication, Safe Publ., London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi).
[4]Gropius, W., 2004 (p.28) in Bauhaus Archive Berlin, Museum of Design - The Collection, Berlin.
[5] Pragmatic peircian concepts (“The Fixation of Belief”, 1877; 1996, p. 125).
[6]Peirce compares "Retroduction (or abduction)", i.e.," the First Stage of Inquiry", with the instinct of the birds: "if we knew that the impulse you prefer one hypothesis you another really were analogous you the instincts of birds and wasps, it would be foolish not you give it play, within the bounds of reason"(...)"But is it fact that man possesses this magical faculty? Not, I reply, you the extent of guessing right the first teams, nor perhaps the second; but that the well-prepared mind has wonderfully soon guessed each secret of nature is historical truth."(1996, pp. 369-371).
[7]O. Y Gasset, La desumanización del arte y otors ensayos de estética, Editorial Optima, Barcelona,1987:112.
[8]Conceptual references from De Fusco, R. (1983) 1988, História da arte contemporânea, Presença, Lisboa.
[9]Carmelo L., 2002, Músicas da Consciência, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins.Lisboa
[10]About (1994) 1995, O Erro de Descartes-Emoção, razão e cérebro humano, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins, and (1999) 2000, O Sentimento de Si- O corpo, a emoção e a neurobiologia da consciência, Publicações Europa-América, Mem Martins.

2005-08-12T07:33:00.000-07:00

2005-05-17T05:21:00.000-07:00

Prophetic literature and war in pre-modern times

(The catastrophe of the Hispanic Moriscos or a Memory without Memory)

by Luís Carmelo (Translated by Margarida Martins)

"Aljamiado-morisco" literature

The prophetic message is by nature, an unstable, capricious, enunciation because it neither reveals nor hides the real, rather filtrates it. As stated by A. Berthelot (1987) the prophetic message conditions the reader to simultaneously distrust and postulate hidden meanings that surpass the actual text. This means the prophetic text fits into a type of pre-modern, interpretative universe dominated by a semiosis where the emitter is always understood as an entity that governs the mystery, be it in immanence or transcendence.
The particularities of the prophetic, however, always tend to co-operate with the reality surrounding it and with the real audience to whom it is destined. The background to this co-operation is situated in the fact that prophetic texts almost always result from simulations and forged manipulations of the future, having as an objective idealising the present conditions according to the desires of the enunciator. This is why the prophetic production oscillates between the real and the imaginary, within a misty and ambiguous region of the almost possible and almost exact.
The new Christians of the Islamic region of Aragon, the so-called Moriscos had to deal with forced conversions after 1526 and were later expelled from Spain in 1609. This community, dominated by the catastrophe of its own cultural decline produced clandestine texts of a prophetic genre, discovered just over a 100 years ago within the walls of rural houses in the Ebro region.
These clandestine texts, now in the hands of today’s interpreters, are proof of the final legacy of an entire civilisation whose existence in the Iberian Peninsula can be traced back almost a thousand years. The intention of this presentation, a mere overview, is to analyse how the Morisc identity is reflected in some of their prophecies. This is the subject that I worked on during my PhD (University of Utreque, Netherlands) in 1995.
One of the obsessions that is found frequently in the Morisc prophecies relates to the immense loss of conscience, particularly in relation to the understanding of the Koran. This sign, fatal to a community which internally wishes to be Islamic is enhanced by others factors which are always explicit in texts revealing pain, such as the loss of a mother-tongue, mystical and literary symbolism, the comparatives used in the metaphoric process (the cooking pan as a symbol of crisis and the furnace as a symbol of unity) and the loss of social and familiar conscience.
The linguistic problem of the Moriscos, (dominated by a language in the transition between old Aragon and Castilian and filled with substantial forms of Arabic) is merely an exterior symptom symbolising the impossibility of translating a culture the Moriscos believed they belong to. The social and familial degeneracy reflects the discontinuity of an old model of life in a new situation, as well as the pressure and oppression of forced conversion to which they were subjected daily.
Unable to translate the prior cultural, genealogical world and not having the necessary disposition for a profound structure to express it, (semiotic as well as linguistic), the Morisc enunciators reveal a besieged identity. The situation of hybrid identity in which they live - at all levels -is an ominous metaphor for a predicted ending, a pre-felt catastrophe. Curiously, during this century of Iberian gold, the slow death of the Hispanic community was mirrored by other deaths in the South American continent.
According to Miguel de Epalza, the link with the past, or rather with the specified Islamic genealogy, is based on an imaginary Iberian-magrebine scheme of "Almoáda" origins and reveals clairvoyant characteristics.
This means that, although the Moriscos felt recognition and nostalgia of the past they generated a simultaneous impossibility to actualise in a focused way their collective memory. The strongest evidence being the "aljamiada" literature that the Moriscos created in their homes. There is, however, no genetic relation between the Arab alphabet and the Romanic language. Due to the intense pressure of the slow demise of their culture, the Morisc text is unconsciously saturated with semantic and syntactic breaks, repetitions and a miscellany of content without direction. It is curious to note the recurrence of Arab lexemes in the prophecies of the naming systems, in particular those of people and places and more of "res" (objects) than "modus" (actions). This demonstrates a total destruction in relation to the linguistic/communicational system in cause.
The vernacular forms reveal a constant determinant and occupy a mid-ground between the dominion of the Romanic Universe (which the Moriscos refuse assimilating to) and the pressures reminiscent of the Arab. This linguistic, inter-semiotic mid-ground is by chance a reflection of the referred identity situated between two impossible fates: the lost past, object of nostalgia and the present, whose common denominator rests on the inability of the Moriscos to assimilate the Christian world.
The self-conscious progressive cultural decadence (and ignorance) is a fact that has been explicitly enunciated in various texts of the Aljamiada-Morisco literature. In the referred enunciation this aspect of the real is also represented. A deficit of identity in the prophetic corpus we are analysing, is almost always associated with the absence or the "lack" the Moriscos always felt. An example of this emptiness are the symbolic "heart," sometimes described as empty or removed according to the whether or not it has been animated by the divine spirit. The emptiness of being underlines the infidelity of men before the Divine, this is synonymous to the first death, the spiritual one. In other words an Islamic identity in its proper sense would only be compatible with an interior religious existence. This vital aspect of the degeneracy of the Moriscos is justified as having its origins in religious negligence, comparing the Moriscos to the times of Jewish exile. The announcement of the evils to come and of natural catastrophes are interpreted as constituting a divine punishment inflicted on the Moriscos for earlier negligence. The infidelity and obsessive culpability becomes, in this sense one of the most important and most relevant identity aspects of the Moriscos, justifying the emptiness they experienced.
Although the Moriscos felt a radical emptiness, they identified themselves with a strong collective conscience. The marking tendency of the Moriscos that in relation to the Christians is found in the Aljamiado-Moriscos literature reveals a very deep mark. For example, factors, like ritual hygiene or the difficulty in representing the divine stand out in the sentences which denounce the Christians ("pork eaters" "cross-worshippers") in the same way that at a more symbolic level, the Moriscos re-vindicate exclusively purification and incorruptibility as assets. Revealing in this sense is the way S. Isidoro de Sevilha is used as a pseudo-narrator of the prophecies. In one of the texts, the saint associates himself to the Divine Islamic unity (tawhid) to the non-divine nature of Jesus Christ and the still the impossible sharing that exists between God and man constituting the theological distinction between Islam and Christianity. Besides the negligence and the divine punishment to which the Moriscos feel victims, they maintain the contradictory certainty of what they inherit by rightful laws - as opposed to the Christians. One of the most reiterated Morisco denouncements occurs during the traumatic historical moment of the betrayed trials (las juras) the changing Christian politics which, between 1492 and 1501, would lead to the first forced conversions. In the analysis of the descriptions of landscapes the semiotics of space reveals the Morisco conscience of fields. Not only do they mystify the Iberian land (going as far as to state in one of the prophecies that Spain is one of the "heavenly plains" where honey flows in the rivers.) but also because they are entirely opposed to the Christians which own the Iberian territory - more scatological than physical. The symbolic space of the prophecies is in this sense, doubled: on the one hand, it replaces the great conquests of other times, on the other hand, it restructures the present, based on the desire to restructure the experience of the ottoman invasion (for which they formulated an adequate route.)
This fracture or Islamic-Christian breach manifests itself equally in characters of a symbolic nature. In this way, for example, S. Tiago de Compostela, the comet of Brittany or the French cavalry are opposed to Alhambra, to the aura of Cordoba or the cavalry of Ronda in a prophecy. These symbolic oppositions among others generate more at superficial levels in the complex text structures that constitute the actual logic of the narrative.
It is also a part of the dichotic nature of this literary real, the vision that the Christians have of the Moriscos. In this context emerges the idea of caste, emphasising the need to clean the Spanish land of all the ferment that corrupts the national unity (Christian and religious.) In one of the prophecies, the Moriscos fill this terrible semantic aspect with the figure of the Encoberto which follows the tradition of prophetic characters as a "last saviour emperor," the decisive agent of the premonitory expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain. Curiously, since the 14th century the Iberian peninsula has been full of mythical Encobertos, whether Islamic or Christian. Portugal made this figure into a myth of the restoration of its independence in the 17th Century and it would export the expression of this imaginary to Brazil.
The prophecy 3 where the Christian figure of the Encoberto emerges is clearly a text that was transformed or manipulated at a certain time by Christian hand. It represents a forged graft as many others in the time of war of Alpujarras. However, the meaning of this intervention in a Morisco clandestine corpus is not a detail but a question of interest because it allows us to understand something on a more complex Morisco identity. Although it may seem far-fetched, the analysis on the nature of the prophecy in cause is a relevant factor that we have to raise. That is, was it not a Morisco that forged the prophecy? There is a combination of details that in principle allow us to conclude affirmatively: Although the prophecy is a result of extracts taken from others (some Christian, some not, and namely, the actual prophecy 2 of the same corpus) the hesitations that indicate that the enunciator does not have (as any other moor) Castilan as a mother tongue, are clear; The refuge on Arabic words as for example, adrabes - doors to the city - or the designation of the Jabarin monster - comes from the same type of semantic destruction that surges in the remaining prophecies of the corpus; We can witness syntactic imitations (calcos), identical to those of other prophecies that reveal the presence of a linguistic model exogenous to the romanic vernacular used, assuming, therefore, characteristics common to the more general textualisation of Aljamiado-Morisco literature. The author demonstrates good knowledge of Islamic and Christian symbols, even recurring to the mythification and mystification of Spanish lands, Morisco characteristic always present in other prophecies of the corpus;
Finally, the recourse to threats and curses, reveals the manipulation skill of the forger that created ambiguities in the beginning of the text through a familiar dialogue in the Aljamiado-Morisco sphere and ends it with an unexpected victory of the Christian Encoberto.
In this way, it is well possible that a Morisco was bribed by the Christians, using the text as a common war weapon which at the time was the prophecy. A certain point allows us to conclude, with caution, that the Morisco community, aware of their own weaknesses and inconsistencies in identity is vulnerable to this self-flagellating enunciation.
If the self mutilation is an accepted attribute in another prophecy, the forth- of a clear Morisco authorship, in the rest as in the rest of the corpus- it is also possible to interpret the presence of the grafted prophecy at least in part in this same sense (that, actually is in accordance with the investigations of J. Hawkins on the "Morisco philosophy of suffering" 1998). Such an opinion might be raised, independently of the insertion of prophecy 3 in the syntax of the three remaining prophecies, at an earlier date to the enunciation of these (possibly at the time of the last copy of the present MS., all of it uniformly reigned with magrebí characters written by the same author) In the meantime let’s just say that the prophecy of our corpus corresponds to a hermeneutic logic of the time where the presence of various contradictory versions within the same texts was common, considering the common practice of intertextual manipulation that constituted the communicational and political game of the prophetic production.
This is, briefly, the silhouette of the real Morisco identity as it appears represented in the semiotic construction of the prophetic corpus of the Manuscript 774 of the Paris National Library. Survival, belief in a scatological coming, conscience of an irredeemable loss, the fight against a "hybrid" identity (of which they feel conscious) nostalgia of the past, emptiness of "being" as a punishment for the religious negligence (for which they feel responsible) self-flagellation - and still the clear conscience of the cultural field that is theirs (although without a consistent language in order to translate it into, that reveals the nature of the drama of the Morisco identity) configures traces of the real Moriscos included in the text in the time when it was created. We are facing what can be designated an internal monologue of a community going through a profound identity crisis and at the edge of the abyss or catastrophe of its own existence as a community in history. In another way we are faced with a memory with no memory.
As L. Cardaillac refers in the conclusions to his classic "Morisques et Chretiens - un affronttement polémique (1977:389) the Moriscos have no history in the sense that history pre-supposes the existence "d’un groupe humain en évolution", hereby the study of the Morisco problem besides the use of historical method to analyse it inevitably needs other methods particularly the "sociological" (ibid.:389). Our alternative route of semiotic-textual research helps to reveal representative characteristics of reality which enrich the study of terminal minorities like the Moriscos. Unfortunately, this reality is still more contemporary than it may seem.

2005-05-16T06:09:00.000-07:00

Mr. Posada's case

Creates a real tension between the politics of the global war on terrorism and the ghosts of the cold war on communism.

2005-05-11T02:37:00.000-07:00

Beyond Humanity

NYT

This is Shandong Labor Re-education Camp in Zibo (it´ s also a carbonized thermal parts factory). All inmates are expected to do some factory work or manual labor. The camp is one of more than 300 special prisons in China.

2005-05-10T02:45:00.000-07:00

Hay Festival

Hay is a tiny market town in the Black Mountains of the Welsh Marches. It has 1300 people and 39 bookshops (Festival: 27 May - 7 June).

2005-05-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

Quote of the day

"Last spring, in the wake of Ray Bradbury pitching a tantrum over Michael Moore appropriating the title of 'Fahrenheit 451' to make Fahrenheit 9/11, I conceived of a plan to write a series of stories with the same titles as famous sf shorts, which would pick apart the totalitarian assumptions underpinning some of sf's classic narratives."

(Cory Doctorow)

2005-04-29T03:21:00.000-07:00

The sense of other minds

"The novel is supreme in giving us the possibility of inhabiting other minds. I think it does it better than drama, better than cinema. It’s developed these elaborate conventions over three or four hundred years of representing not only mental states, but change, over time. So in that sense, yes, I think that ‘other minds’ is partly what the novel is about. If you saw the novel as I do in terms of being an exploration of human nature—an investigation of the human condition—then the main tool of that investigation has to be to demonstrate, to somehow give you, on the page, the sensual ‘felt’ feeling of what it is to be someone else.
Surely everyone in childhood makes this slow recognition— in little leaps and starts— that other people are as alive to themselves as you are to yourself. It’s quite a startling discovery. I remember, round about the age of ten, having one of those little epiphanies of ‘I’m me,’ and at the same time thinking, well, everyone must feel this. Everyone must think, ‘I’m me.’ It’s a terrifying idea, I think, for a child, and yet that sense that other people exist is the basis of our morality. You cannot be cruel to someone, I think, if you are fully aware of what it’s like to be them. And to come back to the novel as a form, I think that’s where it is supreme in giving us that sense of other minds.”

An Interview with Ian McEwan (by Ramona Koval)

2005-04-27T07:56:00.000-07:00

Explosion

The blog population is exploding around the world, resembling the growth of e-mail users in the 1990s:

2005
April - 8,700,000
Jan. - 6,600,000

2004
Dec. - 5,400,000
Sept. - 4,100,000
June - 2,950,000
March - 2,000,000

2003
Dec. - 1,400,000
Sept. - 1,000,000
June - 300,000
March - 100,000

But blogs are also taking off as chat boards and alternative newspapers in countries like Iran, Egypt, and China.

2005-04-19T11:53:00.000-07:00

"Wait to Come Unstuck"

by Wyatt Bonikowski (on Elimae Books)

"They were having their rails lubricated. Underneath they had discovered blockage, and it was all they could do to free themselves, like a kind of jellied meat. "Exposure to the elements," the doctor said. "We have made arrangements for a salad to happen. It will be arriving tomorrow, express." Could they wait any longer? They were busy posting notices on the walls of their apartment, to remind themselves of the truly important in life."

(Full text here)

2005-04-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

One by one

(in A Tasca)

2005-04-18T07:02:00.000-07:00

Give Policarpo a Chance?

(Get all the latest Next Pope odds here now)

1
"Jose Da Cruz Policarpo is not well known because he has spent most of his life working in Portugal. He is, however, evidently popular among the cardinals and this means that he may have a chance at winning — especially if the cardinals wish to elect someone that isn’t an “expected” choice by outsiders." (About)
2
"Apart from study in Rome, Lisbon's Cardinal Jose da Cruz Policarpo has spent his whole priestly life in his native Portugal and is little known to Catholics outside Portuguese-speaking countries.
But this theological moderate has impressed other cardinals in Europe and Latin America, where a Portuguese prelate can serve as a link between the two continents. "If Policarpo is elected Pope, almost everyone outside the College of Cardinals will ask 'who is he?'," a Church official said before the conclave. "But among the cardinals, they've been talking about him for years." (Mydd)
3
"Portuguese cardinal could be a bridge candidate in conclave." (C.N.S.)

2005-04-15T03:36:00.000-07:00

Mirror, Mirror!

´
Royals

2005-04-14T05:03:00.000-07:00

Walt Whitman

Library of Congress, P. P. D. (LC-USZ62-82784)

The Washington Friends of Walt Whitman is pleased to announce a city-wide festival which will take place between March 26 (the date of Whitman's death) and May 31 (Whitman's birth) in 2005. These dates include the month of April, National Poetry Month. Events are designed to highlight the 150th anniversary of the first publication of a masterpiece of American literature, Leaves of Grass, and Whitman’s connection to Washington, DC, where he lived and worked from 1863 to 1873. During this period, the poet published his poignant poems of the Civil War, Drum Taps, and his elegies to Lincoln, “O Captain! My Captain!” and “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” all while earning his living as a civil servant.

2005-04-13T03:25:00.000-07:00

The Oblique Light

She was reclining on the night
glancing at broom shrubs and one of those blocks
of masonry that lead to the soul

there was a clear sense of nothing else existing
she said

Vermeer
the painter
would have liked to see it

he would fly through the oblique light
and from that shadow invent the night
the ancient river absorbed.

(Luís Carmelo. Transl.: Bernardo Palmeirim)

2005-04-12T05:14:00.000-07:00

It ain't over until the fat lady sings

"The post-9/11 world involves two competing nightmares. One imagines another terrorist attack that occurs because authorities fail to respond to signs of danger. The other is about innocent people who are arrested by mistake and held indefinitely because authorities are too frightened, or embarrassed, to admit their errors. We have to be equally vigilant against both." (Ed.NYT)

This are the real signs of our times.

2005-04-11T05:47:00.000-07:00

Part of the family...

Royals

2005-04-11T05:36:00.000-07:00

Particular advices

National Libraries of Scotland

"More than 200 years on from his death, the author of a scandalous bestseller of Georgian London has been outed. For almost 30 years from 1757, Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies was the essential gentleman's accessory for a night on the town."
"The alleged author was as famous as his book. Jack Harris, real name John Harrison, was head waiter at the Shakespear's Head , supplying women, and occasionally men, for all tastes."
Read more about Harris, the "diabolical poet" who "was also briefly an actor."

2005-04-10T04:13:00.000-07:00

Beirut is Beirut!

People filled restaurants and jammed sidewalks Saturday in answer to a call to stop mourning in a city buffeted by nearly two months of political and economic turmoil.

2005-04-09T03:48:00.000-07:00

Disturbing revelations

"A report just released by the National Academy of Sciences bears two disturbing revelations. The cooling pools for nuclear waste at some reactor sites may be far more vulnerable to a devastating attack by terrorists than federal regulators are willing to admit. And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is operating in a hermetically sealed cocoon that makes it difficult for anyone - even the academy, armed with a Congressional mandate - to tell whether the public is adequately protected."

2005-04-07T14:31:00.000-07:00

Kids

Danny Kruger wrote:

"The ugliness of this campaign - already a swamp of dirty tricks and name-calling - resembles two divorced parents scheming and screaming at their children to choose between them: but the kids are sullen, and won't get off the sofa. What's going on?"

Democracy is hard, perhaps the most complex and difficult of all forms. But still the best one to live in!

2005-04-07T11:36:00.000-07:00

Saul Bellow (1915 - 2005)

"I am an American, Chicago born—Chicago, that somber city—and go at things as I have taught myself, free style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent."
(from The Adventures of Augie March, 1953)

2005-04-07T07:49:00.000-07:00

WILD BOAR EYE
A novel in eleven episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

ELEVENTH (and last) EPISODE
(The terrible gush)

Maya hit the gas for the long stretch.
The twilight had invaded the hilly cobblestone and the road sides, and a low fog spread out into the abyss. A figure sprung out running from the somber hedge, looking like a jumbled blob, zigzagging - a single blood-like eye amid the most disconsolate darkness. Maya hit the brakes, shifted gears, and screamed into a tremendous crash. The car leant on its left side against the small wall on the edge of the belvedere. Next to it, snug as a bug in a rug, laid the animal, legs in the air and dead in a pool of blood that ran down the road line.
Like a bolt, as if she had awoken from her sleepwalker’s adventure, from the unforeseen climb and illogical journey, Maya ran out of the car to check, who knows, if the wild boar was dead. Just a couple of seconds later, Rui opened his car door and stood stunned, numb, hanging onto the side mirror. It was then that the wild boar, in a final breath and last grimace, placed the mask of life back on and dashed at Maya who knelt close by.

Rui had no time to react. Blood, the boar’s or Maya’s, etched the car window. A brief, dry moment. The shatter of pain. An instant of light in the darkness. Maybe the photograph of the initiation. The terrible gush. And Rui, frozen solid, lost from himself. From everything.
And the dense smell of costmary celebrating the mountain air. An inexplicable whim. As if fate had awoken with the trip. As if fate had awoken, once and for all, for the only trip.

2005-04-05T17:02:00.000-07:00

WILD BOAR EYE
A novel in twelve episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

TENTH EPISODE
(The inventor of the wonder drug)

Yet nonetheless there was, between the two, that intimate exchange of looks that disclosed, in the hour of truth, a kind of pact, a bold, unforeseen trust. And the engine hiccupped, spoke of wear and tear, and pushed against the fatigue of such a climb. It is two to eight, and out of the shadow a dark sea surges in flickering lights, varying with the relief of the succeeding slopes.

Until they reached a stretch of road, approximately 50 meters long. Less than a mile to the belvedere now. The longing.

(It all takes place somewhere between accord and treachery – thought Rui, after it had all happened).

(Just a gift. Pilgrimage of the spirit that travels quiet until the moment we stand facing each other. One car for the both of us. The absurd. We had never seen each other before. And we were sitting there as if we had been granted access to life everlasting. We had been awaiting a sign. Anything. A car is an asset, a luxury, but I never thought it could be a sign of providence. For a car travels across space in the same way a miracle travels across your imagination. We’re still face to face, the two of us, next to the same car. Each holding his own key. We’d arrived at the park, the same park, at the same time. We took it for granted that we and we alone were heading for our own car and that obviously no one else could, especially at the same time, go for that car as their own. But on that day, it happened. And that was a gift. The gift. After that we traveled on board of a silent confession. We were like a baroque episode that makes movement awaken realities but not the reality. Unique. Between them, between these worlds, something ended up waking what we had lived together for a couple of hours. And because of that we drove, I swear, up to the highest point, the fancy of a higher thawing, where God could wait for us. And us with Him, arm in arm, holding a draught beer and a big cigar and playing crazy games. And I saw myself and them, Rui and God, hand in hand, running on clouds of twilight, in this isthmus where the curves of life can guess the ultimate stretch and, with it, the groveling fog and bitter wait for the belvedere of forbidden longing that I would never come to see. Already a kind of redemption anticipated the announced summit. World and life were still the image of starting the engine of a same vehicle disputed by two human beings who loved and betrayed each other, unaware. I, the inventor of the wonder drug, the magic vaccine, and he a lawman that would make his bearded colleague, he who had read out God’s commandments, envious. I can see him now, sitting on the blue cloud in the corner, a chandelier made out of seeds and costmary stems on each side. A true gift, that chance meeting: the royal pleasure of having existed for the big mountain climb, the oversized cliff. Until. Until the 50 m stretch showed up. It was less than a mile to the belvedere. The longing –Maya thought, just a blink of an eye before it all happened.)

Maya hit the gas for the long stretch.

(Next episode of Wild Boar Eye: “Rui opened his car door and stood stunned, numb, hanging onto the side mirror.”)

Continues

2005-04-05T04:42:00.000-07:00

WILD BOAR EYE
A novel in twelve episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

NINETH EPISODE
(And light came)

Rui and Maya are still standing in the parking lot, in front of the locked car. Each holding his own key.

When Maya places the costmary bunch on the car roof, it sets off the alarm. Rui quickly zaps the car with the remote, halting the siren’s blast. She looks into Rui’s eyes, frozen still. And light came. Without a word, Maya goes round the yellow road line and steps into the passenger’s seat. As if turned to stone, Rui sits next to her and sets the car in motion. They are already speeding out of town, street after street; as if regret could, in that unique moment, be the inauspicious worm which might halt the bizarre adventure already in motion. The mountain ridge looked like a feasible place to go, a place one could trust; and the spontaneous course of the wheel had preceded any decision arranged between the two of them. It was as if fate had awoken with the trip; for the trip.

Up to the last cliff.

It is almost eight in the evening, the last sunrays are spreading out into the liquid sphere of air. And the shadow of the Milky Way climbs out of nowhere. There is howling afar. The sparse branches of the last trees are grooved by the audacious breeze, as the curves and swerves lead to the forbidden belvedere. The red, blood-colored earth by the side of the road. Maya’s fingernails were as if stuck in the costmary bunch, Rui’s fingers tightened up on his knees. Their safety belts encircled an end of the world in motion. And there was still a tale to be told. That Maya had indeed been the true inventor of the AIDS and hepatitis vaccine, and that no one knew, or would know of it. That Rui was, after all, a former lawyer of the renowned Professor Romeo and that not even Maya knew, or was to know of this.

(Next episode of Wild Boar Eye: “Until they reached a stretch of road, approximately 50 meters long. Less than a mile to the belvedere now. The longing.”)

Continues

2005-04-04T04:19:00.000-07:00

WILD BOAR EYE
A novel in twelve episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

EIGHTH EPISODE
(The last cliff)

Over the last cliff, before the last stretch that goes on for approximately two snaky miles, you can easily see the specter of the whitish antenna marking the belvedere everyone yearns for. Maybe that is why it has been baptized ill-omened and proscribed; but deep down, always longed for. Where Rui grew up there was a slope called Dead-End; in Maya’s home town, an ancient path they called Dead Man’s Drink. And yet never did the good moon hold back its light from those places, be it a cold equinox or solstice day, one of evil omen or shady presage. For both Rui and Maya, everything, simply everything was land blessed by the eldest gods and legends that had translated, in ages of gold, the worthy postures and the good deeds which served as examples for mankind.
Rui and Maya never spoke of this, but they grasped it through a mystery that unfolded in the gap between their gazes during the hour of truth, when mystery cast light over its own doubt, and understanding was sewed into a handful of suddenly available, clear options. Numb for words, Rui and Maya realized that the summit of the last cliff was the most likely destination of a coincidence and remote complicity that, even though – who knows? – set off by others, ended up revealing an uncanny acknowledgment, an unexplainable agreement of spirit. Light had come out and the mountain, by a remarkable gift, accompanied it.

(Next episode of Wild Boar Eye: “The mountain ridge looked like a feasible place to go, a place one could trust.”)

Continues

2005-04-03T05:37:00.000-07:00

WILD BOAR EYE
A novel in twelve episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

SEVENTH EPISODE
(On the edge of wonder)

Maya gripped the wheel, accompanying the wide curves. And darkness is moving in the travel’s tale, as the destination of our occult itinerary retracted before the aridness and a limitless abandonment. On the edge of wonder, as Rui lifted his eyes to the summits and granitic spikes foamed with night, a huge bird of prey glided in. In a green ray along the ridge’s top, it traversed the skies from side to side and ended up crossing over the safety of the Midnight Blue Mobilin 2000. Maya confessed:

“This thing about the papers still puzzles me.”
Rui smiled as if he held, almost by magic, the solution in his hands: “Look - the registration papers I took to the bureau were already copies, which is normal. Now, what I have here are these… receipts. There’s always a waiting period in this bureaucratic stuff. Yours are the originals… the very same he must have declared to have lost at the time. Obviously a lie.”
“And the keys?”
“What he told me was that he only had a copy left, which can also happen. Besides, that’s happened to me once. And moreover… he suggested that I should go to the place where he got the car and order two new keys… and that he would even pay for them himself. But that’s something that takes its time, I called to check, you know, and that’s why I hadn’t really begun to take care of it. As you can see, by a process of exclusion, the supposedly misplaced key is precisely the one that he gave to you.”
“But why on earth would he have done that?”
“I’ve got a hunch.”
“What?”
“Think about it, if he managed to keep you away from the lab, if he stole your authority, even threatened you and got you working in some corner, it’s only likely that he should…”
“What?”
“… want to go a step further.”
“Are you suggesting he wanted to…”
“Yes, he wanted to get rid of you… and so, for now at least, to get you into some kind of trouble. To… upset you, enclose you, I don’t know. Something of the sort. This was no distraction of his. You can be sure of that, I feel it.”
“Actually, it wasn’t me who was supposed to transport the blood samples today. It isn’t my day. And seldom is an office car unavailable. Why did he give me this car?”
“Common knowledge says that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That something doesn’t quite add up here... Do you want me to take over driving? Night’s falling. It’s getting hard to see well...”
“We’ll stop at eight and then see. We’re almost there anyway. I’ll try to reach the top of the out-of-bounds belvedere.”
“Ok, sure.”

(Next episode of Wild Boar Eye: “Light had come out and the mountain, by a remarkable gift, accompanied it.”)

Continues

2005-04-02T05:41:00.000-08:00

WILD BOAR EYE
A novel in twelve episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

SIXTH EPISODE
(The greatest venture of mortals: the imagination)

Half past seven and the sun is setting in the highest summits. On the ancient stone pavement the car drives on, rambling down roads, maneuvering within narrow slits. It glides mile after mile along the tilt of the hill, sloping upwards, succeeding curves replete with milestones and cypresses which rise above a thick slop of clouds that obstructs the view of the bottom of the valley and the pastures. Here up high, close to the darkening blue sky - a vestibule for the repose of gods -, life tastes of thin air and hard molten rock curves. Above all, life acquires the taste and wisdom that come with the greatest venture of mortals: the imagination. Perhaps on account of that, Maya has not yet forgotten the beginning of the conversation:

“Let’s go back to Professor Romeo. When did you meet him, after all?”
Rui shook off a chill, loosely forgot his elbow on the seat and began thinking outside of time:
“He sold me the car. It was only then I met him.”
“But how?”
“He was a friend of a colleague of mine from the office. My colleague told me he knew someone who wanted to trade cars. It was precisely what I wanted: a nice car, low mileage, practically new, and the price was very reasonable. So in fact I only met that gentleman and his long coat when we met to take care of the paperwork.”
“And when was that?”
“The day before last.”
“At what time?”
“Well, let me see, it must have been about two pm. I remember I had to have an early lunch.”
“I just can’t make out why the hell he gave me the car keys for the very same car!”
It was a place of mountain peaks speckled with fir-trees. Towards the bottom lay the forest and the first set of long, endless escalades. An ancient memory of ice caps, glaciers, and peaks of death. And here, in this nothingness near the top of the vast canyon, the only thing left is the big evening star that seems to want to come down and touch the globe’s lonely ceiling with a thread of silk. A place of mountain climbers and cold gales, small patches of grass and lost-in-time escapades.

(Next episode of Wild Boar Eye: “We’ll stop at eight and then see. We’re almost there anyway. I’ll try to reach the top of the out-of-bounds belvedere.”)

Continues

2005-04-01T02:43:00.000-08:00

WILD BOAR EYE
A novel in twelve episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

FIFTH EPISODE
(Almost vitreous this certainty, so unmovable)

Rui switched foots, felt his muscles purr about a remote sprain, placed his hand on his chin and rekindled the by then long dialogue:

“But listen, as we were saying, why didn’t you leave town during those hard times?”
“You know, I worked on this project for about ten years. And no matter how many obstacles appeared before me, I always said to myself that one must attain one’s goals. And… as you must have gathered, I’m pretty stubborn. I may have many flaws, but I persevere.”
“It never occurred to you to bail out?”
“No.”
“Not even when they tried to accuse you of lying in a scientific paper?”
“Much less then. The truth is the vaccine was certainly not in the best interest of a lot of nicely settled people. It would solve a lot; too much. And you can’t begin to imagine what nestled interests are like.”
“But they got what they wanted, right?.. They took advantage of your discoveries and came up with a new vaccine as if they’d made it themselves.”
“This isn’t the end of it, believe me. This story doesn’t end here, you can be sure of that. And she that laughs last, laughs best, I assure you.” She rose her dark glasses with her fingertip, a long fourth crescent shaped fingernail, red, sanguine. Almost vitreous this certainty, so unmovable.

(Next episode of Wild Boar Eye: “And here, in this nothingness near the top of the vast canyon, the only thing left is the big evening star that seems to want to come down and touch the globe’s lonely ceiling with a thread of silk.”)

Continues

2005-03-31T02:55:00.000-08:00

WILD BOAR EYE
A novel in twelve episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

FOURTH EPISODE
(The big fountain)

Six in the afternoon. At the belvedere by the Jade Mountains, Maya and Rui step out of the car. They sit side by side on the stone bench, listening to the distant wind. Everything seems to point to a Hopper painting, such is the special tonality of the wait and languor. Later, without any sign of strangeness, Maya turns to the big fountain full of weird garlands and ivy offshoots and said in a very low voice: “It’s time to change over. I’ll drive from now on.”
Rui conceded. He shook his head like a yoyo on goo, a puppet hanging from a cross where invisible actors tame their fatigue and tension. His candid posture rose up slowly, pulling a handkerchief across his forehead, looking Maya in the eyes: “Ok. Later in the evening, by nightfall, I’ll take over again, then.”
So be it.
Maya set off up the mountain, curve after curve. Light falls and shadows grow long, the wind surges into the dense forest. Below them is the alluvial plain of the great city, an abyss caught between walls and the immense valleys whence holy waters sprout from a colossal spring where four rivers blend, two by two.

(Next episode of Wild Boar Eye: “The truth is the vaccine was certainly not in the best interest of a lot of nicely settled people...”)

Continues

2005-03-30T03:34:00.000-08:00

WILD BOAR EYE
A novel in twelve episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

THIRD EPISODE
(Was it hunger, coincidence, a mirage?)

Chasing the same bright yellow line engraved on the floor, Rui and Maya carry on as if united in a single fate, a single impetus, a single chance. Step by step. And in that tap-dance one could hear a sort of tune spreading out into the air, screeching out of some tollbooth speaker: was it raucous Ravel, an orchestra from Cadiz or Algiers?.. Piano, a flute, booming percussion and agitated strings, permanently hovering overhead. It was like a circus, with the asphalt undulating and rippling, pleasure imminent; as if Broadway were waxing and waning into a new musical, combined with the sharp acrobatics of an unusual noon. Was it hunger, coincidence, a mirage? Rui broke off to his left, nearing on the car door. Maya squinted for the first time.
“What?” she muttered. “What! I can’t believe this!” she thought out in a tight thin voice. She ran past the man, clinging to the door that, after all, was the door to her car.
Rui and Maya, came out of nowhere, holding different keys - or the same -, trying to open the very same door. And each demanding, swearing, heart crossed to high heaven, “But… This is my car!”
“It’s mine, look!” Both produced the same documents, the same papers, and both names matched the license plate.
“This can’t be! Look here, I’m a serious person and I hate squabbles!”
“Listen, I don’t like games and least of all at this time of day. I’m tired, overworked!..”
“Wouldn’t it be better to call the police?”

From that moment on, it was impossible to hear another word that went on between Rui and Maya. Each held his key by the Midnight Blue Mobilin 2000; their expressions contorting, transfiguring into slow motion close-ups, while the tedium of explanations faded out. Fudged out. Everything is now, seen from afar. Panoramic. And tension tightens in, only to subside. But why?

(Next episode of Wild Boar Eye: “His candid posture rose up slowly, pulling a handkerchief across his forehead, looking Maya in the eyes...”)

Continues

2005-03-29T09:08:00.000-08:00

The blank blog is staring back at you - 7

Bloggers sometimes become characters much like blogging becomes a literary mode:

"Last spring, when I was living in Boston, love was in the air. I had a date with a very beautiful young woman in Vermont. But I didn't want to take the bus up to see her. I wanted to drive. However, my driver's license had just expired and I couldn't get a quick renewal, because I no longer lived in DC, where the license was from.Swept away by thoughts of romance, I decided to head over to the local Enterprise Rent-a-Car and hope they wouldn't notice my licensed had expired. But they did. And they explained politely but firmly that renting a car to someone without a valid license is absolutely unacceptable. I knew they were right, so I took the bus. Perhaps that why the girl broke up with me." (David Adesnik)

I sould have tried another Enterprise Rent-a-Car.
David´s life and... everything would have been different!

2005-03-29T02:28:00.000-08:00

WILD BOAR EYE
A novel in twelve episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

SECOND EPISODE
(The grand parade)

Across the square, Maya stopped in front of the man with a giant egg under his unfurled, caught in the wind, shirt. She shivered at that open mouth that was but a rocky cave, cut across by a trident of tooth decay. When she came back the same way later on, the curtain had gone up from that Breughel face, where there fluttered a smile fit of a saint. Of the kind that rose into heaven and wore, long ago, the whitened satin of everlasting salvation. Macerated skin, gondola lips, eyes apparently frozen, and the pause, the immense pause between hisses complicating the insistent entreaty: “It’s only two euros, ma’am, couple o’euros only. Come - buy this small bunch of costmary; the greatest tonic in the world against hiccups, nervous problems, evil spells, everything.”
And Maya, not knowing why she had stopped at that shack, that warehouse of voids, found herself holding onto nothing but her purse and the small bunch of French mint that accompanied her slightly sweaty, pale, and probably astonished life line.
She walked on, in slender high heels, waving her hips in readiness and elegance, taking heed of the time and the serious look of the freckled policewoman that wouldn’t stop whispering into her walkie-talkie. Then came the crosswalk, a blotch of insects and cetacean-shaped clouds. The grand parade. And in that interval from the world, Maya remembered the trip she was about to take on the following day. Nine am, leaving for the airport and… how nice it will be, ten days in New York doing absolutely nothing. Maya poised her eyes on the lulling reflex of light coming from the big wheel at the fun fair. Chagall lights turning, arching, whirling a clarity that made it hard for you to perceive the green blossoming once again.
And footsteps crashed into each other again in an eager chaos, a sudden vortex, as soon as the pedestrian lights announced themselves to mankind. Motorbikes, buses, archangels of all kinds, and especially taxis came to a halt. Everything stops in this miniscule hour of urban delights as the city seems to burst into a mixed smell of sandal, rosemary and burnt tires. Maya’s shrewdness is obvious, as she sucks in and tastes the air, and opens her purse with care and circumspection. From within she pulls out her car key and proceeds with determination to the street corner, her tiny costmary bouquet caught between her red, blood-colored nails. This is the dictate, the everyday law. She proceeds into the park, pays for the full morning parking at the booth and walks towards her car.

(next episode of Wild Boar Eye: “Was it hunger, coincidence, a mirage? Rui broke off to his left, nearing on the car door. Maya squinted for the first time.”)

Continues

2005-03-28T14:56:00.000-08:00

There´s a great poem just around the corner - 5

(E. E. Cummings, Complete Poems)

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the littlelame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

2005-03-28T03:32:00.000-08:00

WILD BOAR EYE
A novel in twelve episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

FIRST EPISODE
(A delight, tasting of Bosch prodigies…)

Perhaps because he pronounced words with some difficulty, the old man seemed to be saying, even if in a mumble, the other name for that plant I had long forgotten. And he repeated it out loud, with creased eyebrows, shirt puffed out in the wind, three needlelike teeth and one open eye: “It’s costmary, a marvelous tonic… for making tea against hiccups”, “Buy the grand tonic against hiccups and evil omens!” And there I was, thinking about spasms, monsters, silicone breasts, with my right hand in my pocket clutching at the car keys with unusual strength. Step by step, I waddled on the sidewalk, a salsa or merengue beat overseeing my rhythm, pace and fate, until the crosswalk made me halt.
I lazily glanced back, only to catch sight of the freckled policewoman and, further down, of the haughty man still holding onto the costmary, a small stem of rickety leaves culminating in three or four tiny buds. Only later did I come to find out, by a strange will of chance, that it was in fact French or Roman mint. The green light finally summoned the pedestrians, my fingers glistened through the pomade in my hair, I put on my glasses and advanced into the crowd. In slower, paused steps, I unfolded the newspaper to read the headlines. Deaths in Macedonia, six twins born in Valparaiso, UFOs in Basel, the Asian stock crash, and, cover story: the wonder drug. The discovery of the magic vaccine. Made from wild boar’s blood. Strange stuff; was this even possible?
Behind, like Napoleonic drums in the distance, lost among ambulance sirens and a strange rush of wind from the construction site, I still managed to hear threads of the costmary balsam street cries. A delight, tasting of Bosch prodigies. I turned the corner to head for the park when I recalled the six o’clock rendezvous with Helen at the theater door.
Memory fell in like an apparition – I looked up and saw anew: there was the sun navigating in the zenith between low clouds, the fun fair turning giant pulleys and winding out puffs of fried dough into the stratosphere, while the newspaper, nicely folded up by now, promenaded under my arm. Under my feet went the harmonious tale of the planet, as, same as any other day, I entered the park. I paid the parking fare through the prefab booth glass and finally headed for the car. It was noon, precisely.

(Next episode of Wild Boar Eye: From within she pulls out her car key and proceeds with determination to the street corner, her tiny costmary bouquet caught between her red, blood-colored nails. This is the dictate, the everyday law.)

2005-03-27T16:09:00.000-08:00

The blank blog is staring back at you - 6

Bloggers sometimes become characters much like blogging becomes a literary mode:

"A Little Conversation with GodThis morning, I woke very early before dawn; looking at the clock and thinking that it was really much too early to be starting my day, I stayed in bed and thought of a question I might ask God. I don't often expect direct answers to my questions, but on at least one occasion I did receive what seemed an answer. I was in an especially pitiful and despairing mood and I asked God "Oh, God, shall I just die?" (not truly planning to kill myself, but I know of many who simply give up the fight, stop eating and caring, and who die in pretty short order - it's still a kind of suicide, just in different form) The anwer I felt in my heart was "Leave that to me, Dear". Did that answer come from God or was it simply the imaginings of a delusional mind? I don't know and I don't think it even matters - the answer was a very good one in that it put a stop to my self-pitying attitude and renewed my hope and my commitment to life - it might as well have come from God for the healing it provided." (Ophe´s promise)

Isn´t it?

2005-03-26T05:13:00.000-08:00

"Love's fire heats water"

The little Love-god lying once asleep,
Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
Whilst many nymphs that vowed chaste life to keep,/
Came tripping by, but in her maiden hand,
The fairest votary took up that fire,
Which many legions of true hearts had warmed,
And so the general of hot desire,
Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarmed.
This brand she quenched in a cool well by,
Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual,
Growing a bath and healthful remedy,
For men discased, but I my mistress' thrall,

Came there for cure and this by that I prove,
Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.

(William Shakespeare, Sonnets)

2005-03-25T05:05:00.000-08:00

Quote of the day

"In an age of split-second access to unlimited information, a short story is wonderfully finite: the end is always in sight. Yet the best short stories aren't short on story at all. Instead, they manage to fit an unwieldy world into a very small space. The trick for the writer is to hide the muscle it takes to pull off that compression, convincing us that the world on the page spins easily beyond the story's boundaries." (Maggie Galehouse)

2005-03-24T13:49:00.000-08:00

Human image

"I googled 'marketing with blogs' and got 18,500 hits, so a lot of people are thinking along similar lines.
I honestly don't think blogging is the way to market...not yet. But at least some companies are using blogs as a way to sell some things, including a human image for their companies. That may be the most important thing they're doing on the Web."
(in Writing For The Web)

2005-03-24T05:30:00.000-08:00

It ain't over until the fat lady sings!

2005-03-23T11:17:00.000-08:00

There´s a great poem just around the corner - 4

Letters (Julia Forster)

You found poetry in postmarks. You tore
these finite ink circles from their homebound envelopes
to be stuffed into filing cabinet drawers in
rigid, faultless, alphabetical order.

I liked the magnetic letters that could create their own town
and would still make sense upside down or under
the rattling fridge. These could be i and !, u and n
at the same time, as well as holding up envelopes, unopened.

2005-03-21T04:19:00.000-08:00

There´s a great poem just around the corner - 3

Alien(s) by David Meltzer

"(...) yes yes
why wait when time breaks down
fails to existin axes of remove
chop chop
your hand reaching out for
the promised land."

2005-03-20T04:08:00.000-08:00

There´s a great poem just around the corner - 2

Back from Australia (John Betjeman)

"Cocooned in Time, at this inhuman height,
The packaged food tastes neutrally of clay,
We never seem to catch the running day
But travel on in everlasting night
With all the chic accoutrements of flight:
Lotions and essences in neat array
And yet another plastic cup and tray.
"Thank you so much. Oh no, I'm quite all right".

At home in Cornwall hurrying autumn skies
Leave Bray Hill barren, Stepper jutting bare,
And hold the moon above the sea-wet sand.
The very last of late September dies
In frosty silence and the hills declare
How vast the sky is, looked at from the land."

2005-03-20T03:44:00.000-08:00

The blank blog is staring back at you - 5

Bloggers sometimes become characters much like blogging becomes a literary mode:

"John Kerry flying first-class (commercial) on American Airlines direct flight National Airport to Miami, evening of March 11th. Was without Teresa. Ate some Junior Mints. To his credit, he didn't play silently with a toy Air Force One. Left Junior Mints box on seat afterward, as we all de-planed." (Wonkette)

Isn´t it?

2005-03-19T03:31:00.000-08:00

There´s a great poem just around the corner - 1

Jerome Rothenberg’s Writing Through:

1
Beginning with needles.
Insomnia.
Beginning with baskets.
The Moon.
Who is naked? The imagination
(wrote Lorca) is seared.
This is a homage to water.
Beginning & end.
The “variation” of the poem “Lorca’s Spain: A Homage”

2
Where we are the flowers in our clocks flare up their
feathers ring the light
on a distant sulfur morning cows are licking the salt
lilies
o my son
my son
we are always brought down by the color of the world
it’s blue more blue than subways than astronomy
we are too thin
we have no mouths
our legs are stiff & knock together
faces shapeless like the stars
Tristan Tzara’s “The Great Lament of My Obscurity Three,”

(see also “Narcissus Journal”)

2005-03-18T03:14:00.000-08:00

Are you a "Bobo"?

"(...) The bohemian and the bourgeois are all mixed up, as David Brooks explains in this brilliant description of upscale culture in America. It is hard to tell an espresso-sipping professor from a cappuccino-gulping banker. Laugh and sob as you read about the information age economy's new dominant class. Marvel at their attitudes toward morality, sex, work, and lifestyle, and at how the members of this new elite have combined the values of the countercultural sixties with those of the achieving eighties. These are the people who set the tone for society today, for you. They are bourgeois bohemians: Bobos."

Five years after, are "Bobos" still alive?

2005-03-17T03:15:00.000-08:00

The blank blog is staring back at you - 4

Bloggers sometimes become characters much like blogging becomes a literary mode:

"Secretly, every girl wants to be Cinderella. Every woman wants to be rescued from her circumstances by a wonderful and charming prince who is determined to do anything to get her." (...) "All the good princes are taken or (more often) not interested and all the Cinderellas are too busy chasing to be chased. My suggestion: Secretly like from a distance and flirt little. Flirting only confuses and sends mixed signals. Will I be able to stop flirting? Heck no!"
(Sometimes life surprises you)

Isn´t it?

2005-03-16T16:02:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

TWENTIETH (AND LAST) EPISODE
(The cloud that covered Lisbon)

That was the last time I ever saw him. We shall both die with two secrets engraved in our souls, and that will be enough. Certain thresholds can only be understood in this conformity, in taking pleasure in this unlimited and extreme recess. I stood there staring at the Casa dos Bicos and realized, there and then, that there is indeed a degree of lucidity in stupefaction. Somewhere between brightness, bedazzlement, and on the other hand, perspicacity and even intelligence. There are times in life when one of the sides of the scale suffices – but afterwards, sooner or later, the cracks, the lacks, and the unforeseen always surface. It is as unforeseen to fall in love as it is to bump into a friend near the Terreiro do Paço, who doesn’t even want to recognize me. A lifelong decision is as lucid as sharing a big, though meaningless, secret.
I walked out of the Campo das Cebolas and called Albe on my cell to meet her in front of the Lapa Hotel. We were celebrating the anniversary of the day we met by the pool. Again.
I looked into the water and I swear, Albe, I saw you again, floating, adrift with open arms joined in a clean, pure, ancient ring.
Albe looked ahead and seemed to see the whitish silhouette of a linen suit and, beyond the dark glasses covering her face, a giant starfish.
Such was the cloud that covered Lisbon at that hour.

The End

2005-03-16T02:43:00.000-08:00

Karnazes : one must suffer to be happy

"Dean Karnazes thinks that comfort, convenience and quick gratification - the Big Three of the middle-class American lifestyle - are not making us happy and that we should seek out more suffering.
"Dostoyevsky had it right: 'Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness,' " he writes in his new book, "Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner" (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin)." (Kirk Johnson)

Read more about the unprecedent promotional tour for this "Ultramarathon Man".

2005-03-15T16:10:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

NINETEENTH EPISODE
(the power of obvious limitations)

I lost track of António Romeu some five years ago. As long as he could maintain the kind of life he led at the Penta, he did. After that, he moved to a boarding house by the Lisbon fun fair, but he did all he could to preserve the dignity of his lifestyle. He woke up when he felt like it, dreamt and fulfilled his heart’s content, ate what he wanted, or could; slept with whom he wanted, or managed to; traveled whenever he felt like it, or could. After a while, pleasure was joined by power. Not anymore the power of he who commands, but rather the power of obvious limitations, for there is no amount of money that can last forever, especially when the intent (legitimate, in point of fact) is to spend, spend, and spend again. António took his noble choice to its last consequences, and by the mid 90’s was dragging himself through the streets of Lisbon like a bum, eating at the soup kitchen of the Holy House of Lisbon – a name that spelled out the regal origin of his singular way of life.
The last time I saw him was at the Campo das Cebolas garden, in 1996 I believe. He was sauntering on a blazing August day with a hypermarket plastic bag in his hand, wearing a completely worn-down shirt which read – I shall never forget this – “Mythic Land”. It was an old Valencia soccer club shirt, which allowed me, at the lack of imagination, to start a conversion:
“So, you’re in the soccer business now, hum?” He had become a human wreck. He almost sidestepped me, as if pretending not to know me. He shouldn’t, I thought. Especially because his courage devoured fate itself. Or melted into it. So I had another go: “Where are you going, Romeu?”
António vaguely pointed out West, across the bridge, towards the docks, the old ship yard. And off he went.

(Next and last episode of The Giant Cloud: “A lifelong decision is as lucid as sharing a big, though meaningless, secret…”)

Continues

2005-03-15T03:26:00.000-08:00

Ground Zero

"This is sacred ground"(...)"We wanted to have cultural institutions that would reflect our pride, our courage."
(Governor Pataki)

2005-03-14T16:13:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

EIGHTEENTH EPISODE
(It was written...)

Coming back from the bullfight on the following night, the roads were long, ill-lit and never-ending; Albe’s father drove and her mother took the passenger seat. The music came in a steady double time, loud and vibrant; on that night coming back from Gerona, passing through La Bisbal, Parlavà and Torrebella de Montgrí (even though, in those days, these places could only be pronounced in Catalan and in the dead of night); on that night of endless moonlight, as I was filled with the select memory of the sound of horse trots, acrobatic bull-grapples and the thousand combustion engines that stole my soul away; on that night, I say again, in the quiet softness of the back seat where a pale penumbra of lust and temptation abounded, I pushed my hand along the upholstery and there reached Albe’s hand.
And how she gripped my fingers, my life-line, the paths to my fate and my very wrists; and how tenaciously I responded to such emotion! How happiness seemed to be that single moment, about to be summed up, later, in its lived and celebrated pilgrimage! And how decisive was Samuel Lupi’s marvelous bullfight on horseback and the providential breakdown of my Ford Escort!
It was written.

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud: “António took his noble choice to its last consequences…”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)

2005-03-14T07:15:00.000-08:00

Getting good answers to caregiving questions

Where are the canadian... political blogs?

"Does anyone know of any good ones? I seem to find American ones at every turn, which is fine, American politics affect the entire world and I like knowing what's going on down there, but I would like to read about my own country from time to time too."

That´s the simple truth of Dan's question.
Who gives us the answer?

2005-03-14T06:31:00.000-08:00

The blank blog is staring back at you - 3

Bloggers sometimes become characters much like blogging becomes a literary mode:

"Little sis Camron and her boyfriend Ben arrived Friday. They are drama nerds, by which I mean, they both have degrees in drama--Ben with an emphasis on playwrighting and Camron with an emphasis on puppeteering. They're both just out of undergrad and thinking about grad schools. Ben's checking out playwrighting options and Camron is looking into a puppet program in Connecticut. They're casing neighborhoods and thinking about jobs, and might move up around September or so. We'll see. They have friends here, plus us, so a move would be a hell of a lot easier on them than it was on us! (We laugh about that first year now, but it wasn't too funny at the time.)
Friday night we hit Maggie Nelson's party for Jane at Pete's Candy Store. The book is chunky in an impressive way, and it looks great, with a photo of Jane at 15 on the cover. Maggie read for us a little bit and received hearty congrats from all kinds of poetry peeps including Reen, Jimmy, Brandon Downing, Anselm Berrigan, Erica, et al."
(Brand New Insects)

2005-03-14T06:22:00.000-08:00

Sign of times

"Very few judges have been killed in the nation's history, but threats against judges are on the rise." (N.Y.T. - E./O-E)

2005-03-13T16:54:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

SEVENTEENTH EPISODE
(Beyond the fine grains of L’Escala sand)

And together we cheered affectionately, ate cotton candy, heard expressions of approval, tasted sweet herb smells, watched women wearing lively colored flounces and prophetic men tainted by the Ebro River Moorish olive tone in tight pants, with their eye on this art of devouring and doom which is bullfighting.
It was during our encounter the day before, at the Avuello Bar, that I had confessed to Albe that I would not be able to make it to Gerona. I was truly sorry. My car, although practically new, had broken down. Probably the spark plugs, the battery, don’t know really. For me, an engine was and remains a kind of miracle, moved by more or less controlled explosions, so unlike the real drift of bangs that break out in a bullfight. Astonishing machinery, fed by petrol vapors, so dissimilar to the swerve of explosions that were invading the secrecy of my passion, that veil, a stark handle where her voice and what she tells me grows into a presage of pure desire, without guide, without rudder.
And I went on talking about my project for my book on Lusitanian tauromachy, and my spark plugs, over a Fanta naranja in front of the beach sand, and Albe cracking a smile, in complete secretiveness. Who would figure?
She smiled once more, but it was not merely the callings anymore; it was also her lukewarm body motionlessly dancing, her backbone bristling, the stars confessing in the vicinities of her hot ilium, the shimmering of Lebanon cedar growing in front of the bar, wanting to crawl into the sands, and the ineffable certainty that nothing would remain the same. Edmundo’s strange face was at odds with the world’s boredom and foretold the rise of a chorus of moons, as her wrists navigated over the table top, and her elbow touched his during a brief soft earthquake. In front of them always the Fanta naranja and the body lotion, leather sandals and the illusionary tractability of the Mediterranean, beyond the fine grains of L’Escala sand.

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud: “On that night of endless moonlight, as I was filled with the select memory of the sound of horse trots …”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)

2005-03-13T04:06:00.000-08:00

Quote of the day

"Intentionally misleading comparisons are becoming the dominant mode of public discourse. The ability to tell true analogies from false ones has never been more important." (Adam Cohen)

2005-03-13T03:14:00.000-08:00

The blank blog is staring back at you - 2

Bloggers sometimes become characters much like blogging becomes a literary mode:

"And my father is a truck driver, so I only get to see him like on the weekends and sometimes only every other weekend, but when me and my dad hang out we usually play games. I love games, any games, card games, board games, computer games, or video game, I love them all."
(What about me?)

2005-03-12T17:01:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

SIXTEENTH EPISODE
(Writing a book on bull-grappling)

I saw him coming towards me as if we were old buddies. I was kind of awestruck and it seemed he was pretty much talking to himself, carrying a prodigious smile while his syllables ran over each other: “We’ll drive you to Gerona and go along with you, what do you think?” I was pretty blown out of the water by his readiness, but saw Albe in the backdrop, behind her dad who was almost hugging me with the unexpected offer, spinning on herself, face blossoming with unusual contentment, waving over the justice of the solution.
“Look, I’m very grateful, but… how could I accept?” I watched Albe opening her arms, her father stared into my eyes, her mother sat on the reclining chair with a Paris Match mag for a fan.
“All right, all right, I accept, but on one condition: you’ll allow me to invite all three of you to the bullfight!” And Mr. and Mrs. Granet called out yes together, revealing their instant complacency and content.
“Dad, Edmundo told me that the Portuguese bullfight is totally different from the Spanish!” Albe let out, before we started off and I started to tell her about the Ford Escort having broken down. In the early afternoon the four of us left to see Samuel Lupi bullfighting on his horse and the Portuguese-style bull-grappling that was curiously about to take place at the Gerona bull ring some miles off L’Escala beach.
Writing a book on bull-grappling was something that had grown in my mind, an obsession that had long stalked me. It stemmed from a timeless moment when everything can and will happen between the enormous challenge of the initiate and the leaders, and the large bull, black and headstrong. The bull dashed at defiance under the din of the crowd, the heat of the merciless afternoon and the dust cloud which swelled in the air, with blazing nostrils, swerving hooves, and its blood-spike irons smoking rebellion. Facing it, the bull-grappler of the world prepares for the moment of impact, the clash, the fatal isthmus, his hands on his hips. Infinity fills the space between the bull and the man, between collision and lethargy. It is zero hour again, born from that word without sound whence the largest roar echoes at last, as in birth, so that man and bull, brothers in tusk and arms, in the unique tumult of creation, can together conquer the sign of life, the sortilege of fortune and the trance of the strong. What a feast, bullfights!

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud: “And together we cheered affectionately, ate cotton candy, heard expressions of approval, tasted sweet herb smells, watched women wearing lively colored flounces…”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)

2005-03-12T04:14:00.000-08:00

The blank blog is staring back at you*- 1

Nicole Blackman

Bloggers sometimes become characters much like blogging becomes a literary mode:

"Right now I'm sitting two doors down from Brian, looking at my bookshelf--and Tom's. And I see a hodge-podge of fantasy, Neal Stephenson, Gore Vidal, Norton anthologies, memoirs, "feminist" literature (whatever that means) on marriage, Egypt and Iran, cookbooks, New York guidebooks, novels from possibly every era, from Wuthering Heights to my recently signed Lost in the City. (Anyone who knows us will guess what books are mine and what books are Tom's.) To avoid the cliche, the thing I feel most tells about me through my books is the creases in the spine, the dog-eared pages, the coffee stain on the title page."
(A woolf by any other name)
*David Weinberger

2005-03-11T16:19:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

FIFTEENTH EPISODE
(Fighting against all the boredom of the world)

“That’s right. That’s what you did, in your own way, back then. But I decided to go a step further and set my sail towards total, unbound freedom. If there is such a thing. I just want to try it. If I don’t, I’ll never know.”
“Well, I want to confess something too.”
“What?”
“Back then, as you say, I also should’ve turned my back on business. I should’ve sold all that shit. These days – well I can’t complain, I do lead a happy life… it’s just that sometimes I even have to take sleeping pills cos of the damn print shop! Can you believe it?!”
“Oh yes, I can. But you’re still in time to pull the plug on all that crap. Life’s three days long, and two are for separating the wheat from the chaff. Vocation and heritage, lust and blindness, desire and restraint, freedom and inertia, etc, etc… Am I right or wrong?”
“Haven’t you gone back to being a kid, man! Who would tell…”
“It must be genetic. Do you remember that time with the paper boats on the Nabão river?”
“Don’t I… Our own Discoveries.”
That day, by nightfall, I went out for dinner with Albe and our two kids, Ester and Isaías. By the Tagus, not a breeze, not a ship or sound, only that feeling of the both of us, forever at the Avuello Bar, fighting against all the boredom of the world as if we were fortune tellers for a chorus of moons and our soft earthquake of brief seconds had been, more than passion, a lucid enchantment.

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud: “I was pretty blown out of the water by his readiness, but saw Albe in the backdrop, behind her dad who was almost hugging me with the unexpected offer”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)

2005-03-11T04:15:00.000-08:00

Quote of the day

Le Figaro

"A majority of Americans support an America that works with international institutions, that wants a strengthened U.N., that wants to be part of a constructive multilateral engagement with the world. And that is ignored by too many liberals because it doesn't seem like a winning strategy." (Katrina vanden Heuvel)

2005-03-10T16:33:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

FOURTEENTH EPISODE
(I decided to turn into a ghost and disappear)

“Ok: what happened, man, was that I won the lottery. I haven’t told this to anyone, I assure you. You’ll be the only one to know. A secret for a secret. I owed you this, and for a long time. Don’t ask me why, but some things a guy should cherish till he’s old, and, for me, with that tasteless life I led back home, only later did I understand how much your breaking free, your guts, and foremost your loyalty meant to me back then. The great small things should be cherished, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I agree… and thank you. I wasn’t ready for all this, I should tell you.” António got up, used the second large pause in the conclave and went on:
“When I found out I was rich, I decided to vanish. I didn’t go around explaining, just a couple of hints back home - and off straight to Lisbon. It was just the way I wanted to do things. To tell you the truth, I think my kids are already grown up; and besides, a family is supposed to be this ‘untouchable institution’, my close friends are leeches, the clubs and parishes are the barren tits of the people and my job as a public servant was, for a long time, nothing but a slow death. So I decided to turn into a ghost and disappear. Furthermore, I decided to live here, at the hotel, for as long as I could afford it, and simply go to bed when I feel like it, eat when I want, sleep with who I want to… The diet I want, the hours I want, to drink and dream my desire away and… well, that’s it. For the rest of my life: long live freedom!” António Romeu set his glass on the table, leaned against the large window sill and let a huge smile come out, from ear to ear, leisurely, witty, joyous.
“You mean you’ll never return to Ribatejo?”

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud: “By the Tagus, not a breeze, not a ship or sound, only that feeling of the both of us…”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)

2005-03-10T04:31:00.000-08:00

Remoras?

Kurt Anderson wrote in New York Magazine:

"But just as CNN was never really able to reinvent itself to be indispensable for anything except covering wars and tsunamis, one can imagine the blogs settling in forever at their present level of almost wholly media-on-media impact. For now, bloggers are a second-tier journalistic species. They are remoras. The Times and CNN and CBS News are the whales and sharks to which Instapundit, Kausfiles, and Kos attach themselves for their free rides. (Remoras evolved special sucking disks; bloggers have modems.) If the sharks and whales were to go extinct, what would the blogging remoras do? " (via Davenetics)

I'm afraid I don't agree with Anderson´s idea. Do you?
Bloggers as a "second-tier journalistic species"? Remoras?

2005-03-10T03:20:00.000-08:00

Question of the day

"I really can't think of a single literary weblog (consult the list to the right) that fits this description. Literary blogs are engaged in a serious (albeit not heavy-handed) discussion of books and writing. They are "literary" in the best sense: They care about the quality of the books being published and want to promote a genuine literary "culture" in which books can be discussed seriously." (Dan Green)

What are your first reactions to reading this?
("Dan Green's critique of Richard Curtis's vision of the future of the book", via Wyatt John Bonikowski)

2005-03-09T16:22:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

THIRTEENTH EPISODE
(Without delay, I told António Romeu everything...)

But why on earth was I, of all places, in a suite at the Penta talking about passions with António? I haven’t a clue. But, at a given moment, he changed his expression, put on that face of serious conclaves and solemn pacts, blew out a puff of zeppelin smoke, smiled and confessed that I had given to him, in life, something no one else had. Or would ever come to give. The exclusivity of a secret.
It was true.
When I went back to that Portugal which still reeked of fado and lost myths, I felt the need to tell my story to no matter whom. And I concluded that, from Minho to Timor, throughout our vast and happy nation, only one friend, most of all a very old one, could be the receptacle of such a confidence. Without delay, during an August weekend in ’68, I went up north to Ribatejo and told António Romeu everything, bit by bit, as if I had jumped out of a summertime script by master Truffaut.
He was more amazed and embarrassed then, I remember clearly, than I was now, here at the Penta, observing in Romeu’s face what I had never thought he could have become: an unemployed bon vivant who had left behind his wife, kids, football club, parish, the guys from the local coffee shop, his barber, everyone. But since he kept on postponing the story, I pretty much yelled out:
“Come on, spill it out!” António sat back down, glanced at his watch, poured out some more scotch and finally went through the story in double time.

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud:“ António Romeu set his glass on the table, leaned against the large window sill and let a huge smile come out, from ear to ear, leisurely, witty, joyous.”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)

2005-03-08T16:39:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

TWELVETH EPISODE
(Albe put the entire universe on hold...)

I saw in it the time of all or nothing, the zero hour. The exact time when I should crack my inertia, my chill and burden so as to express that decisive move, that unrepeatable gap that would break the weight of hesitation. But as I started, Albe moved faster with an almost pre-Raphaelite serenity and said, “If you think about it, problems begin when you finish your degree. It isn’t just a question of having a job and doing something - it’s mostly a question of motivation, or of having a special calling to follow a career as a lawyer, you see?” And I understood perfectly, and answered back joyfully, and was just about to greet her generous confession with a wise proposal when she left to sit at her parents’ table:
“Will I see you later, at the beach?” Albe put the entire universe on hold, silenced my answer, blushed slightly and, as she turned to face the aquarium by the breakfast room, quickly turned round and said:
“At Avuello, three o’clock. Ok?”
I had done it. Now all I had to do was destroy what remained of boredom and climb the tall ivory tower. Against my hopelessness. Then nothing would be as it was, the stars confessed, as did the sea, and my most secret cloud.
“What cloud?”

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud:“When I went back to that Portugal which still reeked of fado and lost myths, I felt the need to tell my story to no matter whom…”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)

2005-03-08T04:22:00.000-08:00

Quote of the day

"As with any form of storytelling, a good Web-based story depends on a compelling plot and interesting characters." (The Nature of Too Bad)

2005-03-08T03:56:00.000-08:00

Good News

"(...) Much of the change (in the Middle East) seems to be pushing in a welcome direction, towards a new peace chance in Palestine and the spread of democratic ideas around the Arab world." (From The Economist P.E.)

2005-03-07T16:38:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

ELEVENTH EPISODE
(I saw in her hand the asking for a unique wait...)

That it would be too heavenly to depart on a golden carriage in the arms of my desired Albe. To softly fly over the Apennines, the holy mountains of Kufa, and the almost-out-of-reach heights of Aphrodite. Inertia was coming down my arms; a chill probed my almost steamy eyes, a tardy balk extending into the uselessness of my smile.
And Albe, completely oblivious to all this, was redrawing sincerity, postponing certainty and, after all, confessing herself openly. “It’s true, we should all know our callings before we begin our studies. But that’s the way life is, you have to start someplace and what you’re offered simply comes in such a fixed way… it’s so airtight that your options are few and problems ahead many, don’t you think?”
And Albe, sweet Dulcinea, talking in front of me, and I could barely hear her, as the stain of fatigue slowly subsided, inch by inch. Across the breakfast room, Albe’s parents summoned her with a gesture. She answered the call by raising two fingers in the air.
And I saw in her hand the asking for a unique wait. Exclusive.

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud:“… nothing would be as it was, the stars confessed, as did the sea, and my most secret cloud. …”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)

2005-03-07T03:38:00.000-08:00

Quote of the day

"It's not too soon for Hollywood to start thinking about next year's Oscar ceremony - and if the producers want another outrageous, hard-edged host in the style of Chris Rock, they need look no further than Washington. Vice President Dick Cheney can do the job, as evidenced by White House transcripts, which faithfully note his comedic genius." (Haart Seely)

2005-03-06T16:34:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

TENTH EPISODE
(António was the only friend that truly understood my fury...)

I was tired of the tie-up my life had become, and was lacking hope and courage, so I decided to ask for military leave, a passport and new papers. When I got all the paperwork together, I got into the recently acquired Escort and headed for the Costa Brava. I needed to clear my head, and above all, to escape our national graveyard. It was three full days to the L’Escala beach.
Besides, I had watched die, well inside my home and skin, one of those weddings from days of yore, where the divine unction aspires to a commitment for eternity, and of which a grand and mythical example is the marriage of Dom Pedro and Lady Inês, who will rise to meet face to face someday, in Alcobaça, at the end of time, when the radiant advent from paradise and its thousand limbos are revealed by Our Lord God. In those days of Salazar and “Tomásio”, before the first black and white TV ads, I was the candid and traditional owner of two printing shops, condemned to the outrage of a divorce against all holy law and, as if that was not enough, António was the only friend that truly understood my disjunction and, especially, my fury. After having seen Lady Filipa escape from my legion to her uncle’s house (the Bishop) in Viseu, I permanently escaped from Restelo into Bairro Alto of a thousand loves, where I ended up finding a different life and a new assortment of pleasures.
A shade of a second went by and I was still muttering to myself how tired and running short of hope I was. And that it would be foolish to think of other flights or temptations.

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud:“…And Albe, sweet Dulcinea, talking in front of me, and I could barely hear her, as the stain of fatigue slowly subsided, inch by inch…”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)

2005-03-05T17:08:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

NINETH EPISODE
(I was truly tired and with no great hope at heart…)

“He touched my back ever so slightly, while he pointed to Albe and smiled, smiled, overflowing, and went on and on, without me having asked a thing: ‘That’s my daughter, that’s my daughter!’ and I just stood there, dumbfounded, realizing, perhaps, the oldest lesson of geometry and optics in the world: that a straight line unites at the very least two points, but can bring together, by pure illusion, many more. I went back to my reclining chair, but minutes later, that brief encounter with her father made me notice a girl in her young twenties and eyes avid with an unfulfilled aura of candor and impenetrable beauty. Her name was Albe.”

Just we, talking about callings at such an hour! The face of time was before us, defying boredom. Boredom of everything that threatens to turn astray or even vanish, if at a given time a sign, a gesture undermining the apathy of hesitation does not come forth. I looked at Albe, and for some seconds, some brief, unspeakable seconds, I felt the just notion of my fatigue. I was truly tired and with no great hope at heart.
I was tired of that tacky Lisbon which smelt of grey uniforms and the sulphur at the piers, whence boats left with recruits for Angola; tired of that Lisbon full of submissive, quixotic situations, and lighter permits; tired of that Lisbon exploding with its canned hypocrisy, where everything was small and feeble, excepting the new Tagus bridge, smooth "Benfica", Joaquim Andrade do "Sangalhos" and the evident miracles of Fátima.

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud:“I needed to clear my head, and above all, to escape our national graveyard.”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)

2005-03-04T17:04:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

EIGHTH EPISODE
(And she stayed laughing outside time …)

The wake of the caravelle makes Edmundo lift up his head to face the then clean sky, smooth in amplitude and daydream.
For an instant it makes him guess the possible silence, in face of the windstorm of asteroids and comets of he that plays hide-and-seek and truth-or-dare. He sets down the detective novel on the towel and steps out of his reclining chair in a slight spleen, going over to the stone edge of the swimming pool.
It was about then that Edmundo’s eyes were transfigured and the harpsichord and pianola were heard playing on the back of that last cloud which looked like a starfish. It was also then that Edmundo, from one moment to the next, forgot about the price of paper, the telegram, bullfighting and even about the burnt-out sparks from his Ford Escort.
Above the swimming pool, from a web of strings, hung little triangular flags, blue and red. And she floated under them, adrift with open arms joined in a clean, pure, ancient ring. Over that pale blue, Edmundo made time come to a halt and proceeded to look at her from above, from the side, with the ubiquity that sends flutters up your esophagus.
A shudder.
She swims to the opposite side of the pool, slowly, in this generous moment of existence, holding onto the buoys and sliding - then suddenly, in slow motion, waves goodbye in Edmundo’s direction. The Portuguese man almost waved back, his shy hand rising; his arms opening out into an embarrassed smile left unpronounced. And she stayed laughing outside time, afar, across the universe; now turning her face towards the water, to Thebes, to Haifa, God knows where else.
Perhaps trying to say that time is spun in the same way in which the moon is liquefied in the enigmatic solstice seas.
It was during that moment of awe, Edmundo confesses to António, “that the man walked up to me. Her father, go figure!”

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud: “I was tired of that tacky Lisbon which smelt of grey uniforms and the sulphur at the piers, whence boats left with recruits for Angola”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)

2005-03-03T16:18:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

SEVENTH EPISODE
(Edmundo Edmundo seems more stoic …)

The jar is made of crystal, tall and glazed, and looks like a soft flame ready to take on the French window looking out on the swimming pool.
Edmundo strides on decisively, at nine o’clock sharp, his hands stuck in the pockets of stark white trousers, his memory warped by the orders made out to his printing company, by the car breaking down, the bullfight story, and the prodigal presence of clouds on this canicular August day.
Edmundo nails his eyes on the aquarium and afterwards goes swiftly round the table, filled with tableware, strong-colored juices, ice, and a basket full of fresh bread. A smile to the closest waiter imprints the rare eclipse of another morning that, truth be told, seems doomed to pure holiday forgetfulness.
It is one past nine in the morning and Edmundo has already sat at the table, with a napkin covering his Louisiana linen habit, and with the sound of kids out on the lawn invading the world like comets and brutish asteroids.
The peace of breakfast wanders between shapeless silhouettes that go in and out of the room, meandering in sudden agitation. Edmundo seems more stoic, volatile, as if he had disappeared into a typhoon, spun out into the turbulence of this summer hotel.
The heat bites, but Edmundo has already moved out onto the lawn with his dark glasses and moves an obsessively white handkerchief over his forehead. An uncertain morning sloth hangs all around, and the reclining chair ends up hosting the detective novel, even though the occasion is as brief and transient as life itself.
Word after word, scene after scene, crime after crime, and Edmundo keeps remembering the price of paper, the Lisbon telegram, the bullfight and, who would figure, the last cloud which seems to move upon Gerona now.

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud: “She swims to the opposite side of the pool, slowly, in this generous moment of existence, holding onto the buoys and sliding - then suddenly, in slow motion, waves goodbye in Edmundo’s direction”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)

2005-03-03T04:08:00.000-08:00

Quote of the day

"Women have become so fixated on not withering, they've forgotten that there are infinite ways to be beautiful."

Maureenn Dowd (Full Text Article)

2005-03-02T14:19:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

SIXTH EPISODE
(One of the most important days of my whole life…)

“Today I realize you were just letting off steam, watching yourself outside your story, at the same time you heard yourself tell it. As if you needed to, how shall I put it… stop confusing your image with yourself.”

António went on:
“Passion often brings along optic distortion. We see the cloud in the loved one and in the cloud we see our own face rhyming with Atlantis… But check this out… I’m here, at the Penta, without knowing why yet, talking to you about passions… What’s going on?”

António lit his cigar, got up and walked up to the window.
Edmundo turned his neck around as far as he could and listened for a sign of explanation.
Here was the first long pause since they had met. António blew out a long and straight cloud of smoke, a kind of zeppelin dissipating in the air and smiled:

“That day, Edmundo, was for me perhaps one of the most important days of my whole life. I realized, for the first time ever, that someone had come to me, not to ask for this or that, not to make some practical arrangement, to have a drink or moan about life, not to try and set me up for whatever reason, to recall or forget some appraisal or bad luck, but just to tell and share, alone, a secret. While we’re at it, did Albe ever know that you told me the whole story, every detail?”

“Well, actually… no.”

“I knew it. Pure intuition. And some things a guy simply doesn’t forget. That’s why I was determined, since last night, to talk to you before anyone else.”

“But tell me, man! Talk to me about what? Spill it out!”

António sat back down on his chair, glanced at his watch and refilled both glasses with more whisky.

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud: “Word after word, scene after scene, crime after crime, and Edmundo keeps remembering the price of paper, the Lisbon telegram, the bullfight…”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)

2005-03-01T16:35:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

FIFTH EPISODE

(I never imagined you’d come and tell me all the details...)

Then came the story, one of those rare ones, made out of experience itself, with neither explanation nor reflection to stop or sustain it. António has sat down on the black leather couch and, shaped by his own fresh and decisive role (for there are many that are not), rubs his hands together, remembering what had set off this encounter:
“You were the only guy I know that’s told me, and me alone, a secret.”
“That’s right. It is.”
“I remember it as if it were today. You came from Spain all sparkling with energy, in that Ford Escort - it was blue, right? And you showed up in town, all agitated, telling me about Albe. You weren’t the open-hearted, mushy type, yet suddenly you spilled it all out, all the stuff a guy goes through and that I thought, well, that people live and devour, under certain circumstances, and that then it just all slips by. In other words, try to understand what I’m saying - I never imagined you’d come and tell me all the details of one of those movie-like love stories, that on top of everything, had happened to you. I don’t know if you remember it like I do…”
“You bet I do…”
“It was damn hot that day, the twentieth or something of August, some twenty years ago, and we were both by the river… I was silent and even slightly stunned, in suspense, and you, you were talking like I’d never seen you talk before, with this huge glitter coming out of your eyes, one hell of a poetry, an awesome sense of each particular, it even seemed that the story you were telling me was this thing one shouldn’t touch, fragile, silk-like, and that you were going round it, for once, outside your intimacy with Albe. Wasn’t it?”
“That was ages ago, but yes, that’s how it happened.”

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud: “Passion often brings along optic distortion. We see the cloud in the loved one and in the cloud we see our own face rhyming with Atlantis…”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)

2005-03-01T11:46:00.000-08:00

Quote of the day

"The important thing to remember is why the right wants privatization. The drive to create private accounts isn't about finding a way to strengthen Social Security; it's about finding a way to phase out a system that conservatives have always regarded as illegitimate. And as long as that is what's at stake, there is no room for any genuine compromise."
(Paul Krugman)

2005-03-01T08:03:00.000-08:00

Iraq

Here you can read "a sampler" of some of the best posts from Iraqi bloggers.

2005-03-01T04:30:00.000-08:00

The Brain Floats

(...)
The brain floats on a lake of words
just as once the world was held
on elephant-back above a sea -
subversive rhyme suggests that herds

of metaphors with sharper beak
tear at the silence of unease;
a philosopher feels on his cheek
the tears of which he cannot speak.

(Peter Porter, from "Whereof We Cannot Speak")

2005-03-01T03:18:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud

A novel in twenty episodes

By Luís Carmelo

(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

FOURTH EPISODE

(Edmundo tried to grasp the euphoria...)

António Romeu was Edmundo’s best childhood friend.
Twenty one years after the radiant summer at the Costa Brava, on the 13th August 1989, he decided to transform his life into a work of art.
The story begins on the day he won the special summer lottery. He requested anonymity and, without warning, discarded his headaches at the wood industry, left his home, wife and kids, turned his back on the local coffeehouse, soccer, his neighborhood and all the routine he had accumulated for years on end. For the first time ever, António was leaving his hometown and settling in Lisbon.
So as not to miss any crack or crevice of his new city, he rented a panoramic suite at the Penta, and in good company.
On the same 13th, António rang Edmundo.

The rendezvous of the stunned print collector with his old paper-boat building buddy - which they sent floating downriver, weir after weir, as if they were traveling to the river mouth of a perfect world where cities are of glass, and airplanes are birds copulating on windowsills -; their encounter in the very real Lisbon still had this immense childlike complicity of dry-mud windmills, cardboard dolls and newspapers made out of tinfoil from cigarette packs; the encounter of these old friends on this sunny day, looking back on glorious others, was sealed with an unexpected and long hug; the host asked for calm and guaranteed the exclusivity of the grand mystery of life, of the great secret, proclaiming it with whisky shinning between pointy ice cubes and gestures shifting the light which extended itself obliquely over the floor.
Across, one would say constrained and still, Edmundo tried to grasp the euphoria, enchantment, and the nothingness that remained after so much obvious surprise.

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud: “It was damn hot that day, the twentieth or something of August, some twenty years ago, and we were both by the river… I was silent and even slightly stunned, in suspense, and you, you were talking like I’d never seen you talk before...")

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)

2005-02-28T03:58:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

THIRD EPISODE
(After a moment’s indecision...)

Albe takes a last look at the mirror, closes the door to her hotel room and catches the elevator down to the breakfast room. We’re standing at the dawn of the world, she thinks without knowing, without even saying it.

The elevator door opened and Albe came out at last.

In front of her, Edmundo was crystallized and bewitched by the open newspaper that blossomed out like the rose the sweet French lady had imagined and who, after a moment’s indecision, comes out to surprise and cut him out of the spell. Forever.
He stands up, sits down, stands up, curling the newspaper on the oval table as Albe says she’d had a good night’s sleep. Hi, since yesterday - How long are you staying? - Yeah, I also like to get up early - Do you work or study, do you like chocolate? And Albe went on saying that she was a jurist, a lawyer, that she’d graduated but a month ago. “A calling? Me? Perhaps.”
What is the world but a strange crossroad of vocations, of propensities, of callings, of.
Edmundo had his white handkerchief in his hand and Albe was wearing her long pajamas which matched the color of his handkerchief; a joint sunspot breaking loose and their voice, less dry now, finding its place and timbre; and the tone, at last, anchoring in their eyes. - Who are you, anyway? – In which balcony were you on, after all? - Secrets and storms are exchanged, and behind them, the jar remains crystalline, tall and glazed, an immense vocation of nameless transparency.

Next episode of The Giant Cloud: “Edmundo tried to grasp the euphoria, enchantment, and the nothingness that remained after so much obvious surprise…”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)

2005-02-27T05:22:00.000-08:00

Fours years, four seasons, four lifes

"IT'S that time when the world holds its breath: the annual ritual when we wait to see which glittering and famous person will become even more glittering and more famous. But the Academy Awards are more than just a spectator sport. They are a matter of life and death. On average, the winners live four years longer than nominees who don't win."
(Michael Marmot)

2005-02-27T04:54:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud

A novel in twenty episodes

By Luís Carmelo

(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

SECOND EPISODE

(The night had brought him visions...)

It is morning anew. Edmundo comes down to the lobby and does not even notice the tall and glazed crystal jar, which looks like a devouring flame ready to take on the French window looking out on the swimming pool.

The night had brought him visions of rails on steep slopes and rivers resting on long Amazon stares, while muted hollow voices went on through platforms and, across that deep thunder, among creeping ivy, Edmundo continued to probe the hotel lights, that saraband of balconies and leafage that would only show signs of life at late hours, with the permission of the Mediterranean breeze.

Before moving into the breakfast room, Edmundo had managed to still his abysses, until he stumbled upon the front page about the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

He threw himself on the couch, bereft of the open elevator door before him.

Albe comes out of the shower, dries off and puts on her white columbine pajamas, imagining two garlands on her head and a red thornless rose outlining her lips.

She smiles towards the balcony and peeks through the long drapes at the too-perfect blue of a sea faking sleepiness.

There are open palm trees and a parrot, and hours of drowsiness mixed with the sudden apparition of whitish houses Albe looks round, spinning in a circle, dances, and veers on giddiness until catches herself in a laugh.

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud: “Secrets and storms are exchanged, and behind them, the jar remains crystalline, tall and glazed…”)

Continues

(see here the portuguese updated version)

2005-02-26T07:25:00.000-08:00

The Giant Cloud
A novel in twenty episodes
By Luís Carmelo
(transl. Bernardo Palmeirim)

FIRST EPISODE
(Who could he be, after all?)

Nothing was to remain the same, the stars admitted. Quite so.
The world broke out in a sudden delirium and the early breakfast hour almost allowed you to forget the swarm of lights the hotel had become during the night. There had been fire flies, mosquitoes, moths as Edmundo walked on stilts, imagining buildings and constructions, the massive meccano of the universe; but, above all, the uncertain whereabouts of Albe’s porch. Which one was it? – What maze or mist, what dream could cover the emptiness left behind by that room since you crossed the swimming-pool like a golden mermaid, Albe? – And Edmundo in the darkness, divining a giant lamp, the foundations of a Trojan faun, or was it the huge horse on wheels to penetrate the porch, as if he were Zorro and she a Juliet of too high a breed for such a sudden lot.

And Albe, in front of the mirror, on that same night of waves suspended by time, idling around the bulls and pegasuses from La Camargue, with a ticket to love growing in secret, or in the simple music her dove heart fugaciously pumps into her retina, so close to that day. – Who could he be, after all? - and Albe, facing useless shadows, after having turned the bedroom light off, watches the carved movement of shapes on the ceiling, while her skin stirred up under the thin sheets and the night heat - always the same prodigal night –, that went on whispering the name of languor, magic, of the answer without end. – Why did he look at me like that? – and Albe lay in front of the night’s burning chamber, as the stars filled the void of open curtains, and mole-crickets and other strange animals tramped along the same scorching fate.

(Next episode of The Giant Cloud: “Edmundo comes down to the lobby and does not even notice the tall and glazed crystal jar…”)

Continues

(see here portuguese updated version)

2005-02-25T04:11:00.000-08:00

Guantanamo...

Or... how radicalism makes any meaningful debate impossible. As Brendan O'Neill puts it:

"The anti-Guantanamo lobby no doubt considers itself at the radical cutting edge of critiquing American imperialism. But in transforming Guantanamo into an easy emotional issue, they have done the debate no favours. Instead of a discussion of what lies behind Guantanamo - the peculiar nature of the war that created it, the sense of US paranoia that sustains it, and what the camps have come to symbolise for the US elite - we get unsubstantiated stories about evil Americans and their wicked ways. It remains to be seen what kind of interrogation tactics have been used at Guantanamo, but in the meantime, could we have perhaps have a proper debate about the war on terror and its consequences?"

2005-02-24T09:43:00.000-08:00

Gorgeous

Making politics a game between two tables of the same restaurant: it´s a delightful history about Negroponte, Michael Powell, Tosca, Tommy Franks, delicious pasta and somebody else.

2005-02-24T09:34:00.000-08:00

Being a "blog celebrity"

"I quite enjoy doing this and the interesting detour my life has taken, but being a "blog celebrity" isn't actually the glamorous thing some seem to imagine it to be. Aside from the fact that I spend an inordinate amount of time at my computer, not a glamorous way to spend one's time, my life is fairly normal. I haven't yet been invited to go to Vegas with Ben Affleck, and have rarely been seen hanging out with the "cool kids" of any stripe."
(via Eschaton)