miles and miles of accurate silence.


“you must live in the present, 
launch yourself on every wave
find your eternity in each moment. 
fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. 
there is no other land; there is no other life but this.”
Thoreau, H. (1817-1862)



sometimes worrying is a disease...


"(...) I am glad you are happy — but I never believe much in happiness. I never believe in misery either. Those are things you see on the stage or the screen or the printed pages, they never really happen to you in life.
All I believe in in life is the rewards for virtue (according to your talents) and the punishments for not fulfilling your duties, which are doubly costly.(...)

Things to worry about:
Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship

Things not to worry about:
Don't worry about popular opinion
Don't worry about dolls
Don't worry about the past
Don't worry about the future
Don't worry about growing up
Don't worry about anybody getting ahead of you
Don't worry about triumph
Don't worry about failure unless it comes through your own fault
Don't worry about mosquitoes
Don't worry about flies
Don't worry about insects in general
Don't worry about parents
Don't worry about boys
Don't worry about disappointments
Don't worry about pleasures
Don't worry about satisfactions

Things to think about:
What am I really aiming at?
How good am I really in comparison to my contemporaries in regard to:
(a) Scholarship
(b) Do I really understand about people and am I able to get along with them?
(c) Am I trying to make my body a useful instrument or am I neglecting it?

(...)

Love anyhow."

Fitzgerald, F. S. in A Life in Letters. Simon & Schuster 1933



{random poetry #70}



How much do you love me, a million bushels?
Oh, a lot more than that, Oh, a lot more.
And tomorrow maybe only half a bushel?
Tomorrow maybe not even a half a bushel.
And is this your heart arithmetic?
This is the way the wind measures the weather.
Sandburg, C. (1878-1967)

•.•❤•.• 

I throw out love
like an anchor and wait where the long house lights
of strangers tickle the river’s back …
Isn’t it right to drag the rivers for the bodies
not even the nets could catch?  I won’t lie, I want
you to lie with me on the tumbling surface of love.
Smith, D.

•.•❤•.• 

We are spending our
whole lives saying one thing
to each other, it is the only
thing than can ever be said
& it takes forever, like a tree
telling a story to a mountain.
Woods, R.

•.•❤•.• 


“you will lie to everyone you love.
they will love you anyways.”
Shinji Moon in the anatomy of being



sometimes waters get deep, 
                 sometimes the sea gets dark.


silly honest kind uncanny demonic fascinating .

{random poetry #69}


[ the seventh sense ]

women
who build nations
learn
to love
men
who build nations
learn
to love
children
building sand castles
by the rising sea
in The Collected Poems

[ stations ]

some women wait for themselves
around the next corner
and call the empty spot peace
but the opposite of living
is only not living
and the stars do not care.

some women wait for something
to change and nothing
does change
so they change
themselves.
in Our Dead Behind
“revolution is not a one time event.” 
Lorde, A (1934-1992) 


“it is impossible to distrust one's writing without awakening a deeper distrust in oneself.”
Krauss, N., in Great House


everything flows,
                                                                             except when it's stuck...


cast your love over the universe 


...but what about the most exhilarating fact?


remove yourself from the situation,
change it,
or accept it totally.
if you want to take responsibility for your life,
you must choose one of these three options,
and you must choose now.
then accept the consequences.
no excuses.
no negativity.
no psychic pollution.
keep your inner space clear.
Tolle, E.


@ Gulbenkian 

(...)
Uma geração, que consente deixar-se representar por um Dantas 
é uma geração que nunca o foi! 
é um coio d'indigentes, d'indignos e de cegos! 
é uma rêsma de charlatães e de vendidos
e só pode parir abaixo de zero!
Abaixo a geração!
(...)
Portugal inteiro há-de abrir os olhos um dia
se é que a sua cegueira não é incurável 
e então gritará comigo, a meu lado, 
a necessidade que Portugal tem de ser qualquer coisa de asseado!
Morra o Dantas, morra! Pim!
José de Almada Negreiros, Poeta d'Orpheu, Futurista e Tudo
in Manifesto Anti-Dantas 1915


- what if we love them and they go?
- what if we don't and they stay?


“who we are and who we become depends, in part, on whom we love.”
Lewis, T., in A General Theory of Love

if you want to change the world, love deeply.



“giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world.
i know because i've done it thousands of times.”
Twain, M.


{ less arguing, more moaning }


#CheckFuckingMate


"people who want to improve should take their defeats as lessons
and endeavor to learn what to avoid in the future. 
you must also have the courage of your convictions
if you think your move is good, make it."
Capablanca (1888-1942)


"...as vidas não começam quando as pessoas nascem,
se assim fosse, cada dia era um dia ganho,
as vidas principiam mais tarde, quantas vezes tarde de mais,
para não falar daquelas que mal tendo começado já se acabaram,
por isso é que o outro gritou, Ah,
quem escreverá a história do que poderia ter sido."
Saramago, J. (1922-2010) , in Jangada de Pedra


the pointless point of pointing out the pointlessness .


- pelo menos é um problema que não temos de considerar...
- sim. cria outros, mas livra-nos de muitos.

*by Ana Vidigal in Menina Limpa, Menina Suja, Gulbenkian, 2010


"The irony and tension fade away, and I am home once more.
I don't want to ruminate on happiness. It is much simpler and much easier than that.
For what has remained untouched in these hours I retrieve from the depths of forgetfulness is the memory of a pure emotion, a moment suspended in eternity.
Only this memory is true in me, and I always discover it too late.
We love the gentleness of certain gestures, the way a tree fits into a landscape.
And we have only one detail with which to recreate all this love, but it will do: the smell of a room too long shut up, the special sound of a footstep on the road.
This is the way it is for me.
And if I loved then in giving myself, I finally became myself,
since only love restores us."
Camus, A.  (1913-1960) in Between Yes and No (1937)

{random poetry #68}


[ The Naming of Cats ]

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn’t just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey –
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter –
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum-
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover –
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965)

 


éperduement

le rêve, ce n'est que la vie éperdument dilatée.
Renard, J.


so...


{random poetry #67}


[ Kindness ]

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
     purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

Shihab Nye, N., in The Words Under the Words: Selected Poems


be brave & be kind


there must be something strangely sacred in salt
it is in our tears and in the sea.


half of what i say is meaningless
but i say it so that the other half may reach you.
Gibran, K. in Sand and Foam (1926)