The Great Automatic Grammatizator

The rules of writing

2009-05-20T23:03:00.000+01:00

In the beginning was the verb, and the verb was with words and the verb was word. And the verb was word with action.

Letters. Letters to form syllables. Syllables to form words. Words to form sentences. Sentences to form paragraphs. Paragraphs to form short-stories. Paragraphs to form chapters. Chapters to form novels.

Punctuation. Punctuation is really important. Sometimes it doesn't really matter where you put commas and full stops and everything else. When I don't know where to put them, I argue it is style, and I spread them along the sheet as if seeds of a tree.

2009-05-17T14:58:00.002+01:00

2009-05-17T14:58:00.001+01:00

stream

2009-05-17T14:57:00.002+01:00

2009-05-17T14:57:00.001+01:00

slow

2009-05-17T14:56:00.001+01:00

consciousness.

The death of Bohumil Hrabal

2009-05-07T12:44:00.000+01:00

Bohumil Hrabal died falling from a hospital window when trying to feed the pigeons. Doves.
The doves flew away
(doves that beautiful word for pigeon. dove can be a tender loving expression for a loved one. pigeon is filth)
, they were not blazing like swans, they just flew away. The doves were just a metaphor Bohumil Hrabal used for the ones who had fled.
In his fall, finally at rest, maybe from a fifth floor, the seconds before hitting the ground, Bohumil Hrabal thought of Kafka, Biebl. Maybe Rilke, who knew the world hurts. It was then the last time it hurted.
The night after the day a blazing swan
(or was it a dove)
fell over the hospital window, more doves went to the dome of the rotunda, in Budeč, not to die, but to mourn. Bohumil Hrabal.

2009-05-06T10:29:00.001+01:00

Every morning I wake up earlier and go to The British Museum. And for ten minutes I gaze at the Rosetta Stone. And then I go.

2009-04-26T23:09:00.000+01:00

As I was updating my blog on quotations, I wondered if all videos, images shouldn't be there. In the end, showing a video, an image
(whether from the person captioning the object or the person and object captioned)
is a quotation from someone else's work. Thus, corrections have been made to the two previous posts. Please do follow the links.

2009-04-25T22:23:00.001+01:00

Emmy The Great – First Love (Bandstand Busking Acoustic Session)

2009-04-25T22:22:00.001+01:00

Emmy The Great – War (Bandstand Busking Acoustic Session)

The Displacement

2009-04-23T23:16:00.000+01:00

I went today to Starbucks. It was hot and I wanted something cold and sweet that could substitute lunch.
The Starbucks at Trocadero centre, just after chinatown.
A lady
(old new who cares maybe a woman or something else female gendered)
was sitting alone in a round table and had in front of her three venti coffee cups to go I was unable to tell if full, if empty
(did it mattered)
. She was Asian
(cambodia timor indonesia laos)
and one of her eyes was covered with white gauze then protected by a transport plastic bag wrapped around her forehead. She was wearing a bobby cap with a blue siren
(the siren was quiet let still)
on top. The t-shirt
(my someone went to london and all i got was this lousy t-shirt)
had been bought in a tourist-oriented-shop.
Reading an unknown
(for me)
character newspaper, she seemed lost. Not even happy. And this was London.
As for me, whilst waiting for whatever I had ordered
(i know but it strikes me irrelevant the description and justification of what i was drinking)
, I couldn't take my eyes off of her and was thinking that is should read Edward Said and Homi Bhabha again. More thoroughly.

2009-04-23T00:46:00.001+01:00

A few days later it was May '68.
A few days later it was April '74.
A few days later.

2009-04-22T23:29:00.001+01:00

In the small park next to my flat, children play under the very watchful eyes of the paedophiles. Who then go home and masturbate.

2009-04-06T13:29:00.000+01:00

This blog has no plot. It is impossible for it to have a plot. The plot implies that there is a before a now an after. Thus, a past a present a future.
There is no plot, either in real life or in fiction, for it requires a past a present and future and there is only past.
Past is what once was, but that was, that intangible moment to which one sometimes calls present is just a particle of a zeitgeist which was, in time; being now, past.
Only in syntax and semantics the future is possible. Apart from that, all is past.
Even when narrated the future is past.

2009-03-31T22:53:00.001+01:00

being bookseller is fiction

2009-03-31T22:50:00.000+01:00

being a writer is non-fiction

pointmade

2009-03-25T23:05:00.002Z

wednesdaymorningatfiveo'clockasthedaybegins tracyjacks worksincivilservice
silentlyclosingherbedroomdoor tracyjacks it'ssteadyemployment
leavingthenotethatshehopedwouldsaymore tracyjacks it'sagolfingfanatic
shegoesdownstairstothekitchenclutchingherhandkerchief tracyjacks buthisputiserratic
quietlyturningthebackdoorkey tracyjacks sawaharleystreetdoctor
steppingoutsidesheisfree tracyjacks whoprescribedhealthyliving
she wegavehermostofourlives tracyjacks buthe'sgettingpastforty
isleaving sacrificedmostofourlives tracyjacks andalltheseamsaresplitting
home wegavehereverythingmoneycouldbuy everydayhegotcloser
she'sleavinghomeafterlivingaloneheknewinhishearthewasover
forsomanyyearsbyebyei'dlovetostayhereandbenormal
fathersnoresashiswifegetsintoherdressinggownbutit'sjustsooverrated
picksuptheletterthat'slyingthere tracyjacks lefthomewithoutwarning
standingaloneatthetopofthestairs tracyjacks atfiveinthemorning
shebreaksdownandcriestoherhusbanddaddyourbaby'sgone tracyjacks gotonthefirsttraintowalton
whywouldshetreatussothoughtlessly tracyjacks andstoodontheseafront
howcouldshedothistome tracyjacks threwhisclothesinthewater
she weneverthoughtofourselves tracyjacks andranaroundnaked
is leaving neverathoughtforourselves tracyjacks gotstoppedbythepolice
home westruggledhardallourlivestogetby tracyjacks andescortedbackhome
she'sleavinghomeafterlivingaloneeverydayhegotcloser
forsomanyyearsbyebyeheknewinhishearthewasover
fridaymorningatnineo'clocksheisfarawayi'dlovetostayhereandbenormal
waitingtokeeptheappointmentshemadebutthenit'sjustsooverrated
meetingamanfromthemotortradetracyjacks
she whatdidwedothatwaswrong tracyjacks
is having wedidn'tknowitwaswrong tracyjacks
fun funistheonethingthatmoneycan'tbuy tracyjacks
somethinginsidethatwasalwaysdeniedandthenithappenedonatuesdaymorning
forsomanyyearsbyebyetracyjacksbulldozeddownthehousehelivedin
she'sleavinghomebyebyesayingit'sjustsooverrated
tracyjacks
tracyjacks
tracyjacks
tracyjacks
everydayhegotcloser
heknewinhishearthewasover
i'dlovetostayhereandbenormal
butitwasalwaysoverrated

On liberation

2009-03-22T19:36:00.000Z

As I was looking for images and features of a poet I found a video on youtube
(the same one featured below)
of the thirty fourth anniversary of the revolution in Portugal. It happened a few years before I was born so I never had to endure the absence of freedom
(or what i think to be freedom is something thatiI take for granted whilst there is not a single day that passes that i don't feel more observed my life channelled through different media that compile information about me for unknown reasons)
. Yet, the imagery and video were so powerful.
For the first time I caught a glimpse of it, I finally understood why both Mother and Father always sustained the opinion that following generations
(to their own)
never valued the importance of the day and how it was slowly fading away in the collective memory of Portugal. I felt so moved, so emotionally entangled. In the faces of men and women celebrating was the utter feeling of happiness.
The songs featured, the poetry are something too Portuguese, but what remains, what is of most importance, what endures after, are the faces, the sheer elation of freedom
(a year and a half later the country was on the brink of civil war which failed to happen)
, and that has no language or culture.

2009-03-20T18:54:00.000Z

To suffer

2009-03-15T18:15:00.000Z

It is of no surprise that literature is a social mirror
(and the same holds true the other way around. even plato in his ideal republic knew that the city would mirror men's characters and dispositions)
.
I had this idea for some time now
(it found itself in the midst of the chaos of all ideas. literature that refers to suffering or that is the reflection of periods of great suffering such as wars hungry invasion political despotism and artistic silence has been extremely prolific and rich)
but my diction was so poor that I found no means to phrase it. It was when I was reading Shirley Hazzard's “The Great Fire” that I finally made sense of something that had been dormant since I first read
(for this is the example that i most clearly remember)
“All Quiet On The Western Front”
(erich maria remarque)
. Shirley Hazzard's has a plot which is quite simple
(one could almost mock it for its simplicity of boy meets girl they are apart and then they end together)
, but that is the less important part of the book. The backdrop, the post-second-world-war China and Japan, the famished and destroyed London, set the scenario of what she really wants to convey
(the plot should serve the only purpose of a deeper philosophical idea concept or questioning social issues much as cultural ones. plot for the sake of plot as much as art for the sake of art transforms literature into mere entertainment a vulgar ascription of this artistic medium)
: the difficulty the one finds in living with oneself after having committed and testified the most brutal actions of/in war.
When I set myself on writing I feel that what surrounds me is a ridiculous backdrop. I won't say it is absent of suffering
(but the usage of specific words such as internet mobile phones so departed from literature is almost ridiculous)
, but having born and living in an Europe which hasn't seen war or sheer suffering for fifty years, I cannot help but turn inside, to the human nature rather than the influence that the zeitgeist has.
As I read one of Graham Greene's biographies
(an enchanting memoir by shirley hazzard. yes it is her one more. for different reasons though)
, I learn that in his youth he travelled
(amongst his peers into different directions of the globe and neglecting europe by the same token)
to the end of the world and back again. And I wonder if I shouldn't be engaged in some form of deeper suffering
(one that afflicts the human race in general something that it his so deep that will bruise me in the inside so much that will transpire to the outside)
rather than my own personal one whilst I try to make it universal through half digested platonic or nietzschean ideas and concepts.

MISHA

2009-03-08T17:49:00.002Z

blurred references

2009-03-05T15:20:00.000Z

I has been a long while since I had listened to Blur
(though i was acquainted with them in their apotheotic period of the nineteen-ninety-seven-self-titled album i've grown with time to embrace their parklife-album-era)
. Delved into it
(just like many critics delve into music which they consider to be intellectually more stimulating eagerly reaching erudition whilst despising the wonders of pop culture which these days could be named as user generated content)
. It has been common knowledge that Oasis have been closer to The Beatles than any other British band, for their homage is as close as it could be without being plagiarism
(just the same way blur were referring to the kinks)
. It sounded to me that Blur were closer to The Beatles than Oasis. The social criticism, the questioning of habits, the entanglement in daily life, bridges both The Beatles and Blur
(especially on the beatles final phase. whereas whilst listening to oasis one cannot feel that only musically there is some reference and that that reference is not reinvention but imitation)
.
As it has been stated in many post-modern manifestos
(and in their own anti-manifestos for post-modernism shouldn't be that far from modernism just a prefix away for it's roots and theoretical framework remains the same)
, there are no original ideas, everything is referring to everything and everything is connected. What makes the creative area go
(for just as history it has been stated that painting is dead the author is dead plenty of concepts are dead an still they are being put to use everyday in modern art museums or contemporary art museums and bookshops and publishing houses and many other important market driving services)
is how you re-shuffle concepts and ideas that have already been had.
It is not by imitating ones chords or melodies that you chose your strong poet
(wink to harold bloom)
; but if you take one's ideas and adjust them to your own contingency, to your own zeitgeist, you'll be choosing your strong poet, affiliating with it and, if all goes well, surpass it. But that will be something that only history
(if it is not dead yet)
will validate – whatever history means.

A viagem continua por Rui Cardoso Martins. The evergoing travel by Rui Cardoso Martins, translated by Miguel Fernandes Ceia.

2009-03-01T18:23:00.001Z

2009-03-01T18:21:00.000Z

«The world is small but round and has no end.
Some days ago, in Lisbon's International Fair, tourism was trying to shake off the crisis, like drops off a Mackintosh. I was in with my friend who lives in Brazil, Jorge. He gave me some fliers of Rio Grande (dunes over Christmas, “Turtles cross the ocean to eat here. Why?”), of Maceió (“It is way too beautiful”) and told me about a man you'd love to meet: Bill Goianes, guitar player, from Recife. One of Jorge's uncle got twenty six gun shots whilst coming out of a bank, and because he didn't die, he hired Goianes. The latter killed the responsible parties and went drinking to celebrate. At a certain point, the toothless guitar player, pointed the pistol to Jorge's head and asked his uncle:
This one is to die too?
It is a pity that we cannot go and talk to Bill Goianes, as we used to. Whilst arriving to Atacama desert, it rained and it turned flowers. In the “Valley of the Moon” you asked:
Don't say lunar landscape.
Lunar landscape.
Arica, you found the the red acacias from Lourenço Marques. You also liked the sidewalks of Manhattan, the bricks like those of Mozambique. In New York, with António Lobo Antunes, Maria João, we discovered writers in the stones. Lucille Clifton:
they asked me to remember
but they want me to remember
their own memories
but I keep remembering
my own.
In Colombia we saw a video of what to do in case of kidnapping. In Miami we got the bridal suite. In Cuba you stayed in the swimming pool with the kids whilst I went diving with the barracudas. In Eurodisney, the road-runner hotel, the coyote-tormenting-bird, bip-bip. A few weeks ago, in London, Henrique and Sara loved everything but Madam Tussaud's, a vulgar celebrity driven attraction. We were pretty by the queen. In Panama, in La Miel beach, the barman:
Princess Diana de Gales murió esta night.
How is it possible that she died?
Just so you know, I was born in Alentejo, land of dirt and suicides, only in classmates two or three, but that is sociological and literary, I think.
I don't like people who killed themselves. It is so rude.
You always got that sentence spot on. If this was easy, it would be for other people (your marines' motto).
On our wedding day, in Portalegre, Hermínio Monteiro offered us a Juan Muñoz painting, both of them went almost at the same time. Al Berto had given us, previously, two laced tea cloths and also went. In a book with a Nazolino cover he asked me to take care of you, but he was a poet. Mena gave us a beautiful letter opener, Croft had delivered an immense box, Pinharanda had the Público newspaper talking about having art at home, Luís Pedro was very talkative. Alexandre Melo was telling people he almost beat me up the day we met, he thought I was an eejit trying to chat you up. Tininho, Pereirinha, Zeca, Eustáquio, my sisters, the cousins, etc., sang some local blues with the Stray Gazelles Choir. A mariachi group hired in Badajoz blew the horns 'till dawn, and drained by our friends they retired shortly after. They haven't attempted the spotlight in the ten following years.
Alexandre has a trick: friends don't die, they just cannot come today.
The last:
If I die will you take care of our children?
You're not going to die. But of course.
I just got one thing wrong.
What is left of a heart: the huns were here.
Miss Sud-America died this week with the same bacteria. You were far more beautiful.
I am sorry for the uncombed words, they run from the shrubs into the sky, but I have not your accuracy to hunt clichés. I am not Bill Goianes, the guitar player from Recife.
So many still travels in the round world.
Many have done it by now, but let me just tell you, Tereza Coelho, love, thank you and see you around.»

On quotation

2009-02-17T10:43:00.000Z

“Quoting the quotable could be seen as a trap down which to fall, you need your own voice, it's true. But sometimes the pleasure of using another's words is a matter of satisfaction which does not diminish the expression you seek to speak, and does not exclude your own voice, but reinforces it in such a way as to cause a universal solidarity with humanity, which is heartening.”

2009-02-15T21:41:00.000Z

Any philosophical idea can be achieved by the simplest of men. It is not hard to observe the world
(even if this observation is already contaminated and corrupted by knowledge one acquires directly or indirectly)
and attain the same singularity of thought as great philosophers, either eastern, western, southern or northern. What we lack
(for i am placing myself amongst the simplest of men for no more than that am i)
is the diction, the ability to transfer it so wisely from thought to utterance. We lack the connection between the private and the public, between the intangible and the tangible
(metaphysical and physical)
.
Once more I dwell on the realm of young and older Stephen Dedalus. Is it permeability or impermeability?

Biodiscourse

2009-02-12T13:48:00.000Z

I don't know how it started, I never quite do. It usually comes from a train of thought, a running dog out of my brain and within it's run it finds place in my
(each step i make out in the street contains infinite pieces of ideas that decide to grasp or not to memorize and many of them i lose for i still trust to much in my memory which i shouldn't anyway)
mouth and hands or somewhere physical to try to hold it memorable. The idea was about biographies.
The short story would start with someone choosing a stranger to write a biography on: the idea of the project was to detail the unknown parts of someone before that someone became public. In the end the person featuring the biography would never fulfill the potential and remain unknown – for whatever reason, more or less romantic.
More than the plot or story itself
(even history for all that matters)
, I meant to reflect on the importance or role of the biography and about it's relevance. And to play with the idea of document and documenting. Biography is to take out of context something and make it of public interest, like literature which is a text that when taken out of it's context still makes sense to a community
(just as my life is only important for the ones that surround me my closed and loved ones but it doesn't go any further than that for nothing i have achieved so far is of public interest)
. Writing the biography of the unknown is sitting side by side with a factless biography.

Reality

2009-02-09T22:19:00.000Z

This is my borrowed reality. The other one, the real reality, I cannot convey into words for it is impossible to make something I create and apprehend with five senses into just words
(and even if an image is worth of one thousand words and one word is worth of one thousand words it is still impossible)
. So, in this reality I invented, I am black letters on a white background. Appealing to the shared knowledge of some experience
(when i say orgasm when i say taste of tomato soup or maybe talking about fumbling cats or the scent of something we thought had forgotten or of the blissfulness of something elating or the dread of something appalling amongst infinite other experiences)
, some repertoire that we
(we standing for a community)
partake, I live and am the stereotypes and clichés in other's heads, created and promoted by me.

2009-02-09T19:07:00.000Z

literature is the ubiquitous solace of freedom

2009-02-08T17:52:00.000Z

ubiquitous solace

2009-02-04T18:21:00.000Z

I often wonder if my life is real. What if I would just be a memory of myself in the future
(so this present time i call upon myself now would be just a memory some reflection on the past memories of my life. my present would then be some musing i am having in a future to be looking from my memory point of view)
? If I am now just a memory not a reality
(just a half reality reason why i cannot feel plenty of things because i cannot remember them from my memory in the future the one that creates this present this half reality)
, who I am, why am I thinking about myself and why does it feel like it's never going to end? I am a memory of myself, if i don't wake up. I don't know my self, just as present
(glimpse of it)
is my own memory. I am a vague dream, a notion lost in some freudian interpretation. Who am I whilst I collect the memories of the 26th year. Who am I now looking upon my youth? How old I am?

2009-02-02T23:33:00.001Z

I cannot be tired of repeating, Everything is connected,
everything is connected
. Having this been written
(for said is not an option)
, and that hopefully it'll stay as an underlayer to all that it is going to be written from this moment onwards, I shall now commence my musings
(brooding is such a serious word and i feel like i'd rather use a word that categorizes a way of insight more cynical than serious something more humorous. as if musing was gingernuts and brooding cheesecake)
.
Many years ago in conversation
(and something i still cling to)
I mentioned that I don't believe in inspiration, for that is a romantic concept from the eighteenth century onwards. I might even be tempted
(and because i have just started uttering these words i shall not only be tempted by i will succumb with all my wit to the temptation of saying something mildly salacious. oh such wonders in the word salacious)
to suggest that it was a way to lure women into the poet's, writer's sack.
I've been thinking about Pessoa
(fernando pessoa)
, whose book of disquiet has been my companion for the last month, amongst others. The book of disquiet is like a blog with no titles, no dates or hours, no explicit chronological identity, just random notes, a factless biography
(nonlinear as a journal or diary and yet with such a poignant narrative that it is of the blog rather than any other medium. i now intended to undertake that same experience a stylistic and psychological one. i need to hold sway the digital dominion and fixation of the very name disquiet. it is rightfully mine not only the idea but the name who acknowledges the intellectual reference)
. I my ideas to be mine regardless of others previously having had them. Should Stephen Dedalus be right? Was I right?
In the end
(not only the love you make is the love you take though that is quite true)
one can write and make it not public.

2009-02-02T21:36:00.000Z

after childhood we become prepared for coldness. its generosity that disarms us.

Scarcity of focus

2009-01-25T22:42:00.002Z

I am writing to convey that I don't feel like writing
(so these sentences i am sewing together are some imposition i set to myself otherwise i'd be playing paradoxes denying an action whilst perpetrating that same action)
. However, I didn't write to convey that I am not writing
(so no paradox exists in these words i can barely call mine)
, I did it to convey that I am so entangled in my thoughts that to write
(them)
is just a way to escape deeper broodings. Let us write and muse then. If I don't feel like writing
(rather than not writing at all)
it's because I am infatuated with my broodinds
(or the metonymy)
.

The Narrative

2009-01-16T01:02:00.000Z

This thought first came to me long time ago when, with some friends, I was watching a David Lynch movie
(mulholand drive)
. As we were watching it we kept pausing it trying to make some sense of what was happening. Before the last five minutes we had it all figured out
(and by this i mean the plot the history the coherence of a as if universe a postulation. what mattered most was the understanding the history and plot dismissing all of the other and most important traits of the cinematic language with all its constraints)
, feeling very smart because we were able to understand a David Lynch movie, and then all fell to pieces as the movie passed the last five minutes.
The narrative has infiltrated all artistic manifestations that one is hardly unable to understand something if one doesn't think in terms of plot. And this made people crave and urge to find a narrative in everything they see, regardless, as if this was the only way of thinking.
Meaning, these days, is conveyed only by narrative
(what makes it more interesting is that action has a narrative pornography has a narrative love has a narrative love has a narrative an after and a before)
. What people are craving, then, is just childish repetition of something they already know but that they want to read, see, listen, so that they can feel safe, so that there is the illusion of something that they can control.
If there is no meaning outside the narrative, aesthetics and style lost all their importance.

Centre-east: ode to Jelena and Nadja, pt. 3

2009-01-12T23:10:00.000Z

When I told Jelena I was reading Mother´s novel she said, Bless you my darling,
bless you my darling
. And this is how the beginning of the final third of my triptic starts. Event though it was not on purpose I read all the three books
(because here we are not discussing media and mediality or even platforms where literature is conveyed by here i am deliberately mixing books and literature in a metonymy as it has been long before i did it)
in chronological order, both in time and time. And throughout the whole time
(that spanned four months one adolfo bioy casares one agatha christie one alessandro baricco)
I kept sharing my insights with Jelena, just to culminate in Mother's book. I remember Jelena mentioning that they were brought up to suffer stoically
(just as sonja rostova whose abnegation freed nikolai to marry maria bolkonsky)
and endure. The common traits
(at least the ones that are more obvious to me and the ones that i hold dear to my chest)
are the suffering and the family life. Suffering, stoically or not, mention needs not because it is present in all people I've ever met from centre-east-Europe
(maybe for historical reasons i know not about but i found some wise superiority as if accepting suffering was something so natural as joy)
. But these things I know so little. Family life
(as tolstoy andrić and poderegin describe it)
is so vivid, so real, that you cannot help but feel it in you and almost, at some point one craves to live it, to be part of the balls, of the games, of the cards, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee
(at this moments some tender dusk light incinerates my heart for homesick is the closest i can get to what i really feel. there is still to be invented the word that in english serb or russian or in any other language that can say as much and carry such a depth in feelings as the word saudade)
.
As you move along Mother's novel
(of which i dismissively forget to mention the name of the book and of it's writer what dishonor have I brought upon myself for doing such a wretched thing)
, “The Dawning” by Milka Bajić Poderegin, you find people that, as I have previously mentioned, accept suffering stoically. But, as everyone needs it once in a while, for it is part of human nature, they have a good cry
(this is my favorite expression amongst the book. in this particular section milena is caught stealing milk from a mutton and when safely returns home has a good cry the relieve the tension of almost disgracing the family)
. It is a very courageous and human work
(just as the last sentence is a metonymy for the qualities of the people featured within)
.

Centre-east: ode to Jelena and Nadja, pt. 2

2009-01-07T18:29:00.000Z

When I told Jelena I was reading “The Bridge Over The Drina” she said, You know, it was Ivo Andrič who encouraged Mother to write her book,
you know it was ivo andrič who encouraged mother to write her book
.
I shall now bring some more light
(if light needs be brought onto this ill bounded words by digital constraints the feeble privileged medium i chose as my wordy vehicle because sometimes if things are left in the borders of dawning and dusking in the fringes of a beautifully bounded innuendo)
to Jelena. She would not like it, I can imagine her saying, No, no, bless you my love, I have no importance, you should talk about Nadja,
no no bless you my love i have no importance you should talk about nadja
(so it happens that nadja is jelena's sister and being jelena the most selfless being seconded only by someone else who came now into my mind and of whom i shall be mentioning later in time and time and again person i've ever met she tries to deflect all the attention drawn to her to her sister)
. I only met Nadja once and when I told Jelena how I thought the two of them were very much alike and extremely pretty, she told me, Bless you, little one, don't say such things, all old cats are gray,
bless you little one don't say such things all old cats are gray
. But of Jelena and Nadja I shall talk about later, more thoroughly, because no less than that are they entitled to. Bringing them into light and onto this stream of thought
(connecting three books i read in a row and which left a deep impression on me that still endures and makes me wonder still some unsolved mysteries i cannot shake off of me and truth be told i will not god willing)
is just another way of honoring them with the important role they play in my life, despite the short amount of time I have known them for.
Jelena
(and i am so sorry if i keep repeating myself and quoting other people but rather than myself being unable of creating an original idea i prefer to think that there are no original ideas but that every utterance is indirect or indirect build-up on everything we come across with. or maybe i just chose jelena as my strong poetress the one i hold my lieges to)
told me what she felt when she first saw the bridge over the Drina, the one in Višegrad, I was little when Mother took us and it was so big, so beautiful
i was little when mother took us and it was so big so beautiful
.
It is useless to dwell on the matter of the historical romance when writing about “The Bridge Over The Drina”
(just as i avoid doing so whilst writing about war and peace and furtherlater about the dawning)
, because it has been spoken about so many times and by many people that so little, actually nothing, I could add to it. What seems to me the great trait of this work by Andrič is the fact that, there might be something in space and time that endures whilst everything around it changes and sometimes collapses
(and being the ongoing metamorphoses of things the most prominent trait of the naughties it is ironical to point out how can stone something so material can endure whilst the austrian replaced and turks and then were replaced by the natives)
. Just like “War & Peace”, “The Bridge Over The Drina” concerns history
(one through characters that we read growing up tolstoy's and other through a bridge and what revolves around it andrič's)
and many times focussing on the daily trifles, bringing to our attention the details of daily life and how it was lived both in times of wealth and scarcity. Maybe I'll be promoting stereotypes
(for every time the verb to be is used on the present tense a definitive static statement is created leading then to a stereotype)
whilst bagging together center-Europe and east-Europe literature together. I believe I do it out of ignorance, and even acknowledging it, I am unable not prevent this action, for that is ignorance.

Centre-east: ode to Jelena and Nadja, pt. 1

2009-01-03T23:00:00.000Z

When I told Jelena that I was reading “War and Peace” she said, You know there is a biography of Graeme Greene by Shirley Hazzard and she writes that, later in life, when Graeme Greene finally read “War and Peace”, he said that if he had read it early in life he would have never written a single word, for after it there was nothing else to be written,
you know there is a biography of graeme greene by shirley hazzard and she writes that later in life when graeme greene finally read war and peace he said that if he had read it early in life he would have never written a single word for after it there was nothing else to be written
. For many years my own sister
(and I use my own for later or now that i'm at it i'll explain that jelena is quoting nadja all the time her beloved sister)
Maria had been telling me that “War and Peace” was one of the best novels she'd ever read. I have to agree, it is.
I suppose that many essays and long dissertations have been written about it, about it's epilogue, about it's plot and characters, about it's historical accuracy amongst many other angles
(i was a bout to make a joke about a feminist perspective but decided not to for every perspective as long as well documented is a valid one making the feminist one no exception. i may if i can or am able to disagree. in my own documented way)
possible. I intend no academic analysis
(for I am not equipped with either the analytical skills or the knowledge to perpetrate such a task)
, just a personal one.
Whilst reading “War and Peace”
(which took me over a month and a week a little bit less than dante's divine comedy whose reading i endured for three months)
I couldn't help myself but identifying with Pierre Bezuhov's character, for I found it quite close to myself
(you see it throughout the novel having crisis of belief becoming a freemason and a skeptic but never in both finding satisfaction. only when becoming prisoner of the french and enduring the hardships of horse flesh and of the road sometimes under snow others barefoot he finds freedom liberation)
: as I once was having a very fulfilled inner and intellectual life I was forced by my trivialities to work moving other people's houses. For some months in my life there was a perfect balance between physics and metaphysics. And I felt so free. Later, on reflection, I was able to understand it and then grasping the whole meaning through Tolstoy's words.
I could never write anything academic about, it is too personal. Maybe later. Or maybe, in the subjective
(non-contingent this time)
realm of my unshared pleasures, it'll remain. There is some place in me for unsolved mysteries as well.

Speed and velocity. Trivialities and trifles

2009-01-02T23:46:00.000Z

After so long without writing a single word and just uttering them I almost feel as if I had lost the ability to write
(countless are the writers and composers and other creative professionals that stressed the importance not only of being earnest but of creating everyday even f it was a style exercise alone as if by repetition the muscles and other bodily parts would be more trained to perform an operation)
. I feel like my fingers move not as swiftly as I wanted, as if my physical part was not apt to adjust to the metaphysical one as so many times they were synchronized. Speaking/talking and thinking was the way of the last month
(conveying ideas even if for myself whilst walking the lonely and rather tough streets. many times i felt like sadness only to dwell on pessoa's i feel like tears but that is just the way elation comes to me as a sad stoic momentum)
, as was writing and thinking the previous twelve to twenty four with due intermissions. It is fascinating
(for me at least)
how the mind works, how it trains itself to part from its physical counterpart to the point where it runs almost independently.
It is true that we create according to some medium
(i guess examples to illustrate this statement are needed not for it is quite straight forward to understand my ideas for i share the same disregard plato and nietzsche had for opinions)
and even if creation is an act for ourselves we cannot avoid the medium we are creating for.
The last days creation slipped my mind for trivialities became my only reality. There was no medium and finally when it came dawning, first came verbally than thoughtfully. And now, I am trying, once more, to balance and equate the speed of thought and the velocity of writing.

Abnormal Mode

2008-12-15T23:08:00.000Z

This blog is getting an intellectual upgrade
(which is both a metonymy and synonym of me getting a masters degree hopefully in two days time)
. Things will be running absolutely normal after new year but new feeds will be expected shortly.

As I walk to work

2008-12-11T00:00:00.000Z

As I walk to work
(that privilege assists me as i usually elate on music and footsteps taking between thirty five and forty five minutes door to door)
I try to see as much as I can around me
(once i was given this pole where i was asked what would i do if i had a free afternoon in an unknown city and i answered that i would randomly walk around taking pictures of things i thought were funny in the hope i would find something extraordinary and then blame chance or faith or some metaphysic force for it. i guess i have left some flânerie in me for my interior life is so complete. sometimes i feel like i have achieved everything there is to in a lifetime. i know i am young and my inside experiences are my own reality because even though they have existed for me they are not accounted in the worldly chronicles. they are my private musings and brooding depending on the mood. but if i feel them shouldn't they be accounted as real half real at least)
.

Francis Bacon on Tate Britain so many days ago

2008-12-08T01:10:00.001Z

I like to go to exhibitions, most of the times to see what is featured and others just to observe the people that attend
(if i get both the exhibition was very worth attending)
them. Sometimes I even find myself in exhibitions without knowing
(something like that happened last year in tate modern in a very intriguing exhibition about global cities)
, but nevertheless they're worth taking time for. I like to take as much as I can, as long as – of course – I can also take the time to digest it over. I suppose one can always learn from it
(being the pedagogic function one of the most important of art if not for the mere fact that makes one think)
though learning comes to me as very patronizing way of putting it. Culture can have other effects on you rather than just learning. Either way, I like going to exhibitions.
I think it is utterly inappropriate to describe the exhibition, for the press has done it thoroughly
(and i am immensely less informed than the press and my knowledge of painting is very limited. actually the things that i know are far less than the ones i know not)
. The organization of the exhibition, despite being named, was essentially chronological.
For the first time in my whole life
(for no recollection i have of attending an exhibition where my spirits were directed towards an intellectual assessment rather than a personal one)
I was not entangled in judgments such as pretty and ugly, or other adjectives of the same kind. What for me was more important was the philosophical layers and conceptual path
(even if the concept was the portrait of a dear one as happened with fellow painters and lovers)
taken from the beginning – whatever it was – to the end
(i kept remembering one of my ma professors that taught inter-arts studies and how he taught me to analyze artistic objects. more important than the final object is the process one endures. i think if i knew then what i know now i would have wrote a fairly better essay)
.
Meanwhile a girl in a very short short-skirt was taking notes on the exhibition in her moleskine. She was writing the captions on every room
(sometimes i wondered how she managed her high heels)
until a lady came to her and explained all the captions were available on the free booklet. She kept writing, maybe out of shame, as if she was seeing beyond the written words, to a deeper meaning conveyed by her pen to her paper.
One thing that caught my eye in the end
(beside the couple that felt so familiar to the paintings as if they had been in south kensington studio and just talked it over with the arrogance of the ones that alone know more than the rest of the world together)
was how Umberto Eco's “On Ungliness” was being sold side by side with the catalog of the exhibition and other books related with Francis Bacon. I think it was very smart to do that, for the people who cannot deviate from the beauty judgment
(that dangerous and rather suggestive judgment where beauty is connoted with good and ugly with evil)
. Everyone knows that Francis Bacon's paintings are gruesome and ghastly but
(the same way we cannot avoid looking at someone else's vomit on the street)
it is very hard to ignore and dismiss them. They lingered, up to today, in my dreams
(and this was a week ago)
.

The Great Automatic Grammatizator and The Musical Log #1

2008-11-30T23:47:00.000Z

Sometimes time just seems to disappear. Or sometimes things just happen all at the same time and the time to render them into words is just not enough
(i should quote adrian mole on this one i'm living life instead of reading about it)
. I miss the time to read as I miss the time to write.
I had this idea running for some time now but I decided to put it into use now. Everyday I find myself singing, humming to myself, even if I am not doing it out loud, my mind is always set in terms of music. So I decided to run
(alongside and within rather than without the great automatic grammatizator)
a musical log where i would keep a record of the songs that come into my mind during one day
(sometimes just one and maybe just a detail on the bass line or the melody of the synth and others full repertoires of songs that i would love to play myself. i even think of making compilations and later try to understand my mood and thoughts taking the songs rather than the word as a memory record. decoding my insights into music and then recoding them into words for each decoding in another encoding)
. This kind of memory exercise
(because other thing cannot be called)
should be ran everyday, but since I'll probably won't be able to do it
(for so many reasons)
, I'll be writing the songs in the million pieces of paper that i keep in my pockets. The same pieces of paper in where I kept ideas for short-stories and novels that never became fully grown, just flowers that were once too watered and others left to dry. Just like this blog
(or my life most)
, abandonment and rationalizing afterwards was part of the daily trade.

The Musical Log #1
01. The Organ – Grab That Gun
02. Belle & Sebastian – Expectations
03. The Breeders – Shocker In Gloomtown

I am Sonic Youth

2008-11-21T12:11:00.001Z

I read in another blog those forward games that usually are meant fro you to say your favorite words, your favorite songs
(the kind of thing that people might send me but i never reply because i seldom read other blogs especially in english for i know no one or have little knowledge of the ways of the blog in uk or us)
, your favorite something. So this time I decided to be proactive
(i hate this word and all it stands for but i've been listening to it and using it so many times these past few days that i might give it a go)
and do it myself, by my own initiative.
Answer ten questions with song titles from one band you choose
(my choice is sonic youth as the title mentions)
:
a) Are you male or female? All-Boy All-Girl.
b) Describe yourself: Androgynous Mind.
c) What people think of you? Self-Obsessed And Sexxee.
d) How would you descrive your last relationship? Female Mechanic Now On Duty.
e) Describe your present relationship: Do You Believe in Rapture?
f) Where would you like to be right now? In the Mind of the Bourgeois Reader.
g) What do you think about love? Hot Wire My Heart.
h) How is your life? Theoretical Chaos.
i) What would you ask if you had one wish alone? Six For New Time.
j) Write something wise: Stereo Sanctity.

Choice

2008-11-20T18:31:00.000Z

Still on the metaphysical broodings in which I have been revolving these past few days
(and at the same time winking at granieri whilst keeping myself to myself and maintaining an intellectual log rather than a personal one)
, I found myself thinking of how hard it is to depart from the language questions that have been haunting me
(less metaphorical and more literal)
as I try to find examples of people who gave up their native language and other that endured, so I can feel good about myself and at the same time recriminate myself for what I chose.
It would be much easier not to choose, if the choice was made by some other entity but myself or if there was no possibility of choice
(for ignorance as bliss is also a path but a path that)
. At the same time, the not choosing, or the not knowing that a choice could be made was limiting my freedom
(for freedom walks hand in hand with the ability to choose)
. The choice I have is neither wrong nor right, for putting it in terms of right and wrong is bringing a moral judgment where one is not required or needed
(and according to nietzsche a moral judgment is never needed for we should be beyond good and evil and all morality evolves from religion regardless)
.

Discourse

2008-11-16T23:02:00.000Z

Following up my first ideas of split-personalities whilst I am speaking
(and writing and thinking)
in another language, comes another one that intrigued me. I realized that in colloquial conversation I tend to use plenty of lines from musicians, writers and movies that I am particularly fond of
(sometimes it bothers me so much because i end up feeling that i am not able to speak for myself only through others'. i remember talking about love and being told
in between of not finding true love i'm enjoying the fake ones
and thinking what an amazing line that is and yet again i was not able to summoned it up myself)
. Partially I feel as if my own split-personality came from Hollywood, britpop independent trends and so on and so forth. English language trends, I suppose.
Sometimes I hear or read and find extremely poetic, like these two verses from Death Cab For Cutie's Transatlanticism
(was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere when the water filled every hole and thousands upon thousands made an ocean making islands where no island should go)
but never will I find the appropriate occasion to use them; somehow, in my head, the become a little bit useless and I have to make an enormous effort not to let them slip from my memory. I can actually make sense from it
(or at least and up to a very small extension i can)
and find intellectual elation from the fact that I can understand something written cryptically
(i think i can call poetic cryptic for poetry and most of the language conveyed through literature is essentially about metaphors or symbols and some things that stand for others)
. One can always find something to relate with, but I am so afraid of over-interpretation, of taking hermeneutics a step too far. Take, for example, this verse: “oh, the ocean smells like my mother who should love me, oh, like the ocean does”. Knowing the personal and cultural constraints around the group that sings this song, I can easily make some sense out of it
(i don't follow the post-modern prerogative that states the death of the author first because i don't believe in post-modernism and then because one cannot chastise the text from it's author)
. Nonetheless, I feel uncomfortable with my own interpretation, for it is my own and can be completely departed from reality.

What is troubling you, my child?

2008-11-16T20:53:00.000Z

I just understood what might be troubling me so much. I thought I would just resume my writing, despite the language change and constraints. But no, I have to go again through the whole process of finding my own voice
(which is as enlightening as saying that one's sexually active like it's a permanent state
of elation
of which one cannot escape from once you started it unless one's reached sixty or seventy or menopause and andropause and maybe then your activity might be questioned. i stole this one from juno the sexually active one. the rest is my own breed)
. Does the irony transpire from the last stretch this post? At least I fingered the problem.

The treason

2008-11-12T22:49:00.000Z

Providing that the smallest element in translation is the sentence
(neither the word nor the paragraph)
I'll try and convey my ideas the best way possible. And my first exercise is, undoubtedly, a translation
(or retroversion)
whose origin is Portuguese. It goes without saying the language to which I am translating to. This will be, however, my only translation, for I wrote the same post for previous blog as well. And that's that.
Whilst in conversation with an Italian girl, some time ago, she mentioned that she lived in London as in a voluntary exile, for she felt better in English rather than Italian. At the time not only I thought the idea itself was extremely poetic
(which made me wonder how did i feel about my own split personality)
, but also the way she was putting it. If we only are able to think once we can speak a language
(any language)
, different languages will convey different ways of thinking
(offering infinite objects for the comparative studies discipline)
. Thus, being different people whilst speaking
(and thinking for all that matters)
different languages is like being schizophrenic, is like having our insides torn, one's identity still changes and evols when, at least after a certain age, should be settled. I am still not quite sure how do I exist in English, I haven't thought enough
(maybe when i'm able to convey the whole of my ideas i'll know how deep my treason was if treason one can name it like)
. I guess it should not be that different from the Brasilian and Hungarian of Chico Buarque's “Budapest”.