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Best Society

When I was a child, I thought,
Casually, that solitude
Never needed to be sought.
Something everybody had,
Like nakedness, it lay at hand,
Not specially right or specially wrong,
A plentiful and obvious thing
Not at all hard to understand.

Then, after twenty, it became
At once more difficult to get
And more desired - though all the same
More undesirable; for what
You are alone has, to achieve
The rank of fact, to be expressed
In terms of others, or it's just
A compensating make-believe.

Much better stay in company!
To love you must have someone else,
Giving requires a legatee,
Good neighbours need whole parishfuls
Of folk to do it on - in short,
Our virtues are all social; if,
Deprived of solitude, you chafe,
It's clear you're not the virtuous sort.

Viciously, then, I lock my door.
The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside
Ushers in evening rain. Once more
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.

- Philip Larkin

The destruction of Sennacherib


The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea,
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.
Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green,
That host with their banners at sunset were seen:
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown,
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.
For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!
And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide,
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride;
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf,
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf.
And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail:
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
 
- Lord Byron

When should one consider to exercise one's option to prod along through life wearing nothing but balls of steel? Driving a car, making love to that special woman, or holding a bountiful dose of liquor, all those require, or should, that a person remembers to carry them out properly clad in steel attire, crotchwise. Being a father must be done with iron cojones, pretty much the same way as choosing a mother for your child, which ought never to be done just because you're alone or afraid. But later in life, going through the pain of separation, if or when one gets a chance of picking between doing what seems the greater, rightful thing and just doing what the fuck is best according to one's own heart (leaving the brain to ponder about serious shit like red wine and religion, or the missing link between both) maybe one should opt out and waive the chance of roaming the land feeling, once more, invulnerable, crotchwise. And instead of sacrificing oneself for the supposedly noble outcome and for the virtue of hope, maybe, just maybe, one should hawk like a sailor, smell the fresh, though untimely, spring air in October, and shit from above on all that matters, crotchwise or across one's ribcage, and for a single moment, just that once, believe like everyone ought to believe, that steel balls are great to have when small matters are concerned, but that when the bigger beasts come lurking on your doorstep, as they always find a way of doing that at precisely the least expected moment and along the path of most severe consequences, well, in those moments, the best thing to have done would be, for sure, to let the world of small people fuck itself and on their head be it.

José Sócrates representa o pior que há em Portugal: o chico-espertismo, a sobranceria alarve de - nada sabendo - presumir-se qualificado e como tal digno de ocupar qualquer cargo público ou privado, e, last but not least, aquela forma de estar rançosa que se revela ao quebrar o verniz da falsa sofisticação. A tal coisa que não sai com sabão, perfumes caros ou fatos de corte impecável.

Sócrates está onde está porque há todo um povo, não nos enganemos, que não presta. E para esses, bem como para ele, estou-me eu nas tintas e desejaria que tivessem caído na real o mais longe possível de mim.

Contudo, mesmo num pântano insalubre rodeado de idiots-savants por cuja mão o país há-de vir a cair em definitivo e sem poder levantar-se, enough is enough.

Que se foda este mentiroso de uma vez por todas.

Já descobri o problema da geração parva: é parva. São parvos, em número praticamente integral, mas vivem tão cheios daquilo que julgam saber e dos mimos gerados, em casa, pelos complexos de culpa dos paizinhos, que nem ao espelho se enxergam.

Um diz "somos a geração com maior autonomia moral". Importa-se de repetir? Porquê? Está a querer dizer que não andaram a matar pretos, nem a delapidar o erário público (ainda) e que por isso são ungidos de uma qualquer poção salvífica?

Outro, que é "dramaturgo", não consegue sequer levar a bom porto o exercício, banal em qualquer sociedade, de abdicar da arrogância pesporrenta com que interrompe a sua interlocutora de forma sistemática, com o propósito claro de agitar, fugindo para a frente, a cavalo de sound bite em sound bite. A fatia da audiência que ainda vem de cueiros aplaude e auxilia a feitura da festa.

Pois é, meus queridos, o vosso problema são esses egos inchados, sobranceiros, carentes de terem levado uns bons pares de estalos em tempo útil. Não é a falta de emprego, ou de trabalho, nem muito menos a insuficiência de novas vagas para licenciados em "engenharia da linguagem e do conhecimento no contexto profiláctico das rendas de bilros". É mesmo a parvoíce pueril, imatura, alimentada a pão-de-ló pelas alminhas que vos fizeram e criaram.

São só momentos como este tudo o que tens entre a boca e os dedos. Contempla o copo e a música, sente-te bem, são e recatado. Pensa mais uma frase, tange ainda outra corda, olha para como o puto mais velho encanta esta primeira namorada. És invencível e íntegro. Com quantas tipas estiveste em noites como esta? O que te havia de importar a aleivosia de um gajo qualquer a quem há já muito é devida uma aculturação com o taco de baseball? Lembro-me de uma miúda hoje escritora amanhã cinturão negro de viet-vo-dao me ter definido entre expletivos como sendo um escritor do caraças, redundei e peço desculpa. Talvez isso deixe de importar, há quem faça hoje noventa anos e outros para quem um terço disso contam como tanto. Eu gosto de tudo. Bem hajam.

There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.

- Friedrich Hayek

O liberal é humilde. Reconhece que o mundo, a vida são complicados. A única coisa de que tem certeza é que a incerteza requer liberdade, para que a verdade seja descoberta por um processo de concorrência e debate que não tem fim. O socialista por sua vez acha que a vida e o mundo são facilmente compreensíveis; sabe tudo e quer impor a estreiteza da sua experiência, da sua ignorância e arrogância.

- Raymond Aron

Adrian Borland - Running Low on Highs

I know the ground 'round here too well
Every crack and corner of my cell
Seems my world has been reduced in size

And I´m running very low
Running very low on highs

I took my pleasures one by one
Hovered closer to the sun
Until my melting wings fell from the sky

Now I´m running very low
Running very low on highs

I remember how it was
I was like a soldier to the cause
But in the end you pay a heavy price

It leaves you running very low
Running very low on highs

I stumbled through the day
Floated through the nights
Where life is measured by
The brightness of the light
But it is gone before you even finished
Saying your goodbyes

I won't take back the things I did
I am not ashamed of how I lived
I've never needed any alibis

But I´m running very low
Running very low on highs

So if you think that life is cruel
To me it is like a tank of fuel
And I used up mine
By the time I was thirty-five

Yes, I´m running very low
Running very low on highs

The rain has come. Though thirty five degrees still condense the air outside, waterdrops come and cling like the eggs of flies, or fig seeds, to your dry skin. It is now the season of hope, again, though in order to fly one must first lose sight of the nest.

An olden man, ninety years old, has presided over the lunch table today. His eyes, blue-rimmed and resolute like the many pickaxe points he broke as a miner, crucified my softened frame to the pillars of his vinyard, under which we spent many an hour in conversation and dissolution. I wanted to honour this man's patience by being there if by happenchance his last hour came upon us as we spoke.

It has not come, it may never come. He is immortal. As a frail boy of twelve, no taller than the cane he carved from a cherry tree and still uses as a walking stick, he led his donkey, alone and starving, through forty miles of hills and scrubland, until the wolfpack scented their trail. Pray he did and walk he tried, until it seemed that their fate was certain. This ninety year old man has been a miner, a farmer, thrice a husband and still he carries his own weight with a word of power.

These are this man's genes, his heritage, such the will and the legacy, that from blue rimmed eyes and waning bloodlines make it possible for you to read these lines I, another heir, am writing.

The boy saw a wavering light in the distance. It seemed to float erratically in the wee hours. After some time or a few desperate steps the light began to clink.

The boy's mother, alone and barefoot, with the house dog at her heels, had come; she had waded half the county, half the way, with a pitchfork across her back, to find her son sprinting for his life, with the pack beast and their sacks of coal at the large. Still the wolves came on.

I do not know and he told me not to care, never to lose my temper, or my patience, to be like the rock around which the raging river flows. The great old man under his own vine, we both soaked in his own wine, assured me that it is never worth, never ever worth, to outstrip yourself, to transmute into a wild, savage thing you'll regret to be, for any puny matter, even a shitload of puny matters.

The rain is coming, I will drive south tonight. I have seen how freedom pays and the due tribute that the laws of life are sure to deliver if a man, by truth and humility, sticks to the plan.

I will meet this man again before rain and tears become one. For now, these words are written for the sake of freedom and fire, freedom and fire.

for you this one ever again, four five six times

´

Wake up. Day calls you
to your life: your duty.
And to live, nothing more.
Root it out of the glum
night and the darkness
that covered your body
for which light waited
on tiptoe in the dawn.
Stand up, affirm the straight
simple will to be
a pure slender virgin.
Test your bodys metal.
cold, heat? Your blood
will tell against the snow,
or behind the window.
The colour
in your cheeks will tell.
And look at people. Rest
doing no more than adding
your perfection to another
day. Your task
is to carry your life high,
and play with it, hurl it
like a voice to the clouds
so it may retrieve the light
already gone from us.
That is your fate: to live
Do nothing.
Your work is you, nothing more.

-Pedro Salinas

Epilogue


Please cherish my memory - he said. I walked for thousand
miles on end without bread and without water, along rocks and through
thorns I walked, to fetch you bread, water and roses.
I was always faithful to beauty. With fair mind I gave out
all my fortune. I did not keep my lot. I am poor. With a tiny lily from
the fields I brightened our harshest nights. Please cherish my memory.
And forgive this last sorrow of mine:
I would like - once again - to reap a ripe corn with the
slender sickle moon. To stand at the threshold, to stare away
and to chew with my front teeth the wheat
admiring and blessing this world that I leave behind,
admiring also Him who climbs up the hill in the
golden rain of a sinking sun. There is a purple square patch in his
left sleeve. It is not easy to see. It was this, more than anything else,
that I wanted to show you.
And probably, more than anything else, it would be worth
remembering me for this.

- Yannis Ritsos

a waste of time

a waste of chance

spare a dime

do the dance

to every road retraced

Homem total naquele sentido que não é só à beira dum penhasco, ao por do sol, com vento norte e cabelos grisalhos, que um gajo se sente a escorregar no tapete. É também quando passa por ti um gajo com uma gaja pendurada nas costas, de cabelos ao vento a cento e oitenta, e tu sentes que os testículos de repente emigraram para latitudes superiores e desejas aquilo, e só aquilo com uma força tamanha que não descansas enquanto não o fizeres a caminho de Oslo.

- from the Nhoquinha Chronicles

do you ever feel the need to be with someone, a partner, a man, who soaks life faster than life can throw itself at him?

i do (for a woman, of course)

and it's a good puzzle.

(from the Nyarlathotep Chronicles)

These Words
(Sullivan)

Through the years of decay we walk like tigers in cages
With each passing turn the smaller and smaller the circles
Every weapon and word legitimate now as protection

But these things should never be spoken
These things should never be spoken

I stand undefeated alone in the ring just pacing
The sweat and the blood dried on my hands all wasted
I'm shouting "come back and fight for I am the king"
But the lights are all out and the people are gone

We always burned brightest when no one was watching
Now I kiss the lines on your beautiful face

But these things should never be spoken

And sometimes your hunger for life seems like desperation
And when I read about the world these days all I can feel is hatred
The fortune teller is closing her doors
She looked into the crystal and saw nothing at all

They're waiting round here for something to happen
They won't really want it when it rolls out to greet them

But these things should never be spoken
These things should never be spoken

The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth

if I suffer at this
typewriter
think how I'd feel
among the lettuce-
pickers of Salinas?

- Charles Bukowski

Interrompo este interlúdio a propósito de dois eventos com proporções bíblicas que vieram à rua esta semana:

- Portugal foi eliminado pela Espanha, não por demérito dos jogadores mas sim por culpa explícita e inegável de uma mentalidade curta, medrosa, feudal, do tipo "vamos jogar contra os nossos superiores, baixemos pois as orelhas, tentemos confundi-los e façamos figas para que não nos tratem mal", ou seja, as cachorrices intemporais que duram desde o Estado Novo e que são hoje a maior sombra desse negrume, a par com os sucessivos governos compostos por grunhos encartados no 25 de Abril, que alimentam os amigos a poder e putas por penhor dos contribuintes que lhes servem de alimento

- O actual governo de grunhos encartados, herança de uma tribo juvenil agarrada ao LSD rapidamente convertida às gravatas do situacionismo, usou-se de um poder fabricado e ilegal para roubar aos accionistas de uma empresa privada o produto do seu investimento causando ainda a Portugal um dano irreparável; e eis que isto passa impune pelas mesmas razões, sendo expectável ouvir em qualquer café "eles é que sabem, eles são todos iguais, o que é que se há-de fazer" et caetera.

O que, vociferemos a bem da saúde, constitui dose dupla de nojo e induz a um vómito que há já muito não sentia.