September 06, 2006
me, me, me
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Playing with this fun, fun, fun face transformer thingie (through fellow flickrite Striatic)
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September 04, 2006
Library Thing
Having fun lately with Library Thing: "LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere—even on your mobile phone. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth."
Author cloud
That's what I call a social network! Just added the few books on my tiny bookshelf and some others piling around. I miss my stored-in-the-basement-of-a-friend books. Now I'm starting my own online library. Great!
(found it through misteraitch whose blog is such a source of many delights - which lately includes a post with my favourite Xul Solar painting and a mention to Javier Marías - the cause of my sunday El País newspaper obsession.
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July 12, 2006
Random small pleasures
"No philosopher came close to solving the problem of guilt and weight until Descartes divided mind and body in two, so that the body could gorge itself while the mind thought, Who cares, it’s not me. The great question of philosophy remains: If life is meaningless, what can be done about alphabet soup?" --Thus ate Zarathustra, Woody Allen in the New Yorker
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Weston, Pepper#3
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"Yves Klein. Symphonie Monoton-Silence (1957). Meant to provide a sonic equivalent of his monochomes paintings, the second movement of Klein’s Symphony consists of twenty minutes of silence -- just enough time to give the audience a chance to shake the sense of ringing from their ears: the first twenty minutes consists of a sustained D-major chord." -- Unheard Music, Craig Douglas Dworkin on UBUWeb(PDF)
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Moi je t'offrirai
Des perles de pluie
Venues de pays
Oú il ne pleut pas
--Jacques Brel, Ne me quitte pas
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February 23, 2006
"Is a translation meant for readers who do not understand the original? This would seem to explain adequately the divergence of their standing in the realm of art. Moreover, it seems to be the only conceivable reason for saying "the same thing" repeatedly. For what does a literary work "say"? What does it communicate? It "tells very little to those who understand it. Its essential quality is not statement or the imparting of information -- hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations. But do we not generally regard as the essential substance of a literary work what it contains in addition to information -- as even a poor translator will admit -- the unfathomable, the mysterious, the "poetic," something that a translator can reproduce only if he is also a poet? This, actually, is the cause of another characteristic of inferior translation, which consequently we may define as the inaccurate transmission of an inessential content. This will be true whenever a translation undertakes to serve the reader. However, if it were intended for the reader, the same would have to apply to the original. If the original does not exist for the reader's sake, how could the translation be understood on the basis of this premise?"
-- Walter Benjamin, The task of the translator
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Tricky, the art of translating. Isn't it?
Banubula had a great post on the various English versions of a Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer poem.
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The young daughter of the Honourable Master had a go at translating AB's poem I posted here.
I'm not sure he sent me this as any flaunty proud father of a talented (Portuguese) 15 year old would or if he means that "Even a junior high school kid can translate this better than you" :-)
Be attentive,
Be attentive to the conquests of your strength.
Tear the new days with what you've learnt from your weaknesses.
Pledge with the chalice of your tears
Hold it high and well.
Never, never detain yourself and cry out the dreams you will capture.
The springs you crave to discover await you.
Always follow the North of your woes.
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December 17, 2005
Slow blog
Lélé Senior has a new blog - a slow blog as he puts it.The fast blog doesn't leave much space for his more elaborate musings. I have loved his writing ever since we were college students.
When are we starting that Portuguese Knights Templar version of a Dan Brown's style novel? We could become filthy rich ;-)
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December 13, 2005
Stolen from AC's Encyclopedia
Tudo o que é vivo tem um ligeiro cheiro a morto – exclamou Marija de Breslov, parteira de William Möller, enquanto lhe cortava o cordão umbilical. Admoestada pelo pai da criança sobre a rudeza da frase, respondeu: – Quando nasce uma criança, sr. coronel, abre-se uma cova. O cordão umbilical é o que nos liga à origem e não nos deixa perder num labirinto, liga-nos à matriz. É o fio de Ariadne que nos cortam para sermos abandonados à mercê do monstro de Minos, à vida labiríntica. Esse cordão, o umbilical, vai para o lixo e é substituído por outro que começa nas minhas mãos de parteira e termina nas do meu marido. Ele é coveiro.
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Everything that is alive exhales a discreet odor of death - said Marija de Breslov, William Möller's midwife, while cutting his umbilical cord. Admonished by the father on the harshness of the phrase, she answered: - When a child is born, Colonel, we dig a hole in the ground. The umbilical cord is what links us to our origin and saves us from getting lost in a labyrinth for it binds us to the womb. It is our own thread of Ariadne which is cut in order to abandon us at the mercy of the monster of Minos, to the labyrinthic life. That cord, the umbilical cord, is thrown in the garbage and is replaced by another one that starts on my hands as a midwife and ends on my husband's. He's a grave digger.
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I would link to the blog from where I stole this but it's password protected. It's a precious little gem only some are allowed to enter :-)
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November 22, 2005
Kunst Bar
Clever online animation here: the Art Bar. In a few minutes a trip through History of Modern Art, alcoholic drinks involved.
(A Miró Menu at the Kunst Bar)
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November 21, 2005
Random Thoughts & Notes
Listening to Leonard Cohen while driving this weekend. He's probably the only serious composer/songwriter who can get away with the verses:
Give me crack and anal sex/Take the only tree that's left
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The subversive painter Yves Klein patented this shade of blue. I hope he's dead, otherwise I'm in trouble.
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Since Ian Curtis commited suicide and you optimistically think that you're experiencing mild symptoms of SAD due to this uncommon lack of sunny days, Joy Division might not be the best choice of music to listen to while driving to work.
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Thou shalt not reshelve books in bookshops according to your own filing system.
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Just found out how I love Rooibos with lemon and ginger (perfect companion to Anna's Pepparkakor Ginger Thins).
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Can't drive in the rain without humming a Tom Waits song:
Well, these diamonds on my windshield
These tears from heaven
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I've been getting some visitors who are googling for odd stuff:
"everything to know about senegal chameleons" - I've been to Senegal and didn't see any;
"why does claudia run away from home?" - never did.
"claudia sexy web site" - thank you! :-))))
"examples of cyclical time in 100 years of solitude" - hmm. nice idea for a blog post.
"what does it mean claudia" - unfortunately, if you're named Claudia like me, you don't want to know. That's one big disappointment. You pick up one of those books about the meaning of names and every feminine name means either "beautiful", "gentle", "flower", etc. Claudia just means "the one who limps" after Claudius, the roman emperor with a leg shorter than the other.
My personal favourite:
"what do portuguese people look like?" - I'd post a photo of myself but since I've been told several times I look french that shouldn't be of any help.
UPDATE
My new personal favourite:
"claudia you are the center of my mundo" - the feeling is mutual ;-)
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October 06, 2005
Meaning
"Either we remember the words but their meaning remains obscure; or we discover their meaning when we forget the words."
loosely translated from Gilles Deleuze's remark on Klossowski's "Le Baphomet".
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Deleuze as created by Toogle (fun, fun, fun)
"Toogle is a Text version of Googles Image Search. Currently it creates images out of the very term that was used to fetch those images, later we will endeavour to create images out of the search terms entered by users past and present. But for now please, go play."
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September 28, 2005
Aspen Magazine
Aspen was a multimedia magazine of the arts published by Phyllis Johnson from 1965 to 1971. Each issue came in a customized box filled with booklets, phonograph recordings, posters, postcards — one issue even included a spool of Super-8 movie film.
Found at Aspen#3:
One of the things that interests me is solidifying an action, like an explosion— something that is ephemeral— formalizing or symbolizing it in concrete terms.
Another interest is the visual representation of sound— such as "Varoom! !" Some call it "audio-scription."
Explosions give me a perfect opportunity to do a completely abstract painting which seems, on the surface to he realistic.
— Lichtenstein
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September 27, 2005
Post Secrets
(Through BV who sent me this great link.)
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September 18, 2005
No Comment
The commenting feature on this blog hasn't been working for a long time now (several spam incidents have been affecting weblog.com.pt) and I have better things to do than to rebuild the files of this damned thing every day.
Now I'll just shut off commenting for good so that every visitor's email message won't start with "Commenting isn't working, I'm writing to let you know blah, blah.."
Email address on your right. Use it with parsimony.
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May 10, 2005
Reine Claude
Mr. Ryder (a modern Antrobus under a blogger's disguise) calls me Queen of The Green Prunes. The last time I got a nickname was in 6th grade - it had something to do with some encyclopedical qualities I had at the time.
I'm quoting him, rambling about prunes/plums/ameixas:
"They are superb fruits but a bit of a paradox. What their surface tells us is different from what lies deep down at the core of the fruit.
The Reine-Claude can be entirely green on the outside, pretending to be slightly acid, youngish and immature, when the pulp tells us a different story. Mature, deliciously sweet. The Frogs call it the "Queen Of Prunes", a fruit of the Sun par excéllence, achieving her maturity only at the end of July and allowing herself to be enjoyed for only six short brief weeks. A conundrum fruit, indeed. "Reine-Claude" are all those no longer that young ladies that Nature and good Cosmetics make them look juvenile and "green", while they are in fact perfectly ripe to be tasted."
Despite the wrinkles around my eyes (I smile way too much) and the fact that I'm almost a balzaquienne femme de trente ans, I'm still not in need of that much cosmetics. Also, this kind of fruit has a very powerful laxative effect so it's only fair to add a warning that they should be "enjoyed" with moderation :-))))
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