Words of wisdom

Outside is raining. That kind of rain not heavy enough to keep you home the entire weekend, but still irrestibly inviting to profit from the home's warmth and comfort.

I make myself some coffee.
I now drink it with cinnamon. A cinnamon stick adds my coffee character and intensity. It adds notes of brown to its natural darkness. No sugar added.

Too bad I don't have a fireplace. I would light it even if outside is more than 20 degrees. Just for the pleasure of the flame.

Unable to have fire, I lay on the sofa.

I incidently stumble into these wise words:

"It is well to be a gentleman, it is well to have a cultivated intellect, a delicate taste, a candid, equitable dispassionate mind, a noble and corteous bearing in the conduct of life - these are the connatural qualities of a large knowledge (...)".
|John Henry Cardinal Newman, 1854|

May I always be able to pursue them. End of rainy saturday afternoon thought. (with coffee).



|"Afernoon Coffee Break"| Herman Pekel | 2001

Jour de chance

One of these days, while walking randomly Lisbon's streets, I happened to find an open air book market. It literally made my day and, to my great surprise I found some quite good books that overcome in quality what you generally expect to find in such a place. Of course the ambiance is always fascinating, treasure hunt like, with loads of people trying to make their way into the different stands. But my previous experience had taught me (and to this, I confess, I was wrong) that in such a market you'll hardly get more than the old and rusty classics (I don't mean they are not important), the leftovers of publishing houses and the wishy washy books that make the largest profit of those very same publishing houses.

This time I managed to buy two little treasures, for very temtping prices:



"Tales from a Globalizing World"
| Daniel Scwartz (editor) |

This is probably my favourite: different photo-stories produced by distinguished photographers, which aim at understanding the fracturing nature of globalization. I am expecting a deep sociological insight to all the ways in which globalization can induce exclusion and social conflict. And I long for the photos, of course.




"Words and buildings: a vocabulary of modern architecture"
| Adrian Forty|

How could I ever resist the association of text with architecture. From now on, I won't be able to stop reading the streets, the buildings, the cities, the windows and glass doors. Architecture is more than bricks and walls.

old school ventilator

Bem sei (será que também o sentiram) que já não é Verão, mas a ilusão holográfica e térmica deste sol português mantém-nos contentes e desejantes de um Verão ilusório perpétuo. Fosse ele ao menos capaz de manter as ideias quentes e os pensamentos confluentes...

Here, at work, devemos achar que ainda é Verão, pois instalou-se entre todos uma rotina de difícil desabituação. Temos, entre nós, uma ventoinha. E ninguém se desabituou de a ligar, pela manhã. Nem mesmo eu.

What an old school object, pensei eu, quando a vi pela primeira vez.

Pior que isso, é a permanência ordeira deste objecto estival além saison.

Chega-me, com a periodicidade indesejável do sem aviso, a frescura artificial das pás mecânicas.

As ventoinhas deviam ser como os iogurtes e vir com prazo de validade.

No meio dos papéis e do caos que cobrem a minha secretária, do pó que a amável Dona I. não consegue remover à força de espanador, permanece esta minha alergia à ventoinha.

E não, não consigo explicar melhor porque não gosto da ventoinha.

bureau with a view over the avenue

so my yesterday's meeting went well beyond my brightest definition of good.

and it made me, as usual, do a lot of rethinking on what I should be doing professionally. (i think, and i think, and i think, especially in bed...)

don't please think i am a snob, accostumed only to the bureaucrats' luxury and wellbeing. I had a taste of that in Brussels and it can indeed be addictive, while at the same time illusionary.

let's say i am making much more sense of what i want for myself. and let's say i really enjoy the general mood and high culture experiences my present job has been offering me. in that sense, i feel really priviledged.

i've given up my semiotic and cultural studies fever of the past - would it ever bring bread to the table? - (though the hard task of interpretation will always be with me, insistingly), and i have this very grounded feeling i will hardly become a journalist.

too much disenchantment i've experienced while inhabitting the newsroom.

right now, i feel very good.

i want to make that feeling last, make it seem like a walk down the avenue - in which bureaux may be located on top of high buildings, but in which the trees' shadows will always welcome me on the ground.

avenida da Liberdade, Lisboa

Excessivamente Musical | cronica de um regresso a casa |

Yes, completely obsessed today, as if any chapter of these hours (which sum up a single day) had to match the perfect soundtrack.

Lovely, this pass time of mine. Not hard at all. Every picture of my day fits into a music scale or dimension. Right now, "Outro Futuro", by Balla. I randomly discovered them, but their sound is addictive and genuinely powerful.

What could this exact choice mean, for now? By the time I am writing, it is 19:51. I have just returned from Lisbon. Superb day behind my back, full of projects I am able to feel and conduct with my own hands. I like the way the agenda looks. To put it correctly, I like the way in which both my mental agenda and my professional diary are coming to terms.

WOW. I take a (not that deep) breathe and realise the magnificient importance of it all.

I couldn't help posting this while returning home. In the meantime, I know that soon I should head up to the kitchen. There's, somewhere in the fridge, a couple of steakes I must cook. Then I shall read, and sleep, and dream on.

Tomorrow I am meeting the ambassador.

(great expectations...)



Bala |Outro Futuro|

Well done, Euclid

I had to get this praising session started, much because I absolutely feel every word I am about to say.

Lisbon's Euclid Workshop - Leadership for a New Europe: The Third Sector Solution - was a smashing success, especially because it revealled Portuguese stakeholders' weakenesses and general - or, should I say, beyond rational explanation - fear of any networking or innovation attempt. It also showed how the Government still has an enormous amount of learning to undergo before we reach the dynamics and quality service-oriented culture of the Third Sector as it operates in many other European countries.

Still organizations such as CIDESC (http://www.esc-rights.org/) proved to be innovative and assertive in the views shared with a very challenging audience, and in the recommendations offered to create a vibrant Portuguese Third Sector.

I am now an optimist. And the way ahead is promising.

Not a new song. Not a new video.

Refreshingly bitter, yet delicious.
Go & see where this place is, there, in your viewer expectations, in the back of your mind. Certainly by the sea. Certainly the scene is a hotel room. And then a runaway piece. I used to think some of my favourite book pages were those of Marguerite Duras: characters sitting in rooms, windows covered in thick curtains, blinders denying the light. I couldn’t help the association with this video, despite the necessary differences and disparities. Of course the association is purely inside of me.

Profoundly cinematographic. Just like this song.



Nouvelle Vague Don't go

Setembro

A folha do calendário ditou, na alternância regular de dois anos - dois; 2; II
Que Setembro seria o mês da partida
Para mim, claro, porque a Setembro está colado, como folha ainda não amarelecida pelo vento
o código dos regressos.

Que encanto há no regresso e na redescoberta. Um encanto que voluntariamente me neguei, refugiando-me em partidas contentes e fugazes, porque sabia do conforto da volta. Sempre a volta. sempre a alternância. Sempre.

Que encanto houve este ano no ficar. No regressar de mim a mim. Na alternância interior, na ponte que me atravessa dos cabelos à extremidade das unhas dos pés.

Choque eléctrico que me percorre de excitação, este de, desta vez, Setembro querer dizer, em paz cósmica de todos os universos, sentidos e medidas, estar aqui.





September Fields - Thornhill, Stirlingshire
Laura Newbury