a gajinha e o gato

há dias onde me podia apaixonar por uma galinha manca.

hymne personnational

"Ma luette, ma gentille luette
je te plumerai la tête, et le bec, et le bec!
ma luette, ma gentille luette..."

etc etc.

oui oui oui le GROS problème de zeroglotte, c'est la minusculité minuscule de sa niche (nichée) écologique... On dit ça, m'en fait, on est tous des mêmes, non? Avec pattes et ailes et luette. (qui se dit UVULA en engrish (un mot mi-oeno mi-gynécologique, a-t-on idée! ) et c'est là bien sûr le grain de sable dérailleur du jour)

first times

This osteopath began his work today by clasping electrodes to my back and turning the voltage as high "as you can stand". This meant i could feel my muscles twitching and switching with a life of their own, hopping like crazy in electric rhythm. Thus i was left alone for 10 minutes. Alone with somebody's panicking heart grafted to my shoulders (that's how it felt, and that's how my heart was taking it, faster and faster, before I talked him down, can't see anything without wanting the same, the sympathetic bastard) 10 minutes is a long time.
Afterwards came bliss.

ADN

Não é que descobri, num evento surreal que mais parecia o que imagino ser o aquecimento das dançarinas do Finalmente, que só consigo rebolar as ancas com algum aparato no sentido dos ponteiros dum relógio? No outro não rodam, andam aos tristes solavancos qual pneu furado.
Como é que o meu bisavô Robert não se lembrou desta horrenda consequência quando resolveu ser relojeiro?

cross-hatching

Absolute shelter and the mail

ok, this is going to be pretty disheveled:
as I already wrote here, the columbian writer and diplomat of swedish descent Léon de Greiff (1895-1976) spoke about Korpilombolo as the "absolute shelter", even if he only visited there shortly, once. He, says Wiki, meant it as a philosophical metaphor.
But if... (short break. it began hailing all of a sudden, i had to run and save my washing) But if you look at one of these world-maps for climate change, like in 40 years or such, when the temperature has risen, the water is up, mass extinction of beasts, plants and humans has occurred, Korpi will be one of the very few places that could still be more or less habitable. Is that why quite a few people disembark on zeroglotte on the "Korpilombolo Project" tag? What are they looking for? Real-estate? A survival group living off cloudberries and dried reindeer?

If you had to invent a mean of communication/information/storage for a energy-crazed civilization living on a planet of finished resources, and working tirelessly at her own doom, what would you come up with? Logically, I mean, in an Darwinian evolutionary way? Survival-of-the-most-likely-to-bring-it-all-to-an-end? You'll invent this beautiful super-effective energy-driven device that's so easy and fun to use that in no time every thought and word and image of that civilization will be stored in it, to the point that many many many things will only exist in the device. So when the energy begins to lack, the people will be cut from their artefacts and...and what? It's just that bit-sized instantly rewarding stuff (any stuff) seems the perfect food for a dying person, cat, sycamore.

But of course the virtuality is what makes me free. A little bit freer.

ok, this was not only disheveled, but plain brooding. and not very...clear.


(Finno-Ugric languages (Italics indicate extinct languages)
Baltic-Finnic : Estonian · Finnish (Ingrian Finnish · Kven · Meänkieli) · Ingrian · Karelian (Ludic · Olonets Karelian) · Livonian · South Estonian (Seto · Võro) · Veps · Votic
Volga-Finnic : Mari · Erzya · Moksha · Merya · Meshcherian · Muromian
Permic : Komi · Komi-Permyak · Udmurt
Sami : Akkla · Inari · Kemi· Kildin · Lule · Northern · Pite · Skolt · Southern · Ter · Ume
Ugric
Hungarian · Khanty · Mansi)

On the power of hands

Years ago, Emilia worked in a bar for some time. One night, she witnessed a very sweet very drunk bum who'd gotten a gash on his head, and was being tended by a young nurse who happened to be there. As the nurse worked on him, he looked at her, rambling softly about how she had beautiful breasts, how he knew women like to be looked at, how he 'd want to make her one baby, or better : two, so they would never be lonely... if she'd only let him. What could have been harsh crude talk was actually tender, sincere, even respectful. Very vulnerable.
Afterwards, when Emilia asked the nurse how she coped with these things, she said she didn't mind because she had learned that when you touch (as in "put your hands on") very lonely persons, they sometime want to marry you on the spot. That's the effect hands can have, touching.

Sounds terrible. Well, it almost happened to me this afternoon, and I'm not even so lonely these days. During the whole second half-hour of the appointment, I seriously thought of proposing to the unknown osteopath who was kneading my sore back to a raw and happy pulp. Seriously.

(Yesterday, retouching. today, touching. Is there a pattern emerging here???)

the Intimacy of Strangers (3)

This lady has been living with me for ages. In the eighties in Berlin, one filmmaker-apprentice was earning some money touching up prints in a photo lab that worked for the Bauhaus museum. Some prints that he liked but were too bad to work on (not that you would notice it), he brought home. This one I fell in love with, so much I asked for it. Her steady gaze has been following me ever since, over changes of homes and countries. Time passes, she's immune. She was a mature lady then, she's now something of a child. She's part of my life. I had forgotten her name. If asked, I'd answer she was a textile artist of secondary importance at the Weimarer school. Two days ago, I stumbled on her in the Internet. I stood still, actually shocked, like seeing your half-naked sibling's pic on a dating site.
Marianne Brandt. That's her name. (Which I could have remembered, since the first boy who kissed me was thus called, Brandt. It happened by the fountain at the train station, an awful -if puzzling- disillusion. Which might be the reason.) She was a successful designer, and this is a self portrait. I read this and saw what I hadn't seen in some 25 years: the release mechanism in her left hand. And then I found the following: the whole picture. No idea when it was cut, and who did it. Public privacy. One way to exorcise it.

Cinderella nas Caldas

Foi ela que as viu, penduradas num molho cerrado ao lado dos bacalhaus. "Vendem-se muito" disse o merceeiro abrindo o molho no balcão, uma enchurrada de chinelos de criar Lapónia naquela viela húmida. "Aquelas são de mulher, as de homem só as posso ir buscar para a semana. Escolham, escolham." O principe, realista, murmurou que de certeza que eram feitos na China. "Em Gouveia. Mas já quase não se fazem, já não há retalhos, a industria téxtil fecha toda. E as mulherzinhas, envelhecem. As mais novas já não querem". Ela, enfim, pantufa é pantufa, mas sempre se prova, não? O merceeiro:" São feitas de qualquer maneira, não há tamanhos, veja se quer grande, ou pequeno. Vá vendo". Qual tamanho qual quê. "Quero aquelas com as solas encarnadas". 4 euros e meio, foi o que o principe pagou.

Mais tarde, addenda já nocturna:
Ao fim e ao cabo quem traz as pantufas não é o principe mas a fada madrinha. O principe só mais tarde acha uma, a perdida.(Primeiro escrevi noturna. Mas noturna perde mistério e se torna soturna, voltou nocturna. Tanta batalha que ainda me falta vencer aos meus conservadorismos encapotados.)

comfort-shattering maths

I have a friend with a black-and-white brain (says he), who wouldn't let anybody get away with bad science. He send me this: So now I stand corrected: Running out of the rain WILL get you less wet then just walking. How sad. I liked the counter-intuitive feel, the idea that in some cases doing nothing special would help more then hectic moving, that staying in could be better then moving out. But no.
Plus I'll never know if it was just one more case of Infamous Selective Remembering, or if the book had it wrong. (Me being me, odds are it's ISR. Very prone I am.)

happy january

Mitternacht, Gas alle (nichts mit Gazprom zu tun), die Wohnung saukalt. Also: Wasser kochen (das geht noch), Wärmeflasche füllen, T-shirt um die heisse Wärmeflasche wickeln, das ganze unter die Bettdecke, bisschen warten (Zähneputzen, etc.etc...) schnell auziehen, Wärmeflasche auswickeln, glühende T-shirt anziehen... Wohlseufz.
Dann von unter der Decke bloggen....

Les Filles sans Queue

I had to go to the cybercave to have them scanned, these small no-tail-girls. The Bengali deskman took them with the tips of his fingers, scanned them twice as fast as usually, asked if it was ok if he called the file "Art", put it on my flash-drive and returned to his work without saying good night. I didn't intend to upset him, his is the only cave in the neighborhood that's still open at this time of the night.
So here they are, the nekkid lassies, not tailed, nor tailored.
The no-tail-woman has still to come. She will awake soon, with no memory but, if she's lucky, just the ghost of a tail. Long, furry, and, of course, prehensile.

a orelha abelhuda

ouviu à porta do talho:
" é amanhã que me trazem o olho de vidro"

hoje correu tudo mal, a não ser o sol e a lua.

Já deitei fora 3 gratafunchos. Como é possível passar horas a tentar lembrar-se da linha dum nariz?

Nabelneid

Icy morning in the kitchen. The coffeepot takes its sweet personal time. On Radio France Internationale the speaker: 8 heures à Paris, 7 heures en Temps Universel. I always get a kick out of him. 7 o'clock, that's what the small watch hanging in the dried laurel says. Temps Universel, that's here, that's me and my yellow pointed slippers, we breathe small clouds in universal time, amidst galaxies and last years empty bottles! You wouldn't guess it but we are part of the whole! Merci! Merci!

Riding the Sulphur Baby

Don't ask.

anonovo

zero/zero

A uma brasileira que lhe contava o seu espanto ao descobrir que em Portugal dizem que fala brasileiro, quando para si, ela sempre falou português, Zero ia, com a maior das naturalidades, dizer que lhe parecia normal que a lingua dela tivesse o nome do pais onde é falada, quando zzzuuuiiito se calou, atingida pela primeira ilu do ano. Suiça, a pobre zeroglota fala francês. E até costuma achar meio ofensivo quando um galês lhe vêm dizer que fala suiço.

(ilu: abreviação para iluminacíon de melón: anomalia zeroglótica de cariz cucurbitácea. Isto é: embatanço da percebitação, pode ter vários feitios, vários sabores, mas pevides tem sempre)

Today's comfort

You're walking. It starts to rain.
If you start to run to get out of the rain, you'll actually get wetter then if you don't.
Something about the relative speeds of the falling drops, and yours.

I found this fact decades ago in a science book for kids. Such things, my brain grabs and remembers forever. I'd love it to be as efficient in other matters.

My name is Ismael

Hoje Ismael entrou na minha vida.
Isto é, já o conheço há anos, vende-me os cartões de telefone e o jornal ocasional.
Tem olhos meigos e tez indiana, sempre gostei da sua maneira desprendida de me tratar por tu. Nunca soube o nome dele, nem ele o meu.
Hoje passou uma mulher apressada: Olá Ismael.

Lisboa-Nantucket Express. O grande mar baleeiro a lamber o quiosque da Almirante Reis.

Mas há quem não goste de ler.