You’re a nothing but a scared little boy who can’t handle how extraordinarily ordinary you are!

às vezes a MTV surpreende

But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;

Matthew Arnold

Nice song

Esta série faz-me rir descontroladamente.

Modern family. O exemplo maravilhoso de uma série que é hilariante. E no último episódio quem me fez rir mais foram as fantasias de Halloween e os comentários que foram feitos.

Claire: Are you trying to get candy or japanese businessmen?

Haley: Okay, Mom. You cannot have a problem with this. I’m Mother Teresa.
Claire: Are you kidding me?
Haley: What? I’m her back when she was hot.
Claire: I will pay you ten dollars to put on more clothes.
Alex: Bet that’s the first time you ever heard that one.

Não sei porque

é a pressa, a rapidez, a notícia em cima da hora, não sei o que é mas acontece sempre a mesma coisa.
Dentes cerrados, músculos a contrair e pensamentos! Muitos pensamentos!
Será que pára? Tem que parar. E era bom que parasse agora!

Depois de tantos anos, encontrei-te

Uma pequenina luz bruxuleante
não na distância brilhando no extremo da estrada
aqui no meio de nós e a multidão em volta
une toute petite lumière
just a little light
una piccola... em todas as línguas do mundo
uma pequena luz bruxuleante
brilhando incerta mas brilhando
aqui no meio de nós
entre o bafo quente da multidão
a ventania dos cerros e a brisa dos mares
e o sopro azedo dos que a não vêem
só a adivinham e raivosamente assopram.
Uma pequena luz
que vacila exacta
que bruxuleia firme
que não ilumina apenas brilha.
Chamaram-lhe voz ouviram-na e é muda.
Muda como a exactidão como a firmeza
como a justiça.
Brilhando indefectível.
Silenciosa não crepita
não consome não custa dinheiro.
Não é ela que custa dinheiro.
Não aquece também os que de frio se juntam.
Não ilumina também os rostos que se curvam.
Apenas brilha bruxuleia ondeia
indefectível próxima dourada.
Tudo é incerto ou falso ou violento: brilha.
Tudo é terror vaidade orgulho teimosia: brilha.
Tudo é pensamento realidade sensação saber: brilha.
Tudo é treva ou claridade contra a mesma treva: brilha.
Desde sempre ou desde nunca para sempre ou não: brilha.
Uma pequenina luz bruxuleante e muda
como a exactidão como a firmeza
como a justiça.
Apenas como elas.
Mas brilha.
Não na distância. Aqui
no meio de nós.
Brilha.

25/9/1949

Jorge de Sena

Shit happens

Taoism: Shit happens.

Confucianism: Confucius say, "Shit happens."

Buddhism: If shit happens, it isn't really shit.

Zen Buddhism: Shit is, and is not.

Zen Buddhism #2: What is the sound of shit happening?

Hinduism: This shit has happened before.

Islam: If shit happens, it is the will of Allah.

Islam #2: If shit happens, kill the person responsible.

Islam #3: If shit happens, blame Israel.

Catholicism: If shit happens, you deserve it.

Protestantism: Let shit happen to someone else.

Presbyterian: This shit was bound to happen.

Episcopalian: It's not so bad if shit happens, as long as you serve the right wine with it.

Methodist: It's not so bad if shit happens, as long as you serve grape juice with it.

Congregationalist: Shit that happens to one person is just as good as shit that happens to another.

Unitarian: Shit that happens to one person is just as bad as shit that happens to another.

Lutheran: If shit happens, don't talk about it.

Fundamentalism: If shit happens, you will go to hell, unless you are born again. (Amen!)

Judaism: Why does this shit always happen to us?

Calvinism: Shit happens because you don't work.

Seventh Day Adventism: No shit shall happen on Saturday.

Creationism: God made all shit.

Secular Humanism: Shit evolves.

Christian Science: When shit happens, don't call a doctor - pray!

Christian Science #2: Shit happening is all in your mind.

Unitarianism: Come let us reason together about this shit.

Quakers: Let us not fight over this shit.

Utopianism: This shit does not stink.

Darwinism: This shit was once food.

Capitalism: That's MY shit.

Communism: It's everybody's shit.

Feminism: Men are shit.

Chauvinism: We may be shit, but you can't live without us...

Commercialism: Let's package this shit.

Impressionism: From a distance, shit looks like a garden.

Idolism: Let's bronze this shit.

Existentialism: Shit doesn't happen; shit IS.

Existentialism #2: What is shit, anyway?

Stoicism: This shit is good for me.

Hedonism: There is nothing like a good shit happening!

Mormonism: God sent us this shit.

Mormonism #2: This shit is going to happen again.

Wiccan: An it harm none, let shit happen.

Scientology: If shit happens, see "Dianetics", p.157.

Jehovah's Witnesses: >Knock< >Knock<>

Jehovah's Witnesses #2: May we have a moment of your time to show you some of our shit?

Moonies: Only really happy shit happens.

Hare Krishna: Shit happens, rama rama.

Rastafarianism: Let's smoke this shit!

Zoroastrianism: Shit happens half on the time.

Church of SubGenius: BoB shits.

Practical: Deal with shit one day at a time.

Agnostic: Shit might have happened; then again, maybe not.

Agnostic #2: Did someone shit?

Agnostic #3: What is this shit?

Satanism: SNEPPAH TIHS.

Atheism: What shit?

Atheism #2: I can't believe this shit!

Nihilism: No shit.

mal posso esperar para ver The Social Network

Só penso nisso, Isabel Abreu

no Album Assobio da Cobra de Manuel Paulo

Boca de leão
Olhos de falcão
Faro de outro ser
Que faz ão ão
Misturar o ser
A terra e o céu
Até nem saber
O que é meu ou teu
Pernas de anarquista
Mãos de carteirista
Boca de sacana
A quem ninguém resista
Há de ser a sós
Será tudo nosso
Até que um de nós diga
Estou que nem posso!

Refrão:
Faço o que quiseres
Até compromisso
Para não dizeres
Que eu só penso nisso!

Fama de jibóia
Teia de aranhão
Cavalo de Tróia
No meu coração
Há de ser a dois
Dois e mais nenhum
Para que depois
Sejam só dois em um

Refrão

Faço o que quiseres
Hoje ou nem por isso
Mas eu sei que queres
Que pense nisso!

Quando eu morrer voltarei para buscar os instante que não vivi junto do mar!

Obrigado

Já li isto tantas vezes! És unica, J.

Amo-te como amaria o irmão que não tenho. Amo-te mais ainda, porque com um irmão haveria sempre a justificação do sangue.

O livro dos rapazes

No sábado vou ser padrinho do M. que é lindo de morrer.
Comprei-lhe hoje parte do presente que ele terá.

O livro dos rapazes - como ser o melhor em tudo.

Tem coisas muito úteis tais como: como fazer uma fogueira, como cair sem te magoares...muito, como sair de areia movediça, como trepar até um copa de uma palmeira.
Enfim, coisas úteis para o dia-a-dia.
Mas a melhor é:

Como ser um santo católico
1. Morre.
2. Bispos locais investigam a tua vida.
3. o papa proclama que és um modelo de virtude
4. Faz milagres (não podem ser truques!)

Fica aqui o guia para se alguém estiver a ambicionar sê-lo no futuro próximo...

Conheço pessoas assim

Mesmo depois de desligar o computador, não passa sem o estímulo que os seus restantes aparelhómetros electrónicos lhe proporcionam. Esquece-se de coisas como combinações para jantar e tem dificuldade em dar atenção à família.

É assim que funciona um cérebro sintonizado com os computadores.

Film experience meets Julianne Moore!

Nathaniel: I've seen all of your movies but four.

[At this last confession outburst, Julianne registers a split second of shock, followed by hilariously self-deprecating sympathy.]

Julianne: Really? My god, you've seen some junk then!

Hilarious

It's hard, hard not to sit on your hands
And bury your head in the sand
Hard not to make other plans
and claim that you've done all you can all along
And life must go on

It's hard, hard to stand up for what's right
And bring home the bacon each night
Hard not to break down and cry
When every idea that you've tried has been wrong
But you must go carry on

It's hard but you know it's worth the fight
'cause you know you've got the truth on your side
When the accusations fly, hold tight
Don't be afraid of what they'll say
Who cares what cowards think, anyway
They will understand one day, one day

It's hard, hard when you're here all alone
And everyone else has gone home
Harder to know right from wrong
When all objectivity's gone
And it's gone
But you still carry on

'cause you, you are the only one left
And you've got to clean up this mess
You know you'll end up like the rest
Bitter and twisted, unless
You stay strong and you carry on

It's hard but you know it's worth the fight

'cause you know you've got the truth on your side
When the accusations fly, hold tight
And don't be afraid of what they'll say
Who cares what cowards think, anyway
They will understand one day, one day.

Tropecei mas não caí

Para ti, lu!

Porque te conheço há muitos anos, e depois deles todos gosto de ti como sempre.

Porque me lembro de brincarmos, de banhos no jardim, de tirar fotocópias e de nos rirmos até o meu pai achar que eramos malucos.

Porque me lembro das nossas noites, do que bebemos em conjunto, dos dramas, das choradeiras, do que fomos crescendo, dos amigos que foram passando, de eu sempre um passo atrás e tu a comandares.

Porque eu sabia que tu sabias daquilo que eu sabia e assim foi rápido, indolor, sem dramas e claro, regado com um belo shot a seguir.

Porque sempre estiveste perto, sempre chamaste por mim quando estavas mal e eu aprendi a chamar por ti quando eu estava em baixo.

Porque me acolhes, porque abres a porta de tua casa, porque me dás de dormir e eu te procuro e cada vez mais, porque tenho necessidade de partilhar contigo o que se passa comigo.

Porque gosto de te ouvir e de estar contigo. Porque és uma lufada de ar fresco, porque és dura nas tuas críticas em relação ao teu trabalho, porque nunca faltaste, porque foste sempre e eu gosto de o fazer para ti.

Porque tenho orgulho em ti! Muito! Pela mulher que eu vi transformar-se à minha frente, por essa beleza que foste deixando sair enquanto o teu cabelo caía, pela lutadora que te revelaste, pela maneira incrível com que lutaste pelo que querias, por o teres conseguido, por teres ido atrás de um sonho e isso se ter revelado a tua melhor opção.

Porque és única e és minha amiga, porque eu sinto-me um pouco perdido se não estou contigo, porque és simplesmente tu, queria dizer-te que te adoro, muito, e que és mesmo muito importante na minha vida.

Do teu amigo

João

Ana

É o nevoeiro, sabes.
E eu aqui fechado em casa
à espera que chegues todos os dias
sem saber se tu chegas todos os dias
à espera da chave na porta e tu a entrares
tu que vens de lá de fora todos os dias, do trabalho
vens do nevoeiro, do escuro, nem sei como
da chuva, de toda esta chuva que se ouve
E se
não sei
se tu não entrares
se tu um dia, imagina
um dia eu aqui à espera, aqui dentro
os barulhos lá fora
e tu não
e nunca mais.
Se desapareceres
se tu um dia
depois como é
como é que vai ser
o que é que eu posso
o que é que eu devo
o que é que eu faço se um dia tu não entrares?
É nisso que eu penso.
E as pessoas lá fora
Está alguém lá fora que passa o dia lá fora
alguém que quer falar contigo mas não te encontra
mas quando te encontrar
o que é que vai acontecer
o que é que vai acontecer quando te encontrar?
E eu aqui
e só quando entras é que eu
só quando te tenho aqui ao pé de mim
aí sentada
só então é que posso descansar.
Desculpa.
Tens razão, desculpa.
é só o nevoeiro, é só a noite, é só isso.
Estou cansado. Cansado de estar aqui dentro fechado
todos os dias
de não conseguir trabalhar
e de estar à tua espera todos os dias.
Devia sair
talvez se eu saísse
nem que fosse descer só à rua.
Se não tivesse tanto medo de me perder
se tivesse um sítio para onde
porque é muito difícil sair quando não tenho nenhum sítio
para onde ir
quando não tenho nada lá fora
não se vê nada
não se vê ninguém
e esta impressão.
Não sei.

José Maria Vieira Mendes

Wise up?

Este fim de semana

Foi das melhores viagens que fiz! E foi mesmo aqui ao lado!
Soube mesmo bem.

Para ti!

Música do dia

Ontem fiquei ansioso

Fiquei ansioso, pelo meu futuro.
Porque se quiser ser bom, tenho que me dedicar, mas essa dedicação irá ocupar-me tempo e eu não sei como lidar com algumas coisas.
Não sei lidar com o facto de ter que ir a baptizados ou a funerais ou a casamentos, e não puder, porque tenho peça e ninguém me pode substituir.
Não sei lidar com o facto de os nossos filhos precisarem de mim e não poder estar lá para eles.
Não sei lidar com o facto de tu me quereres e não estar por perto.
Eu sei que isto é tudo por antecipação, mas não estou a saber lidar com a conjugação da minha vida pessoal e profissional...

Hoje

fiz três coisas que já não fazia há muito tempo.

Subi a uma árvore e fiquei lá, só porque posso;

deixei correr a água do tanque pelos canais só para ver a força que tinha;

e corri em erva alta e molhada enquanto me ria alto. E só há uma forma de o fazer direito. Esta:

Ontem a minha lealdade custou-me €500

MERDA!!!

My name is asher lev

If you want to know how to do a thing you must first have a complete desire to do that thing. Then go to kindred spirits - others who have wanted to do that thing - and study their ways and means, learn from their successes and failures and add your quota. Thus you may acquire from the experience of the race. And with this technical knowledge you may go forward, expressing through the play of forms the music that is in you and wich is very personal to you.

Fado da tristeza

Não cantes alegrias a fingir
Se alguma dor existir
A roer dentro da toca
Deixa a tristeza sair
Pois só se aprende a sorrir
Com a verdade na boca

Quem canta uma alegria que não tem
Não conta nada a ninguém
Fala verdade a mentir
Cada alegria que inventas
Mata a verdade que tentas
Pois e tentar a fingir

Não cantes alegrias de encomenda
Que a vida não se remenda
Com morte que não morreu
Canta da cabeça aos pés
Canta com aquilo que és
Só podes dar o que é teu

Verdade ou mentira

" assisti à cena seguinteentre um farmacêutico de idade já avançada e um indivíduo, vestindo um impermeável, que parecua conduzir-se correcta ou até atenciosamente. O farmacêutico recusava-se a comprar-lhe o retreato do Führer.

"Este retrato vem directamente de Munique, e está a ser vendido por 28 xelins, já emoldurado; acrescento que o Partido recomenda a sua aquisição e que muitos dos seus membros mais altamente colocados o têm também".

"Mas", respondia o farmacêutico, "é que precisamente comprei outro ontem, que é ainda mais bem feito e, embora de perfil, ainda mais fiel do que o seu".

"Como quiser", respondeu o vendedor, "mas devo-lhe dizer que fui mandatado pelo Partido para vender este retrato, e que registo o nome de todos os compradores num caderno especial, porque tudo tem que ser feito correctamente, e, como Göering tão bem disse, nenhuma pessoa inocente será fuzilada...".

O farmacêutico pagou os 28 Xelins."

Annemarie Schwarzenbach, A Áustria à espera de um novo libertador?

Achei este texto uma enorme estória.
A possibilidade de o vendedor ser um aldabrão. A possibilidade de não ser. O farmacêutico recusar comprar. O farmacêutico recusar ser mais uma vez forçado.
O medo que aqui paira - E se ele não me comprar? E se ele me denunciar - ou - E se eu não lho comprar? E se eu for apanhado?.

Muito bom mesmo

Desculpa

às vezes não sei.
às vezes parece que estou distante e o que eu quero é estar mais perto.
Serei assim tão confuso... Ontem queria ter estado perto, muito perto, mas acabei bem longe. e pior que longe acabei a magoar-te. e isso é que eu não queria.
Por isso acaba por me magoar a mim. parece que falhei. parece que sou fraco. parece que só penso em mim.

Não gosto do que fiz, não gosto de como te sentes. não gosto de como me sinto depois te ver.

“Wherever you go, go with all your heart.”

OUVISTE?!?!?

o post a a seguir é grande mas vale a pena!

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

*Dedicado ao BA*

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.

So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to speak against their governments. Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.

Obrigado por me teres abraçado tão apertadinho

We all bear the scars
Yes, we all feign a laugh
We all cry in the dark
Get cut off before we start

And as your first act begins
You realise they're all waiting
For a fall, for a flaw, for the end

And there's a path stained with tears
Could you talk to quiet my fears
Could you pull me aside
Just to acknowledge that i've tried

As your last breath begins
Contently take it in
Cause we all get it in
The end

And as your last breath begins
You find your demon's your best friend
And we all get it in
The end

Música do dia

os novos anúncios da Snickers são simplesmente geniais!!!

A Bela e o Paparazzo

*UPDATE* - A minha avó disse que eu precisava de ter mais consternação. 2º best avó

Muitas pessoas têm ido ver a Bela e o Paparazzo para me verem pela 1ª vez no grande ecrã.
Os meus pais, a minha cunhada, os meus amigos.
Mas de todas as pessoas que foram aquela que mais me emocionou foi o facto de a minha Conceição (empregada/família lá de casa) ter ido.

É que já não ia há mais de 30 anos...

Obrigado Sãozinha

Música do dia

piroso...mas honesto!

Maria:
Perhaps I had a wicked childhood
Perhaps I had a miserable youth
But somwhere in my wicked, miserable past
There must have been a moment of truth

For here you are, standing there, loving me
Whether or not you should
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good

Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good

Captain:
For here you are, standing there, loving me
Whether or not you should

Maria:
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good

Maria and the Captain:
Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could

Maria:
So somewhere in my youth
Captain:
Or childhood
Maria:
I must have done something . . .
Maria and the Captain:
Something good

Cavalo à solta

Não sei se é a melhor versão mas a letra é simplesmente única...
e é simplesmente tua

Cavalo à solta

Minha laranja amarga e doce
meu poema
feito de gomos de saudade
minha pena
pesada e leve
secreta e pura
minha passagem para o breve breve
instante da loucura.

Minha ousadia
meu galope
minha rédea
meu potro doido
minha chama
minha réstia
de luz intensa
de voz aberta
minha denúncia do que pensa
do que sente a gente certa.

Em ti respiro
em ti eu provo
por ti consigo
esta força que de novo
em ti persigo
em ti percorro
cavalo à solta
pela margem do teu corpo.

Minha alegria
minha amargura
minha coragem de correr contra a ternura.

Por isso digo
canção castigo
amêndoa travo corpo alma amante amigo
por isso canto
por isso digo
alpendre casa cama arca do meu trigo.

Meu desafio
minha aventura
minha coragem de correr contra a ternura.

                   José Carlos Ary dos Santos

jura

Jura que não vais ter uma aventura
Dessas que acontecem numa altura
E depois se desvanecem
Sem lembrança boa ou má
E por isso mesmo se esquecem

Jura que se tiveres uma aventura
Vais contar uma mentira
Com cuidado e com ternura
Vais fazer uma pintura
Com uma tinta qualquer
Que o ciúme é queimadura
Que faz o coração sofrer

Jura que não vais ter uma aventura
Porque eu hei-de estar sempre à altura
De saber
Que a solidão é dura
E o amor é uma fervura
Que a saudade não segura
E a razão não serena

(os dois últimos versos foram eliminados pelo autor deste blogue... só porque sim!)

sim sou optimista

mas não tenho de ser sempre. Não tenho de aceitar de sorriso nos lábios o que não compreendo. Na vida somos o que somos. Ponto.
Todos temos maus momentos, eu tenho (muitas vezes) os meus. Não têm de me aturar, se o fazem é porque querem, porque talvez me compreendam melhor do que eu mesma. O que eu não compreendo não tenho de aturar. Não compreendo quem apregoa felicidade sabendo que não é feliz. Não compreendo como é que se pode ter uma visão dum mundo que não existe: e nada disto tem a ver com teorias políticas ou ideológicas, tem a ver com a vida como ela é.

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