A tal do salto

Material world

I’ll stop in the Pakistani off-licence and buy the evening standard and the daily mirror, nick some paints, bright colours - red, yellow, blue, primary colours, you know – forget about cleaning the kitchen, someone will eventually do that. I will just spread newspapers everywhere and mix some colours. Touch something cold, with smell and physical existence, even if just for a second. Then, I might throw everything by the window. If it’s art, someone will have a look and remember it.

irritante

Londres está assim. Com mais horas de luz, chuva e trovoada, passeios molhados e alisados a pedir sombras e cores, bons para fotografar, prontos para receber a queda de alguém que anda rápido porque anda. Cidade no limbo. Recolhe os casacos mas ainda não bebe ao fim do dia nos bares cá fora. Vá, dá um salto!

Iraqis now capable of conducting war without the US

Washington, DC - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Monday that escalating violence in Iraq demonstrated that the Iraqi population is now capable of waging the Iraq war without outside military aid, and pronounced that the American mission there "was a complete sucess". "Over the last month the Iraqis have been fighting like you wouldn't believe", said Rumsfeld in a press conference at the Pentagon. "New Iraqis are joining the war everyday - so many, in fact, that we don't know where they all came from. It's almost as they came in from nowhere."

"The average Iraqi fighter has made remarkable progress and we are very proud," said Lt. Col. Bailey Whitman, a spokesman for coalition forces stationed in Baghdad. "In the past several weeks, people across Iraq have, in a systematic way unthinkable just three years ago, overrun both Shi'a and Sunni neighborhoods with devastating results. This is an out-and-out success by the standards of the modern American military."

Rumsfeld, however, sought to reassure the Iraqi people that despite their rapid improvement, the U.S. would not abandon them. "We've accomplished a lot," Rumsfeld said. "But there's still so much to take from the people of this rich country, and we're not going to pack up and leave just because they're doing so well on their own. We look forward to working very, very closely with Iraq, once there's a friendly government in place that we can do business with."
Added Rumsfeld: "We plan to be around for a long, long time."


The Onion. Como se apresenta? The America's finest news source. Verdade!
http://www.theonion.com/

cherry blossom ou cerejeiras em flor

Funny how certain movies show up in an oddly appropriate timing. Spring started with the double life of Veronique.

É engraçado como certos movimentos proporcionam um espectáculo estranho e se apropriam do tempo. A Primavera começou a dobrar com a vida da Verónica.

dog's world

estrujido ou estrugido?

"Quero um erro de gramática que refaça
na metade luminosa o poema do mundo,
e que Deus mantenha oculto na metade nocturna
o erro do erro:
alta voltagem do ouro,
bafo no rosto."

Herberto Helder

saudade

sentirmos falta de alguém que não vemos

short story

It was a rainy and foggy day in London. She was sitting in a café in Bloomsbury, with a toast and tea with milk. Reading the Independent and the latest projections for global warming. London is still far way from that, she thought. An umbrella opens. A raincoat turns. She stares and he walks away. He walked away. She turned the page.

“We deserve better - aren't we the future of France?”
Aurelie Silan
Student

Paris saw the biggest of Saturday’s marches. Unions said some 1.5 million took part. The French government wants to let firms offer job contracts to people under 26 which would make it easier for them to be fired at short notice. Anenne, a protester in Paris, said: "We are students and later we want to have jobs, but we see that the situation is getting worse in France on all fronts. "We have to come here and make ourselves heard. The vote is not enough; they approve laws without even asking us our opinion. It's not right." Another protester said he was marching because "the precarious situation of the youth will have an impact on our retirement". "We defend their cause and our cause at the same time."

José Sócrates, the Portuguese PM, announced before he was elected that he aimed to create 5,000 traineeships for young professionals. What are professional traineeships? Job contracts to young people which offer no job security. More: they are usually underpaid. Why was everyone so pleased with his proposal? Why didn’t we go there and "make ourselves heard"? Speaking against myself: where were the Aurelies and Anennes of Portugal at that time?

Trees!

How cosy beneath them. Or just looking at them, actually. Feeling like a tiny ant, with the protection of a grandmother. “Yeah! Look, here I am and this is my granny! Who’s gonna kill me now, ah? Come on Mr. Squirrel, don’t just stare, try to do something! Scared? Ahhhhh! Who dares to threat me, now?”. Funny how long trees live. Once saw a tree with 1200 years old. Maybe some live even more than that. That one looked quite elderly to me. I lived 28 years. She lived 1200. Almost 43 mes! I wonder how that must feel. Maybe I should ask her if some girl like me sat once in a winter day beneath her thinking what I am thinking. Lady tree, do you know anything from her life? Was she happy?

More important

How come all of a sudden you realize that something is more important than your sleeping pillow? Your views from Covent Garden, your new dress from Topshop? Your annual leave, your signed CD of Anouar Brahem? More precious than your pills, you bath at the end of the day, your day of sun in London or one day in Alentejo? Your mobile phone, your £1000, your last paper, your voice in the radio, a picnic with your friends, her breed, your smile.

Como é que de repente te apercebes que alguma coisa é mais importante que a tua almofada? As tuas vistas de Covent Garden, o teu novo vestido da Topshop? Os teus dias de férias, o teu CD autografado de Anouar Brahem? Mais precioso que as tuas pílulas, o banho de imersão ao fim do dia, o teu dia de sol em Londres ou um dia no Alentejo? O teu telemóvel, os teus €1500, o teu último artigo, a tua voz na rádio, um picnic com os teus amigos, a sua raça, o teu sorriso.

Sohotown

"If you get Sohoitis...you will stay there always, day and night and get no work done ever. You have been warned." Tambimuttu, the editor of Poetry London, to writer Julian McLaren-Ross.

The start of a book by Judith Summers on the history of Soho, London's most colourful neighbourhood. A good start for a blog. Wellcome!