The Hymn of Kassiani

I often miss the church. Especially during the Holy Week. It´s Holy Tuesday today. They sang the Hymn of Kassiani. I can see the church full of people, close together, I can feel the warmth of the candles, the smell of the burning incense. And I can hear the beautiful hymn of 'the woman of many sins' filling the church, all the way up to the dome.



P.S. And what can I say... I am also a woman of many sins... and vices... and routines. I couldn´t keep away from the blog.

The promise

"...But far away, emerging from the waters like the back of a gigantic cetacean, the reddish island, the mysterious Berlenga, waves, a gesture of kindness and of promise..." Mariano Calado

In my family they say that when I was a kid I would stay content with promises. I didn´t really demand that they would be materialized. The promise alone was enough for me. It seems that I haven´t grown up.

It was very beautiful by the sea today. Promising.

Le signorine di Wilko

I saw it last week, but I still think about it. It was the set, the light, the costumes ("... the characteristics of women´s fashion of the 40s in a war context. It is not by chance that women´s fashion of that time is at the same time masculine, almost brutal and with a military-like style, but also erotic and sexually provocative"), everything intensely realistic (hyper-realistic), perfect for a story about lives gone different than expected, about desires looking for the chance to be fulfilled. It was the beautiful work of latvian director Alvis Hermanis, who has left me amazed for the second time. And it was the italian, of course. The unsurpassed language of desiderio.

Le signorine di Wilko, directed by Alvis Hermanis. Emilia Romagna Teatro

The process

And I am quoting:

"...we recognize the loss, with rage, guilt, explosions of sadness, sometimes depression; and finally, the acceptance, the redefinition of 'I'. We encounter and live at peace with ourselves and thus the mourning ends."

It´s a pity they don´t define a timetable. It would be good to have an approximate idea about the "finally" and the "thus".

Lullaby

It´s like a lullaby. Who doesn´t need a lullaby?

The cauliflower

"You turn your body and imagination over to keep sadness away. But who told you it´s not allowed to be sad? The truth is that, many times, there´s nothing more sensible than being sad; every day things happen, to others, to us, and you can´t help it, or maybe you can, with that ancient and unique cure of feeling sad.

Don´t let the others give you prescriptions of joy, as those who prescribe a period of antibiotics or spoons of seawater with an empty stomach. If you let them treat your sadness as if it was a perversion or, at best, an illness, you´re lost: apart from sad, you´ll feel guilty. And you´re not guilty for being sad. Isn´t it normal to feel pain when you cut yourself? Doesn´t the flesh burn when you´re whipped?

So, in the same way, the world, the vague succession of facts that occur (or those that do not occur) create a fund of melancholy. The poet Leopardi said: “Just like the air fills the spaces between objects, melancholy fills the intervals between one pleasure and the next”. Live your sadness, touch it, defoliate it in your eyes, wet it with tears; wrap it in screams or silence, copy it in notebooks, write it down on your body, write it down on your skin´s pores. Because only if you don´t defend yourself it will run away, momentarily, to another place, different from the centre of your intimate pain.

And so that you can taste your sadness, I´ll also recommend a melancholic dish: cauliflower in the mist. Boil that white, sad and consistent flower in steam. Slowly, with that smell of breath the mouth gives off in lamentations, it will boil until it gets soft. And wrapped in mist, in its evaporating steam, add to it oil and garlic and some pepper, and salt it with your own tears. Then taste it slowly, biting it from the fork, and cry more, cry still, and that flower will end up sucking your melancholy without leaving you dry, without leaving you calm, without stealing the only thing that is yours at that moment, the only thing that nobody can take from you amymore, your sadness; but with the feeling of having shared with that unfading flower, with that absurd, prehistoric flower, with that flower the betrothed never ask the florist for, with that cabbage flower that nobody puts in the vases, with that anomaly, with that flourished sadness, your own sadness of cauliflower, of the sad and melancholic plant."

Once again from Cookbook for Sad Women, by Héctor Abad Faciolince. It´s not an illness. It´s just a cauliflower. And it´s OK to taste it.

Clouds of May

A small boy is given an egg. If he manages not to break it during forty days, he´ll get the watch with music he so much desires. He keeps it in his pocket. Going to and coming from school every day, with a heavy racksack on his back, he always has his hand in the pocket, protecting the egg. He really wants the watch.

One day, on his way back home, an old lady calls him and asks him to take a basket with tomatoes to another person´s house. It´s a long way. He walks and walks, from time to time he has to stop to rub his hands, aching from the weight. He´s sweating, he´s tired. He´s going up a hill. He stops to take a breath, leaves the basket down, looks back to the long way he came from.

As he picks up the basket again, a tomato falls. He bends to pick it up and... the egg breaks in his pocket (and it seemed that my heart broke with it). He realises what´s happened. His pocket is wet. He doesn´t cry. He turns to the basket and kicks it hard. The tomatoes roll down the hill. Be damned, stupid tomatoes!

Clouds of May, a film by Nuri Bilge Ceylan

A contradictory confusion

"That tendency of yours to betray, to lie - and to be perfectly frank. To hide - or to be too open. That concern to preserve yourself - only to end up telling your story, your truth, with every detail, to a stranger. That wish to escape, to run away when someone seems to get to know you, although you don´t reveal yourself, and that vertigo to stay. That untamed thirst for someone - and for not being with anyone. That hunger for the impossibles. How to think in the middle of this contradictory confusion? It´s the truth and it´s a lie, it´s OK and it´s not OK, and there´s no way out. Nothing to do. Have a glass of water."

Cookbook for Sad Women by Héctor Abad Faciolince

It´s somehow terrifying. But I am eager to read the rest. And terrified... And eager... And terrified... And eager...

Other journeys - Foz Côa

Foz Côa, Feb 1999

At lunchtime today I recalled my trips to Foz Côa. The valley and our encounter with paleolithic art is a very special experience. We arrive at the small museum and then we are taken with a jeep down the narrow and winding road, few people at a time. First we see the river, the vineyards, the rocks. And once we get closer and we look better... we are left breathless. There they are, the beautiful engravings of animals, sometimes standing alone, sometimes overlapping. Elegant, precise lines, figures that were drawn on the rock thousands of years ago. There is absolute silence around us (thanks to the control of visitor numbers), just us and the thousand-year-old figures.

I´ve been to Foz Côa twice, once in February, the second time in November. The landscape is beautiful in winter, but even more in late automn, when we witness the intense celebration of the colourful vineyards. Next time it will be in spring, hoping to enjoy the blooming almond trees.

Denial

In 1963 there was a strong belief that Neruda was going to win the Nobel prize. Seferis got it. The Chilean ambassador in Paris had prepared a party for Neruda, that did not take place. "Do you know who this Seferis is?", the ambassador asked Neruda. "No idea", was Neruda´s answer.

DENIAL
by Giorgos Seferis

On the secret seashore
white like a pigeon
we thirsted at noon;
but the water was brackish.

On the golden sand
we wrote her name;
but the sea-breeze blew
and the writing vanished.

With what spirit, what heart,
what desire and passion
we lived our life: a mistake!
So we changed our life...

[English translation by Edmund Keeley and Phillip Sherrard]

Mikis Theodorakis put it into music. He also composed the music for Neruda´s Canto General...

Frozen peas

Crammed, nervous, suffocating frozen peas build fences with piles of magazines and newspapers, old and new blogs, and hide behind them. And the day finally passes. A relief.

Facing another week.


Bobby Baker, Diary drawing

The beloved Orient

It´s almost impossible to listen to the Istanbul Oriental Ensemble sitting. Keeping the feet still, the shoulders from twitching. The sounds are very familiar. The sweetness of the violin, the lament of the clarinet, expressions of the soul of the Orient. And I was once again in Istanbul, the 'old beloved'. I could see the melancholic Bosphorus, I would find myself lost in the beehive of Capali Carsi (closed market), I could taste apple tea and sweet baklava, I would feel the nonchalance in the air of the narrow streets in a hot summer afternoon, I could hear the orthodox and the muslims praising god. The Orient is lament, nonchalance and longing.

It´s gonna be OK

The two brothers sit side by side on the floor, exhausted after their physical and emotional fight, and Bobby says to Jack: "It´s gonna be OK".

On an average day, by John Kolvenbach.

More on silence

José Gil was interviewed yesterday on the occasion of giving his last class. Here´s a passage:

“[…] We lose a necessary density in perceiving the work of art. When we exhibit and sell those statuettes… We approve. It´s the democratization of culture, etc. But I can guarantee that we lose a density and richness of perception. I mean, we lose the silence. And we need silence. And this is not very profound stuff. What´s terrible is that they´ve become very profound stuff! They are obvious things! I remember a friend who´s an ethnologist, french, working, I think, in Senegal. One of the people from the region where he was doing his fieldwork would go to Paris, knock on his door, get in, sit down and it seems that he would stay for five hours without saying a word. Five hours later, he would get up and say goodbye and leave. It´s a different way of being. He had done what was necessary: he had regained the friendship, in silence. Silence speaks – there must also exist a language of silence… So, we are talking about simple things that, suddenly, have become esoteric.[...]”

I liked that. I would have liked to meet the man from Senegal. And the man who was considered one of the top 25 thinkers of the world and who seems to appreciate the language of silence. He gave his last class yesterday.

Other journeys - The faun

The visit to Munich´s Glyptothek is one of the fondest memories from my first trip to that city. Many beautiful things from home are kept there, especially sculptures, a constant reminder of the german fascination with hellenic antiquity. The Glyptothek is rather small and it was very quiet on the day I visited, I had it almost all to myself. It felt cosy and it was exciting and touching seeing so much of 'our stuff' there.

The most special of those encounters, though, was with Barberini´s Faun, probably my favourite hellenistic statue. I was left completely in awe when I had first studied it. It´s the details on his marble body, his position, the expression on his face. It makes you feel you can hear his heavy, tired breathing (those satyrs/fauns being always very 'active'), you can see his muscles moving. At the same time he looks strong and vulnerable.

What´s to be vulnerable? It´s to be 'susceptible to being wounded or hurt', it´s to be 'open to moral attack, criticism, temptation'. It feels human and acceptable when we see it in others. Completely pathetic when it concerns us.

Silent landscapes

The news have just arrived. It´s snowing heavily in my hometown. We used to go to walk by the lake at night and there was a very special silence while the snow was falling. Comforting. Peaceful.

And when the clouds go away and the sky is clear, the moonlight reflects on the mountains and everything looks blue and bright. Still comforting. And peaceful.

Suddenly I miss it. That comfort. And that peace. And the silence, more than anything.

Silence

We tend to think of silence as something negative. It´s not. Actually, Euripides said: "Either say something better than silence or be silent". So, we better be silent when all we want is to hear our voice; when we have nothing important to say; when we have nothing interesting to say; when we are going to repeat ourselves; when we know in advance we are going to regret having spoken.

But there is more to it.

We better be silent when speaking becomes a condition; when we are encouraged to speak by the just curious; when speaking simply leaves us exposed.

Silence is a shelter. And it comes with a price. That´s the hard part.

Other journeys - Istanbul

Today I visited Ara Güler´s exhibition at CCB. His images of Istanbul brought back beautiful memories from my trips to the melancholic 'Poli' (as the Greeks call it). The people - particularly welcoming with those from 'Yunanistan' -, the monuments, the busy and dirty streets, the women covering with scarves and grey or beige raincoats during the August ramazan, the priests in Fanari, the river, the wooden houses on its shores, the bridge linking Europe to Asia, the terribly cold and grey streets in winter, the muezzins calling for prayer... And also the Greeks who took us around and who, few years later, would follow so many others before them and 'return' to the motherland... There are faces in Güler´s photos, cafés, activities, that are 'theirs' as much as they are 'ours'. They are two people´s that lived together for a very long time. Or should I say more than two. Güler is of armenian origin.

Being at CCB, I didn´t resist having a second go at Annemarie Schwarzenbach´s photos from the Middle East. These are different 'journeys'. There is no fear there. Just longing.

I could dance all night

Spirits up! Come on, dear Pollyannas, we can make it.

Sol Negro

Na minha voz In my voice
trago a noite e o mar I carry the night and the sea
O meu canto é a luz My song is the light
de um sol negro em dor of a black sun in pain
É o amor que morreu It is the love that died
na noite do mar in the darkness of the sea

Valha Nossa Senhora Our Lady
Há quanto tempo ele foi embora For how long has he been gone
Para bem longe pra além do mar Far away, beyond the sea
Para além dos braços de Iemanjá Beyond the arms of Iemanjá
Adeus Goodbye
(Caetano Veloso)

When I learned this song I didn´t know the language was portuguese...

Mind faces

Bobby Baker is a performance artist. During the years that she was enjoying some of her major successes, few people knew that she was suffering from a severe mental disease. That her public and private life were quiet separate worlds.

While she was being treated, and that lasted many years, she had made a strict rule: "...To do a diary drawing every single day I was there [the day centre]". Some of these drawings are now on display at the Gulbenkian Foundation, in an exhibition called "Mind Faces". They are colourful, they are frightening, they are beautiful, painful and revealing. And they make you think. A lot.

Top left: Yoga for weepers / Top right: Running away from depression
Bottom left: An anxious person / Bottom right: Pea crisis

The drawings were clearly a survival mechanism. Does doing a diary drawing every single day sound like doing a post every single day...?