desejos compulsivos

Eu sou o olhar que penetra nas camadas do mundo,

ando debaixo da pele e sacudo os sonhos.

Não desprezo nada que tenha visto,

todas as coisas se gravam pra sempre na minha cachola.

Toco nas flores, nas almas, nos sons, nos movimentos,

destelho as casas penduradas na terra,

tiro os cheiros dos corpos das meninas sonhando.

Desloco as consciências,

a rua estala com os meus passos,

e ando nos quatro cantos da vida.

Consolo o herói vagabundo, glorifico o soldado vencido,

não posso amar ninguém porque sou o amor,

tenho me surpreendido a cumprimentar os gatos

e a pedir desculpas ao mendigo.

Sou o espírito que assiste à Criação

e que bole em todas as almas que encontra.

Múltiplo, desarticulado, longe como o diabo.

nada me fixa nos caminhos do mundo.

Cantiga de Malazarte

 

 O cavalo mecânico arrebata o manequim pensativo

que invade a sombra das casas no espaço elástico.

Ao sinal do sonho a vida move direitinho as estátuas

que retomam seu lugar na série do planeta.

Os homens largam a ação na paisagem elementar

e invocam os pesadelos de mármore na beira do infinito.

Os fantasmas vibram mensagens de outra luz nos olhos,

expulsam o sol do espaço e se instalam no mundo.

 O Mundo Inimigo

 Murilo Mendes

(1901-1975)

In 1929 a large earthquake occurred near New Zealand. Danish seismologist Inge Lehmann “the only Danish seismologist,” as she once referred to herself—studied the shock waves and was puzzled by what she saw. A few P-waves, which should have been deflected by the core, were in fact recorded at seismic stations. Lehmann theorized that these waves had traveled some distance into the core and then bounced off some kind of boundary. Her interpretation of this data was the foundation of a 1936 paper in which she theorized that Earth’s center consisted of two parts: a solid inner core surrounded by a liquid outer core, separated by what has come to be called the Lehmann Discontinuity. Lehmann’s hypothesis was confirmed in 1970 when more sensitive seismographs detected waves deflecting off this solid core.

Born in Denmark in 1888, Lehmann was a pioneer among women and scientists. Her early education was at a progressive school where boys and girls were treated exactly alike. This was a sharp contrast to the mathematical and scientific community she later encountered, about which she once protested to her nephew, Niles Groes, “You should know how many incompetent men I had to compete with—in vain.” Groes recalls, “I remember Inge one Sunday in her beloved garden…with a big table filled with cardboard oatmeal boxes. In the boxes were cardboard cards with information on earthquakes…all over the world. This was before computer processing was available, but the system was the same. With her cardboard cards and her oatmeal boxes, Inge registered the velocity of propagation of the earthquakes to all parts of the globe. By means of this information, she deduced new theories of the inner parts of the Earth.”

A critical and independent thinker, Lehmann subsequently established herself as an authority on the structure of the upper mantle. She conducted extensive research in other countries, benefiting from an increased global interest in seismology for the surveillance of clandestine nuclear explosions. When Lehmann received the William Bowie medal in 1971, the highest honor of the American Geophysical Union, she was described as “the master of a black art for which no amount of computerizing is likely to be a complete substitute.” Lehmann lived to be 105.

Inge Lehmann: Discoverer of the Earth's Inner Core in  AMNH Library Digital Repository