Troubled Water

Comecei a escrever um poema sobre ti, mas esqueci-me do teu rosto  e do modo como o trazes  à altura excessiva do chão. Regressei então  aos meus mais comuns lugares  e falei (como falo sempre)  da morte que pratico sem razão à vista. Por este andar, não volto a encontrar  o meu sonoro estilo adolescente,  tão despido de certezas como de comércios  literários, e torna-se-me difícil  escrever um poema de amor  apenas com os restos de quem fui  e com o pouco que desse amor não tive. Hei-de voltar a ver-te, quem sabe?,  traficado a imperícia sob o cronómetro  dos meus ombros - e saberei então  que os elétricos que se perdem  conduzem invariavelmente a um poema alheio  e que por isso, embora sem ser por isso,  o nosso desencontro é uma estória  inútil entre aspas de betão. Sessenta Quilos de Paixão E no entanto regressamos  - aos becos onde o sangue  insiste em não ser tocado e visto.  À...

[...] This idea about time is essentially misleading, for the world as we know it, the world with human beings formed into some sort of civilization, is of quite comprehensible duration. People began to collect in a rudimentary society in the north of Mesopotamia some twelve thousand years ago. Using twenty-five years as a generation, that is four hundred and eighty generations ago. Sitting here at my desk, I can think back five generations—I have photographs of four. That is, I can think back one-ninety-sixth of the way to the start of civilization. A skilled genealogist could easily get me one fiftieth of the distance back. And I can conceive of how most of those forebears lived. From the work of archeologists and from accounts like those in the Bible I have some sense of daily life at least as far back as the time of the Pharaohs, which is almost half the way. Three hundred and twenty generations ago, Jericho was a walled city of three thousand souls. Three hundred and twenty is a l...

  Cristo de San Juan de la Cruz - Salvador Dalí (1951) En una noche oscura, con ansias, en amores inflamada, ¡oh dichosa ventura!, salí sin ser notada estando ya mi casa sosegada. A oscuras y segura, por la secreta escala, disfrazada, ¡oh dichosa ventura!, a oscuras y en celada, estando ya mi casa sosegada. En la noche dichosa, en secreto, que nadie me veía, ni yo miraba cosa, sin otra luz y guía sino la que en el corazón ardía. Aquésta me guiaba más cierto que la luz de mediodía, adonde me esperaba quien yo bien me sabía, en parte donde nadie parecía. ¡Oh noche que guiaste! ¡oh noche amable más que el alborada! ¡oh noche que juntaste Amado con amada, amada en el Amado transformada! En mi pecho florido, que entero para él solo se guardaba, allí quedó dormido, y yo le regalaba, y el ventalle de cedros aire daba. El aire de la almena, cuando yo sus cabellos esparcía, con su mano serena en mi cuello hería y todos mis sentidos suspendía. Quedéme y olvidéme, el rostro recliné sobre el ...

“As a child Gräfin Maria had the freedom of the woods and forest surrounding her home, and the lifelong interest in many branches of natural history that this experience awakened had a noticeable influence on her later professional work. From her mother she learned plant and animal names; fossils were a special interest. At age six she began her first formal instruction, provided by the village schoolteacher. At fourteen she went to the Victoria pensionat in Karlsruhe. The four-year curriculum then offered in girls' schools was not designed to prepare students for university entrance (that option not yet being formally available to woman), but she had already made up her mind to work toward a doctorate, if necessary by special permission. Returning to her Burgberg home in 1887 and successfully defeating the efforts of her family to arrange a marriage for her, she spend four years studying on her own with guidance, particularly in mathematics and Latin, from a progressive-minded t...

«Le premier acte de rupture à opérer est le refus radical des formes actuelles d’évaluation, qui sont aujourd’hui la clef du système d’enseignement car elles lui imposent la logique de la concurrence généralisée. Une pédagogie contemporaine doit repenser radicalement les contenus enseignés, alors qu’aujourd’hui ils sont repris de génération en génération, dans une sorte d’héritage routinier. Faut-il vraiment enseigner aux jeunes ce qu’on leur enseigne actuellement? Qu’est-ce qu’il est important  de leur enseigner en ce moment de l’aventure humaine?  Important , et non pas seulement utile ... Pour répondre à ces questions, on a besoin d’une utopie anthropologique, car toujours, historiquement, les pédagogies se sont construites en référence à une représentation de l’être humain. Par ailleurs, la pédagogie ne sera contemporaine que si elle affronte les défis actuels: l’ínégalité sociale, les discriminations raciales et de genre, la question écologique et, avec elle, celle de la ...

Revolutionary policy: It is our deep-seated conviction that since the freedom of all nations is indivisible, national revolutions must become international in scope. just as the European and world reaction is unified , there should no longer be isolated revolutions , but a universal, worldwide revolution . Therefore, all the particular interests, the vanities, pretensions, jealousies, and hostilities between and among nations must now be transformed into the unified, common, and universal interest of the revolution, which alone can assure the freedom and independence of each nation by the solidarity of all . We believe also that the holy alliance of the world counterrevolution and the conspiracy of kings, clergy, nobility, and the bourgeoisie, based on enormous budgets, on permanent armies, on formidable bureaucracies, and equipped with all the monstrous apparatus of modern centralized states, constitutes an overwhelming force; indeed, that this formidable reactionary coalition can be...

During the last decade, feminist research has attempted to add understandings of women and their social activities to what we all thought we knew about nature and social life. However, from the very beginning of this project, it has appeared to be in tension with some ofthe most fundamental insights of the Second Women's Movement . Only recently has the nature of this tension become clear. Within the theories, concepts, methods and goals of inquiry we inherited from the dominant discourses we have generated an impressive collection of "facts" about women and their lives, cross-culturally and historically - and we can produce many, many more. But these do not, and cannot, add up to more than a partial and distorted understanding of the patterns of women's lives. We cannot understand women and their lives by adding facts about them to bodies of knowledge which take men, their lives, and their beliefs as the human norm. Furthermore, it is now evident that if women's ...

  «Gradually I became familiar with their wishes, their difficulties, and their opinions. Sometimes there might be heard murmurs of discontent, but far oftener expressions on the countenance, or uttered in words, of patience, hope, and tranquillity. And taken generally, I must say that, in this point at least, the poor are more philosophic than the rich—that they show a more ready and cheerful submission to what they consider as irremediable evils or irreparable losses. Whenever I saw occasion, or could do it without appearing to be intrusive, I joined their parties, and gave my opinion upon the matter in discussion, which, if not always judicious, was always received indulgently. If wages were a little higher or expected to be so, or the quartern loaf a little lower, or it was reported that onions and butter were expected to fall, I was glad; yet, if the contrary were true, I drew from opium some means of consoling myself. For opium (like the bee, that extracts its materials indis...

[...] Most of us are tied to this idea of revolutionary organisation. Even anarchists, who refuse authoritarian organisation, do not disdain it. On this basis we all accept the idea that the contradictory reality of capital can be attacked with similar means. We do so because we are convinced that these means are legitimate, emerging as they do from the same field of struggle as capital. We refuse to admit that not everyone might see things the way we do. Our theory is identical to the practice and strategy of our organisations. The differences between the authoritarians and ourselves are many, but they all collapse before a common faith in the historical organisation. Anarchy will be reached through the work of these organisations (substantial differences only appear in methods of approach). But this faith indicates something very important: the claim of our whole rationalist culture to explain reality in progressive terms.  This culture bases itself on the idea that history is ir...

“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.” “The Orient and Islam have a kind of extrareal, phenomenologically reduced status that puts them out of reach of everyone except the Western expert. From the beginning of Western speculation about the Orient, the one thing the orient could not do was to represent itself. Evidence of the Orient was credible only after it had passed through and been made firm by the refining fire of the Orientalist’s work.” “The more one is able to leave one’s cultural home, the more ...

The Feast of St.Nicholas   by Jan Havicksz Steen , 1665 - 1668  oil on canvas, 82cm×70.5cm   Old Sante Claus with much delight His reindeer drives this frosty night, O’r chimney tops, and tracts of snow, To bring his yearly gifts to you. The steady friend of virtuous youth, The friend of duty, and of truth, Each Christmas eve he joys to come Where peace and love have made their home. Through many houses he has been, And various beds and stockings seen; Some, white as snow, and neatly mended, Others, that seemed for pigs intended. To some I gave a pretty doll, To some a peg-top, or a ball; No crackers, cannons, squibs, or rockets, To blow their eyes up, or their pockets. Where e’re I found good girls or boys, That hated quarrels, strife and noise, I left an apple, or a tart, Or wooden gun, or painted cart; No drums to stun their Mother’s ear, Nor swords to make their sisters fear; But pretty books to store their mind With knowledge of each various kind. But where I found ...

Yusupbek Mukhlisi (1920–2004) When an extremist burned a copy of the Quran outside a Stockholm mosque, it ignited strong reactions from the Islamic world. This act led to Morocco withdrawing its consul from Sweden and condemnation from countries like Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) called for a meeting to discuss and condemn the event. This reaction raises questions about the Islamic world’s response to different provocations, particularly when juxtaposed with the silence over China’s genocide in East Turkestan (officially known in China as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region).  Notably, over 8,450 mosques have been reportedly destroyed in this region, home to Uyghurs and other Muslim communities. Despite evidence from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) indicating damage to a total of 16,000 mosques in East Turkestan, Muslim-majority countries such as Iran, Qatar, Morocco, and Iraq have not spoken out. This contrasting response...

[...] Mas quem sabe, foi porque o mundo também é rato, e eu tinha pensado que já estava pronta para o rato também. Porque eu me imaginava mais forte. Porque eu fazia do amor um cálculo matemático errado: pensava que, somando as compreensões, eu amava. Não sabia que, somando as incompreensões, é que se ama verdadeiramente. Porque eu, só por ter tido carinho, pensei que amar é fácil. É porque eu não quis o amor solene, sem compreender que a solenidade ritualiza a incompreensão e a transforma em oferenda. E é também porque sempre fui de brigar muito, meu modo é brigando. É porque sempre tento chegar pelo meu modo. É porque ainda não sei ceder. É porque no fundo eu quero amar o que eu amaria – e não o que é. É porque ainda não sou eu mesma, e então o castigo é amar um mundo que não é ele. É também porque eu me ofendo à toa. É porque talvez eu precise que me digam com brutalidade, pois sou muito teimosa. É porque sou muito possessiva e então me foi perguntado com alguma ironia se eu também ...