Troubled Water

  My grandmother died the day the missionaries came for our souls. To save them, I mean. They cycled up the drive as my mother and I carried her to the van, on our way to the hospital. We didn’t hear their rattling till they dismounted, we were so bent on moving her without pain. Their hands waved hello. There was nothing for the bicycles to do, so I looked at the wheels not the missionaries, who asked, Do you have a source of happiness in your life? What was my answer, what is it now? My grandmother swayed like a hammock between us, then stilled. They sprang to help. Bicycles clattered on asphalt— Did we use dogwood switches? Did we use stones? Visitation I Red stones piled in square towers. Red roads cruise aqueducts. Blue chain by the door strikes a bell. From our gold-draped room the windows with their astragals and sashes glass out the bottle-green hills. I hold her naked on the carpet, my body spilling out of my lavender dress. Body, if you could be forever spilling out of yo...

Tom Stoppard has been fascinated with mathematics since the beginning of his career. Indeed, this is what originally led a well-behaved mathematician like me to devote so much time to exploring the relationship between mathematics and theater. It was Stoppard’s 1993 play Arcadia that initially grabbed my attention, but I quickly learned that Stoppard had been casting mathematicians long before he knew any mathematics. In the 1966 breakthrough play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead , Guildenstern speaks like an Aristotelean logician. In the follow-up play Jumpers , philosophy professor George Moore invokes Bertrand Russell, Georg Cantor, and the Greek philosopher Zeno in his attempts to prove God exists. Progressively more explicit mathematical stepping stones appear in every decade. Euclidean geometry makes an appearance in Every Good Boy Deserves Favour , Hapgood features Leonard Euler’s Bridges of Konigsberg solution and a sizable dose of quantum mechanics, Arcadia is built a...

Fanciful depiction of the siege and fall of Constantinople in 1453. Painting by Panagiotis Zografos, under the guidance of Makriyannis Perhaps one would like to know the emperor’s preparations before the siege, while the sultan was gathering his forces, and the aid that we received from the Christians abroad. No aid whatsoever was dispatched by other Christians. On the contrary, an official of the sultan was sent to the Serbian despot Lord George in order to ask him to be the intermediary for the treaty with the Hungarians. Even though a Christian scribe in the retinue of the envoy had been instructed by certain members of the Turkish Council to inform the despot that the sultan intended to march against Constantinople once the treaty was signed and to delay the conclusion of this treaty, the despot paid no attention to him; the wretch of a despot did not consider the fact that once the head has been removed the limbs perish also. An important meeting of the senate was held in Venice...

“Dizia-me: vale a pena viver para morrer? Gozar para quê? O trabalho é mais vão que a poeira alevantada por um cavalo a galope! Amigo, morrerás! Este morrerás revestia no meu espírito a significação exacta dum prazo. Não era a noção vaga «morrer», mas antes o juízo determinado «não viver». Não viver podia alongar-se no tempo e, todavia, não era amanhã, era já hoje. Nele se me sentenciava à vida a ablação, por inútil, de tudo o que ela representava, no espaço, de gozo, de posse, de sentimento de mim mesmo - via-me a entrar para a antecâmara do meu próprio celário. Mas se este pensamento se encarniçava particularmente na esfera do eu, às vezes batia asas para abranger o universo em suas finalidades. E proclamava: tu; os outros; todos; esta cidade; o reino; a terra. Daqui a cem anos terão passado, em matéria, os que te amam e cercam; mais uns séculos e a memória deles será mais fugaz que a mente dum recém-nascido. Conta mais uns séculos, e onde estará o teu país? E se teu entendimento pod...

Ahora te quiero, como el mar quiere a su agua: desde fuera, por arriba, haciéndose sin parar con ella tormentas, fugas, albergues, descansos, calmas. ¡Qué frenesíes, quererte! ¡Qué entusiasmo de olas altas, y qué desmayos de espuma van y vienen! Un tropel de formas, hechas, deshechas, galopan desmelenadas. Pero detrás de sus flancos está soñándose un sueño de otra forma más profunda de querer, que está allá abajo: de no ser ya movimiento, de acabar este vaivén, este ir y venir, de cielos a abismos, de hallar por fin la inmóvil flor sin otoño de un quererse quieto, quieto. Más allá de ola y espuma el querer busca su fondo. Esta hondura donde el mar hizo la paz con su agua y están queriéndose ya sin signo, sin movimiento. Amor tan sepultado en su ser, tan entregado, tan quieto, que nuestro querer en vida se sintiese seguro de no acabar cuando terminan los besos, las miradas, las señales. Tan cierto de no morir, como está el gran amor de los muertos. Aquí en esta orilla blanca del lecho d...

A third use which Nature subserves to man is that of Language. Nature is the vehicle of thought, and in a simple, double, and threefold degree. 1. Words are signs of natural facts. 2. Particular natural facts are symbols of particular facts. 3. Nature is the symbol of spirits. 1. Words are signs of natural facts. The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history. The use of the outer creation is to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation. Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance. Right originally means straight ; wrong means twisted . Spirit primarily means wind ; transgression, the crossing of a line; supercilious, the raising of the eye-brow. We say the heart to express emotion, the head to denote thought; and thought and emotion are, in their turn, words borrowed from sensible things , and now appropriated to spiritual nature. Mos...

As declarações de Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa sobre a obrigação de o país assumir os custos dos crimes do colonialismo vieram reacender o debate em torno das várias modalidades de reparação às antigas colónias, incluindo a restituição de bens culturais, um tema a que Portugal está ainda longe de prestar a atenção que lhe vem sendo dedicada noutros países europeus, cujos museus dispõem hoje de detalhados guias de boas práticas para os ajudar a lidar com objectos (e restos humanos) obtidos em contexto de dominação colonial. E por estes dias tivemos mais um sinal de que a questão está mesmo na ordem do dia, com o pedido formal que a Colômbia endereçou esta [penúltima] quinta-feira ao Governo espanhol para que proceda à devolução do tesouro dos Quimbayas, uma das colecções mais apreciadas do Museu da América, em Madrid.[...] [...] Neste contexto, talvez as afirmações do Presidente da República, proferidas a 23 de Abril num jantar com jornalistas estrangeiros, possam ser generosamente vistas co...

It was the river, the river. We played there, out, out of the house, out of the garden, out under the wide sky. The little rivers, convenient to us, they ran apart, they conjoined. They ran clear and bright over precious stones, purple and pale green and dark green, and the white pebbles too. Take them home, the best colours, put them to dry in the sun – Gone! out of the water of illusion, gone dull, all the same grey. (Well we understood the experience of Rosamund and her Purple Jar !) But there were still good shapes and good smooth feel; find these for pockets. So many little moss fields, red fields with harvests, green cushions, very small white flowers there were among the big stones, and the stones had strange ornamentations. Always the chatter of the waters, cheerful chattering, rippling over the pebbles, round the stones. . . .       (Over there by the bank the deep water,       cart-wheels going down – don’t look there to-day;       ...

They say it takes ten years to make a dancer and twenty to settle an immigrant, both of which I have been. I started to dance in my mid-twenties, and after ten years of training, having swum upstream to make an aging instrument into an expressive one, I began to finally acquire that coveted dancer’s “center,” though the moment I danced as a tenured dancer was fleeting—as the absence of a life-long foundation collided head-on with the tenuousness of a newly-trained body. Then, what does the aging dancer do when her physical facility wanes? She pours herself into other bodies, redirects her ideas into movement for other bodies, translates her ideas into movements for those bodies. In other words, she choreographs, superimposes herself on the shifting surface of other bodies. She re-enters the self from a different position, recreates herself elsewhere. This way, the dancer does not die, but lives on by way of transforming. Ecosystems, humans, all systems continuously make adjustments to ...

The songs I have not sung to you    Will wake me in the night And hover in the dark like birds    Whose wings are tipped with light. Like birds with restless, eager wings    That quiver for their flight, The songs I have not sung to you     Will wake me in the night. Unsung My father was a tall man and yet the ripened rye Would come above his shoulders, the spears shot up so high. My father was a tall man and yet the tasseled corn Would hide him when he cut the stalks upon a frosty morn. The green things grew so lushly in the valley of my birth, Where else could one witness the luxuriance of earth? The plow would turn so rhythmically the loose, unfettered loam, There was no need of effort to drive the coulter home. My father walked behind his team before the sun was high, Fine as a figure on a frieze cut sharp against the sky. And when he swung the cradle in the yellow of the grain, He could command all eyes around, or when he drove the wain. I wo...

Intro 475 demonstration at City Hall, NYC (Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, Jane Vercaine, Barbara Deming, Kady Vandeurs, Carol Grosberg) - Diana Davies (1973) [...] E pensar que Marsha é uma das primeiras drag queens a ir ao The Stonewall Inn… Ela conta que parou na entrada do bar, apenas para homens gays, e perguntou:  “O que acham? Sou homem ou sou mulher?” Como ninguém respondeu, ela resolveu entrar. E só depois dela começaram a permitir a entrada de mulheres lésbicas e drag queens.  Muito agradável, o Stonewall Inn era de propriedade da máfia – na época, gays não podiam frequentar bares. Mas a máfia subornava a polícia e controlava os bares gays da cidade. Detalhe:  a mesma máfia que estava por trás do Festival da Libertação, que acontecia todo ano na rua Christopher, logo após a Parada Gay e que, de tempos em tempos, era confrontada pela liderança do movimento, por só visar lucro e não dar contrapartida à comunidade. A mesma máfia que, suspeita-se, seja responsáv...

Sair do amor requer força  mais ou menos como tirar  um barco da água parece fácil  quando ele está no mar  mas quando há pouca água  tem o peso de um elefante.  Puxa-se muito  pede-se ajuda  grita-se por outros homens.  Ficar tempo demais  em águas rasas  na companhia das algas  e pequenos peixes  não é muito agradável. Com a corda na mão in Paisagens Inclinadas (2023) Da visão do monte  reparo nisto:  a pouca  neve do topo  a falta de árvores  você na penumbra. A beleza pode  ser isto:  a visão daquilo  que não se têm. Aproximação in "Quênia – poemas de viagem" (2021) Mich aela Schmaedel El vino es una flor de un sólo pétalo de vidrio.  Entre los tantos seres que pueblan el mundo debido a su leve violencia, el vino es el de más firme delicadeza.  En el oscuro y claro reino de los líquidos, cuya soberanía comprende desde los almíbares hasta los venenos, el vino ocupa u...

[...] Estamos, portanto, numa situação política singular: o Estado, essa entidade demiúrgica e totalizadora que mobilizou a crítica da esquerda, transformou-se no último baluarte da defesa dos direitos inalienáveis da constituição democrática. E mais, fez da esquerda o seu último grande defensor. É por isso que o epíteto «festival de demagogia» é, ele próprio, tão demagógico e intelectualmente ignorante: porque nada nas posições de um partido como o BE, a CDU ou o Livre é extremista: eles são, pelo contrário, os últimos defensores do projecto da social-democracia — esse mesmo que o PS provou na última década ser incapaz de defender. Eles, CDU, Bloco e Livre, são o centro político : oferecem uma reflexão estruturada — bastou ver os debates entre cada um dos partidos —, medidas e um programa mínimo de regulação para que o mercado, ele próprio, possa funcionar tanto economicamente, como socialmente, isto é, para a sociedade no seu todo, para essa sociedade dos pequenos proprietários e não...