Felizmente há coisas que se mantêm

Dizia eu, domingo, na crónica d'O Jogo, a propósito das vitórias benfiquistas. A ver se, daqui a bocado, para a Taça da Liga, damos show de bola para festejar o futuro.

Isto anda tudo ligado — DeLillo e Borges

"To break the spell I look at a photograph of Borges, a great picture sent to me by the Irish writer Colm Tóín. The face of Borges against a dark background—Borges fierce, blind, his nostrils gaping, his skin stretched taut, his mouth amazingly vivid; his mouth looks painted; he’s like a shaman painted for visions, and the whole face has a kind of steely rapture. I’ve read Borges of course, although not nearly all of it, and I don’t know anything about the way he worked—but the photograph shows us a writer who did not waste time at the window or anywhere else. So I’ve tried to make him my guide out of lethargy and drift, into the otherworld of magic, art, and divination." (DeLillo na Paris Review)

Símbolo

"Os atos são o nosso símbolo." 


(O Aleph, Jorge Luis Borges)

Uma fotografia de Ricardo Stuckert

"How close to the self can we get without losing everything?"

É essencial ler este ensaio de Don DeLillo, Counterpoint: Three Movies, a Book and an Old Photograph.

Aqui

Crise espiritual

A crise espiritual de que fala Joseph Weiler nesta entrevista a Ana Fonseca Pereira, no Público, também passa por isto — o fim do Teatro da Cornucópia.

Jan-Werner Müller põe o ponto no i de populismo

"Populists aren’t just fantasy politicians; what they say and do can be in response to real grievances, and can have very real consequences. But it is important to appreciate that they aren’t just like other politicians, with a bit more rabble-rousing rhetoric thrown in. They define an alternative political reality in which their monopoly on the representation of the ‘real people’ is all that matters: in Trump’s case, an alt-reality under the auspices of the alt-right. At best, populists will waste years for their countries, as Berlusconi did in Italy. In the US, this will probably mean a free hand for K Street lobbyists and all-out crony capitalism (or, in the case of Trump, maybe capitalism in one family); continual attempts to undermine checks and balances (including assaults on judges as enemies of the people when they rule against what real citizens want; and life being made extremely difficult for the media); and government as a kind of reality TV show with plenty of bread and circuses. And the worst case? Regime change in the United States of America." (Jan-Werner Müller na LRB)

Whaaaa

Ai o que eu gosto de bombas de gasolina 6

Linhas de investigação sobre este mundo da pós-verdade

Uma fotografia de Petras Malukas

Patti Smith deve gostar disto

Política internacional

"Bill Clinton let slip some years later that the American Secret Service had found Yeltsin, during an official visit to Washington in 1995, wandering drunk in his underpants down Pennsylvania Avenue looking for a pizza. Who knows what Russia might be like now if Yeltsin had been left to stagger on into the night, rather than returned to his bedroom in Blair House? At that point in Russia’s transition everything was still possible. In the four remaining years of Yeltsin’s miserable reign the possibilities drained away, until only Putin was left." (Russia, NATO, Trump: The Shadow World, de Robert Cottrell, na NYRB)

Apagar uma cidade

“Remember that there was once a city called Aleppo that the world erased from the camp and from history. This is a farewell message [from a doctor] whose fate along with that of his companions is death or arrest at any moment.” (no Guardian de hoje)

Reportagem 20

"Mas escrever torna tudo mais claro e pior ao mesmo tempo." (Joy Williams)

Irmão pássaro à porta do Convento Franciscano em Pula, Croácia

Postal de Pula, na Croácia

A Maria e o José do Azul-turquesa trouxeram-me à Croácia tantos anos depois.

A palavra Deus

"Out in the street, the man in the harlequin clothes was screaming, 'The word God shits some people's minds!'
    'The word would be shut,' Sherwin said to him mildly. "Don't you mean shuts?'" 


(The Quick and the Dead, Joy Williams)

É preciso imaginar de novo o mundo

Mudar para modo Maradona

Porque hoje é domingo, tenho crónica n'O Jogo.

Contra o mundo da pós-verdade: just gimme some truth

Iô, malta do NYT

Já basta o que basta. Não é preciso dar mau nome ao teatro!