sexta-feira, 28 de fevereiro de 2014

BOLEROS, TANGOS E FLAMENCOS

Querido D.

Os boleros chegaram pra mim loguinho depois de você. E o tango e o flamenco.  E depois dêles veio o forró que aliás dancei muito nos terreiros arenosos da praia de Meaipe, no quintal das escolas quando de visita de passagem.  Até tinha o meu professor de dança, que depois descobri era também o traficante local – rapaz de corpo forte e de olhos muito fundos que gostava de dançar com a gringa brasileira e que vendia loteria e jôgo do bicho.  Sempre que eu visitava a sala do forró, uma vez por ano, nas férias, êle me procurava logo e pedia pra dançar.  Já dava pra saber bailar quase que flutuando como aqueles casais do forró fazem, patinando pela poeira do terreiro.

A minha herança germânica aliás não acho que foi o que me conteve. Me deu a força séria de me manter em foco e me deu uma paixão muito grande pela filosofia.  Até hoje.  Creio que a gente (em geral) seja um amálgama de tudo que vai a ser.  Não somos parte do passado, nem em memória, pois no recontar e relembrar já viramos a página e escrevemos com tinta nova. Essa é a beleza da coisa.

Algum filósofo pos-moderno disse recentemente que o pensamento existe no lugar onde existe lugar e espaço.  E que pensar é esquecer. “Thinking is forgetting. Only in forgetting can thought be born. We think because we forget. Thinking generalizes, synthesizes, eliminates peculiarities, but only as forgetting enables it. Forgetting traverses thought with the same intensity as memory. Neither forgetting nor memory is absolute; the capacity for thinking rests upon this notion.

O relembrar e a memória, o recordar, recontando é ato definitivo do ser no futuro, digo eu. 
 
Acabo de voltar lá do Botânico, onde trabalho, de uma noite de “Magic in the Meadow”, – uma festa enorme de beneficiência nossa, debaixo de uma tenda enorme e iluminada com pontas agudas que nem o aeroporto de Paris ou seria o de Denver? Pôr do sol com nuvens mágicas de outono e mucho dinheiro. Mágico itinerante, leilão silencioso e ao vivo, música, comida gostosa, muita bebida.  E até telescópios pra gente ver Jupiter de muito perto no plano ilusório do visual com todas as luas de sobremesa. O presidente do Conselho deu um milhão de dólares para a nossa campanha.  E pra minha surprêsa, mencionou o meu nome e o meu trabalho com os voluntários no seu discurso.

Sua carta me comoveu. Me lembrei de uma vez quando você me mandou uma dúzia de rosas vermelhas (porque as amarelas e minhas preferidas não tem muito gôsto) com um cartãozinho dentro, com sua letra de tinta azul elegante caidínha pra direita e pequena “para você comer e fartar-se”.  Isso depois de você ter descompassado o meu sentido do sexo, chegando em casa, como você chegou, de Uberaba ou de Uberlândia, cheio do cheiro das mulheres com quem você acordou ou adormeceu. 

(All my Princes are dead…)

Já naquela época, tinhamos “issues”, questões quanto a minha necessidade tão poderosa de fartura, de excessos, de paixões, de quebra e de extrapolação dos limites.  Hoje, depois de tanto tempo, continuo trabalhando essa e as outras duas ou três idéias primeiras, aqueles temas maiores da nossa juventude, quando o mundo éramos nós, quando ríamos dos limites – (pelo menos eu ria e chorava) e empurrava e batalhava para que a enormidade do meu entendimento também fôsse o seu.  E o do mundo. 

Você, de mais comedido, queria mais calma e mais ordem e queria trabalhar dentro da realidade do dia.  Paz a tranquilidade. Você sempre dizia que eu devia aprender a trabalhar dentro do sistema. E hoje eu trabalho bem dentro de algum sistema.  (Com muita dificuldade…, mas isso é papo para outra estória)

Hoje sei que aquele entendimento meu, aquele comportamento ainda é meu e me define.  E continuo empurrando e me ajustando e inventando e criando e escrevendo até que alguma centelha de gênio transparece.  Alguma poesia.

Me encanta saber, que pra você também, o eterno ficou.

Aí, como eu conto a estória para amigos meus, você, de poeta que eu amava, se tornou advogado. E tudo foi por água abaixo pra mim. (:”)

O mundo é o mesmo, as palavras as mesmas, os sentimentos bastante os mesmos, nesse território, o amor.

Beijo,

Erica
 

BORDERLINES


Travels through the frontiers
0. Travel today

1. Travel as aphrodisiac
same as travel while standing in line.

In a chronicle of long ago, Gabriel Garcia Marques equated travel and travel logs to powerful known aphrodisiacs. For many years, my keenest sensual fantasy was to mate while flying. As old as I get, the deed is never accomplished, the glamour of flying dimmed by countless hours.  Yet when I cross time zones, travel retains the exquisite possibility of mutiny in time and in space, that deep shift inside where I land in a different culture, a different in vitro, a different landscape and the possibility of mutation.

I have just returned from a month long trip to my homeland of Brazil, way down toward the south from this northern here where I live year round. Climate zone classified between temperate, jungle, rain forest and I never know what else. Warm home of soul and of young memory.

I traveled fast and by airplane and these are my traveling notes, my precious first impressions:

My legs are jumpy and do not want to go to sleep. The free wine I never seem able to refuse in airplane rides is once again semi sweet and California cheap.

This time I imagine to gather up the courage and pack that nice airline grey and elegant wool blanket and take it home. This time I imagine buying a cozy duty free afghan made out of silk to match my stolen grey blanket.  Buy it  from the shadowy, well made-up free zone woman who visits us after the brandy, way in the middle of the night, when breathing is difficult and we would do just about anything to survive inside.  I imagine asking for all the playing cards and all the airline games I heard they only give to children. 

Another unfulfilled fantasy.

We endure ten hours inside the tin box and land safely in São Paulo. 

Brasil at last!  Brisk endless walk through endless steel corridors, a need to pee and to stop!  Like cows and bulls we are arraigned into snaky lines. In solidarity to my American traveling partner, I stay in the long line designated for the "Others".

We know we could actually have some fun over there. Spend a month traipsing around, hopping and experimenting.

I already taste the forbidden high calorie savories at the street stands, lingering toward the deli and the cheese puffs. Freshly squeezed juices from nutritious tropical fruit, the philosophy shared with bus riders, the laughter, all the dance that await us, we know. 

We also know that success is connected to staying connected to the standing in this long line.

It is hot, it is summer, the air conditioner does not work, the airport is being renovated!
Winter coats, heavy lined boots, weary travelers in line,

once again, saying not a word
when the cute police woman dressed in a tight short black skirt, tight skimpy white t-shirt, deep tan, long black hair
tells us to open our passports to our photo pages! I am quite sure she may have had a gun.

"You mean to say, Border Police Woman, you mean to imply we are not who we are? We look different than our passport photo?"  

Foreigners made to wait and to answer the essential questions.
"Why do you want to be here? What is it that you bring that can harm us? Show me your papers and prove to me who you are! "

How many times in my life did I not cross these borders to watch the border patrol express that exact same doubt?

"You do not look like your passport photos and your real intentions must be very different from your written understatements! (What statements? What under statements?)

Once in Bombay, I was told in a very accented stern language y this tall handsome dark Indian man to "Stand behind the rope, or else!"  I will forever remember that when I stand in line and when I try to jump rope.

Once in Guinea, I was told by this handsome guerilla green uniformed machine gunned French speaking African man that I needed an entry visa into the country so as to transit through the airport and get to the departure lounge, toward the north to my connecting flight, or else!

Or else? 

We stood there for sure and not one of us said a word.

Eventually we, the foreigners and I, the native, got in and attempted to belong.  We spent considerable time and effort trying to blend in.  Blend in and not draw the attention of all the "bandidos", guerilla people who eventually would get us and rob us of something essential that belonged to us only, and not to them. Or so we thought.
Fact is we looked different anyway!  So why bother to make us stand in line? Why not just let us get in and meet our fate?

Little did we know we would be doing the same now, here, only barefooted?
 


sábado, 22 de fevereiro de 2014

BIRD ON THE WIRE 2


LIKE A BIRD ON A WIRE


Like a bird on a wire






like a drunk in a midnight fire

I have tried in my way
to be free...



Like a bird on the wire, 
Like a drunk in a midnight choir 
I have tried in my way to be free. 
Like a worm on a hook, 
Like a knight from some old fashioned book 
I have saved all my ribbons for thee. 
If I, if I have been unkind, 
I hope that you can just let it go by. 
If I, if I have been untrue 
I hope you know it was never to you. 

Like a baby, stillborn, 
Like a beast with his horn 
I have torn everyone who reached out for me. 
But I swear by this song 
And by all that I have done wrong 
I will make it all up to thee. 
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch, 
He said to me, "You must not ask for so much." 
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door, 
She cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?" 

Oh like a bird on the wire, 
Like a drunk in a midnight choir 
I have tried in my way to be free.

(Leonard Cohen)

sexta-feira, 14 de fevereiro de 2014

THE CITY OF LIGHTS

Hi.
Today, on the bus to downtown, I saw a woman praying with a rosary of beads.  Also found a very old email I wrote to you with the beginnings of my city of lights.  2004. Still my project for the long haul.


To Mark,

It is interesting how, over the years, I made you into a filter for me and my expressions in writing...  As long as you are fine with it, and we both enjoy it, I will continue to do it. (Lazy of me in a sense.)

The only danger I see is that, as my filter, I tend to expect you to react like me, as a filter, and give me feedback and distilled and filtered and clean water, always, as a result of being my filter...

Expectations, expectations!  Expectorants and cough suppressants - so what are the meanings of the "ations" now that we know what all the "expects" mean?

Anyway, this is my project for the long haul - a few years ago I got lost coming back from Saratoga Springs ( I can never say Skidmore again without pausing)

I crossed TapperSee and ended up on the Brooklyn Bridge, trying to find my way back toward the south and Maryland.  

That was my City of Lights - there was haze, perfect light, I was lost and then there was the Brooklyn Bridge. Brass bed stands abandoned and large bits and pieces of garbage.  It was such a threatening place, a dangerous and marvelous place - it was the promise of what was there, down below - that huge city running on lights and on possible sin!  Talk about the jungle, man.  You have it all inside the city that runs on lights.


So that is how this project got started. It is in the raw data stage.


Happy mowing!  I am tired of being a witch and am going out there in search of some pod costume.





The City of lights

by Erica Weick


Sometimes, when I enter the city of Dhorna at night, I feel an inexplicable fear that this is to be the last time.  As if I could only dare one more time to imagine such distant travels to a place in memory.  There, where I found the meaning, the answer, the irresistible lure of the low mud walls, there where I learned it was not necessary to understand.

The story does not want to be written from the riches

The city of lights had no visible vegetation, the only things I remember were the mud, the mud and the mud.

In earlier times, he had told me, “There were lushes and greens. Hibiscus lived next to Baptisia, that false indigo pea like flower, with bluish early blooms cascading down in long arches, heavy in racemes forcing the branches to bend. The flowers soon gone, replaced by long pods that mimicked the flowers, then turned brown and popped open in seeds that looked like the pods, in late autumn, before the snows.”

He had known all about those things, and what to do with the pods.  There was water then, and snow. Something called the seasons and milestones and benchmarks, life and transitions.

When is it that the smell of things becomes less of a trajectory of yeah and nay,

less of a pungent, more of a numbing of the olfactory senses?

when is it that the lack of smell is the best possible alternative to a preferred smell?

and the touch not essential – and the approach, one that is somewhat careful?

yet

the approach, once it reaches,

even now is an approach to the creation of mud

clay circus dark gypsies trapezes

clowns dressed for day and undressed and redressed as kings and queens for night.

But I never understood his approaches.  No clown by day, no trapeze, just this jester flying with no wings.

To this day I swear I will never understand his approaches. To anything!  Most of all, not to me. 

He fashions himself as some sort of a go at it alone type – some kind of shaman- for sure.  But those are not his words.  His words are words of process, then they are words of deep doubt, and of fear. 

His words, like mine, are not swords, yet they wound as if they were meant as weapons, in these precise times, as if they were meant as swords.

Our conversations are matter or fact, in their beginnings. 

They then acquire a weight I can only describe as the weight of a crystal. 


Our conversations pierce through layers and layers of dense material, to me, almost always material I do not “see”, it is material I sense, though, it is material I do not smell. 


What comes to mind is the material of non-matter, the enchanting chapter on black holes, the anti matter material of all dreams.  This material lacks in the clarity yet it is as clear as water in a clear creek of a pristine water in a brook in memory somewhere – the where I want to go to – with you, the one who reads me.


Where I imagined I wanted to go with him.  He seldom stayed with me, though, for more than a week.


Now he is longer available to me. His work took him away for most of the time when I was there. When he came back, there was a misunderstanding, that last time.  I did not meet him and I left without ever seeing him again.


After he/she left too
and for many years there after
she felt the world was no longer infinite

she lost her sheen
her words they too no longer spread like seeds in bloom

Within so many counted words, a contained reservoir,
they would end soon if she was not careful,

she ought not to squander them. 

And repetition then, became necessary,

During that time, she told stories over, and over again, in the dry telling days,

the days of no water.

Her words still came from her vast, yet contained repertoire, she felt compelled to repeat sentences.  Sentences like “when in full darker green of summer”, or when “the light was still catching”, she repeated the best words, as if they were finite and her world, a world that was ending forever. 

Sometimes the people of the village took her words and made necklaces out of them. Beaded necklaces and their beaded wood recited the words, the words of repetition from her finite repertoire.  They would add some of their words from their own finite repertoires. They would recite the words over, and over again, while they let the beads methodically, slowly fill in the spaces between the beads and tell the rest of what is in the telling.


Praying, wishing for him to appear, like a child sometimes wishes for magic to happen, from the clear like almost crystal but more like the silk weaving from the spiders, out from under the bed with the monsters, out with it! – that kind of magic that opens the door to the closets, the lock made out of rusty iron and bronze, and on to the lid to the treasures and the semi precious stones in agate and emeralds and pirates and Hungarian relatives and gypsies green with envy and early jade, and really true clear crystals and mirrors full jewels in memory! Easy dawns and sunsets revealed in jolts and in understandings.


As I waited, I wandered toward the mountain path, not far from where I always stayed down by the docks. I walked toward the mountain path…

When I met them I was not prepared. They were singing.

the children

they weaved around us like transparent structures, like the in between in the weave of rich textile sometimes, like ghosts in a grassy green park, dancing prancing swinging


when I remember them they look to me like raised thread, and I can touch them what they look like brown blond, yellow wool.

garrulous in the weaving is the word I am looking for – that is the word that describes them.

quarta-feira, 5 de fevereiro de 2014

AMADEO LORENZATO, 1900-1995



 
Amadeo Lorenzato, (1900-1995), Celebração do Cotidiano, até 9 de março no Centro deArte Popular (CEMIG).  Artista espontâneo, popular, moderno, contemporâneo dos impressionistas, pintor de paredes, mineiro e mais.  Vale a pena ver e voltar pra ver de novo!

Roberto Rugiero da Galeria Brasiliana comentou bem que “Lorenzato é um artista que não se dá tão rápido. Ele é zen. Você precisa de convívio, de penetração em seus mistérios.”

Tão verdade.  Foi somente na minha segunda visita a exposição que tudo mudou e vi algo lindo, algo extraordinário. De repente as cores das pinturas se intensificaram e tudo virou luz. Forma e luz. 

Centro de Arte Popular – CEMIG, Rua Gonçalves Dias 1608, Funcionários, perto da praça da Liberdade, um pouco a baixo do Cinema de Arte.