Noel Harry Leaver

Orientalist painters (II)


A Moorish City (detail after digital manipulation)

Elizabeth Nourse

Orientalist Painters (I)



The Mosque, Tunis 1897 (detail after digital manipulation)

Roald Amundsen

Norway: young at 100-years old...


A South-Pole inhabitant


Norway is birthdayparty-ing: one hundred years old as an Independent state. I do like Norway and for many reasons, including some non-bloggable ones. Their most celebrated hero is Amundsen who, playing fair, first discovered the South Pole. A land towards which I must confess a special interest since I'm the proud owner of a taxidermised Penguin (Ysmail, depicted above) from a species that used to overpopulate the area.

As a suggestion to honour and congratulate the non-EU but NATO member of the European Family why not doing something Norwegian in the coming days? Apart from the "usual suspects" (like Grieg, Ibsen , Munch... or Liv Ullman) why not reading the tremendously powerful novel by Ms. Herborg Wassmo, "Dina's Book"? The Honourable Reader will not regret it.

Fernando Pessoa

Happiness is always post-factum...



I was happy then (now, I know it)

The Honourable Reader might be forgiven for suspecting that this blogger of yours is a vain person. Recently, I indulged in ordering a personal card where besides my name and mobile phone I also provide details on my gmail address and on the URL of this blog. A colleague of mine, from the Dalmacian coast, was the recipient of one such card after confessing her admiration for Fernando Pessoa (thereby crossing the line between "professional" acquaintance and "personal" acquaintance.)

She e-mailed me this morning, re-stating her interest in the Great Poet and I could not resist, in my reply to her, to re-visit one the most glorious intuitions of Pessoa.

There:

"Thanxs! My favourite philosophical/poetical "sound-bite" from Pessoa is "Fui feliz outrora agora", which is an abbreviation from two lines of a poem:

"Eu era feliz? Não sei:
Fui-o outrora agora".

Literal translation (to help you in the trip between Castellano and Portugues) is something like:

Was I happy? I don't know
I was happy then now

But for the full impact of his thought you have to work it out for yourself. Each one of us, readers, have slightly different interpretations. For me it means that happiness is never identified as such as it is happening and only later - post-happy factum - can a particular moment be experienced as happy (no longer in the Present but as a memory) . This disappointment when we become aware of that unavoidable time-lag is not a blackish negative emotion because it is normally tainted with those tender nostalgic tones we Portuguese call "saudade". (A bit like the "taska" of the Russian language). Happiness and Euphoria are not the same.

Viva Fernando Pessoa!


Saludos,

J. "

I just want to add something on that increasingly frequent confusion between euphoria and happiness. I have read the other day, from an expert on treatment for drug-addiction, that for the drug-user there is a "present-ification" of Time, there's no past and no future, only the now (the Present). The "flash", the "high" moment of using drugs, orgasm-like in what concerns the neurochemistry of it all, is instant powerful euphoria. So many youngsters take that as happiness. They think they will only recognize happiness when they'll feel those euphoria-related moods. They should know better. They should read Pessoa.

ps

Dalmatia stroke again with her own translation efforts. Not bad, Girl, not bad at all! :

Was I happy? I don't know:

Now I know, then I was.

*

Was I happy? I don't know:

Now I know, I was, then.

*

Was I happy? I don't know:

Yes, I was, now I know.

*

Was I happy? I don't know:

I was, then, now I know.

*

Was I happy? I don't know:

Then, I was, now I know.

Prince Dolgoruki

Icon frame (I)


(Unwritten blog)

Untitled

Time to sleep

One doesn’t want to break one's routine of daily blogging while in the Ciudad, but sometimes it’s hard. ( Is it because nothing really happened yesterday? It’s never true, of course. Should I talk about the autographed shirt of Luis Figo which is going to be a hit in the forthcoming raffle? About the nostalgia for “porchetta” ( roasted suckling pig) I could identify in the moistened eyes of Italian expats in Madrid, at their annual national party? About the “arroseur-arrosé” situation that arises when a rolangaro-ish master of psychological manipulation sees all his shots dealt with force and elegance by the full forward advancing-to-the-net tactics of his psydversary? About late evening calls that challenge pajama-wearing inertia? Could I make from any of these items a 3-paragraphs story worth of a blogtext? I don’t think so.)

D. D. Velazquéz

Mega-pixeled "Las Meninas"..



Colour manipulation with hyper-saturation

( Unwritten blog)

Vitriolica Webb

Dungaree Wars..




Ridiculous to wear when prep school days are over...

I'm not enough computer-literate myself to successfully add blog-links so I'll have to do it this way. I truly recommend www.unkemptwomen.blogspot.com as a blog. With a reservation though. Ms. Webb, the blogger, has a thing for dungarees, which is, I'm sure the Honourable Reader will agree, a dreadful example of self-indulgence.

To limit the damage to her street-credibility I had to warn her in a recent comment: "I'm afraid that only acceptable dungarees are Osh-Kosh in 3-years old curly-haired beauties. Girls, I understand you want the laid-back hippie-ish cool look that supposedly would remove ten years from the birthdate on your mental ID card, but be practical. What happens when you want to go to the loo and you have dungarees is between farcical and messy. I rest my case. Posted by j.ryder(www) at 9:37 6/6/2005"

I've got my deserved victory sometime afterwards: " i hate to admit it, j.r., but you have serious point there. there have been times.... Posted by vit(www) at 10:21 6/6/2005

The Dungaree Fighters have been smashed...

Joao Moura

Cultural diversity in Xtreme sports should be preserved...



"Dressage" is for wimps...



I went straight from Barajas airport to Las Ventas, the bullfight arena of Madrid. Entries were purchased weeks ago on the edge of legitimate ticket-dealing, and were as expensive as La Scala stalls. When you fancy horsemanship you might be delighted with the fight for an Olympic Games Gold Medal in the "Dressage" category but the Equestrian Corrida (or Rejoneo, as they called it in Spain) is the real thing. The horseriders are not only at Master level in Viennese Lipizani-type artistic technicality but they have to bond with their horses in a very unique way. For a horse to overcome the fear of a pitch black bull of six-hundred-plus kilos, he really must trust his rider.

The cast was very good: Joao Moura & Son and the best that the Spanish variant can offer, Pablo Hermoso de Mendoza. Both father and his 16-year old (!) son were awarded an "oreja" , the ear of the bull removed from the just-killed animal ( with a knife every pit-bull owner skinhead hooligan must dream about).

Muse was quite in awe with what was demanded from the horses and with the mix of adrenalin and beauty. "But this is a radical sport, like snowboarding off-piste!"- she shouted, when the bull horn-daggers almost established contact with the horse's flesh.

Antonio Vecchi

Requiescat in Pace...


His yacht craftmanship will also be remembered..

There are too many one-issue men around, like NGO-addicts who care only for their own tiny bit of activism. There's a mounting tsunami of philistinism, when income records and quarterly financial results are taken as substitutes for classical literature. Almost no humanists or renaissance men are left. The range of activities of an individual is becoming narrower and narrower. So, let us salute a Man of Faith who apart from a formal graduation in Economy was a curious and cultured person, keen to pursue wide-spectrum interests, from menuiserie to Fado-singing. The yacht replica he made with painstakingly attention to detail must be one of the most telling monuments to the high skills of his beautiful hands. And the CD he recorded for his grandchildren with Coimbra "Fados" he sung with his attractive posh voice will ensure that we will remember him in the right way. Slightly in awe and with a tender smile.

Chevalier de Seingalt

'Multimedia reading' ...



A certain Venice...

The Honourable Reader will forgive this blog-author for insisting in the added value of multimedia exposure when dealing with your theme-of-the-week. A simple idea, really. If you are reading a book and you dive into a certain period or set of characters why not coupling it with a film (or other source of imagery) and some concomitant 'further reading'?. A serious essay on Casanova ("Casanova, ou l'Anti-Don Juan" by Felicien Marceau) was my starting point. By coincidence, I received the very same week, thanks to the services of the UK branch of Amazon.com, the novel "Carnevale" by Ms. Michelle Lovric . This novel, from which frontcover I unashamedly extracted the photo above, is set in Venice and takes on board both Signore Casanova and Lord Byron himself (a feast!). At this juncture, the W.H.Smith shop at Heathrow Terminal One provided me, for a modest sum, a DVD copy of the latest TV-Series on the life of Casanova (BBC, 2005) . So, I'm conducting simultaneously a three-layered engagement with Libertine Venice and its most famous Guru. In this day and age of synergisms and mutually reinforcing stuff, "multimedia reading" should be encouraged and proselytized about.

Antonio Egas Moniz

Reckless behaviour comes from the pre-frontal cortex...




A Spaniard Beauty

Dinner with the Freudian Angel. It must have been decades since last time I had Neurology, Psychiatry, Neuroscience and the like as the main topics of conversation at meal time with an interesting, bright and beautiful young lady. Quite challenging, and a bit of a personality~split-inducer, when one witnesses one's phrases and non-verbal language being both listened to and professionally assessed (from a Psychologist's viewpoint). Can men tolerate intelligent women? Overcome the primeval defensive reactions? I believe so, indeed I'm quite doctrinaire on the subject. I'll keep on drinking to that.

Jacques Chirac

Some politicians have "It", some don't...

The Museum Inn, in Farnham, Dorset

Trying to ingratiate myself to my kind weekend-in-Dorset hosts, I invited the LandMark Couple to dinner at "The Museum Inn", following their suggestion. Only now, after some googling, I realize what a strike of luck it was to be spending post-London time in that particular spot of the English countryside. As I read in www.museuminn.co.uk, this place has won the "English Inn of the Year 2005" Award. My caramelised onion tarte tatin with hot Soignon goat cheese was first class, and I'm now aware that the head-chef has achieved Michelin-star status in previous establishments.

As I did many times before, as a kind of personal tribute to the courage of Serge Hochar in growing fine wines in the Bekaa Valley, I ordered a Chateau Musar. My first bottle of Lebanese wine since Syria's withdrawal, in fact.

But why calling this blogtext "Jacques Chirac"? Well, of the free-flowing discussion at dinner what I remember most was when we tried to work it out what puts a political leader in the A-list. (Say, on the same league as Willy Brandt or Winston Churchill). What are the criteria? Who fulfills it? After some brain-storming we agreed that a leading politician should have (1) charisma/TVphotogeny, (2) specific skills (managing his party, managing government, etc.) (3) vision (but not just being the right person in the transitional period) and (4) some Renaissance Man features (being more than just a politicians' politician). Then we took names out of our hats and keep asking ourselves: does he has "It"? Is he a A-leaguer? Havel and John Paul II were leaders in all four counts, that's for sure, but what about less obvious candidates? As a case study, we submitted four famous French politicians to the 'Museum Inn Criteria': Delors, Chirac, Sarkozy and De Villepin ( note that the dinner took place on the eve of the French referendum). Delors got a clean-sweep, bien entendu. Regarding the others a consensus could not be reached. Could Chirac be given full marks in the Vision criterion? Is not Sarkozy failing in the "Renaissance" factor, precisely where De Villepin excels?

We ended up making a tour d'horizon of European leading politicians to identify those who have "It". I kindly suggest to the Honourable Reader to entertain himself in the same innocent way.