A firefight with heavily armed insurgents near a gold-domed mosque. A helicopter evacuation of bloody car bomb victims. A meeting with tribal elders upset about security.
Just another day in Afghanistan? More like the dress rehearsal for war, played out on 100,000 acres of snake-infested pine forest on an Army post near the Texas border.
“We want to replicate the contemporary operating environment," said Col. Jon S. Lehr, who oversees the training operation. “But we also have to prepare a soldier for their worst day.”
About two weeks ago Simone Federman sent this message for those who used to exchange E-mails with her father Raymond Federman. I had this privilege to be one who got some genuine writing lectures that Raymond gave at any question I sent on his own books, or postmodernism, or even on Samuel Beckett. The fact is that Raymond wrote a book on Beckett before his first novel was ever printed, so he was always eager to talk about Beckett. In his last E-mail for me he sent a copy of the text he wrote for an Alt-X collective book on postmodernism. He was always a gentleman in his way to please his admirers...
Raymond Federman, who coined the word “surfiction” for his writings.
Now this lovely letter from his daughter Simone:
October 6, 2009
My father died this morning. Last night I read all of "The Voice in The Closet" to him in one breath, 75 pages: one sentence. I stopped on page 61 to cry, and then we both cried at the end.
He had not been responsive for more than 24 hours, so this was especially magical.I thanked him for all the books, all the beautiful sentences, this being the most beautiful I had ever read. I thanked him for being the best father I could ever imagine. I told him he would always be my best friend. His eyebrows told me to stop crying. So I did. I told him I understood because he had taught me about laughter.
I went to bed on the pull-out couch next to his bed. I half heard his loud heavy breathing stop and roused to call my mom, who had already had a beautiful tearful last goodbye, and the nurse. He had died. We said kaddish for him at the mortuary, and he was cremated, as he wished, like his mother, father and sisters, at about noon.
We are planning to spread some of the ashes, maybe some noodles too, at his golf course, maybe even make a drop at the casino, and then bring some to France to spread at his former apartment and Le Cimetière Marin (the one in the Valéry poem he wanted me to read to him last week).
My mother and I, my sister Robin and brothers, James and Steve are planning a memorial celebration of his life in San Diego in the coming weeks, details to come.
We are okay, feeling strong. We had a really special last few weeks with him, not to mention a really special 47 to 49 years. I apologize for the group e-mail. I just wanted you to know.
Much love, Simone
Raymond reading “The Voice in the Closet”.
Novembro 03, 2009
Eternally Pagu
A member of Brazil's avant-garde in its heyday. Patrícia Galvão (or to use her nickname, Pagu) was extraordinary. Not only was her work among the most exciting and innovative published in the 1930s, it was unique in portraying an avant-garde woman's view of women in Sao Paulo during that audacious period. Industrial Park, first published in 1933, is Galvão's most notable literary achieve-ment. Like Döblin's portrayal of Berlin in Alexanderplatz or Biely's St Petersburg, it is a book about the voices, clashes, and traffic of a city in the middle of rapid change. It includes fragments of public documents as well as dialogue and narration, giving a panorama of the city in a sequence of colorful slices. The novel dramatizes the problems of exploitation, poverty, racial prejudice, prostitution, state repression, and neocolonialism, but it is by no means a doctrinaire tract. Galvão's ironic wit pervades the novel, aspiring not only to describe the teeming city but also to put art and politics in each other's service. Like many of her contemporaries Galvão was a member of the Brazilian Communist Party. She attracted Party criticism for her unorthodox behavior and outspokenness. A visit to Moscow in 1934 disenchanted her with the communist state, but she continued to militate for change upon returning to Brazil. She was imprisoned and tortured under the Vargas dictatorship between 1935 and 1940. In the 1940s she returned to the public through her journalism and literary activities. She died in 1962.
Dance, dance mesmo assim... Dance pelos momentos fugazes que nunca mais se repetirão... Dance pelo botão de rosa, promessa de nova vida... Dance pelos meninos e meninas de rua, que só conhecem a desesperança... Dance pelos sentimentos tardios, que nunca deram em nada... Dance pelos arrependimentos, que sufocam o pecado saudável... Dance pelo arco-íris, o coveiro da chuva de verão... Dance pelo amor infinito, aquele que um dia sempre acaba... Dance pelo primeiro beijo, que reduz uma hora a um segundo... Dance pelo vestido da Marilyn Monroe, outrora tão recheado da dona... Dance pelo final de Casablanca, o início de tantas amizades... Dance pela fabrica da Studebaker, que faliu em 1966... Dance pela tinta zarcão, que esconde a implacável ferrugem... Dance pelo anjo-da-guarda, o discreto e bom conselheiro. Dance pelo sistema plantation, que vai desertificar a Amazônia... Dance pelo instante do orgasmo, que foi, é ou um dia será... Dance por você, pensando numa salsa cubana... Dance pela humanidade, pensando num merengue paraense... Dance pelos inviáveis, num samba quadradinho e sincopado... Dance uma valsa vienense, pelo sucesso do seu vizinho... Dance, dance mesmo assim: pelo teu último sonho, pela próxima notícia, pelo sol que brilha na praia ou por uma vida nova e repleta de oportunidades... Dance pelo que você jurou que seria e que ainda pode ser, pois tudo só depende de sua dança...
(Beto Palaio)
Outubro 02, 2009
NA AMAZONIA DO BEÇA INTO BEÇA´S AMAZON
Rio Negro (a tributary of Amazon River)
moon of autumn frogs eat mosquitoes next to a light pole
lua de outono rãs comem mosquitos perto do poste de luz
Surrounded by green island in the ivy of the wall - a white orchid
Cercado de verde Ilha na trepadeira da parede Uma orquídea branca
(Haikus Anibal Beça wrote in English)
Rio na piracema Peixes pulam nas canoas: Mendigos alegres
river at spawning time fish jump into the canoes such glad beggars
Canto e contracanto O pica-pau reclamando Do som do machado
Chant and conterpoint The woodpecker complaining About the sounds of the axes
Susto na colheita Em vez do capuaçu Cai a casa de vespas
Fright in the harvest Instead of the coconut A wasp’s nest falls down
(Haikus Anibal Beça wrote in Portuguese)
Uakti – Philip Glass – Japura River
Philip Glass – Amazon River
Anibal Beça (1946-2009)
Caro Aníbal, há uma Amazônia maior que você já deve ter descoberto. Dear Aníbal, there´s a greater Amazon you certainly discovered by now.
(Os haikáis que Anibal escreveu em inglês são de nossa comunidade Outsiderwriters/ The Haikus written in English by Aníbal belongs to our community Outsiderwriters)
Setembro 20, 2009
O LIVRO VERMELHO DE JUNG
THE JUNG’S RED BOOK
“The years … when I pursued the inner images were the most important time of my life…”
During WWI, Jung commenced an extended self-exploration that he called his “confrontation with the unconscious.” During this period, he developed his principal theories of the collective unconscious, the archetypes, psychological types and the process of individuation, and transformed psychotherapy from a practice concerned with the treatment of pathology into a means for reconnection with the soul and the recovery of meaning in life. At the heart of this endeavor was his legendary Red Book, a large, leather bound, illuminated volume that he created between 1914 and 1930, and which contained the nucleus of his later works.
Durante a Primeira Grande Guerra, Jung iniciou uma extensa exploração do self no que ele chamou de “a confrontação com o inconsciente”. Durante este período ele desenvolveu suas importantes teorias sobre o inconsciente coletivo, arquétipos, padrões psicológicos e o processo de individuação. Com isto ele transformou a psicoterapia de uma prática apenas voltada para o tratamento patológico num modo de reconexão do paciente com a alma e sua reconquista do significado da vida. No cerne desta sua empreitada estava o legendário Livro Vermelho, um grande volume encadernado em couro e repleto de iluminuras que ele coletara entre 1914 e 1930 no qual continha todo aspecto central de seus trabalhos posteriores.
The Holy Grail of the Unconscious O Santo Graal do Inconsciente
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