here is always somewhere else
Posted: 12/10/2012 Filed under: Coordinates, Letters Leave a commentOne day he decided to make a very long sailing trip
in search of the miraculous
*he was the fourth element
(Bas Jan Ader)
letter 55
Posted: 21/08/2012 Filed under: Letters Leave a commentmy dear maria,
how are you?
i’ve been trying to keep life quite beautiful. by now we are making wooden furnitures by ourselves. flowers and herbs flourish in the garden. it makes the house so lovely! from time to time my son and i glimpse a butterfly with its tiny and colored wings. and my son runs to take his little camera. most of times the small insect flies along the air before he can picture it. and he starts laughing. *butterflies and children are easy images, don’t you think so?* it is delightful anyway, children and butterflies. it’s the end of the winter and the days are pretty cold. i can’t sleep well. nights have been so long. actually i could never sleep well. i belive that is why i started reading, and after some time writing. i’ve written far less than i wish, though. when we start living things it becomes difficult to write about them. such as love. it is essential its abcence to write about it. by now, my sweet, i’m just thinking about men and women working day by day, about this unusual wolrd around us. that is why i still walk with bare feet. it is my resistance.
with love,
a.
letter 53
Posted: 02/08/2012 Filed under: Letters Leave a comment’cause sometimes i want to tell you a thing.
letter 51
Posted: 08/05/2012 Filed under: Letters Leave a commenteden is that old-fashioned house
we dwell in every day
without suspecting our abode
until we drive away
how fair, on looking back, the day
we sauntered from the door
unconscious our returning
discover it no more
*emily dickinson
letter 50
Posted: 02/05/2012 Filed under: Letters Leave a commentnigh on winter
you hold my hand tight
and life took place again
if you could know how many shadows
will remain amongst us
in the very moment of your dreams
royal cordillera
Posted: 03/04/2012 Filed under: Coordinates, Letters Leave a commenteven when we cannot reach it
we know it is still there – so white –
looking on men and their secrets
as it always has been
south pacific
Posted: 24/02/2012 Filed under: Coordinates, Letters Leave a commenttell me a unique word
and if you look that close
you will see simply
a deep square of blue
from now on*
Posted: 11/01/2012 Filed under: drawers chests and wardrobes Leave a comment*amalgama #8: fernando ancil (brazil) and glaura cardoso vale (brazil)
——-
i always thought house was a place of care
and not an imprisonment
at the same time, i locked doors and drawers out
creating a barrier to prevent
strangers to come in and out
this flawed ideia of security
while fear scares me inside
for a long time house was only a room
where books, clothes, and long plays were gathering
while doors and drawers were still locked
i realized in the cloudy room the possibility to not to fear the world
locked doors and drawers
did not make possible strangers to come in and out
nor writing either
a table*
Posted: 08/01/2012 Filed under: drawers chests and wardrobes Leave a comment*amalgam #7: fernando ancil (brazil) and marina tsvetaeva (1933, russia)**
Oh, table, on which I write! I thank you with all my heart: You’ve given a trunk to me – With goal a table to be – But keep being the living trunk! – With – over my head – your leaf, young, With fresh bark and hot pitch’s tears, With roots – till the bottom of Earth! Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, October 22, 2005 ** Marina Tsvetaeva is the great Russian poet of 20th century (1892-1941)closed landscape*
Posted: 04/01/2012 Filed under: drawers chests and wardrobes Leave a comment*amalgama #6: rafael fares (brazil) and virginia yiny (spain)
A savage inside the cave and the man goes out to hunt.
Ripped in two both sexes.
She will be the womb, he will stay in the midst of
There and hither.
A tamed man cooks and the woman picks her children.
They have never been married.
They met each other cuz he was a migrant
He wanted a home, he was tired to be an errant
She wants only a lover, she had life done.
three*
Posted: 27/12/2011 Filed under: drawers chests and wardrobes Leave a comment*amalgam #3: bruno vasconcelos (brazil) and ko sakauchi (japan)
—
When I was little, my dad used to say “if you’re lost, I can find you looking for the girl who has three moles like Orion on her thigh and bring back home anywhere you are.” Two out of three are almost gone now and maybe I don’t need them.
of fruits and love*
Posted: 17/12/2011 Filed under: drawers chests and wardrobes 3 Comments*amalgam #1: lígia diniz (brazil) and anna volkova (latvia)
So strange, you see,
these windows so wide don’t get a grip of this city’s infinity.
From our room I see trees-with-branches-with-leaves-with-mangos so big
they could fall and smash someone’s head
and yet they are homelike for me.
(Ever since I was little I look up to the sky in terror:
such greatness must be famished for being so long so blue.
And in a city like this – all turquoise sky, no ocean, no woods –
it will surely feed on a lesser woman
like me.)
That is why (you see)
I need those trees-with-branches-with-leaves-with-mangos-so-big:
so I can hold on to them when the ravenous universe finally sends for me.
And that is why
when the sun is high
I ask you to close all the windows
and throw your body both gently and heavily –
I ask you to throw your body over me.
retrospective
Posted: 10/12/2011 Filed under: drawers chests and wardrobes Leave a commentmy love has no meaning
———————————-
everyday dishes
Posted: 04/12/2011 Filed under: drawers chests and wardrobes Leave a commenton my writing desk:
a computer, notebooks, faded pictures, some lists to do.
among them rests a small chinese ball you once offered me
on its surface, a delicate blue painted foliage.
love can be that flimsy.
————————————————————–
Political license
Posted: 27/11/2011 Filed under: drawers chests and wardrobes Leave a commentfor today, at least for today, i’ll close the windows and turn off lights for the men and children murdered in an indigenous village in brazil.
for today, at least for today, i’ll sing them a song I use to sing to my little boy when he feels threatened. it has no meaning. but i’ll sing it anyway.
(a song to Guarani-Kaiowa)
————————————————————————————–
the theme: drawers, chests and wardrobes
drawers, chests and wardrobes*
Posted: 16/11/2011 Filed under: drawers chests and wardrobes Leave a commentFor a while we’ve stopped posting here. And we both started wondering why. Yesterday we met by chance on skype and talked about it (a little bit) and life. We always find something potentially interesting when talking about life randomly. It is, probably our method. A fluid, open-ended conversation about minor daily things: my son, your MA, films, books we are reading, and other ordinary situations. We were talking about what to do with our blog, trying to set a new theme and start publishing on it again. What does we have in common, besides “mouse gray” hair, red shoes, accents, photography and books? Our relationship has been marked by such coincidences. And it wasn’t different yesterday.
We were talking about leaving home, about having no more home, at least a traditional home. We are both having to deal with it, in different ways though. How is to live in between two cities and build up a feeling of home on the road, or how to feel at home when you had to leave your home unexpectedly and had no chance do set a new one? And, again, by chance, I wrote you a quotation from Bachelard’s La poétique de l’espace. You were reading it as well. So we decided to understand it better. The coincidences but, mostly, what drove us to this book. We both want to understand the idea of intimacy, of the relationship between exterior and interior, personal objects and spaces, the sense of building a home and live in it, or leave it, of home and its poétique.
So we decided to start writing/picturing to each other again, like the first time, when we fist ‘met’ each other, as a diary, as a description of ordinary time and space of life.
* from La poétique de l’espace, by Gaston Bachelard
———————————————————————————-
For this theme, we decided to do each post together: one of us will post an image, another – text. We are going to swap every time who will post what, but without indication on it. We try to build one story told by two people. Let’s see how it works.
A letter to Maria
Posted: 26/06/2011 Filed under: no picture, tea coffee Leave a commentDear Maria,
Sorry for not answering your emails and skype calls. Life sometimes can be very tricky. We never know what comes next. I’m back to my hometown after six years. I think it is time to stay close to my beloved ones, at least for now. It’s Fall here and the sky is so blue that is almost impossible not to feel touched by it. I feel deeply touched by ipê trees outside. From my window I can see a pink one. They remember me my mom, she loves them, mostly the yellow ones. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my camera with me, otherwise I would send you a picture of it. It’s funny, don’t’ you think so? A photographer without a camera. It happens sometimes. So I write instead of shot. Let’s start all over again? I can invite you for a cup of tea and we will talk about love, photography, gardens and the days for come.
With love,
Ana
on theme: tea coffe and something else
Letter from Carolina
Posted: 10/06/2011 Filed under: tea coffee Leave a commentI do not know when the words were lost, but it was in the end of winter. These days, I’ve planned a strategy – a strategy of writing or an image. I thought to invite myself to a cup of tea – after the end of writing, I started living things rather than writing them. It was a little disturbing. The word love, for example, existed only in writing. Outside, the word is more simple and quotidian. I can not write about a tea unless I take it. Soon, I will have a cup of tea in a place I like near my house. I will sit, ask for the flavors, and make from this rough writing, my wordless moment.
[Today I saw the first autumm pink Ipê tree – I thought it was worthy to note.]
Carolina Junqueira likes photography and notebooks
on the theme – tea coffee and something else
Letter from Luísa (around me)
Posted: 05/05/2011 Filed under: around me Leave a comment*Luísa Horta, artist based in Brazil
Letter from Renata (around me)
Posted: 04/05/2011 Filed under: around me Leave a commentAround me, small fragments of daily life
Around me
bared feet
searching for a path
I go along
being the word
the sense
the direction
Even without a route
I’m the guide
(mother’s eyes)
In the heart of a babble
My words vanish
gather on the floor
Sometimes, someone stumbles on them
Pay attention
and a question will arise
From the seed word
springs up a clear speech
(teacher’s eyes)
It grows dark
the house becomes quiet
as the others fall asleep
I think I’m also going to sleep
’cause I am afraid to look
(eyes in the mirror)
*Renata Resende, Brazil ( historian, teacher and mother of João Pedro)
letter from Glaura (around me)
Posted: 02/05/2011 Filed under: around me 1 Commentfrom the old house I keep all the memories
of a story that happened there and made me possible writing
writing is something essential
the very gesture that attaches me to the world
take it off and I die
as many others have said…
*glaura cardoso, brazil
(translation: ana carvalho and eduardo assis)
letter 29 (around me)
Posted: 29/04/2011 Filed under: around me 1 Commentsometimes I go there to eat fresh fruit
I like the beauty of some plastic flowers outside
remembering me japanese gardens I could barely imagine
so tiny and delicate
from their country
only the image of a soundless wave
the breathtaking violence of nature
Letter 27
Posted: 10/04/2011 Filed under: Letters | Tags: ana, photo Leave a commentOnly silence remains.
Letter 25
Posted: 05/04/2011 Filed under: Letters Leave a commentAll love ends in a deep sea, at last.
(Mumbai, India, 2011)
Letter 24
Posted: 31/03/2011 Filed under: Letters Leave a commentMumbai. To reach it, you have to write it. The photography could not. (I could not)
Letter 22
Posted: 16/03/2011 Filed under: Letters Leave a commentMy dear Maria,
What to do with the canvas you once offered me? Especially me, my sweet, the one who never knows what to do in front of a white surface, a white landscape, in front of any possibility to come? Meanwhile I look at things, not the invisibles ones, but the ones we can touch, even if briefly, with our eyes and hands. All these things without value. Minor things. A piece of a handwritten paper, for an example. The sunflower next to the window. Some book passages. Or remembering the sea. Everything is so tiny. You would say that memory is not touchable. And I disagree. Have you ever tried to lay your body over a memory. It is almost unbearable, but, oh!, how to live without it? I have an inclination towards memories and things with no value. For me, they have said enough.
Letter 19
Posted: 27/02/2011 Filed under: Letters Leave a commentShe has only one child. She calls him: my little grasshopper. He doesn’t know, but she is about to cry.
Letter 17
Posted: 24/02/2011 Filed under: Letters | Tags: ana, photo Leave a commentOn the shelf lays a picture of her child.
Letter 15
Posted: 23/02/2011 Filed under: Letters Leave a comment“It happened suddenly. One day I looked in the mirror and I couldn’t recognize myself.”
letter 12
Posted: 14/02/2011 Filed under: Letters 7 Commentsin the midst of your dreams
two or three swift-flying
songbirds
Letter 9
Posted: 09/02/2011 Filed under: Letters 1 CommentOne day every single room will be taken by its arms. And from the men who once lived there will rest nothing but the dreams they whispered in the very blue night.
Letter 8
Posted: 07/02/2011 Filed under: Letters Leave a commentloosing her track
like water
in the sand
like music
flinging across the sea
Letter 3
Posted: 27/01/2011 Filed under: Letters | Tags: ana, photo 2 Commentstouching the clouds
with the tip of feet
* i wanted to write something to you. your letter came to me first.
Letter 1
Posted: 24/01/2011 Filed under: Letters | Tags: ana, video Leave a commentIt’s the dry season
The city has become
A lonely desert
As my heart
Everything burns
* the taste of the sea on my lips *