On Death… again!

Posted by: Jussara

On Death, without Exaggeration 

via Perceval Press

It can’t take a joke,
find a star, make a bridge.
It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,
building ships, or baking cakes.

In our planning for tomorrow,
it has the final word,
which is always beside the point.

It can’t even get the things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave,
make a coffin,
clean up after itself.

Preoccupied with killing,
it does the job awkwardly,
without system or skill.
As though each of us were its first kill.

Oh, it has its triumphs,
but look at its countless defeats,
missed blows,
and repeat attempts!

Sometimes it isn’t strong enough
to swat a fly from the air.
Many are the caterpillars
that have outcrawled it.

All those bulbs, pods,
tentacles, fins, tracheae,
nuptial plumage, and winter fur
show that it has fallen behind
with its halfhearted work.

Ill will won’t help
and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d’etat
is so far not enough.

Hearts beat inside eggs.
Babies’ skeletons grow.
Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves
and sometimes even tall trees fall away.

Whoever claims that it’s omnipotent
is himself living proof
that it’s not.

There’s no life
that couldn’t be immortal
if only for a moment.

Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.

In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you’ve come
can’t be undone.

Wislawa Szymborska  |  From “The People on the Bridge” (1986)

Translated by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

THE SEVENTH SEAL (Det sjunde inseglet, 1957, Ingmar Bergman)

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How terrible

Posted by: Jussara

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Quem é Vilém Flusser?

Os contornos do meu futuro pensamento começavam a delinear-se; o problema central viria a ser a língua. Em primeiro lugar, obviamente, porque amo a língua. Amo sua beleza, sua riqueza, seu mistério e seu encanto. Só sou verdadeiramente quando falo, escrevo, leio ou quando ela sussurra dentro de mim, querendo articular-se. Mas também porque ela é forma simbólica, morada do Ser que vela e revela, vereda pela qual me ligo aos outros, campo de imortalidade aere perennius, matéria e instrumento da arte. Ela é meu compromisso, através dela concebo minha realidade e por ela deslizo rumo ao seu horizonte e fundamento, o silêncio do indizível. Ela é minha forma de religiosidade. É, quiçá, também a forma pela qual me perco.

Vilém Flusser  |  “Língua e Realidade“

 

What is more tragic: life or death?

Posted by: Jussara
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… Cats that are rereading Hamlet …

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The body is here

Posted by: CAROL

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Maybe it should also be said that to make love is to feel one’s body close in on oneself. It is finally to exist outside of any utopia, with all of one’s density, between the hands of the other. Under the other’s fingers running over you, all the invisible parts of your body begin to exist. Against the lips of the other, yours become sensitive. In front of his half-closed eyes, your face acquires a certitude. There is a gaze, finally, to see your closed eyelids. Love also, like the mirror and like death—it appeases the utopia of your body, it hushes it, it calms it, it encloses it as if in a box, it shuts and seals it. This is why love is so closely related to the illusion of the mirror and the menace of death. And if, despite these two perilous figures that surround it, we love so much to make love, it is because, in love, the body is here.

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Michel Foucault (Radio Interview – 1966)

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