the old year is almost past

In this last day of the year of 2005, I have cleaned my house, talked to the most important girl in my world and now get ready to see the new year in with my sweetie.
Minor incident yesterday with candles, invocations and various, maybe too many worship figures made me stop in my tracks and realize that although life is smooth, it is also very fickle.
2004 was my annus horribilus, this year has been one of change and innovation, the coming one I pray will be one of consolidation. One day at a time, I have been reconstructing my abode, with care, love and the help of my fellow soul travelers.

presents and their utility

The photo at right was taken with my new holiday present. City park and the geese on a partially frozen lake. On a beautiful day at the end of December. The city, the geese and the mountais as backdrop. Now all I need is a job and this city will be perfect.

a full heart

Because in this house we celebrate Christmas and Chanukah, all I want for this epoch is more of what I've had so far...that is good and sufficient...love, enough money, serenety and peace.

Googling our brains

The debate rages on about whether Google is a potentiate for fascism or a great liberating force for humanity. Lest we forget, 2,500 years ago, Epicurus and Leontion his companion, were proclaiming the equality of women and men, yet, looking around us, it would seem to be a new at times degenerate idea. Of course in the world of globalization, ideas spread faster and further. But do they really? Is technology serving humanity for the betterment of its lot, or will it be a faceless, power and money driven force which will serve the likes of me at the cost of the likes of others. Most of humanity awakes daily with hunger in their bellies and fear in their hearts. What will be Google's Whole Brain contribution to the improvement of their condition, I wonder! Is Google really the best medium for query, or has it become the click-in drug much like television. What you are getting is the lowest common denominator. Is that our criterium for the idea of the "Whole Brain". It is superficiality rather than depth. Banalities at the level of office party banter. And it does indeed suit the masses, just like television. Let us hope, though, that it does not crush all the other "real" search engines. We can, however be fairly sure of, if not its goals, its results. The further dulling of the brain. With the twisted dellusion that what we are doing is uplifting and cultural. We are no longer dulling our brains with television, we are googling them with a computer! (to ne continued...)

just pictures

poppies
SIMPLE FLOWER
SUCH COMPLEXITY

a smile and a power

In the distant year of 1993, in that other part of the world where I came into being. My child and I, seemingly happy, the smile overshadowing the dark clouds of my existence. Death beckoned me then, with a much stronger grip. Tempted, I survived. Not death, but its sinister callings. I am of another fiber now, with a loving power of my understanding that guides me through the vicissitudes of my existence. And the smile as well as the spirit than brings it forth acompany me still.
Life can be good!

A Room of One's Own

It is to Virginia Woolf that we turn our attention on this most quiet and peaceful sunday. We invent a room of one's own to escape to and reflect on her wise words from that oeuvre..prescient and as solid an argument for women's rights as as ever been written... quotations taken from the e-texts University of Adelaide Library Electronic Texts Collection:

...a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction..."

...when a subject is highly controversial—and any question about sex is that—one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold.

...The indifference of the world which Keats and Flaubert and other men of genius have found so hard to bear was in her case not indifference but hostility...

...If he had written dispassionately about women, had used indisputable proofs to establish his argument and had shown no trace of wishing that the result should be one thing rather than another, one would not have been angry either. One would have accepted the fact, as one accepts the fact that a pea is green or a canary yellow. So be it, I should have said.

...A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband.

...the spirit of life and beauty in a kitchen chopping up suet.

...Women have served all these centuries as looking–glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

...They had been written in the red light of emotion and not in the white light of truth.

If Mrs Seton, I said, had been making money, what sort of memories would you have had of games and quarrels? What would you have known of Scotland, and its fine air and cakes and all the rest of it? But it is useless to ask these questions, because you would never have come into existence at all. Moreover, it is equally useless to ask what might have happened if Mrs Seton and her mother and her mother before her had amassed great wealth and laid it under the foundations of college and library, because, in the first place, to earn money was impossible for them, and in the second, had it been possible, the law denied them the right to possess what money they earned. It is only for the last forty–eight years that Mrs Seton has had a penny of her own. For all the centuries before that it would have been her husband’s property—a thought which, perhaps, may have had its share in keeping Mrs Seton and her mothers off the Stock Exchange. Every penny I earn, they may have said, will be taken from me and disposed of according to my husband’s wisdom—perhaps to found a scholarship or to endow a fellowship in Balliol or Kings, so that to earn money, even if I could earn money, is not a matter that interests me very greatly. I had better leave it to my husband.
. If only Mrs Seton and her mother and her mother before her had learnt the great art of making money and had left their money, like their fathers and their grandfathers before them, to found fellowships and lectureships and prizes and scholarships appropriated to the use of their own sex, we might have dined very tolerably up here alone off a bird and a bottle of wine; we might have looked forward without undue confidence to a pleasant and honourable lifetime spent in the shelter of one of the liberally endowed professions. We might have been exploring or writing; mooning about the venerable places of the earth; sitting contemplative on the steps of the Parthenon, or. going at ten to an office and coming home comfortably at half–past four to write a little poetry. Only, if Mrs Seton and her like had gone into business at the age of fifteen, there would have been—that was the snag in the argument—no Mary. What, I asked, did Mary think of t hat? There between the curtains was the October night, calm and lovely, with a star or two caught in the yellowing trees. Was she ready to resign her share of it and her memories (for they had been a happy family, though a large one) of games and quarrels up in Scotland, which she is never tired of praising for the fineness of its air and the quality of its cakes, in order that Fernham might have been endowed with fifty thousand pounds or so by a stroke of the pen? For, to endow a college would necessitate the suppression of families altogether. Making a fortune and bearing thirteen children—no human being could stand it. Consider the facts, we said. First there are nine months before the baby is born. Then the baby is born. Then there are three or four months spent in feeding the baby. After the baby is fed there are certainly five years spent in playing with the baby...

Is there any thing to add but that we have a responsability as women to make sure that we defend the right to a room of one's own, for us, for our daughters, for all women.
A place of respect, of emotional and physical integrity to develop our full human potential.
For a room of one's own is as much a physical space as it is a place in inside us we can turn to, to dream and reflect...
A place that has not been shrunk to nothing by our peers, television, social pressure to conform ...

and so this blog is an extension of a room of my own...

changes

Rock Creek Way seen from P street bridge in the Spring and in the Fall... The transformation in folliage spanned the time between my stay in the "Seat of the Empire". Got some money, foot aches and enough stress to last me a few years. Recovering and getting ready to do yet another stretch of slave waging...
The snow fall outside while I type my little inanities and listen to some mellow music.
Oh what a life!

the war on...SEX

We have had the war on drugs, the war on terrorism and now we have the war on sex. New legislation goes after the pimps and the johns and does what! Take their cars away, give them tickets, in short profits from the very thing it is trying to outlaw. That is pimping in my book.
We at this here blog, with its feminist inclinations are not fond of a world where prostituition and pornography seem to be more popular than ever. We, as a matter of fact were under the delusion than those nasty human habits were gone the way of the dodo, We tried to think that between the surge of feminism and evangelical christianity, porn was remitted to the dark alleys were weirdos roam.
On the contrary, it has resurged in spite or because of...
Is it possible to legislage away undesirable human behavior.
We at this blog, feel the conumdrum of post modern relativist conflict. Sometimes...
Sometimes...you feel like a nut...and sometimes you don't

a dialogue surreal

At the kitchen table:
She: "Can you believe women in Classical greece only got half of the food allotment of men? Isn't that a trip?"
He: "Yeah! As opposed to now, when they only get half of the wages"

memories of lives past

Ah, yes, the privilege of living in various places in California was once bestowed upon my person, in yet, another life time...

Serene, feminist Santa Cruz as it was in the year of 1982. Carefree and irresponsible, I enjoyed 6 months of downpour in that Utopia by the sea. Have not gone back since...But I still remember the redwoods and the houses hidden in the trees as well as the sea lions and the hippie attraction that was the mall.

the pope's prada loafers

Red loafers?
Gucci glasses?
Prada?
What do the devil and the pope have in common?
They are both high class fashionistas...
It just doesn't seem right!

biker babe...in another lifetime

'twas in another lifetime,
one of fun and games...
repetious tasks and too many hours sitting on a stool...
I still like bikes, the rest I can dispense with...

Leonardo's patent sexism

This Leonardo Da Vinci drawing begs for a lot of questions and one afirmation:

Woman as reproductive system and nothing more?

Did Leonardo ever encounter a female that proved him wrong?

Did he ever think about it?

How did we let this condition persist, year after year, generation after generation, millenia after millenia?

What creatures are men that millenia after millenia they would aquiesce with the subsbervient condition of their wives, their daughter, nieces, granddaughters and soul mates?

Well, we have come some ways...

on life...

Beyond those trees, in another place in another time, there I dwelt. Other wars, scenes, other person, the Other, another incarnation suspended forever in time bending over and backwards. Streching out into the universe through time and space I play out my life as if this was a rehersal for something better to come.
But 'tis it for all time and eternity...
can I be o.k. with that?

to my sweet soul mate

My sweet sweet soul mate
That our love would be put to the test again and again, I doubt not. This, however so surreal, so Kafkaesque and yet so human, I did not expect. That a plain pneumonia, diabolical in nature, would threaten to steal you away, is not something that even in my wildest imagination I would think of. Which once again proves how little fertility our imaginings have when stacked against the life forces out there. This is gut wrenching through and through. The feeling of total revulsion, the numbness, the impotence, the sheer overwhelming sense of true powerlessness is indescribable. It would take the pen of a poet to do justice to the anger, the rage and the profound sadness that overtakes me. I must go on performing the mechanical duties of life, but I cannot pretend that all goes well. The sadness, the mind blogging intensity of it all transpires out of my pores. I cannot help it. I am disconnect and I am with you in some far way room out in the land of cowboys and great peaks. Today, Saturday, we would have gone to N.Y., we would have gone to a small room in the Upper West Side, we would have taken off our clothes, and we would have made sweet love.
It was not to be.
I cry silently and I prepare for a voyage. Into the unknown, where you you struggle with the forces of life and death. I join you reaching out my hand, my soul, my heart to you. I am only sure that I love you and that this love has much force. I want you you, I need you to be there for me, to rub my feet, to write me love letters, to tell me of your love, to just be there, I need as much as the air I breathe, I need your beauty, your vision of life, passionate, intense and driven., your weirdness and your uniqueness, vulnerability and angst, all, your hair, your mouth your hands your sex and ears, I need you to be there for me, to be here with me, I need you to say good morning to and to kiss good night , I will not take no for an answer
I am coming home to you...

This was in June of this year; all is well and we have made our home...

A woman's work is never done

Listening to Joni Mitchell, mellowing out on this Friday afternoon. Have finally after all these years started on my projected e-mail book. wow! This is exciting!
Thinking of women and our lot...Always remember that memorable bit in Phillip Roth's The Plot Against America: "The men worked 50, 60, even 70 or more hours a week; the women worked all the time, with little assistance from labor saving devices, washing laundry, ironing shirts, mending socks, turning collars, sewing on buttons, mothproofing wollens, polishing furniture, sweeping and washing floors, washing windows, cleaning sinks, tubs, toilets, and stoves, vacuuming rugs, nursing the sick, shopping for food, cooking meals, feeding relatives, tidying closets and drawers, overseeing paint jobs and household repairs, arraging for religious observances, paying bills and keeping the family's books while simultaneously attending to their children's health, clothing, cleanliness, schooling, nutrition, conduct, birthdays, discipline, and morale. "
And I would add that oftentimes they still manage to hold a full time job. Is it any wonder that they take pills and have frequent breakdowns. It is true that a woman's work is never done, and that lack of sense of accomplishment can sometimes defeat us. So anyway the book will be on the substance of woman through the ages and geography...

a joke

So he looks at his crotch and says:
"It is indeed a sad day when a man looks down and thinks of Bill Gates"
"Bill Gates?" she replies
"What you mean"?
"oh! You know, micro soft!"

'thicker than water

To an enduring friendship and ever lasting ties. This was written in the original language we communicated in, when as children at our grandmother's farm, we would unleash the wild gals, so contained in our uptight urban upbringing. Of those summers, I retain all the good that I have of my childhood. They are indeed golden memories!
This poem was written for your most recent birthday:

Sande no Verão

Não me enganou a memória
Nem tão pouco esqueci
Os momentos dourados de infância
Que passei ao pé de ti

Contidos no meu coração
Alegria e variada traquinice
Tendas, o avô e o cão Nero

Mais, claro, a prima Alice

O padre João, Realmente,
Perdura na minha memória
Feita de remendos e enxertos
E desses momentos de glória

Mondegoan blues

This small town up on a hill overlooking the Mondego River was my place of dwelling for a few years. Poverty stricken, insular and close minded were its people, who never really made me feel at home. The big city girl, with the urbane alcoholic husband and the small shy daughter. In a place where people were always someone's cousin or aunt or mother, I stood to have to prove my worth by the sole weight of my accomplishments.

Considering my personal history at the time, with its episodic personal recklessness, I was on the rebound and trying to make good on the commitment to straightening what was skewed for so long. I fairly well succeed for the most part. But a failed marriage, a child with learning difficulties and the emotional eroding effect of always trying to balance a very tight budget, ate slowly away at my iron determination. What came next was to be what would again trans form me. And the obligatory move, in an absurd attempt to push away the deamons in my soul.

Situation

Alone, in my little world, the city outside, cold, severe.
32 years after the smile captured by a camera in another continent, another life altogether. The eyes still clear with the inocence of a life ahead. Short lived would be that smile as would the innocence. Hells, heavens, nirvanas and reinventions later, stoic in the face of a future devoid of much mystery and magic. Through all the isms and all the chemistry offered by the interceding 3 decades, I sit here, a survivor of a social war and personal rage, wondering the next step.

After the storm

Yes, all these years of wandering and wondering have landed me in the patch of land where I now stand. It has not been an easy trip, oh but to use a common expression, what a trip it's been.
I have questions and opinions and dreams and fears. I've tried to find the place of inner peace, I have streched the meaning of self search. It is still wonder, that I wake to every morning of my life.
Is this home?
Have I found home?

My muse Salome

My child, my soul mate with whom I am for all eternity interwined in spirit. My inspiration, she keeps me going and this complex journey called life has been sweetened and mellowed by the force of her beauty. I doubt not that on that distant day in 1992, the child Salome Pereira came into this life and saved my own. She has given me a direction, a purpose that was blatantly absent before her decision to join me. I am forever grateful for her sweet influence in this sometimes trying existence.

beauty has a price?

First snow fall for my eyes to behold in 15 years! I awoke and the world has transformed itself. Gone the greys and browns of winter replaced by the serene yet frozen beauty whiteness of snow.

serenitis

This is where it all started. The place, a city of water and light bordering the Atlantic ocean and Tagus river. A city of pale blue skies and friendly weather. In the distant year of 1962, I made this city and this street my home. A trampoline from which to embark on this adventure called life. A starting point, from whence I ventured out to the planet I call home.
Many years and many lands, and many journeys. I am far from that distant place I once called home, in another city with no ocean, a few creeks and majestic mountains in the distance. This city shall now be the home that I have searched far and wide.
I look for PEACE, pray that I may find it in my heart and around me.