This is a wonderful piece of research on the word "fuck" and all who sail in her.
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Dykes To Watch Out For
That’s the title of a comic strip that Alison Bechdel has been doing, oh for ever, it seems. Actually, it began back in 1983 and has been delighting its audience ever since. Now she’s brought out a compedium: The Essential Dykes To Watch Out For. It’s gone straight on my "to read" list. The New York Times gives it a glowing review, even Alison is taken aback.And if you haven’t read Fun Home, her brilliant, morbidly funny and disturbing memoir of growing up in the family’s funeral home business, then you should really track down a copy. It’s better than Six Feet Under.Leave a comment
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Saudade
Saudade is a Portugese word that is defined as ‘a feeling of nostalgic remembrance of people or things, absent or forever lost, accompanied by the desire to see or possess them once more’ (Correia da Cunha,1982).
The psychiatrist Carlos E. Sluzki writes beautifully and movingly about one of his case studies, an elderly Mexican woman who received weekly visits from her two sons, even though they were both long since dead. Do go and read this article, you won’t be disappointed.
(hat tip to Mind Hacks)
4 responses to “Saudade”
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Saudades is more than that. Saudades allows us to carry the past into the present and thus makes a place in out future. Sluzki is Argentinian and you can’t really understand saudades unless you’re a brasileiro, but he makes a good attempt when he says, ‘it gives us the authorization to re-engage in our joy and creativity.’ But it also gives us permission to bring our past, with all its unfulfilled hopes and dreams into our present and so into our futures. When we say, Ai! Que Saudades!’ we don’t just long for the past; we bring the past into the present and make it real.The year before he died, my father made one last trip back to Brasil, the land of his birth. Meeting up with one of his nephews in Rio, he went to Colombo, a coffee house in Rio where his mother used to take him as a child in the 20’s and 30’s. It was as resplendant in its Belle Epoque glamour as it was when he was a boy. He got on his cell phone and rang his sisters in Oklahoma City and said, ‘Guess where I am?’That’s saudades.
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Thanks, Coboró, for the elucidation and the vignette. As Sluzki says, the word is perhaps untranslatable, but hopefully we’re now within striking distance of getting a handle on it…
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Geoff,You wrote, read the case study by Carlos E. Sluzki, you won`t be disappointed. You are right. Absolutelydelightful.Teddy Lloyd
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Teddy, you’re very welcome.
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Windows Live
You may have noticed that my Windows Live Space (a.k.a. Geoff Coupe’s Blog) has changed its appearance today. Microsoft has just rolled out major changes to its Windows Live Services. I can’t say that I’m particularly happy about them. Management of comments on the blog has just got really difficult, and it was badly designed before.It looks as though Microsoft is trying to build a Facebook clone. I don’t want a Facebook clone, I just want a nice simple blog. Sigh.2 responses to “Windows Live”
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You know, my offer to help move these all to a more comprehensive blogging package (WordPress, Movable Type, etc) still stands. Just sayin’. And for what it’s worth, I use Windows Live Writer to publish to my WordPress blog when I get the urge to write.
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As Vicki Pollard would say: Yeah, but no, but yeah, but no… I’m not sure that a "comprehensive" blogging package is what I’m looking for. Windows Live Spaces has been OK for me up to now. It’s just that Microsoft has moved all the furniture around (or, as I commented on their team blog, sent it off to another country), and what was relatively straightforward is now buried in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. Frankly, the user interface design team must have been asleep at the wheel on this one.
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Do You Know What Time It Is?
I know that I’ve grumbled before about the fact that Horizon – the BBC’s once-proud flagship of its science programming – has become a shadow of its former self: dumbed-down beyond belief, or needlessly sexed-up with flashy graphics and bizarre camera angles.Well, I’m really pleased to be able to say that last night’s episode: Do You Know What Time It Is? showed a return to the form of the classic Horizons. Presented by physicist Professor Brian Cox, it was both engrossing and mind-expanding. Simply brilliant.Leave a comment
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Filming Red Mars
A short story that conjures up the juncture between the fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars and science fiction film. Wonderful.Leave a comment
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Irony At Dangerous Levels
Whilst I do have some sympathy with what Father Jamison is saying here, I do think it’s a bit rich for a representative of the Catholic Church to be lecturing us on the exploitation of spirituality and the corruption of children’s minds. Mo obviously agrees with me.Leave a comment
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Ridiculous Fashion
As I’ve mentioned before, the fashion industry is an area of human endeavour that I’ve never quite understood. Today’s exhibit from the Rijksmuseum demonstrates that the industry has a long history of being not entirely sane. It’s a wedding dress that is two metres wide. While presumably the bride could advance grandly down the aisle in the church, I have visions of her mincing sideways through the doors at home before the event, and I just wonder how she actually made it to the church…The Rijksmuseum bills the dress as "one of the most impressive items of clothing in the collection". I’d be inclined to call it one of the most ridiculous. And what’s with the piece of sacking over the head of the mannequin? That truly is a bizarre choice by the museum’s display staff.Leave a comment
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World AIDS Day
Today is World AIDS day. Wear your red ribbon, or better still, give a donation to an AIDS charity. As I said three years ago, it’s also a day to think about some lost friends: Kerry, Lance, Eric, Humphrey, Peter, John, Kingsley, Graham, and Neil. I’m sorry that you’re not around with the rest of us today.Leave a comment
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Out On A Spree
I can’t do justice to expressing my thoughts on recent events in Mumbai, so I’ll let Ophelia do it for me.Today’s Observer carries several pieces about them. I found those by William Dalrymple and Jason Burke to be the most illuminating. That by Maninee Misra less so.Leave a comment
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The Leaked List
Yes, I know I have a warped sense of humour.The maker of the video mashup talks about it here. Worth reading. And I’ve not seen Der Untergang, so that’s an ommision I will proceed to rectify as quickly as possible. Ganz’s incarnation of Hitler is clearly something to experience at first hand.Leave a comment
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There’s Bugger All Down Here On Earth
After a day browsing the internet, that final quote from one of the best songs of science is what sticks in my mind.Leave a comment
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Death Comes to the Birdfeeder
Being Winter, I’ve hung up a birdfeeder outside my study window. It gets lots of visitors, generally members of the Tit families. Yesterday I was working away when suddenly I caught a flash of something whizzing past the windows, and the thump of at least one bird hitting the glass. A Sparrowhawk (an adult female, I think) had spotted the possibility of lunch and successfully captured a Great Tit. She took it a few yards away to under a Pine tree where she devoured it at her leisure.
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An Interview with Jacques Vergès
Der Spiegel has a fascinating interview with the attorney Jacques Vergès.Vergès: I believe that everyone, no matter what he may have done, has the right to a fair trial. The public is always quick to assign the label of "monster." But monsters do not exist, just as there is no such thing as absolute evil. My clients are human beings, people with two eyes, two hands, a gender and emotions. That’s what makes them so sinister.I think that is an accurate summary of what we are dealing with. One end of the bell-curve of humanity. It’s an interview that is worth reading and pondering on.(hat tip to Mike Tidmus)Leave a comment
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Big Hands
Rachmaninov’s Prelude in C# Minor is a tricky piece to play, not just for the necessary speed and precision for the allegro section, but also for the chord stretches. At the peak of my piano-playing ability (when I was 17, sigh) I could manage a passable stab at it. As Igudesman and Joo demonstrate, there are other ways of achieving those stretches…The Wikipedia entry doesn’t mention it, but I’d always understood the piece to represent a burial where the unfortunate occupant of the coffin is not in fact dead, and the allegro is the frantic scrabbling of the interred trying to escape before succumbing to the inevitable…(hat tip to Raymond Chen for the link)Leave a comment
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A Little Levity
This interview with Sarah Palin, with its background counterpoint of turkeys in their death throes, is like something out of Monty Python. My jaw is still on the desk.Leave a comment
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A Right Charlie
I must confess that I have little time for the British monarchy, although strangely enough I do feel better disposed towards the Dutch monarchy. Thinking about it, it’s possibly because of the individuals involved and of what they say and do. Prince Charles, for example, has always struck me as a strikingly stupid man, who if it were not for the fact of his birth, would be put in the category of those tiresome people who write endless letters in green ink to newspaper editors.Leave a comment
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The Spectacular Sea-Slug
Carl Zimmer, over at The Loom, has a couple of fascinating posts on the Emerald Green Sea Slug, which turns out to be something from science fiction – practically a plant/animal hybrid. Wonderful.Leave a comment
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Euthanasia
Jesus, Mo and the barmaid discuss the question of euthanasia. Needless to say, I’m with the barmaid on this one.Leave a comment
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God Trump Cards
New Humanist publishes its religious trump cards, illustrated by Martin Rowson. I’m closest to the secularist/atheist/humanist figure, but I don’t have that wimpy beard in real life. I agree with my mother who once opined that she could never trust a man with a beard – he’s sure to have something to hide…Leave a comment
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