Out of this world

"I had a farm in Africa..."

This is how my all-time favourite film begins. The calm voice of Meryl Streep and the African landscapes on a bird's eye view produce a sort of spell that leave you suspended from reality and into the past lives of real characters in the endless immensities of Africa.

To my knowledge, this is the only movie that is far better than the book that inspired it. I have the real "Out of Africa" by Karen Blixen but somehow I haven't managed to read it to the end. It has been there on my bedside table for years holding the promise that one day I will eventually finish it. I never do, though. I read the lines and it's always the movie that comes to my mind. I see the picture of the real Blixen and it's always Streep I see pleading for the Kikuyu.

Because of "Out of Africa", I decided I wanted to study imperialism in Africa. Because of a movie I saw for the first time in my childhood years, I decided my life, I did a PhD in my adult years.

This was also the first movie that brought tears to my eyes, mine and Mom's. There we were the two of us in that silent apprehension of the sublime, together in the same enchantment. And because each time I watch "Out of Africa" I remember Mom, and because the tears now are the souvenir of Mom, today I can only remember Sydney Pollack. Thank you!

RIP

About nothing

I just felt like writing out of nothing in particular. Maybe I'm a bit moody today but there's no reason why it should be so. It's just that, since I have this thing called a blog, I might as well make some use of it for no reason at all. Is that a privilege or what?

I still remember filling the pages of countless diaries. I grew out of it meantime, but, suddenly, here I am mistress and commander of a virtual diary! Life is a perpetual surprise, is it not?

The photo to illustrate the nothingness of this post is a landscape from Easter Island. I've always wanted to go there, again, out of no other reason than the allure of such remote and southern islands. I'll be heading to the far South below the Equator within some weeks and maybe that's why I remembered Easter Island. Again, the nothingness of personally interrelated meanings. And yet, who says that nothingness is nothing? It might be all...

Isn't this just a bit too much?

Of course everybody knows we shouldn't park in forbidden places! Of course we are not saints behind the wheel! Of course somebody's gonna get fined! But imposing a 1.100 fine requirement as a productivity goal on those that zeal that we don't forget our responsiblities as drivers is a bit too much.

Last week or the other we got to know that ASAE inspectors also need to fine x number of people to meet their productivity rates. Now it's traffic authorities. Who says that 1.100 is the exact number of fines that each traffic officer needs to fill in? Why not 500 or 2.100? Is 1.100 based on any scientific/statistic data?

And just by the way, why is it that MPs aren't required to pass an assigned number of laws while they're in Parliament or read and analyse another specific number of documents per day to meet their productivity goals? Hmm, come to think of it, why not setting productivity rates for the PM?

Danger, danger!

E não é que fiquei hoje a saber que os nossos pcs mesmo desligados estão vulneráveis à pirataria internética?! Só com o modem desligado é que o pc fica off a sério?! Pois, não sabia. O melhor mesmo é desligar da corrente. Ó piratas e banditagem de um raio mais o phishing e os shadow sites e toda a online fraud!

The Cry of the Desert

I love the desert.

More than the sea, I love the desert. More than the green of a fertile landscape, I love the barren browns of the desert. It's a seduction, an irrational, passionate love. I love the desert because... and the because says everything.

I once heard that in the silence of the desert you can listen to your blood run in your veins. I tried once to listen to my blood. I never could. In the desert I listen to my thoughts. It's incredible how thoughts can be audible. They are.

The desert is you. The desert is the experience of transcendence. Prophets came from the desert. The desert is a rite of passage to some kind of knowledge, the purification of sin, the letting go of self or self-discovery.

The desert is Purgatory on Earth. The place of human suffering even if there's no sin to repent for other than the sin of poverty.

I bought National Geographic today because it was about the Sahel. I thought about the Great Sahel, the trans-African desert, I forgot that the greatest, most horrid experience in human agony is in the Sael. I forgot about Chad and the Darfur. How could I? How could I, coming from my rich world in Europe, forget about that? How could I just think about my own desert, my own pleasurable experiences, my... my... my... The truth is I did, I did forget that.

This is my Act of Contrition.