The Father and Son Road Show, de Sherman Alexie

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The Father and Son Road Show


The doctor tells me my father's story,
How he'll die if he stops dialysis.
"First confusion, followed by lethargy,
Then toxins shut off the brain." I hate this

Doctor and his certainty, though I wish
I could hate my father and his weakness.
Of course, I'm lying. Most days, I would kiss
This doctor as he tends the sugar-soaked mess

My father has made of his life. I confess
To loving my father, a gentle man
Whose brutal thirsts have left us all bereft,
And so bereft, I'm to give a command

Performance—a road show, a song and dance—
And convince my father to continue
Dialysis, no matter how he's planned
To die or not die. I don't have a clue

How to begin this time, though I've rescued
My endless father endlessly, traveled
Two thousand miles to buy him a shoe
To fit his amputated foot. Unraveled

By the simple act of living, marveled
By the mundane, my father mowed the lawn
Like van Gogh painted and spread free gravel
On the driveway like God created dawn.

God, how often I woke to find him gone,
Fleeing the children he loved and could not feed,
As if leaving made magic, a spell-song
That conjured fruit, milk, bread, fish, egg, and seed.

Come back, come back, I child-cried, I need
My father to return. Now, a father
Of two open mouths (and souls) who need me,
I'm a primitive: I hunt and gather;

I build totems and pyramids; I'm fur
And claw; I believe animals can talk;
I know the world is flat; I'm the cur
Raised by wolves; I worship corn, leaf, and stalk;

A child of the sun, I've learned to walk
Upright but still run on all fours; afraid
Of the dark and fire, in love with rock
And fire, I huddle alone in caves

And pray to my ten thousand gods; I pray
To my father's ten thousand gods; I pray
To my sons' twenty thousand gods; and I pray
For protection, courage, and strength to stay

With my father as he chooses the way
This machine will help him live or not live,
As father and father-son separate,
Loose, broken, dissolved by dialysis.

Lovely Green Eyes, de Arnošt Lustig

Os livros sobre o Holocausto deixam-me sempre algo desconfortável, porque continuo a achar de tal modo inimaginável o que aconteceu. Não gostei muito deste livro - tem boas descrições do horror dos campos, mas as personagens parecem-me excessivamente tipificadas, como os alemães, ou superficialmente esboçadas, como os checos. No entanto, resta sempre a sensação de que aquilo aconteceu mesmo, a pessoas reais, e neste caso o autor passou por Teresienstadt e Auschwitz, de modo que sabe bem do que fala, e provavelmente por isso as descrições são tão reais, tal como a noção do tempo, de que geralmente não nos apercebemos - como a esperança de vida era curta e a intensidade das experiências fazia os curtos períodos de tempo parecerem intermináveis.

Dois filmes no fim-de-semana

New York I Love You é um filme simpático, com algumas partes muito boas e boas interpretações e outras um bocado chochas. No conjunto, gostei menos do que de Paris Je t'Aime, mas vale a pena ver.


The International, de Tom Tykwer (só depois vi que era o mesmo realizador do óptimo Run, Lola, Run), é um thriller razoável, adaptado à realidade actual - os maus são os bancos multinacionais - com algumas boas sequências de acção e muitos planos turísticos de cidades como Istambul, Nova Iorque e Milão. Clive Owen, Naomi Watts e Armin Müller-Stahl estão muito bem, como sempre, ele forçando um pouco a nota do herói solitário e atormentado (algumas deixas do guião são um pouco excessivas, como quando ele diz a Naomi Watts: "Comes a time when you have to know which bridges to cross and which to burn. I'm the one you burn." - seguido de um prolongado close up do rosto másculo e profundo do herói...). Mas é um filme agradável de ver.

Aubade, de Phlip Larkin

I work all day, and get half drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
- The good not used, the love not given, time
Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never:
But at the total emptiness forever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says no rational being
Can fear a thing it cannot feel, not seeing
that this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no-one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can't escape
Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

No Saints or Angels, de Ivan Klíma

Um romance interessante, muito bom, que se passa em Praga mas poderia passar-se aqui em Lisboa ou em qualquer outra cidade ocidental. Trata dos sentimentos de desmotivação e falta de esperança e de sentido da via tão comuns na nossa sociedade actual; as referências e os pormenores são locais - a ocupação nazi, o comunismo, o pós-comunismo - mas os problemas e os sentimentos focados são universais. Por motivos óbvios, tocou-me particulrmente o problema da filha adolescente e toxicodepndente. Apesar do tom gloomy que permeia todo o livro, termina com uma nota de optimismo, sem respostas definitivas mas com uma mensagem de esperança.

Begin Again - A Poem of Hope, by Susan Coolidge

Every day is a fresh beginning,
Every day is the world made new;
You who are weary of sorrow and sinning,
Here is a beautiful hope for you-
A hope for me and a hope for you.

All the past things are past and over,
The tasks are done and the tears are shed;
Yesterday’s errors let yesterday cover;
Yesterday’s wounds, which smarted and bled,
Are healed with the healing which night has shed.

Yesterday now is a part of forever,
Bound up in a sheaf, which God holds tight;
With glad days, and sad days and bad days which never
Shall visit us more with their bloom and their blight,
Their fullness of sunshine or sorrowful night.
Let them go, since we cannot relieve them,
Cannot undo and cannot atone;
God in His mercy, receive, forgive them;
Only the new days are our own,
Today is ours, and today alone.

Here are the skies all burnished brightly,
Here is the spent earth all reborn,
Here are the tired limbs springing lightly
To face the sun and to share the morn,
In the chrism of dew and the cool of dawn.

Every day is a fresh beginning;
Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain,
And, spite of old sorrow and older sinning,
And puzzles forecasted and possible pain
Take heart with the day, and begin again.

Prague Tales, de Jan Neruda

Mais uma excelente descoberta literária das minhas viagens! Nunca tinha ouvido falar de Jan Neruda antes de ir a Praga, e descobri que não só dá o nome a uma das ruas mais turísticas da cidade (onde morou) como é a origem do pseudónimo literário de Pablo Neruda.

Não tinha à partida grandes expectativas, mas o livro é delicioso e conquistou-me completamente; não imaginava que houvesse contos tão bons antes de Maupassant ou de Chekov. Muito bem escrito, com um óptimo sentido de humor, personagens muito humanas e reais, e uma capacidade de mestre de recriar o ambiente do "Little Quarter", pitoresco e humano. Estou muito satisfeito com estas aquisições livrescas checas!

(A casa dos Dois Sóis foi onde ele morou na rua que agora se chama Nerudova.)