Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson:

La terre est bleue

La terre est bleue comme une orange
Jamais une erreur les mots ne mentent pas
Ils ne vous donnent plus à chanter
Au tour des baisers de s'entendre
Les fous et les amours
Elle sa bouche d'alliance
Tous les secrets tous les sourires
Et quels vêtements d'indulgence
À la croire toute nue.
Les guêpes fleurissent vert
L'aube se passe autour du cou
Un collier de fenêtres
Des ailes couvrent les feuilles
Tu as toutes les joies solaires
Tout le soleil sur la terre
Sur les chemins de ta beauté.

Paul Eluard

Another Good Film recent

Fish Tank

This past week's films:

4 months 3 weeks



*****

Entre Les Murs



*****

Le Silence De Lorna



*****

Three Monkeys



*****

District 9

Deux œuvres de Georges Fourest
(1867-1945)


Le Cid

Va, je ne te hais point
Pierre Corneille

Le palais de Gormaz, comte et gobernador
est en deuil; pour jamais dort couché sous la pierre
l'hidalgo dont le sang a rougi la rapière
de Rodrigue appelé le Cid Campeador

Le soir tombe. Invoquant les deux saints Paul et Pierre
Chimène, en voile noirs, s'accoude au mirador
et ses yeux dont les pleurs ont brûlé la paupière
regardent, sans rien voir, mourir le soleil d'or ...

Mais un éclair, soudain, fulgure en sa prunelle :
sur la plaza Rodrigue est debout devant elle !
Impassible et hautain, drapé dans sa capa,

le héros meurtrier à pas lents se promène :
"Dieu !" soupire à part soi la plaintive Chimène,
"qu'il est joli garçon l'assassin de Papa !"



Un homme

Justum et tenacem propositi virum
Horace
Gémir, pleurer, prier est également lâche.
Alfred de Vigny

Quand le docteur lui dit : "Monsieur, c'est la vérole
indiscutablement !", quand il fut convaincu
sans pouvoir en douter qu'il était bien cocu
l'Homme n'articula pas la moindre parole.

Quand il réalisa que sa chemise ultime
et son pantalon bleu par un trou laissaient voir
sa fesse gauche et quand il sut que vingt centimes
(oh ! pas même cinq sous !) faisaient tout son avoir

il ne s'arracha point les cheveux, étant chauve,
il ne murmura point : "Que le bon Dieu me sauve !"
ne se poignarda pas comme eût fait un Romain,

sans pleurer, sans gémir, sans donner aucun signe
d'un veule désespoir, calme, simple, très-digne
il prononça le nom de l'excrément humain.

*****

Rimailleur masculin
Celui qui fait de mauvais vers.
Ce n’est qu’un rimailleur.
C’est un plat rimailleur. Il est familier.

*****

LES FEUILLES QUI TOMBENT

*****

carnet
nom masculin
(ancien provençal quern, du latin quaterni, groupe de quatre feuilles)
Petit registre de poche pour notes, comptes, etc. : Carnet d'adresses.
Assemblage de billets, de tickets, de timbres, etc., pouvant être détachés au moment de l'emploi.
Mines
Rigole creusée dans la sole d'une galerie pour l'écoulement de l'eau.
Presse
Rubrique payante d'un journal consacrée à l'état civil des personnes intéressées.

Le Grain et le Mullet

Just got around to seeing this:

Chat Lunatique

à Alfred Tattet

Adversus Absynthium (A l'encontre de l'absinthe)

Absynthe, monstre né jadis pour notre perte
De l’Afrique à Paris traînant ta robe verte
Comment donc as-tu pu sous le soleil oser
Souiller ses lèvres d’or de ton âcre baiser
Vile prostituée en tes temples assise
Tu te vends à l’esprit ainsi qu'à la sottise
Et ne fais nul souci aux adieux, laurier
Qui couvre le Poëte ainsi que le guerrier
Hélas ! n’avait-il pas assez de l’amertume
A laquelle en vivant tout grand cœur s’accoutume
Aussi que l’eau du ciel ......
Qu’il ne reste plus rien de ton amer poison
O monstre sois maudit, je te jette à la face
Les imprécations de Tibulle et d’Horace
Et contre toi j’évoque en mon sein irrité
La langue que parlait la belle antiquité.

Fontainebleau, août 1847
Antoni Deschamps

****(et aussi)****

Five o’clock Absinthe1
By Raoul Ponchon
Quand le couchant étend son voile d'hyacinthe
Sur Rastaquapolis2.
C'est l'heure assurément de prendre son absinthe,
Qu'en penses-tu, mon fils?
C'est en été surtout, quand la soif vous terrasse
– Tels cent Dreyfous3 bavards –
Qu'il convient de chercher une fraîche terrasse4
Le long des boulevards.
Où l'on sait rencontrer l'absinthe la meilleure.
Celle du fils Pernod;
Fi des autres ! De même un dièze est un leurre
Quand il est de Gounod.
Je dis le long des boulevards, et non à Rome,
Ni chez les Bonivards5;
Carpour être absinthier on n'en est pas moins homme.
Et sur nos boulevards
On voit passer les plus suaves créatures
Aux plus gentes façons :
Tout en buvant, cela réveille vos natures,
C'est exquis... mais passons.
Vous avez votre absinthe, il s'agit de la faire;
Ça n'est pas, croyez-moi,
Comme pense un vain peuple, une petite affaire,
Banale et sans émoi.
Il ne faut pas avoir ailleurs l'âme occupée,
Pour le moment du moins.
L'absinthe veut d'abord de la belle eau frappée,
Les dieux m'en soient témoins !
D'eau tiède, il n'en faut pas : Jupiter la condamne.
Toi-même, qu'en dis-tu ?
Autant vaudrait, ma foi, boire du pissat d'âne
Ou du bouillon pointu6
Et n'allez pas comme un qui serait du Hanovre7,
Surtout me l'effrayer,
Avec votre carafe, elle croirait, la povre8 !
Que l'on la veut noyer.
Déridez-la toujours d'une première goutte...
Là... là... tout doucement.
Vous la verrez alors palpiter, vibrer toute,
Sourire ingénûment;
When sundown spreads its hyacinth veil
Over Rastaquapolis
It’s surely time for an absinthe
Don’t you think, my son?
It’s especially in summer, when thirst wears you down
- Like a hundred Dreyfus gossips -
That it’s fitting to seek a fresh terrace
Along the boulevards
Where one finds the best absinthe
That of the sons of Pernod
Forget the rest! They’re like a sharp by Gounod:
mere illusion.
I say along the boulevards, and not in Rome,
Nor at the home of the Bonivards;
To be an absinthier is not to be any less a man.
And on our boulevards
One sees pass the sweetest creatures
With the gentlest manners:
You’re drinking, they rouse your nature,
They are exquisite... but let it pass.
You have your absinthe, it’s all about preparation
This is not, believe me,
As the cynics think, a small matter
Banal and without emotion
The heart should not be elsewhere
For the moment at least.
Absinthe wants first, beautiful ice water
The gods are my witness!
Tepid water, none of that: Jupiter condemns it.
Yourself, what say you?
Might as well, my faith, drink donkey piss
Or enema broth
And don’t come on like a German,
And scare her,
With your carafe; she would think, poor dear!
That you want to drown her.
Always rouse her from the first drop …
Like so ... and so ... very gently
Then behold her quiver, all vibrant
With an innocent smile;

Street Sweeper Social Club:




Mercedes Sosa



Hasta Siempre

SPAIN: NOBODY HAS TO KNOW

Nobody has to know
Girl we've fallen so in love
It was just a year ago
And you've kept it to yourself

Nobody has to know
Nobody has to know

Nobody has to know
Girl our love has grown so strong
Close the shades unplug the phone
How can our love be so wrong

Nobody has to know
Nobody has to know

Nobody has to know
Girl we've fallen so in love
It was just a year ago
And you've kept it to yourself

Nobody has to know
Nobody has to know

Time Will Break The World - The Silver Jews

The sun and the shutters and the sun shattered hair
The butler hesitates at the top of the stairs
A kitten from Great Britain sleeps behind the drapes
An old silver bowl filled with apples and grapes

It's so very cold in the mansion after sunset
The snow is blowing through the baseboard outlets
And I have no idea what drives you, mister
Tanning beds explode with rich women inside

All my poor, hungry children
All my poor, hungry children
All my poor, hungry children
Time will break the world
Time will break the world
Time will break the world

The snow falls down so beautiful and stupid
For the black silhoutte of Abraham Lincoln trees
The sky's low and grey like a Japanese table
And my horse's legs look like four brown shotguns

The icicles are dripping like the whole house is weeping
On an evil little car with gull-wing doors
And I have no idea what drives you, mister
But I've killed you in my mind so many times before

All my poor, hungry children
All my poor, hungry children
All my poor, hungry children
Time will break the world
Time will break the world
Time will break the world

caloric restriction as the new longevity scheme

*****

re: Brasserie Wepler, place Clichy:

Du côté des écrivains, le spectacle mouvementé des passants, l'animation sensuelle qui règnent sur la place, fascinent. Dès 1928, Henry Miller en fait son repère préféré. « Je m'y suis assis à la terrasse et à l'intérieur, par tous les temps et à toutes les heures du jour et de la nuit. C'était pour moi un livre ouvert. Tous les visages des garçons, des gérants, des caissières, des putains, de la clientèle et même des dames de lavabos sont gravés dans ma mémoire comme les images d'un livre que j'aurais feuilletés tous les jours.» Jours tranquilles à Clichy.

******

And, recounting on Montmartre:

jusqu'on 17eme siecle, son utilisation pour construire les maisons a ete intensive, au point que le dicton en vogue etait Il y a plus de Montmartre dans Paris que de Paris dans Montmartre...

And sadly, no pictures to upload yet, but if it helps, my current location:


Agrandir le plan

FILM

Curious to see what they'd have to say about Happy Go Lucky after watching this, Mike Leigh's new film.

This bird, laughing smiling, whole philosophy was about making people, making the world around her better. It was all very esoteric and boring, annoying even, the mindless giggling and chatter, I almost grew to hate this character until the freak driving instructor's massive outburst allowed her to reveal a human side which was more than one dimensional. Had other dimensions of the bird's character come out sooner, might not have had to have felt as though the first 45 minutes of the movie was an endurance contest.

anyway, here's what "they" say:

Poppy Cross is happy-go-lucky. At 30, she lives in Camden: cheeky, playful, frank while funny, and talkative to strangers. She's a conscientious and exuberant primary-school teacher, flatmates with Zoe, her long-time friend; she's close to one sister, and not so close to another. In this slice of life story, we watch her take driving lessons from Scott, a dour and tightly-wound instructor, take classes in flamenco dance from a fiery Spaniard, encounter a tramp in the night, and sort out a student's aggressive behavior with a social worker's help. Along the way, we wonder if her open attitude puts her at risk of misunderstanding or worse. What is the root of happiness?

Well, what is at the root of being one-dimensional?

In any event, here's the trailer, decide for yourself in 1 minute 47 seconds.

VILNIUS POKER




from Ričardas Gavelis

What they say:

Ričardas Gavelis wrote to intimidate and attack, and his novel Vilnius Poker, seldom subtle in its language, demands attention. It is a masterwork of bitterness and sarcasm, one that descends into the self-destructive impulses of those who, though they physically survived the privations inherent to Soviet Russia, were nonetheless emotionally traumatized. Part national rant, part passage into madness, Vilnius Poker is more than a product of the Cold War. It is a condemnation of everything Gavelis thought was wrong with Lithuania, and this first English translation, published twenty years after Poker was originally written, feels fresh.

Vilnius Poker is disorienting, as right from the start Gavelis offers Vytautas Vargalys, an extravagant, energetic narrator whose thoughts shift between the lucid and the figurative. The speaker for the first two-thirds of the book, Vargalys is a survivor of a Russian prison camp where he was physically beaten and emotionally destroyed. His once-brilliant future was ruined by the camps, and he now obsesses and rants about the failures of Lithuania; in fact, so thorough was his transformation that his survival of the camps seems almost futile. As with much of Vilnius Poker, Gavelis never says precisely how Vargalys survived; instead, the inhumanity of the camp haunts Vargalys as he suffers from post traumatic stress—induced flashbacks.

What HE says:

(page 31)

..."I began on The Way against my will. I had already settled down and forgotten all the quests for meaning. Even chest pains no longer upset me - it was just the first ones that were frightening. I no longer tormented myself if I didn't feel the slightest desire when I saw an ideally sexy woman. I was forty-three years old..."

(Page 43):

"Only those who have lost their spirit fear the monsters of the interior. Only those who have lost their balance pretend their insides are pure and refined. You can only become truly great by joining your heaven with your hell. All of the good in people is the same but the kingdom of evil is different in everyone."

(Page 54):

"That he could even have those kinds of feeling surprised me, but I quickly figured it out. He was afraid to be left forgotten and alone, to fail to attract others' attention for even a second. Every person who still has a thing or two left inside is able to be alone with himself. There was nothing inside this lumbering figure that could be relied on. He no longer had himself, so a secret fear constantly gnawed at him..."

(Page 77):

"It is the Vilnius Basilisk's gaze, piercing me every morning, a morning that begins with the overcrowded trollybus, the crush of figures, the jounrey from non-existence into none-existence: from the drabness of dreamless sleep to the unthinking work machine. It's only by Their will that the tired figures with puffy eyes cram into iron boxes with fly-covered windows and slowly creak towards their daily bondage. The day begins with smells: the stink of rancid sweat and cheap soap, the stench of last night's drinking, and a whiff of nightmares...."

And after that, just try and imagine what it was like all those years, winter, summer, good weather, shite weather, always under the gaze of communism, all lives for generations lived under that shadow. No matter what you're doing now, that was their reality then. Imagine that. Miserable yet still trying to live life, still trying to fart out a few joys...

FOR THAT COLD AND RAINY FUTURE DAY:

The Three Acts I saw in Győr Last Weekend

Artem Chepkonakov



Omar Sosa Afreecanos Trio



Astillero

Fat People Will Pay More

The chieftains at Ryan Air could show the government a thing or two about raising revenues.

Look at this, democracy in action, letting people VOTE how to charge fat people more money to fly:

The Ryanair proposals are:

* Charge per kg over 130kg/20 stone (male) and 100kg/15 stone (females);

* Charge per inch for every waist inch over 45 inch (male) and 40 inch (female);

* Charge for every point in excess of 40 points on the Body Mass Index (+30 points is obese);

* Charge for a second seat if passengers’ waist touches both armrests simultaneously.

Ryanair spokesman Stephen McNamara said: “With passengers voting overwhelmingly for a ‘fat tax’ we are now asking them to suggest which format the charge should take.

So why didn't Alistair Darling unveil in his Idiot's Guide To Losing Money Budget a new tax on fat people too? I mean look around you in England, people. There's positively billions that could be had making fat people pay more for existing.

Why stop at the rich and the pub crawlers and the fat people for that matter?

How about a poor tax?

It's a great idea. The way it works is that children borne to a mother with no job and on benefits or a family already unable to sustain itself, are sold, by the government, to the highest child labour bidder. Just think about it - with the birth rate among people on benefits being what it is Poor Kids And Cheap Labour could become England's new and fastest growing export industry.


"There is nothing worst than the person sitting next to you on the plane taking half your seat as well. It is only fair that these people pay for a double seat."
stan white, leeds, u/k, comments in the article about the Ryan Air fat tax.

Only fair? Why let them fly at all? Why not ground them for life? Should fat people be allowed to fly? It defies gravity. Not to mention the added risk to a plane flying with fat people on board.

I don't think there should be a new surcharge on fat people for flying Ryan Air.

Ryan Air should just be bold and make it a company policy: Hey Fat People, Fuck Off. We Don't Want Your Business.

*****

Here's the funny bit about the alleged bold fuck you to rich people entailed in Darling's new budget:

Firstly, he's going to raise the planned new top rate of tax on incomes over £150,000 from 45% to 50%.

Then, people with incomes over £150,000 will also see their pension tax relief restricted from 2011, while personal allowances will be scrapped for those on incomes over £100,000 from next April.

Bravo.

Or not.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned the hike would produce far less revenue than the Treasury hoped unless more stringent measures were brought in to crack down on tax avoidance.

Michael Wistow, head of tax at law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner, said: "History shows that increasing tax rates rarely achieves the objective of increasing the tax take, individuals will now look to find other ways of earning money or reducing tax liabilities."

Greed. You gotta love it.