Within a Sky Full of Earth

This is the expression of our disaster. It's still hard to tell. Could be like every vanished book would resemble the weight of an imaginary being that lost its own life. Do books die? They don't, but for sure they stop whispering. They stop being there, watching us and keeping us safe. It's painful to count them. To write their names on our list of casualties. I was there and I know it.
Bloom started slowly, with a few books. As we were selling them and sending them to other homes we were buying more. More and more. Until there wouldn't be more space. The exquisite space of Bloom Red was crowded with books, like a train on the rush hour. They squeezed themselves up and down. Shouting to each others. Telling their own stories. Puhskin's The Queen of Spades was always getting a voice on Dostoievsky's The Gambler. Or On the Road drifting some other tale to tell to Marguerite Duras' The Sailor from Gibraltar. On the Sea!
Fuck! It's hard to breathe now. They were all gone!
THIS EVENING WE LEFT THE LIGHT OF THE LOGO AT OUR DOOR ON. IT MEANS THAT WE'RE STILL THERE. WE STILL HAVE A LIGHT AT THE BEGINNING OF SOMETHING ELSE! LIKE A CANDLE IT GIVES US HOPE...

BLOOM RED WILL BE CLOSED UNTILL FURTHER NOTICE. THANK YOU!
WE'LL KEEP BREATHING AT BLOOM YELLOW!

And suddenly the dream is over. You wake up in a new reality and there's no other way as to face it just like it is. This was Bloom Red today morning, a place of disintegration. A ground zero on our own scale but in the same way unbelievable.
What is this? Where are we now? It took ages to get to this point, struggling from back and forth to bring books and a different life to this city and have them as our trueness. As our own veins, our flesh and blood. It was our passion from many months. It still is. Difficult to go by, as are books a difficult subject to make your own life subsist. Sometimes we failed, but it was on failure that we could open our doors. Learning.
From the back of the night the dawn brought us one meter water high inside our shop. We're it couldn't exist. Books don't burn and cannot swim. They have drown themselves on their own voices. Can you hear a story underwater? I guess not.
Who's to blame? Probably ourselves. Probably nobody. Where to go now? Even having faced it when we saw it we are still on that point when you wake up from the dream and see a world you haven't met before. It's the same, we know it, but the picture touched us much differently, goes directly to the heart, and we still couldn't print it out.
First we have to clean the mess, then we'll see. Bloom will not survive on its own. We'll need resources that it never had. We'll not give up. We'll go until the last station.
[MORE ON THE FLOOD]

But it wasn’t what Saramago was doing that I already could do (albeit on a smaller, less Nobel Prize worthy way) that made reading Blindness so educational. It was a certain, very, to my mind, unSaramago-like quality to this novel that makes it both Saramago’s best novel and the one that opened an until-then locked door for me. The thing that makes Blindness so great isn’t just the writing (by which I mean the language, the way the sentences (even in translation) unfold in perfect rhythm, the sharpness of the insights, the brilliance of all sorts of small technical choices (like not giving any of the characters proper names), which is so mindbogglingly good, but the gripping, unrelenting nature of the novel’s plot.

Two bits of advice (one fairly obvious and arguably useless, the other better all around) for writers, by way of conclusion. First, it’s not a bad idea to read writers that write like you, only better. Second, when you find yourself trying to write in a way you’ve never written before, avoid the urge to simultaneously stop doing what you already do well. This urge is understandable, informed as it is by both the desire to not be accused of repeating oneself and the dream of being the object of that most coveted double negative, “There’s seemingly nothing Writer X can’t do!” Starting from scratch, in regards to style, technique, etc., is asking for trouble, if you ask me. Instead, go from strength to strength. You can thank me (and Jose Saramago) later.
[TODD HASAK-LOWY IS A WRITER AND LITERARY CRITIC WHO WAS BROUGHT BY MARK SARVAS ON THE ELEGANT VARIATION - A PIECE IN THREE PARTS]

Blindness, by José Saramago • VINTAGE • AVAILABLE AT BLOOM
• READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

In early 1939, Detective Comics' success with the seminal superhero Superman in Action Comics prompted editors to scramble for more such heroes. In response, Bob Kane conceived "the Bat-Man". Kane said his influences for the character included actor Douglas Fairbanks' movie portrayal of the swashbuckler Zorro, Leonardo Da Vinci's diagram of the ornithopter, a flying machine with huge bat-like wings; and the 1930 film The Bat Whispers, based on Mary Rinehart's mystery novel The Circular Staircase.

Bill Finger joined Bob Kane's nascent studio in 1938. An aspiring writer and part-time shoe salesperson, he had met Kane at a party, and Kane later offered him a job ghost writing the strips Rusty and Clip Carson. That was what he recalled:

Kane had an idea for a character called 'Batman', and he'd like me to see the drawings. I went over to Kane's, and he had drawn a character who looked very much like Superman with kind of... reddish tights, I believe, with boots... no gloves, no gauntlets... with a small domino mask, swinging on a rope. He had two stiff wings that were sticking out, looking like bat wings. And under it was a big sign... BATMAN.

Finger said he offered such suggestions as giving the character a cowl and scalloped cape instead of wings; adding gloves; leaving the mask's eyeholes blank to connote mystery; and removing the bright red sections of the original costume, suggesting instead a gray-and-black color scheme. Finger additionally said his suggestions were influenced by Lee Falk's The Phantom, a syndicated newspaper comic strip character with which Kane was familiar as well. Finger, who said he also devised the character's civilian name, Bruce Wayne, wrote the first Batman story, while Kane provided art. Kane, who had already submitted the proposal for Batman at DC and held a contract, is the only person given official company credit for Batman's creation. Comics historian Ron Goulart, in Comic Book Encyclopedia, refers to Batman as the "creation of artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger"
[SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA]

In collaboration with the University of Hong Kong and an initiative of Bloom * Creative Network, the Macanese architect Carlos Marreiros will be at the Faculty of Architecture for an open lecture. Titled "Tracing Lines Between Two Worlds" the lecture will flow on the intercultural way of life of this region of the world – Macau, where East and West melted through time, generating its specific and fascinating Architectural Culture. This lecture, which is based on the lines between two worlds, will provide a specific learning experience for the participants regarding Architecture of the East and the West – the similarities and the differences and the boundaries between the universes of reality and imagination, which the Macanese architect is a good example, on its diversity and miscegenation.

DETAILS
Date/Time: 26/09/2008 18:30-20:00
Venue: Room 419, Knowles Building, The University of Hong Kong
Language: English
Registration is not required.
Further information, please visit this website.
Any enquiries feel free to contact the Faculty of Architecture by email.

I've seen it everywhere. I've heard stories of people that constantly die. By every second. On TV, on newspapers. On bold letters. Death is epidemic, is the disease of being alive. Even if I didn't ever see a dead body. My relatives that passed on I could only be by their closed wooden boxes. And it was a safe matter. Not saw them.
But. As I keep living. This is my true being and until then. Until the bold letters come upon me. I'm immortal. And immortality is what keeps me alive.

After I finished the book (a couple days later, which for me is fast), I started trying to make sense of what made it such a powerful reading experience. What I quickly realized was that Blindness isn’t just a great book in some necessarily meaningless objective sense. I know people who did not dig it at all. Rather, it was a great, nearly perfect book for me at that moment, because it had all the elements of the kind of fiction I most liked. But it had more, too. And as much as this might seem like it contradicts all the reader vs. writer/scholar stuff I posited in my opening, this “more” that Blindness has showed me how to write a novel.

I first decided to read Saramago after a fellow writer told me (online, of all places) that my writing style reminded him of Saramago. I figured, well, I ought to see who this Saramago guy is. And the similarities between the voice in my debut story collection and that of Saramago’s narrator—highly authoritative, deeply analytical, long-winded and given to seemingly endless asides—were hard to miss. So I read Saramago from that first sentence the way you read a writer whose style and technique, however impressive and overall unmatchable, makes sense all in all. Because there are writers (Faulkner is my best example) who you read and admire, but whose writing so mysterious and off-the-charts good that you can’t write for weeks after your encounter. Even though I was humbled by Saramago’s writing, I felt like I got him right away.
[TODD HASAK-LOWY IS A WRITER AND LITERARY CRITIC WHO WAS BROUGHT BY MARK SARVAS ON THE ELEGANT VARIATION - A PIECE IN THREE PARTS]

Blindness, by José Saramago • VINTAGE • AVAILABLE AT BLOOM

BLOOM TV:
• Saramago at the end of his first screening of the movie Blindness.
• Fernando Meireles, the director of Blindness, talks about his experience.
• The Theatrical Trailer of Blindness.

A exposição "Desenhos de Escritores" abriu no Museu Colecção Berardo, inaugurada no dia 1 de Setembro, e traz a obra gráfica de cerca de uma centena de autores consagrados, desde George Sand e Antonin Artaud a William Burroughs e Günter Grass.

Resultado de uma colaboração com o Institut Mémoires de L´Édition Contemporaine (IMEC), em França, e o Musée D´Ixelles (Bélgica), a exposição será complementada com obras dos escritores-desenhadores portugueses Almada Negreiros, Mário Cesariny e Ana Hatherly, indicou à Agência Lusa fonte do Museu Berardo.
Esta exposição inédita reúne uma grande diversidade de escritores que também desenham, de George Sand a Bernard Heidsieck, do romantismo à poesia sonora, passando pelos surrealistas, até à "beat generation", representada, por exemplo, por Jack Kerouac e William Burroughs.
Em "Desenhos de Escritores" poderão ser vistos desde pequenos esboços que cobrem o rodapé de um manuscrito, como no caso de Stendhal, até desenhos que cobrem páginas inteiras, como Victor Hugo, que criou imagens fantasmagóricas, ou Baudelaire, mais dado às caricaturas.
Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, Charles Cros, Guillaume Apollinaire, Paul Valéry, Max Jacob, Antonin Artaud, Jean Follain, Jacques Audiberti, Henri Michaux, Roland Barthes, Michel Butor, Jean Tardieu, Christian Dotremont, entre outros escritores, são ilustrados ou ilustram-se a si próprios exibindo uma linguagem artística menos conhecida do público.
"Desenhos de Escritores" prolonga-se até 2 de Novembro, com entrada livre.
[FONTE: LUSA] [MAIS INFORMAÇÃO AQUI - PDF]
• O destaque e reportagem no EL PAIS (em espanhol)

Recently published and available at Bloom Yellow is the quarterly issue of ARTICHOKE, the official magazine of the Design Institute of Australia. Interesting, relevant and sometimes controversial, ARTICHOKE communicates good design and the discussion of design issues to industry professionals and a broader audience of design aware consumers.
ARTICHOKE covers interior architecture and design, textile design, product design, exhibition design and graphic design, and provides designers with news and information on current trends and projects, and is published four times a year.
ARTICHOKE is endorsed by the Design Institute of Australia (DIA) and the Australian Institute of Architects.
See some sample print pages here and come to Bloom to buy it, we can tell you is worth every dime spent. Good photos, good design, good texts and a beautiful piece of printing material.

ARTICHOKE MAGAZINE • AVAILABLE AT BLOOM NOW!

Tim Hetherington was the winner of the World Press Photo of the Year winner, here's a special profile on him. You can get to know more about Tim and his award-winning picture, as well as see and hear him talk about his earlier work and important influences on his development.
Watch a film Tim made for ABC Television, of the Korengal Valley where his prize-winning photos were taken.
In two exclusive interviews, Tim discusses his own feelings about the winning image, and talks about the story behind it.
Tim talks about his involvement in projects using sport as a healing process in Africa, and his years in Liberia, experiences that shaped his personal development and career.
Find out more about Tim Hetherington, his life, beliefs and career.
[SOURCE: WORLD PRESS PHOTO • PHOTO © VANITY FAIR]

The World Press Photo'08 exhibition opens today in Macau at the Tourism Activities Centre, don't miss it! Be there from 6.30pm onwards.
[SEE THE GALLERY HERE]

If you’re lucky enough to get paid to read, then you’re probably unlucky enough to feel that reading is a job. You might well enjoy what you read most of the time, but even so, if it’s part of your work, you can’t help but read it in ways that make the reading anything but the stuff of simple pleasure: you read with a pen or pencil in hand, you ask yourself after every sentence, “Is this good?” “What does it mean?” “How would I teach this?” “Do I even understand this?” You read (or watch) yourself reading, constantly making sure that you’re drawing meaningful conclusions or making suggestive connections, because in one way or another you’re going to be accountable for what you read. Otherwise, why would anyone agree to pay you?

Now as far as making a living goes, one could do much, much worse. But still, if you wind up in a read-for-pay career, it’s likely that a) once upon a time a love of reading played a role in your decision to pursue this career, and/but b) this career of yours has at best complicated this love in ways that on occasion makes the word “regret” not entirely ungermaine to the topic at hand. Sure you avoided selling radio time to advertisers or strip mining in West Virginia, but remember when you just loved reading?

I mention all this in order to present what was for me an exceptional reading experience: José Saramago’s Blindness. I liked, a lot even, this novel from its very first (if memory serves me correctly) long sentence, and my fondness for it only grew as I continued. About 100 pages into it, I reached a happy place I had not visited for some time. I knew I was there when I looked at my watch, saw that it was nearly midnight on a weekday, and said to myself, “Okay, just one more chapter.” I realized that this was a book so good that it silenced all the typically bothersome professional yammering that comes steadily from all the other semi-related-to-reader parts of me (teacher, scholar, writer). I was just reading this book, by which I mean that I was unusually present in the reading experience, by which I mean that I was probably out at some boundary where what I already knew a book could show me meets what I was at that moment learning lies just beyond that.
[TODD HASAK-LOWY IS A WRITER AND LITERARY CRITIC WHO WAS BROUGHT BY MARK SARVAS ON THE ELEGANT VARIATION - A PIECE IN THREE PARTS]

Blindness, by José Saramago • VINTAGE • AVAILABLE AT BLOOM

Cerca de duzentas fotografias premiadas no concurso anual organizado pela Fundação World Press Photo, sediada na Holanda, vão estar em exposição em Macau, no Centro de Actividades Turísticas, por iniciativa da Casa de Portugal, que quis proporciona esta oportunidade de apreciar o que de melhor se produziu no Mundo, em 2007, em termos de fotojornalismo.
Ao júri do concurso, constituído por personalidades de renome dos mais diversos países e reunido em Fevereiro último, durante dez dias, em Amesterdão, foram submetidas exactamente 80.536 fotografias, da autoria de 5.019 fotojornalistas originários de 125 países. Números que impressionam e que dão bem conta do prestígio de que goza mundialmente a iniciativa.
O prémio maior deste concurso é atribuído à fotografia classificada como «Fotografia do Ano», um concurso dividido em dez categorias, onde se incluem, nomeadamente, as de «Notícias Gerais», «Pessoas que são Notícia», «Desporto», «Natureza » e «Artes e Entretenimento».
Neste último concurso, respeitante a obras produzidas e publicadas no ano transacto, o fotojornalista português Miguel Barreira, do jornal «Record», ganhou o terceiro prémio da categoria «Desporto em Acção», com uma fotografia tirada na praia do Norte, na Nazaré, durante uma espectacular prova de «bodyboard».
Todos os anos, após a atribuição dos prémios, a exposição com as fotografias galardoadas é inaugurada em Amesterdão, e onde surgiu, já no longínquo ano de 1955, a primeira exposição internacional de fotojornalismo, então por iniciativa da Associação Holandesa de Fotojornalistas.
Após a apresentação em Amesterdão a exposição é levada a percorrer o Mundo, através da cooperação com entidades ou instituições das mais diversas e importantes cidades, desde Londres a Nova Iorque, passando por São Paulo, Quito, Manila, Seúl, Paris, Milão, etc..

Em Macau, a exposição será inaugurada no CAT-Centro de Actividades Turísticas no próximo dia 18 do corrente, às 18.30 horas, no decorrer de uma recepção, ficando depois patente ao público, com entrada livre, diariamente, das 10 às 19 horas, e até 9 de Outubro próximo.

Queria tomar partido por alguém. Dizer alguma coisa que ninguém consegue dizer. Como por exemplo que a tua galinha é maior do que a minha. Sim, é verdade. Ou que o Conde Barão é que devia ser o presidente. Mas vou esperar. Vou esperar e volto amanhã para um novo ensaio, com o corpo na mesma mas com a mente mais sã, decerto. Prometo!

O V. disse que não conhecia nenhuma livraria pequena que vendesse também café. Há aquelas de vários andares, em Nova-Iorque, em Milão, essas têm tudo lá dentro. Achou que era um gajo com coragem. Depois continuámos para ali a falar. Se uma pessoa sonha e não segue aquilo que sonha só sabe que sonhou, mais nada. Mas se o segue e o concretiza ao menos sabe o que é. Sabe o que é lá estar. E da ideia forma uma realidade. E vive-a! Apesar de tudo, eu estou a viver a puta da minha realidade. A treta do meu sonho!

This song could have been our soundtrack. It's called "I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead" "The Sun Smells Too Loud" and is on the last album of the Scotish band Mogway, which was titled "The Hawk Is Howling", that will be realeased on the 21st of September. It's a delightful essay on sound and ambience. Mogwai member Barry Burns described the album's songs as being "dreamy ballads about forbidden love gone awry".
Listen to it as you scroll our website down. We've been very busy and we could not update our blog so often, we'll try our best to do it more in the future, as soon we park all our cars.
[MOGWAY ON WIKIPEDIA]

Where does digitisation lead us?
Give your views.

The Frankfurt Book Fair, as the global meeting place for the book world, is a barometer of change in the industry. Last year’s survey showed that digitisation was seen as the greatest challenge for the book sector worldwide.
This year they want to find out your opinion about how digitisation will influence the future of the publishing industry and who will be the driving force behind it.
They would be grateful if you could spend a few minutes giving your responses to the questions. The results of the survey will be published in the Frankfurt Book Fair Newsletter, which we hope will make an interesting reading.Please answer the following questions in brief (it will take you about five minutes) on this link. Thank you.

Fundada em 1993 e agora com sede em Coimbra, a Angelus Novus, Editora publicou até 2005, data em que interrompeu a sua produção, 110 títulos, tendo criado uma imagem de prestígio sobretudo na área do ensaio e da edição de clássicos da literatura portuguesa. A Angelus Novus divulgou uma nova geração de autores portugueses e editou uma série muito seleccionada de autores estrangeiros, quer na poesia – Durs Grünbein, Luis Javier Moreno – quer no ensaio: Antonio Candido, João Cabral de Melo Neto, Jacques Derrida, Theodor W. Adorno, Ortega y Gasset, Bill Readings ou Eve Kosofsky.
A Angelus Novus que regressou ao mercado em Janeiro de 2008 deseja prolongar o essencial desta herança – o rigor e exigência na escolha de títulos e autores – mas é, na verdade, uma nova Angelus, na medida em que surgiu com uma imagem totalmente renovada e com um catálogo mais variado, destinado a públicos muito mais diversos, pondo em prática um novo conceito de editora, do ponto de vista do design gráfico, da comunicação com os leitores ou da visibilidade no mercado.
Não desiste, à partida, de nenhum leitor, dos 7 aos 77 anos, dos mais integrados aos mais alternativos. Nesse sentido, não são nem pretendem ser uma editora marginal mas sim uma editora disponível para acompanhar e estimular os debates que movem os nossos contemporâneos. Como sempre, o novo pode estar mais à frente ou mais atrás, pode passar pela encomenda de textos cuja falta se sente ou pela recuperação de textos «clássicos» ou simplesmente esquecidos. Como pode passar por grafismos arrojados ou por soluções antigas e ainda válidas, porque muito testadas e com sucesso. Não há aliás razões para não se considerar um livro um objecto coleccionável, porque belo. Ou porque, belo ou útil, nele se declina um pedaço da nossa vida.
A Angelus Novus publica obras em todos os géneros, sem preconceitos de ordem moral, política ou religiosa no que toca às posições defendidas pelas autoras ou autores nos seus textos e sejam tais obras polémicas ou não.
A Angelus Novus não publica porém obras que façam propaganda política ou religiosa ou obras que defendam expressamente posições racistas, fascistas ou discriminatórias no que respeita a questões de «género» e identidade sexual.
[SITE OFICIAL]

Desato-lhe os cordões das botas. Tiro-lhe as meias. Estão transpiradas. Pego-lhe nos pés. São já do tamanho dos meus. Cheiro-lhos. Como se ele fosse um cristo ignoto e eu uma virgem mãe. Beijo-lhe o sinal que tem no dedo mais pequenino do pé esquerdo. Digo Gosto tanto do cheiro dos teus pés. Ele não responde. Limita-se a sorrir, mostrando os dentes novos, definitivos, enormes, que lhe estão a crescer na boca. Pergunto Achas que sou maluquinha por gostar do cheiro dos teus pés? Ele volta a sorrir. Atira-se para trás. Suspira. Depois responde. Um pouco. Acho que és uma mãe um pouco louca. São estas as exactas palavras que lhe saem da boca. Volto a pegar-lhe nos pés. Esfrego-os no meu rosto. Às vezes, muitas vezes, tenho a sensação de o sufocar com os meus gestos. Não sou capaz de não lhe tocar. Tantas vezes que desejo ter um ventre enorme elástico onde ele novamente se aninhe e sossegue. Tenho por ele, mais do que por ela, um amor táctil, quase obsceno. Chegará um dia em que ele não me deixará cheirar-lhe os pés, nem me contará os sonhos, nem me pedirá ajuda para colar cromos na caderneta. Estranhará a minha nudez, esconder-me-á a sua. Abrirá assim fissuras irreparáveis na nossa intimidade. Deixarei de me reconhecer no seu corpo, nos olhos, na boca, nas mãos, na sua pele de maltês e andarilho, escura como a de um cigano. O seu corpo deixará de ser o meu corpo.
(acho sempre que não me sobra amor para outro filho.)
[Barão Trepador por Ana de Amesterdam • 23 JUN 2008]

Beyond Zhang Yimou's Generation: Nostalgia, Humanism and Survival of the Silent Majority in Chinese Cinema since 1997, by Mao Sihui
The Macau Ricci Institute (MRI) is glad to invite you to its September "MRI Forum", a monthly seminar on Greater China related topics.
The forum will be chaired by 徐浩均 Choi Hou Kuan, Chris, Executive Assistant of the Macau Ricci Institute. It will be followed by a small cocktail party during which participants will have the opportunity to meet the speaker.

Under this topic, the speaker will be using film clips of his own choice such as scenes from Jia Zhangke's "Xiaowu" (1997), "Platform" (2000), "Still Life" (2006), Wang Xiaoshuai's "Beijing Bicycle" (2001) and "Shanghai Dreams" (2005), Li Yang's "Blind Shaft" (2003), Yang Yazhou's "Loach is Fish too" (2004), Qi Jian's "The Forest Ranger" (2006) and Zhang Yang's "Going Home" (2007). These films represent the real truth-seeking spirit of these "younger" directors which is extremely valuable in contemporary China and can be a very good channel to explore the deep social, psychological and cultural implications of a fast rising China in the age of "glocalisation" (the dual process of globalisation and localisation).

Mao Sihui is Professor of English and Comparative Cultural Studies, Chairman of English Language Teaching and Research Committee, Director of MPI-Bell Centre of English, Macao Polytechnic Institute and Vice President of Sino-American Cultural Studies Association of China. He is also Honorary Professor of Comparative Literature of Hong Kong University and PhD supervisor for Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. He received his M.A. from Department of English, University of Lancaster, and his PhD (Comparative Literature – Film Culture) from the University of Hong Kong. He taught for many years at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies and then at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. His publications include Technologising the Male Body: British Cinema 1957-1987 (1999), New Perspectives: Contemporary Literary and Cultural Studies (2000), Decoding Contemporary Britain (2003), and Literature, Culture and Postmodern Transformations: 8 Case Studies from William Shakespeare to James Bond (forthcoming) and also over 50 journal papers/ book chapters in language and translation studies, literary and cultural studies. He is editor-in-chief of New Topics in Contemporary Cultural Studies Series (6 books) published by Sun Yat-sen University Press (2007-2008) He is currently working on the project Representations of Macao in Contemporary Cinema.

Due to limited space, interested persons should reserve their seat on a "first come, first serve" basis. Your contact details, especially e-mail address, will allow us to keep you informed of forthcoming MRI Forums and other MRI activities. At the occasion, a selection of the Institute’s publications will be offered at a discount price (please, see below).
To reserve your seat, please click on the following this link or send an E-mail to forums@riccimac.org or call (853) 2853 2536.

Date & Time: Wednesday, September 17th 2008, at 6:30PM
Venue: Macau Ricci Institute, Av. Cons. Ferreira de Almeida, No. 95-E • MAP
Language: English

Cheguei demasiado cedo a Londres. Não dormi na viagem. Não me lembro de nada. São sete e tal da manhã e é preciso descansar, agora que todos começam a acordar. Tenho tudo vivo dentro de mim. Agora de longe penso que não lutei. Que desisti. Que fiz tudo trocado. Podia ter sido outra coisa e agora aguento-me com novos modos de vida. Novas consciências. A pensar que nada perdura. Mas o futuro está aí. E Londres é a cidade certa para começar.
[BA1245 • JUN 2004]

Eu juro. Todos os poetas estão do nosso lado. Eu juro. E juro que, um dia, todos os políticos se transformarão em estrelas rock e que todas as fardas se confundirão com luzes de néon em cidades sem nome. E juro que, um dia, Marc Bolan ressuscitará por detrás de um écran gigante de vídeo. E que em todas as ruas se dançará ao som de Lou Reed. Take a walk on the wild side. E se, um dia, os fascistas no poder se transformarem em balas perdidas na multidão, nós saíremos à rua, nós seremos mais fortes, nada nos calará, nada nos derrubará. Eu juro.
João Peste, em "Juramento Sem Bandeira" (1987)

enact |enˈakt|
verb [ trans. ]
1 put into practice (a belief, idea, or suggestion).
2 act out (a role or play) on stage.
3 to strive to make a story come true.

Future shock is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.
ALVIN TOFFLER

Ishmael is a half ton silverback gorilla. He is a student of ecology, life, freedom, and the human condition. He is also a teacher. He teaches that which all humans need to learn - must learn - if our species, and the rest of life on Earth as we know it, is to survive.

In 1989 Ted Turner created a fellowship to be awarded to a work of fiction offering positive solutions to global problems. The winner, chosen from 2500 entries worldwide, was a work of startling clarity and depth: Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, a Socratic journey that explores the most challenging problem humankind has ever faced: How to save the world from ourselves.
The book opens with a deceptively ordinary personals ad: "Teacher seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world." Seeking a direction for his life, a young man answers the ad and is startled to find that the teacher is a lowland gorilla named Ishmael, a creature uniquely placed to vision anew the human story.
Ishmael's paradigm of history is startlingly different from the one wired into our cultural consciousness. For Ishmael, our agricultural revolution was not a technological event but a moral one, a rebellion against an ethical structure inherent in the community of life since its foundation four billion years ago. Having escaped the restraints of this ethical structure, humankind made itself a global tyrant, wielding deadly force over all other species while lacking the wisdom to make its tyranny a beneficial one or even a sustainable one.
That tyranny is now hurtling us toward a planetary disaster of pollution and overpopulation. If we want to avoid that catastrophe, we need to work our way back to some fundamental truths: that we weren't born a menace to the world and that no irresistible fate compels us to go on being a menace to the world.
Since Bantam first published Daniel Quinn's utterly unique novel Ishmael in 1992, the novel has grown into a bestseller. Ishmael has garnered rave reviews and has been adopted for classroom use in schools coast-to-coast, including Dartmouth, the Naval Academy and Stanford University. Along the way, Ishmael gathered a devoted following as thousands upon thousands of readers have written to Quinn to express how the book has changed their lives.
Quinn's first version of the award-winning novel was written in 1977 and was followed by seven more complete and distinct versions. The character Ishmael appeared only in the eighth, and final, version. This is also the only version written as a novel. "I was ready to admit defeat when Ted Turner announced his plans for the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship. I felt, if I read him right, he was looking for exactly the sort of book I was struggling to write, and this encouraged me to give it one more try. I'm certainly glad I did."
Quinn says Ishmael is a story about hope. "I think we have a much finer and more exciting destiny than conquering and ruling the world," he says. "This book shows that we can learn about what that destiny is from the life around us -- and in Ishmael it just happens that life speaks with the voice of a lowland gorilla."
SOURCE: ISHMAEL.ORG • MORE ON WIKIPEDIA • SOON AT BLOOM

It's a new arrival at our yellow shop the frieze magazine, an English venture on contemporary art and culture.
This publication is managed by the Frieze Foundation, a non-profit organization established in 2003 and responsible for the curated programme at Frieze Art Fair, who comprises artist commissions, talks, films, music and education.
Frieze Art Fair is held every October in Regent’s Park, London. It features more than 150 of the most exciting contemporary art galleries in the world. As well as these exhibitors, the Fair includes specially commissioned artists’ projects and an ambitious talks calendar. Frieze Foundation is funded by the European Commission’s Culture 2000 programme.
The magazine, along with its website, is now the front-head of the whole project and the scratch from where it began. Launched up in 1991, frieze magazine, is the leading magazine of contemporary art and culture. frieze is published eight times a year and includes essays, reviews and columns by today’s most forward-thinking writers, artists and curators. You can buy it now in Macau at Bloom Yellow at St. Lazarus district. For subscriptions send us an email. Thank you!
RELATED LINK: frieze project

Did you ever saw any of these videos about making pop-corn with a mobile phone? Well, they seem to be true. Do you believe them? Try it yourself and you'll see what happens.
Growing concerns about the use of these devices, relayed on recent scientific studies, are disturbing all users around the world. Does your cell phone affects your brain, putting your health in danger? Probably yes. You can read it on the fresh issue of Best Life magazine. They put the finger on all the keys flowing down through these matters.
Did you ever heard about Specific Absorption Rate, commonly known as SAR number? It's another SAR different from the one you are used to, nothing to do with special regions. This is the rate that measures the absorbed radiation by the human body. And some phones are more danger than others, iPhones, for instance, are on the middle range on this. Maybe you believe that for the hours you've already spend on a cell phone probably you wouldn't be here reading this and you don't care much. Perhaps this is not truly scientific confirmed yet but for your own sake you should take a look about it. First rule: don't let your kids use it! Second rule: always use a wired headset (even the Bluetooth devices can be harmful with long time use).

The truth about the cell-phone–cancer link and what it means for you and your kids

When Vini Khurana, PhD, an Australian (and Mayo Clinic–trained) neurosurgeon, announced that the link between cell-phone use and cancer was irrefutable—the result of his analysis of more than 100 studies—it set off alarm bells around the world. Use a cell phone, he said, and you increase your risk of developing a malignant brain tumor by two to four times. Until recently, the majority of research indicated little or no link between cell phones and cancer (the World Health Organization and the American Cancer Society maintain that cell phones pose no threat), but several new long-term studies have cast doubt about their safety. Given that cell phones and PDAs serve as lifelines for so many people—24 percent of 10- and 11-year-olds carry them—it raises urgent questions. To find out what precautions you should take when using your cell phone, we dialed the nation's leading experts.

Do cell phones cause cancer?
Maybe…with extended use. Mobile-phone users are twice as likely to develop malignant, difficult-to-treat brain tumors called gilomas, according to a first-of-its-kind study that analyzed the effects of cell-phone use over 10 years or more and was published last year in the journal Occupational Environmental Medicine. The Bioinitiative Working Group, an international coalition of scientists and public-health experts, recently published a hefty report detailing the link between the nonionizing radiation caused by a cell phone's electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and cancer, DNA damage, Alzheimer's, and other diseases. "The cells in the body react to EMFs in cell phones just like they do to other environmental toxins, including heavy metals and chemicals," says Martin Blank, PhD, a professor in bioelectromagnetics at Columbia University and one of the report's authors. The study found that risk from cell-phone use starts at 260 lifetime hours.

Do cell phones emit radiation only when you are talking?
No. "Cell phones give off radiation any time they're turned on so that they can communicate with base stations," says Lou Bloomfield, PhD, professor of physics at the University of Virginia and author of How Everything Works: Making Physics Out of the Ordinary. "The radiation emitted, however, is stronger and more frequent when you're talking or messaging." Also, the greater distance you are from a base station, the more radiation your phone must emit in order to get a signal, which is why your phone feels hot when you have low reception. That heat you feel is radiation. The Bioinitiative study found that adverse effects to DNA can also occur before the phone heats up. To reduce your exposure, make calls only when you have strong reception, hang up before your phone heats up, and store your phone away from your body when it's not in use.

What is the range of the radiation?
Exposure to radiation from your cell phone drops off slowly for the first three to four inches from your body, and then it falls dramatically, says Bloomfield. To reduce your exposure, invest in a hands-free headset and limit the amount of time you spend talking on the phone. Khurana recommends using the speaker mode and holding the phone about eight inches away from you. Also, limit your use of Bluetooth devices. While it's true that they emit the least amount of radiation (one study found they can operate as low as 0.001 watts per kilogram), even that can add up fast.

Is it risky to carry a cell phone in your pants pocket?
Maybe. One 2006 study found no link to testicular cancer, but other researchers suspect a link to male infertility. Ashok Agarwal, PhD, director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, recently completed a study in which cell phones were set down for one hour in talk mode, next to sperm samples in test tubes. He found that the sperm's motility and viability were significantly reduced, and levels of harmful free radicals increased after exposure. Agarwal suggests storing the phone in your jacket pocket to reduce exposure to cell-phone radiation. Pregnant women need to take precautions too, because a recent study found that cell-phone use while pregnant is linked to behavioral problems in children.
[Julie A. Evans on BEST LIFE MAGAZINE • SEPTEMBER ISSUE • FOLLOW IT HERE OR BUY IT AT BLOOM YELLOW TODAY OR TOMORROW]

RELATED LINKS: WIKIPEDIA • TRUTHOUT • THE NEW YORK TIMES

If you come to BLOOM YELLOW today the first thing you notice is that the magazines are epidemic and are crawling through every space available. As we got many different titles they spread around and we're running out of place for all of them, which in a way is good because we have a good offer.
One of the last arrivals is Foreign Affairs, the preeminent journal of foreign policy and international affairs, who provides to government and business leaders, students, and the general public with insightful, thought-provoking analysis on world events for over 80 years. Before it becomes policy, it's all there, in Foreign Affairs.
Founded in 1921, the Council on Foreign Relations is a non-profit and nonpartisan membership organization dedicated to improving the understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs through the free exchange of ideas. Its 3,400 members include nearly all past and present Presidents, Secretaries of State, Defense and Treasury, other senior U.S. government officials, renowned scholars, and major leaders of business, media, human rights, and other non-governmental groups. Each year the Council sponsors several hundred meetings including televised debates and other media events, and publishes Foreign Affairs, the preeminent journal in the field, as well as dozens of other reports and books by noted experts.
Since 1922, the Council has published Foreign Affairs, America's most influential publication on international affairs and foreign policy. It is more than a magazine — it is the international forum of choice for the most important new ideas, analysis, and debate on the most significant issues in the world. Inevitably, articles published in Foreign Affairs shape the political dialogue for months and years to come.
On this issue [September/October 2008, Vol 87, Number 5] you can read about the Dauting Agenda of the next U. S. President, who will inherit a more difficult set of international challenges than any predecessor since World War II, an essay by Richard Holbrooke. Along you can follow the Bush Era in perspective. Read also articles by Christopher Hitchens and Antonio Guterres, former Prime-minister of Portugal and UN High Comissioner for Refugees. Look for A Strategic Economic Engagement, the right way to engage China, an essay by Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary.
Plenty of readings to start your weekend and to boost the coming month.
[FOREIGN AFFAIRS WEBSITE]

And yes, we are back in town!

José Tavares, vice-presidente do Instituto de Desporto de Macau, entrevistado pela Tribuna de Macau, responde assim à seguinte questão:

-Em termos económicos, que benefícios é que Macau teve?
-Ficámos a ganhar, porque hoje em dia, para fazer as mesmas infra-estruturas, era o dobro ou o triplo do preço. Antecipou-se a construção dessas instalações, que devia ter acontecido em 15 ou 20 anos, e o Governo poupou muito dinheiro, porque as matérias primas e a mão-de-obra eram mais baratas.

Mas e se tivessem acontecido há 15 ou 20 anos não teriam poupado muito mais? Logo o Governo perdeu rios de dinheiro. Mas por esta lógica estamos todos contentes. O Governo por ter feito a ponte Nobre de Carvalho em 1974 e não agora. O Stanley Ho por ter terminado a Torre de Macau em 1999 e o David Chow também deve estar contentíssimo por ter feito a Doca dos Pescadores há uns anos e não em 2008. Estão todos com os cofres cheios por causa disso. Imaginem se o Homem se punha a inventar o Fogo agora, o dinheirão que isso não custaria.

Mensagem para as novas gerações?
Puta que os pariu!
[ENTREVISTA DE JOÃO PAULO COTRIM A LUIZ PACHECO, REVISTA LER, 1995, COMPILADAS NO LIVRO 'O CROCODILO QUE VOA' - EDIÇÃO TINTA DA CHINA]

From the Southeast Asia bay to the heart of Europe it takes half a day if you ride a jet plane. Imagine what it would be if you get any other means of transport. Would take a hell of a ride. The distance is about 9600 kilometers. We departed at night and as we flew away towards the West the speed of daylight was chasing us from the start and by the time we arrived the bloom of dawn was just touching our tail. Long time waiting in a cabin of a plane nowhere in the world it's like being mad without knowing. A limbo of endless short memories that we recall under sleepless periods or on the short breath of a dream. Human beings that commute with each other, breathing the same air, side by side, just to get to another life that waits on a new promising land. Returning home or be faraway from it are the predicts of this tedious road on the sky. But as people say, "the sky has no limits". No end. And when you arrive your whole senses are opened to any new discovery waiting for the marvelous of the uncommon chance. The unknown future taking place on the other side of the planet. Yourself but in a way different.

In the small place of Odemira, Alentejo, Portugal, 20 minutes from the Atlantic Coast, stands a new holiday destination, where Bloom is planting a little seed. Visit Quinta do Chocalhinho.

Bloom Red and Bloom Yellow are open. Part of the team is on holidays and will return soon to the moonbase. Keep enjoying all the books you can have.

Não sei se me faço entender, embora entenda com tanta facilidade o que acabei de escrever.

Telefonaram-me para casa e perguntaram-me se estava em casa.
Foi então que deram pelo facto de que realmente eu tinha morrido havia já dezassete dias.
Por vezes as perguntas estúpidas são de extrema utilidade.
Adaptação local de Contos de Gin-Tónico, de Mário Henrique Leiria

Qualquer coisa?

No fundo fazíamo-nos companhia, mesmo quando passavam dias em que não dizíamos palavra.
Um corpo precisa de ver outro para saber o que é.
Amor Portátil, de Pedro Paixão
[DISPONÍVEL NA BLOOM]

sei.
claro que sei.
seria desonesta se dissesse que não sabia.

mas sim, sei.
e hoje fizeste questão de fazer com que soubesse.
e soube o que já sabia.

que sei.
claro que sei.
serei honesta ao dizer que sei.
[* Pelo teu amor]

dos meus sonhos,
sonhos, que me esqueci
e me permiti "reinventar", mantenho em brasa a meia metade percorrida da
outra metade de um sonho
por sonhar,
os meus sonhos,
alimentados de palavras meio adormecidas, que hoje valem por
si.

Provoco,
na imediata constatação,
o meu reencontro contra a luz,
despindo da alma
o próprio peso do corpo.

Desse processo,
onde as horas passam - por mim -
Transformadas em vírgulas, no interior da cessação de movimento, ganham vida e circulam palavras,
como forma de inocente salvação expiada.

More and more people are moving into towns and cities to live and work, which is altering the urban/rural balance of countries worldwide. For the first time in the history of humanity, more than half of the earth’s population is living in urban areas. THE ENDLESS CITY is an unparalleled study of the growth of six of the world's international cities (New York, Shanghai, London, Mexico City, Johannesburg, and Berlin), exploring key structural, social, and economic factors. This book was overseen by the London School of Economics, and features extensive research and coherent texts by world-renowned professionals in the field of urban planning and development. The information is presented in a comprehensive and visually compelling sequence, enabling quick and efficient reference as well as offering material that is exciting to study. Each city is examined individually in its own chapter as well as being analyzed comparatively in an observational chapter. THE ENDLESS CITY is authoritatively edited by Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic in collaboration with the London School of Economics and the Urban Age Project - an international organization seeking a new urban agenda for global cities. Extensive research and coherent text are presented in a comprehensive and visually compelling sequence, making this an essential reference tool for anyone interested in urbanism and development.
[CHECK THE FEATURED WEBSITE HERE and ORDER IT FROM US]

The Endless City, by Ricky Burdett (Editor), Deyan Sudjic (Editor)
PHAIDON PRESS • HARDCOVER • 512 PAGES • MARCH 2008

      The only nation
                                       I ever gave
allegiance to
          was
                     hibernation.
[BY MARTIN C. - The best writer of Macau]

Yesterday we had a full house. It is an amazing book, China: Portrait of a Country, and just to look at the pictures we can talk about them for ages. It was really a pleasure to have Liu Heung Shing and once again Karen Smith with us. We would like to thank to everybody who came to this and to the other events. We will soon post some pictures of all the sessions and we'll return with more in September. This was our first try to revive a lovely area in Macau. We want to do it like the beat of the city's art! Hope you can enjoy it as we do.

OUR BIGGEST THANKS TO PETER SUART, XU XI, KUNG CHI SING, KAREN SMITH, LIU HEUNG SHING, PHILIP TSANG, MARJORIE YAU, MARY CHAN, SHEILA LO, JOSEPHINE MA, ALICE WU, CATHERINE CHENG, LIZ LAM, GLENN TIMMERMANS, ANDREW MOODY, JORGE MESQUITA AND VICENZO. TASCHEN, HONG KONG UNIVERSITY PRESS, HAVEN BOOKS, CHAMELEON PRESS, TIMEZONE 8, ASIA PUBLISHER SERVICES, FOREIGN PRESS DISTRIBUTORS, BAMBU SOCIEDADE DE ARTES LIMITADA, SANTA CASA DA MISERICÓRDIA DE MACAU, CASA DE PORTUGAL EM MACAU, JORNAL HOJE MACAU, MACAU CLOSER MAGAZINE AND TO ALL THE ONES WHO KNOW THAT THIS WOULDN'T BE POSSIBLE WITHOUT THEM!

O grande mistério não é termos sido lançados aqui ao acaso, entre a profusão da matéria e das estrelas: é que, da nossa própria prisão, de dentro de nós mesmos, conseguimos extrair imagens suficientemente poderosas para negar a nossa insignificância.
André Malraux, in A Condição Humana, 1933

[...] Liu Heung Shing got the idea for the book shortly after China won its bid to host the Olympics. “I began to wonder what people in 2008 would understand about the journey that Chinese people have undergone from 1949 till today. When people get off at the airport they’ll be surrounded by luxury – villas, fast trains, cars, stadiums – but will not necessarily appreciate or understand the road that has lead to today.”

The photographer says he wanted to present as balanced a portrait of the country as possible. In Western media, he notes, “China is either too backward or it’s flooding the West with all these goods and is a threat to its neighbours… at what point does conversation turn into demonisation?” At the other end of the spectrum, Chinese media tend to see “China through a viewing glass that is not always propagandistic, but the Chinese have a tendency to put the best face forward.”

The book takes a panoramic, decade-by-decade look at the nation’s development, from the founding of the People’s Republic, to the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, to the Opening and Reform and Tiananmen, right up to its ongoing economic miracle. Even China’s most recent heartrending national tragedy, the Sichuan earthquake, makes an appearance. Liu has spent the last four years pouring over archives, travelling the country meeting photographers and gaining access to negatives. “Surprisingly when I started calling the photographers, I had a very warm welcome.” Many of them already knew Liu’s 1983 work, China After Mao, which was circulated ‘unofficially’ in China.

Between 25 and 30 per cent of the works in the new book have never been published, including one of Madame Jiang Qing, purported to be the last photograph taken of her before she was arrested that same evening. Another shows Chairman Mao with more than a dozen of his personal staff, an image Liu says “would have been impossible to publish during Mao’s lifetime.” Another photo depicts one of Mao’s ‘railway attendants’ in fashionable dress. Elsewhere, we see original images alongside official photographs, such as the Gang of Four at Mao’s funeral, placed beside the official photograph in which the four were airbrushed out. [...]
[STACEY DUFF in TIME OUT HONG KONG]

You can occupy my every sigh,
You can rent a space inside my mind
At least untill the price becomes too high.

Pistas para a sua identificação

- O cinéfilo tem sempre tempo para ir ao cinema.
- É muito chato e refere repetidamente aos amigos, e outras vítimas, cenas preferidas, actores, filmes, bandas sonoras e alguma trivia.
- Sabe a data de nascimento da Asta Nielsen.
- Não viu, inexplicavelmente, alguns filmes que toda a gente viu, como Música no Coração ou Os Canhões de Navarone.
- Viu filmes que mais ninguém viu, como La Petite Fée de Solbaken, e é especialista em géneros obscuros, como Bergfilms germânicos.
- Sabe nomes de directores de fotografia e as características gerais do seu trabalho.
- Desvaloriza Sundance em favor do Festival de Cinema de Telluride.
- Sorri, iluminado, quando alguém sai do cinema a dizer que o filme tem uma grande fotografia.
- Sabe de cor bocados de filmes obscuros, como O Coronel Wolodyjowski, e encontra meios de incluir nas conversas, mesmo a despropósito, referências a esses filmes.
- Vai ao cinema sozinho.
- Consegue lançar numa conversa, com uma certeza imune ao mais leve pestanejar, nomes difíceis, como Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, ou mesmo, prova máxima, nomes de realizadores coreanos.
- Sabe que o último filme do Wong Kar Wai é uma merda.
- Usou gabardina e, a dada altura, cachecol à nouvelle vague.
- Vai às sessões das 14:00 e recorda que a certa altura havia sessões às 11 da manhã.
- Lembra, saudoso, ciclos de cinema a que assistiu há mais de 20 anos, e onde, invariavelmente, se passaram episódios inesquecíveis.
- Tem opiniões firmes sobre o cinema mudo dinamarquês.
- Sabe de cor títulos de filmes na língua original, preferindo dizer Neokonchenaya Piesa dlya Mekhanicheskogo Pianino a Peça Inacabada para Piano Mecânico.
- Também sabe títulos de filmes em bengali, ladaque, azeri, além de japonês ou russo.
- Por vezes finge não saber a tradução de títulos de alguns filmes.
- Teve/tem paixões fortes por actores ou actrizes. Uma vez jantou num restaurante em Carcassone onde estava, a 18 mesas de distância, a Catherine Deneuve.
- Odeia militantemente alguns géneros (como o musical – exemplo : Les Parapluies de Cherburg), alguns actores (Anthony Quinn), ou alguns filmes (Il Postino).
- Detestava, até à altura em que passou apenas a responder com um sorriso trocista, que alguém que não considera um “gajo do cinema“ lhe sugerisse ver este ou aquele filme, vivendo no terror de ouvir a frase : “ó pá, se és meu amigo tens de ir ver isto”.
- Passou horas em bichas para comprar bilhetes para ciclos, onde fez amizades para a vida. Conclui lembrando que: “ainda tenho lá em casa os bilhetes de...”.
- Abusa de frases superlativas começadas por Nunca, como: “nunca a Garbo esteve tão sublime como em...”, que faz acompanhar de um gesto de mão, abrangente e nostálgico.
- Vê filmes sem legendas em línguas que não domina.
- Insiste que os filmes do Syberberg: “até se vêem bem, é uma questão de entrar neles“.
- Só em casos excepcionais vê filmes dobrados, quando não há outra cópia de um filme dificílimo de encontrar, e envolvendo uma língua que não entende, como por exemplo um filme em dinamarquês dobrado para italiano.
[POR BOI LUXO em Luz de Inverno, no Hoje Macau da passada Terça-feira]

Due to the very hot weather and mostly because Dan Waters is 88 years old, Bloom and MCCM Creations decided to postpone the presentation of One Couple Two Cultures, event scheduled to this Saturday, 2nd of August, to another date, on a cooler time, to be announced soon.

To everybody our sincere apologies and to Dan our most deep regards.