The latest short stories' collection book I have read ...

I don't often read magazines of new writing like Granta's but I have been fortunate enough to have bought quite a few on different subjects, which not only did I find to be particularly cheap (possibly because of being old editions) but also interesting. 

 

Of the various short stories in this 118 Edition - Exit Strategies, whose authors I have read for the first time three stood out,  The Road to Damascus by Claire Messud on the  tender sketch relatated to the death of the author's father and her ties to Beirut, City Boy by Judy Chicurel on a rather poignant and moving story regarding an "abandoned" child and Thirty girls by Susan Minot which focuses on a true massive kidnapping of school girls in Uganda. Stacy Kranitz's photos are worth being looked at and the overall feeling is that every story has specific moments on which to ponder.






"To understand that most of what is, you can only imagine, and can imagine only through the often contradictory traces of what you can see. To understand that always, at the heart of things - whatever the ideas and ideologies, the violation and violence, the peculiarities of culture - always at the heart are ordinary people, and there is just life, being lived: tables and bread and toilets and scissors and cigarettes and kisses and death; just life." - on The road to Damascus by Claire Messud.



"How the audience affects a performance, how differently we behave when we know we are being watched. True authenticity (...) required  an absolute nearly  spiritual denial of the audience, or even the possibility of being watched." - on The Provincials by Daniel Alrcón.






 

 

 

 

 

Macao revisited ...

As I was looking for some old photo albums, which I haven't yet been able to find (in the numerable paper boxes "protecting" some of my old memories from the flow of time) I came across two photos dating back to 1997 that I wanted Pricilla and Azevedo to look at, following our recent getting together evening.

 

 

Despite the fact that eighteen years have gone by since this photo was taken I still remember that moment. Azevedo, his wife and I had gathered with the Air Traffic Controllers to be on a beach site for an organised barbecue just three days into my Macanese territory arrival. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Sally, Pricilla, Azevedo, Shirley and myself (from left to right).

 

 

 

 

Azevedo and his wife Sonia had booked three public grills on Hac Sa, Coloane island (which I had considered amazingly interesting at the time) and the students had brought along Portuguese imported sardines (to honour us with) to be cooked (the Macanese way, which meant they'd be spiced in a different way and later dipped in honey before being grilled).

I do remember the girls (I included) were offered some sort of welcoming gift (which I am looking at as the photo was being taken) upon reaching the site. It was an incredible afternoon, in which we started getting to know the students and the local habits. That initial "approach" would later prove to be precious in regards to the teaching-learning strategies.

 

 

 

I am particularly fond of these memories, one of the reasons being the fact that it was my first ever Asian trip, as well as my first experience in terms of teaching Chinese speaking students, whose mentality, learning rhythm and committement to the learning itself strongly differed from the one of our Portuguese and African students (I was used to).

 

 

The first group of Macanese Abinitio Air Traffic controllers (on their last Aeronautical English classroom day).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the latest documentary film I have watched ...

I was really looking forward to watching the documentary film - Das Grosse Museum (the Great Museum) on one of the most important Museums of the world - the Kunst Historisches Museum in Viena, Austria not only because I visited it some years ago but particularly because I had watched the National Gallery some days before and was interested in finding out what sort of approach  Johannes Holzhausen would have in regards to it.

 

It turned out to be a different one from  Wiseman's despite the fact that both have incorporated a behind-the-scene type of approach.

I was once more impressed with having "witnessed" the meticulous care and the amount of valuable time dedicated to the restoration of Art pieces as well as the maintenance and alteration works of the Gallery itself, which is something we, as visitors very often don't think about.

" I guess for me a Museum is like Noah's ark, a place where things are preserved and carried across the ocean of time into the present (...) one of the ideas behind this film: to show objects never exist in isolation but always in the context of someone's work."

 

An evening out ...

Had we been in Macao, China and we would have almost certainly spent the evening out at Azevedo and Sonia's as we so often did back in 1996, but because not only is Sonia currently in Brazil and the rest of the former group of students not present, Azevedo and I decided to take Pricilla on an evening out to a local Portuguese restaurant.

 

 

We ended up talking about everything and nothing in what turned out to be an evening of memories' recollection and the getting to know what the current lives of those we were so attached to back then are now. The fabulous food added a touch of "nostalgia" to the gathering because despite being completely different from the specialities Sonia used to cook it was nevertheless around a table (and food, to be more precise) we used to get together.

May those who played an important role in our life keep on being acknowledged for having beeen special in some sort of way ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getting together (again) ...

Following my getting together with a Macanese student I hadn't seen for a while I was unexpectedly surprised with the visit of two former Angolan students I hadn't also been with for several years ... (seven, to be precise).

 

I don't suppose I'll ever be prepared for these encounters which inevitably bring about memories ... of extraordinary periods of our lives in which we seemed to have time enough to teach-learn and get engaged in other activities that went well beyond the training ones.

I suppose the spirit of the teachers of that epoch was slightly different from today's ... students were to be "taken care of" throughout the whole process, especially if they were from other countries, so as to allow them to better adapt to our own reality and training rhythm ... I believe teachers who have not taught abroad will possibly not understand what I am talking about ... but I know and they (both of them Heads of the Pedagogical area at the capital city international airport in Angola) know how important it is to establish bonds that go beyond the classroom and the training schedule.










 

Getting together after eighteen years ...

In 1997 I got quite close to one of my Macanese female students, whom I actually owe part of my Mandarin writing training to, as we did write to each other in that Language over a period of years.

 

 

Distance kept us apart and despite the fact that whenever students from Macao came over to the Training Centre I used to get information on her and what she was doing then, we never had the chance of seeing each other again until this morning when she walked into the centre as part of  a comittee of Chinese Directors on a training visit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had known about it for a while and therefore decided to wear a Chinese gown she and her fellow colleagues had offered me then, so as to honour her presence and "revive" a sequence of moments that lasted about one month and which were so important for us at the time.

 

 

It was an emotional getting together, as we reunited and decided to see a lot more of each other whilst we are geographically closer.  

 

 

 

 

 

The latest book I have read ...

I must confess the moment I picked up David Grossman's book Lion's honey, the myth of Samson I wasn't expecting it to bring me so much information on the myth in terms of  its various analysis and a myriad of interpretation perspectives. 

 

It reminded me of the thorough analysis we sometimes had to carry out whilst at University whenever we had to scalp down any given poem, though I am in no way comparing what we used to do with the mastery of David Grossman's.

Ironically as I was watching the National Gallery's documentary film last week one of the paintings being explained to the public was Samson and Delilah by Peter Paul Rubens and as he is seen fallen asleep on her lap the intensity of what is to follow is almost inevitably brewing up in one's mind but more so after having read Grossman's psychological interpretation behind the act of trusting the woman he is said to have fallen in love with, who would ultimately lead to his loss of power.

The numerous visual interpretations of parts of the myth, such as his fight with the lion by Lucas Cranach, the elder or his pulling of the pillars of the temple of Dagon together have gained a much stronger insight as a result of my reading of Grossman's book, the same being true in regards to the actual representations of the act of having his hair cut anf thus his loss of strength.  

"(...) what he has discovered about himself , while battling the lion has frightened him: the hidden superhuman power that has burst out and revealed itself to him for the first time has, perhaps also shocked him and created a partition between Samson and his  new larger-than-life self that does not fully belong to the human race."

"(...) the bond with Delilah did arouse in Samson something totally new, and was not designed merely to satisfy his compulsive need to be betrayed, to experience intimacy that is violated by strangers (...) for the first time in his life, Samson fulfills his independent will by exercising his highest freedom available to him as human being - (...) namely, emotional freedom, the freedom to love. And if, on this part, this was true love, it may be surmised (perhaps only wishfully) that Samson allows Delilah to deceive him again and again because he is hoping against hope that he is mistaken."

"He, who from birth , indeed from the womb, was exiled in effect from any kind of home ... (... ) who never really belonged either to his own people or to the people into his midst his urges had propelled him. He, who slept with many women but had no child of his own; he, whose umbelical cord had been severed, as it were at both ends that "rests upon" - nachon in Hebrew - two pillars. But nachon also means "proper": at last - how ironic  - bayit nachon, a proper home."

This book is very interesting and really worth reading not only by readers who are into myths but also by those merely curious as to what they are and the implications therewith associated. David Grossman is a great writer who takes us "enthusiastically" along his incredible trip into the Classics.

"In Lion's Honey, David Grossman reaches beyond the calamitous events to conduct a sensitive examination of human motivation ... (...) and the author does it in a most elegant style." - The Times Literary Supplement.

" A feat even the Gods would marvel at ... a glittering pantheon of the most esteemed contemporary writers breathes bright golden light into the world's classic tales" - Vanity Fair

 

"Original and very clever." - The Times