the performing body

On a mid-Saturday break, the review of the week.

- Swimming. I did swim 3 km. this week (proud of my little discipline achievement!) and, one day, had quite an anthropologically fascinanting encounter.

We were swimming in the pool, next to another lane where an old lady was also swimming calmly. Suddenly, what seemed like an american football team showed up. Some 5 or 6 guys, tall hyper-broad-shoulder, muscles, biceps, and just general "massiveness". Well, they were very aggreessive and definetly just waiting for us to get so annoyed that we would leave. We didn't, out of principle. But it was like swimming in the Atlantic with this massive waves drowning you when you tried to breath. Their oversized bodies were just too heavy and their swimming skills were far from perfect so it was like dropping a bomb in the water when they tried to swim.

I was very intrigued by their bodies. Some of them had a triangular shape so clear that it looked surreal. I wonder how many pills you have to take for the perfect geometry. It was very disturbing because, somehow, they were ideal bodies, ideal guys. What we are told is ideal. And I found them... plain. They seemed so perfect, only comparable to those houses in the magazines where no one lives, just decorated for the pictures. It seems no one was inhabiting those bodies either. Very disturbing. And highly unattractive. It was not sexy, which I know was supposed to be. It was just so scary, monster-like.

Well, that drove me into thinking that day about that night back at home when I watched the Rolling Stone's Rock'n Roll Circus on ARTE. I remembered Mick Jagger singing "Sympathy for the Devil", taking off his shirt. I did youtube it immediately. This lead to a "Mick Jagger" mania in the last few days. I cannot help but to feel there is something divine, extremely attractive and quite fascinating about his body. An inhabited, expressive, interesting piece of humanity. There it lies, the attractive body, the ideal body because it is so specific. It crawls, it jumps, it rests, it twists and bends and stands straight up. So unique, so determined. It doesn't have a myth, it has a voice.

PERFORMANCE 1968

Of course this Jagger fixation lead me to watch "Performance", his film debut. More than recommend it: preach it. It is a piece of art like only those circunstances could produce. It has some truly fantastic scenes. I feel like it has brought something new to my life, some awakening.

The bed scene, the bullet scene, the intro, the "videoclip", the mirrors and the mushrooms. The photograph is quite ironic, if you have seen the movie. I still think it is very beautiful, even though it does not come from the movie plot, probably just from a photo session on set.

I am awake. Not illuded. Just happy, free, surrounded by my own visions of greatness.

INTO THE WILD

Saw it yesterday. It stayed with me during the night. I holded him tight, never letting him go.
Somehow I had not felt like that since Catcher in the Rye. Like I wanted to be there, to put my arms around that boy and tell him it was going to be alright. It is a human impulse stronger than a screen.

And I feel more than ever that the world is full of martyrs, people who died so that we could learn. Who gave their lifes to the experience of knowledge. Those should be our Gods, our gurus. The dead souls of the extreme.


Because nature and freedom can trapp you so easily, the only performance that makes it true, all the way, is the one that goes as far as madness.

Important conclusions in the Universe

I need to go to class now. But there at two or three important things in the Universe right now.

1 - Food is THE supreme pleasure of reality. I had the most supremely delicious dinner yesterday, and, I am gald to say, I made it myself. Of course the expensive Portuguese cod fish, olive oil, organic potatoes and the Portuguese bread also helped. But, seriously, whoever prefers adrenaline, for instance, to a dinner is missing out on the amazing peaks of supreme flavour.

Because life is not only composed by tasks, but by tastes.

2- Epistemology Naturalized. I like Quine, I do. Gods and Science - the difference is one of degree not quality. Nevertheless, it is an important one.

3- I am quite tierd of studying French but hearing a great number of North Americans despise France. No, it is not Paradise. Bill Maher makes much of it, but with good reason. Anyhow, it is still a place I would not mind leaving in.

The fall

A blog should be a product of reflection.

But as I sit here, about to go to bed, I wonder, I feel and I think. Sometimes, these things are better served fresh.

I wonder. How much do we ever get to know of ourselves. In class my Prof made a great point. We have a very naive way of looking at what we want, we think we know it all.

I thought I did. But I am not sure.

In fact, I am appaled at how I am not sure at all! I feel that rational adults would repress doubt here, would stick to what they have said, to what they have thought. And I cannot be that dellusional.


I perceive clearly that I am playing with fire, as I sit in that dark big room, full of emotion and colour. Most of us are. It is a common human fascination. Literally as well.

All the magic in the world is in that gap in between people. People are God, are the Universe, my microcosmos of fantasy, power, kindness and madness. The space betweem us is like an abyss. I feel like falling, but I am sure of death of the part of me that decides to go into it.

And still I say yes, and I cannot stop. I commit myself. I know I cannot escape, and yet I would very much like to.

No one can. Humanity is constantly falling into the abyss. Like mermaids chanting on the bottom, like velvet, like all the flowers in the world, the space gathers around us, wraps us and presses us down.

Did I say too much? Am I trapped? Am I going to regret it?

Maybe that is the meaning of it all. To fall.

Oh, being a middle-aged youngster

I go into the kitchen to cook some dinner. An evening as usual.

Normally, I spend the 30 minutes it takes to prepare, boil, clean and so on on my own or with another fellow resident with whom I at most exchange some nice and kind words about academia and the current weather conditions.

That night I was up for a little entertainment while the tortellini floated around the pan. It was the girl that always said that she wascooking because her boyfriend would be coming over. And the boyfriend. I was intrigued to say the least. After all, she only cooks when he is coming. Or so it seems.

They were almost done cooking. Were going to start eating. I thought making out and stiring at the same time was never a very good idea. They disagreed. Again, I concentrated on my tortellini.

After those demonstrations of affection they sat to eat. There, it started being weird. I mean, kissing interrupts any proper talking. Understandable, I get it. But, sitting down, eating, I expected some conversation to develop. I was coming in and going out of the kitchen anyhow, and they never seemed to mind my presence for other types of contact. So, no major obstacle occured to me... They would talk.

Or not. "Pass the salt". "This is pretty good, did you add something new?". I was astonished. For 15 or 20 minutes the two creatures sat like one of those couples married for 50 years. Except, they would be around 20. No talking, no meaningful words, no discourse, no nothing! It was so surreal.

I wonder. Is that what "being in a relationship" mean? Or is a Canadian thing? What do I know... I just think it is absolutely fantastic how they sounded middle-aged, boring, tierd of life and each other.

After, she proposed he should do the dishes, since she cooked. He compromised: some dishes. He ended up drying them. Doing it all wrong. At least, she thought so. Honey! Be Careful, don't do that, this, that.... Again: why do these people sound like they were a 60 year old married couple?

And then people say that feeling alone next to a partner is a myth. That people liek that are just an exception. Who are we fooling? Obviously, if this is what these two are at at the age of 20... Somehow, I fear for the sanity of their middle-aged selves.

What happened? Is this what we turned into? I wonder if those two in the picture also talked about condiments exclusively.
And maybe yes... Oh, skepticism about relationships!

Rule #1 - S calling someone p "boyfriend" can occur if an only if S is able of having meaningful talks q with p at t(able)