among the gaffa trees 2

Spotted among the gaffa trees

exile in gaffa 2

exile in gaffa

no more, no more...

...and further even...

No more people 3

...further and further in...

No more people 2

I'll be making my retreat into the woods

deviation

This is absolutely amazing. Reminds me that hardest body to posess is your own. Should make a nice anatomy study once I'm back to drawing such things.

No more people

No more drawings of people for a few days.

Sometimes I feel we are simply too many. Craving for the same, of which there is too little, we step on each other's toes in our mad rush for salvation. In blind panic we claw at each other like a drowning man at his would-be saviour. Caught between fear and desire, we become murderous and petty, like so many rush-hour christmas shoppers, stabbing for possession of that last useless shiny trinket. We create abstract notions of scarcity by our greed. We create abstract notions of desire, by the projection of our emptiness. And the real scarcity, and the real desire, and the real emptiness, get masked under the light and thunder of pain and anger, and are put aside, and forgotten, but for that weight in the chest, that vacuum that hurts, the absence of something you cannot quite put your finger on...

And when it becomes too crowded, that simple gift - happiness - seems too childish, its voice too soft to sound important in face of the thunderous shoutings of pain and anger and turbulent feelings. And it gets silenced. Happiness, the seeking of it, was never a subject of public policy. It never launched a vessel, never started a war, never kept a love affair afloat. It just doesn't seem important enough. Need, greed, and fear, those make the world go 'round...in a downward spiral, so it seems...

And when it becomes too crowded, you all seem so many, I forget to love you. I forget you are all a bit of me. Even if I can still say it. And I would trade the whole blue globe for a bubble with room for two.

So no more drawings of people for a few days. Not until I love you all again...

Chiquita

Ok, she was young and frisky...but a bit of a dog...:)

ephemera

Braga. Last time I was here I came hunting for the sun with the moon. This time they tell me it has something to do with a shooting star.

Whatever the ephemeral alibi, it is the North of Portugal, so you have little choice but to eat 'till you burst and drink 'till you fall. I also got to read 'till I slept, quite cozy, with a fireplace at my feet and a young lady improbably called chiquita on my lap. She was a bit too young for me, but I wasn't complaining. Also, she didn't shave her legs, so I guessed she was either french or a leftie. Again, that was fine by me either way. Ok, ok, her picture will go up on the next post, you perverts :)

Will it?

The Dynamic of a Bush Scandal: How the Spying Story Will Unfold (and Fade)

I am too tired to comment upon this, but it should be read even if only for the sake of the violent discussion that ensued from the article itself. Maybe people are finally getting angry enough, at least around the fringe.

Memories from Skydiving: My first solo jump

Exiting the plane, no place to hold on to, no ground under my feet. Then the plane itself, last remnant of a perceived connection to the safe and solid world, lifts away from the field of vision. Nothing but emptyness remains, a freefall with no bearings. No hope but to just let go, and concede...

There are days when life feels just like this.

Mug Shot

Deep into Lisbon winter. Now, this is a true mug-shot! :)

wide eyed

Was he seeing the same?

Restless hands

Lovely, creatively shifting, moving, sliding, curling-up, restless hands.

on the bus

He kept sneering in a very particular fashion. I wonder what was on his mind.

The good, the bad, and the beautiful

As I was coming down Lisbon's Chiado, speakers were shouting tepid christmas music into the street. Some sort of plastic voice radio presenter explained how we should all be happy that the city hall decided to give us this oportunity to do our shopping to the sound of bottled ,predictable, hypnotic, boring christmas music. It reminded me of BusTV and made me sick.

But a little further down, I heard some very nice playing of drums. This girl with a very friendly smile was playing her drums while her friend asked passerby's for coins. They were also giving a couple of little puppies away.

It was all so nice and warm and cute, I just stopped there and made a drawing of them.

Some beautiful things manage to survive even the Christmas rush.

Sensory Overload

Today was a day of excessive stimuli. Too much of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Too much joy, too little, too brief, too much beauty, too much ugliness, all separated by too little time. I am far too tired to describe it all. So I'll just single out a random moment.

As I was going home, on the subway, I looked around. Now, lately, I've been finding that people vary, physically, mostly in rather discrete ways. Sometimes I despair of being able to get, not a likeness really, but a difference. Not today. As I looked around I was surrounded by so much beauty, so much ugliness, so much difference...

A man with such a strange cartoonish nose...so wide and flat on the top, so thin and round on the bottom; a woman, her face so long I couldn't believe it; an old man with a huge jaw; a fantastic bulging vein on the back of another man's hand; a girl with protruding jaw and pouting lips... It was all so much, all of a sudden, that I could not take a pick. I was too tired. Like a boy in a toy shop that is just too huge, I jusr gave up, relaxed, and took no notes at all. My brain was buzzing with a far too stratospheric high...

Triptych

This portrait turned into a triptych as I decided I could not lose the curve of right shoulder, that beautiful strap pressing down against the skin, or the shape of the right arm. I love the way her whole body leaned to the right at a sharp angle. Unfourtunately, the moleskine could not be opened down, for the right hand was holding the left one in a most delightful way, that would have lent a different grace and balance to the whole composition...some mistakes cannot be corrected...

Good Intentions (3)

Good Intentions (2)

Good Intentions (1)

In an attempt to concentrate on my maths I started carrying around a squared (what a crime!) moleskine in my pocket, instead of my usual japanese pocket album. The end result was a little more maths done...

...and a lot of drawings on squared paper....:(

Is there no hope for me?

Independence Day

Today, December the 1st, Portugal commemorates the national holiday consecrated to the restoration of independence. Notice that mostly we commemorate the national holiday (we love holidays) more than the restoration or the independence themselves.

But that's not all.

While Portugal commemorates the fact that it got rid of the Spanish...

...Spain commemorates the fact that it got rid of the Portuguese. :)

Some would perhaps venture that the fact that Spain has no holiday for it (though it actually got the better deal) is probably one of the reasons it is now much richer than Portugal...:)

Next month, on January the 1st, both countries commemorate the loss of their independence, with their peaceful anexation by the European Community in 1984.

It is sort of a christian thing, isn't it? Comemorating the death and ressurrection, only in this case we do it in reverse...