Jose Gomes Ferreira's "blog"

A miserable November Sunday and I sit down to write my blog. I’m struck by a book by José Gomes Ferreira, a writer and poet from Porto (1900 - 1985). Generally his writing is a struggle for (world) justice. It’s a sort of dialectic both between realistic and unrealistic ideas and between his individualist tendencies and a deep empathy to other people’s suffering. I relate to him.

This book of his I’ve been reading (“Imitação dos dias”, 1977) looks remarkably like a blog with its subject headers and short entries. It’s a mix of musings and reflections for a large audience. He begins the book with a short subtitle: “Escrevam aqui a data que quiserem. Por exemplo: 9 de Janeiro de 2467 … Sonho viver até lá”. Write here the date that you want. For example: 9th January 2467 … I dream of living until then. It goes like this (suggestions/corrections to my translations welcome):

Domingo opaco. Dreary Sunday. A chuva tamborila com dedos de violência branda no quadrado cinzento da janela…The rain taps with fingers of soft violence on the grey windowframe.

E, de súbito, acode-me este desejo (que, na realidade, trazia há anos na cabeça): inventar um Diário à vista do público. Falso, mentiroso, impostor – verdadeiro, em suma. And, suddenly, I get an urge (that, in reality, has been in my head for years): to invent a Diary open to the public. False, lying, deceiving – in sum, the truth.

Um livro sabiamente doseado de sobra e luz, com serpents e andorinhas, confissões abertas (mas prudentes), escândalos (afinal comedidos), aqui o inevitável fio de fonte lírica, mais adiante duas ou três brutalidades de rasgar cues. A book wisely dosed with shade and light, with snakes and swallows, open (but cautious) confessions, scandals (comedies after all) … Sem falar nas mentirolas habituais, dispostas com engenho de grosseria subtil, para que me engrandeçam perante a posteriadade (que nunca me lerá). Without talking in those usual white lies, handed out with the ingeniousness of subtle impoliteness so that I will be known for ever (but never read).

"Tempo de incerteza" ou "falam, falam, falam ..."

I've just started reading "Tempo de Incerteza" (Time of Uncertainty) by António Barreto where he traces Portugal's changing political history, culture and values over the last four decades. He begins by saying:
"Não há definição que resuma um país. Nem estatística que valha a verdade de um povo. Pior ainda quando se tenta, em poucas páginas, traçar um breve retrato do percurso agitado de uma sociedade. Sobretudo se se trata de um período de muito especial ritmo de mudança e de transformações radicais." (p.21) There is no definition that can sum up a country. Nor statistics that validate the truth of a society. Especially if you are talking about a period with a very special rhythm of change and radical transformations."

However, this anedota a friend sent my son seemed to be a pretty good attempt! I won't tranlsate it becuase you won't see the humour unless you understand Portuguese!

Assunto: Falam, falam, falam ...

O que aconteceu foi que eu estava em Belém na inauguração da maior arvore de Natal da Europa, sim repito da Europa, porque nós quando fazemos as coisas é em grande, e a banca é do povo e o Millennium é do povo e o meu patrão jardim Gonçalves tb é do povo e a câmara municipal etecetera e tal, e virei-me para um turista que lá estava e disse-lhe:

- Lá na tua terra não tens disto pois não? A maior da Europa, a MAIOR!

E o gajo vem com uma conversa do género: Não sei quê, no meu país preferimos gastar dinheiro noutras coisas, por exemplo a evitar que rebentem condutas de água, que levam ao abatimento do solo, e dessa forma prejudiquem milhares de pessoas...mais não sei que mais e o camandro!

E eu, que até sou um gajo que é pá, tenho uma facilidade na exposição de argumentos, não me fiquei e disse-lhe logo:

- A maior da Europa! Toma! Embrulha!

E o gajo começa a falar que não sei quê, lá no país dele quando começa a chover as zonas ribeirinhas não ficam inundadas, e que talvez fosse melhor que, em vez da arvore, o dinheiro fosse canalizado para evitar essas situações.

Eu comecei a enervar-me e disse-lhe logo:

- Mau, tu queres ver que nos temos que chatear! Eu estou aqui a expor argumentos que é pá sim senhor, e tu vens com essa conversa de não sei quê. Eu nem quero começar a falar na feijoada em cima da ponte, nem no desfile de "pais natais", porque senão nem sabias onde te meteres pá.

O gajo começa a falar de uma coisa qualquer, tipo túneis que são construídos e ficam a meio, e não sei que mais, e eu virei logo costas. Porque quando eu vejo estes gajos que não conseguem aceitar a superioridade de um país sobre o outro, e ainda falam, falam, falam, e não dizem nada de jeito, eu fico chateado, claro que fico chateado!!

News from everywhere

I haven't written my blog for a few days now and I wonder why. With this sensation of moving in and out of different worlds I'm constantly negotiating who I am and where I'm going!! Then I lose sight of what I'm trying to do in this blog or what I want to talk about here (as opposed to in other places).

So I remind myself that here I'm exploring living in two languages and all that represents. But what I'm finding is that a lot of what it represents is related to my past (not necessarily in two languages). That brought me to think of a good friend I worked with on non-mainstream education projects in England almost twenty years ago. His career path was school head, but he opted to "por as mãos na massa" working in grassroots projects in Latin America - among other things. Through his example of speaking many languages I was alerted then to the political and social importance of speaking different languages, even though I'm not a natural multi-lingual person. Just someone who tries.

Anyway, this is the online newpaper my old-time friend (and once mentor) continues to write monthly, used by teachers in Britain and beyond: News From Everywhere. And as I've recently been involved in a project with teachers working on "inclusion", mostly in Portugal but also UK and Romenia, I thought they might be interested in subscribing to it.

"News from Everywhere is published every week during school and college term-times.
It is intended for people who are interested in digging out the real issues behind the news.
It is presented in such a way as to challenge some of the assumptions behind the mainstream media.
It presents facts and asks questions.

It is short and avoids the need to wade through oceans of text.
Please get in touch with me at the email address below with any comments you may have."

Sorry world

What a great site - funny, clever and serious :
http://www.sorryeverybody.com/

Some more photos:
http://www.sorryeverybody.com/gallery/1/

and FAQs:
http://www.sorryeverybody.com/faq/

Thanks!

Immigrants?

I'm clapping here for the way the Diário de Noticias is covering the critical situation in Holland at the moment. In fact, they started their analysis after the film release and before Theo Van Gogh was murdered.

However, I AM uneasy about the headline and what it implies: "Holandeses e imigrantes entre medo e intolerância" or "The Dutch and immigrants between fear and intolerance". Are "the immigrants" not also "the Dutch"? There are Islamic extremists (and also plain thugs and bullies who could be Islamist, Catholic, Calvanist or Jewish ....) living in Holland who don't buy into a society that holds liberal views on things like free speech, abortion, gay marriage, legal prostitution soft drug consumption. But it is a BIG mistake to be distinguishing people from Holland as either "Dutch" or "immigrants".

Women (not) in the news

I read the BBC news about the "fearsome power of marines in in Falluja" and hear how "[The marines] wait until they see a guy with a gun but when they see that, they open up with everything they've got" and how "The bullets that they fire are high velocity. The buildings are of poor construction here - the bullets travel through the walls." I just wonder what could possibly be the constructive result of all this.

I watch the TV news and see images Arafat's coffin swimming through the crowds of people mourning his death and share the observation of Miguel Vale de Almeida in his blog post "Helicóptero, caixão, homens aos tiros" that these thousands and thousands of people are all men and that there seemed to be a lot of gunfire involved.

I turn to the online Al Jazeerah news publication to find consolation in Muslim women in the news. And I search out some books about women in Islam,

I worry about the tragic symbolism of unfolding events in Holland, sparked by the brutal murder of Theo van Gogh for his controversial film that portrayed violence agains women in Islamic societies. Holland is a a country that has represented and continues to represent liberal democracy and tolerance. But talking to a friend who lives on the other side of the park where van Gogh was murdered, he talks of feelings like "losing our innocence" and "attacked in our identity".

Two months ago I wrote in my blog about Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a popular politician in the Netherlands of Somali origin. She renounced her religion and even switched from the Dutch Social Democratic Party to the centre-right precisely because she thought that problems related to women, Islam and Muslim society in general were going unspoken in the liberal left in Dutch politics.

Men, women, extremism, liberalism, winning, losing, attacking, suffering...I'm searching for what it is that we have to learn from all this?

Different domains for different languages

As I move in and out of different languages I'm struck by how it just isn't right to translate. I have different domains in my head to talk about different things. My internal dilaogues with different people take place in different languages. So I think different things to different people.

This made me think today of Fernando Pessoa. He was someone who explored different domains to the extreme. He had a series of heteronyms - or rather, he was a series of different authors/poets, each of whom had their own character, likes and dislikes and styles of writing. Each of his personalities had their own "language" (linguagem) and some had different languages (línguas) - English and Portuguese. In a book he wrote about "A Língua Portuguesa" (Assírio & Alvim, 1997) he wrote: "Usando do inglês como língua científica e geral, usaremos do português como língua literária e particular. Teremos, no império como na cultural, uma vida doméstica e uma vida pública. Para o que queremos aprender leremos inglês; para o que queremos sentir, português. Para o que queremos ensinar, falaremos inglês; português para o que queremos dizer." (p.151)

But I want to explore the idea of different domains (and therefore different languages) being related to different internal dialogues (to different audiences) - not necessarily to related to fixed domains like cultural domains.

Sarah Hussein Obama

Sarah Hussein Obama

Sarah Hussein Obama, from Nyanza Province in Kenya, is the grandmother of Barack Obama who looks like has won a seat in the US Senate for the Democrats in Illinois.

Barack Obama will be the 5th African-American Senator in US history and I've seen him tipped as a a likely candidate for the first Black President of the US. Not only am I interested in the guy because of his roots in Kenya (even though he was born and lived most of his life in Hawaii and then Indonesia) but he was also someone who loudly opposed America's invasion in Iraq at an early stage. He is a civil rights lawyer by profession and has an active history in development issues. I must hang on to some sign of hope in what looks to me like a future historic disaster with the re-election of Bush.

His name, Barack, means blessing in Swahili (which I think is, in fact, spelt "baraka") and, who knows, maybe we are seeing a potential world leader with a vision more people in the world will be able to identify with. I wonder what other languages he speaks.

Half full or half empty?

It looks like I'm not alone in feeling depressed as Autumn comes in on us. "O frio outonal trouxe de volta o pessimismo aos portugueses" according to the Diário de Notícias. Half the people in a survey by Marktest think that this time in a year that the economic situation of the country and the domestic economy will be worse. Mind you 22% think it will be equal or better.

I also learned from this article that one of the main resaons for depression is that Durão Barroso left us as Prime Minister to become President of the European Union. Maybe that's why we don't hear more about the exciting events of the European Constitution and European Commission in the Portuguese press which I have to follow more in the BBC news.