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Enjoy a 360° panoramic view of the Dom Luís I bridge in my home town, Porto. Thousands of other panoramic photos from all over the world, tied together with Google Maps, can be found at the original site,  360cities.net.

Ponte Dom Luis in Portugal

“é tarde meu amor
estou longe de ti com o tempo, diluíste-te nas veias das marés, na saliva de meu corpo
[ sofrido
agora, tuas máquinas trituraram-me, cospem-me, interrompem o sono
habito longe, no coração vivo das areias, no cuspo límpido dos corais…
a solidão tem dias mais cruéis

tentei ser teu, amar-te e amar o falso ouro…quis ser grande e morrer contigo
enfeitar-me com as tuas luas brancas, pratear a voz em tuas águas de seda…cantar-te os
[ gestos com ternura
mas não

águas, águas inquinadas pulsando dentro do meu corpo, como um peixe ferido, louco
em mim a lama… e o visco inocente dos teus náufragos sem nome-de-rua, nem
[ estátua-de-jardim-público
aceito o desafio do teu desdém

na boca ficou-me um gosto a salmoura e destruição
apenas possuo o corpo magoado destas poucas palavras tristes que te cantam”

(Al Berto in O Medo)

This animated rendition of Maurice Ogden’s poem “The Hangman” (published in a previous post) was produced in 1964. Narration is by Herschel Bernardi, while the music was composed and conducted by Serge Hovey.

It is today the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. You can find a set of arresting photos of such abomination since the moment it was built up to the present here.

“Built with barbed wire and concrete in August of 1961 by the Communist East, The Berlin Wall, stretching for about 30 miles, was a Cold War symbol which separated East and West Berlin, preventing people from leaving East Germany. According to the “August 13 Association” which specialises in the history of the Berlin Wall, at least 938 people – 255 in Berlin alone – died, shot by East German border guards, attempting to flee to West Berlin or West Germany. It stood for 28 years as a division between the Soviets and the Allies. The wall was torn down after Communism collapsed in 1989. ”

Today, while reading Richard Sonnenfeldt’s obituary on The Economist, I came across a little story that goes to prove that even what we would call human monsters know good from bad, right from wrong. The Auschwitz concentration camp was, if you recall, the place where more than a million people are estimated to have been killed.

When he [Richard Sonnenfeldt] asked Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz, whether he was ever tempted to enrich himself from the inmates, Höss replied: “What kind of man do you think I am?”

In 1964, Joseph Brodsky was a 23-year-old, virtually unpublished poet living in Leningrad. The authorities considered him dangerous, despite the fact that his writing, using classical and metaphysical themes, was apolitical. Brodsky was arrested and charged with “having a worldview damaging to the state, decadence and modernism, failure to finish school, and social parasitism . . . except for the writing of awful poems.”

A short testimony from his trial::

Judge: And what is your profession in general?
Brodsky: Poet translator.
Judge: Who recognized you as a poet? Who enrolled you in the ranks of poets?
Brodsky: No one. And who enrolled me in the ranks of humanity?
Judge: Did you study this?
Brodsky: This?
Judge: To become a poet. You did not try to finish high school where they prepare, where they teach?
Brodsky: I didn’t think you could get this from school.
Judge: How then?
Brodsky: I think that it . . . comes from God.

“1.
Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.

The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.

And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.

And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead –
Till one cried: “Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?”

Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
“He who serves me best,” said he,
“Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree.”

And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another’s grief
At the Hangman’s hand was our relief
Read the rest of this entry »

“Men jag älskar dig, jag älskar
dig du är den vackraste av
alla om du tror det eller ej,
fastän jag puttar dig ibland så
älskar jag dig. Jag hatar dig.
Älskling, jag hatar dig. Jag
förstår inte att du är äcklig
och gör så, jag förstår inte
hur du kunde göra så mot
mig! Åh vad jag älskar dig.”

(Jörgen Gassilewski i Kärleksdikter)

A live at rehearsal version of Nine Inch Nails track Head Down, from The Slip album. This album was released free of charge in 2008, and you can still download it next to a high quality PDF with artwork and credits here.