Flashes

I am reading Fernando Pessoa 's The Book of Disquiet . It is edited from the 25,000 pages he wrote during the 1920s and 1930s, found in a trunk after his death in 1935.  Pessoa had many alter egos ; this book is credited to one of them, Bernard Soares , a book-keeper working in Lisbon , at Rua dos Douradores . For the first time in my life, I am urged to underline sentences in a book that is not a text book, to find them again and again. A hundred years later, they go under my skin, they express emotions I did not know I had. " Brief, dark shadow of a city tree, the light sound of water falling into a sad pool, the green of smooth grass – a public garden on the edge of dusk – in this moment you are the whole universe to me, because you entirely fill my every conscious feeling. I want nothing more from life than to feel it ebbing away into these unexpected evenings to the sound of other people’s children playing in gardens fenced in by the melancholy of the surrounding s...

 When I think of  the biography  of Franz Kafka  I only remember  How he rowed his boat  up the Vltava  Then put the oars up  Lay down on his back  At the bottom of the boat  And let the river take him  In his black suit  He looked like a  Dead man in his coffin  When his colleagues  on the bridge  Watched him float  Towards them  And past under them.

It has been 15 years since I posted these two entries here and I am surprised this account still exists. I was looking for a way to post impressions on books and this simple platform seems perfect for just words.

In Ireland, I went to a cafe, said "a cappuccino, please", and got seated. The waiter brought me a tea pot and a cup. I hesitated a bit, but decided to go for it. I had two cups of tea with milk and brown sugar, read Irish Independent with it, and left satisfied. This happened two other times. Some weeks ago in England, I ordered "a cappuccino, please". I was given a pot of tea. Now I know better than pronouncing "cappuccino" in the Italian way. If I really want a it, I have to say "a" it like in "cap". But it is too late. I have become a tea drinker. It is especially good with a scone, butter and jam.

I walk in the forest in Kent and hear a helicopter. In Ireland, where all the towns are by rivers like everywhere else, whenever you heard a helicopter, you knew somebody had jumped to the river. There were two young brothers who came from a pub in early hours and the other one said, I will kill myself, I will jump to the river. The other brother did not believe but went home. His brother jumped to the river and there was a helicopter above us next day; I lived next to the river. This is why I stopped reading local papers in Ireland.