lust - let's raise our glasses

A reply to those dishonest journalists who twist phrases to make the Idea seem ridiculous;
to those women who only think what I have dared to say;
to those for whom Lust is still nothing but a sin;
to all those who in Lust can only see Vice, just as in Pride they see only vanity.

Lust, when viewed without moral preconceptions and as an essential part of life’s dynamism, is a force.

Lust is not, any more than pride, a mortal sin for the race that is strong. Lust, like pride, is a virtue that urges one on, a powerful source of energy.

Lust is the expression of a being projected beyond itself. It is the painful joy of wounded flesh, the joyous pain of a flowering. And whatever secrets unite these beings, it is a union of flesh. It is the sensory and sensual synthesis that leads to the greatest liberation of spirit. It is the communion of a particle of humanity with all the sensuality of the earth.

Lust is the quest of the flesh for the unknown, just as Celebration is the spirit’s quest for the unknown. Lust is the act of creating, it is Creation.

Flesh creates in the way that the spirit creates. In the eyes of the Universe their creation is equal. One is not superior to the other and creation of the spirit depends on that of the flesh.

We possess body and spirit. To curb one and develop the other shows weakness and is wrong. A strong man must realize his full carnal and spiritual potentiality. The satisfaction of their lust is the conquerors’ due. After a battle in which men have died, it is normal for the victors, proven in war, to turn to rape in the conquered land, so that life may be re-created.

When they have fought their battles, soldiers seek sensual pleasures, in which their constantly battling energies can be unwound and renewed. The modern hero, the hero in any field, experiences the same desire and the same pleasure. The artist, that great universal medium, has the same need. And the exaltation of the initiates of those religions still sufficiently new to contain a tempting element of the unknown, is no more than sensuality diverted spiritually towards a sacred female image.

Art and war are the great manifestations of sensuality; lust is their flower. A people exclusively spiritual or a people exclusively carnal would be condemned to the same decadence—sterility.

Lust excites energy and releases strength. Pitilessly it drove primitive man to victory, for the pride of bearing back a woman the spoils of the defeated. Today it drives the great men of business who run the banks, the press and international trade to increase their wealth by creating centers, harnessing energies and exalting the crowds, to worship and glorify with it the object of their lust. These men, tired but strong, find time for lust, the principal motive force of their action and of the reactions caused by their actions affecting multitudes and worlds.

Even among the new peoples where sensuality has not yet been released or acknowledged, and who are neither primitive brutes nor the sophisticated representatives of the old civilizations, woman is equally the great galvanizing principle to which all is offered. The secret cult that man has for her is only the unconscious drive of a lust as yet barely woken. Amongst these peoples as amongst the peoples of the north, but for different reasons, lust is almost exclusively concerned with procreation. But lust, under whatever aspects it shows itself, whether they are considered normal or abnormal, is always the supreme spur.

The animal life, the life of energy, the life of the spirit, sometimes demand a respite. And effort for effort’s sake calls inevitably for effort for pleasure’s sake. These efforts are not mutually harmful but complementary, and realize fully the total being.

For heroes, for those who create with the spirit, for dominators of all fields, lust is the magnificent exaltation of their strength. For every being it is a motive to surpass oneself with the simple aim of self-selection, of being noticed, chosen, picked out.

Christian morality alone, following on from pagan morality, was fatally drawn to consider lust as a weakness. Out of the healthy joy which is the flowering of the flesh in all its power it has made something shameful and to be hidden, a vice to be denied. It has covered it with hypocrisy, and this has made a sin of it.

We must stop despising Desire, this attraction at once delicate and brutal between two bodies, of whatever sex, two bodies that want each other, striving for unity. We must stop despising Desire, disguising it in the pitiful clothes of old and sterile sentimentality.

It is not lust that disunites, dissolves and annihilates. It is rather the mesmerizing complications of sentimentality, artificial jealousies, words that inebriate and deceive, the rhetoric of parting and eternal fidelities, literary nostalgia—all the histrionics of love.

We must get rid of all the ill-omened debris of romanticism, counting daisy petals, moonlight duets, heavy endearments, false hypocritical modesty. When beings are drawn together by a physical attraction, let them—instead of talking only of the fragility of their hearts—dare to express their desires, the inclinations of their bodies, and to anticipate the possibilities of joy and disappointment in their future carnal union.

Physical modesty, which varies according to time and place, has only the ephemeral value of a social virtue.

We must face up to lust in full conciousness. We must make of it what a sophisticated and intelligent being makes of himself and of his life; we must make lust into a work of art. To allege unwariness or bewilderment in order to explain an act of love is hypocrisy, weakness and stupidity.

We should desire a body consciously, like any other thing.

Love at first sight, passion or failure to think, must not prompt us to be constantly giving ourselves, nor to take beings, as we are usually inclined to do so due to our inability to see into the future. We must choose intelligently. Directed by our intuition and will, we should compare the feelings and desires of the two partners and avoid uniting and satisfying any that are unable to complement and exalt each other.

Equally conciously and with the same guiding will, the joys of this coupling should lead to the climax, should develop its full potential, and should permit to flower all the seeds sown by the merging of two bodies. Lust should be made into a work of art, formed like every work of art, both instinctively and consciously.

We must strip lust of all the sentimental veils that disfigure it. These veils were thrown over it out of mere cowardice, because smug sentimentality is so satisfying. Sentimentality is comfortable and therefore demeaning.

In one who is young and healthy, when lust clashes with sentimentality, lust is victorious. Sentiment is a creature of fashion, lust is eternal. Lust triumphs, because it is the joyous exaltation that drives one beyond oneself, the delight in posession and domination, the perpetual victory from which the perpetual battle is born anew, the headiest and surest intoxication of conquest. And as this certain conquest is temporary, it must be constantly won anew.

Lust is a force, in that it refines the spirit by bringing to white heat the excitement of the flesh. The spirit burns bright and clear from a healthy, strong flesh, purified in the embrace. Only the weak and sick sink into the mire and are diminished. And lust is a force in that it kills the weak and exalts the strong, aiding natural selection.

Lust is a force, finally, in that it never leads to the insipidity of the definite and the secure, doled out by soothing sentimentality. Lust is the eternal battle, never finally won. After the fleeting triumph, even during the ephemeral triumph itself, reawakening dissatisfaction spurs a human being, driven by an orgiastic will, to expand and surpass himself.

Lust is for the body what an ideal is for the spirit—the magnificent Chimaera, that one ever clutches at but never captures, and which the young and the avid, intoxicated with the vision, pursue without rest.

Lust is a force.


Valentine de Saint-Point, Futurist Manifesto of Lust

blue prelude

Love Streams, John Cassavetes, 1984

é que esta coisa da lucidez aleija

sou introvertida

as coisas que vejo
colam-se-me à alma
como chiclete
se me comovo, engulo
as próprias lágrimas
quando me rio,
o meu sangue borbulha, e
mesmo as palavras,
alimento-me delas
de resto, estou sempre esfomeado
se o mundo coubesse dentro de mim,
já teria morrido de indigestão
em contrapartida, extroverto tudo o que ingiro e,
por vezes, até sou notavelmente feliz


Bénédicte Houart, Vida: Variações II

das demasidas lágrimas engolidas, demasiadas ainda poucas

(d)o corpo que perdemos na noite

Aqui estou. Vespertina, vespertina.
Às quatro e meia e um minuto
a sentir-me tão distante
pequenina, pequenina.

Nem ponto já. Ou ambígua.


Helga Moreira, Tumulto


oh boy

não te iludas

© Nan Goldin

noites pesadas, estas

e eu sem chocolate em casa

lâminas e punhais

Não haverá futuro — e haverá
somente esta lâmina
de quartzo lacerando
a carne amarrotada. E haverá
somente este punhal
de cinza cravado
entre almofadas inúteis
e lençóis vazios.


Albano Martins

futuro - foi o que inventaram para estragar o presente

the inventory of goodbye

I have a pack of letters,
I have a pack of memories.
I could cut out the eyes of both.
I could wear them like a patchwork apron.
I could stick them in the washer, the drier,
and maybe some of the pain would float off like dirt?
Perhaps down the disposal I could grind up the loss.
Besides -- what a bargain -- no expensive phone calls.
No lengthy trips on planes in the fog.
No manicky laughter or blessing from an odd-lot priest.
That priest is probably still floating on a fog pillow.
Blessing us. Blessing us.

Am I to bless the lost you,
sitting here with my clumsy soul?
Propaganda time is over.
I sit here on the spike of truth.
No one to hate except the slim fish of memory
that slides in and out of my brain.
No one to hate except the acute feel of my nightgown
brushing my body like a light that has gone out.
It recalls the kiss we invented, tongues like poems,
meeting, returning, inviting, causing a fever of need.
Laughter, maps, cassettes, touch singing its path -
all to be broken and laid away in a tight strongbox.
The monotonous dead clog me up and there is only
black done in black that oozes from the strongbox.
I must disembowel it and then set the heart, the legs,
of two who were one upon a large woodpile
and ignite, as I was once ignited, and let it whirl
into flame, reaching the sky
making it dangerous with its red.


Anne Sexton

se eu fosse uma música

podia muito bem ser esta

é que ouves isto e pensas na outra que já dizia

when you grow up your heart dies

corações malditos #2

The ancient Greeks had an expression (quoted by Plutarch as a Parable of Pythagoras) that translates as "Eat not the heart." It meant not to consume oneself with troubles or worries, which could be almost as devastating as eating one's heart.

James Rogers Dictionary of Cliches


tábem deixa

corações malditos

«pena é não haver um manicómio para corações, que para cabeças há muitos.»


já dizia a florbela espanca

do concreto ao abstracto ao nulo

© Louise-Bourgeois

seven unpopular things to say about blood

1
Our mothers bled, and bleed,
and our enemies,
and our enemies’ mothers.

2
It rushes to the finest
nick, romances the blade.

3
It dreams
the primary dream of liquids:
to sleep, horizontally.

4
It is in the surgeon’s heart,
the executioner’s brain.

5
Vampires and journalists
are excited by it; poets
faint on sight.

6
I knew it better as a child,
kept scabs, like ladybirds, in jars.

7
Blood: now mine would be with yours
until the moon breaks orbit
and the nights run cold.


Pat Boran, Grisu nº1


tenham um domingo sangrento. no bom ou no mau sentido, como vos aprouver

herzensschatzi komm, sweetheart come

© Emma Hauck

em fevereiro de 1909, Emma Hauck foi, aos trinta anos, internada no hospital psiquiátrico da universidade de heidelberg, na alemanha, com esquizofrenia. (ufa) morre onze anos depois e é descoberta a colecção comovente de cartas, escritas obsessivamente pela mão da doce Emma - todas elas dirigidas ao perdido marido Mark. pouco se percebe mas repetem-se os «herzensschatzi komm» (sweetheart come) e «komm komm komm» (come, come, come).

olhem, não sei. lágrimas

cartas de amor quem as não tem

So My Lumps,

You’re off, by God! I can barely believe it since I am so unaccustomed to anybody leaving me. But reflectively I wonder why nobody did so before.

All I care about - honest to God - is that you are happy and I don’t much care who you’ll find happiness with. I mean as long as he’s a friendly bloke and treats you nice and kind.

If he doesn’t, I’ll come at him with a hammer and clinker. God’s eye may be on the sparrow, but my eye will always be on you. Never forget your strange virtues.

Never forget that underneath that veneer of raucous language is a remarkable and puritanical LADY.

I am a smashing bore and why you’ve stuck by me so long is an indication of your loyalty. I shall miss you with passion and wild regret. You know, of course, my angelic one, that everything I (we) have is yours, so you should be fairly comfortable.

Don’t, however, let your next inamorata use it, otherwise I might become a trifle testy. And if he takes my former wife and turns her into stress and strife, I’ll smash him bash him, laugh or crash him, slash him, trash him etc.

Christ, I am possessed by language. Mostly bad. (Sloshed, d’yer think?) So now, have a good time. You may rest assured that I will not have affairs with any other female. Anybody after you is going to be disinteresting.

I shall gloom a lot and stare morosely into unimaginable distances and act a bit - probably on the stage - to keep me in booze and butter, but chiefly and above all I shall write. Not about you, I hasten to add. I’ll leave it to you to announce the parting of the ways while I shall never say or write one word except this valedictory note to you.

Try and look after yourself. Much love. Don’t forget that you are probably the greatest actress in the world, you are the best there can be. I wish I could borrow a minute portion of your passion and commitment, but there you are - cold is cold as ice is ice.


escreveu o Richard Burton à Elizabeth Taylor

cartas de amor quem as não tem

My Dearest Gertrude,

You will be sorry, and surprised, and puzzled, to hear what a queer illness I have had ever since you went. I sent for the doctor, and said, "Give me some medicine. for I'm tired." He said, "Nonsense and stuff! You don't want medicine: go to bed!" I said, "No; it isn't the sort of tiredness that wants bed. I'm tired in the face."

He looked a little grave, and said, "Oh, it's your nose that's tired: a person often talks too much when he thinks he knows a great deal." I said, "No, it isn't the nose. Perhaps it's the hair."

Then he looked rather grave, and said, "Now I understand: you've been playing too many hairs on the pianoforte." "No, indeed I haven't!" I said, "and it isn't exactly the hair: it's more about the nose and chin."

Then he looked a good deal graver, and said, "Have you been walking much on your chin lately?" I said, "No." "Well!" he said, "it puzzles me very much. Do you think it's in the lips?" "Of course!" I said. "That's exactly what it is!"

Then he looked very grave indeed, and said, "I think you must have been giving too many kisses." "Well," I said, "I did give one kiss to a baby child, a little friend of mine." "Think again," he said; "are you sure it was only one?" I thought again, and said, "Perhaps it was eleven times." Then the doctor said, "You must not give her any more till your lips are quite rested again." "But what am I to do?" I said, "because you see, I owe her a hundred and eighty-two more."

Then he looked so grave that tears ran down his cheeks, and he said, "You may send them to her in a box." Then I remembered a little box that I once bought at Dover, and thought I would some day give it to some little girl or other. So I have packed them all in it very carefully. Tell me if they come safe or if any are lost on the way.


escreveu o Lewis Carroll à Gertrude Chataway

se eu fosse uma banda sonora

High Society, Charles Walters, 1956

o cão godard e o cão ray

Era uma vez um cão todo amarelo. Na rua, os cães com quem ele brincava faziam muita troça dele. Chamavam-lhe «o ovo estrelado», «o ovo mole», o «carro eléctrico», «o icterício» e outros mimos. Todos os dias, o cão chegava a casa a chorar. A mãe reparou na tamanha tristeza e perguntou-lhe pela razão dela. Quando, entre soluços, o filho a informou, a mãe encorajou-o. O que fazia falar os outros era a inveja, toda a gente prefere os louros, ele era o mais bonito de todos os cães das redondezas.
No dia seguinte, o cão amarelo voltou ufano. Aos habituais insultos retorquiu com a opinião da mãe. Foi o fim da macacada. Além de o achincalharem a ele, achincalharam-lhe a mãe. Devia ser bonita a gema de ovo, a margarina velha, a amarelona.
Desesperado, o animal nem sequer ousou voltar para casa, à noite. Sentou-se em cima de uma pedrinha, a chorar, a chorar muito. Até que passou um elefante que meteu conversa com ele e quis saber da razão das lágrimas. Quando o cão amarelo contou a sua desdita, o elefante perguntou se já lhe tinham falado do Cão Godard. Que não, respondeu o coitadinho. O Cão Godard - explicou o elefante - era um cão de gosto infalível, que pintava todos os cães do mundo com as cores mais belas. Morava muito longe, mas o elefante levá-lo-ia até ele. E o Cão Godard escolheria a mais bela das cores, fazendo regressar o cão amarelo mais lindo do que as coisas lindas. O cão aceitou logo o convite do elefante. Pulou para as costas dele e seguiram viagem.
Três dias e três noites percorreram montes e vales, até chegar a uma montanha muito alta e distante onde dezenas de cães formavam duas extensas filas, à direita e à esquerda de um trono, no topo de uma elevação, em que se sentava o Cão Godard. Os da fila do lado direito vinham a descer e eram, todos, belíssimos. Eram cães que o Cão Godard acabara de pintar, com cores diferentes mas igualmente admiráveis. Os da fila do lado esquerdo iam a subir e eram feiíssimos. Eram os cães que o Cão Godard se preparava para pintar.
O elefante pousou no solo o cão amarelo e este, cabisbaixo, ocupou o seu lugar na fila do lado esquerdo, aguardando a sua vez. Não aguardou muito tempo. Do alto do trono, o Cão Godard olhou-o e levantou-se de um salto. «Em verdade, em verdade vos digo» - bradou, atroando aos ares - «que nunca, até hoje, vi cão mais belo. Já pintei cães da cor da dança, já pintei cães da cor da música, já pintei cães da cor da poesia, já pintei cães da cor da pintura. Mas nunca consegui pintar um cão da cor do cinema. O cão amarelo, que ali vejo, é o cão da cor do cinema. Eu te baptizo: Cão Nicholas Ray».
O cão ficou muito espantado. Contou os enxovalhos que sofrera, disse que vinha ali para mudar de cor. Logo o Cão Godard gritou irado: «São cães neo-realistas os teus amigos. Não percebem nada de nada de nada. Eu te digo, ó cão, que tu és o mais belo dos cães. Mais belo do que o cão amarelo só o cão amarelo, só tu que agora baptizo como Cão Nicholas Ray». A estas palavras, todos os outros cães rebentaram numa ovação. Todos lhe queriam mexer, todos o queriam cheirar, todos o queriam lamber, todos o queriam beijar.
Mas o cão desconfiava ainda. Como é que os outros cães, os cães da terra dele, o iriam acreditar? O Cão Godard veio então até ele, e, com brandos movimentos, da direita para a esquerda e da esquerda para a direita, escreveu na barriga do cão: «O cão amarelo é o mais belo dos cães. Mais belo do que o cão amarelo só o cão amarelo. A tua beleza é a ausência da beleza. O cão amarelo, como o sol, obriga-nos a fechar os olhos. A beleza cega. Porque a beleza é o cão amarelo. E por isso o cão amarelo é o Cão Nicholas Ray. Porque o cinema é Nicholas Ray». E, havendo terminado, assinou: «Cão Godard».
Orgulhosíssimo, radiantíssimo, o cão amarelo agradeceu ao Cão Godard e, entre palmas e bravos, voltou a subir para as costas do elefante, que a custo continha as lágrimas.
Três dias e três noites durou também a viagem de regresso. De noite, chegaram a casa, onde o elefante e o cão se despediram. A mãe esperava-o em enorme ansiedade. O filho contou-lhe então o sucedido. «Vês» - disse a mãe - «vês como eu tinha razão? Agora já acreditas e em mim não acreditaste. Mas desculpo-te: que é uma mãe ao lado do Cão Godard?»
Ao outro dia, o cão amarelo acordou contentíssimo. Comeu à pressa o osso matinal e foi ter com os amigos. Receberam-no ainda pior, se possível: «Olha, o ovo estrelado, nós a julgar que já tinhas desaparecido. Vai-te embora carro eléctrico, vai-te embora cão tinhoso, bicho feioso». «Sou tinhoso? Sou feio?», respondeu seguríssimo o jovem cão, «então leiam aqui». E deitou-se de costas, de barriga para o ar. Os cães nem podiam acreditar no que liam. Todo o seu mundo vacilava. Afinal o cão amarelo era o mais belo dos cães.
Suplicaram-lhe então que os levasse até ao monte do Cão Godard, para que o Cão Godard os pintasse a todos da mesma cor ou, pelo menos, de cor tão parecida quanto possível. Mas o elefante recusou-se a refazer o percurso. «Então vocês foram maus e fizeram troça do cão amarelo e agora querem ser como ele? Não os levo, não. E, mesmo que os levasse, o Cão Godard não os pintava e, horrorizado com o vosso mau gosto, mandava afastá-los como malditos que são.»
Daí em diante, o cão amarelo chamado Cão Ray ou Cão Rei, passou a ser o ídolo de todos os cães da vizinhança. E viveu feliz o resto dos seus dias.


João Bénard da Costa, Os Filmes da Minha Vida

sabes que se os neo-realistas vissem isto riam-se muito, muitíssimo. mas dás-te ao trabalho de passar tudo, tudinho, mesmo que à mão, mãozinha, porque sem isto o teu blog não fazia sentido algum, algunzinho

(and now for something completely different)

darling
the crocodile species
has existed for over
300 million years
and you became extinct
last night.


Charles Bukowski

ufa. antes tarde do que nunca