Alô, Alô, Marciano

Elis Regina

 

Alô, alô, marciano
Aqui quem fala é da Terra
Pra variar estamos em guerra
Você não imagina a loucura
O ser humano tá na maior fissura porque
Tá cada vez mais down o high society

Down, down, down
O high society

Alô, alô, marciano
A crise tá virando zona
Cada um por si todo mundo na lona
E lá se foi a mordomia
Tem muito rei aí pedindo alforria porque
Tá cada vez mais down o high society

Down, down, down
O high society

Alô, alô, marciano
A coisa tá ficando ruça!
Muita patrulha, muita bagunça
O muro começou a pichar
Tem sempre um ayatollah pra atolar Alá
Tá cada vez mais down o high society

Down, down, down
O high society

Alô, alô, marciano
Aqui quem fala é da Terra
Pra variar estamos em guerra
Você não imagina a loucura
O ser humano tá na maior fissura porque
Tá cada vez mais down o high society

Down, down, down
O high society.

Crisis and difficult times

At the center of our moral life and our moral imagination are the great models of resistance: the great stories of those who have said No.

Susan Sontag, 2003

Emily

XII

To hear an oriole sing
May be a common thing,
Or only a divine.

It is not of the bird
Who sings the same, unheard,
As unto crowd.

(...)

"The tune is in the tree,"
The sceptic showeth me;
"No, sir! In thee!"

LVIII

The bee is not afraid of me,
I know the butterfly;
The pretty people in the woods
Receive me cordially.

The brooks laugh louder when I come,
The breezes madder play.
Wherefore, mine eyes, thy silver mists?
Wherefore, O summer's day?

XCVII

To make a prairie it takes a clover
and one bee, -
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson in late 1846 or early 1847

Annemarie Schwarzenbach

Next November it will be 70 years that Annemarie Schwarzenbach died. This magnetic restless adventurer who seduced countless men and women during the turbulent years between WWI and WWII, survived a severe addiction to morphine (among other drugs), malaria, intrepid trips to places like Congo, Chad, Syria, Persia (which hadn't become Iran yet) or Afghanistan (with Ella Maillart, two women in the 1930s driving alone from Europe to Afghanistan) only to die from a bike fall in Switzerland at the age of 34.

Her work would only get the attention it deserved almost 50 years after her death. Six months before she died she wrote a letter from Lisbon to Carson McCullers:

"Je crois toujours que les forces spirituelles, la relation sincère + véritable entre des êtres humains qui s'aiment sont plus fortes que les obstacles matériels du monde extérieur, de même que la relation sincère + véritable avec n'importe quel ami, n'importe quel objet extérieur, une pierre, un arbre, est plus forte que la séparation artificielle que nous impose l'unité brisée. Je me sens très patiente quant aux événements à venir". (quoted by Dominique Laure Miermont in Annemarie Schwarzenbach ou le mal de l'Europe)



Annemarie Schwarzenbach by Marianne Breslauer