Circles, Movement, Moment, The Olympics, The moon and The Marathon

A person rushes out at the end of the day and is still greeted with the most amazing blue canopy, so profound and deep in the centre, an intense almost turqoise hue where the sun just set and on the opposite side, as the light slowly drips away - and the spectrums remnant - final reddish edges delicately gives another intensity to the location - the backdrop where a fattened moon swells just above the horizon.., so mesmerizing with the marking of the grand-master upon its face, humming an intimate song as it meets you, delicately yet so very striking.

There's something about a fattened moon that fills the viewer's eyes, in such a way you can feel its touch, embracing you in the August warm breeze.

A person's soul even more open from having just tripped over the bubbling giggle of two toddlers in one of those ancient contraptions that resembles a car, that startles you with a sudden Beach Boys tune - Good Vibrations - (but with chipmunk voices in place of the original ones) bursting from it as you're paying a bill unaware of that tiny ''playground'' behind your back - caught off guard both you and the cashier -  both busting into sudden laughter from the contagion of the infants' ''alegria genial''.

I recalled as I gazed at the sky, heart still full of the babies' laughter from moments before, how yesterday evening the moon burst forth upon an astonishing sky. Unlike today that was completely cloudless, it seemed to foretell today's presentation. The heavens behind the fattened sphere was pure pink and a pair of small blue clouds, the only ones in sight, tagging along - at times draping portions of the large silver-like shining ball..

August has a special feel to it, as the days and nights are warm, the sea boasts sumptuous temperatures and colour, wave after wave.
At night in different spots the fragrances from the garden's lemon trees, flowering lemon verbena bush and other flowering plants, small patches of strawberries and grapes, herbs and other green beings seep into you, as they mix with the ocean breeze from down the road,  In the still of the night the cosmos reveals itself in cloudless transparency as it sets you into a different mode of time and space, venturing past shooting stars and other things that circle within layers of circles..

To live on the southernmost tips of what some consider an apparently older continent (Europe) gives one a special and profound special sense of ''The South''. You feel it deep inside you. It's as if the closer to the earth's centre belt the more you feel the ''South'' within, regardless it being more to the North or South of where you are (which seems ironic, doesn't it?)
 I suppose it has to do with, regardless being in one or the other hemisphere - the notion of ''down there'' is indifferent to the names we give such as ''South'' or ''North''.

It is with this in mind that I approach this article, meant for an event in the ''Southern'' Hemisphere. The fact of it being in the ''Western'' Hemisphere has a different bearing. One that perhaps has to do more with what many call a ''New'' continent (apparently ''new'') in relation to what above is called an ''apparently older continent''.  In that longitudinal hemisphere the notion of North and South still remains regardless of time passing.
West and East is more of a ''Time'' thing whereas South and North is spacial to us.
Time passes equally regardless being in the N or S hemispheres.
Our blue home spins like a top, there is no difference to whom is North or South, with what we perceive as the passing of time.

In navigation, nevertheless, we know that is is precisely the longitude that we speak of  when we mention ''minutes'' as we measure space and distance from anywhere (ironic as Space seems to give us the sense of North and South, not East or West that contrary to those immediately makes me (at least) think of Time.

North and South seems beyond Time, it is indifferent to Chronos. It is ''timeless''. It is apparently ''still'' - with a touch of an eternal feeling..
Perhaps for this reason one feels ''South'' or ''North'' as I mention before.
It is one thing to chase after or away from the sun that apparently goes round.

(who indeed truly notices, at least for the most part of the time, that is is we that are spinning. The sun has a different spin to it, unapparent to our short lived existences and view, as it too circles within its spinning galaxy that also travels.. (and here Space needs Time for any measure - at least to our cognition) -  There are so many things that seem ironic or poetic, fatalistic, or marvelous.

It's as if everything were a ''pescadinha de rabo na boca''. Infinity being two ''pescadinhas de rabo na boca'' facing each other and juxtaposed (one can extrapolate endlessly to so many things - positive & negative; opposing directions or movement; the blue and red blood vessels - for blood that comes or goes; Gravity & Movement


(movement through two types: 1. centripetal, centrifugal or electro-mangetic forces / or 2. gravity itself)
though one affects or can balance the other for instnce, one capable of creating curved motion as movement though in truth both can do this - one through such as that which is created by East-West movement upon a North-South Axis in terms of our planet - for instance, the other depending on the mass of and distance between things, both creating movement that pulls, one balancing the other and controlling that pull through centripetal or centrifugal movement, which in turn seems so key in making the earth itself seem as a big magnet with its 'magnetosphere', apparently caused by an inner centripital movement in its own core...
something so tied to that which can either attract or push away through magnetism but that becomes less relevant when the distance is greater, as opposed to gravity which apparently depends on two things - mass & distance between objects.
One of the things one does see in common to all is the circular nature of movement as cause or effect, whereas one of the types is more linear in nature - inward or outward - movement toward or away ||  In the realm of circular things and movements - both linearly effecting things and each other as circles are ''drawn'' and created in movement and form, as a vast sea of circular things intertwined by apparently invisible lines - forces that move one another and with one another linearly and in circles with measures of forces of apparent differing nature - where mass and distance gives birth to movement both circular and linear, as if everything could be simplified to a compass (of multitudinous capacities in Time and Space, where any point is pinned and with a string outer circumference is made - in a multitude of possible layers. planes, ''dimentionalities'' simultaneous or of apparent separate episode   through linear view   though connected   through circular forms within Time and Space and Motion, where things of mass and distance create or condition the movement of circle and line.  

Oh my goodness, where was I... as yes, the South.. The east-west movement must've made  a vector from some corialis effect (force?), due to all this centri - petal and fugal - movement (oh good grief!!)

where...?

aaaaaaaaaaaah, yes, the globe, the blue - dynamo - spinning marble that spins round other spinning things that.. (aw, not again...)

The globe, the South (the West), the movement... August.. ah yes, the Olympics.

That's it.
I'm back.. (I think)

Among some of the things that comes to mind is there being a ''Refugee Team''. This is a feat and one of great merit especially in a time when the world seems to be in extensive turmoil on a global level, with what seems to be an attempt to put a stranglehold on nations that recently founded that recent ''counterpoint'' (The New Development Bank)  to that nifty cute gang known to us as the IMF (namely the BRICs nations). 

World banks, international strife...? I may be wrong. What do I know anyway?

It's probably just coincidental the recent upheavals in Brazil, or troubles with nation leaders that have seemed to seek any of the BRICKs in anyway  (as I think of some of our European ''Eurozone'' layers), or nations and areas next to these founders of the NDB.

Oh well, let us set politics aside, let us concentrate on The Olympic Games (aw, come on, don't laugh.... I mean it. I really do)

This is one planet.
 (It is blue like our oceans and skies, oceans and cerulean firmament that is, and that are all interconnected)
We are one people.

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I suppose one of the things that strikes me the most (and so pleasing to see happen), concerning the Olympic Games, is that the use of symbols such as flags or even team ''shirts'' is not employed or viewed with the habitual ''anti'' this or that, but quite the contrary.  People celebrating and emotive in the best sense for others from their own or other nations, moreover the increased value in there being the maximal possible number of different lands partaking in the event - an event that doesn't define sports to one single kind of sport (so limiting and shallow to do so, as we know) makes it more striking.

I will contradict somewhat what I say above as I will dedicate this post to one of the things that most moves me in terms of the games (it always has) - The marathon - but this does by no means take away the brilliance or the significance of the other athletic feats in the other sports.

Along with the pentathlon, the discus throwing, boxing, wrestling, jumping, and equestrian competition, the foot face comes from the old games.

The marathon itself as we know was something else and outside the old games, but, as it's been brought back and made a part of the modern version, due to its nature, it seems to have crowned the whole event with a special significance.

It is the spirit of that significance, that although present in all types of sport, that something seems to be epitomized in the marathon run.

It touches me deeply.


So I leave here images of athletes, of that medium, that equally and profoundly move me.

Abebe Bequila 

(can't begin to say how the man moves me, although he is no longer with us) - twice Gold - in 60 and 64, along with his world titles, barefoot or with shoes always amazing as he'd finish the event with grace and unbelievable ease (crazy how he didn't even seem tired, so unbelievable and tremendous, so powerful, so elegant, and so very graceful - in so many ways) : photo credits - LINK

Terry Fox

(my goodness, what can I possibly say.., how can one define him. I'm still speachless

He still moves me to tears. I remeber too well his final run. Not only that      the aftermath is just so... I'm speachless) : photo credits - LINK

Carlos Lopes

Well, like with Terry Fox, it has nothing to do with having a soft spot for Portugal or Canada. His going beyond so many odds.., when age is aparently indifferent, and a nation's scarce population and capablility (or perhaps will) for funding things that are not ''football'' is astonishing.
He won the first gold medal ever for his nation. There have been more since then, and titles in different sports events (judo, canoeing, jumping, sprinting, et cetera..., (and of courtse, in long distance runs or marathons),   His olympic record stood for 20 years (untill 2008)

In a land that has pride in athletes (and rightfully so, I admit), among others: the most usually mentioned being Eusébio, Luis Figo and Cristiano Ronaldo, it was Carlos Lopes that gave the nation it's first ever ''Gold'' (not football - a marathon run).

 Gracious, with uncanny humbleness yet so poweful, soft spoken, inspirational..., so many reasons he'll always be an all-time champion.

(thankfully still gracing this earth, and hopefully so for many more years)

Photo credits - LINK 

and well, of course -  Rosa Mota (of course)

- obviously not because she is a woman, it is because she is definitely in this league   -   no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
She's absolutely amazing (by any standard)!


Like the great Mr. Bequila, among other things ending her runs with apparent ease, fresh as if she could run another one.
Goodness just look at her smile!!!

(yes, I am tempted to post achievments of the current games in things that I love to see besides the marathon, but, as they have not finished, and when the Olympics are not going on   the mind (my mind) tends to first settle on the marathon in the first moments when contemplating the games, something that moves me as previously said even beyond the games, and perhaps a reason I mention the Refugee team (with the significance of ''the marathon runner'' in mind) , so I leave it at this 

- the above example of the marathon runner for all creeds  nations or moments in time   for that which is the common denominator in all   in all the sports events and types   in all the lands that have their champions  that in turn are all our champions)

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Ok - I'll post some more, because I do so immensly enjoy other events within the Olympics -
(since this video doesn't seem to load, I'll leave another link, forthwith - with the same segment)

- I leave this video clip
because it pleases me :)
(it's cute) -  and I have a soft spot for sails..


:)






(like many of us I love water events: swimming and diving  -  synchronized or not, canoeing, or involving sails.., gymnastics, sprinting, distance or relay running; team efforts such as volleyball.. basketball.. polo.. et cetera, all the jumping events - the athletes on their own. or with horses,  the 'deca- penta - tria'- thlon events, fencing, et cetera)

..... So much for the modern day Olympics.



As for the Old version of The Games,  this year it being held in Rio de Janeiro makes it so easy to post things with the other components of the original Olympics in mind:
Music,
Theatre Arts,
and Oratory (ie. philosphers, professors, great minds of math and/or the sciences, among others)



- with the host country in mind I leave some

music,
some ''poetics'' and theatre arts,
and of course with respect to philosophers/professors.. an inspirational mind (ok - let us start with this).  I can't decide between the two, that share the same last name though unrelated, so I'll leave both, for those that may be interested.







Paulo Freire

regarding - Roberto Freire:
  LINK

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(hard to choose with Hermeto, as it is hard to choose authors and/or performers from this land.
It could be him playing with others - in water, in the amazon, or his beard or a kettle..
 I'll just leave him on his own with a piano)



(and something by Egberto Gismonti, dedicated by the author to the man above, his mentor)

(and of course - a sample by the great Chico Buaque himself)

(the sound quality in the above video-clip is poor, but.. my goodness)





(and a little more of the 'so many', from a land so rich in music)

(i know he has a large bofy of work as an author and/or performer, and Brazilian but, i love this whole concert so very much, His rendition of ''Tonada de luna llena'' - a capella or from his 'Fina Stampa'' recordings is just so...., and others such as this sample therefrom is so sumptuous.

I leave it because among other things, his lovely smiling face was just as it is here, once when I was hanging upon a contraption years ago, in front of so many in an unbelievable density of a crowd in Lisbon, as I in a flash stretched to my limit - hitting a ''b'' natural, my goodness there he was, right there straight in front almost touching me - at the tip of my instrument, amazing smile that warmed me up all inside. - a beautiful and unforgetable moment)











____________ a land with so much music (and so hard to define or exemplify musically)

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And though it's hard to choose in terms of theatre arts, among the talented women and men, I simply leave António Abujamra - magnificently reciting Fernando Pessoa's ''Tabacaria''


(for anyone who would like to read the poem -  written out in an English translation
- LINK )







Why Pessoa? Well, aside from being a World poet who also wrote in other idioms other than the Portuguese language, his work has a multidute of depths..... and........

- and as is known, he was himself a large number of authors and ««pessoas»» (so to speak)
 (pessoa also meaning, as a word in Portuguese, ««person»») though he was but one man.



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 Goodnight ♥





























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Note: regarding the last video-clip in this post
(as far as I know, it was originally posted to youtube - here.  In case you should wish no background soundtrack, since in truth it is unnecessary though I like the way the one above does it, without going overboard.., other than the one I have placed, I leave the mentioned link)