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Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Cate Blanchet…Katherine Hepburn…
Joe Mantegna…Dean Martin…
Harry Connick Jr….Frank Sinatra…
It just happens, doesn’t it, that once in a long while, the personalities of the past, that were so strong way back when, have to find a way to reappear, their auras were so vibrant that mere death couldn’t do them asunder…
This is a wee tale of one such reincarnation and channelling, as I see it, one that has been haunting me of late…in my mind, by way of a certain song, bringing back a time and a place, filled with innocence and joy but also such deep sorrow, not only for me but for many of us, who, when we had him, never truly appreciated him…until he was gone…just the way we humans are, I guess…we just never “get it” until it’s too late…
Yes, this reincarnation/channelling isn’t like the others I’ve mentioned. There is no visual familiarity and quite frankly, I'm not sure anyone on the face of this Earth could be as warm, welcoming and naively wild as Dennis Wilson…but for a time, when they needed help, John filled the emotional and musical shoes of Dennis for The Beach Boys, on stage, and I’m fairly certain, off stage as well.
John, like Dennis, has had marital and celeb problems, who doesn’t in Hollywood when you’re naturally attractive, warm-hearted and gifted. Many have poo-pooed Stamos for his stint on the TV series “Full House” but hey, I defy you to show me any celeb who hasn’t started off with less than stellar credentials…
Sadly though, for Stamos, it was rather a downhill slide after “Full House” but happily, his love and talent for music gave him the celeb boost that he needed and it basically came with a once in a lifetime chance to sit on the stool Dennis Wilson would have sat on, behind a drum set Dennis would have preferred to use as a shield more than an instrument, and for a time, as The Beach Boys toured in the late 80s/early 90s, John allowed Dennis to be reborn in him, for his band mates, for Dennis’ surviving brothers and for Dennis’ still-loyal fans…one last glimpse at what could have been…if only.
I myself, was personally apart of this experience, on one fine summer’s day in Calgary, Alberta Canada, when The Beach Boys were scheduled to play an outdoor sports venue we call Canada Olympic Park.
It was the summer of ‘91, only two and a half years after the Calgary ‘88 Olympics, and I was NOT going to miss this concert, no how.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I, of course, had seen The Beach Boys play in California, way back in the 70s, but at that time, I was too young to appreciate much more than the cool 3D experience of singing Little Surfer Girl while being one at Surf City, Long Beach or La Jolla. It was about summer fun back then, like the Wilson Boys said, not about watching history slowly ebb away.
The Summer of Love, technically 1967, still strongly held it’s grasp on southern California well into the 70s, but after the Monterey Pop Festival, The Manson murders, Woodstock, and the death knell at Altamont, somehow that feeling of the care-free easy-going California life-style was dying in everyone’s minds…no one could resuscitate that Summer of Love, just like no one could resuscitate Dennis after he drowned at his former sloop mooring site, three days after Christmas ‘83, on that fateful winter’s day at Marina del Rey.
Some things, no matter how good they are, no matter how hard one tries to hang on to them, just, by Providence, usually ebb away. It’s just how it is.
Of course, after Dennis’ death, The Beach Boys kept playing and touring but there had been such problems with Brian well before, and then with the loss of Dennis, well, I wasn’t a fly on the synthesizer stand on stage but I think if I had been, I would have sensed The Beach Boys having a hard time of it, emotionally, spiritually, performing that fun-loving music when so much less-than-fun-loving experiences had befallen the group…
Rock band producer, Terry Melcher, helped The Beach Boys get back on top with their first Top Ten single in years, “Kokomo”, and that injected life back into the band. Yet, in my humble opinion, they had always had trouble filling Dennis’ drum-playing shoes, yes, for his talent, but more for his spirit, the only Beach Boy, after all, who could say he actually surfed.
John Stamos fit the bill, “Kokomo” was the excuse and The Beach Boys were off and running once again and on top of the music mountain that had so eluded them for many years…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My boyfriend at the time proposed to me at that concert. I said yes. We lived a happy life for fifteen years and he too, like all good people, died young, far too young…but that summer never left me…probably never will.
At one point, right in the middle of a song, Brian just left the keyboard and walked off stage, his handlers gently guiding him back on again. The other boys looked tired, strained, probably worried for Big Brian…they all did a terrific job and I’m sure the young kids in the crowd saw nothing amiss…but I did…I saw the ebbing away of what was left, save for the spirit of Dennis Wilson alive and well 
That “Kokomo” Tour was The Beach Boys swan song, I guess…you never know when you’re witnessing the fading of something monumental…not the dying of, necessarily, but the fading of…like General MacArthur’s famous farewell speech to the U.S. Congress in 1951, where he uttered those prophetic words from a then famous barracks song “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.”
From old generals to famous rock stars, to all of us in between, who have lived more the fading of people and places than the dying of same, not better words could have been spoken about The Beach Boys or Dennis Wilson, or for that matter, the good aspects still in our hearts from the 60s and that Summer of Love.
The reincarnation and channelling continues…
Monday, November 29, 2010
HARRY PORTER...BOX OFFICE
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Harry Potter's spell on the box office still lingers, as The Deathly Hallows, Part 1 earned $50.3 million this weekend to bring its two-week total to $220.4 million, according to studio estimates.
But Tangled, Disney's animated update of the Rapunzel fairy tale, was second by a hair, with $49.1 million for the weekend and $69 million since opening Wednesday.
Despite big business for the top two movies, receipts fell short of the Thanksgiving record set last year, when The Twilight Saga: New Moon and The Blind Side were released.
TOP 10 CHART:
Megamind, Paramount's animated superhero adventure, took third place with $12.9 million in its fourth week in release. The film, starring Will Ferrell, has earned $130.5 million so far.
Burlesque, the glitzy musical starring Cher as a club owner and Christina Aguilera as the small-town girl with the big voice and bigger dreams, opened in fourth place with $11.8 million for the weekend and a five-day total of $17.2 million.
"It's clearly a crowd-pleaser," says Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution for Sony, which released Burlesque. "Our numbers went up as the weekend went on." Bruer is pleased with diversity of the film's audience and noted that exit surveys indicate that Burlesque "is truly a movie that people want to see over and over again."
Unstoppable, the runaway-train thriller starring Denzel Washington and Chris Pine, barely slowed down, earning $11.75 million in its third week, good enough for fifth place. Twentieth Century Fox, which released Unstoppable, also crashed the kiddie party with the debut of Love and Other Drugs. The adult drama starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway, opened at No. 6, making $9.9 million for the weekend and $14 million over five days, in line with expectations.
"This is a marathon, not a sprint, and we hope audiences will continue to discover the film," says Chris Aronson, Fox's senior vice president of domestic distribution.
The other newcomer of the weekend, Faster, starring Dwayne Johnson as a man hellbent on revenge, made its debut in seventh with $8.6 million.
BREAK in to PieceS
Dakota landing in a new frontier
Dakota landing in a new frontier
Astonished to see a simple girl
Pony tail, no lipstick, no mascara
Walking hold her mom's arm
Her cheeks blush redden
When extend my hand
She seated close to mine
When drive them home
Weekend hang out till late
Rocking in friends anniversaries
Scent pure aroma fill my lung
Sleep anxiety dreaming
Dance flying without a feet
A hummer hit her heart to pieces
When I whispered good bye
Tears shed flooding my shirt
Cupped the cheeks to stop her sobs
Poor girls, black list father
Kill a new blossom passion
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Invasão das favelas no Rio: Quem é o inimigo. O papel dos aparatos de repressão
0 comments Posted by barongan at 8:44 AMOs últimos acontecimentos da luta de classes recolocaram em debate qual o verdadeiro papel das policias e dos aparatos de repressão dentro do Estado burguês mesmo quando este se apresenta na forma de um “Estado Democrático de Direito”.
Engels nos ensinou que o Estado existe por que existem as classes sociais e, como sua consequência, a luta de classes. Então, para que esses antagonismos de classe não destruam o organismo social ergue-se um poder que se coloca, aparentemente, acima da sociedade, para atenuar e manter os conflitos de classe nos limites da “ordem”.
O Estado é um poder para a dominação da classe economicamente mais forte, um instrumento de opressão de uma classe por outra, criador de uma ordem legalizadora e consolidadora da opressão [1]. Um instrumento que permite a classe dominante efetivamente dominar, mantendo submetidas as classes exploradas.
Sua principal característica é a existência de uma força pública militar em contraposição a população organizada espontaneamente enquanto poder armado. Essa força militar é composta por destacamentos de homens armados: exército permanente e polícia, tendo à sua disposição prisões, tribunais e institutos penais de coerção.
Por isso ele e Marx saudaram o primeiro decreto da Comuna de Paris que suprimiu o exército permanente e o substituiu pelo povo armado. A polícia perdeu suas atribuições político-burguesas e transformou-se em um instrumento da Comuna, sendo o mandato de seus membros revogáveis a qualquer tempo. Juizes, procuradores e demais funcionários judiciários passavam a ser eleitos, estando seus mandatos sujeitos à revogação a qualquer tempo. Nesse quadro de absoluta elegibilidade e revogabilidade a qualquer momento de todos os funcionários communards, sem qualquer exceção, todos os cargos do serviço público haviam de ser prestados na base dos salários dos operários.
Por isso, Lenin chegou a afirmar: “Apenas o comunismo torna o Estado absolutamente desnecessário, porque não existe ninguém para ser suprimido, ‘ninguém’ no sentido de classe. (...) Não somos utopistas e não negamos minimamente a possibilidade da inevitabilidade de excessos da parte de pessoas individuais ou a necessidade de deter tais excessos. Em primeiro lugar, contudo, não se necessita de nenhuma máquina especial, de nenhum aparato especial de supressão. Isso será feito pelo próprio povo armado, tão simplesmente e tão prontamente como qualquer massa de povo civilizado, até mesmo na sociedade moderna, interfere para deter uma pancadaria ou impedir que uma mulher seja atacada. E, em segundo lugar, sabemos que a causa social fundamental dos excessos, que consistem na violação das regras do intercurso social, é a exploração do povo, suas necessidades e sua pobreza. Com a remoção da principal causa, os excessos começaram, inevitavelmente, a ‘perecer’. Não sabemos quão rapidamente e em que sucessão, porém, sabemos que perecerão. Com o seu perecimento, o Estado também perecerá” [2].
Como se ve então nossos mestres trabalhavam claramente com o conceito que o aparato de repressão policial existe para reprimir e agir de maneira coercitiva contra o povo pobre. E no caso do Brasil o povo pobre negro que vive nas favelas e nos bairros operários.
O combate a criminalidade é somente um subproduto desta tarefa principal ou até mesmo um disfarce para a implementação de sua tarefa fundamental.
Não se trata somente de policiais bons ou maus, mas sim de um Estado que é o maior impulsionador da violência e da criminalidade.
São as próprias instituições do Estado, corruptas e decadentes que promovem um circulo vicioso de repressão e crime.
Por isso violencia, prisão e mortes nas favelas do Rio de Janeiro, brutalidade na ação policial em ocupações, como a do Pinheirinho, grosserias e agressões contra jovens, negros e desempregados. Criminalização de trabalhadores e dirigentes sindicais quando realizam suas mobilizações. Enquando do outro lado sorrisos nas bocas de criminosos como Salvador Cacciola, e rapida passagens pelas grades de Pitta, Naji Nahas, Daniel Dantas.
Sem duvida a policia e os tribunais em nosso pais tem classe. A classe burguesa, e a clara determinação de repressão do povo pobre.
Com Lula, aumentou a criminalização
Atualmente, no Brasil, nos vendem a imagem que vivemos em um Estado Democrático, cumpridor das leis, com uma polícia e um judiciário neutro, e que agora, com o governo Lula, os trabalhadores tem mais espaço para conquistar suas reivindicações. Mas a vida e a realidade não são bem assim.
Apesar da aparência democrática há um aumento da criminalização dos movimentos sociais e cada vez mais os trabalhadores estão sendo impedidos de utilizar suas formas de luta.
Por exemplo, o MST sofreu por parte do Ministério Público do Rio Grande do Sul e Federal ações judiciais que visa colocá-los fora da lei e criminalizar as ocupações de terra como sendo atos de terrorismo.
Segundo os promotores, o MST é uma organização paramilitar, treinado pelas FARCs e que ameaça a segurança nacional. Por isso o Conselho do MP gaúcho decidiu iniciar uma série de medidas para “dissolução do MST e declaração de sua ilegalidade”. Proibiu qualquer deslocamento de sem-terra, como marchas ou caminhadas e passou a investigar acampamentos e lideranças por “práticas criminosas” e uso de verbas públicas. Pressionado, o Ministério Público recuou, mas acusou oito trabalhadores rurais em Carazinho de crimes contra a Lei de Segurança Nacional.
Além disso a Justiça Federal de Marabá, no Pará, multou três líderes sem-terra em R$ 5,2 milhões por terem participado de manifestações que interditou a Estrada de Ferro de Carajás (PA), que pertence à Vale do Rio Doce.
A maior ocupação urbana do Brasil, o Pinheirinho, em São José dos Campos, também sofre constantes blitz da polícia de maneira truculenta e com a imprensa dando sensacionalismo a qualquer crime que ocorre na ocupação, como os mesmos crimes não ocorressem em quaisquer bairros de São Paulo ou Rio de Janeiro.
No movimento sindical, recentemente a Apeoesp, filiada a CUT, recebeu uma multa de 1999 de 700 mil reais que esta sendo executada agora e uma de 2005 de 4 milhões de reais e a terceira 2008 de 500 mil e que levou ao bloqueamento provisório da conta, por realizar uma manifestação na Paulista, com isso sua conta foi bloqueada.
Os rodoviários do Amapá foram acusados por toda imprensa do estado, em conluio com a patronal, de terem sequestrado os ônibus na greve e terem cobrado passagens mais baratas para arrecada dinheiro para o Fundo de Greve. Neste caso tentam identificar uma ação dos trabalhadores com um crime inafiançável, preparando uma denuncia juntamente com o Ministério Publico do estado, para intimidar e, se não houver reação, colocar os dirigentes sindicais na cadeia.
Os petroleiros da FNP estão sendo acusados criminalmente por atentado violento ao pudor pela manifestação realizada pelos aposentados na porta do Edise, Rio de Janeiro, onde estes tiraram a roupa para criar um fato político. O Sindicato de Alagoas e Sergipe já recebeu cerca de 4 Interditos Proibitórios para que não possa mais realizar manifestações e uma multa de 750 mil reais. E na recente greve de 5 dias a Petrobras também conseguiu um Interdito para evitar a paralisação da refinaria da Bahia e para desocupar as plataformas ocupadas pelos grevistas na Bacia de Campos, que foram acusados de motim.
Na Revap em São José dos Campos a Petrobras buscou criminalizar os dirigentes do movimento através de um inquérito policial, pelos danos ocorridos na refinaria no confronto entre policia e grevistas. Tentando esconder suas responsabilidade por ter autorizado a entrada da Tropa de Choque dentro da refinaria, a noite, sem nenhuma ordem judicial e sem nenhum preparo para a ação. A direção da Petrobras é quem deveria ser criminalizada se ocorresse algum incidente grave.
O Sindicato dos Metalúrgicos de São José dos Campos, recebeu quase uma centena de Interditos Proibitórios, somente da Embraer, que ganhou em multas sobre o sindicato mais de 5 milhões de reais, para os quais são descontados 30% da arrecadação mensal (90 mil reais). Latequer e Hitachi também tem Interditos contra o sindicato. A GM também, recebeu Interditos Proibitórios que buscam impedir que o sindicato faça trabalho com os terceirizados e trabalhadores das empreiteiras e recentemente conseguiu uma Notificação Judicial para penalizar civil e criminalmente o sindicato e seus diretores, se estes realizarem atividades em outras bases, a exemplo da GM de Gravataí e São Caetano.
Como disse o dirigente da Conlutas, Atnagoras Lopes, “se realizamos greve fora da fábrica, recebemos Interditos e somos multados, se realizamos greve dentro da fábrica somos criminalizados, se realizamos passeatas somos punidos e também multados. Então que diabo de direito de greve é este que o trabalhador não pode ficar dentro, nem fora da fábrica e nem fazer manifestação”.
O PSTU assume o compromisso publico em seu programa eleitoral de combater a criminalização dos movimentos sociais e de assumir para si as bandeiras do Seminário Nacional contra a criminalização dos movimentos sociais realizado nos dias 21 e 22 de outubro, na sede da Ordem dos Advogados do Brasil – OAB, em Brasília (DF) e sua carta manifesto.
NOTAS:
[1] LÊNIN, Estado e Revolução
[2] Idem
FONTE: SITE DO PSTU
Saturday, November 27, 2010
We Should Dance While We Can
I’ve got two little brown-eyed girls back at home, a sitter who can stay until 1 a.m., and their father, Scott, standing next to me in his seersucker suit. I married him nearly a decade ago in this same chapel on the shady grounds of the Southwest School of Art, tucked along a slow curve of the San Antonio River.
“Come on,” I say. “We should dance while we can.”
Our own wedding reception was held in the garden, but my father managed to sneak upstairs and out onto the balcony, where he raised a flute of Champagne. An old-school WASP physician from the Midwest who would later endure both of my homebirths, he’d nonetheless had just about enough of the collectivist vibe of our wedding: a banjo processional, a woman preacher in cowboy boots, a Paul Éluard poem read in its original French, and me, walking through the grass in a ponytail, holding both his hand and my mother’s. The time had come for him to make sure everyone knew who was paying for this free-flowing love
.
“I’m the father of the bride,” he boomed. Later, he gulped a few of the half-finished mimosas that had been left on the patio, muttering, “Each one of those looks like a five-dollar bill flying away.”
Wynn, Scott’s only brother, was there too. A practicing Buddhist and perpetually underemployed English major, he could recite “Green Eggs and Ham” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” from memory. His other party trick involved nauseating contortions of his double-jointed elbows and knees. During the ceremony he’d given a little speech about the Buddhist concept of sangha, which can refer to a gathering of like-minded people coming together in support of a common idea, our marriage in this case. The rings were passed until everyone had touched them, and then returned to us, warm.
Six years later I was on the University of Texas campus, eight months pregnant and waddling out of a graduate school workshop on prose poems, when I got the first phone call: my father, saying that the dye test used to see whether a melanoma found on his chest was spreading to his lymph system had come back clear.
“Well, Niffer,” he said, “I’d say we dodged a bullet.”
Less than an hour later, as I headed home to San Antonio on I-35, my cellphone buzzed again. This time it was my husband, his voice soft with disbelief, saying they’d found Wynn in his apartment in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston.
“Found him how?” I said, confused, or at least hoping I was.
The signal dropped before he could reply. I set the phone on the passenger seat, then looked at it when it shuddered back to life, an insect I wasn’t eager to pick up. For 37 years, Wynn had slept with a stuffed Paddington Bear. His friend found the bear with him in bed where he’d swallowed a bottle of antidepressants. This was not his first struggle with staying here on earth, only his last.
Dad was dead less than a year later, the tumors that no one could see like ghosts filling his lungs, liver and brain. The last time I saw him alive, we ate enchiladas and drank margaritas on the River Walk. He piled on the fire-roasted salsa despite the ravage a last-ditch bio-chemo protocol was wreaking on his intestines. His familiar claim that he wasn’t hungry, followed by his subsequent scavenge of everyone else’s plate, made the day seem almost normal.
But as we stood to leave he stared at the bill, his brain unable to remember how to calculate a tip. Later, at the airport, he struggled to get out of the passenger seat of my Subaru, stumbling backward, grabbing for the door, which then shut hard on his fingers, trapping them. He looked at me, eyes desperate.
Source: New York Times Nov 26, 2010 by Jenny Browne
“Come on,” I say. “We should dance while we can.”
Our own wedding reception was held in the garden, but my father managed to sneak upstairs and out onto the balcony, where he raised a flute of Champagne. An old-school WASP physician from the Midwest who would later endure both of my homebirths, he’d nonetheless had just about enough of the collectivist vibe of our wedding: a banjo processional, a woman preacher in cowboy boots, a Paul Éluard poem read in its original French, and me, walking through the grass in a ponytail, holding both his hand and my mother’s. The time had come for him to make sure everyone knew who was paying for this free-flowing love
.
“I’m the father of the bride,” he boomed. Later, he gulped a few of the half-finished mimosas that had been left on the patio, muttering, “Each one of those looks like a five-dollar bill flying away.”
Wynn, Scott’s only brother, was there too. A practicing Buddhist and perpetually underemployed English major, he could recite “Green Eggs and Ham” and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” from memory. His other party trick involved nauseating contortions of his double-jointed elbows and knees. During the ceremony he’d given a little speech about the Buddhist concept of sangha, which can refer to a gathering of like-minded people coming together in support of a common idea, our marriage in this case. The rings were passed until everyone had touched them, and then returned to us, warm.
Six years later I was on the University of Texas campus, eight months pregnant and waddling out of a graduate school workshop on prose poems, when I got the first phone call: my father, saying that the dye test used to see whether a melanoma found on his chest was spreading to his lymph system had come back clear.
“Well, Niffer,” he said, “I’d say we dodged a bullet.”
Less than an hour later, as I headed home to San Antonio on I-35, my cellphone buzzed again. This time it was my husband, his voice soft with disbelief, saying they’d found Wynn in his apartment in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston.
“Found him how?” I said, confused, or at least hoping I was.
The signal dropped before he could reply. I set the phone on the passenger seat, then looked at it when it shuddered back to life, an insect I wasn’t eager to pick up. For 37 years, Wynn had slept with a stuffed Paddington Bear. His friend found the bear with him in bed where he’d swallowed a bottle of antidepressants. This was not his first struggle with staying here on earth, only his last.
Dad was dead less than a year later, the tumors that no one could see like ghosts filling his lungs, liver and brain. The last time I saw him alive, we ate enchiladas and drank margaritas on the River Walk. He piled on the fire-roasted salsa despite the ravage a last-ditch bio-chemo protocol was wreaking on his intestines. His familiar claim that he wasn’t hungry, followed by his subsequent scavenge of everyone else’s plate, made the day seem almost normal.
But as we stood to leave he stared at the bill, his brain unable to remember how to calculate a tip. Later, at the airport, he struggled to get out of the passenger seat of my Subaru, stumbling backward, grabbing for the door, which then shut hard on his fingers, trapping them. He looked at me, eyes desperate.
Source: New York Times Nov 26, 2010 by Jenny Browne
Don’t we all have lifelong fears…born into us as children, that stay with us through adulthood and haunt us to our death bed?
I do and have had…all these many years…
It was a hardcover book my Mother bought for me, to read to me at bedtime, only this book and it’s stories were hardly bedtime fare…too depressing, too fearful, too upsetting for an overly sensitive, overly imaginative creature such as I…
Soon, because I was too smart for my own good, I morphed beyond the bedtime story, read by my Mother, to take on the hard-cover book on my own…but the stories never got less upsetting, and one in particular, stained my consciousness, from then, until now…
“The Little Match Girl” by Hans Christian Andersen…
Since I first knew of it’s existence, I had a deep-seated fear that I may, some day, be that girl…yet, I was born to a well-healed family, having a life and surroundings far removed from any girl who may have had to survive by selling matches on the street corners of East London at the turn of the 20th century…
But still…
The haunting in me remained…
And at 46, there is, most definitely a risk, as with many people of my generation, who are just a paycheque away from The Little Match Girl…
Maybe it’s just a fairy-tale…maybe it’s just my mind playing tricks as it often does…but this year, this New Years Eve, when your Christmas tree is lit and your children and relatives are stuffed full of turkey, remember that many are not…and just one, one tiny girl, could be shivering under your spruce tree, in your well-endowed yard, in the dead of night, watching the glow from your prosperity touch her not as she shivers to her close…
In this vein, I bring you “The Little Match Girl”…so that you may pause, for just a moment, and gaze out from your picture window, to see the reality that lays just beyond the glass…
Outside, the death of the old year was mourned in cold dark streets, their empty silence mocked by the merriment of the revellers within. Snow fell thick and fast as one little barefoot girl wandered, lonely as a shadow, through the deserted streets.
Snowflakes clung to the fair hair that lay like a pale cloak about her shoulders, and her wan cheeks were wet with tears. She was cold and hungry, tired and frightened. Still her hands, numb and sore, clung tenaciously to the little bundles of matches which she had been trying all day to sell. But no one in that hurrying, excited crowd paused for even a moment to look with pity at the poor child who stood, with outstretched hands, pleading for one single copper for one of the bundles of matches which she clutched in her tattered apron.
There would be no customers now. But even wandering the streets was preferable to going home to the beating that she knew would await her if she returned with her matches unsold.
She still shivered. Mechanically she counted the little bundles…until a thought struck her. The light of even one match might warm her frozen fingers.
Drawing out a match she struck it against the wall.
It flared with a bright warm flame and the child gazed at it in fascination. There was something magical about the glow, as she looked into it she saw a firelit room, cozy and warm. She could almost feel the heat of those blazing logs enveloping her.
Then the little flame flickered and died, and now she was back again on the snow-swept street, a burnt match in her hand.
Eagerly the child struck a second match. Again she was back in the firelit room and this time she saw a table in one corner, spread with a white damask cloth and laden with party fare.
But just as she stretched out her hand towards a plate the flame died out.
The light from the third match seemed even brighter than the others. Now she was sitting under a tall Christmas tree. The green branches were laden with bright baubles and gaily wrapped packages tied with tinsel, and the tree sparkled with tiny winking lights.
The child stretched out her hands in delight…and in that moment the light of the match was quenched.
But, as she sat with upturned face, the Christmas lights burned brighter and brighter above her, shining stars in the night sky. As she watched, one star fell, the light streaming behind it like a fiery tail.
“Somewhere someone is dying,” whispered the little match girl. Her old grandmother – the only person who had ever been kind to her and who had died long ago – had once told her that whenever a star fell from the heavens an immortal spirit returned to the God who had created it.
“Grandmother,” cried the child, “do not leave me when the flame dies away. Stay with me, dear grandmother, for I am cold and lonely.”
Hastily she lit all the unused matches in the bundle, lest her grandmother should disappear. They burned with such a blaze of glory that the child sat in a bright pool of light.
Bending down, the grandmother grasped the child’s cold little hand. Together the flew, higher and higher, joyfully and gloriously they flew. They never paused till they reached Paradise, where neither cold nor hunger nor pain could ever touch the little match girl again.
The bells rang out the old sad year; then joyful peals told of the New Year’s birth.
In the cold morning light the child was found: She had frozen to death on the last night of the year.
She sat crouched in the corner of two houses, the unsold matches in her lap, one bundle of which was quite burnt out.
“Poor child, she was trying to warm herself!” thought the people, as they passed by.
But they were puzzled by the happy smile on her lips. Not one of them guessed the sweet visions she had seen before she sped, so eagerly, to a happier home.
A chair beside me now vacant
Campus air con frozen my empty heart
Lonely among crowded
After jilbab's girl gone away
My sad melody heard by a girl next door
Blossom rose most admired
Hold me tight from the back of the bicycle
Working homework till late at night
Her gaze warming my cold heart
Watering the blooming rose
Blowing a good smell scent
Youngsters come around the garden
I defend from fire and wild wind
Would the roses grow in a dry pottery
Dark cloud hanging over the sky
When she kiss me good bye
Whisper close, please write me soon
Would a rose blossom when I return
The study ended, a new life started
Going to the Capital holding a diploma
Train's wheel click slowly to the west
Her waves dissappear in the dark
Memory never forgotten
Friday, November 26, 2010
INPUT 0836 - Wulka (HANDS, THE WARRIOR INDOMITA)
propose its adaptation to the screen or cartoon version , a comic who for years have kept q continues to delight as that first day q leaves smelled new.
These catches have been ordered and suggested thanks to blog friend:
http://monsterbrains.blogspot.com/
Enjoy the bizarre ride. Mr.
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