Walk on air against your better judgement

 https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/republic-of-ireland/walk-on-air-against-your-better-judgement-inscribed-on-seamus-heaney-headstone/31451636.html

 'Walk on air against your better judgement' inscribed on Seamus Heaney headstone

Seamus Heaney's famous line to "walk on air against your better judgement" has been inscribed as an epitaph on his gravestone.

The quote from his 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech was placed over the Irish poet's grave in Northern Ireland earlier this week. It was included in a poem called The Gravel Walks.

Heaney, who died almost two years ago aged 74, was the country's best known contemporary writer. He also created a bestseller from a translation of Beowulf and sold more books in Britain than any other living poet during his lifetime.

He is buried in Bellaghy, Co Derry, his birthplace and the inspiration for much of his early work. Historian Eugene Kielt runs tours of Heaney country.

He said: "It is a beautiful line, very inspirational. It is about going for it. We are naturally cautious and sometimes someone should throw caution to the wind.

"It is about keeping your feet on the ground but looking up as well. It is about risk taking and not being inhibited, losing your inhibitions."

 

The line was first used in a poem published in the US. In 1996 it formed part of the collection The Spirit Level.

In a 2008 interview Heaney was asked why he chose it.

He said: "A person from Northern Ireland is naturally cautious. You grew up vigilant because it's a divided society. My poetry on the whole was earth hugging, but then I began to look up rather than keep down. I think it had to do with a sense that the marvellous was as permissible as the matter-of-fact in poetry."

Heaney has said The Gravel Walks was about heavy work as well as the "paradoxical sense of lightness" when lifting heavy things. It also reflects a popular traditional Irish reel of the same name.

 "I like the in-betweenness of up and down, of being on the earth and of the heavens. I think that's where poetry should dwell, between the dream world and the given world, because you don't just want photo

graphy, and you don't want fantasy either."

 

Professor Fran Brearton, director of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University Belfast (QUB), said it was a line that referenced his early work about digging in his native home.

She explained: "It is about being able to see beyond your moment, he says it is a reminder to himself about what poetry can do.

"It is about not being dogmatic, grounded, intransigent, nor completely remote from every day life ... it is about trying to find a balance between things."

She said that could be interpreted politically but was also about the balance between his past and childhood and how that is married with adulthood.

The line is taken from the final stanza of The Gravel Walks, the full verse of which reads:

"So walk on air against your better judgement

Establishing yourself somewhere in between

Those solid batches mixed with grey cement

And a tune called The Gravel Walks that conjures green."

 

Emotionally intelligent person - Alain de Botton

Emotionally intelligent person.
And written by a man!! Healthy words in this time of (unfortunately) an overwhelmig vision of men (almost with no exception) as monsters defended by so many people.
"The emotionally intelligent person knows that love is a skill, not a feeling, and will require trust, vulnerability, generosity, humor, sexual understanding, and selective resignation.
The emotionally intelligent person awards themselves (es dona a sí mateixa, se da a sí misma) the time to determine what gives their working life meaning and has the confidence and tenacity to try to find an accommodation between their inner priorities and the demands of the world.
The emotionally intelligent person knows how to hope and be grateful, while remaining steadfast before the essentially tragic structure of existence.
The emotionally intelligent person knows that they will only ever be mentally healthy in a few areas and at certain moments, but is committed to fathoming their inadequacies and warning others of them in good time, with apology and charm.
There are few catastrophes, in our own lives or in those of nations, that do not ultimately have their origins in emotional ignorance."
Alain de Botton, The School of Life.

Humilitat i supèrbia - Cela

 "En el sepulcro de don Miguel de Mañara, que está en el presbiterio, la lápida que él redactó reza de esta manera: «Aquí yacen los huesos y la ceniza del peor hombre que ha vivido en el mundo». Si esto no es soberbia, todo lo que viene en el catecismo —y en el diccionario— está de más. Humilde viene de humus, suelo, tierra. Es humilde aquel que quiere vivir y morir a ras de tierra, confundido y no campando —super, superbus— sobre la tierra, mostrándonos su singularidad. Que no es soberbio tan sólo el que se ensalza sino también el que deliberadamente se singulariza."

Cela, Primer viaje andaluz.

Vine a viure a un poble

https://venteaviviraunpueblo.com/&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwiTqpr2ieKBAxVAUaQEHS6rBfQQFnoECAgQAg&usg=AOvVaw0NN5awrDREHm-TJp4U1nNb

Gobleki Tepe

 https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-asia/decoding-g-bekli-tepe-secret-society-and-space-observatory-008687

Poesia PENDENT

 Mary Oliver.

 

Faulkner i l'alcohol

 CITA procedent de Facebook:
"Una de las compañías más fieles de William Faulkner fue el alcohol, con el que mantuvo una curiosa relación que él mismo consideraba literaria. Hasta el punto de intentar convencer a quienes le rodeaban que sin su botella de Old Crow no hubieran existido El ruido y la furia, Luz de agosto o Santuario, ni siquiera otras ensoñaciones más turbias y como ¡Absalón, Absalón o Mientras agonizo. «La civilización comienza con la destilación», dijo una vez. Su afición por la bebida rivalizaba con las de sus otros dos compañeros de tríada literaria, Ernest Hemingway y F. Scott Fitzgerald. Incluso con la de James Joyce. A diferencia de ellos, sin embargo, a Faulkner le gustaba beber mientras escribía. En 1937, su traductor francés, Maurice Edgar Coindreau, estaba tratando de descifrar una de esas frases barrocas que otra autora sureña, Flannery O’Connor, decía evitar para que su pequeño bote no se empantanase. Se la mostró al escritor, que inmediatamente rompió a reír: «No tengo absolutamente idea de lo que quería expresar», respondió Faulkner. «Verá, escribo por la noche y el whisky mantiene en mi cabeza tantas ideas que luego soy incapaz de recordarlas a la mañana siguiente».

Entre los biógrafos existe diferente grado de compresión sobre el alcoholismo de Faulkner. Joseph Blotner pasa de puntillas por el asunto, no intenta entender la adicción, se limita a dejar constancia de los estragos que produjo en él. Para Frederick R. Karl, la bebida es esencial tanto para mantener a salvo su rebeldía como en su obra. «Si quitáramos el alcohol, es muy probable que no existiera el escritor y probablemente tampoco habría una persona definida». Jay Parini sostiene que había un propósito terapéutico en el alcoholismo. Bebía, según él, para limpiar las telarañas y poner el reloj a cero.

El vino y el brandy no eran los espirituosos favoritos de Faulkner. Le gustaba el whisky. Su bebida preferida era el julepe de menta. Este combinado consistía, según su versión, en una mezcla de whisky bourbon con una cucharada de azúcar, una rama o dos de menta triturada y hielo. Le gustaba beberlo en una taza de metal helado. La palabra «julepe» apareció por primera vez en el siglo XIV para describir una bebida de jarabe utilizado en farmacia. Faulkner era el primero en creer en la eficacia medicinal del alcohol.

Sirviese el whisky para confundirlo o no en sus párrafos más oscuros, Faulkner es el único escritor con vocación de pelmazo que a veces recompensa el titánico esfuerzo que supone penetrar en su mundo. Cuando se le preguntó en aquella entrevista del «Paris Review» qué debían hacer aquellos que no entendían lo que escribía incluso después de leerlo dos y tres veces, se limitó a responder: «Que lo lean cuatro». Y siguió embotellando sus ideas en Old Crow."