saramago and the empire of light...june- 18- 2010 jose saramago passes away......some thoughts....

at last i am reaching the end of the wall....the three travellers have met in the woods and joana carda scratched a mark on the ground they try to obliterate it but it will not go away.......then they are on the way to where? they are still following the dog with the blue wool......they arrive at a house ...maria opens the door...she is the lady with the blue sock....i have chosen to base this part of the mural on magrittes painting " the empire of light" ........day and night exist @ the same time....in the same place.......we or they are entering another world....there is a blue cloud floating over the house......what does it signify.....whilst the friends are talking pedro orce who is alone goes off with "dog".......they wander over the hills towards the sea....as they approach the beach there is a still quality......calm......not quite real.......do his eyes deceive him........can this be.......scattered along the beach are boats....petrified boats.....stone boats.........there is an eerie feeling  in the evening light......which is fading fast.......adding to the mystery............rocks ....large rocks...like we find in albufeira........a calm sea..........i am using the boats as a reference to a painting by bocklin....the isle of the dead.......the boats are almost transparent....you can see right through them....what is their cargo........souls.........i have returned to the image of the floating landmass heading towards the azores......or the isle of the dead........the boat in the "unknown island" becomes the island...the raft is a moving island......the story has gone full circle....the man searching for the island......the peninsular departing ftom europe.....by cause and effect...the stick..the stone...a tremble..the birds...the blue sock......"dog"....blue cloud........the dogs that bark ........impossible....perhaps no more impossible then magrittes painting of the empire of light......day and night together at the same time.......the moon hanging in the early morning sky at the end.....all is possible.....these where my thoughts during the day of june 18......after the days work i went to an exhibition in sao bras....not an unusual event at all...at the gallery i picked up the novel about an elephant .....by you know who......unfortunately for me in portuguese......on returning home that night...a message was waiting for me on facebook from dave gibbs an old friend...telling me about saramago....it was strange ....i had spent the past 2 days thinking abiout all these connections............possible connections

"Because each of you has his or her own death, you carry it with you in a secret place from the moment you're born, it belongs to you and you belong to it." José Saramago

"Some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don't understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they're there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it's the other side that matters.” José Saramago

from dave gibbs

INEVITABILITY
Lucky is the tree that’s barely sentient,
and even more the unfeeling flinty rock,... See more
because there is no pain like that of living,
nor greater grief than that of sentient life.

To be, know nothing, and not know where we’re going,
with the fear of past and future terrors…
And the shocking certainty of being dead tomorrow,
and to suffer through this life and through its shadows

and all the things we know not and cannot imagine,
and the flesh groping with its nascent inflorescences,
and the tomb that waits with floral tributes,
and not knowing where we’re going,
or where we’ve come from!…

Rubén Darío
(my translation)

Saramago will be cremated at Lisbon's Alto de Sao Joao cemetery at noon on Sunday June 20, after which his ashes will be divided.
Half will be taken to his native village of Azinhaga and the rest will be placed at the foot of an olive tree in the garden of his Lanzarote home, where he spent the last 17 years of his life.

The olive tree.........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3ldSLYnECc         bocklin...the isle of the dead.........

Böcklin himself provided no public explanation as to the meaning of the painting, though he did describe it as “a dream picture: it must produce such a stillness that one would be awed by a knock on the door.......