Feira da Ladra (um ano depois)

Feliz Ano Sousa !

Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed

Some feelings can only be expressed by the words of the greatest. This is the case with this impressive poem by Dylan Thomas, which moved the cosmonaut's heart today.


Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed

Lie still, sleep becalmed, sufferer with the wound  
In the throat, burning and turning. All night afloat  
On the silent sea we have heard the sound
That came from the wound wrapped in the salt sheet.

Under the mile off moon we trembled listening
To the sea sound flowing like blood from the loud wound  
And when the salt sheet broke in a storm of singing  
The voices of all the drowned swam on the wind.

Open a pathway through the slow sad sail,
Throw wide to the wind the gates of the wandering boat  
For my voyage to begin to the end of my wound,  
We heard the sea sound sing, we saw the salt sheet tell.  
Lie still, sleep becalmed, hide the mouth in the throat,
Or we shall obey, and ride with you through the drowned.

-- Dylan Thomas

Sousa Power

Un abrazo

Un abrazo y un silencio. Tantas palabras por decir y sin embargo, en ese abrazo, tantas palabras dichas.

A-ka-puuul-ko

Some words became mantras in Sousa's world.
They lost their original meaning and turned into a sequence of sounds that are meant to be whispered slowly and repeatedly at each one's ears.
A-ka-puuuul-ko. Al-faaaa-ma.

Cuando Tu Me Quieras

Running after buses

Running late after buses became a national sport in Sousa's World.
Sometimes we miss a bus, but it doesn't mean we miss it forever because there's always another one. And if we miss that one, there's yet another one... and another one.
We just can't give up running.

Cursi Memories

The cosmonaut had a cursi-moment and suddenly so many memories flashed through his mind:
A full moon in Bahia Feliz.
An old-fashioned Tango in Valsequillo.
A wheel-chair in an Edward Hopper conference at the Thyssen-Bornemisza (la "deficiente"!).
Illegal Ron-Con-Cola from the chinese store (los mejores del mundo!).
A Porto at Sunset by the Douro.
Laying down on the sand dunes of Maspalomas.
Gin Tonics and Salsa at the 19th Hole.
A bouquet of green flowers for the prettiest girl in all the world.

A half-destroyed heart was found in Maspalomas

A heart was found today in the sands of Maspalomas beach.

Gran Canaria police confirmed that the heart was found half-destroyed by the ocean waves, with the single enigmatic word "sousa" lying inside. 

Police is continuing their investigations into the circumstances surrounding such a strange discovery, which is currently being treated as unexplained.

The origins of the Placa-Sousa

The origins of the Sousa plaque are involved in a deep mystery. Some say it originally came from an old grocery store in Portugal, but this is just one of the stories. Some other people believe that the plaque came originally from the United States and trace its origins back to 1941, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So, sit back and hold your breath, for this is the story I am about to uncover today.

Our story begins in early XX century Vienna. Johann Oliveira de Sousa was an Austrian preeminent mathematician and philosopher, of Portuguese Jewish origins. He is best known for his famous postulates on the Theory of Plain Happiness, which was the basis for his doctorate in the University of Vienna in the early 30s.

While studying in the Austrian capital, he participated in the Viennese cultural circles and eventually got in contact with people such as Sigmund Freud, Moritz Schlick and Kurt Godel. These contacts may have set Professor Sousa's life course. In 1936, after the infamous assassination of Moritz Schlick by a nazi student, Johann de Sousa followed Kurt Godel on an academic trip to the United States. Later that year, escaping from the ever growing claustrophobic political environment in Vienna, he accepted a lecturer position in the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Princeton, New Jersey. Godel would joined him 4 years later, in 1940, following his famous trip through the Trans-Siberian railway to Vladivostok, from there to San Francisco and finally to Princeton.

In 1941, Professor Johann de Sousa left Princeton and moved to Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was a co-founder of the RISAS, the Research Institute for Simple Axiomatic Systems.

And this is where our story meets the Sousa plaque. In his quest for simplicity and minimalism, Professor Johann de Sousa ordered a plain plaque with the simple word "SOUSA" for his personal office door at Harvard. This behavior later become a leitmotiv of Professor Sousa's life: simplicity as a shortcut to happiness.

After Johann de Sousa's retirement in the late 70s, people lost track of the famous Sousa's plaque. Some people say that in the late 90s, right before the Professor's death, the plaque was handed over by  himself to one of his most preeminent disciples, a young student simply known in the Harvard campus as "the cosmonaut".

How and why the plaque was recently seen in such different places as Lisbon, Madrid or Las Palmas is still a mystery. If you happen to know where the placa-sousa is, please fill in the survey below.

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Sousa Loneliness

Edward Hopper, "Hotel Room"

Sousa's World Climate

A lot has been said about the weather in Sousa's World but, nevertheless, Sousa's climate is still a very mysterious subject.

Rain and stormy weather have a special place in the land of Sousa. But it is not the usual rain or the usual storms, that we can find anywhere else.  Sousa storms have a life of its own and seem to be destined for a special target, or a certain person, and no matter where these targets will go, the rain will find its way across the air and it will hit what it wants to hit.

Such mysterious experiences have been reported several times by Bonnie and the Cosmonaut in the past.  In some occasions, in the happy island, they were saved inexplicably out of a perfect storm by this invisible hand. In some other occasions the power of an unpredictable extreme rainfall washed them away mercilessly.

You can run, you can try to hide, but rain will always catch you in Sousa’s World.

Lá Fora, Rir de Tudo

This poem from the Portuguese poet  Mario Cesariny entered Sousa's World in the early days and soon became like a Sousa's Manifesto. A program for La Vida Sousa: Rir de Tudo.


Pastelaria

Afinal o que importa não é a literatura
nem a crítica de arte nem a câmara escura

Afinal o que importa não é bem o negócio
nem o ter dinheiro ao lado de ter horas de ócio

Afinal o que importa não é ser novo e galante
- ele há tanta maneira de compor uma estante

Afinal o que importa é não ter medo: fechar os olhos frente ao precipício
e cair verticalmente no vício

Não é verdade rapaz? E amanhã há bola
antes de haver cinema madame blanche e parola

Que afinal o que importa não é haver gente com fome
porque assim como assim ainda há muita genteque come

Que afinal o que importa é não ter medo
de chamar o gerente e dizer muito alto ao pé de muita gente:
Gerente! Este leite está azedo!

Que afinal o que importa é pôr ao alto a gola do peludo
à saída da pastelaria, e lá fora – ah, lá fora! – rir de tudo

No riso admirável de quem sabe e gosta
ter lavados e muitos dentes brancos à mostra

-Mario Cesariny

Brown-Eyed Guy

She almost missed the Bus.

Once he left the station she tried to get her thoughts together.
They had shared more than a walk, more than a cake. They both wanted the same thing: The Happiness

While they were talking in the Coffee he stared at her. The strong look in his eyes made Bonnie lowed the glance. She realized the special guy he was, and desired to get the chance to know him better.

In her imagination she wanted to find a different world to be involved. A wonderful way of exploring the life from a different and magical point of view, to discover the funny side of every incident, every detail... and get the smile by enjoying the simple things of the Sousa's World.

Cita Primera: Um Cosmonauta na Feira da Ladra

In the pre-history of Sousa’s world, there was a curly-hair girl lost in a quirky bizarre small village in the Portuguese Alentejo, trying to bring peace to her memories, and a cosmonaut who had long forgotten how it was like to be happy.

Initially, just like two undercover double agents, they set up a meeting at Feira da Ladra. He was nervous. She was hungry. They walked up and down the castle hill, talked and laughed, drank Porto with chocolate cake and finished the day running after a soon-to-depart bus called Felicidade.

Since that day, running late after buses became a sort of national sport in the Sousa’s world.

Feira da Ladra on 8tracks.com.

Bonnie, the Cosmonaut and the foundation of the Sousa Legend

It all started on a rainy morning, a couple of months back in time.

It is still a mystery how and why the gate to Sousa’s world was found in a tiny antique shop, in a city 50km south of Lisbon.

The Sousa Sign was standing there, waiting to be found, just like Alice’s magic mirror. Bonnie saw it before anyone else and, guided by this sort of genius sense that is only available to the chosen ones, she soon realized there was more to be found on that old plaque. The cosmonaut didn’t value it at first, but like with everything else, he just followed Bonnie steps down the hole.

The Sousa legend was about to start and they both knew it would become impossible to stop it later.