quinta-feira, 31 de março de 2022
Meditações - how death counts the rings from trees to clocks
All at Once
Trees have whole streets
of
when they were planted
plaqued with when the city is
to inherit them dead
of age almost all at once as if
a natural bombing.
People see a bill not figured in,
a blood red
collection come
like fall’s leaf due without fail
an unseen cost of the design:
pale bud and yellow blossom—
though seeming little to do this time
with tense spring
in the window
of dead and dying trees’ terms up,
with expecting a life by life replacement—
not this plague of life’s time
as a season across the city.
By trial we do, but don’t
know how death counts the rings
from trees to clocks,
species to singled soul
at its hour. or on history’s days we all die at once.
Ed Roberson
quarta-feira, 30 de março de 2022
Meditações - Watching the tender hours go dreamily
Dawn
The soft-toned clock upon the stair chimed three—
Too sweet for
sleep, too early yet to rise.
In restful peace I
lay with half-closed eyes,
Watching the tender hours go dreamily;
The tide was flowing in; I heard the sea
Shivering along the
sands; while yet the skies
Were dim,
uncertain, as the light that lies
Beneath the fretwork of some wild-rose tree
Within the thicket gray. The chanticleer
Sent drowsy calls
across the slumbrous air;
In solemn silence
sweet it was to hear
My own heart beat . . . Then broad and deep and fair—
Trembling in its
new birth from heaven’s womb—
One crimson shaft
of dawn sank thro’ my room.
Ella Higginson
terça-feira, 29 de março de 2022
Em primeira mão - em Zurique, com a Breitling, que reformulou totalmente o Navitimer
Estamos em Zurique, a convite da Breitling, que assinala os
70 anos do Navitimer com a completa remodelação da linha deste verdadeiro
relógio de piloto de aviação profissional, com a sua lendária régua de cálculo
circular.
Cronógrafo automático, com data, cronómetro certificado COSC,
o Navitimer 2022 vem em caixas de 41, 43 ou 46 mm, e em aço ou ouro vermelho,
com braceletes de pele de crocodilo ou metal). Os mostradores são azuis, verdes
ou cobre opacos. As imagens, em primeira mão:
“We don't throw the term ‘icon’ around lightly. The Navitimer is one of the most recognizable
watches ever made. It’s on collectors’ lists of the greatest watches of all
time. What began as a tool for pilots has gone on to mean something profound to
every single person who has had this timepiece along on their personal
journey.”
The de-facto pilot’s watch
Not even its inventor could have predicted the phenomenon
the Navitimer would become. In 1952, Willy Breitling developed a wrist-worn
chronograph with a circular slide rule that would allow pilots to perform all
necessary flight calculations. Two years later, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots
Association (AOPA), the largest aviators’ club in the world, announced the
design as its official timepiece. The association’s winged logo was emblazoned
at 12 o’clock, and the “navigation timer”—or Navitimer—was born.
The Navitimer grew up alongside the burgeoning civil
aviation industry. Beloved by airline captains and aircraft enthusiasts, it
even made its way into space on the wrist of astronaut Scott Carpenter in 1962
as a 24-hour timepiece to tell day from night. And it wasn’t only pilots drawn
to the watch’s irrepressible aesthetic. Celebrities of the day, such as Miles
Davis, Serge Gainsbourg, Jim Clark and Graham Hill, were devotees, proving that
the Navitimer had style as well as function.
An evolution in Breitling’s signature modern-retro style
To create the new Navitimer, Breitling preserved the most
recognizable aspects of the icon's design code. From a distance, this is
unmistakably a Navitimer, with its circular slide rule, baton indexes, trio of
chronograph counters and notched bezel for easy grip. Up close, however, its
modern refinements come through loud and clear.
A flattened slide rule and a domed crystal create the
illusion of a more compact profile. Alternating polished and brushed finishings
give the metal elements a lustrous, yet understated quality. A slimmer
silhouette on the oscillating weight enhances the open-caseback view of the
COSC-certified Breitling Manufacture Caliber 01. This movement is backed by a
five-year warranty, provides approximately 70 hours of power reserve and allows
the wearer to change the date—now visible through a discreet window in the
subdial—at any time.
For the journey, celebrating what moves us
Today, after 70 years, the Navitimer has gone beyond being a
tool used by pilots to navigate their course. It has become a symbol for those
plotting their personal journeys through life.
Breitling celebrates this significance in a new campaign,
NAVITIMER – FOR THE JOURNEY, featuring the Navitimer Squad, made up of
basketball superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, American Ballet Theatre principal
dancer Misty Copeland and aviation pioneer and explorer Bertrand Piccard. Each
member has been on an incredible journey to get to where they are today at the
top of their fields. Each one has charted a course and stayed it through sheer
determination. And each one is on route to achieving their next set of
ambitions. Using powerful visuals and the Squad Members’ own narration, the
campaign gets to the heart of these moving journeys.
“This project means a lot to me because it celebrates not only where I was in life, but where I’d come from and where I am going,” says Misty Copeland. “There is an absolute parallel between navigating towards a physical destination and navigating towards the vision of where you want to be in life. You’ll see that theme come through in these three stories.”
The Navitimer has come a long way since Willy Breitling
first drafted his idea for a wrist-worn flight tool. This redesign, with its
focus on color, styling and inclusive appeal, marks a new phase in the
Navitimer’s journey, one that blends Breitling’s modern aesthetics and values
with its historic watchmaking savoir faire to create an updated identity for
the iconic watch that started it all.
Meditações - Time and the Garden
Time and the Garden
The spring has darkened with activity.
The future gathers in vine, bush, and tree:
Persimmon, walnut, loquat, fig, and grape,
Degrees and kinds of color, taste, and shape.
These will advance in their due series, space
The season like a tranquil dwelling-place.
And yet excitement swells me, vein by vein:
I long to crowd the little garden, gain
Its sweetness in my hand and crush it small
And taste it in a moment, time and all!
These trees, whose slow growth measures off my years,
I would expand to greatness. No one hears,
And I am still retarded in duress!
And this is like that other restlessness
To seize the greatness not yet fairly earned,
One which the tougher poets have discerned—
Gascoigne, Ben Jonson, Greville, Raleigh, Donne,
Poets who wrote great poems, one by one,
And spaced by many years, each line an act
Through which few labor, which no men retract.
This passion is the scholar’s heritage,
The imposition of a busy age,
The passion to condense from book to book
Unbroken wisdom in a single look,
Though we know well that when this fix the head,
The mind’s immortal, but the man is dead.
segunda-feira, 28 de março de 2022
Ourivesaria artística Topásio, de Ferreira Marques & Irmão, Porto, 1946
(arquivo Fernando Correia de Oliveira)
Meditações - mountains and streams dance around each other in a clockwork
Precision German Craftsmanship
It was a good day and I was about to do something important
and good, but then I unscrewed the pen I was using
to see the ink. Precision German craftsmanship.
The Germans are so persnickety and precise,
they wash their driveways. Their mountains and streams
dance around each other in a clockwork, courtly imitation
of spring. They build the Panzer tank, out of rakes
hoses and garden gnomes; they built me.
And I’ve seated myself above an avenue on the brink
of mystery, always just on the lip, with my toes over the
lip
but my bowels behind.
When I replaced the ink the sky was socked in,
only one window of blue open in the north, directly over
someone.
But that person was reading about Rosicrucians in the
laundromat,
he was unaware as the blue window closed above him.
The rest of us are limp and damp,
I see a button in front of us that says “spin cycle.”
I’m going to push it.
Matthew Rohrer
