3 of 8 - Snippets of Eros - Knowledge in the Feminine, Knowledge as Love

Dear Earthlings:

The year of wonders is what 2012 is supposed to be.  Yours truly offers snippets of her favorite books.  All on yesterday's forbidden themes.  Let's see if their mysteries are revealed.

Eros is a story that staved the loneliness of her first years in the Caribbean, when she was missing her former Matrias,  California and Italy.  

What does knowledge in the feminine fee like?  Is it ecological?  Sustainable?  That's one of the main themes.  Since time immemorial, women know each other independently of men.  We love each other independently of men.  Yet the very topic has become taboo.  Why?  Women's knowledge has been regarded as ignorance for too long.  Women produce knowledge when they produce love.  Isn't that a win-win?  A world that reveres women's knowledge is a world that reveres love.

Here are yours truly's reflections back in 2007.  Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves, has the full story. 

"Sara and I were positioned at the edge of a university system which treated women's knowledge as ignorance.  Knowledge was modeled on war, an invasion of the field or body to be searched or conquered by the knowing mind.  But our presence brought in our sense of economy as subsistence, of ecology as balance in the energy field between beings.  We were a site of resistance to the mechanistic concepts of learning, justice, and well being generated by the prevalent masculine epistemology.  I remember Sara being always happy, healthy, and full of energy.  She had very few toys but was always busy.  Later on . . . I kept thinking back to this blessed time when ecological frugality was the measure of a child's freedom and happiness" (20)

The narrative continues as Sara follows her destiny to become an Italian girl raised by her dad. Oh blessed be! 

Dear Earthlings:

Education is the heart of democracy.  And that includes education to love.  It comes in many forms.  Including learning about Eros and journeys of multiple loves.

Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves was a Lambda Finalist in 2007.  It is now being considered for translation in to Spanish by a press in Madrid.  Access to this memoir would be a great gift to Spanish speakers across the globe.  If you agree, leave a comment and we will let the publisher know.  Gracias!  

Did you enjoy the post?  Let us know!  Yours truly appreciates your attention.  The comments box is open.

Come back!  And stay tuned for more wonders.

Namaste,
 

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD

Gilf Gaia Extraordinaire

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love
Professor of Humanities

University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

   

Follow us in the social media

Poly Planet GAIA Blog: 
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/ 

Website: www.serenagaia.com 

Be Appraised of Ecosex Community Project PostaHouse 
Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings 

Author's Page/Lists all books: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA 

YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini
 

2 of 8 - Snippets of Eros - When a "No" Becomes a "Yes"

Dear Earthlings:

The year of wonders is what 2012 is supposed to be.  Yours truly offers snippets of her favorite books.  All on yesterday's forbidden themes.  Let's see if their mysteries are revealed.

Eros is a story that staved off the loneliness of her first years in the Caribbean, when she was missing her former Matrias, California and Italy.  

Can a "no" become a "yes"?  That's one of the main themes.  Many a "no" has turned into a "yes" since time immemorial.  Yet the very question became taboo.  Why?  If we respect a "no" that becomes a "yes," we will respect a "yes" that becomes a "no."  Isn't that a win-win?  A world where love can change our minds is a world where love abounds.

Here are yours truly's reflections back in 2007.  Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves, has the full story. 

"Campus culture was increasingly aware of rape, and Stephane and i could not help but notice that the rapist was always male, the raped female.  . . . "There must be a way in which a woman can rape a man" I commented.  And that's how we came to see our erotic performances, especially those in which I was the initiator, as examples of male rape. . . .
But when a man's voice says no, his body might be saying yes with a flamboyant erection.  In this case, the man's voice and his genitals make two opposite statements.  "Which one is more correct?" we wondered.  In the past, rape had been a crime against the woman's family, often repaired with the rapist marrying the girl" (17).

The narrative continues as Stephane and Gaia bask in their amorous erotic play.  Oh blessed be! 

Dear Earthlings:

Education is the heart of democracy.  And that includes education to love.  It comes in many forms.  Including learning about Eros and journeys of multiple loves.

Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves was a Lambda Finalist in 2007.  It is now being considered for translation in to Spanish by a press in Madrid.  Access to this memoir would be a great gift to Spanish speakers across the globe.  If you agree, leave a comment and we will let the publisher know.  Gracias!  

Did you enjoy the post?  Let us know!  Yours truly appreciates your attention.  The comments box is open.

Come back!  And stay tuned for more wonders.

Namaste,
 

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD

Gilf Gaia Extraordinaire

Author of Gaia, Eros, and many other books about love
Professor of Humanities

University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

   

Follow us in the social media

Poly Planet GAIA Blog: 
http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/ 

Website: www.serenagaia.com 

Be Appraised of Ecosex Community Project PostaHouse 
Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings 

Author's Page/Lists all books: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA 

YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini
 

Finally, GAIA on Kindle: Start reading in less than a minute! Ecosexual Gift if you buy on Sept 26th!

We at 3WayKiss wish to sincerely thank you for your attention to this.  We are delighted to offer Gaia on Kindle, the recently released digital edition of Gaia and the New Politics of Love. 

Regarded as an avatar of ecosexual theory, this controversial book is a Silver Winner in
Cosmology and New Science for the 2010 Nautilus Awards.  Now you can start reading it in less than a minute, and without the waste of a single twig!  If that weren't ecosexual enough, you can also get a fabulous Gift when you make your purchase on September 26th.  This Sunday has been announced world wide as the push-up date to bring the title up into the digital best-seller list. 

When people like you decide what a best seller looks, feels, reads like, we can transform the publishing industry into one that really reflects the creative intelligence of readers.  When you decide to participate in this push, you also create better book-contract opportunities for writers whose creative intelligence resonates with your ideas, ideals. This book has been described both as a 'disgrace' and as a 'masterpiece.'  It has made waves of differing opinions in its own niche communities.  The author has issued a 'clarification statement' in response to these.  Don't you wish to know what this is all about immediately?  Well . . . . yes, you do, but please mark your calendar for the 26th and on that day click on the  book-cover image. 

We at 3WayKiss wish to thank you from a deep place in our heart.  We are a non-profit based in Puerto Rico devoted to the mission of "educating the public world wide about the arts of loving and their infinite forms of expression that our species make piece with our gracious hostess, the third planet Gaia."  We could not be more thrilled to reach out with this special offer to you!

If you are not familiar with digital book reading, this is a good time to start.  Download the free software Kindle for PC, or another free software for mobile devices.  What a great, 'right livelihood' way to read.  No more paper, no more trees!  No more storing, dusting, shipping, logging around those heavy, expensive print books.  All the intensity, complexity, reliability, in-depth knowledge a book can offer, for the feather weight of a digital file stored on your hard disk!

Teaching Gaia in Greece

With Regina Reinhardt and Robyn Ochs in London for BiReCon

Annie Sprinkle - Wedding to the Moon

What a relief for those of us aspiring to a light footprint.  And how consonant with the whole idea of Gaia as the basis for a new, ecosexual politics of love! Start building your digital library on the 26th!

The author's summer has been fabulous with new travels and experiences, including seminars on The Wisdom of Love in the San Francisco Bay Area with such avatars of Polyamory as Deborah Taj Anapol and Dossie Easton; teaching compersion, polyamory, and Gaia theory in Washington State and Greece; coaching participants ready to design the amorous life of their dreams; visiting oracle shrines in Greece and naturist villages in France, and keynoting at BiReCon the Bisexuality Research Conference in England. 

Now she's ready for more, with participation in Annie and Beth's Wedding to the Moon ecosexual performance and symposium in LA, October 23-24, with workshops and readings planned for the 16 and the 19, more workshops on Managing Jealousy in November in Puerto Rico, and more events to be announced.  

As a reward for participating in the push-up day for Gaia on Kindle, you get a fabulous ecosexual Gift:  Bring your proof of purchase to any of her events and you'll get a discount of up to $ 20 on the door charge. That's more than double the purchase price for Gaia on Kindle!

More details on events will be announced soon.  Stay tuned for the Newsletter with Calendar of Events. You can also follow us on our blog, PolyPlanetGAIA, and learn a lot more about Gaia and ecosexual theories, practices, possibilities.  Become a follower here. You can follow us on Facebook, become a fan of Gaia here,or simply friend Serena Anderlini

With deep appreciation for your interest and business, we at 3WayKiss remain yours truly, in devotion and ecosexual friendship.

Namaste,
Serena Anderlini @ 3WayKiss
author of Gaia and the New Politics of Love, a Silver Winner for Cosmology and New Science for the 2010 Nautilus Book Awards, and many other fabulous books
Professor of Humanities at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

How the Wisdom of Love Transforms Gaia: Modeling Choice for Children and Grandchildren

In talking about poly lovestyles, the question of 'children' often comes up. "It's ok as long as only adults are involved, but what about children? Can they be 'exposed' to such things and still grow up to be sane and happy people?" Find out all about this and more in this clip. Hear the wisdom of poly grandmothers with two generations of descendants who are happy to have them be part of the family and respect them for who they are!

Here's another clip from the Double Book Launch on 6/22.  Enjoy and let us know what you think.  And for more info on it all, don't forget to order your copy of Gaia and the New Politics of Love!

How the Wisdom of Love Transforms Gaia: Inventing the Families We Need

What is a nuclear family?  How did this type of family come into being?  Whose interests does this invention serve?  When did it become prevalent and why?  What is 'nuclear' about it?  Why do some people think it's the only possible type of family and/or the most advanced one?  What are new ways to think about 'family' that better serve the future of our species?

All of this stuff came up when Taj and yours truly were reading at Open Secret Bookstore, at the Double Book Launch we held on June 22.  We promised more details about it, and here we are!

People often ask me about families, and how they became nuclear.  In fact, many even seem to think that families have always been nuclear, that there's never been another model for what a family is supposed to look like, or even that there is something inherently 'natural' to families being of this kind. 

But what is 'nuclear' about families, really? Are these kinds of families supposed to explode, like atoms? Are they an invention of the nuclear age? Do they look like atoms, and if so, which ones? Carbon? Oxygen? Hydrogen? Uranium? Perhaps they've got some nuclear energy inside, in which case they should be handled carefully, right?  If they are enriched, they can become even more unstable, and that can start the process of atomic fission, where they splinter into little particles.  In this case, they fall under George W's special category, 'nukular,' remember? The famous word that egregious president could not pronounce? 

In any event, and jokes aside, the nuclear family, explosive or not, is a very recent invention.  If we consider the infinite ways in which life has become organized in order to nurture itself through time on the face of our multifarious hostess Gaia, including all of human cultures and the cultures of other species, we find out that in the history of what we may call 'family,' the nuclear family is really a split second. Just a blink of the eye. And not the happiest or most interesting one.

The clip explains when and why the nuclear family became prevalent. What kind of paradigm it is part of, and why this paradigm no longer serves life in general, or human life in particular.  Nothing wrong with nuclear families. They serve a purpose. But to move into a Gaian future, the whole idea of what constitutes family must be placed in a much wider horizon.

Check it out!

Yours truly hopes you enjoy the video. Please help us imagine what the video does not say. What families can we invent to met our needs? Suggestions are welcome!

Families are about love, right? So a new politics of love is also a new politics about families, right?  If you're not sure what's political about families, find out all about it in Gaia and the New Politics of Love.  

Namaste,

Gaia

a.k.a. Serena Anderlini

How the Wisdom of Love Transforms Gaia: On Being the Resources We Share

Friends keep telling me that people don't understand what I mean.  "She uses strange words," they say, or at least, "she uses words in a strange way.  Why does she do that? What does she really mean?"

"That's the point," I think to myself, very shy, very humbled, very timid, "making up new words, new phrases, using words that are unfamiliar, making familiar words sound new."

That's the power of words, the power of literature, if you will.  What I was trained in.  (Arhhhhhg, what a mistake to presume one can relinquish some ignorance!)

"These people," I think, "they really want it easy.  Not only I learned their language so I can speak to them.  But then if I use words of their language that for one reason or another sound queasy, they become suspicious of me.  There's no way to do right by them!"

"What's this fear?"  Fear of words.  One cannot be afraid of words.  Words are NOT things.  They only represent things.  Or do they?  Can words also MAKE things?  Can they CHANGE things?  Can they affect, transform, reinterpret, create REALITY?

Of course they can. All poets are keenly aware of this. Otherwise why would they spend time playing with words? 

So, a case in point is this video clip.  From The Wisdom of Love, a double book launch Deborah Taj Anapol and me held at Open Secret Bookstore on June 22, 2010.  It's a bit late to post.  I know.  Took a long time to figure, with us being a team of wise, wise, wise people.  So ancient is our wisdom that we're not all that familiar with latest tech stuff for social media. But we get it eventually.  And for this clip, we owe courtesy to Steve Hoffman of Oakaland, California, who shot, cut, and reduced for us.

So, what's the fun with words here?  Well, "RESOURCES."  People in ecology, in environmental science talk about 'resources,' right?  "Limited resources."  "Sources of energy that are 'renewable'," as in wind, solar, hydro: ways to create power that generate themselves again every day, that are commonly owned/shared.  That don't involve pollution or extinction of the source when it's most needed.  See what's happening with the oil spill.  Easy oil is almost gone now.  And we're ever more dependent on it.  While it's also turning our amiable hostess Gaia into an oven.  Ouch! I'm cooking! I'm being cooked!

So then, resources is the issue, right?  Why can't we BE the resources we seek?  Sounds Oedipal?  It is!  What happens if we begin to think of ourselves as the resources we need?  What if we begin to practice BEING resources for each other?

A whole lot!  Big shift in thinking.  Now we don't need a lot of resources.  We need to interpret each other AS resources.  And what can we trade that is, as Stan Dale would say, "free"?  We can trade LOVE, or 'amor,' or 'amore,' or 'amour' as those hopelessly Romantic, romance language people would say. 

Then we see that being POLYAMOROUS, being capable, by nurture, by nature (who knows?) of trading these AMOROUS RESOURCES with a whole bunch of people is NOT a dangerous perversion, is NOT a problem, is NOT a liability, is NOT a sign of being promiscuous or a misfit.  IT IS ACTUALLY A VIRTUE!!!

Yes, you heard me.  BEING POLY IS ACTUALLY A VIRTUE!  It should be rewarded as a free recycling system, as a national forest deep-ecology biodiversity sustaining nurturing ecosystem. It should be cause for being nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace!

"But wait a minute," you must be saying, "is this for real?"  "Sounds like a trick to justify some wicked perversion."

Well, I leave the final judgment to you.  It's on the video.  Somebody in the audience at Open Secret asked "what's the connection between Gaia the living planet and open love, open relating?"

That's how I explained it!

Go ahead and listen . . . .

Then, if you like what you hear, you can get more info from the source of my wisdom, Gaia and the New Politics of Love.  This book was inspired by one who IS the pleasure he seeks.  Watch out for the book's new digital edition, coming soon.  Meanwhile, get your paper version and start practicing love's wisdom.

There will be more posts and clips.  The momentous series of events we held in Norther California in June-early July will be unfolding digitally as we post clips and snippets, with comments.

We look forward to YOUR comments too!

Namaste,

Gaia

a.k.a. Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio

Gaia Silver Winner in Cosmology and New Science for Nautilus Book Awards

Dear Serena,

Congratulations !  I am delighted to inform you that our Second Team of judges has selected the 2010 Nautilus  Silver Award winners, and North Atlantic Books has a winning title.

Your Silver Winner is:

·        Gaia and the New Politics of Love by Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio –

     007 Cosmology/New Science

All Silver Winning titles have now moved to the third and final phase of judging where the Gold Winner for each category will be selected.  Gold Winners will be announced and posted on our website, www.nautilusbookawards.com, on Wednesday morning, May 26^th,  and also at the BookExpo America in New York. 

All Winners are eligible to receive 12 complimentary custom-designed metallic Silver Winner’s seals.

If you want to receive these seals, please email us the best address to send them to you.

All Silver Winners will be contacted by email in a few days

 and offered the opportunity to purchase additional seals.

We have attached a .jpg of the Nautilus Awards Silver Winner’s seal for you to use on your website, for subsequent printings of your book, or for PR  and marketing.

****************************************************************************

2010 Nautilus Book Awards Gold Winners will receive Award Certificates, and these books will be:

• Announced and exhibited in our 2010 Nautilus Book Awards Showcase at the publishing industry's premier event, BookExpo America, held this year in the Jacob Javits Center in New York.
• Announced in a Press Release which will be widely distributed at the BEA, and sent directly to our select list of media.
• Exhibited for ONE YEAR in a special display on our website, www.nautilusbookawards.com,with a photograph and write-up of the book.
• Announced in the June issue of EVOLVE! Magazine and distributed to 45,000 consumers through hundreds of bookstores. This will be a 5- page, full-color article with a photograph of each of the Gold-winning titles.                                       

Silver Winners will be offered the opportunity to exhibit their books at a greatly reduced rate in our booth at the BookExpo America in New York. More information about this will follow.

ALL SILVER & GOLD WINNERS WILL BE ADDED TO THE “NAUTILUS LIBRARY OF IMAGINATION & POSSIBILITY,” AND LISTED ON OUR WEBSITE, http://www.nautilusbookawards.com/The_Nautilus_Library.html

We will continue to update you on the progress of our judges.  If you have any questions or need any more information, please contact me at marilyn@marilynmcguire.com

Please know how much we appreciate your entering the 2010 Nautilus Book Awards.

We agree with Dr. Jean Houston, who says of the Nautilus Winning titles, “These books are creating a curriculum for those folks out there who are longing for a new story.” 

Cheers & Smiles,

Marilyn

MARILYN McGUIRE, Founder / Director

NAUTILUS BOOK & AUDIO BOOK AWARDS

286 ENCHANTED FOREST ROAD (shipping)

P.O. BOX 1359 (mailing/billing)

EASTSOUND, WA   98245

www.nautilusbookawards.com

P please consider the environment before printing this e-mail

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Polyamory and Sex Could Save the Planet, Author Argues

Tinamarie Bernard on Modern Love Examiner

At first glance, sex and the environment don’t make obvious bedfellows. How can the answer to our environmental problems – global warming, access to fresh water, ecological sustainability, and the use of fossil fuels – possibly be found between the satin sheets of lovers? According to a growing number of greenies, free love may just save the world. In her newest book, Gaia: The New Politics of Love, author Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio attempts to lay the groundwork for this premise.

        

         Can pushing our comfort 

         zones about love be the 

         answer to world peace? 

       Image: Rene Magritte

Read more in  Modern Love Examiner

March 17, 2010