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Friday, June 17, 2011

2 | Friday is for Poetry | Venerdi Poesia | "A Lake for the Heart | Il lago del cuore" | Luigi Anderlini

Hi lovely Earthlings!

Lago di Bracciano, photo by Ivano Pulcini
Here we come to the second episode of Friday is for Poetry.  The poem, "The Lake," from the collection, A Lake for the Heart, is by Luigi Anderlini, for yours truly's translation into English.  For you lovers of Italian--and there are many for this handsome language where so much beauty and knowledge is stored--please scroll down to the end and find the original.  The lake Luigi Anderlini was in love with is il lago di Bracciano, in the vicinity of Rome, the capital of Italy where Luigi's political career brought him.  The moving aspect of the poem is the way the lake is address like a body of water with a soul, with a will of its own, with a soul.  Echoes of Greek mythology where the forces of nature are treated like Titans whose power we humble humans must acknowledge, came to Luigi through his first wife Lidia's classical education.  You will get more of that as you come to know her through his poems.  Yours truly now leaves you with the poet's voice.
 

THE LAKE


“Your roar was but a whisper”
Eugenio Montale “Cuttlefish Bones” – “Mediterranean”

If I look at you from the crenels
of the castle above
the overhanging cliffs,
oh lake, you are in my eyes
a little bit of sky studded
in the gradually lowering valleys.

In the spring, a wide green bed grows around you.
Round like the mouth
0f the volcano you were millions of years ago,
your breath is now
light and secret,
an almost evanescent perfume.
I would like to slide
between earth and sky like your gulls
whose pale shadow is left on water
while the impalpable fluff
of time descends from on high.

On your shores today pile-dwellings like
a hundred centuries ago.  And if I appear
in the mist on the surface of your diaphanous waters
time runs backwards
and I am the animal who invents
the warmth of a home
on boards thrust in mud.
Like a vortex, funnel, or goblet
you descend deep in the abyss.
The north wind sweeps you from above.
It infuriates you, pushing you
to get rid of every impurity.
Or the east wind curls you up, mockingly.
Or the west wind flatters you, careful lover.
Amused, you vary your colors from
indigo to pale green.
The same and different always, across time you exist
and challenge it.  You challenge me too,
as in your presence
I am but an unruly, hopeless maggot.

Ploughed by your ferry’s prow
that heaves a huge whisker of water,
scratched by the keels of your boats,
annoyed by the blades of your rows,
you, lake, hang in there
impassible, and perhaps
in your turquoise summer,
enjoy the lavish colors,
the hundreds sails that bring
a festive glory to all your shores.
At night you smile at the moon’s
long, fringed dazzle, and in the dark
your undertow mumbles
its secret disquiet.
I’ve lived next to you for years.
Between the leaves your blue
arrives at my green shelter.  
I can’t see you but I measure your anger
as I listen to your mumble. 
You lay down large mats of water
on the soft, warm sand.
The curls of your wave
hit the cliff and break.
At night, your falling wave’s
deep thud upsets my heart.

I set off at dusk with my “Piaff.”
Cool form the sea, the west wind
blows into the sail.
The water swashes
around the hull. 
The shore becomes an arched sickle behind me.
A hustle and bustle of voices
follow me through the air.
Then nothing but
the wind’s soft blow into the sail,
my trip in the lake’s deep silence. 
The sunset still dazzles,
its light playing between my jib and spanker.
The hills look on in amazement.
The lake is the back of an enormous liquid animal;
The catamaran you catch a glimpse of
is just a tall shadow in the pouring light.
Silently, it ploughs the water without 
breaking the impending silence.
A voice softly pierces the darkening air
to reach you.
The words you hear are
miraculously new. 
“Ciao!  A cheerful ponentino, ha!  You still at it?  Ciao!”
You feel the hulls’ cut,
as you brush against
the other white spanker.
It’s your last rendez-vous, your last greeting
as the sun goes down behind the withered hills.

Among the thick black plants that mark
the boundary between earth and sky
A glimmer still shines.
Like enormous dinosaurs, with bristly backs
the hills chase one another.
Suddenly a yellow blaze goes off
in the shore’s circle.  A billion years’ jump
back into the past.
The foaming lava seethes
on the crater’s edges.
unconquered nature
Imposes its violent law:
“You’re just a twig in my hands”
she claims, “Then as now,
I am the one to assign destinies,
to keep a firm grip
on each and every life.”
A door closes yet again
in the sky’s vault.
The lance of time wins inexorably
and lets me know that on the shores
I see windows and city lights.
Life travels through time
slowly conquering it, raping it,
printing its marks 
everywhere and claiming them
like flags displayed in the sun.

The wind is down and the lights whiten
in the high silence.
I am alone with you,
lake, lord of the night.
The sail hangs flaccid from the mast, the water
is black with shiny tar,
far away are the stars.
It’s the time of wasted expectations
that one does not give up.
One’s frail hopes rise
the enlightenment of a decision is long to come.
Nor does resignation set in
to console one from pain.
One’s imagination is consumed
yet does not give up--the future still flickers.
The hills’ merry go round has stopped now.
Lake, for you it’s time
to rest, lie down, and steal the quiet
of endless dialogs.
Something different is preparing for me: my last
voyage into the dark.  This ultimate return
ashore feels disquieting. 
Now the wind shakes my sale again:
A light breeze that barely blows from the north.
The boat slides quietly.
Soft and persuasive,
my landing ashore is a
delicate incision on the sand. 


Lake Bracciano, Isotopes
 

Il lago
“il tuo rombo non era che un sussurro”
Montale “Ossi di seppia” – “Mediterraneo”


Se ti guardo dai merli
del castello, che sovrasta
a strapiombo la scogliera,
agli occhi miei tu, lago, sei
un po’ di cielo incastonato
nel lento degradare delle valli.
Ti cresce attorno, a primavera, un ampio letto verde.
Tondo come la bocca
del vulcano che fosti milioni di anni fa,
ora il tuo respiro
è lieve e segreto
quasi lo svaporare d’un profumo.
Tra cielo e terra vorrei
infilarmi come i tuoi gabbiani
che lasciano sull’acqua appena un’ombra
mentre scende impalpabile
– dall’alto – la lanugine del tempo.

Oggi sulle tue rive ancora palafitte come
cento secoli fa. E se nella caligine
affioro al pelo dell’acqua tua diafana
precipita il tempo all’indietro
e sono l’animale che congegna
il tepore di casa
sopra gli assi piantati nella melma.
Profondo – a vortice – come un imbuto
o un calice, tu scendi nell’abisso.
Sopra ti spazza tesa
tramontana che t’infuria e ti spinge
a liberarti d’ogni impurità.
O t’arriccia irridente
il tuo grecale o ti lusinga, accorto
amante, il ponentino.
Divertito tu vari i colori, dall’indaco
al verde pallido.
Sempre uguale e diverso, sei nel tempo
e lo sfidi. Sfidi anche me
che al tuo cospetto sono
ma indocile larva senza scampo.

Solcato dalla prua
del tuo battello
- alza grandi baffi d’acqua –
graffiato dalla chiglia
delle barche, infastidito
dalle pale dei remi,
tu, lago, te ne resti
impassibile e magari
d’estate ti godi nel tuo turchese,
lo scialo dei colori,
le cento e cento vele
glorianti a festa tutte le tue sponde.
La notte ridi al barbaglio
lungo e sfrangiato della luna
e la tua risacca borbotta
nel buio segreta inquietudine.
Da anni ormai ti vivo accanto.
Al mio rifugio verde arriva
– tra le foglie – il tuo azzurro.
Non ti vedo ma ascolto
il tuo mormorare, misuro
la tua collera: i grandi
tappeti d’acqua che stendi
nella rena morbida e calda,
l’onda arricciata che precipita
e si frange sulla scogliera
o il tonfo profondo
del flutto che s’abbatte
e che di notte mi annega
il cuore in subbuglio.

Parto al tramonto così il mio “Piaff”.
Nella vela il ponentino
soffia fresco dal mare.
Sciaborda l’acqua a circuire
limpida lo scafo. S’innarca
dietro di me, larga, la falce
della spiaggia: tramestio
di voci che m’inseguono
nell’aria. Poi non resta
che il soffice soffio del vento nella vela,
il viaggio nel silenzio denso e assorto del lago.
Barbaglia ancora il sole che tramonta,
tra randa e fiocco gioca alterna la luce.
Guardano stupefatte le colline.
Il lago è il dorso d’un enorme animale liquido
ed il catamarrano che intravedi
è ancora un’ombra alta nella luce che spiove.
Solca silente l’acqua e non incrina
il silenzio che incombe.
La voce che ti arriva
perfora tenera l’aria che imbruna.
Miracolosamente
nuove sono le parole che ascolti.
“Ciao! Allegro il ponentino! Tu vai ancora? Ciao!”
Avverti il taglio degli scafi,
dolcissimo è il fruscio
dell’alta randa bianca.
È l’ultimo incontro, l’ultimo saluto
cala il sole dietro le colline stecchite.

C’è ancora chiarore
tra le piante fitte che – nere – segnano
il confine tra cielo terra e cielo.
Enormi dinosauri le colline
che – irsuto il dorso – immote si rincorrono.
All’improvviso scatta
nel cerchio delle rive una vampata
gialla. Si torna indietro
di miliardi di anni:
alla lava che schiumando ribolle
ai bordi del cratere,
alla natura indomita
che impone violenta la sua legge:
- “Altro non siete che un fuscello” – dice–
“Nelle mie mani. Allora come oggi.
Sono io che segno i destini,
che ferma mantengo la mia presa
sulla vita di tutti e di ciascuno”.
Ma un’altra porta si chiude
di nuovo nella calotta del cielo.
Inesorabile vince la lancia del tempo
e mi dice che quelle sono luci
lampioni, finestre accese sulle rive.
È vita che viaggia nel tempo
e lenta lo conquista e lo violenta
che stampa le sue impronte
ovunque e le reclama
come grandi bandiere esposte al sole.

Caduto è il vento, altissimo è il silenzio,
si sbiancano le luci.
Sono solo con te
- lago – che sei padrone della notte.
Dall’albero pende flaccida la vela, l’acqua
è nera di catrame lucido,
lontane le stelle.
È questa l’ora delle attese vane,
in cui non ci si rassegna.
Crescono gracili le speranze
e tarda il lume delle decisioni
e la rassegnazione non arriva
a consolarti della pena.
La fantasia si consuma
ma non cede, balugina ancora il futuro.
S’è fermata attorno la giostra
delle colline. Per te – lago – è l’ora
del riposo disteso, della quiete
rubata, dei colloqui senza fine.
Altro per me si prepara: un ultimo
viaggio nel buio, un ritorno inquieto
verso l’approdo estremo.
Ed eccolo il vento che scuote la vela:
soffice, da nord, appena una brezza leggera.
Scivola tacita la barca.
L’approdo è una incisione
morbida e persuasiva,
dolcissima sulla rena.

1996


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

The poems will appear every Friday at 11:00 AM.  Come back!  And get your copy of A Lake for the Heart right away!

Stay tuned for more wonders.

Namaste,


Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD
Gilf Gaia Extraordinaire
Author of Gaia and the New Politics of Love and many other books
Professor of Humanities
University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez
Join Our Mailing List

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A Lake for the Heart





Tuesday, June 14, 2011

2 of 7 - Bisexual Epistemologies: A Journey from Nausea to Commitment

Bisexual Epistemologies: A Journey from Nausea to Commitment 

An occasional piece by
Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

For The Journal of Bisexuality’s 10th Anniversary Issue

Hi dear readers!
This seven-in-one piece will be great fun--yours truly promises.  Find out all the ins and outs of 10 years of Bisexuality!  What does "epistemology"mean?  Big word, right?  Well, all it means is that when you're making love you're producing knowledge.  A good thing!
We follow the abstract with the Introduction, and will have five more posts.  Really revealing of all those things about bi you've always been curious about.  Why is it so good?  What can it do for you?  For the planet?  For the future?  For authentic intimacy?  It's all here, spiced with a bit of irony and critique of why we're so behind on our agenda.  What's keeping us from being more efficient.
Also arcane words you've been told have no meaning unless you got a PhD are explained--made very easy!  "Nausea," "existentialism": it's all about the chakra system--really.  Commitment?  It's not about going to jail (as in, "being committed").  But rather, it's about "being-in-action" about things.  Being the one who makes the difference!  No mysteries.  Woooooow!  Come back for more, will you?  We'll post every week, on Tuesdays.
Namaste,
Serena

 
2. Introduction

It is an acknowledgement to be invited to contribute to this anniversary issue.[1]  Ten Years of Bisexuality is how fellow-traveler eclectic and queer-theory pioneer David Halperin would probably call this--not to mention Nobel Laureate in Literature Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who might have preferred Ten Years of Solitude.[2]  Let this occasional piece be an opportunity to analyze the miracle of planetary consciousness and political circumstances that has been at cause of my being part of it, and reflect on what we might learn from the results.
 In 2003 I was invited to guest edit the issue that became Women and Bisexuality: A Global Perspective.  Regina Reinhardt, the journal’s associate editor, was a close collaborator of Fritz Klein, founder of the journal.  She offered the opportunity and the issue ended up collecting articles from four different continents.  In 2005 I invited myself to guest-edit an issue on the intersections of polyamory and bisexuality.  Fritz Klein initially resisted the idea.  As a seasoned good listener who would allow eloquence and a good argument to convince him, he eventually agreed.  It became Plural Loves: Designs for Bi and Poly Living, now an appreciated book in poly communities for research and practice.  Fritz Klein passed in 2006, and I remember writing, in a post-traumatic state of semi-trance from the death of a respected friend and intimate leader, “In Absentia,” a short introductory piece for the issue about to go to print.  When Jonathan Alexander came in as editor-in-chief anointed by the Fritz Klein legacy that funds this initiative, I proposed Bisexuality and Queer Theory (2010).[3]  This issue is now in production as a book that promises to bridge the discursive gap between practice and theory, communities and ivy leagues, or the body and the mind, to use shorthand from new age speak.  There were no conferences in North America in years subsequent to Klein’s passing that would offer spaces for continuance of the integration of discourses auspicated by the activist scholarship to which I devote my energies.  When the energies for one such conference jelled in England, in 2010, I was invited to keynote and sparkled the idea of the proceedings volume that became BiTopia, now in print as a journal issue.[4]
Every issue has been a labor of love devoted to the overarching commitment to the scientific invention of a world where love for love, or erotophilia, is revered.  As an activist scholar, I don’t follow trends that promise prestige.  I chart new fields that offer the opportunity to make the world a better place for those who love love as I do and are willing to stand for an inclusive amorous vision beyond binaries and divisive dualisms.  This requires a public profile that involves risk.  It also involves the effort of being beyond the lateral hostilities that often make coordination among activists, communities, advocates, and academics difficult, as well as a vision whose horizon is wider than the sum of often conflicting academic sectors and disciplines.  I hope to have kept faith to my overarching intent at all times, even though I am aware that in some cases this is just wishful thinking.
Over this period I have considered myself a participant observer and research activist of bisexuality, as an in-flux identity, a diverse community, a subculture interspersed with tropes from other, contiguous groups, and a practice of love rich with many variations.  Bisexuality is just as healthy as any other sexual orientation, Fritz Klein established with his seminal work in the mid 1980s, The Bisexual Option.  If fact, when social and cultural causes for neuroses that can accrue from it are removed, it is even healthier since it corresponds to the potential for “100 Percent Intimacy,” as indicated in the subtitle he chose for that book.[5]  Klein focused on how this applies to the individual, as in the kind of therapeutic approach that can help a bisexual person feel comfortable with her/his orientation and related practices of love. 
Today cultural discourse about the interconnection between sexuality and consciousness has developed much further.  Many of us believe that active sexual education and amorous expression, not the stillness of a couch with the “talking cure,” is where the healing begins.  We are also more aware of planetary consciousness, or the noosphere--which has been further activated by cyberspace interactivity.  In this evolving cultural context, Klein’s claim about the health of a bisexual person can be projected on the wider horizon of global ecological health, which can thrive on the expansion of human sexual fluidity and amorous inclusiveness.  In a homeopathic rhetorical turn, one might theorize bisexuality, and/or the fear thereof, as the “problem” which is the solution, the “disease” which is the cure, the “lie” which is the truth, in an algorithm with the potential to heal personal, relational, cultural, social, ecological, emotional, and economic wounds all the way back to Plato’s dualisms. 
When we look forwards we can envision bisexuality as an engine in the paradigmatic shift toward a future of sexual fluidity and amorous inclusiveness where the energies of love and life are revered.  In other words, bisexuality is the foundation of a new epistemology based on love for our hostess, third planet Gaia, and the mantle teeming with life that she has enshrined herself in to welcome the life journeys of an amazing range of interdependent beings, from humans to bacteria and everything in between.[6] 
If bisexuality is an epistemology--or at least a significant element in the new episteme toward which planetary consciousness is shifting--then we may want to go back to literature, the art of wordsmiths, to sort out what this means.


[1] Jonathan Alexander, the editor-in-chief whose rhetorical expertise has been so instrumental in keeping the Journal going since Fritz Klein’s death, is the one who helped me see the call to contribute to this issue as a form of recognition for my role in affirming the Klein legacy.  I owe him many of the insights of this piece.  Our conversations were very inspiring.  Another debt is owed Regina Reinhardt for also insisting.  Thank you!
[2] My references are David Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality, and its palimpsest, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, by now two respected classics in their own discursive ambits.
[4] Introduction pre-published on Poly Planet Gaia, here: http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/search/label/BiTopia%3A%20Intro%20to%20BiReCon%20Proceedings%20Volume. My contribution to this issue, from my keynote, is also available on Poly Planet Gaia, here:

[5] The Bisexual Option was published in the early 1980s with the subtitle A Concept of One Hundred Percent Intimacy.  It went into its second edition in 1993. 
[6] The reference here is my own work on bisexuality and global ecological theory, in Gaia and the New Politics of Love (2009).





Yours truly appreciates your attention.  Stay tuned for more wonders.

Namaste,

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD
Gilf Gaia Extraordinaire
Author of Gaia and the New Politics of Love and many other books
Professor of Humanities
University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez
Join Our Mailing List

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Friday, June 10, 2011

1 | Friday is for Poetry | Venerdi Poesia | "A Lake for the Heart | Il lago del cuore" | Luigi Anderlini


 Hi lovely Eathlings!

Luigi Anderlini
for the summer yours truly has decided to share something really beautiful and personal.  Her dad, Luigi Anderlini, was a really extraordinary person.  A poet, memoirist, and intellectual who came from teaching and dedicated himself to politics, he was such a model of honesty that when the entire political class of his generation came under attack for corruption by the judicial system--in the early 1990s--yours truly never even doubted for a moment that he was at any risk of being found wrong.  And he wasn't!  

Today, with rampant greed pervading civil life, mainstream media, and politics, with a whole new class of nouveaux riches--the new rich whose money was made in the digital revolution and is now embezzled out of the economy and into some tax havens, or paradisi fiscali as they say in Italian--this is so rare as to demand celebration!

Because her dad was a poet, and because he so loved nature that one might say he almost feel in love with it like an ecosexual would do, yours truly happily celebrates this occasion with the forthcoming series Friday is for Poetry, or Venerdi poesia, as Italians would say.  The poems in this series are part of the collection her dad left for publication after his death, A Lake for the Heart, or Il lago del cuore.  Yours truly had the privilege of doing the translation and introduction to the bilingual edition for Gradiva Press in 2005.  This really helped her grieve the loss.  The death of Luigi Anderlini was a bit like the death of an age in the world where he emerged as a public figure, Italy, and later Europe and the world.  Her relatives kept asking, "aren't you missing your dad?"  She replied, "no, because I'm with him every day when I translate one of his poems."  Translators, especially good translators, really crawl under one's skin.  They penetrate our body and soul.  Yours truly never felt as close to her dad as when she translated his poems.  Many of them made her cry over and over.  And revealed to her aspects of life beyond death.  It was an intimacy forbidden in the secular world.  And so she kept telling herself that this translation process felt a bit like post-mortem incest. Oh well . . .

Here she will reproduce the poems that stirred her emotions most, "The Lake," "Women," and "Lydia."  You lovely earthlings who will read the series will become familiar with the poet, the fine, sensitive person whose emotions became chiseled in words.  The plan is to follow this with a short biography--the introduction to the collection--that will reveal more of the public figure and political person--the agent of change that Luigi Anderlini was in his era.  

Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton
Oh, if more poets came onto the scene of politics!  Obama, for one, is a good rhetorician, and--unlike his predecessor--he can spell.  He is literate, a cultured person.  And he can choose words.  Words, in politics and everything else, are not "just words."  They are what stirs the imagination to make a transformed reality possible.  Politics is a chiseling of words.  Or not!  Obama has distinguished himself as a chiseler, and yours truly's dad, who was known in Italy for crossing the color lines, would have been so happy to know that a man of two races followed the dark years of the shrub era.  When politics is not a chiseling of words, it can be a string of insults, a non-rhetoric of slander and offensiveness that only reflects the ignorance of those deluded enough to think that it it will benefit them, as in, say, the Tea Party Movement and its followers.

Poetry, however, is more than rhetoric, even elegant rhetoric.  Poetry is a search for the soul.  And that's what the collection yours truly translated was.  A man consciously approaching the last door, with the memory of a life lived in integrity, an authentic life, an imperfect life, a life that made sense.  A man who chooses to dedicate time before death to chiseling the literary legacy of this life.  A legacy where the most personal aspects and the most public ones are integrated, in a somewhat feminist fashion dare one say.

As you stay with the project, dear reader and lovely earthling, you will come across the premonitions of ecosexual love in some of Luigi Anderlini's poems, and the legacy of questions from her father's biography that came up for her, as yours truly explored the possibility of finding answers for them in the inclusive practices of love of which she is now aware.

The poems will appear every Friday at 11:00 AM.
Come back! And get your copy of A Lake for the Heart right away!


Yours truly appreciates your attention.  Stay tuned for more wonders.

Namaste,

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD
Gilf Gaia Extraordinaire
Author of Gaia and the New Politics of Love and many other books
Professor of Humanities
University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez
Join Our Mailing List

 GaiaCoverFullSize  
Follow us in the social media
Poly Planet GAIA Blog: http://polyplanet.blogspot.com/ 
Author's Page/Lists all books: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA 
YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini
 
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A Lake for the Heart