Mini Encyclopedia of EcoSexuality - Eros (3 of 3)

Entry:  Eros

by Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

3. Eros Across Time and Space, cont'd

When modernity became a prevalent mentality in the scenes of Western Culture, Eros came back as a significant cultural trope via the discourse of psychoanalysis.  Cultural constructs of the divine were still prevalently male, monotheistic, and abstract.  The mind/body split that had resulted in the divorce of the sacred from the erotic was still in function.  Humans still believed they had been made “in God’s Image.”  They were encouraged to do so by evolutionary science that positioned our species at the pinnacle of evolution: the form of life for whom other forms had been designed.  These constructs aligned with official scientific practices that desacralized nature and turned it into a resource for human life. 

Predictably, Eros’s come back was partial: from a deity in a polytheistic pantheon, the trope became a sexual instinct or drive.  Freud, a founder of the new human science, had a predilection for Greek tropes to conceptualize psychoanalysis.  He envisioned Eros as the life instinct and associated this instinct with its opposite: Thanatos, the drive to death and self-destruction.  This binary helped Freud explain intra-psychic conflicts while positioning the erotic on the side of life.  In this way, psychoanalytic discourse rescued the erotic from its association with “sin” and “vice,” and made it an element in the discourse of late 19^th century vitalism, of which Freud’s views were part. 

In the late 20^th century, the discourse of postmodern science produced a gradual but effective decoupling of the practice of love from reproduction.  While the Gaia Hypothesis postulated that love begins with unicellular life, the biosciences began to study the effects of love across biological realms.  It became apparent that within the discourse of psychoanalysis the redemption of Eros could only be partial.  As an instinct, Eros was considered “natural,” but only to the extent that its pursuit was contained within the cultural values of the time.  The modern notion of the “natural” was very narrow.  “Sexuality” was the new cultural construct based on which all arts and practices of love were to be analyzed.  Yet all non-reproductive expressions of love were pre-classified as “perversions” that caused illness because they were “unnatural.”  Psychotherapy used discourse to talk patients out of them.  But Eros proved too powerful and the “talking cure” did not always work out.  The practice of same-gender love and a woman’s choice to experience pleasure and pursue her desire contrasted with the cultural values of the time.  Civilization was associated with the stability of these values.  This explains why Freud did not carry his own premises fully out. 

When psychoanalysis, sex-positive feminism, and political theory started to converse with one another things became more contextualized.  In the 1960s, Marcuse identified the connection between sexual repression and social oppression.  In Eros and Civilization he connected the dots between Freud and Marx.  Reich proposed to liberate the erotic energy in the body and thereby cure the mind.  In the 1970-80s, sex-positive feminists, including Gayle Rubin, Ruby Rich, and many others, unpacked women’s sexuality and reclaimed female erotic power.  The new genre of Erotica was invented as a style in the visual and performing arts that celebrates nudity, sexual play, erotic seduction, styles of pleasure, orgasmic variety, and body art.  Conventional pornography was turned upside down.  The emphasis was on pleasure, playfulness, and art rather than arousal.  The intention was to encourage all viewers to become more knowledgeable in the arts of love, rather than feed male viewers with ejaculatory fantasies.  With Annie Sprinkle, Carol Queen, Susie Bright, Betty Dodson, and others, women became erotic protagonists and sovereign sexual subjects.  Female viewers felt especially empowered: their anatomy of arousal and erotic potential were finally recognized.  A new scene for the arts of love had come about. 

In this new scene, Eros made a full come back when humans realized they were vulnerable to the forces of a degraded environment and a seriously damaged climate.  The way the sacred value of the force of love was re-established was roundabout.  In the context of global ecology and a new impulse to respect non-human life, Neo-paganism appeared as a cultural movement that pluralized the sacred and vowed to revere life in all its manifestations.  At about the same time, modern Tantra appeared in the West as a reverberation of a countercultural tradition within Hinduism, another polytheistic culture.  Tantra emphasizes the union of the erotic and the sacred in the arts of love.  Behind these cultural elements was a vernacular notion of Gaia as the web of life, a sense of cyberspace as a manifestation of planetary consciousness, and a circular sense of planetary life as recycling.  The new cultural tropes restored to Eros his sacred powers.

In the practice of sacred sexuality the sovereignty of female pleasure is recognized.  A new marriage of the sacred and the erotic became possible when the interdependence of Eros and Gaia, feminine and masculine, matter and energy, lover and beloved, was recognized.  When the experience of pleasure becomes a way to expand consciousness, one’s ability to channel the cosmic force of love is magnified.   The arts of love serve to channel the flow of energy so that one element can transform into another in the continuous recycling of life.

See Also: Gaia Hypothesis, Ecosexuality, Tantra, Herbert Marcuse, Plato, Sappho, Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis, Thanatos, Cupid, The Symposium, Giacomo Casanova, Marquis De Sade, Humanism, Gaspara Stampa, Veronica Franco, Erotica, sex-positive feminism, Ovid, sexual, sacred, arts of love.

List of Sources

Bright, Susie.  Full Exposure: Opening Up to Sexual Creativity and Erotic Expression.  New York: Harper Collins, 2009.

Casanova, Giacomo.  The Story of My Life.  Gilberto Pizzamiglio ed.  Stephen Sartarelli tr.  New York: Penguin, 2001.

De Sade, Marquis.  The Marquis de Sade: The Complete Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings.  Richard Seaver and Austryn Wainhouse trs.  Introduction by Jean Paulhan and Maurice Blanchot.  New York: Grove Press, 1965.

Franco, Veronica.  Poems and Selected Letters.  University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Freud, Sigmund.  Beyond the Pleasure Principle.  New York: Penguin, 2003.

Halperin, David.  One Hundred Years of Homosexuality.   New York: Routledge, 2012.

Holland, Nancy.  “Looking Backwards: A Feminist Revisits Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization.” Hypatia: 26: 1 (Winter 2011): 65-78.

Marcuse, Herbert.  Eros and Civilization.  Boston: Beacon Press, 1974.

Ovid.  The Art of Love.  James Michie tr.  New York: Random House 2013.

Plato.  Symposium.  Robin Waterfield tr.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Queen, Carol.  Real Live Nude Girls: Chronicles of Sex-Positive Culture.  New York: Cleis Press, 2003. 

Reich, Wilhelm.  Character Analysis.  Vincent Carfagno tr.  New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013.

Rich, Ruby.  Chick Flicks: Theories and Memories of the Feminist Film Movement.  Duke University Press, 1998. 

Rubin, Gayle.  “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex.”  In Literary Theory: An Anthology (770-794).  Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan eds.  New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. 

Sappho.  The Complete Poems of Sappho.   Willis Barnstone tr.  New York: Shambhala Publications, 2011. 

Sprinkle, Annie.  Dr Annie Sprinkle’s How to Be a Sex Goddesses in 101 Easy Steps.  NP: Joseph Kramer/Erospirit, 2008.

______  .  Dr. Annie Sprinkle’s Amazing World of Orgasm.  Joseph Kramer dir.  NP: Erospirit, 2007. 

Stampa, Gaspara.  Selected Poems.  SUNY: Italica Press, 2008.

To be continued: new entry is The Gaia Hypothesis . . .  come back next week, same time.

Sending much love and all good wishes to all of you and your loved ones.  Thanks you for listening and opening up.  Stay tuned for more coming.  With all good wishes for a happy spring and summer.  Thank you!

Namaste,

SerenaGaia

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD

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

Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings 
Go to Author's Page/Lists all Books:  
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA  
YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini
Be Appraised of Ecosex Community Project PostaHouse
 

Mini Encyclopedia of EcoSexuality - Eros (2 of 3)

Entry:  Eros

by Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

3. Eros Across Time and Space

In Antiquity, Eros was imagined as a deity, and this deity was envisioned in a number of correlated ways.  Most of these are rehearsed in Plato’s dialog dedicated to Eros, The Banquet, or Symposium.  The background for this dialog is an Athenian practice of love known as pederasty, whereby, in a two-month retreat, an adult man initiates a young man into the arts of loving.  Participants in the banquet, Athenian men of various age groups, are invited to commend Eros.  Their interpretations correspond to a range of perspectives on love still held today.  Phaedrus describes Eros as one of the oldest gods, also known as Titans, because they represented forces of nature whose power was sovereign over human life.  This interpretation assumes that Eros is a cosmic force.  As a natural element, Eros is similar to other Titans: Aeolus for the winds, Uranus for the sky, Cronus for time, and Gea, or Gaia, for the Earth.  

Other participants in the all-male banquet include the legal expert Pausanias, Socrates’s youthful and handsome disciple Agathon, the physician Eryximachus, the playwright Aristophanes, the philosopher Socrates, and young Alcibiades, another disciple of Socrates who arrives drunk.  Pausanias’s interpretation associates Eros with Aphrodite since he was sometimes seen as her son.  He brings up Aphrodite’s spiritual and erotic aspects, claiming that a balance of both is advisable.  Agathon describes Eros as a youthful and handsome god, which tends to associate love with the effervescence of youth and the process of reproduction.  Aristophanes associates Eros with the durability and uniqueness implied in the construct of “the other half.”  Legend has it that ancient humans had two faces, four legs and four arms.  They were of three kinds:  male, female, and male/female.  Zeus cut them in halves because they were too arrogant.  Eros is the force that attracts the two severed halves to one another: to form durable, self-contained couples made of two men, two women, or a woman and a man.  This interpretation appreciates the value of monogamy and same-gender love in a way that could be used by today’s advocates of gay marriage equality.  The more holistic Eryximachus associates Eros with the state of health in one’s life: medicine, music, and astronomy are love’s allies, provided they are well practiced. 

Socrates’s turn eventually comes, and, as is typical of Plato’s dialogs, he recaps the inconsistencies of others and provides a more comprehensive interpretation.  The philosopher invokes the wisdom of another philosopher, Diotima, a woman who answered his questions when asked.   “Eros,” Diotima claimed, “is neither young nor old.”  The lesson reads, as Socrates continues to explain to the others, that he is a mediator between the desirer and the desired, the human and the divine, the young and the old, the beautiful and the ugly.  He is the force that guides humans towards the beautiful, which inspires humans to desire knowledge, and therefore coincides with the good.  This union of good and beautiful is what one wants to keep forever, Socrates reports, as he refers back to Aristophanes’s appreciation for same-gender love.  The question arises: how do same-gender and other-gender unions last in time?  The union of men and women produces descendants.  The union of men and men is of a more elevated character because it produces ideas and philosophical dialogs.  The explanation of why Diotima forgot the union of women and women never comes.  Yet, Alcibiades, who is drunk, undermines the teacher’s argument by claiming that it’s the body of his disciples that Socrates desires, not their mind.  Socrates replies that Alcibiades is jealous of Agathon.  This exchange refers to the construct that under the effect of wine and other Aphrodisiacs, humans can become more honest with themselves about their desires.

The Symposium anticipates the mind/body split that’s part of Plato’s philosophy and the post-classical era so eagerly picked up.  Notably, the union of women and women is not mentioned in the lesson that concludes the dialog.  This epistemological deficiency is correlative to the absence of women in flesh and bones from such dialogs.  From female philosophers and teachers of the time, including Sappho, we know that the union of women and women was very fertile.  The Thaisoi of ancient Lydia specialized in the education of young women.  There this union produced ideas, poems, music, and art; and, most of all, a philosophy that advocates the freedom to love for people of both genders.  Women educated in the arts of love became aware that one finds beauty in whatever one loves.  As disciples of Sappho, young women learned to admire Helen’s practice of freedom in choosing a partner.  They experienced love as a vibration that encompasses the whole being.  And allowed love to last in one’s heart though memory, poetry, music, and nostalgia.   

Eros became Cupid when the Romans became Hellenized enough to adopt Greek deities, and adapt them to their mentality.  Cupid is often represented as a winged putto whose arrows convey the Roman rhetoric that love is a form of conquest: a rhetoric the poet Ovid ironically adopts in his manual, The Art of Love.  While Eros is envisioned as an energy, a vibration, a force that connects those in love, Cupid is more materially-oriented and practical.  Eventually, he becomes coupled with cupidity, or the desire to acquire unnecessary riches and capital.  In another legend, Eros/Cupid falls in love with Psyche and marries her.  Paganism in the Roman Empire was not conducive of sacred eroticism because cynicism prevailed and pleasure was not experienced as a path to enlightenment.  When Christianity became institutionalized, the divorce of the sacred and the sexual became final.  The new institution was held together by the myth of a sacred conception without deflowering.  The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception de-eroticized the feminine and exiled women who enjoy lovemaking from the realm of the divine.

To be continued . . .  come back next week, same time.

Sending much love and all good wishes to all of you and your loved ones.  Thanks you for listening and opening up.  Stay tuned for more coming.  With all good wishes for a happy spring and summer.  Thank you!

Namaste,

SerenaGaia

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD

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
Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings 
Go to Author's Page/Lists all Books:  
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA  
YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini
Be Appraised of Ecosex Community Project PostaHouse
 

Mini Encyclopedia of EcoSexuality - Eros (1 of 3)

Entry:  Eros

Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio, PhD

1. Summary

The notion of Eros comes from Antiquity.  In Greek mythology Eros was the god of love.  Eros represented the marriage of the sacred and the sexual at the heart of polytheism and classical mythologies.  Knowledge about this deity was considered good since it involved initiation and training in the arts of love.  Eros was often considered a force of nature, similar to other Titans or primordial deities.  Eros is the topic of Plato's dialog, The Symposium.  The Roman version of Eros was Cupid.  In the Christian Era, monotheism and the dogma of "Immaculate Conception" dissolved the marriage of the sacred and the sexual.  In the Early Modern and Modern Era, Eros made a gradual come back thanks to the Discourse of Love in Renaissance Poetry and to Freudian Psychoanalysis.  In the Post Modern Era, a full come back of Eros as a supreme force of nature is taking place, as more humans are becoming aware of love as the ecology of life on the sovereign third planet known as Gaia or Earth. 

2. Introduction

The notion of Eros comes from Antiquity.  In Greek mythology, Eros was known as the deity that represented the cosmic force of love.  In most polytheistic cultures, lovemaking was considered an art.  The practice of this art had a sacred character.  Initiation rituals marked the processes of educating young people into the practice of these arts.  As an element of nature whose force science could not explain well enough, love had its proper deity among others in a culture’s pantheon.  In Greek culture, Eros represented both the cosmic force of love and the way this force was wielded by those trained in the arts of love, or the erotic.  The very practice of these arts was considered sacred, as the energy of love would manifest among deities, among humans, and between humans and deities. 

The binary that opposes love and sex came about when polytheistic belief systems gave way to various forms of monotheisms, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  With only one deity to love, legitimate practices of love became narrower.  Since the mono deity was typically non-sexualized, the sacred and the erotic became decoupled, and erotic pleasure became constructed as “sin” or “vice.”  In the age of European expansion called the Renaissance, Eros was part of the love for nature--and human nature--that came to the age via Humanism, the cultural movement that encouraged a genuine study of the classics.  Female poets like Veronica Franco and Gaspara Stampa interpreted the art of love as the source of all other arts.  The discourse of love developed across languages and cultural arenas, including Italy, France, and England.  The “flame of love” was a central trope, carrying the idea of love as an energy that circulates and spreads like wildfire.  The erotic was the background for the poetic convention of celebrating one’s love life in a sequence of sonnets, ballads, and madrigals.  For the libertines of the 18^th century, the erotic was a subcultural space to explore various styles of pleasure related to one ideal of the revolution that concluded the century: liberté!  Known leaders in this movement include Giacomo Casanova and the Marquis de Sade. 

In the modern era the notion of Eros was revived when the human sciences evolved as legitimate disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, and psychoanalysis.  In this context, Eros became associated with the cultural construct of sexuality.  This construct was useful in rescuing erotic pleasure from the wastebasket of “sin” and “vice” where it had been placed by institutionalized Christianity.  The notion of “sexuality” placed the arts of love under the aegis of science.  It legitimized the study of love and its practices via the discipline of psychoanalysis, with Freud and others as its founders.  In this essay we will describe Eros as a cultural construct whose effects are significant in the Ancient and the modern world.  We will focus on how the trope travels, transforms, adapts across time and cultural landscapes.  

To be continued . . . . come back next week, same time.

Sending much love and all good wishes to all of you and your loved ones.  Thanks you for listening and opening up.  Stay tuned for more coming.  With all good wishes for a happy end of winter, spring, and summer.  Thank you!

Namaste,

SerenaGaia

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD

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

Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings 
Go to Author's Page/Lists all Books:  
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA  
YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini
Be Appraised of Ecosex Community Project PostaHouse
 

Plural Wedding of Ecosexual Love Sets Hearts on Fire - An Amorous Visions Calendar: Feb 22-March 6, 2014 in California

Dear Planet Lovers,

It's the night before the flight that starts a traveling period of about five months over several countries.  I only have a short time and I don't want to take off without the promised follow up to my newsletter announcements back in December.

Oh well . . . . where do I start?

The wedding: we did it!  The first plural wedding of ecosexual love in the Caribbean.  It really happened!  iI's done.  And it was a success. More: it was magic.  With everyone in the group listening to the invocation ministered by Heather Anne Trahan, and taking the vows to be Playa Azul's "spice." Wooow!  We were so amazingly diverse, yet united by this declaration of love for an ecosystem that I sincerely call my nurse, doctor, and lover.  She is very compersive and not at all jealous.  And now that we all share this lover we are all "metamours."  Lovers of a partner we share.  And since that day the shift in the energetic field all in and around the beach itself, ourselves, and those who come to enjoy nature, is just momentous.  We all share a lover, so we are all collaborative.  We were completely spontaneous and everyone was eager to be on camera. 

For me, and others I hear, emotions were high: to experience a "wedding" as freedom, peace, inclusion. When all feel part of it: more people, more "spice."  What a turn around!  Marriage? It's for everyone, ecosexual style.  Puralizing this institution: making it open, fluid, vibrant.  Acknowledging ecosystems as equals: as partners.  Thank you Playa Azul for choosing me 16 years ago and for keeping me safe, healthy, happy, at ease, and vibrant.  As an added bonus, when in the throes of this template production, an amazing team jelled up.  Our director, Shaison Ouseph, was on his first visit to Puerto Rico from Mumbai.  He learned all about us and got really enthralled, as you can see from the trailer he put out.  Many others pitched in, acknowledged with gratitude.  If you like what you see, let us know.  You can also join the conversation on the FB event page.  We are ready for the next episode in the series Hearts on Fire.  And we can bring the Hearts on Fire right where you are.  We we're taking calls and getting booked up! 

If you can't wait to hear more about Hearts on Fire, we have something coming up.  On Saturday, February 22, Hearts on Fire officially invites to a preview of Te Amo Playa Azul I Love You, at the International Conference on the Future of Monogamy and Non-Monogamy.  we start at 4 PM, at the Clark Kerr Center, Building 14, UCB, 2601 Warring St, Berkeley, CA, 94720.  It's a unique opportunity to preview and discuss the ecosexual art movie that will document the first plural wedding of ecosexual love in the Caribbean.  We're happy to present the project, share more trailers and photographs, and take questions.  Including: "how do I bring this healthy, and safe, and happy, and easy practice of ecosexual love to my families, my ecosystems, my communities?"  We look forward to being with you there.  Share with friends and invite.  Thank you!

This big wave of ecosexual love also helped congeal the energy of "Amorous Visions," the cinema studies project that brought me to Connecticut last year.  With her warm sunshine, caressing waves, clear waters, and blue horizon, it was easy for Playa Azul to attract, in one

day, some 15 "spice" (plural for the word "spouse," poly style).  No wonder she's an ecosystem conducive of such abundance.  We make movies about ecosexual love.  What if we interpret cinema as a study of ecosexual love?  Turns out the motion camera can really find out what happens to the energy of love in ecosystems toxic with fear.  The health and vitality of ecosystems does affect the quality of human relationships.  And yet, even when fear is rampant, love finds a way to survive.  Love for love: the code for this energy encapsulated in a virus, surviving for a better time.  This became the focus for UC Irvine and UC Riverside.  Amorous Visions: Sex, Genders, and Ecosystems of Love in Bertolucci and Cavani.  Talks are asfo.  Monday, March 3, at 2-3:15 PM at UCR.  Room HMNSS 2212 (English Department Conference Room), hosted by John Ganim for the auspices of the English Department and Queer Lab.  Wednesday, March 5, at 2:30-5:00 PM at UCI.  Room HG 101, hosted by Jonathan Alexander, with auspices from the Writign Center and the Gender and Sexuality Program.  These are al free univrsity event, and they are fun.  I promise.  All details and directions on the FB events page.  Join us.  We want to take your questions and practice inclusive democracy, ecosexuality style.

Speaking of which, UCSD choose a talk on Ecosexuality, and that's happening on Thursday, March 6, at 4:3-6:00 PM.  Ecosexuality: Notes for an Orgasmic Earth, is the title for the in-the-works collection about ecosexuality I'm co-editing with Lindsay Hagamen.  We will be announcing this amazing collection of writings, and introducing the

Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle's Ecosexual Wedding

online platform for the book launch.  Teamwork here too. Go to www.orgasmicearth.org to find out who all is in the line up.  We will also introduce ecosexuality as the practice, theory, art, and activist that reveres the Earth as a lover and acknowledges her ecosystems as partners with significant and enduring rights.  We will focus on the practice of ecosexual weddings to ecosystems and forces of nature, as initiated by Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens in the seven-year project LoveArtLab.  We will explain the relatednes of ecosexuality and modern Tantra.  A don't miss.  Room: LGBT Center at UC San Diego.  Hosted by Pasquale Verdicchio, with auspices by the Literature Department and the LGBT Center.  All details and directions on the FB event page.  From wherever you are, this is worth a trip to La Jolla, San Diego.  Join us!

Finally, after March 6th, time for a break comes.  Here it's time for acknowledgements to all those who contribute to this calendar.  My hostess in Oakland, Spring Friedlander, with her

healthy, amorous, and inclusive community house.  My host in San Diego, Adam Paulman, whose inclusive amorous gifts are well recognized.  All the auspices and organizers, 

including my Deans, Manuel Valdez Pizzini and Felix Fernandez.  the administrative assistants at UPR Mayaguez who spent endless hours "comprobando" (=corroborating the evidence for) expenses and funds.  The teams of Te Amo Playa Azul, including film director Shaison Ouspeh, production coordinator Lloyd Sparks, emcee slash translator Maria Virginia Sanchez, liaisons with campus and organic farms Paola Pagan and Ricardo.  High priestess Heather Anne Trahan, who invoked the natural forces on the speaking of the vows.  All the "guests" and participants in the three workshops who were eager to be filmed as spontaneously as they came long.  And who embraced together the shared spouse.  All the inspiring minds in the 2012-13 Fellows group at UCHI, and its Director, Sharon Harris.  The students in Ecosexuality, including Adam Kocurek and Alexandra Mayer, and the WGSS Chair, Nancy Naples.  Please please please help spread word of upcoming events and invite your friends.  Thank you! 

If you want to catch up with me or invite me in and around the West Coast and the Bay Area, April is your chance.  My calendar is open.  Travel plans proceed with visits and rest in May, plus getting to team up more deeply in view of future plans.  Alessio, my oldest grandchild, turns 10 on May 15th.  He's an amazing student.  Thanks Paola Coda for bringing him up.  And we plan to spend it together with family and friends in Rome.  Visits to Cap d'Agde, France, in late June, and guests from Portland, Oregon, at PostaHouse in early July.  For all these programs, there is a place set at our table, if you choose to join us.  We have extra rooms in the chalets and camping room in the garden.  space is limited so let us know in advance.

More announcements coming as projects evolve.  They have a life of their own, and I, the "inspiring force," am only the conduit ever rushing to catch up with them.  So I hope you will forgive if this letter reads a bit rushed.  Oh well, I have a flight to catch.

Sending much love and all good wishes to all of you and your loved ones.  Thanks you for listening and opening up.  Stay tuned for more coming.  With all good wishes for a happy end of winter, spring, and summer.  Thank you!

Namaste,

SerenaGaia

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD

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

Become a Fan: www.facebook.com/GaiaBlessings 
Go to Author's Page/Lists all Books:  
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001JS1VKA  
YouTube Uploaded Videos: http://www.youtube.com/SerenaAnderlini
Be Appraised of Ecosex Community Project PostaHouse