bringing visions from sky to earth

not all spiritual beings fly. some are grounded, really rooted with their feet heavy like rocks and hands colored with earth, because they need to see the planet and its inhabitants from close-up, not from the sky. with open eyes, beaming like rays of sunlight through glass, coloring inner vision, lines, shades of red and yellow. the poetry of forms in matter, in the imperfections. with heart radiating the rhythm and pulsations of blood… they need to be so close that the exhalations of divine breath create fog on the window that looks out to the field where animals live according to their instincts, fog on the camera lens, on the contact lenses, on the skin in contact. bodhisattva, welcome to our world. the wind of your breath – slow as the ocean – brings messages, sighing together with the waves of human events, small and pretty like stones, rounded and carried by the river to the ocean with the water always in movement, nuances of eternal blue.

for Piovra Caffè, written in the Esalen Art Barn, September 2013

gli esseri spirituali non volano tutti. alcuni sono atterrati, ben fondati, con i piedi come rocce e le mani colorati di terra…

All night archiving

Where is my place?

It’s here. at the desk with a pen in hand (or keyboard under the fingers in this era of digitized feathers and ink), almost midnight… past midnight… way past midnight. in the silence, listening to the rhythm of hearts pulsing ever more in unison, in dreams… translating heartbeats into images. transmutation of pure emotion in a trail of color, vision, sensory delights. this is the alchemy of the artist of life.

although I am not an artist, not really… I am an archivist. every encounter, thought, sensation and impulse – from the first time I saw you to the most recent courageous tale – everything is conserved and catalogued in the library of memory – the astral one and the random access one – in the subversive library of congress and the one of regressions in time and past lives. the university one with interminable shelves on tracks with steering wheels to move them left and right, creating an opening just big enough for a human body to enter and search through the volumes of knowledge and history, with the ever present risk of finding yourself crushed between the section on the French revolution sliding closed against the discourses on macroeconomics… reminding us that even research is a daring journey.

in this immense spaceship, traveling between time empires and stellar conquests, millennial lifetimes and oracular knowledge, my place is much smaller than all that. the bed of a cat that prowls at night and sleeps little, purring and gathering intuitions. I am like any of us, never essential and always unique.

Dov’è il mio posto?

E’ qui. alla scrivania, penna in mano (o tastiera sotto le dita in quest’epoca di piume ed inchiostro digitalizzati), quasi mezzanotte… oltre… ben oltre…

a poem about sewing

I realize that I am a seamstress,
along with all the other things that I am, and I am many.
my favorite ones: artist, dancer
student of life almost as much as teacher
healer, traveler, lover and catalyst.

I sew with threads of light, words
threads of breath, movement, codes and colors.
I sew with a pair of wooden chopsticks instead of metallic needles…

with the heartbeat directing the orchestra of the hands.
I sew just one thing: a blanket.

This blanket grows, covers my entire bedroom
wrapping around and warming up who is there.
expanding to the nucleo, over the entire territory
caressing and nourishing every leaf and ant.

then, beyond, it covers Vidracco, over the gardens and grandmothers,
the streets and sculptures, the watermill and apparently solid mountain.
beyond…Piedmont, the Alps, all of italy.
to the west over the oceans until the California coast.
toward Asia, Turkey, all the way to Thailand.
the entire planet covered with subtle threads of pure love.

beyond! the solar system, galaxies, universes
that I can’t remember anymore or even imagine.
with all of space covered, it expands through time,
until the beginning, which is only and still an end.

even here, the end comes to an end
and rebirth brings me to the first woven thread,
going back to the complete potentiality of every moment, every cell
the potential of action, creation, weaving a fabric of gold.

una poesia per cucire

mi sono resa conto che sono una cucitrice.
insieme alle altre cose che io sono, e sono tante.