Dante @ MindSay

 Dante Dante Dante!!! How is it that I can go from such a deep deep depression dying from the aches of a scorned love, to the heights of delight at the horizon of the prospect of new love. Love, no not yet, definitely not yet, but very much in like. A lot of like. In a previous blog, I asked you Dante, you wonderous philosopher on love, (read his Vita Nuova) how to extricate the painful and destructive force that is love,  only to find that I end up in its slippery grip once more. I find that love is not without a sense irony or humour.  So i laugh, ha  ha  ha HA, at Love's macabre  sense of humour,  for I was at the throes of  DEATH not so long ago, and now I am caught in the flurry that we call LIFE. (and i am enjoying it) (the rush, the beauty are all greatest before the fall, i warn myself, but love is worth the pain, there is BEAUTY even in PAIN, but i am off topic now)   I have thought about it Dante and I always said that you never left me an answer on how to get rid of the pain, the endescrible pain that love leaves behind. The kind of pain that tears a hole in your soul and leaves you standing in an endless and opaque abyss where you scream unending screams where no sound is uttered, yet the blinding and crippling pain can be felt for miles around.  Its excrutiating, everyone who has loved truely and deeply and has lost love has felt this pain, they know of what I speak, yet no one, nothing can take it away. But for some reason this is true, it doesn't go away, it never goes you will always be screaming, it is just that the screaming at times gets quieted by other things or people that come into our lives to help keep our sanity, or regain our sanity once it has been lost. Dante I think I have found myself an answer I can live with, an answer that wont keep me awake at night, where I keep friends with ghosts racking my brain wondering where it was that "I" went wrong.  Dante Dante Dante!!!  The feeling of being unloved, the feeling of being worthless, the feeling of not being worth your weight in gold, ha HA ha, that is loves macarbre sense of humour.
   The answer is to lift your head, with all the strength and power you have left, lift your head as high as you can. In all the glory of your misery and through the alkaline tears that fall from your eyes and stain your face look to the crowds, look out at them, search them, study the faces of the people that surround you, of the people that pass you by, of the people you meet.  When you reach the face that lights at the sight of your haggard frame and tired face you have been found. You will find that person. It is in that person that healing and love can be found. When a person looks at you and sees the torture and the pain in your eyes and the turmoil like a tornado in your soul and finds beauty, pure beauty, and cannot look away because to them you are captivating. They do not see us in perfection, I ask, for what is perfection? (If perfection were to exist, it is unattainable. Perfection is an ideal and an institution that is a cage that people have created, in order that we could be assured of failure.)  It is in the bowels of created perfection when we first fell into Love’s trap, when we had our hair done up, make-up on to precise detail, and fake dazzling smiles that match the pricy clothes bought with our souls. The fake perfection tried to hide our faults from Love but, (perfection, being what it is) we were bound to be found inherently imperfect by Love’s penetrating and stealing gaze and it is for our shortcomings that it is down into Love’s cold abyss that we were thrown away as rejects. Love is Fickle, Love fell for what it saw, but found our cracks and faults and said “No, I do not want your imperfection.” Yet, that person whose face lights up at first glance when seeing us in fallen grace, is the person who sees the cracks, the fissures, the faults, the imperfections, and says, “I see beauty, I see art, and I want it, I love it. You are mine.”   
    So, what is the answer; keep moving, keep living, keep loving, lift your head and look. Once we fall into Love, there is no way out, because we are creatures of Love that were meant to love. Love is cyclical, love is crazy, love is non-sensical, love is pain, love is moments of pure joy, love comes and love goes, but in the end love always comes back in one form or another. Just muster up the courage and strength to lift your head up and look.

XOXO,
AnaMaria Gonzalez 2007, Jan 12

Here i am again, and blog i shall.
Well, this weekend has consisted of watching some movies, watched a few with oysters3, which included Donnie Darko, Calvaire(that french horror flick that scared the shit out of me...which, wasn't so scary the 2nd time around), and part of A Clockwork Orange...yes, my favorite movie of all time, finally came in yesterday, it's been on backorder for almost a month.
Yep...nothing much has been happening lately, been reading The Inferno by Dante again, going to write a book report on it.
Nothing much else...just getting back into the groove of things.

"Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,
ché la diritta via era smarrita."

"Midway in the journey of our life
I came to myself in a dark wood,
for the straight way was lost."

-Dante Alighieri, The Inferno

Happy Wintereenmas, everyone.

Interview With A Dragon

"Old Scarface, they call me. Guess it's pretty accurate, but still, you'd think they'd show a little more respect to someone who's repeatedly saved their asses over the past few aeons." He chuckles softly and slugs his ale.

I must say, when I was told to meet the most venerable specimen of Draconis rex, I hardly expected the interview to take place in a tavern, let alone one so shabby as this.

"You were expecting a dragon's lair, full of gold and whatnot, weren't you," he laughs as I tell him. "Never much bothered with all that nonsense- we're supposed to be some kind of peacekeepers, not treasure-hoarders. Not to say I don't have a tidy sum in an account in Innsmouth, that is."

Times most certainly have changed.

"Yeah, not much good comes from sitting on a pile of gems- doesn't accrue any interest, and you're stuck watching over the damned thing just to make sure nobody gets any ideas. Fuckin' inconvenient. I prefer getting out and raising a little hell in my old age." Another laugh. "You wouldn't believe how many adventuring parties I've joined up with who're all trying to get their mitts on my hoard. It's the big thing nowadays, apparently.

"Kids these days! All they want to do is get the best of everything, now, now, now. No patience anymore. Used to be I'd have one apprentice every half millenium. Now they're lining up at my door, all too eager, no-one willing to take the time and make the effort to be a half-decent mage. Sad, really.

"Oh well. Guess the times are changing. I feel sorry for any poor bastard who takes on one of those impatient wanna-bes."

So now that he's given up training acolytes, what had he been up to in recent years?

"Ye gods, what haven't I been up to? Adventuring, mostly. Hearkening back to my younger days. Surprised the blue-eyed hell out of a few kids when they found out their ex-army curmudgeon was a fuckin' dragon. Funny, really. This one group had been going on and on about how easy dragon-slaying was, how stupid we'd all gotten, yadda yadda. I say nothing, keep quiet, and when we were all about to get gutted, bam, back to true form, kick some ass, and turn around to find the rest of the party has quietly shat themselves. Apparently they hadn't figured on me being so damn big. Seems like they'd been going after drakes; never even seen a real dragon before. Gave them more than a little pause, I'll tell you that.

"Spent a little time up north, with those really big orcs up in Svallund. Good bunch, really. Shame they had to retreat so far into the wastes to keep from getting slaved out. Met one- Reig, I think his name was- lost his entire family to slavers. Been leading warbands down south in revenge, and I can't say I blame him. One of these days I want to get some of your University fellas to interview him, get his story out there. Slave trade just ain't right."

I prepared for my trip to Florence by reading EM Forsters A Room With A View, but the book, however much fun to read, was misleading because it implied there would be rooms to sleep in in Florence. We've had a lot of trouble finding places to stay, with views or otherwise. The original plan was to spend a day in Sienna after Pisa, and then go on to Florence. But Lindsay was supposed to book the hostel in Sienna, and apparently the computer connections aren't too reliable in Mali, so she asked her mother to do it for her from her US computer. Apparently her mom forgot to make the booking, so we decided rather than spend a single night in Sienna, it would be best to go straight to Florence. We showed up without a place to stay, however, and after a quick consultation with the guidebook decided it would be best to go to tourist information in the train station and get a room for the night.

The woman in tourist information took one look at us and said "Cheap cheap cheap?" and we said yes, we needed a place to stay for two people, one night at the cheapest possible rate. She smiled and nodded and made a lot of phonecalls in rapid sucession, speaking in breathless Italian, and finally after several tries found us two hostel beds for the night. We thanked her, and received the map she gave us and made our way through some very unpleasant and unseasonable rain to our hotel room. With the room taken care of, we decided to brave the wet in order to do some sight seeing, and found ourselves outside Saint Croce Church, the church where the hero and heroine of A Room With A View have their first real conversation. We planned to duck our heads in and take a quick peak, but we soon found out that that was impossible.

The church turned out to be the burial sight of Galileo, Machiavelli, Micheangelo and others, though not, interestingly enough of Dante. Dante is buried in Ravenna, but that didn't stop Saint Croce from building a huge garrish monument in honor of the Florentine poet. I've never been a big Dante fan despite slogging my way through three different translations of the Inferno. When I saw his monument I think I understood why. He always looks incredibly dour, as if he was having bad indigestion; I think it comes out in his writing.

The next day we had to move to our hostel that Lindsay had also booked from Mali (the deal was that she would book Florence and Sienna, I would book Venice and Pisa). Rather than head straight to our Hostel, however, we decided to do some early sight seeing, and made it to the Duomo in time to be first in line when it opened. The guidebook was not too enthusiastic about the church, claiming it was "chilly and austere" on the inside, but I enjoyed it immensely. The inside doesn't feel cluttered the way some of these churches can be. After the Duomo we headed across the way to the Baptistry to gaze at Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise," which was obscured by a sea of tourists. I'm short enough, however, that I eventually wrangled  my way to the front, and I'm glad I did, the doors are truly breathtaking.

The Piazza was beginning to get absolutely swamped with tour groups, so we headed back to our hostel to collect our bags and carried them through the wet and cold to the hostel we had booked for the next five nights.

The hostel looked amazing, it was up a steep flight of stairs, but had large windows and wooden floors as well as offering free internet. There were signs all over in broken English reminding guests that "The waisting of the energy was a crime against the enviroment" and other helpful hostel hints. When we got there, however, the woman couldn't find our booking. There was much sturm und drang, and the management was called, while we nervously looked over the reservation and tried to decipher the rapid Italian the receptionist was shouting into the phone. Eventually we realized that the reservation was for May, and we were here in June. The hostel was booked solid all five nights, and we had nowhere to stay. We asked the receptionist if she had any suggestions of places to stay, and she said that as far as she knew the entire city was booked solid. It turns out that the next day, the second of June, was a national holiday, and meaning it was a popular time to visit. She wouldn't let us use the phone, but she was nice enough to let us store our bags while we found a place to stay.

We returned to the street with absolutely no idea of what to do. We found a phone and began to call all of the hostels in the guidebook. All of them were booked solid for the next two nights, but we finally found a place that will take us for the last three nights of our stay. Lindsay went off to find an internet cafe where she could confirm the booking, and I headed in the other direction to find us a bed for the night. My plan was to head to the tourist office, but I realized that the streets on the way to the train station seemed to be lined with wall to wall hotels. I stopped into a few of the cheaper looking ones, all of which seemed to be booked solid for the next two nights (I even encountered a panicky couple whose reservations had also fallen through screaming at an unfortunate receptionist) Finally I found a one star hotel with a single room left. It was little more than a broom cubbard, but breakfast was included, and the room had a TV. Grateful to have a place to stay I headed back to collect both Lindsay and the luggage. I've learned two things from the whole experience--the first is never have anybody make a hotel booking from Mali, and the second is that commercials are more entertaining in Italian.

Well today was probably the warmest day of the year so far being about 22c (Don't ask me what that equals I have no idea) so I spent the morning and the first half of the afternoon shopping for the essentials of life like food and my monthly occult magazine and had a wander round taking a few pictures of the area known as Georgetown once again for those of you that are fans of my pictures on blog.

I came home and relaxed in the garden for a few hours enjoying the sun and was joined eventually by Dante so I decided to take some pictures of her as below. Doesn't she look cute!

Other than that I have not much to report except for I finished the biography of Dylan Thomas I have been reading for a while so it's been a good day, even if empathy has been a bit too high it's been liveable with.  Happy 21st birthday to Patty for tomorrow also.

Love to all