("InSPIEGABILE" / Pisa, Italy copyright 2007 photo taken by cris carpio-garing.)
ordinary day.
woke up. shot off to the gym where 20 minutes of cycling and 40 minutes of lifting failed to rouse my still semi-functioning mind.
walked two blocks to buy me some Rothmans, a carton of milk, pineapple juice.
as i was going into the house, this old lady blindsided me by the stairs. she was muttering to herself, obviously pissed off at something or someone. by the elevator, she turned to me and asked if i knew the people who were making a fuss last night around midnight. having had little sleep, i knew it was the Peruvian family up on the fifth. But our floor having been the victim of unreasonable complaints from other tenants, i knew better than to squeal.
"Ero sveglio tutta la notte e non ho sentito niente, signora. Forse si sbaglia."
( I was awake all last night and i heard nothing, ma'am. Maybe you're mistaken."
That shut her up. As she got out on the second, she continued grumbling and huffing.
I hid a smile.
Outside the door, i could hear the phone ring.
"Pronto?" Hmmmm... nod. Gasp. Shit. nod. nod. Fcuk. Fcuk. Fcuk. nod. nod. shake head. Damnit.
That phone call sure did the trick. It felt like i drank a pitcher of italian corretto (which i hear is quite popular back home nowadays, the sambuca). It was my best gal pal in the U.S., the torchbearer of love, my mythical image of all that is good and and wonderful and POSSIBLE about love.
after 15 years of delirious monogamy, her boyfriend-now-fiance-now-jerk broke ties with her, apparently, over a romantic dinner and over a close friend of hers.
her belief in love was rattled, shaken, utterly destroyed by what happened.
imagine mine.
it is simple, really. Yes, we choose our partners. things work out. things might not. and yet it is also damnably complicated. It was my 22nd birthday when i decided to break an elementary concept.
Live and evil is probably one of the most basic semordnilap couple. Spell live backwards and you get evil. At that time, i firmly believed that it was LOVE that formed evil's semordnilap. And i stressed, "eeeh-voool!"
i dont know why, but i turned to my friend Luisa Igloria's poem I HAVE A CRUSH On An ITALIAn TEnor. Luisa is a poet extraordinaire and Associate Professor in the MFA Creative Writing Program and Department of English, Old Dominion University. I had the amazing opportunity to meet her and interview her for the paper i worked for here in Italy last year. Her words are instruments, the structure of her verses the sections, and her poems the completed orchestra that has the power to amaze, flummox, aggravate or convey peace.
...in those few seconds when i felt my friend's heart crumbling to pieces, i heard the words... "and for one person only...we say I choose you...delegate the rest to coffee shop friends..."
here's the part of the poem that I'm referring to.
...But when you think about
the souls in The Symposium, separated from each other
and condemned to yearn eternally for what completes them
and makes them whole, you can begin to understand
the difficulty. Not everyone can fulfill such a dizzying
array of needs, and for one person only. It’s hard enough
to figure out who it is we were meant to be with—and yet
we point and say we choose, we say I choose you. Would it be
enough to recognize which of our most important needs are met
by our mates, and delegate the rest to coffee shop friends,
email buddies, jobs, hobbies, therapists; to running, reading,
writing, yoga, or massage therapy? Sometimes it is at
the hands of a complete stranger that the spine gentles
and relaxes on the linen-draped table. The head droops,
the shoulders slacken, the ribs exhale a longer breath.
And the back, all this time locked tightly in its habit of not
giving anything away, responds to the fingers
of the blind masseuse, in the same way the tenor sings
so ardently of a world he still desires, can still taste and feel,
though he can no longer see. Any stone would melt
like a heart, from the honey of even such imperfect love.
I HAVE A CRUSH ON AN ITALIAN TENOR
(Poetry East, fall 2007)
http://www.luisaigloria.com/
...in those few seconds, i was the rope that they all pulled at, for which they hurled and heaved and measured their strengths and worth.
this tug of war.
delusion and faith.
and i hear another beguilingly profound voice at the back of my head, Spike singing his bloody aria of "Love's a bitch". Crass, and yet finespun.
"...And the back, all this time locked tightly in its habit of not giving anything away..."
some days, you're better off not getting out of bed.
xxx.
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