Antonia Gaeta:
Three Islands In the Background
Can you see them?
Not yet.
I know we’re close. Let me up on your shoulders.
Go a bit higher. Come on, higher. Can you see them now?
No, not yet.
Well, let’s continue. Tell me what you plan to do.
I want to speak about writing, to unravel and build the environment in which
my works are read. And that’s why I picked writing: hushed, desired, narrated,
censured, invariably in my own name. Well, in actual fact, I wanted to write
on everything, place my lines on sculptures, print my letters on fabric, wood,
porcelain, paper… in case there were a surfeit of ideas. I’m in a constant struggle
between my fantasy self and my real self.
Can you see them now?
Still a bit to go, still a bit.
There is time to train the mind, to make it dance, to attain a practicable
equipoise between geometric calculus and rhetoric, without going too far,
obviously, but enough to balance our posture and our muscle fibre.
Shush. Listen to the wind. Locus amoenus.
Send a hug from me.
When you train to think, you transform your body; when you train your body,
you allow your mind to access new states.
Do you think? I want to have fun, to talk and celebrate. How do we bring this all
together?
Look, the ancients, starting with Pliny the Elder at the top, defined the moon as a
funnel that made the planet’s energies converge towards the earth.
And what has that got to do with what I want to do?
Everything and nothing. There’s always some common ground, though perhaps,
on occasions, contrived. One has to face the matter without blanching or
becoming upset, I will have to begin somehow, and I particularly love to digress
and to talk about the panoply of types and facets of energetic relations. Let me
take my reasoning further.
Of course!
As you know, it’s plausible that the entire universe is pierced by vital forces which
may eventually, though not always successfully, be recognized and controlled. In
the same way, you are fascinated by claw legs, lonely souls, optic tracts and goats
with teeth. Every now and then, I need to face my wounds by entering the warm
water wells under the surface of some world. The empty chair shines, palindromic,
head and tail, it moves at the bottom of the garden. These verbal comforts cause
me a little anguish, like the dark clarity that descends from the stars or the wild
forest in the first canto of inferno.
Don’t neglect those themes or my attitude.
Enjoy the sun going down.
Omitting everything said and its opposite, let’s get back on track.
Can you see anything?
No, not much up close, but at a distance I can still see well and, most importantly,
you shouldn’t overlook clairvoyance or the dying light of communal celebration.
Contorted, sinuous, in the murmur of water and hanging plants, roll, roll, roll,
and there you are, diaphanous, queen of the tale.
I’ll be frank with you. You shouldn’t be surprised by my vice for optimistic
deliriums nor by the grotesque victory emotions have won over me. The best
way I’ve found to face my demons and draw blessings to me, is by wrestling with
thorny enigmas. Combining rebelliousness with enthusiastic exuberance and
a wave of joy. I enjoy feeding on berries, cherries, plums, peaches and apricots.
I feel euphoric under rain-laden clouds. Ready for sarcasm, a constant voice
tells me to smile while I contemplate the collapse of the last wheezing, putrid
remnants of the autocratic order.
So yes, how’s life?
At our own pace. Neither early, nor late. We have to arrive.
At this time of year the trees lose their leaves, so get inspired, develop in your
exuberant way, break down an inhibition, sharpen your imagination.
I got tired of your almanac recipes, of your being hostage to an inexplicable
condition, of your non-stop doodling. You’re the absurd nothing. Always the
same, always the same, you repeat yourself, you contradict yourself, over
and over.
I’m shattered.
You lived to the full today!
Leave it now.
I see them now. Good things repeat, like in spring.