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September 2004

THIS MONTH's THEME:

Love

Love?
Did you hear it right? Is Luca really going to blog about love? What is happening to him, has he become soft in his heart? Well, follow the next day's diary, my dear readers.



It is not by accident that I chose this day to start writing again, after the long summer pause.
A lot of people in the world will have a thought at the state of the world today, remembering the attack to the Twin Towers that changed so many things.
I wanted to remind you of what has been happening since. The reaction has been the worst possible: hard against hard, revenge, violence. Some people still think this can bring good changes, not having learned from all our history that it is never the case.
Is there less violence in the world now, in comparison to three years ago? Is the world safer? Is the risk for terrorism lower? Are we happier?
The answer to all the previous questions is a clear no. No, the world is not better at all. And the reason is clear when we ask ourselves the definitive and only important question: is there more love in the world now?
No there isn't, that's why things are so bad. I am not talking about individual love.
I am in love myself, interesting enough, due to the most wonderful person you can imagine, who came from exactly the part of the world I am talking about, to change my life with her blessing.
So, I know this huge miracle in life is still possible (some politicians have even tried to forbid that...).
I am writing about love not being a part of the institutions and powers ruling the world.
Love is love and business and power is business and power, they seem to say.
This is truly a schizophrenic world, split between sensible, balanced people who live life as it is normal to live it, with fulfillment, understanding and tolerance, and people who has lost life inside themselves to follow a sick ideal of sterile and “macho” power.
It is about time for the loving people to get involved in the caring ruling of this world and for the dead people to get themselves a life.
The only real way to change this world is to provide, any single person in it has the care, possibilities, guidance and warmth needed to make him/her a loving person.


Why is love so powerful? Because it is normal. I mean, it is our normal state of existence. At the origins, we were one. Then something happened that split us in parts. When we don't live immersed in love, we feel the frustrating and saddening feeling of separation all the time. All what we do is trying to fill this huge hole inside ourselves, but it will never work, as it is not the real thing.
Love gives us again this fulfillment of cosmic union, which is not an ideal, but our very own essence.
It is like being healthy, and enjoying life with all the energy we have. It is not an exception, it should be the normality of every second in our lives.
When someone doesn't experience love in his life, then separation takes place, and the other is not anymore recognized as a part of oneself. It is unimportant, or an enemy indeed.
Then you would not feel the responsibility for pain, sufferance, violence you cause to another living being, who in reality is you, yourself, a part of you and of the whole.
That's why no one can be happy or “win”, using violence. You are only destroying yourself and your own world.


Next month I will dedicate my b-log to the American elections, trying to avoid this big announced disaster of the re-election of George W. Bush.
What has this to do with love? It has, actually, remember what I wrote yesterday about love not being a part of political institutions. Bush is increasing his gap from Kerry by showing his weapon hormone muscles. No compassion anymore, it seems, but war, total, constant, cruel, pitiless war against all the world. It means being macho assh. is popular and populistic. Most of the people likes a leader like that, because they think other people do the same. Showing sentiments is out. You would be considered a looser feminine if you showed real compassion, tolerance, sensitivity, love. The battle against “soft values” has been merciless in the last years of populism. Try to talk about civil nonviolence anywhere, and people will begin to laugh in your face. While you just need to go to a random cinema to be overflowed with blood, violence, people killing each other without even rising an eyebrow.
That's how right-wings, populist, nationalistic politicians mostly, but not exclusively (see Tony Blair for ex.) have reduced our society. It is functional not only to them, but to anyone of us who just flows with the stream, for the sake of “normality”.


Shouldn't have mentioned Bush. That word evokes only disasters. Yesterday he abolished the ban on assault weapons that had existed for 10 years, reducing a lot of crimes. He is killer, no doubt about that. Let's now enjoy the party, with school boys, or anyone else, buying big weapons and playing mass-murderers. How really funny, especially for the rifle industries. If there is a real enemy of real love, the one is hypocrisy.

Anyway, the most forsaken section of my home page was undoubtedly Langua, as I am a very lazy writer (would you believe that?), and I seldom take the time to polish my stuff. I decided to do something about it, as a part of my development into being a better person. You can look at the result clicking into Langua.[update: now "Writings"] Enjoy.


Funny enough, I didn't write my blog about love yesterday because there was too much related to love to do :) Well, I got a very important mail from my beloved and I used a lot of time to answer.
That's why it is not realistic to have more than one relationship at the same time. I really can't believe some people can manage that, where do they find time? When I love someone I dedicate all myself to her, and not even 48 hours a day would be enough.
I am not saying relationships have to be smothering though, that could kill it even tougher. Balance in everything my dears.



No rose without thorns. How true (know everything about that).
Do not wait for things to happen, get prepared. Nothing worse than reacting randomly and overexcited to unexpected situations.
You would probably destroy much more than needed.
Face the real problems that can arise in your relationship, and do something about it before things happen.
Being responsible, sensitive and foreseeing is very, very sexy.


“ When love beckons to you follow him,
though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
so shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
and then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the season-less world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
for love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
to melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
and to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
to rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
to return home at eventide with gratitude;
and then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips. ”

from: “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran

To Cheryl


A typical Sunday quote, although very fine:

“Kärlek är som daggen som faller
på både nässlor och liljor”

[“Love is like dew that falls
on both nettles and lilies”]

Swedish proverb


Someone is getting afraid I am going to loose my famous cynical objectivity with all this sentimental stuff. Well, then here it is what some scientists (or other wise people) had to say about this matter:

“Gravitation is not responsible
for people falling in love”

Albert Einstein

“We don't believe in rheumatism
and true love
until after the first attack.”

Marie Ebner Von Eschenbach ("Aphorismen", Berlin, 1880)

“True love comes quietly,
without banners or flashing lights.
If you hear bells,
get your ears checked.”

Erich Segal

“Love is metaphysical gravity.”

R Buckminster Fuller

“Love is only a dirty trick played on us
to achieve continuation of the species.”

W. Somerset Maugham (˝A Writer's Notebook˝, 1949)

“Nobody has ever measured, even poets,
how much a heart can hold.”

Zelda Fitzgerald

So, basically, rational people take no responsibility for explaining love. The final word:

“The heart has its reasons
that reason knows nothing of”

Blaise Pascal (˝Pensees˝, 1670)


Might be not the best day to talk about love today, so I am going to talk about something else...
I am still aware of the fact some parts of my home site are not fully completed. I am working on it daily now. You will notice it in different places (feel free to take a tour!) and soon the whole will begin to look like what I wished it to be, when I started designing it many years ago.
Well, may be today it was about clapping one's own shoulder as a way of supporting and loving oneself (a bit).


I was thinking about all the horrendous things happening in the world.
We have really to begin stating again how sacred and precious the individual life is.
All systems, religions, States, political systems, ideologies, whatever, are nothing worth if they suppress the individuals.
Just imagine people is being bombed, beheaded, kidnapped, enslaved, killed, exploited, humiliated, raped, subdued in year 2004!
What are all our progresses, material things, nations, religions, cultures, institutions, work, money and societies worth if that happens, even more and more cruelly than before?
Life is an illusion, some say. No, it is a tragic and violent reality, if we make it so with our ferocious, distant and anti-human illusions, in stead of loving any one right in front of us.


Love is definitely a risk for our life. The higher you fly...
But:

“The risk it takes to remain tight inside the bud
is more painful than the risk it takes to blossom”

Anais Nin

“[...] better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all.”

Alfred Tennyson

And, finally:

“You should always have high hopes.
Otherwise you won't be disappointed.”

Gunnar Hägg (Swedish journalist)


The main paradox of love is:
either it is true love, and then universal,
or it s egoistic love, and then particular.
If your love is true love, then it should be the same for anyone in the world. Universal and unconditional love for everyone.
So why do we usually fall in love with someone in particular?
I think love is the meeting place for the union of heaven and earth. The ideal and the practical.
It is still the ideal to be universally loving, to be unattached, to give everything to everyone. That's great, natural, joyous.
At the same time, love is never enough, and at times you will feel like you want to concentrate on one person in particular. To give everything to him/her.
Again: that is a risk, because expectations, attachments, demands, fears, jealousy, and so on, will start.
I know though, that what you can achieve at times, even in an egoistic and narrow relationship like that, is the most heavenly proximity and fulfillment you could imagine.
Sweet paradox.


I am really enjoying the scandal of writing about love in a world that is going completely crazy. Where violence is not the exception, but the daily rule.
I am used to do what I feel is right, even in the middle of people with completely different values.
That doesn't mean I don't read the newspapers or ignore what is going on. Or that I am an aging pathetic idealist.
It is very important to begin inverting this march toward a cold and aggressive society. Even few sensible words are the beginning of this process, I know the entire world's society will have to go through this, or it won't make it. Again: there is no violent solution to the world's troubles, it will only get things worse and worse, and honestly, it is already a nightmare to live in a world like this.
I never changed my ideals, and will always say it loud and clear for the rest of my life: never listen to the prophets of violence, they are only hypocrites, and have no clue on how to solve problems. They only use their muscles, of all possible organs, because their most important ones, the heart and brain, are forgotten somewhere.


If you are not a usual reader of mine, or you just were brought here by some inscrutable Internet side streets, there is a chance you are not so confident with your emotions, and a bit scared about letting them invade your safe, practical, rational life. Worried about love 'disturbing' your career? Read what a hard worker like a dutch painter said:

“Love is eternal -- the aspect may change, but not the essence. There is the same difference in a person before and after he is in love as there is in an unlighted lamp and one that is burning. The lamp was there and was a good lamp, but now it is shedding light too, and that is its real function.
And love makes one calmer about many things, and that way, one is more fit for one's work”

Vincent Van Gogh


Well, dear readers, time to conclude this flight across the feeling of love.

What is love, then?
Probably the best definition is: the deep feeling of caring totally and unconditionally for the whole world or for someone in particular. The closer the two are, the more probable it is that's real love.
Otherwise you would have to face that it is more about your own need to love and be loved, which is human and fully understandable, but prone to end in selfishness, jealousy, disappointment, unhealthy attachment and so on.
In real life, it will always be a mix of the two forms for love, if we are honest with ourselves and realistic.
There will be enthusiasms and disappointments, ups and downs, successes and failures.
The important is to grow out of this experience and evolve into being a better individual, with a deep-rooted feeling of worth, of being loved and with space to love in return and give all yourself to someone in particular and whoever is in front of you.
And to think about those you don't know, and are far away from you, with the same burning desire of wishing them a better life.

How to choose the right one?
I do not pretend to solve one of the highest mysteries in life, but I can only endorse the simplest rule about that:
do choose the one who makes you happy.
Physical attraction, intellectual interest, good communication, material security, common goals and values, all is important as a foundation, but what is all that worth if you won't feel happy in your life?
When you go out with this woman or man, if you see you can't be completely yourself, if you have to play a role or put a mask on yourself, then it is probably not the one for you. Soon or later the mask will fall, and you will face the disaster.
Please let it happen before you decide to have children, they don't need that kind of tragedies.

This special person will then be the object of your projections, of what you would like to see in him/her, of your needs, of your expectations.
She/he will never be perfect (unless you are really lucky, and you did choose very, very, very carefully).
You need to learn to live with that and consider you are equally imperfect too.
Some things will stay like that, some others can be changed. There is always something to be done about problems. And if things start to go very bad, then do not wait, do not hesitate to ask for help. Go to a psychologist for ex.
You can't solve everything inside the relationship. You need a third, external part to come out of the still-stand and frustration. As simple as needing a mirror to see yourself.

But let's hope it won't be the case, and let's work for it!
You need to reinvent your relationship every single day. To care for it, to evolve in it, never to loose the original enchantment you felt for the other one.
Consider yourself as the luckiest man/woman in the world, you probably are, all of you...

As promised, next month's issue will be about USA and the American presidential elections. Don't miss it.