6. ON WHAT MAKES US HUMAN

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Who defines "human"? It's still us humans, isn't it? It's a vicious circle.

I wrote it before, my reading friend: we shall never know finally why we are; why anything is, or needs to be. All our science, all our art, the whole vast edifice of matter, has its foundations in this meaninglessness; and the only assumptions we can make about it are that it is both necessary and sympathetic to the continuing existence of matter.

So we want to be mastered, but we are masterless. I’d like to chant to Israel and "next year in Jerusalem", because it gives me hope for purpose. We think always in a causative and hierarchical manner. The process of time and God are co-infinite. Our finity cannot comprehend them, or their causelessness.

God is caused by what it causes; is made necessary by what it necessitates; we cannot comprehend.

...And we go on living, in the final analysis, because we do not know why we are here to live. Unknowing is vital to man as water.

We read books and ask questions because we want to feel real, present. We want to know that we don't know.

-Erigena says:
God is eternally partially self-ignorant. If he knew all of himself, he could define himself. If he could define himself, he would be finite. But all he knows of himself is what he has created. What is created is his knowledge, what is potential is his mystery: mysterious in him and to him.

All this applies equally to man.

The ubiquitous absence of God in ordinary life is this sense of non-existing, of mystery, of incalculable potentiality; this eternal doubt that hovers between the thing in itself and our perception of it; this dimension in and by which all other dimensions exist. The white paper that contains a drawing; the space that contains a building; the silence that contains a sonata; the passage of time that prevents a sensation or object continuing for ever; all these are God.

Mystery, or unknowing, is energy. As soon as a mystery is explained, it ceases to be a source of energy. If we question deep enough there comes a point where answers, if answers could be given, would kill.

Your search for God must remain a search, and the answer hidden – because an answer does not exist.

That's what makes us human.

5. MY FIRE IS BURNING, HOW’S YOURS?

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Spinning through the Star?

Please, become a link in the starchain. If you skip a link, the union is broken, the unity has failed, the Mind staggers. You are my link.

My link to sanity?

Ahaaaaaa!!!

But Mind is immanent in all cognitive experience as an active process which gives objective form to knowledge. It does not stand in a transcendent relation to an extraneous object which it passively contemplates.

I asked you, in a couple of chapters past, to slap my mind and shock it. Detonate it.

Where is the shock, the detonation, the veritable tornado? I'm still waiting... Can't you give me something different? Can't you strike my mind with an electrifying thought, an exceptional idea?

[[[[[[[[[[please]]]]]]]]]]]

When I ask for an idea, I ask it with reference to any action. I mean: what principle, what meaning, what purpose can you offer me to substantiate communication, THIS SORT of communication, the communicating Star? Make the X work: the crossing of minds.

And the SYMBOL? What about the SYMBOL? Can't you CREATE one for me, for my initiative, for my purpose?
C'mon, INVENT A FABULOUS, FANTASTIC, UNIVERSAL, UNIFYING SYMBOL!!!
Then email it to me, and it'll become OUR unifying symbol... OK?


What is the aim or value of the action I have initiated with all of you? What am I driving at? The Star must be an operative creative force. I find, just like I think you do, that the Universe has meaning, has value. Ideal values are the dynamic forces, the driving power of the Universe.

A person wrote me a message sometime ago, pronouncing her life as "...a mutated morph that never fully developed", another analysed the profundity of bereavement, and yet another endeavoured to combine religion and sensual life in a difficult equilibrium, whilst another one strove for psychic conjuncture. I love you for these expressions. An artist emailed me to express his deeper feelings via pastous colours, a sculptor suffered with me the plasticity of diverse sculpture, a nurse looks for "normality" among anormalcy, and all of us plunge into books, books, more books – to find repose, fire quenching and appeasement.

[[[[[[[[yet my fire is still burning, and nobody is set alight but me]]]]]]]]]

The world is intelligible only as a system of ends. My view, therefore, has little to do with the problem whether a thing is only a particular image or a general relation. The question of the independence of the knower and the known is hardly relevant to it. Nor is it committed to the doctrine that the world is made of mind, an infinite mind or a society of minds.

Am I an idealist? Then Idealism in my sense concerns the ultimate nature of reality, whatever may be its relation to the knowing mind.

I perceive life as significant and purposeful, endowing man with a destiny that is not limited to the sensible world. But, pardon me, I just CANNOT FIND the significance and the purpose!

Give me a hand. Create a change...

Have you that spiritual dimension to your being, that mood of reflective inquiry and self-contemplation, that anxiety of mind to know the things spiritual in which is the true dwelling-place of man? Have you? Have you, really?

Can you supply me with a vision of the world of things and persons which will enable me to interpret the manifold experiences as expressive, in some sort, of a purpose?
A purpose.
What is your true purpose? Can it be passed on? On to the STAR... and the Universe beyond....
You cannot fail me now. Your point, your starpoint is shining.

A message.
Any message.

4. ALWAYS RESPOND TO THE STAR

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English is not my mother-tongue.
So what?
I want to talk to you!

I want to create a STAR of MINDS, and I want it to be an avalanche, a star as bright as a newly exploded sun -- I will go on and on, but you must respond to the challenge, beat me to it, not let me walk alone. It must be a two-way dialogue, not a monologue -- you must restrain me with your own invading thought.

In the Star Symbol::::


(now, friend, create a symbol and email it to me: we'll make it our Symbol!)


all points have the same importance, so ALL must contribute!

Have you sent me a message yet?

Remember: kinkazzo

No message? Why not?

A message, ANY message. A touch. ANY touch.

Is your mind shy? Refusing to commune? Afraid to come short? Not brainy enough?

All creative thought processes occur in the mind, not the brain. We don't wish here to be brainy, erudite, and tedious. Our star is a Mind Star, not a Brain Star. The brain is merely a switchboard through which the mind channels its commands and impulses. It is a little like a complicated electric maze in which the nerve fibres function similarly to electric wires in man-made contraptions. Mind formulates thoughts which are sent out to both the body and the world outside via the brain, but mind and body are not the sole components of man. There is a third force, the highest within man. That which religion calls the soul and which in parapsychology (hear me!) is often referred to as psyche or psi factor is, in fact, personality itself. It is emotional in character and made of energy, as is the mind. I prefer to call it the spirit in this context since it embodies the active, creative, and original element in man. Man then is a triple combination of spirit, mind, and body, functioning in unison in a descending order. That is to say, body without mind and spirit cannot live. Mind without spirit cannot live. But, spirit by itself exists in the higher realms of consciousness.

In many philosophical theories mind and spirit are either confused with each other or presented as one and the same principle. Clearly they are not, for mind is an intellectual force free from all emotional connotations, while spirit is purely emotional, free from all intellectual connotations. It is important to know what facet of one's personality should be brought into play under certain conditions to accomplish definite aims. To lift a heavy object, body and muscles must come into play. To answer a difficult question requiring logical thinking, clearly the mind must be used; but to come to an emotional conclusion or one involving religion, only spirit and the emotional inner self can hold the answer.

Now... Can you, the reader, send me a message jolting me out of my brain? I want to be shocked by you, right now! Can you really be different, prove to me that you are emotionally able to shake my person off his head? Come on, come on, you are different, you are responsive, and you must answer my plea: now, blow me out of myself, reach for my MIND, go for MY SPIRIT and throw me out into the sky with your mental vibrations!

What does it take? I have lived my life always looking for sensations, novel experiences, different passions, new kicks. I fought in the jungles, I sailed in the Pacific gazing at the stars, I lived in the desert and heard my voice alone, I was lost in Jerusalem, I produced two offspring who simply cannot be satisfied with life, I married when I was 21 and for thirty years I created a total symbiosis with my partner, in such a way that speaking for us was unnecessary. I held any jobs you can think of, always searching, always discontent…

I believed in the God of Israel. I was an atheist. I was a Christian and a Buddhist. I had relatives burning in the ovens at Auschwitz… I am a seeker of the agent. I seek an agent for this being in a blind wind, this being on a raft. Don't you see how troubled my life is? I seek the mysterious power, the causator, the god, the face behind the mysterious mask of being and not being. Some of us make an active god of their own better natures; a benevolent father, a gentle mother, a wise brother, a charming sister. Some make an active god from attributes: such desirable human attributes as mercy, concern and justice. Some make an active god of their own worse natures; a god who is sadistically cruel or profoundly absurd; a god who absconds; a black exploiter of the defenceless individual.

As man sees through one reason for living, another wells from the mysterious spring. It must be so, because he continues to exist. This inexplicable buoyancy irritates him. He exists, but he is abused.

Some of you have had pretty dramatic lives, I’m sure of it, others would have very high aspirations. Some of us are old, some of you are young -- what do you have to offer?

Surely we have poets in our midst, and sculptors, and painters, writers, musicians, healers of body and mind, gentle souls with idealistic passions. What do you really have to offer, now? Give me an answer, pleaseeeee--------------->

Share!

3. HUMANITY HAS NO UNDERSTANDING; BUT THE LOGOS HAS

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PANTA REI (Gk.)

Everything flows


I love Heraclitus, so I will quote from him, the "Dark" one:

This world, which is the same for all, was made by neither god nor man.
The opposite is beneficial.
The beginning and the end are the same.
All that we see is death.
Change is rest.
How can you hide from what is always present?
Man, like a light in the night, is kindled and put out...

Whoa!! How much more flowing tension can we create? Bello, bello, bello!!!

Come and dance with me, and we'll have words for our musical notes in a crescendo of power -- the power of tension, the tension we are engendering with our COMMUNICATION!

Ah, the power of tension! The power of tension is proportionate to its mystery. To be aware of and to understand tension produces two results. Like lightning on a dark night it reveals what is, and it reveals the way ahead. Our tension!

It thus allows the transposition to a personally or socially less harmful tension to be made. It permits the tension to be controlled, rather than to control.

I want to control my tension with the STAR. Through you in an uncontrolled exchange...

A star is X: the Mind X-ing --- my STAR. OUR STAR.
Our tension.

Knowledge of a tension inaugurates two situations: seeing through the old, and craving for a new. That's me, baby.

Because we love and need mystery, we are often reluctant to analyze situations in which mystery seems to inhere.

The chief such situation is in ourselves, in the tensions we exist in.

In Rome, Florence, Venice, Paris, Geneva, Bremen, London, Edinburgh, Manhattan, Boston, San Francisco, Sydney...

We despise primitive cultures for the taboos with which they surround sacred groves and caves and the like; but we still encourage exactly similar taboos in the antique landscapes of the mind.

Yet even here we must distinguish between the selfish attachment to mystery that is really a lazy refusal to think or act and our essential need of a residual mystery in life as a whole. This mystery, between what we know and what we know we will never know, is the ultimate tension.

Panta rei indeed...

2 - I WANT TO CREATE A STAR INSIDE MY SELF!

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If you’re reading this, it means: I FOUND YOU!

I believe you are the one. Each and every one of you.

I want to create a star, A STAR, A STAR WITH AN X. Why a star with an “X”?

I want to create an enormous interconnected STAR of communicating minds, and the X is the crossing of connecting thoughts. Good enough as an image?
It should get you going.

The points of the STAR are its representative minds: the partakers of the communion. The whole of the STAR becomes its shining creativeness and imperative force of higher consciousness. Until we reach ecstasy, ecstatic creation, in an explosion of united genius.
Beautiful. Visionary. Mad.
Mine is not a simple Star, though.
No brevity here. No pearls of wisdom. No Tao. No haiku.
Initial confusion. The entropy of full expression. This is what I want, at least in the beginning. Just like a Big Bang that will create a Universe. Order will come later...

To see that everybody not merely depends on everybody,
but actually everybody is everybody in a deeper sense.
David Bohm, 1998 -- On Creativity.

Who cares about a little initial confusion of intersecating messages from perplexed but interested readers? Where is the pleasure of epistolary gone, the time when long letters were fervently written by kindred souls?

Please send me long letters, prolix messages, overflowing emails… I am here for you: the God of Logos.

But if you can't express yourself creatively, then you don't belong. That's it. Perhaps the weak ones, those who have no time for true introspection, will say: “what’s this rambling crap?”, or "forget it, too many things to do", or “I can’t stand meditative or spiritual rigmarole", and again “cannot handle the mail confusion", "perhaps another time, when I've sorted out things", "now I have no time for this: later, later maybe…". And what do you have time for, and when?

The Hebrew paraphrase: “If not now, when? And if not I, then who?”

We all work, and hard at that. We say it several times over. Just to feel at ease with this globalised bourgeoisie. But what about working on our Inner Self and link it with the Other? No time for that? My God, I'm dismayed.
You find time to read a thick fuilleton. You find time to watch trash-TV. You find time to shop your head off. You find time to eat and drink junk...

Why can't you find time for my Star? Make it OUR star.

Are you scared? Frightened, like any other human being on earth? Sure.
Please, return to this page again, or preserve my message into a new mental file, for later review. Please, pretty please? Scan it onto your notebook and entitle it "Our Star: A star is X" and place our dialogues there to appraise when your soul commands. I'll do that too, and if I -- the computer illiteratus -- can do it, anybody can. Remember: the X stands for mindcrossing!
Mind-Crossing. A Crosswork of Minds. Communion, finally. Fantastic!

But you can’t… apparently not.

Because you are scared. Confused. Sceptical. Busy.

But we are all confused, generally. All scared. And all sceptically busy…

In straying into a realm of confusion, we have traded an appreciative awareness for a preoccupation with limited purposes. A vast, integrated space has become narrowed down to a container of isolated things.
But here I am, telling you now we are not isolated. We are the STAR! Listen to me: I really am talking to you!

No Onanism here, folks: I don't wish to talk to myself, not at all.

It is necessary to reverse this tendency to isolation: we cannot talk to a mirror, to our image reflected.
Inwardly, when we are meditating on our own, we may think we're having great success because we are noting everything, counting all our thoughts. But this is not really "paying attention" in any high sense... we are just playing games.
We must communicate with each other, within OUR Star.

No lonely monologues, please. I don't want mental masturbation, I want mental copulation. If I write incessantly to you, you write incessantly to me. Deal?

I can handle it. So can you.

Even when we become more concentrated, so that we are completely immersed in our attention, like a cat watching something, our awareness is still stuck someplace. It is not exactly "aware of", but it is still narrow and kind of hypnotized. We could stay here for a long time without falling into a frustrating place, but we are not making any progress. So we must go beyond all awareness which is stuck on some thing or in some place.

The Star must reach beyond...

Yet, it would be absurd to try to avoid everything, to blot everything out. So... somehow, the very things which are disconnected, fragmented, must themselves yield up a vision of continuity, of unity.

THE STAR IS THE UNITY I PROPOSE TO YOU

I believe you do understand me, if you are still with me now. Those who won’t understand, have stopped reading. Yet others I hope will arrive.

Each of us will take the other's hand and form a chain, a continuous link, an interconnected star of kindred minds: intellectual companions joining up for a séance of astounding proportions!

Trying to make this happen can also become a preoccupation. It has become MY preoccupation: a desire to enlarge, widen the circle, reach out to everyone...

We need to work very lightly and subtly, not pushing too hard to do anything. But we must create a ring of strength through expression. We must spread and stay WITHIN. If we are desperate to change our situation, to go elsewhere, we will probably not achieve real balance or insight... I have no fixed picture of things to achieve, except a unity with YOU. You are my difference.

You are my insight.

Here, here, do you read me?
Ahaa!

Making dichotomies the working basis for the discovery of unity is really a very practical procedure, and it is the only way our ordinary problems can be properly resolved.
We mustn't forget our body, though.
We are not only electrical impulses given to a keypad via the email system. When I get up from my desk and exit the meanders of my communicating Mind, I perceive my physical state in a slow and gradual manner. Each and every time, I became aware I am carnal.

The human body, which is often a solid, cramped expression of isolation and pain, can be used to realize a more expansive awareness and satisfaction. Our ordinary awareness, which so often mistreats the body, can also nourish it and encourage concrete implementation of very profound values. It is well-known that body and mind are a theoretical unity of some kind, but in actual practice they may be at odds with one another. I feel this. Don't you?

Then my Star could contribute. My Star has to become your Star: OUR Star. Again.

I'll keep repeating this to infinity. OUR -- our our our our.

I still don't feel this "ourness". This togetherness. Why? Because you have not yet reached me. Do it, do it now!
A message, please. Click me and write me…

Together we have the ability to achieve a "unity", I'm sure of it. An intellectual unity. A congenial unity of minds. A true vibrating phosphorescent STAR. We may expose a clear, unquestionable unity which has great existential importance, rather than a mere formal interest. The STAR is not a newsgroup, a club, a chatroom, a forum, a sect, a religion.

A star is a heavenly self-luminous body.

I want my STAR to be a heavenly Self-Luminous Unity of Minds.

"Mind" and "body" may come to have a new significance for us, and may become balanced and relaxed. Relaxation expands into calmness, the ability to really enjoy sensations and proper functioning of the body.

All of us are interested in this. I know it. That's why a found you. Perhaps you’re a nurse, a psychologist, an artist, poet, writer, administrator, accountant, lawyer... You certainly are a Body and a Mind. Healing. Heal them together and expand yourself to Luminosity, to Brightness, to Starshine!

Escape the mental scream. Death. Evil. Sickness. Fanaticism. Physicality. Analysis. Aggressiveness. Exertion. Distress. War. Terrorism. Murder and rape. Repetitive news, repetitive nauseous hammering.

You attempt finding mind-body relations, but you’re lost.

We retain tensions at the cost of having our lives greatly shortened... it is better to give our bodies the chance for long, meaningful efforts.

Calmness: the ability to really enjoy sensations and proper functioning of the body.
This can be a very healing process. Enlightenment through our STAR.

A star is X. A for the beginning, then the centre of the Star/Mind, and the final X for the crossing. The Enlightenment, the Mind Sublimation, the ecstasy of Creativeness. Hmmm…

There is always much talk about enlightenment, but enlightenment is not an object of distant, unearthly travels. It is a matter of internal development that begins with good "health". When we seek the "shore beyond", this "beyond" is only a matter of getting past the confusion of knowledge limitation, not of going somewhere else.

My star is not going some place. My star is going "beyond".

Let your hair down (mine has been shed long ago!). Let yourself go, I beg you. And we will uncover knowledge. I promise. We are doing it already! Now, as you read my piece.

People who are very busy and work hard to save money may think that they will take care of their body-mind at some later time, or will seek enlightenment when they have retired. But complete health and awakening are really the same, and only have meaning in terms of present action, present difficulty.
Once the mind and body function separately even for a little while, discriminations arise which destroy our ability to perceive the unity of our situations. Steams of moments arise which involve patterns of discovering more and more problems, and these patterns are very hard to cut through. At this point, we are these patterns; we are the problems, so we cannot escape. If we live this way for many years, how can we then hope to discover serenity or enlightenment? It would be very terrible to become old, especially for someone who has worked for a lifetime to gain material security, and be unable to practice self-care and self-healing, or to achieve self-understanding.

If we have no control over our health, our peace of mind, or our understanding, but must depend on others for these things, can we really feel satisfied or secure?

There you have it. The Star path is set. Respond and be a Star!

1 - SPECULATIVE LOGORRHEA: AN INVITATION

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Are you in love with creative writing and introspective analysis? Are you tired of meaningless activities and searching for a deeper meaning? Do you use the Word as your best way to reach out and seek fulfilment?

Well, my friend, here I am, answering your call: I am an eclectic maniac with logorrhea as his main disease, sprinkled with a good touch of egocentrism natural with all male chauvinists that have led a wandering life like I have.

You may wish to have a look at my alterego on the 'Net to better understand my excessive passion for knowledge and books. In there I proudly exhibit my books and write unsolicited reviews because my hyperlexic mind has to find an exhaust valve somewhere: and yet, you only read my moderate reviews..., being spared my full anger and asskicking rage. That, I mostly keep to myself.

Where in the 'Net? I'll let you wonder about it: with all the search engines available, the quest is yours… Just use kinkazzo as the magic word.

But non importa. Everything else I write, it's for work and learning, so it isn't fun. I'm the editor of a series of books which are simply so boring and tedious, that only lawyers and dentists would enjoy them with masochistic pleasure. Jokes aside, I do read and write a lot, I own an extensive library (6000 volumes to date) and plagiarize my own reviews for other books that don't deserve a full appraisal, due to their pitiful contents, but that I keep receiving from would-be Nobel candidates. Ah ah ah ah! Then I teach, supervise, manage my academic staff, resort to Internet when close to dozing off at my desk, and wait for an irate soul to jolt me off my head via the email medium.

Can you do that?
Jolt me off my head with an email? Here's the address: kinkazzo@yahoo.it -- try it.

I'm half a century old, but if Saul Bellow is my paragon, I should really start enjoying myself at 85. So far, at any rate, I've tried being an Army officer in Asia, a diplomat in Europe, an academic at the Antipodes, and an intelligence officer, a teacher, an anthropologist among the aborigines, an administrator, a writer, a Jewish historian, a...a...a... well, talk about the Promethean complex!

All things are possible, except skiing through a revolving door.

I have travelled the whole world, consumed by an inner fire I cannot decipher yet. But my disquiet and restlessness hasn't abated: I'm Mediterranean (d'you really think Mediterraneans are just like everybody else? uhm, history seems to counter that...), impulsive, angry, emotional, and discontent.

What can you do about it?
Help me?

And what are you doing reading this text of mine, anyway? Are you trying to unload your pain and fears by way of virtual transfer? Write me about yourself, pleeeease: as you can see, I am not shy and am reaching out. It’s something already, isn’t it?

My Italian twang is mixed with an Australian flavour which creates strange reactions, but not when I write. Hee hee hee... When I write I seem to become universal, in an orgasmic, a-tonic, mental masturbating sort of way that pampers my deeper requisites for sensual freedom and awakens the genius in me.

I am actively thinking, while I write. While I'm writing for you and to you, the anonymous reader.

All active thinking is more than a mere linking together of images and conceptions. Can you intellectually connect with me and perceive the genius?

Genius: his messages take shape in the secret depths of the soul

Philosopher Galton wrote that "what is generally meant by genius is the automatic activity of the mind, as distinguished from the effort of the will. In a man of genius, the ideas come as by inspiration; he is driven rather than drives himself." It is a gift of the gods... Plato, himself a genius, suggests that creative thought is a kind of madness sent upon men by the gods in accordance with some purpose of which they and not we are conscious. Being conscious that I am not really a genius, I should be satisfied with my intuitive mind, as intuition is the basis of all thinking. The intuited idea is operative throughout the whole process of the collection of facts, the brooding over them, the gradual heightening of the tension, the sudden release and the slow and steady mastery of the detail by the elaboration of the conceptions and judgments. In any concrete act of thinking mind's active experience is both intuitive and intellectual. If you wish to be my intellectual connection, in turn I should be intuitively your medium for manipulating your higher sense of existence. Accept?

I mean: do you accept that?

It is a mistake to think that the only qualifications for elucidating truth and fulfilment in life are purely intellectual. Only those whose lives are deep and rich light on the really vital syntheses significant to mankind.

Shouldn't we do our part in the synthesis of our life? Let's be creative then, if we cannot be true geniuses. Let's be alive and expressive in all our senses.

Artistic. Yes.

The work of art is the crystallization of a life-process. Grab my hand... shed your skin awhile, and be an artist with me, just like I want to be an artist with you, unlearning to relearn -- just like Socrates said.

Is this my mid-life crisis? I've been like this since birth (!), so no bullshit. It's actual awareness, finally. A wanting for aesthetic achievement. My mind is in labour and craves for sustenance from the whole being. No more crap from others.

Read a poem (Leaves of Grass would serve the purpose). Or write a poem...

This is the prayer I understand, no other.

True poetry which is rich with a world of suffering and experience, has the fullness and mystery, and depth and authority of life itself. It is because the poet sees so intensely that he is able to communicate to us his feeling and judgment. The creative spirit and its activity are so unlike the conscious mind that the latter feels itself to be inspired and raised above its normal power by the breath of spirit. Can you bear with me a moment about "inspiration"?

The inspired souls speak from a centre of consciousness that has transcended the limits of its finitude and so claim an authoritativeness which is not within the power of the normal individual to bestow. They do not think so much as thoughts come to them. Hey, you see how close we now come to the concept of "genius" as Plato sees it? So, perhaps all hope is not lost. The poet believes that his work is due not to his intellectual skill or imaginative boldness but to what he calls his inspiration.

I feel inspired. Do you? Ever?

Since inspiration comes to the poet's life and fades out of it regardless of his inclination, he traces it to a power more unconscious than conscious. To the ancient Hindus and the Greeks, the poetic exercise is a religious act, and the poet invokes his muse and begins with a prayer. Ever read Homer? It is always a dialogue between the daimon and the psyche. The authors of the Vedic hymns regarded themselves as channels of something greater than they knew, instruments of a higher soul beyond themselves. They do not so much create the contents as contemplate them in their moments of deepest insight. Plato in his Symposium suggests a similar view. Aristotle says that the poet is either "happily gifted by nature" or "a bit of a maniac". Our Dante says: "I am one who, when love inspires, take note and as he dictates within me I express myself."

The poetic experience is but momentary for the veil is redrawn and the mood of exaltation passes. The poet attempts a translation of the ineffable experience into words. While poetry is in the soul, the poem is a pale reflection of the original, an attempt to register in words an impression which has become an image in memory. Here, dear reader, I falter. Here I have my tragedy: cannot ever be satisfied with my "registrations". There is something incommensurable in poetry, eluding my expression in words. The poetic temper is in all of us though only a few develop it. The poet has the gift, which fewer still have, of communicating the experience by words of immediate power which compel the wandering mind to respond to his appeal. It is truly difficult to translate states of soul into words and images. The success of art is measured by the extent to which it is able to render experiences of one dimension into terms of another.

The difference between a poet and a non-poet is that the experience of the former is larger and his verbal control greater. And an adequate control of technique is essential to the poet. Even in the act of composition the poet is in a state in which the reflective elements are subordinated to the intuitive. The vision, however, is not operative for so long as it continues, its very stress acts as a check on expression. The experience is recollected but not in tranquillity. Poetry is the language of excitement. For in recollecting the exciting experience, the poet recreates the conditions of its happening and identifies himself with it. The spell of the experience is still on the poet and under its influence he employs intuitive words and images which possess emotional value more than logical meaning. While poetry is not the vision itself, but only the image of it, still its quality depends on the degree with which it calls up the vision.

Let us be poets together, and call up a vision to share....

...The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky, -
No higher than the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat - the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.

--from Renascence by E. St.Vincent Millay

A QUICK INTRODUCTION... MAINLY ON BOOKS & WRITING

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A bibliophile since adolescence, I would do anything to get the book I have in mind at any given time. My library is extensive and varied, and it has followed me all over the world, which I have travelled incessantly. I am introspective, I like meditation and existential questioning: my readings reflect my soul. I can spatiate between simple, adventurous thrillers and demanding, profound treaties with equal enjoyment - as long as my mind can be enriched and my fantasy challenged.

I am a professor of Sociohistory and Linguistics, have published specialised work in Italian and English on a variety of topics (Judaism, Anglo-American literature, foreign languages, philosophy and religious anthropology), live in the beautiful medieval city of Bologna (Italy) after a long stint down-under in Australia. Getting itchy feet again now, I think I'll soon move to... Scotland! And why not, am bheil thu ga mo thuigsinn?

My work also involves education and training of post-graduate students for future employment and a successful career: the organisation that thus far has collected my abilities and skills to enable me to do the above is called COFIMP ( check also sister organization GEMINI - and the eMagazine MOVE ON ), and is a consortium of Small & Medium Enterprises with non-profit goals for the betterment of entrepreneurship in Italy and Europe at large. If I can use books to achieve part of those goals, then I will...enthusiastically!

I believe the process of writing is something in which a writer's whole personality plays a part, and this challenges me. A writer writes not only with his ideas but also with his instincts, with his intuition. The dark side of a personality also plays a very important role in the process of writing a book. The rational factor is something of which the writer is not totally aware. And so when a writer gives testimony about his writings, he does it in a particularly subjective way.

So, there you have it.

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