The Italian Child of Past

I smell gas and coffee

cold tapping feet on the marble floor 

the cold seeping into the bones - from the living quarters 

ah - the electric fire 

and once more cold sheets

and creaky beds 

howling dogs and motorbikes

The bakers are busy rolling bread shapes

we are sent to get a bag full

five o'clock in the morning

where have you surfaced from child?

and where are you going?

I am a child of foreign lands 

The well in the garden

imaginations running wild

bottomless, endless? 

and pathways in the garden

run along them

and you fall and hurt your knees

from one generation to an other

The Church

fear of the beckoning nuns 

the walk of shame - in front of the congregation

the slight breeze - forever - unsettles me

Mary's veil sways mysteriously

a dead body in the coffin – stirring?

arches, marble, frankincense - intoxicating….....

is Christ going to stand up? 

Is he going to walk down that aisle? 

The cemetery

tragic deaths and mourned pasts

baby tombs 

and murders - in Africa

little compartments

do they really contain dead people? 

The dried out valley

the forest up the mountain 

with the big rocks and stones

it harbours more...... 

The lone man living on the deserted farm

keeping cheese in the drawers 

and goats in the kitchen

The smell; unbearable, and captivating

I prati sono verdi e l'acqua e pura

The Italian connection

After 13 years I have returned to my Italian roots. I understand and don't understand why it's been so long. After all, I spent the first 20 years of my life there twice a year. And there is a lovely extended family with lots of interesting people that make it up.


See I have always had a love-hate relationship with Italy. The chaos, the food, the opinions, the politics, the fashion, the image of the woman, the Vatican, the papacy and Heavens don't get me started Berlusconi - the north-south divide.......


In my early adulthood I was trapped in a multicultural-identity turmoil, desperate to find my own point of references without interference from my Italian father and English mother and Swiss partner. I felt I didn't have a voice that was mine. Worst of all my accents in Italian and English weren't mine, they mimicked the one's my parents had from their respective backgrounds and my Swiss cadence, well that one has always been a bit of a homeless mish-mash.


So on I went on my journeys, rebelled and rejected, lived and sampled, made my own opinions, to only throw them out later and...... landed where I am today.


Today my Italian accent can easily have a bit of Roman in it, if I chose, much to the annoyance, I am sure, of some and certainly to my father's disapproval, but to my pride. 


Roma -  I salute Cinema Nuovo Sacher, Villa Doria Pamphili, Priscilla the cool Jungian therapist, Santa Maria in Trastevere, Gelato, Pizza Bianca & Nutella, Mario the guy on the loud vespa, the deli shop round the corner, Piazza della Radio........ Officially my Italian citizenship now has the stamp of Rome and not that of the home village of my farther. 


And our honeymoon was on Stromboli in stark December. 


So -  am very pleased that I made my relationship to my Italy my own.


However, there is that 13 year gap. I am only now waking up to building up a new relationship to the Italy of my childhood. My cousins are heading slowly towards their sixties whilst their children are now in early adulthood. We are all older and the younger generation are now fighting their battles. 


My children have just woken up to the fact that their mother has an Italian side that has remained so far in the silent background.


And I am wondering what is this Italian side? As a child, as a young person, I felt threatened in my girlhood, in my womanhood. My blond hair and English complexion has always attracted sometimes unwanted attention and adoration. 


Today I feel strong as a woman. Having carried and born three children, has given me Power, and has also healed.


Maybe the key to my longing as a women for the wild side, for expression, for the cycle of creativity and destruction, must pass through the Italian connection? Maybe without that link something is missing? Maybe it's time to lay down the rebellion, to start the journey of making conscious, to start looking for the Power of Life? 


So I invoke, I appeal.....


.......................      Italia, aiutami a trovare il tuo spirito nella mia anima.

The sanctuary experience

Before the festive holidays I was feeling run down and struggled to get through the last weeks. On advice of a friend I booked myself into the Sanctuary in London, a sort of beauty spa place I was vaguely aware of but never really entertained going to.


It was an interesting experience.


Before going my imagination went wild, as it does, and I painted a picture in my mind of a sort of sacred place, as the name suggests, where women can be themselves, tune into their bodies and nurture their souls. A place where we sisters can let go of the pressures of the outside world, where we put to rest our duties of super woman, super mum, and multi juggling and holding being.


The reality was more of a well run for profit organisation selling us women the idea that 'we are worth it', as the famous add says, whilst their tills ring in delight. A lot of women seemed to be going in groups to have a 'good old girlie chat' and hang out together. I imagined something a bit more introspective and quiet.


And what really bugged me were the women's magazine all over the place selling an image of a woman that we all know really does not exist. But that image plays nasty tricks un our subconscious. Not surprising then perhaps that women in the spa did not go naked, as I imagined, but hid their bodies in bikini, for those with fitter bodies, or swim suit for those with more flesh to the bone, which in turn were tightly wrapped up in a thick bathrobe.


I left feeling a bit sad. Yes I did have a nice treatment that loosened up my stiff muscles, and I did enjoy the pools and the sauna and I managed to get through my last days of work in a much better shape but I was wondering what kind of image haunts women and how the beauty industry makes money out of women's insecurities.


Where is the wolf woman? Where is our wild side? What happened to our power of presence, with curves, bones, wrinkles, creases, dents, and stretchmarks, whatever the landscape of our body?


Will we ever banish the pin up girl?

The longing of a woman

I am grappling with something these days. It is about longing, my longing. What is it I am longing for? It is difficult to find the words to describe it. It is buried and inscribed deep down into the caverns of my soul, where shadows and light meet and dance the story of love and passion. Not the kind that is flaring up and then subsides leaving you empty but a fire in the belly that ever burns and guards fiercely that which is important and key to the growth of the soul. 


I want to express that and I want someone to meet me in that expression. And sometimes I feel that other does not exist. Maybe that's not it though. Maybe I am scared to unleash that bellyful of fire and therefore I feel there is no one there to meet it? 

It takes courage. 

Yes.

What if I express, live, be that which is 

cavernous

fleshy

juicy

strong

healthy

all-encompassing

bountiful

fertile

wise

deep

truthful

magic

old

round?

Open Rooms 

Internal Spaces 

Body Harbouring Blood

Blood Harbouring Body 

Spaces 

Internal Rooms 

Open

Body Space 

Image Body 

Space Image 

Body Space Image 

Body Space Form 

Body Space 

Sacred Body 

Space Form

Heart 

Body Bones 

Structure 

Fluids Body Space 

Fluid Form Space 

Sacred Body 

Cathedral of Structure 

and Chaos 

Body 

Image Space 

Sacred 

Valid 

Body Sacred 

Space Body 

Sacred Space 

Body Sacred Space 

Cathedral of Fluids 

Mixing 

Faith Space

Sacred Spaces 

Sacred Room 

God forms a heart 

and the Star twinkles 

joyfully 

playfully 

safely 

Sacred Spaces 

Room for thought 

Food filling internal catacombs 

Internal space 

Landscape 

Sacred Spaces 

Playing in the halls of monsters 

Glittering stardust 

Powder of dust 

Lifting

Sacred

Month of Light and Rehearsal of Christmas Carols

Today is the first advent. Although I am not so much into the traditional and don't particularly like Christmas anymore because of the consumerism I do love the symbolism of light. So this year, like many other years, I have created my own version of advent wreath and after a hard day's work have lit the first of the four candles. Every Sunday up until Christmas a further light gets lit.  It's also a reminder of my childhood in Switzerland, where we used to have an advent wreath every year. My mother still makes her own every year. 

Like every year around this time, the girls are practicing their Christmas Carols for their Christmas performance at school - with devotion and graceful zeal - and I was in tears. There is something about the symbolism of the Christmas story that I find very moving; the baby born in a stable to humble parent. The idea that with every light we move closer to the Big Light, the Shining Star. And this delivered by the seriousness of children with their big eyes, bell-like voices and their real emotion whenever they sing "Baby Jesus is born". 

So Christmas can be special after all. The stillness, the introspection, the being together in a meaningful way without having to do anything in particular. I can feel the magic. What magic will this year bring? With every light I light I feel I want to connect to something deeper - within. Something that connects us all. Humanity in union perhaps. All nations - one nation. And Peace. Not an ideal but an aspiration. 

The end of breastfeeding and the beginnings of openings

One door closes and one door opens. And in reality probably more than one opens. The way I experience it these days is like little bubbles of openings appear in my consciousness and for a split second I am at one, I am at peace, I believe that good will come, I trust and I can almost see the shape of what comes next. And then it's gone....... This is a new process. It's exciting. It also feels like a wind is blowing through my body and the openings, new openings,  are the passages where the wind can blow through freely.

This has come about through the transition of having stopped feeding my little one from my breasts. That was an intense and big transition. My milk took two weeks to go. For that time, I am blessed, I wasn't alone and my husband took over the comforting and soothing as with me the baby could not settle down with the absence of the breast and the presence of milk!

His hands still search the warm and soft skin but I think he has now forgotten where and how exactly he used to get comfort from. With this little one it had to be all or nothing. I kind of knew that a long time ago, but up until now I did not have the strength, or I or he were not ready to let go of that part of our relationship. Until one dear morning he would not let be of the breast, nor would he be comforted, and we ended both up in tears of frustration and I decided there and then that we had to end. We had a talk: "my dear baby Mami is tired and can not give you this anymore. We are going to end and it is going to be hard for both of us. It does not mean I am not there anymore to soothe and love you, it just means that we are moving on and growing".

So here it is. Growing we must and change is inevitable, ever present. I am not connected anymore in this so unique and intense way to another human being. Part of me is sad, and part of me is glad. There is an awareness and a wondering about the fact that the little one now grows independently of me, in the sense that nothing of my body flows into his body anymore. We are now truly two whereas before, for a long time, we were one, one flowing into the other, one giving and the other taking, to and fro. The first circle was severed through the process of birth, now the second circle has been severed through the ebbing of the milk. That there is a big circle connecting us somewhere I am sure of, but it doesn't lessen I think the importance and the enormity of the severance of these physical, perhaps existential circles. Somehow the question of 'who are you and who am I' moves into the foreground and 'what kind of relationship can we build'.

So my little baby, now I must get used to you now actually being a toddler. With that comes your will and your personality and we know that you have a very strong drive for exploration and a very strong mind of your own. I can see that we are going to have our battles, perhaps because your drive for exploration and your strong mind meets mine. But we are going to sail these rough seas no matter what. And my openings, the way I can seize them, will ultimately also be yours. So come on, let's sail sailor!

Fundamental Aloneness

I have reached a stage where no talking, no books, no advice, no information is doing anything for me anymore. Any input is confusing me and shaking my balance - it threatens to throw me into the abyss. 

I am alone

Alone in me I will find the answer

I know

It's a habit running to people or things to appease my doubts and anxieties. And there is a sigh of relief when I turn towards my inner sanctum - and stay still. But to do that, completely, is a mammoth task. I don't know why. I panic about letting go of this worldly habit. 

I am almost in terror about letting go of this shore and to give myself over to the water that takes me to the other side. 

I am indeed in a process. 

May I sense the extended hand of the Light

and not fall into the traps of the Black Hole

This is my fundamental aloneness. 

No one but me knows 

I am clinging on but soon must let go....... 

Change. 

The Hanged Mother with Babe