This week I'm seeing Vietnam in the list of the top ten countries visiting the poetry blog. Argentina's in there too, but Chile is not. It seems that I get one or the other, but not both, The same is true of Spain and Portugal. Maybe in each case I have just one fan, who is constantly crossing the border like a bagashero. [How many of you know that word? It's Portunhol for "contrabandista."]

It is nice when I can be faithful to who I was. It is imperative that I be true to who I am.

--DCT 24 Feb. 2017

In our possessed state, Beauty speaks through us. She has Her own wisdom, which we are powerless to match or refute. She is the source of Life and Death. Though we may retransmit sparks of Her overwhelming light, we are basically along for the ride. We are the wood burning in Her sacred dhuni, Her fire-pit, which is also our funeral pyre.

D. Carlos Traxler
One year ago: 24 Feb. 2016

In the end it is beauty that we love, beauty that heals the soul and makes us believe that there could be a god, must be a god. We will do anything to have such beauty, to possess it, whether or not it can really be possessed, because we worship it. In that sense, at least, there is a god. Beauty is a god that, instead of being possessed, possesses us, drives us, riding us like the gods of Vodou, to imitate it, re-create it, and love it. Before such an onslaught of divinity we are helpless. 

D. Carlos Traxler

One year ago: 23 Feb. 2016

I shall sit around
in my suit of armour
dreaming with my greyhound,

Yo, que soy fijo de algo,
pasaré el día en armadura,
soñando sueños con mi galgo.

Donald Carlos Traxler
22 Feb. 2017

Nota bilingüe - Bilingual Note

Estoy escribiendo esta nota en dos idiomas por su importancia, y porque vivo en dos culturas. La mayor parte de mis amigos saben que soy naturista. Qué piensan de eso? Que es una eccentricidad, algo cómico, un vicio? No sé. Ni voy a perder sueño pensando en eso. Su importancia no tiene que ver conmigo, sino con toda la raza humana. Lo que hay que saber y entender es que la desnudez es normal, que es el estado normal del ser humano.

Se dice que la ropa hace al hombre. Pero lo que hace no es parte de la natura. Lo que hace es una construcción artificial, con una humanidad restringida y poco libre, a veces torcida y miope. Pero la desnudez, al contrario, hace al humano; un humano que, en vez de sacar ventaja de la vulnerabilidad de otra persona, la comparte. En vez de magnificar las diferencias sociales, las borra, para facilitar comprensión y cooperación humana. Dejando atrás lo artificial, se descubre de nuevo lo natural y esencial.

Si esta visión del ser humano y su estado natural y normal no se acepta por “la sociedad”, es “la sociedad” que se equivoca, es “la sociedad” que tendrá que aprender una nueva manera de pensar, para hacerse realmente humana, y casi diría para sobrevivir. Lo artificial que hemos creado está matando a lo natural, y si eso pasa, va a matar a nosotros tambien.

///

I am writing this note in two languages because of its importance, and because I live in two cultures. Most of my friends know that I’m a naturist. What do they think of that? That it’s an eccentricity, something comical, a vice? I don’t know. Nor am I going to lose sleep thinking about it. Its importance doesn’t have to do with me, but with the whole human race. What has to be known and understood is that nudity is normal, that it is the normal state of the human being.

It is said that clothes make the man. But what they make is not part of nature. What they make is an artificial construction, with a humanity that is restricted and unfree, sometimes distorted and myopic. But nudity, on the other hand, makes the human; a human that, instead of taking advantage of the vulnerability of another person, shares it. Instead of magnifying social differences, it erases them, facilitating understanding and human cooperation. In leaving behind the artificial, the natural and essential is rediscovered.

If this vision of the human being and our natural and normal state is not accepted by “society,” it is “society” that is mistaken, it is “society” that will have to learn a new way of thinking, to become really human, and I might even say to survive. The artificial that we have created is killing the natural, and if this happens, it is going to kill us, too.

Paulo y Francesca

[portunhol surenho]

Francesca, so tu leal amante,
que compartió dez anos de perigo.
Quero dizerte con candor
que la causa do desmaio de Dante
non foi o nosso castigo,
foi nosso eterno amor.

12 fevrero 2017

Francesca, I am your faithful lover,
who shared ten years of danger.
I want to tell you from my soul
that the cause of Dante's faint
was not our punishment,
but our undying love.