Like most men his age, when my good friend Currado Malaspina looks honestly at the annals of his amorous life he sees one long concatenation of shame. Each humiliation has its own rancid stench and its own putrid form of debasement, but like Tolstoy's happy families they are all basically of a single sort. They are as predictable as they are unavoidable and Currado's inability to learn from experience is simply more evidence that in the end we are no more inclined toward reason than our elder ancestors, the apes.
"Women," Currado likes to point out at every opportunity, especially when there are women present who might potentially prove him wrong but invariably don't, "are the true hunters and gatherers. They hunt for the sweeter souls of man and suck until only the parched detritus remains. Then they gather all the foul and dessicated remnants and together with their saintly sisters grouse about our sapless lack of spine."
"Unfortunately, I've never found proper comfort with derelicts and whores," he goes on "though with them the remedy is plain. Instead I insist on what is inconveniently called romantic love only to learn that my oxymoronic rendering of the heart is a subject of ridicule and scorn."
Some have interpreted Malaspina's work as a hostile, sexist diatribe railing against the winds of inevitable change. Others simply see it as a tender form of soft pornography. Knowing the man it is clear to me that both readings are understandable but the truth lies elsewhere.
Currado Malaspina's work has always been a clumsy prayer for passion in a world of politicized desire. It is a plea for parity where the combustible leverage of lovemaking is shared and held aloft like a balloon.
To his credit, Malaspina has never conceded defeat despite his pain and his disappointment. If he has displaced his optimism with a body of work of questionable merit at least he remains a poet rather than a bitter polemicist.
I wish his current petite amie all the luck in the world.
Currado Malaspina's work has always been a clumsy prayer for passion in a world of politicized desire. It is a plea for parity where the combustible leverage of lovemaking is shared and held aloft like a balloon.
To his credit, Malaspina has never conceded defeat despite his pain and his disappointment. If he has displaced his optimism with a body of work of questionable merit at least he remains a poet rather than a bitter polemicist.
I wish his current petite amie all the luck in the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment