Thematic clusters that interest me, fic-wise

[lobelia321]

• gem stones (lapis lazuli and so forth)

• anatomy, especially inner (corpuscles and so forth)

• planetary (orbit, tectonic plates and so forth)

• meteorology (related to planetary, in my mind)

• arthropods (a reprise; they just never get old)

• Mongolia (yurts and so forth)

• calligraphy and textiles (I get to indulge in these in Desert Prince)

• anything else that will come to me in the course of time and in the course of idly leafing through my Oxford Illustrated

I realised last night that my love of thematic concepts is nowhere more satisfied than by Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics, a novel which I re-read last year (in Italian, too!!) and with which I was clearly imprinted at a tender, post-modern age. Calvino turns cosmological and evolutionary science into fiction, and I just adore it.

Comments

[freyafloyd.livejournal.com]

Aha! I should have known. That whole thing with the road and the minerals; I was thinking, 'this is all a bit Italo Calvino.'

I read Difficult Loves quite recently.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, you recognised! I love Calvino. If on a Winter's Night A Traveller is in my top ten novels that I love and adore list.

[sophrosyne31.livejournal.com]

dio mio, tu leggi l'italiano, anche? ma come sei intelligente, oltre i miei pensieri! bravo, cara! desiderio io tanto leggere cosmicomics ma non lo facevo... uno per la lista!

[/showing off]

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Cosmicomiche e veramente meraviglioso! Mi piace moltissimo il Calvino!! E ho dimenticato che parli italiano tu!!! Hah!

We can declaim Dante together. *uses 'Italian' icon*

[sophrosyne31.livejournal.com]

io adoro calvino, evidemente if on a winter's night ma anche soppratutto le citta invisibili, mi fa sognare tutte le cose strane e belle, in modo molto elegante e con una semplicita sempre profunda... devo certemente leggere l'altri libri, ma questo fraso e uno che mi dico quasi ogni giorno da qualcosa. ce sono troppi libri e mi da una mal di testa! communque mi fa sorridere da sapere che tu anche parli l'italiano, pero migliore di me -- mi manca tanta quella lingua.

allora, so solo una quotazione da dante: e quindi uscemmo per riveder le stelle...

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

No, no, il mio italiano e molto ruggioso! Posso leggere, c'é vero. Ma mi piace molto la letteratura italiana, :-) Il mio top ten libro e Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore; Citta invisibili e un po troppo non-narrativo per me.

Dante! *&eecute; morta*

[sophrosyne31.livejournal.com]

Sono le undici di mattina adesso ma a me sembra come la prima mattina, quindi la mente non funzione bene, communque... appena pensavo al tuo posto di sopra, le cose che t'interressano... questi soggetti anche mi piacianno tanti e fanno mi pensare che ti piacerebbe un romanzo si chiama 'fugitive pieces' da anne michaels, una poetessa canadianese... se lo vedrai, pensar di leggarlo, perche e il mio libro piu favoroso, un libro elegante, interressante e umane.

Allora, un discorso italiano! quando mi trovavo a Roma da nuovo, parlevemo sempre delle cose profonde (le politiche, l'arte, la vita, l'esperienza, la famiglia, la storia...), era stancante ma molto soddisfacente! per qualsisi ragione, quando parlo in italiano io sono sempre piu seriosa... Dov'e il mio spirito birichino??

Come tu hai studiato la lingua?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I can't keep up with this! You have obviously been immersed in an Italian-speaking environment much more recently than I have and I'm limping along behind! I can do the reading but not the chiaccheraring and certainly not in the flippant tone of sophisticated irony (hoho) that I am used to adopting on Giornale Vitale (*snorts at self*). What is birichino?

I studied this language at uni!! I also did a month's course in Florence and do-it-yourself things at home and about two months' worth of night classes at uni in Sydney before I started studying in Germany. Since then: nothing really, just keeping up with a novel or so per year in Italian. When I met cinzia two years ago in Milan, I chickened out and spoke in English. :-( I know what you mean about having different personae in different languages. I am different in German. Sorta.

Are you available to meet on Mon 8th or Tues 9th May??? In London, I'm not coming to Kent.

[sophrosyne31.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I know. I found in Rome that one moment I was following the main gist of what people were saying, and then for a blessed moment of epiphany I'd have the impression I was understanding everything perfectly, and then I'd fall away in concentration for a moment and when I came back to it I'd not be able to comprehend a word, it was all just noise. O dio!!

Birichino = naughty, cheeky!!

I should make the effort to read in italian, for one thing it would remedy some of my bad colloquialisms and give me more vocab in a less frenzied atmosphere than a dinner party conversation accompanied by lots of wine. :)

Oh! this is your other email!! Now I see -- and yes, I think I may well indeed be in London then -- *definitely* tuesday afternoon -- so maybe that's a good date! If you haven't read my other comment yet I just left you a lot of confused blather about not knowing where I'm going to be when... but this looks good! Yeah?

Un bacio!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Saturday!!!!!

[sophrosyne31.livejournal.com]

saturday!!! cambridge!!! omg okay!!! un incontro destinato!!!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

did u get txt?