Un battito di mani, un battito di cuore

A noi essere umani talvolta piace parlare della nostra specie come una categoria di bestie bipedi, dotate di un cervello la cui esistenza viene ignorata, impulsive, rozze, ignoranti; calunniamo noi stessi di agire con irruenza e disinvoltura in ogni nostra azione, solo perché siamo umani. In verità, nonostante l’onnipresente e ineliminabile elemento di spontaneità, le nostre azioni sono in qualche misura premeditate, studiate. Prima di emettere un singolo suono, esalare, tendere un muscolo, prima di esporci al nostro pubblico di simili, ci fermiamo a riflettere; forse non scandagliamo le conseguenze, trascuriamo il possibile avvenire – tutto sommato siamo solo umani  – forse ci lasciamo sopraffare dalle emozioni, dall’euforia maniacale a un accesso di nera ira: purtuttavia applichiamo una specie di filtro a ogni nostra mossa.

Siamo degli attori del quotidiano e il nostro palco è la realtà. La qualità, alcuni contesteranno, non sarà certo quella che vanta il mitico regno di Hollywood o che viene sfoggiata nei palazzi del mondo di Broadway – ma ognuno di noi è colui che interpreta il ruolo di se stesso. Noi ci interpretiamo; rare sono le volte in cui ci sentiamo in grado di lasciare a nudo la nostra anima, la nostra essenza. Ci interpretiamo in tutte le salse.

L’applauso del pubblico in tripudio fomenta il nostro fervore. Ci nutriamo del clangore di mani, la stonante sinfonia di urli e fischi. A volte abbiamo bisogno dell’ammirazione di qualcun altro per essere in grado di amare noi stessi. Forse sono proprio gli estranei a sottolineare le nostre virtù e a presentarcele su un piatto d’argento; forse sono loro, che manifestano stima e adorazione per una persona che siamo stati per poche ore,

 

 

…

 

 

… E qui vi lascio un consiglio. Iniziai a scrivere questo testo il 14 maggio dell’anno 2016. Ho fatto l’errore di lasciare giù la penna, trascurando il mio scritto, per poi riprenderla in mano soltanto oggi, il 3 gennaio 2017. Non sarei capace di continuare il testo, dovrei riniziare da capo. Non posso interpretare il personaggio nelle cui vesti mi trovavo un anno fa – da qui: << Carpe diem.>>; una spontaneità premeditata, o una premeditazione spontanea. In ogni caso ho imparato la mia lezione.

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Sì o no… o no o sì?

 

Due emisferi cerebrali, mente e cuore, due sfere – io e gli altri, passato e futuro, due direzioni – avanti e indietro, sì o no… o no o sì?

Chiariamo:

• Due emisferi cerebrali: ipse dixit Madre Natura e la neuroanatomia umana.
• Mente e cuore: dualismo martoriante, due avversari insiti, uno realista e l’altro ottimista. Una mente ottimista è sconsigliable come lo è un cuore realista: dopotutto il nostro sangue è caldo. Una mente realista in coppia inscindibile con un cuore che sorride giulivo e ignaro è altrettanto pernicioso. C’è chi vuole sapere e chi è ingenuo – ma nessuno dei due “sa”…
• Io e gli altri: sono umano in quanto essere generato da due umani e portato al mondo per vivere tra i miei simili, che sono per la maggior parte umani. La vita da romito nel 2017 è un compito arduo, la vita da romito è solitario – si può vivere in solitudine per tutta la vita? E’ questo vivere?
• Passato e futuro: se vogliamo proprio essere meticolosi, diremo che il presente non esiste. Tempo di guardare le mie mani, di respirare e sono già nel passato. Oppure nel futuro. Oscilliamo: così hanno detto…
• Avanti e indietro: ormai non è lecito stare fermi. E’ neghittosità, è vigliaccheria, è inevitabile: siamo in continuo movimento. Motum perpetuum – chi se ne vuole sottrarre definitivamente ha come alternativa la criogenia. Svoltare? Non credo sia un’opzione, perché in ogni caso dopo x passi a sinistra o destra , per continuare bisognerebbe andare avanti. Oppure indietro? E andando indietro si potrebbe finalmente stare fermi, ma sarebbe una mossa esiziale…
• Sì o no: logica vuole che ci siano due valori di verità in questo mondo binario, troppo binario.
• No o sì: perché non sapremo mai se siamo noi ad essere dalla parte del torto o ad avere ragione.

In medio stat virtus? Teoricamente. Idealmente.

Noi cerchiamo l’equilibrio, ma per quanto possiamo essere forti ed esistenzialmente robusti, saldi nei nostri principi, positivamente caparbi, siamo scombussolati dal primo soffio, seppur leggerismo, che la vita rilascia, sospriando con malizia, nella nostra direzione. Una vita di contrasti:

• una vita in cui vorremmo seguire la mente e attenerci ad un comportamento realista, adottando una posizione di freddezza e scetticismo in cui, data la nostra apatia e abulia, non vi potranno essere speranze disattese, dal momento che non ci saranno speranze. Quale essere umano riucirà, però, a soffocare le bollenti rivolte del cuore? Chi potrà mettere a tacere il centro aristotelico del nostro stesso corpo? Eppure c’è chi non vuole più sperare per tema di esporsi troppo, come un guerriero fiero e tracotante che sguaina la spada con una smorfia di superiorità sul viso e perde la vita davanti al manigoldo con una pistola, e versare lacrime amare per qualcosa che la mente ripudierebbe. Il cuore non ragiona: questo è compito della ragione. Sta tutto nella semantica. Il cuore si ostina a sperare – a volte ottiene ciò che vuole, ma questo per puro caso. Però è proprio lì che nasce la felicità: amare è una cosa bellissima, riuscire ad essere amati è forse ancora più lieto. Il cuore si ostina a sperare, ma la speranza è effimera, debole davanti alle losche forze che ci assalgono nel nostro cammino. E’ il cuore che si lede da solo, un Icaro, ed essendo egoista coinvolge la mente nella sua sofferenza. O forse è la mente che non riesce ad astenersi dal compatire. Una mente offuscata dai patemi sorti dal suo fallimento, dal suo trascurato proposito di non derogare ai suoi princìpi, una mente che
• vede da dove proviene il dolore: di certo non è stato il cuore soltano ad autoinfliggersi, a buscarsi quella insanabile ferita. Sono stati gli altri – non si tratta di una calunnia da codardi schivi, non è un addossare la colpa a qualcun altro. Il cuore è narcisista, non compierebbe mai un atto dannoso nei suoi  stessi confronti consapevolmente. Sì, sono stati gli altri: gli altri a cui voglio bene e gli altri a cui non ne voglio. Ci sono tanti altri. Per vivere coi nostri cari dobbiamo anche sopportare la poco gradita garanzia di inimicizie. Io e gli altri: parti complementari. Senza gli altri, non ci sarei io; senza di me, non avrebbe senso parlare di altri. L’enfer c’est les autres. L’enfer possono essere les autres, certi autres. Eppure nessuno vorrebbe rinunciare a ciò che ama per rimanere soltanto con se stesso, perché
• domina la greve paura del futuro, perché ha di affrontare il grande ignoto da solo. L’ennesima incudine: paura del passato, paura del futuro. Nel presente si potrebbe tirare un sospiro di sollievo – però c’è il passato che ci chiama rivangare, il futuro che ci ordina in modo persino perentorio di vangare; di vangare quel terreno che vorremmo sondare e dove dovremo seminare almeno qualcosa, dato che
• non possiamo rimanere fermi su due piedi a riflettere. Ad assaggiarci. Ad accarezzarci. A pescare nel torbido. Ad invitare noi stessi a prendere un caffè per conoscerci meglio. A consultare il futuro per saperci orientare. Andare indietro significa scavare nei ricordi, scandagliare felicità passate, tentare di riabbracciare il conforto di una decisione già presa, la leggerezza delle responsabilità svanite di cui non siamo più oberati. Andare indietro significa allontanarsi dal futuro – faux pas. Riaffiora lo Streben e siamo già in ritardo: abbiamo perso il treno della realtà. Pensare o agire, agire o pensare. E’ difficile persino convincersi che la vita sia facile. Urge una risposta, una nostra reazione; dobbiamo prendere una decisione e dire
• sì o no.
• Oppure saranno gli altri a dire no o sì.

Coolture shock cult

ce

Today marks the start of a new era: I have officially been living in Italy for as long as I lived in England. The bizarre London – Lusurasco d’Alseno (for those who aren’t familiar with remote towns in Northern Italian provinces, I would advise they look it up on a detailed map) axis holds strong in its awkward existence: it’s always rather amusing to hear the stories of innocent 11-year-olds who move from a sprawling metropolis to a third world town, relict of the past centuries and the simple life, who go from being surrounded by an anonymous throng of about 8 million people to roving through a town of 16,000 ghastly inhabitants, and then fewer still. I’m currently in an agrestic sort of Hobbiton; documents state the presence of a good 4,770 people living in this confined area. I am, on the other hand, adamant that there be well less than a meagre thousand – in any case, there are more chicken than human beings. So, whilst as listeners of such tales we can have a hearty laugh, it is far more grotesque to see oneself placed in such a torrid situation.

As for myself, I can’t really complain – I’m still alive, so that must mean that it can’t have been all that bad. I did have my fair share of peripeteias (one being the tragic move) and sour, gloomy times… It’s always pleasant to look back in laughter, to take a vicarious look at the dismal vortex of doom I eventually drifted away from.

The beginning of my adventure was a jump with a thump; I was obviously excited about going from rainy London to the sunripe land of pizza and nature, also given the fact that pre-teens are easily prone to psychological conditioning and find their parents’ joy and vim rather contagious. I remember telling my best friend about the imminent move – we were both consternated but sure that we would still have across-the-border adventures to come (they didn’t). On that occasion I managed to get the dratted name of my future home wrong, saying Florence (“Firenze”) instead of “Fiorenzuola”. The latter is far smaller and of less interest in the eyes of just about anybody on the planet. And in the Solar System too, for that matter. Getting to Italy after family pep-talks and the general sparkling enthusiasm that forever effervesced after us having made the Big decision proved to be, for me, a flop. It was almost like starting a race after being cheered on by the brimming stadium, wearing a chest pumped full of pride, and tripping up on a tied-up shoelace on the second step forward, falling down face flat. Grim.

A dramatic fall, lasting several weeks, months, topped off with alienation, loneliness and embarrassment: I had plummeted into the unwelcoming abyss of an Italian small-town middle school, without knowing anyone other than my two brothers (both tucked safely away  in the locus amoenus that was their primary school – my brother in the 5th and last year, my youngest one in the 1st, learning how to write after having acquired this skill in reception in London; some guys get all the luck) and my parents, without knowing what I was supposed to do, where I was meant to go, whom I could speak to and how I could have possibly spoken a language I knew like a Kazakh knows Shakespearian English.

Not being able to communicate properly is probably one of the most frustrating things a person could ever experience. It’s already embarrassing on a personal level – having to surrender and give in to admitting that you are effectively not able and cannot even try to do something (even a thing so basic and human such as speaking). But the situation worsens in an interindividual context, where the tongue-tied speaker is exposed to vicious comments, mockery and humiliation. As if I didn’t feel glum enough for knowing things but not having the words to give verbal life to them, other people would opt for derision or condescending tones whilst trying to explain expressions I couldn’t get my head around  or burst out laughing for the inevitably egregious mistakes I would make – I was well aware of their funny accents and mistakes they made during English lessons, but I didn’t snigger nor utter a peep. It wouldn’t have been kind of me, and I have most probably come across as arrogant. Some people only grasp the concept of humiliation when they are the victims.
Then again, I sometimes stumble upon exercise books from my first year over here in Italy and I laugh at the innocent blunders that mushroomed in every piece of writing for however careful I would try to be.

Not long ago I collected my first degree with a thesis written entirely in Italian – people can come a long way when they put their heads to it! And what’s more is that last year I had actually thought I would have found myself cemented stuck in the exact same bewildering situation just as I was leaving for an exchange abroad in yeasty Germany. Chapeu to all the people who have the courage to pack their bags and study in a distant land for a few months – it’s not all that easy. The presence of other students that have made the same decision, however, results in a comforting sense of shared misadventure: everyone is more or less on the same boat, and students can all make use of their knowledge of the lingua franca par excellence English, some handling this fragile language better than others. And this time round I could speak and understand German very well, and this blessing made the stay a whole lot easier. In the first year of middle school I couldn’t expect to have a decent conversation in English with anyone, being the only Anglo-Saxon in the building; I just had to make do with the little Italian I had. New boys and girls from Arabic speaking countries could find company, Romanians and Albanians had cousins or linguistically similar buddies in other classes – lucky them.
In the afternoon I’d just resort to playing basketball or football; sport is a universal language. Italy was full of playing fields that were easily reachable on foot or by bike – that was thrilling. I would never have dreamed of stepping outside and pedalling away in the middle of quiet roads in London (in Southgate I had to stay on the pavement and be weary of crossings and other vehicles). I have to admit – there were fewer roads in old Fiorenzuola. During the first week in our first, antediluvian, moth-ridden flat, my mum decided to take me and my brother for a lovely bike ride, so we could get to know the place that was now our home. After about 20 minutes we started heading back home, led by mother Goose. Me and my sibling were both rather perplexed, but my mother’s answer was simply that we had seen everything there was to see.

To be continued

Pretty fly for a white guy

21.06.2015

Gather round, younglings, as once again I have a story for your ears (..or eyes, because you’re reading this on facebook)

In this day and age we have all been to an airport at least once in our globalised lives, and most of us should know the feeling a person perceives when he/she sees a most undesirable person sitting nearby at the gate. This unwanted presence is usually a morbidly obese person with a DIY “Niagara Falls” print on his t-shirt under his armpits, an obstreperous brute or a boisterous virago shouting on the phone, a guy with an “Allah is my bff and I fucking hate America YOLO” jumper, Paris Hilton or the living definition of the word “weirdo”.

Today my caring father and his slave – my sibling – drove me to the airport and solemnly accompanied me to the security check area. During our brief exchange of “cheerios” and “toodle-oos”, we noticed a total weirdo bobbing along around the barriers. Details are rather important in situations such as this one, and hence I will describe this unearthly gremlin: probably in his 30s, but worn and torn like a 90-year-old war veteran; a NOFX t-shirt with Jesus written somewhere on the back; slick, greasy hair that made me want to pour what was left of my bottle of water on his head to give him a cathartic shower and free him from the oil well residing upon his noggin; yellow Vans trainers with rainbow laces. But the salient element, the worst and most striking, were these atrocious fucking head-phones sitting AROUND his head like a pair of glasses stuck on backwards.
My dad, clearly intrigued, took this freak of humanity to a liking and chuckled “Haha look it’s a terrorist”. I was about to blurt out something along the lines of: “Jesus Christ would you shut up, I bet he’s going to be on my plane now you said that”.
But I didn’t. I held my tongue. I didn’t want to tempt fate. It’s happened too many times: I pray to every known God to not let the creep at my gate sit near me on the plane and I find the god-forsaken fool sitting riiiiight next to me. Breathing my same air. How terrible.
My dad, however, beat me to it: “Nah, he hasn’t even got a rucksack, he’s probably just a loner, bumming around at the airport on a Sunday afternoon (AS ONE WOULD), might be waiting for someone”.

These words settled into my brain, soothing my soul, just like vanilla ice cream that slowly melts and smothers hot brownies. Brownies, however, that will never be digested: as I was already on board, locked, stocked and ready for take off, I took the time to study my surroundings. My eye fell on an elderly couple sitting in the immediate vicinity: the man was massaging his wife’s foot, cuddling her corns, bumping her bunions… You get the idea. In an evident state of disgust and repulsion, I decided to turn my head around…
And there I saw it. It. The suicide-bomber-weirdo-sociopath-creep from before.
My heart stopped. My stomach fell out of my arse (I was immediately forced by a hostess to pick it back up because it would have been dangerously in the way in case of an emergency). I saw the whole of “Big Fish” – crock of shit, an appalling film – pass in front of my eyes. I just wanted to cry.
Next to me, adjacent, shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, murderer to victim. My brain was having fun conjuring up some gruesome images of decapitations and human butchering – I can be quite paranoid – and I was trying to devise plans for survival in case he should have hijacked the plane or self-defence ideas (a kick in the bollocks or a head to the head?) preparing for any eventual threats.
So there I was in mid-air, sobbing, fearing for my life, as one normally does when flying with Easyjet. I was on the point of bursting out crying like a pussy several times; I was even about to plead, beg the good-looking (and probably gay now I just said that) steward to move me to any other seat on the plane, but he probably would have told me to get a hold of myself and try to sell me a cup of tea for 4 frigging euros.
“Don’t look at him.. Ok shit I just did.. Avoid eye-contact Lia, like when you’re on the tube… Don’t look at his face.. Study his behaviour… Is he hiding a knife in his shoe? A scimitar in his 3/4-length trousers?.. Bugger, that’s it, you looked him in the eyes, typical crazy eyes… He’s going to make a Shish kebab out of you now, you’ve done it big time Lia”
Ok, so maybe my suspected terrorist, alleged criminal of seat-mate was completely innocuous (for today). Or almost: as we got up after the plane had landed to get our suitcases, the odd-bod obviously had to lift up his armpits – setting loose a legion of infernal, sweat-drenched odour particles into my nostrils, thus contaminating my poor lungs, polluting my existence, a waft of the underworld, the pungent stench of the 7 plagues of Egypt, used sanitary towels and McDonald’s toilets.

I will never pass judgement about potential co-travellers ever again, God. I know you enjoy the banter, but please, I’ve learnt my lesson.

Calabro-no

14/06/2015 – Un brano da “Le cronache alemanne di una Lia a Edelberga”

Lo sanno tutti che io pavento i calabroni, le vespe, i vespidi di ogni dimensione, colore, nazionalità, razza, famiglia nobile, supermercato, provincia calabrese.

Ero quasi contenta di trascorrere la mia estate in Germania, sebbene l’estate italiana sia una cosa inimitabile e straordinariamente gradevole, unica, perché la grande Alemagna in fin dei conti è un paese nordico con un clima fragile non dissimile da quello britannico. Gli sbalzi termici, le copiose nuvole, vento possente… tutti fenomeni atmosferici che imperversano sulla città di Heidelberg in modo regolare, e che dovrebbero escludere l’esistenza di calabroni.
… E invece no. Attraverso la mia parete-finestra, che fa di camera mia uno spettacolo per i vicini oltre-giardino, la bambina nella bolla, la gabbia metaforica di Gregor Samsa, vedo in continuazione un calabrone bastardo e inopportuno che passeggia sulla mia tenda, strofinandosi probabilmente per lasciarci non so quali disgustose sostanze da vespa, si appoggia sul vetro della finestra, mi osserva con quegli occhi da creatura insignificante, che non svoglendo nessun ruolo preciso nel mondo se non quello di pungere, fare dei nidi che sembrano dei trulli pugliesi fatti di sterco e saliva, farmi vagire e scappare dall’incommensurabile paura, rendere la mia vita una vita da eremita estivo, da romito moderno che non esce di casa per paura di prendere l’ebola dal contatto distanziato col postino, NON merita assolutamente di esistere.
Un aspetto positivo tuttavia c’è: non posso fumare, dato che posso farlo solo sul mio balcone, che è attualmente abitato da questo clandestino qua… malattè t’ha fat brut parmzan d’una vespa..

11/06

 

Amico mio,

amico mio travagliato,

amico mio che fatalmente

se n’è andato!

Chi il carnefice che ti

spinse a fare il passo esiziale?

Languo io a spasmi cheti,

amico mio, ti perdono non come tale

ma come umano: perduto, disperato

che ha scoperto morendo d’esser nato.

Ti perdono dolcemente e bacio le tu’ orme

In un mondo che non condona

la mestizia delle trite alme e dorme

inanzi le misere sorti; e pietà non dona.

Se n’è andato

fatalmente un amico mio

amico mio travagliato.

Amico mio.

Tedesc-use

09/06/2015 – Un brano da “Le cronache alemanne di una Lia a Edelberga”

Forse sono gli inglesi a essere troppo ossequiosi. Però in fondo persino gli italiani hanno l’abitudine di chiedere permesso quando devono passare.
Questa nozione, tuttavia, è del tutto sconosciuta in Germania.

Sono cresciuta nel Regno Unito, dove le persone si scusano perennemente. Devi passare? “Sorry”. Qualcuno ti urta sul bus? “Oh, sorry!”. Calpesti una cacca? “Oh bugger, sorry!”. Qualcuno ti accoltella? Chiedi scusa al facinoroso dotato di lama per l’inconveniente. Non perché l’atto di chiedere venia per delle frivolezze sia una cosa di per sé sempre appropriata e corretta, ma perché ci sembra giusto farlo (forse anche per sfuggire ai problemi e alle situazioni un po’ awkward – vedesi la vita quotidiana cinematografica e reale di Colin Firth).

In Germania invece no.

Tabù.

Evitano le “Entschuldigung” e “Sorry” come se fossero dei lebbrosi, delle bestemmie, un’interrogazione alla prima ora del lunedì. Optano per la forza fisica, l’irruenza tipica dei villani e delle vespe che cercano di irrompere nella tua stanza attraverso una finestra chiusa (vespe di MERDA), e quando c’è qualcuno che possa essere d’intralcio, grugniscono, emettono suoni gutturali e iniziano a spintonare. Scelta poco saggia quando l’individuo in questione sono io: innanzitutto perché è un gesto da maleducati e non lo sopporto, due, perché sono un colosso femminile, una torre, una sequoia, e anche se un camion di trasporto di lottatori Sumo mi investisse rimarrei illesa – un po’ incazzata, ma incolume. Eppure insistono, spingono, spronano, perseverano, ruggiscono, pronunciano sottovoce i nomi di generali nazist deceduti. E io così, siccome immobile. Sembrano delle formiche che cercano di spostare lo stronzo del quarto giorno di vacanza (ovvero l’accumulo di materia fecale dei primi tre giorni che non sei riuscito ad espellere perché sei in un altro paese con diverse condizioni climatiche, un regime alimentare a cui non ti sei ancora accostumato, ecc.). Tentativi inani, quasi pietosi ma divertenti.

Tuttavia, siccome non così malvagia né sadica, e visto che le nefandezze prolungate non sono il mio forte, alla fine li lascio passare con un’aria altera, uno sguardo che non manca di espressività – una fisonomia da Cristus Patiens – che sembra dire “Eh, sei un po’ peinlich..”. Però chiedo sempre scusa.

 

SCUSATEMI se siete degli zotici, SCUSATEMI se non volete sprecare le vostre preziosissime parole (da qui una valida lezione: “Verba non volant, Lia manet .. e non si sposta per un cazzo”).

Mi sto disintossicando da questa deferenza per persone a caso. Quindi sorry not sorry per questo papiro chevi ruberà almeno 5 preziosi minuti del vostro tempo che mai abbonda…

We’re All Saints in our own way

4th June, 2015

 

I’m having one of those saint days: charitable act after charitable act.. And the benevolence is repaid.
I got on the bus this morning, and at the stop after where I got on I noticed a poor old chap struggling to get his trolley on the bus. Using my 21-year-old-shewolf strength, I lifted the trolley up using my little finger (no, now I’m just exaggerating.. I used telekinesis) and the old guy, overcome by infinite gratitude, showered me with praise and thanks. You’re welcomemy aged friend, and people who don’t help the elderly are nasty wankers.
However, my martyrdom is far from being over. A few minutes after the trolley episode, I noticed that the girl sitting next to me had brought a tissue to her mouth, thus concealing half of her face. “How embarrassing,” I thought “At least I’m not the only one that shoots internal organs, massive bogeys and a part of her soul from her nose when she sneezes.” I was just about to kindly offer her a tissue to clean up that unpleasant nasal diarrhoea of hers, when the bus screeched to a halt and she was forced to draw the sacred tissue from her face. Her entire mouth and jaw and just everything were drenched. “You mug, you’re not supposed to mix cocaine with water when you snort it,” I was about to say, but then she erupted. A flood of bile, a waterfall of a most putrid body cocktail, the genesis of “Pungent Stench” lagoon.

When I’m in an awkward situation, or I say sorry repeatedly for no particular reason or I go totally Collin Firth (stiff, stilted perhaps, sealed mouth, I tend to stare at the cause of unease and start to mutter). Today I was a bit of a Collin Firth, as I started off “Errr… Hmmm…. Would you.. Perhaps… Maybe.. Like a tissue?” But the spluttering young lady promptly replied: “No thank you, I’ve got oneBLLLARGHJRGHHG”.
This went on for another two minutes. I didn’t get up or move, because it must have been shitty enough just leaving a smelly puddle of yourself on the bus, let alone becoming some kind of public transport outcast. The Pukey Pariah. So I figured out that I just had to bear with it… Sealing my nostrils and mouth, breathing through my pores…
Now for the retribution, Karma’s little pat-on-the-head: although I was extremely near to the subject in question, not one single drop on puke landed on my leg, shoes or rucksack. Not. Even. One. Praise the lord (of the rings). It’s almost as if Jesus flew down from his crib and used his robes to protect me from the “acid rain”.

I’d like to end this story by quoting Borat: “VERY NIIIIIICE”

Remembering what never happened – 1

Just as the Sun sets and the Moon then rises, falls a part of me as the other one awakens.

29.07.2015

His dad is dead, he’s dead – don’t ask why, or how, or when. Dead. That would be insolent and insensitive. His father is dead: he is most surely at the cemetery in this very instant. Drive me through these amber, peaked dunes, to the gleaming white resting-ground of the dead. Pristine catacombs, mourning relatives, shrubs and gravel: as a girl dries a tear, I run to the stairs. Stay there in silence, I will be back with my prey.

The door creeks open: I wouldn’t want to disturb the unknown. A silhouette right in front of me, perched on the head of my shadow and leaning forward, gazing at what could be a mirror.
“I’m sorry. I had to”.
Half of his head had been shaved, the top of his head. Bald. His eyebrows were gone.
“Don’t ask why.”
Why? Why did I start to search for the strangest possible objects in the kitchen cupboards of the gloomy apartment?
“She left me, but my heart didn’t. I’m determined to get her back”, he says as he lies next to her. I should leave, he intimates, as he gently poses his burning lips on the sordid flower of his passion, laying lusciously beside him. Their love had obviously become whole again, two hearts conjoined anew.

Let’s go, back through the gravel, shrubs, mourning relatives and pristine catacombs, through the barren wastelands of a vortex of void: where will we ever end up?

The soothing softness of a mint-coloured carpet under my feet. Does this place exist outside of me or does this part of the world hang directly from one of my finger-tips? Everything is so tangible, realistic, it exists in its inexistence.

So many rooms, like the chambers of my mind. Mahogany room, dramatic stairs: enormous and puissant, a royal green carpet is the steps’ drape. The room has disappeared, or was it I who disappeared?
Take me to the library: third-floor, left-wing. It defies the laws of perception and physics: infinity circumscribed by four walls. An enchanted cage. Third-floor, not second: there there is a room of mirrors, corners and eternal sunset. Come quick, take me there, the turquoise humble-bumble, turbulent room of my dreams.

I started thanking tomorrow yesterday

Picasso, Weeping Woman 1937.jpg

 

The instant I laid my finger on the key to write the last letter of my abstruse title, I started to feel a tepid tear trickle down my right cheek; and that tear, along with the salty droplet-companions that followed, softened the seemingly inextricable knot that had built up inside my throat.

I have no valid reason to be upset – no socially valid reason, no reason that would be deemed worthy of woe by anybody else – but sometimes we simply need to turn to this “base” behaviour just to remind ourselves who we are.

I’m drained, I’ve never been quite so tired in my whole life. That’s probably why my body was so vulnerable and flaccid in the fight against the sea of roaring emotions that has been brewing up inside of me for an unhealthy amount of time. This enervation from which I’m suffering could even be gratifying, meaning that I’m leading an active existence and actually doing something: I’m doing something, but it’s not something that I want. I haven’t been able to write for days, I haven’t had 10 minutes for myself to think about mystical things that don’t pertain to the misery that daily life can draw us into – and I consider any time for this activity as a divine gift – I haven’t had time to talk the people closest to me, I haven’t had time to study the things that I love, I haven’t had time to play music, to listen to music and be ravished by it, I haven’t had time to appreciate anything properly. The only thing I have had time to do is to say thank you to tomorrow for being another day and for the myriad of disparate possibilities that it may bring.

Not long ago I published a brief composition on time and the enviable ability to chisel chips  of our daily aeons for ourselves from the block of unrefined marble that is our day: towards the end of each day, this hunk of white solid should look more like a sculpture, rather than just an austere, shapeless mass. A sign of a fruitful day. I describe it as an enviable talent, as I realise now that I haven’t been praticing what I preached; I’ve been barely managing to read two pages of my book every night, before plummeting onto my pillow like a dead horse and letting my thoughts stream into a world of oniric chaos.

The best thing about today is that it will never be today again.

Thank you, Tomorrow, for being your imminent self; bring me hope, for my heart has never been more ready to fall in love with a day.