“I edit my posts for a while after they’re posted”

– Jago Noja

someone argued that a police state isn’t very different from another more gentle state. that all the states are equal in being tyrannical in a way or another– because a wall has two sides, they said, because war and violence are everywhere and were there before, and before the worse got started, another worse was there. they said we always were on the outside of the walls. but today those who are eagerly working for the police states, for the total surveillance, for the liberties washed into the fears– they don’t see how they’re putting themselves –and ourselves too– inside the circle of walls were graffiti aren’t allowed.

I came to Libi’s studio to attach to the ceiling a couple of venetian blinds, hang a couple of scaffolding and to screw to an old table the two button-makers Libi uses when she makes cloth buttons. We already put off this thing two or three times since it is not easy to have me doing things. So Libi opens the door, I get into the house and put down the bag with the drill and there’s this communication door to her grandma apartment because Libi can’t afford to have her own atelier or something, and through the passage I see her grandma sitting stuffed into a small armchair with two or three pillows and a loud TV set in the background. Next to her is her Ukrainian maid, slavonic oblique eyes and large cheekbones, a skin all scribbled by lines of wrinkles. I never met either of the two ladies, so I cross the room to give them the hand. The room is an old used room of an old used apartment that used to be lived in by many people. They say some of them died in the camps during the war and others survived and later died of life. There are the old photos, the faces so dark and smiling and a collection of bad and good pictures hanging from the walls, a large opaquish mirror where I can watch my figure approaching.

We don’t chat or anything, I just say “nice to meet you”, stand, look around. Smell of artichokes or peas. I shake with grandma first, shriveled in her chair, and her hand is moist, kind of completely damp with a warm sticky liquid, possibly saliva. Her eyes scrutinize me rapidly and shyly, not very present in the moment. Her mind must be thinner than it used to, evaporating in the late age like the words coming from the TV and leaving no trace. I then forget to shake with the Ukrainian lady because of the saliva on the palm of my hand, kind of shocked for a second there, and I step back where there’s Libi still in the door and then come back to shake the Ukrainian lady too.
“I’m sorry” I say, I smile of myself and try to make it a little warmer. I still don’t give a shit about either of the two ladies or the situation but I’m here. I know how Libi sort of weeps for her family when she’s alone, because she’s a only child, she says she’s going to be the last one to know of her family, of how it was, what all the names and things and places meant, and how even new lives brought into it would be outside of it because it’s too late. I guess she’s right. She tried few times to get me interested with her family story to no avail– now I’m sorry she doesn’t try anymore, but better that way– I’m the guy who drives her mad declaring his indifference or enmity for family bonds, she found the wrong guy at that– but it’s the same for me, Libi, the connection is broken and lost –we all waited too long. But I don’t care. Why? because the mythology died a long ago I guess–

Libi behind me smiles in the opaquish mirror and says something to he maid. Tries her grandfather sunglasses on and smiles. She has that slightly disturbing householder inflection I never heard on her, insensitive and strangely moving –sign of the distance– as she gets closer to the mirror to watch at herself from behind the enveloping glasses.
“I’m keeping the glasses” she announces. Almost in synchrony her grandmother declares that she has to go to the bathroom and the two ladies get up, move to the corridor to the bathroom disappearing in the friendly water pipes noises.

I didn’t said hello to Libi very warmly before. I am grumpy and bored and disappointed by everything. Why is it so? All so unhappy and tighten up, ridiculous. It is like wanting to see faces without the courage to look for fear to be looked at. I think of a word to describe this feeling but I don’t have any– I think at what is Libi thinking of me when I feel her glancing at my sphinxy face. That I am crazy, that I am a tone deaf music, that my distrust is cruel– that I am lost to her love or help–
Why is it that I can’t– admit that I am better now than I used to be?

I should have told her how she looked beautiful in those sunglasses and instead I looked away– there’s always something more important in the thoughts and I can’t be there. I never learned to be there– I only managed to, by accident– I still don’t believe to or seriously take all the wounds we’re carrying but it must be fear– lack of desire–

How was the phrase in that movie, “that’s what makes me clumsy, the absence of desire.”
Peter Handke, of course–

The atelier in her grandfather studio. All around is the endearing Libi’s classical mess, piles of clothes and the armless legless dummy I bought her in that little store of used stuff on the navigli.
I start drilling holes making the awful noises go around in the house– and I picture the noises entering every room of the old used apartment, door after door, carpet and walls and chairs and quavering cups, and it’s like if in the noises we all hide how much alone we are.

Funny how blog celebrity Beppe Grillo commented yesterday the story of the couple of Erba who killed their neighbors, and by doing it he used the same, chief, well-tested and reassuring interpretation of the mainstream media about it. One wonders then, what a blog like his one is needed for if not, once again, for straightforward, hugely reassuring purposes.

(And obviously the only reason to remark this fact is that Beppe Grillo’s blog is so fantastically popular. So far I took this as the most significant evidence of the unfortunate, blatant average backwardness of the italian blogland: not really for what Grillo writes, which is at worst trivial or predictable, but for the plebiscite of links and readers and comments that surrounds him : Plebiscites are such a boring, bad sign.)

The wordpress dashboard says I have 72 drafts, which means snippets of unfinished or discarded posts. I want to do away with this stuff ’cause 72 is a big number when it comes to things you hadn’t the guts to publish nor to erase. Before I suddenly die– and someone can read the stuff in its entirety– I feel I have to get rid of it. And while I proceed with the liquidation, I’m saving bits of it because I’m a weak person.

// …the problem is that a personality is a very complex thing, larger than the world itself, it has all the colors of the rainbow and no color at all.
–On a given day it can show you any unpredictable, insufferable face and leave you with a fist of flies.
Physical beauty instead decays only in time, and evidently much more resistant and reassuring –because it is less complex– is what you are left to wish when your gracious girl makes you mad with her personality.
The solution? dive into the personality until it feels warmer again than the cool outside. Or vice versa. (i.e. no solution) //

// …”I know Milan’s cathedral is so huge,” she says. “This must look like a small toy to you.”
“Actually I hate Milano’s cathedral,” I says. “I think that the larger the church, the less religion is in it. That’s why the largest church in the world is in Rome, you know?” //

// …reading a news item like this one, refreshed the mother-daughter threesome fantasy in my mind . The fantasy had been planted there a long ago by Sade’s novels and certain comics and other erotica, of course, and was never completely silent (…) –but I’m sure one would come up with it even without the help of all those who came before–
Then it mixed up with recent readings like Elfriede Jelinek‘s “The Piano Teacher” and developed into this threesome fantasy where the daughter, to find the strength to undergo all the perversions of the man (which is you) begs her mother to mistreat her and insult her and force her in various ways to do the things (…) because that’s their menage and you, being the man, cannot but follow their game, you’re not guilty or anything //

// …The city was so calm and windy around, the streets emptied and dark against the glowing lights of the open restaurants, and the synagogue was outlined, the gigantic tribunal in the back, the silent trees around the hospital where my sister was born, Liceo Berchet, Philippine church, the front yards of via Orti, the graffiti, the avenues, it was all there, beautiful as it is when there’s almost nobody around using it. The air was cool, and the noises remote in the blinking of the unseen semaphores, and I think Milano could have lighten that walk, so heavy and paranoid as it was. Typically I wasn’t really cooperating //

A great clamor can be heard right now on the Italian media. The news item is the tragic one of an Italian policeman who got killed during a clash between hooligans (in Italy called: ultrà) in the city of Catania, after a match of the local team with the team of the nearby city of Palermo. As a consequence, the authorities decided to suspend all soccer matches until new restrictive laws will be put forward to avoid similar episodes in the future.
“Suspending matches for a weekend is not enough. Until we come up with drastic measures we won’t start again” said the boss of the Italian Soccer Federation, Pancalli. Others have called for a one-year suspension of the games. A whole bunch of do-gooders pissed-off daddies is swarming right now on the media. One wonders where they were until yesterday.

Now, the clamor is quite odd. What’s even more odd:
“Pancalli’s decision to suspend the matches for an indefinite period on Saturday won the backing of Michel Platini, the newly-elected head of European soccer’s governing body UEFA.” You know why that’s odd? Because Platini was the one who, as a player, advocated the decision to go on with the match during the massacre at the Heisel Statium in 1986, were many totally innocent people, caught in a hooligan battle, died or were injured.

It’s all so odd because the Italian soccer championship was never suspended before, regardless the countless deaths and the incidents we had to witness in the years, during Sunday matches: and all the scandals of corruption and doping and cheating and so forth weren’t enough to suspend the games. The championship wasn’t even suspended after last year scandal, when it was learned that all the crucial games were rigged by corrupted managers and bribed referees.
Now they decided to suspend the games, because a policeman died, which is fine and right by me, also quite too late (plus I don’t give a shit about soccer anyway) –but is still very odd.

One thing is for sure, though, the clamor has a reason (it always has a reason): and, wanna bet? because our politicians are now running around screaming for new restrictive laws to help the law enforcement in the stadiums, it will soon be discovered that “more technology is needed”.
Here’s the paranoid foresight, actually: The authorities will “realize” that it is now necessary to fingerprint all the people who enter the stadiums or who buy tickets; to x-ray them; to take more pictures of them, before, during and after the game; more cameras will be needed, in and around the stadiums and in the streets were the hooligans hang out; to give forms to fill in when one wants to buy a ticket, or, why not, board a train directed to a city where a game is held; I.D.s will be asked to people in the streets on the days of the game; a new large database wherein to put all the names and pictures and data will be needed, and the data will be cross-referenced with a lot of other data, like driving licenses, emails, telephone numbers, family members and partners and stuff; all the marvels of the technology we so adore will be put into place: we will learn that it is all for our security, of course. Old story already, just so that more and more portions of reality will be claimed by the databases.

Because that’s the thing, with the clamor of the media: the clamor is there because something bad happened, but it is also there to push us all unto a psychological condition. This time is one more of those where tomorrow we are all supposed to be grateful for the surveillance and the restrictive laws. Wanna bet?

–In picture, above: during the war in Catania (courtesy corriere.it)

Babsi today wrote about a typical milanese episode (I’ve lived similar episodes also in Rome, but to me this sort will always be associated with Milan, like a certain damp cold weather and the smell of monoxide).

It’s the one where the ticket controllers get on a bus in a small commando team and start checking on the tickets of the passengers, behaving like bullies and blatantly treating certain categories of passengers differently from the others.
They yell, they drag around, they use the force and a whole range of intimidations, or they limit themselves to sermons about the importance of always carrying a “good ticket”. When they cannot bully you and yell at you (because you’re a citizen) they can always make you fell ashamed of yourself in front of everyone.
The trick always worked and will always work, because many middle-class citizens mistake their own radical fear of being put to shame in front of the others for instinctive respect of the law, although the truth probably is that they would sooner break the law if only they could resist or be indifferent to shame (cf. Kafka’s Process). Or, as it is with tax cheating in this country (and a lot of other stuff), if only the crime itself wasn’t considered a shame.

Pathetically incapable of professionally doing their job by politely asking for documents and writing down the tickets and normally fine the passenger, using a normal tone of voice and human decency, the milanese controllers are very often ego maniacs who just adore the tough part of their job more than anything else, and have orgasms listening to the barking sound of their voices in the silent bus.
When I was a teenager those in my category where the favorite victims of ticket controllers. Youngsters by the shabby appearance where easily the ones to be mistreated if found without a ticket. Now, only a handful of years later, it is all different. Shabby youngsters carry iPods and cell phones, and the most undesirable of all passengers, the most vulnerable is obviously the immigrant, or B-citizen, whatever you want to call it.

Babsi tells her story with her usual efficiency, and I felt I had to tell about my own by commenting to her post. I am translating here excerpts from both the sources.

Babsi:

At the bottom of the trolleybus, a boy. The boy who’s turning a blind eye to them and who has a wool jacket with patches on the elbows. Ticket, they say to him. Without the “please” that was reserved to me. The boy acts dumb. Hey, the ticket, kids one. Where are you from? Egypt? And where do you get the tickets? In Egypt? The boy utters a long guttural sentence: I am sure that he is understanding and he is insulting them. Or that he is cursing. Always the same one, almost pensionable; He is looming up in front of him, standing astride at this point, and insisting: or you just thought to come to Italy to fool the Italians, eh, dark boy? “Morocco”, says the boy. “Morocco, not Egypt”. Resurgence of national pride. Oh, Morocco. It’s the same. Here it’s paying for the ticket. The second interferes: so, do you or do you not have it? He doesn’t have it. I don’t know why he doesn’t. Because he doesn’t have a buck, probably, but I lived in London washing dishes and I asked for money at the Earl’s Court subway station to pay for my tickets (…)
They’re back to grill the boy with the patches on the elbows. I.D., says the old one. E-D? tries to parrot the boy. Oh, when there was Mussolini the things went all right, snaps the man in uniform… I clear my throat. Excuse me? When there was – who? I surprised him. He’s looking at me resentfully. Don’t you get in the way, miss. I don’t get in the way. I’m interested in civility and good sense. I breath in despite the fever. “Apology of fascism, you know.”
Now everyone is looking at me: the moroccan boy, the woman in pink, the six controllers, the one who’s yelling in the cell phone no se puede. “When there was Mussolini, gentlemen, should be taught at school – I swallow – how much this country was violent and illiberal”. Silence. “Not – I swallow – on the buses.” My man in uniform is outraged: on the buses, miss, one should pay the ticket! That’s all! (…)
Three controllers out of six make the boy get off the bus: the rough way.

Me:

(…) I was fined plenty of times during my junior and high school years. Once I was chased down half Viale Padova by a controller, up to the inside premises of school, many times I was grabbed by the jacket, yelled on my face, carried down the 56 or the 92 or the 33, underwent the sermons I hate, I lied and gave false identities and shrugged and laughed in the face and trembled of fear and shame.
Still today that I always pay the ticket in every city of the world, when I see uniforms instinctively I shiver and look for escape routes.
Always hated controllers because of their intimidating air. Never solved the ambiguity, whether the State was always right, even when it came with the shitty face and the bullying policeman-like behavior and all the rest, or whether it was never right, because of the great lie that was held together all around.
Finally, I don’t care for the apology… I find the law-enforced anti-fascism very cretin (it certainly doesn’t keep people from being or becoming fascist in new and old ways), but the way I see it bullying and barking voices are more than sufficient reasons to put oneself in the way, since they represent all the possible worse, all the possible fascism to expose and impede. If only to get in the way was anything useful– or even if it wasn’t useful at all. Provided to have clear in an instant which side one is on… and instead one loses precious seconds to understand it.

This illustrates very well the totalitarian tendency which is implicit in the anarchist or pacifist vision of society. In a Society where there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity of gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.

— George Orwell, Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver’s Travels, 1946

“Create new post” says the blogging interface. Yeah, it’s been a long time since I have last discussed the Italian politics and I would love to reopen that scary box. It’s not like there aren’t things to talk about, since the departure of Berlusconi and the advent of Prodi. The funny verminy stories about the Vicenza U.S. military base being the more juicy of them. I just want to clarify that my avoidance of said subjects does not depends on a major sympathy felt for the new rulers. In fact, if possible, my sympathy is even less for Prodi’s government than for Berlusconi’s, because I know this sort of guys better, and I recognize better the indulgence of which they enjoy, and the lies that they spread. Even if they’re more honest, if a concept like honesty would ever be possible in politics and particularly in the Italian politics. Besides it would be much more interesting and useful to criticize the “friend” than the “enemy”, if one would still believe in criticizing politicians.
The thing is, after having hoped for so long for the fall of Berlusconi, everything still seems so hopeless in the Italian panorama that one doesn’t really finds a reason to sweat for how rotten things are. They are just rotten, that’s all. What’s worse, they are rotten while having more energy or initiative. And I always felt that the little that was left of good in Italy was so because of a lack of initiative and energy.

Another issue that I would love to bash on everyday, sort of like aioros does, is the one of the childish and ludicrous and hypocrite and mafia-like ways of the Italian journalism, which, every single hour of the day and almost without exceptions proves itself to be composed of individuals well-intentioned to dumb their fellow citizens down –a inch more every year until they’ll touch the rock bottom and below, into total unconsciousness.
It’s hard to find the necessity of all the everyday collections of naked women aside of the news titles, of all the collections of commonplaces and condensed knowledge without anything left of intelligent –or of all the news item like this one, that are totally irrelevant even under a sociological aspect, and only are there for morbid insensitivity.
But everything falls into place when one simply realizes that the global project is seriously the one of total unconsciousness, so there’s really nothing new or special about the Italian journalism. It just is journalism. Tiredly dragging us all towards a future when the only arbiters will be the empty words of taste and not the written laws.

So where the occasional political observer goes these days, when he feels all the tiredness of the worn out scenario he knows already? It probably goes to the blogs, the last throes to be felt by the dying collective body — thanks God and the CIA and the NSA for inventing them.

(…) It’s fine. And is also fine that those who cry and die are balanced by those who laugh and live; and the art (I don’t know what that is) dances on its own, without looking from what direction comes the music. For the “intellectual world” besides, the war is a settled affair, save the outstanding moral matters, and aesthetic; its emotional capacity is spent, or at most awaits for something fresher and stronger. However it’s a common case for large part of the humanity still on the lands – an unconscious blank “on what is going on”, mistaken for strength of mind and vital bravery. Were they all eating rations since the beginning!
(…) To have the strength of one’s misery and humiliation – the loyalty to face one’s void: but maybe this would mean something too haughty and respectful at the same time.
I am not putting an end.

Libi does everything… Sometimes I look at her and get excited only to think that I can order her to do anything that comes to my mind– the only obstacle being my mind itself, so often hazy of bad thoughts and worries and obsessions–

It was shortly after we met that I learned how Libi’s heroines were maids and waitress and servants. Back then she was preparing her last exam writing a dissertation about an old italian movie… the movie revolved around the self-immolation of a maid of all-work, and her descending path from dignity to subjection. She thought she had picked that subject out of her feminist sympathies.
I remember one afternoon, she was reading and writing in bed and telling me about the movie and how the story tragically went and I said, “that’s obviously your sexual fantasy.”
She looked away for a second. Outside was a clear day, the white clouds upon the roofs–at that time we used to get out in the city quite often and we probably had to get together with someone else that day. She was asking for help to normalcy and friends, out of the window and in the city where her self was at bay from anything so obviously deep in and pushing– I don’t know what she was thinking–

“No, what do you mean”, she said. Blushed. We swallowed (or maybe that was later). I said You Know What I Mean, and she said No I don’t.
“I mean that’s your fantasy, to be a servant and to be humiliated and obey and all the rest.”
Libi looked at me, I said, “hey, you know that’s fine by me. That’s actually what i want, so– there’s no problem.”

Libi does what I want. Sometimes I complain that she isn’t horny enough, that she doesn’t throw herself at me.
“That’s not my role”, she says. I’m an object. She’s right I guess. I am probably the one who’s not entirely up to his role.

I always envied sexual victims and preys (consensual, doh) because I always felt that their vision and their bravery were clearer and stronger than mine– They knew what they wanted and how and possibly even why. I always turned to them with the hope to find in that certainty, in that vocation a hint of what possessed me but I could never find it. I can understand someone else’s craving for humiliation or punishment but what about me? Do I really want to hurt or humiliate these persons? I love them– I don’t despise women at all– why I get so excited at the sheer idea of having no limits or respect — no interactions outside the one of the voice that gives the order?

all I could think of was that the disposition to master or humiliate was due to some feeling of insecurity toward sex that I had. That kind of ruined it for a while (still does, off and on). I also thought about the loads of S/M porno magazines I used to find in my mother’s room when I was a kid –and how that conditioned my fantasies– but the truth is that I discarded those that i didn’t like. Already then I immediately went for where my fantasies were–
So I don’t know. I guess I am still searching.

“The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.
— George Orwell, In front of your Nose, 1946

For the first time in nine or ten years my father called me on the phone few days ago. “Ciao ico” he said. “How are you doing.” My more aware reader knows that what I mean is not that I haven’t seen or talked to my father in nine years (we met on Xmas), but that he just never calls me or search for me or anything. That’s our deal apparently.
Anyway he did, with my greatest surprise.
Surprise didn’t lasted long. He needed help because his email wasn’t working anymore. So it began a series of phone calls that went on for the following days entirely revolving around his problem with the fucking email. I mean entirely, like calling the helpdesk of your company and throwing at the voice that’s helping you a single “how are you” balloon at the beginning, just to get rid of all formalities and focus on the important things.
There aren’t questions about life, about love, about feelings, about the state of the soul or of the pockets or of the bodies or anything.
Where do you live, ico? What do you love? How’s your health, fucking dad? There isn’t hesitation, all you are is a name and a cell phone number very easy to remember when you need it –and my voice turns all round and prompt and filling the empty spaces. I keep the thing on track and focused on names of menu commands and procedures and send him home satisfied even when the problem isn’t solved. Today he wasn’t satisfied because I told him I hadn’t time. He used his resentful tone to say “OK. As you wish. Later then”. But usually he’s satisfied that I took care of him. I’m the good whore.

I wonder what was it that turned my family into this splintered pot, cutting and blind. And where is love? Seriously?
My father always played the victim and always claimed love, the love he deserved and I wasn’t giving him — even after a beating or an humiliation he claimed to be the betrayed one.
But now I am adult, I am lost, I am dispersed and still I wonder, where is love? Love was supposed to be behind it all but there is nothing instead. Just crabbiness and insensitivity, that’s all.

I know what’s wrong with the splintered pot, it is that truth was never that important — and it was so easy for him to forget the real face of it — either when I was staying at my mother’s or at my father’s but with him it was scientifically perverse– Politics and commitments and laughs were twisted to adhere to doctrine and so was the constant induced sense of guilt for everything. I dragged so many times my father onto the battlefield and cried and trembled trying to make him a rational enemy and not a so irrational one and was beaten and humiliated –and he never kept a diary of anything he said or thought or did, so that he hadn’t to remember all the evil done, all the shit dragged around, or the wounds inflicted. He was the one who believed in Stalin and in the repression of the masses and then worshiped T.S. Eliot–

Yeah thanks for having had so many books dad, I don’t know what would have happened of me without books, they showed me the way to sneak out– so many times

Dad, wait, do you remember when you descended the stairs in a thundering noise and burst into my room where I was staying awake reading and you just started to violently throw the content of the bookshelves at me on the bed, dad? Remember when you sent me off on the streets of Mogadishu alone, eleven years old kid at noon in the empty dusty streets to find the five shelling bill I had somehow lost on the way? In the poorest neighbor? Remember the boy you publicly humiliated countless times because he wasn’t brave or virile enough, and later humiliated because he was becoming too much virile? No dad, I know you don’t fucking remember.

But I was wrong all the time, I am still wrong, how could I have known that my father was insane? And that I was going to be insane like him, in a different way? Because it’s easy to see. Insanity is the only situation where the Orwell rule quoted here doesn’t mean no shit. Nothing means no shit with insanity, only being the good whore and placate the beast and forget about the love that was promised a long time ago. I don’t know who promised it anyway, if there ever was anyone.