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

– Jago Noja

When I go to Milan, to fulfill that town’s dream of a cultural centre, you should come. An interesting city. It’s huge – and full of very ugly, common, repulsive people.
— Ingmar Bergman, from The Passion of Anna

that night I slept at Carlo’s, after more talking and boasting and drinking and walking around Venice, meeting people in bars, following girls down the calli, ending up us alone and stoned and bitter sitting on the steps of a deconsecrated church turned into a art gallery or a gym and talking about foolish things now forever sunk into a oblivion thicker than the waters of the canals of Venice. And I had that dream sleeping on a pallet on floor, a portion of a dream I still remember, where girls leaned on a table looking at fashion pictures in a magazine, whispering things in the ancient-looking room by a high ceiling but not large (just like a room of a old palace of Venice) and outside of a window, invisible to me in the corner of the dream was the world of the future that I was anxiously about to see but couldn’t and couldn’t and couldn’t until I woke up.
I was in Carlo’s garret. Looking up at the backside of the roof, wood and terracotta, atrocious white light entering from a squared hole through a opaque glass pane. Pigeons walking and talking above and not so far, the early boat acoustic signals said it was a foggy day. My disappointed snort for the bad weather. The rattling of the garbage trolleys going up and down the bridges.
I had slept too little, and felt absurdly awake in the sleeping house, bad taste in dry mouth and dizziness– eyes hurting.
I got out without saying goodbye walking softly amid the snores, the streets were so cold, I could hear the noise made by my steps against the hard pavement stones. The streets were dark to the openings of the skewed squares, wide in comparison and filled with more white light under the low unfriendly sky, quiet, dirty of a nightly high tide now dissolved in a grainy film of stickiness made of guano and salted sea.
I was looking for a bar, at that time I still had the veneration for the italian bars and their stinking coffees and croissants with no imagination, that what Parise so beautifully wrote about, and I think I found one just down the Ponte de Maravegie. It’s the bar with the colorful glass panes, not the osteria nor the pastry shop (that lane down the bridge being the typical italian three-bars-in-a-row) and so little room inside against the counter. A radio was certainly playing, but not loudly. The croissants were warm and good, the coffee probably good. Nice the people. I didn’t know any better. It felt reinvigorating and so I extended my walk to the aimless route of the fondamenta along Canale della Giudecca (aka fondamenta degli incurabili) once again fantasizing of being Corto Maltese (before my brother robbed me of that fantasy too) or Brodskij (before my russian friend explained it all to me). Enjoying the procrastination of the coming back home, where more rest and the long awaited solitude were.
The humid sadness of the city in the thin fog, its casual beauty appearing and disappearing and morphing, the large unsteady waters of the canal and their uniform color fading out in nothingness, the few, walking the fondamenta like me with their hands well protected in the big pockets of their dark dark dark cappotti, and my eyes still hurting– the day had begun but without a move, wanting to be admired in its pointlessness, it was quite beautiful to be there and alive.
It was near the end– one of the last months in Venice, before coming back to Milan. And I thought I had had enough of Venice back then. I didn’t know anything.

— in picture above: waters, venice, etc.

this is set at a outside table of a bar in Rome, in a empty square under the sun somewhere near trastevere at the end of spring probably. we are finishing our wine or coffee. this could be a comment on things like this happening to my country. but not necessarily.

— So Cipriana, are you really a fascist?
— You bet I am! always had, always will. I have nothing against the non-fascists but this is what I am. Hail the Duce and all the rest.
— Nothing against the non-fascists! Listen to her. Are we supposed to believe this crap?
— And you, Elda, are you fascist too?
— Sure I am… well, no I am not. Sorry Cip but you know. I was fascist but I am not anymore. They told me I have to go with the left because they are running everything and pulling all the threads, you know. They say that in my field it is important. So I reformed. I am with the left now. God save D’Alema and all the rest.
— Yeah but you do are a fascist Elda, you know that. Until yesterday you had Fini’s picture in your room.
— I saw it, it was next Capossela’s.
— No Cip, I’m telling you, I don’t give a shit anymore.

(Cip finishes her cigarette with a hard drag. Puts it out in the glassy ashtray. We admire the gesture in silence, the smoke dissolving in the sun light)

— So what about you, Ico, are you a communist or what?
— No girls I am not. Not a communist.
— He’s an anarchist.
— No I am not.
— He’s pretending to be superior.
— I am no nothing, I don’t want to define myself like that anymore.
— uh-uh.
— So what are you for, Corpo, the comedians?

Let’s generalize for a moment here (actually what follows is not a generalization but my personal experience which I pretend to be general)
…when you talk to the woman or the girl you’re with, the so called partner, and express whatever feeling of discouragement or desperation or weakness, she will immediately give you words of continuous and pressing solidarity that will revolve around the concept that whatever feeling you are experiencing it is simply not true. It is unmotivated. It is silly. It is probably the opposite, instead. There probably is some detail you didn’t considered thanks to which things aren’t so bad. You are probably doing perfectly fine. It goes so much so that you both get to a stage where she asks: “what’s going on?” and you quickly: “nothing!” although you really need to talk. Because her prompt caring denial would be worse than silence.
On the other hand if you talk to your ex or to a girl you’re friend with, you have a chance that she might express her solidarity in a less censoring way, which –if talking serves a purpose– is the only way for you to move forward. She might even find the words to look in dismay at your condition without denying it. That’s because she doesn’t feel threatened by it. You’re not her man, so your defects can be observed more objectively. This might explain why men seek love and then get bored by it. And why they keep falling in love with friends and exes. And why probably your girlfriend is a splendid talker and listener and helper –but not with you.

Many have waken up in the last years to the real deal about globalization in politics, which in very short terms is that the left-right paradigm acted out by the leaders has no actual sense anymore, and that the real struggle is the one of the elite against the constitutions of the nations of the formerly called free world and against the people’s rights (in favor of super-national authorities that are never questioned, even when they decide to bomb Belgrade or whatever.)
“Many” is not enough anyway, and in reality many is a very little figure. In Italy though it is even less, here everything is ruled by the false paradigm: every little local power, left or right, unionist or made-by-media is barricaded to defend its own role and its own little garden of historical battles, and a incredible load of energy is wasted everyday debating false issues and pretended oppositions. Example being that every italian blog who stands for the left or the right comes with a bunch of hired opinions and expected ideas (that its readership, faithful to the same ideas, will safeguard against the authors themselves), while those who blame corruption for everything (Beppe Grillo et al.) are in fact helping to trash the Constitution and the system of guarantees that seem to be the real enemy of the elite.
Thing is, comedians and politicians and media moguls and independent bloggers are hired in Italy by the “new world order” project or whatever you wanna call it without even knowing what they are fighting for. (I am sure our average politicians and rulers don’t see more clearly than anyone else, their eyes and voices prove it.)
All they have to do is to sell ideas to the masses in order to go further with the project. Clear example being the recent statement by Vice Prime Minister Rutelli, someone who pretends to be on the left, when in reality he is nowhere, who said that it is now necessary to enforce a national DNA bank in order to fight crime.

Now, aside of the sheer stupidity of the idea (assuming that everyone is a criminal to help the police to investigate? thanks a lot) this statement is hypocritically (and hysterically) made possible by the numerous unsolved or hard to solve crimes that are everyday on the newspapers and that make people indignant and frustrated. So just like in central America, where the “war on drugs” is used as a pretext to implement the police state, and in north America, where the “war on terrorism” is used for the same purpose, elsewhere politicians use different pretexts: be it immigration, “global warming” or “rampant crime”.

What remains is that the pace of this global change towards technologically-driven authoritarianism is faster then ever, and should be the first serious reason to worry in this strategic moment for everyone who pretends to be interested in politics.

Just a glimpse: US doles out millions for street cameras; cameras to scan emotional behavior are being designed; US presidency gets another surveillance “blank check” (and they want more); China gets from the US a massive human tracking system; and my city cries for its own too; while scientists seem to devote themselves to design new weapons against citizens and new weapons to terrify other citizens; while internet is being used to stop dissidence in a simulation of free speech (Mao Zedong style); soldiers tell about atrocities but nobody listen to them; and a new hoax to justify satellite weapons is being prepared. Etcetera.

Libi came back from the beach. I was glad to see her. I badly wanted to make love, to say things, to make her do things. She came in with the collection of bags and packs she was bringing with her smile, a reddish tan, splendid eyes, came to me –I grabbed her wrist firmly and put her hands on my dick and started to undress her with the other hand. She complied seriously, the act, our act had started beautifully. We kissed for long, which is something I not so often do… But for a magic moment I was feeling freer or lighter, I don’t know. Our hearts were beating fast, we moved from the kitchen to the floor of the room to the couch to the bedroom. It only was bad knowing that this was also welcome as a symbol for making amends for something else, which is the tragic ugliness of familiarity… It took a while to take off me all the urge and the mysterious need. I know that making love can help much. I felt almost non alone. I almost hoped I had done something good, given something good–

Today everything’s wrong, Libi again is asking me the wrong questions and I, feeling miserably alone, knowing to be unbearable, not knowing what to say, only thinking I have to go away, no inertia this time please no inertia. So different can be two days one coming next to the other.
Later we were sitting at the table and I wasn’t listening anymore. I was recalling similar moments from other years, different table, walls, glasses, voice, face, questions. Recognizing a moment I didn’t recognize back then, but that I was now feeling clearly: the moment I came to know I had to go, I had to be away.
As much as I love this woman, I was thinking, whom I can’t make happy now (where I wish “I” was written lowercase) And if I don’t want to leave her, but make her happy –it doesn’t matter because I have to go (where?), however long it is going to take to make it happen because everything is for me and for her so unbearably difficult– And I went on imagining a reunion later on. Our being finally together because I was coming back finally healed in my spirit and my emotions. I couldn’t look at her but I wanted. I felt this grip in my stomach because yesterday it had been so different and now it was shit. Then I thought how life is actually much shorter than that, and how there is never going to be the time to achieve anything else but adaptation to this personal disaster and limitation and emptiness — and so I drowned into that sea of anguish and premonitions and Libi went to bed, without us looking at each other anymore that night.

there was this beautiful sky. I was staying in bed, I had cried, not hardly or for long or anything. Just a result of scattered thoughts of people far, the inability to summon them up, the clumsiness or weight of the world that couldn’t be moved or pulled, the bitter promises of the future. I couldn’t see very well, because of the wet paste in the eyes. I unhooked the mosquito net, it rolled on itself with a slam! after which the radio was playing quietly. I cleaned my eyes with my fingers curled. a unsteady coolish breeze came to my face with diverted noises from the avenue behind the condos. all words were mixed up in my head, all thoughts still as if queuing up on a bench against the wall to be called forth. it was all so familiar and this familiarity what I could stand less, less than any other form of pain or boredom. the things a ghost of once intense things I hardly could connect to now. the hatred for the city was one thing with hatred for myself, the weak–

no, not exactly that. i took the pictures of the sky automatically thinking ‘this will go for the blog’. I knew it hardly mattered because I still lacked the courage to take out for a walk the things I wanted to say. the sunsetting sky was seriously beautiful. if only I had the ability to see into things like I used to. i closed the left nostril with a finger pushing air out. the right one still half-closed since then, not creaking anymore. I think it will stay this way, I thought satisfied– so since nearly about the time my last intense emotions were, some is still trapped– and the most shitty thing is to be uncertain of the accuracy of your own memories and the details that are fading out and, you know, this unwillingness to explain.

Among his grand exploits, having cheated the government (25 billion liras of settlement in 2000); having blathered endlessly about charity while making a fortune; having sought the coziness of commonplaces…
But these are not great sins and we are not to judge sins anyways. Much worse would be having contributed to the impoverishing of music by reducing its ambiguity to a steadfast restated pronunciation of self-evident elements. Melody, pathos, lyrics, energy, in other words making the kitsch out of it. It was thank to him that in the last thirty years people forever learned that the word ‘tenor’ was to be associated with big men singing moving things on stage, solitary as monads and without real interaction with a opera (only “moments”), in a cloud of exteriority and lies under which the remains of music stays as nauseating as a jingle heard too many times. Pop music, in other words. Without the rebel element.
The Pavarotti kitsch will follow us for a long time, like a trail left behind his steps. It is everywhere in the newspapers now. Politicians before everyone else, because LP was a political tool obviously (politics masked by charity), and then the classic shower of hyperboles by celebrities’ mouths. All the hype to hide everything that is human like misery or smallness.
Anyway. I don’t think I will remember Luciano Pavarotti after this week and I doubt I will ever think about him evermore. Yet it matters to me to recognize in him one of the many, say, riders of the falling country who with great weight of trivialization helped the fall in these times.

[trying to write a less navel-gazing blog post] …In my country every government pretends to reform everything and especially the things that should be consistent during the years, because by doing so each government can delude itself and its supporters into the fact that what is being done will last, when in fact nothing the italian governments do lasts except the things that really should be changed.
Be it evidence of this the umpteenth reform of the School system, that this government is enforcing just like all its predecessors. Anyway this isn’t exactly what I wanted to write about.
I read that in the new system students in high school start off with formative “debts” that they have to “pay off” before the end of the five years. Yep, that’s the metaphor. They have “debts”. They come at school and they have “debts”. Maybe it’s nothing new. Previously they had “credits”, I believe. Not that it makes much difference. At the University they still will have “credits” I think.
Well, whoever invented this metaphor is an idiot.
This notion is so sad, and a disgrace to the idea of education: but also is an indicator of what or who really leads this world and its present-day philosophical and material changes. And this is certainly not the political elite (for them it was “votes” to count at school, not “debts”, right? To each its own metaphor.).
So who actually leads and rule? And not only in Italy of course, not only in Italy.

Reading the wondrous Adventures of Augie March — on which I have one or two reserves that I’ll maybe put together later on — I run into Bellow’s definition of present day’s police strip searches humiliations and ritual abuses. Of course back then it was only for supposed criminals, and now it’s for everyone’s hard luck (in the sense that you don’t even have to be labeled as a criminal to be humiliated):

We had to empty our pockets; they were after knives and matches and such objects of harm. But for me that wasn’t what it was for, but to have the bigger existence taking charge of your small things, and making you learn forfeits as a sign that you aren’t any more your own man, in the street, with the contents of your pocket your own business: that was the purpose of it.
— p. 174

on the other hand, right in the beginning of depression, when Augie had his adventures a lot of well meaning fellows bummed around and were given the label of “criminal” free of charge. Definitions can move just a little and involve so many–

the hand is a wave / the dialog is suppressed in words and a whistle / decency and TV commercial din gets / through the window in the only light: all the idols have a lie left to say / monday the world wakes up / I raise my voice to make clear / that we all are alone, utterly / stalking ourselves in our minds / and follows shame.