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

– Jago Noja

It is with amounts of dizziness, shame and a little pride that I can announce that I “cured a day” at Dennis Cooper’s blog today.
I did so by achieving what a long time ago was called “make yourself beautiful with another bird’s feathers”, basically presenting and translating a number of great Italian pieces of modern poetry in the english language (please note: The poems are distributed on seven different posts, for seven different poets).
For my italian readers, and probably also for most of the others, some of the names will be known and possibly slightly nauseating classics of our history, like Montale or Ungaretti or Pasolini. There are others that aren’t equally known anyway, so it can be interesting anyway, or so I hope.

The same battery of translations and introductions is also available here on my blog on a special page called 7 italian poets. I opened this replica only because I plan to periodically expand it with new names and poems (the poets here are already eight, actually).

Anyway, I recently learned that I enjoy translating poetry very much. It really puts me inside the poem, in the words and the music of it, it puts me under the illusion of being for a little while partially good as the poet, only for mounting on his shoulders, and it is very exciting (yep, and you pretty much can figure out the standards of the excitement I get in my life by this).

–in picture above: with another bird’s feathers, etc.

I hadn’t noticed that the Guardian, and probably others, had covered the killings of Erba that recently where all over the place on the italian newspapers. The gist of it according to the Guardian seem to be that the couple murdered their neighbors because they were too loud (so also reports Italy Logue, where I first learned of the Guardian cover of the thing, and pretty much all the other media sources here in Italy).

Of course as always the truth is more complex, less absurd, and the real fun is not to simplify it. The truest things always come out if you look closely.

For example details of the story say that Rosa Bazzi, the killer from upstairs who apparently started the massacre dragging her husband into it, was raped when she was ten years old (if you can imagine that). Because forms of violence so often morph into similar or specular forms of violence later on, I see easily the same kind of brutal ignorance of the Italian province behind the two connected events: and the typical reserved and very-decent, extremely repressed behavior (that suddenly explodes) of the people of northern Lombardia in particular.

It’s true anyway that “too loud neighbors” was the explanation the couple of murderers alleged for their “insane act”.

Yet I think that everyone who wants to know knows, and particularly those who live in the same area or region of the event (a region where the infamous racist & powerful party “Northern alliance” was born), that a great deal of the reasons for this crime must be searched within the fact that one of the two murdered women, the main target of the attack, lived with a man from Tunisia.
And Rosa from upstairs cut the throat of a two years old little boy (“who was crying, and I suffer of headache” she said) who was the mixed-blood son of the said couple.
Not to recognize this simple fact, that they felt entitled to destroy that family because it was a racially mixed family, means to once again censorship one essential flavor of the Italian and European life of this century, losing yet another occasion to look directly at ourselves, our fading Italian world, what we really are.

years ago, when I lived as a student in a microscopic studio apartment in Venice, I had for a while a very strong Milan Kundera phase. It had started a little before I camped in Venice for the first time, but it just grew exponentially when I left the last shared apartment and began living by myself.
It went on for few years, during which I read and re-read everything from him, always finding his books amazingly perfect for me and for how I wanted my life to be (what a sucker).

There was this half-hidden sottoportego near my house: a short underpass cutting through that multi-centenarian complex of buildings and coming out to the Tana canal behind Arsenale.
I used to pass from that underpass every so often, so one day I took out one of my keys and carved a wall of the sottoportego with the writing you see above here (“W Kundera” means “long live Kundera”, “go Kundera” or something).
It was a polemic gesture probably, or I just wanted to enjoy the effect of seeing such a writing with all the pro-soccer-teams writings and against-lame-people writings and stupid-political writings and other tags that passing by I had to decipher.
Afterwards, for the rest of the time I lived in that apartment, to see that small writing down in the sottoportego among the others always gave me a little pleasure.

I was in Venice a couple of weeks ago, and I passed through that same sottoportego again and I don’t know about the other writings, which ones were the new and which still the old ones, but my pro-kundera writing was still there as the picture shows, even though my trip for him had long ended.
Honestly to see it there didn’t really gave me any pleasure, only a feeling of tenderness and slight dizziness for the person I was, someone who is now so unknown and lost to me almost as that other guy or girl who on another given day under the shades of the same sottoportego wrote I love you Franco.

I have been reading sunshine’s blog for more than a year now… I think she is or should be a blogging celebrity… She doesn’t post very often for obvious reasons, but her posts are always the most lively and moving thing. She’s going to be 15 soon but she could be 20, because she is the smartest girl.

In spite of the hard situation , no electricity , no security , the students keep going to school .. and we will succeed , and get high marks no matter what the terrorists do , weather they like or not we will keep going on

and a blessed girl indeed.

like when you worry if the cat does not sleep between your legs at night,
that it might be refusing you, not deign of its catty favors
or when you worry to scare out someone if they’re waiting
at the elevator when you climb out, so you move a little to the back
to give them time to spot you in the cabin–
or when you’re laying in the dentist chair, eyes on the round mirrored lamp,
white ceiling, gurgling aspirator sound coming from your mouth
and you think and you think, why am I trusting this guy, what if he is like
a auto mechanic, who’s unscrewing the right bolts to slowly destroy my mouth–
“he keeps finding wrong teeth”, you feel old and naive and gullible
and why the help girls are so smiling all the time? what if is it all a scheme–
“they’re not really hitting on you”, and you feel old and naive and gullible
–open wide, he says
like when everyone keeps looking at you on the streets, men and women need to give a second look at you
as they pass by because you can be really handsome,
clerks chin up want to serve you before the others and you just have to step back
— and you feel sorry, for every look, for every eye contact
for every imagined brushing against and going by, not stronger and a winner anymore just sorry
like when you’re driving and you stop to let someone cross the street
the thing no one does in your city and you clutch the wheel and you pray for
the passerby not to thank you with that white hand with that hurried, scared wave
— which the passerby invariably does
darkish coat now trotting to the sidewalk isle
like when you’re making love and waiting for the moment when your thoughts are carried away
and the thoughts carry you away instead
and when you have the crucial thoughts the last seconds before falling asleep,
the glow of the lamp still burning somewhere next to the bed, dark house
and you are too drowsy to write them down and so you just desperately pray to remember them in the morning
and in the morning they’re always gone– hollow caves of the brain devoured by another vain night
or when you get into the shower and invariably feel sorry for all the water you’re going to use, the
soap spread to the dead rivers to the warm seas.

In line with my recent post that wanted to (not) define my political position in life, what follows is another similar rambling about the idea of progress, and basically about my not being able to define my own opinions, as they seem to fluctuate and glide like clouds or birds.

There’s a lot of misunderstanding around on the use and meanings of the word ‘progress’.
For many, ‘progress’ is one thing with ‘evolution’ and those are the ones who, although preaching their devotion to Darwin, seem to have completely misunderstood the essence of Darwin’s thought. Evolution is not a form of progress, it is a form of adaptation. As such, it is completely neutral. That’s why it should not be used politically or ideologically: even in cultural terms, evolution could mean for a species’ society a downgrade of cleverness, sensitivity, ingenuity and overall abilities if only the environment wanted such an adaptation: in scientific terms this would still be called ‘evolution’. In fact there is no opposite to the word ‘evolution’ in Darwin’s world. Every major scientific achievement in the study of evolution proved that there isn’t even such a thing in Nature as a linear progress from simplicity to complexity, but a mere ‘poking around’ of vital forms in all directions.

So what ‘progress’ is instead? The way I see it, progress is something much less objective or natural (although everything is ‘natural’, from a leaf to a tire) than evolution: it is a philosophical or social concept which is totally dependent on the point of view of someone who stands in the middle of it or on the brink of it.
Considering the land covered from ‘there’ to ‘here’ I can see a path as a progress, first of all because my point of view is limited (whether ‘there’ is in the past or in the future, there’s a good chance that my perception of it is very lacunous), second because ‘here to there’ is just a blink of the eye in Nature’s world, and the effects of that blink of the eye can be totally erased by the effects of the following blink.
To acknowledge this might just mean not a refusal to go on and try to better the world we live in (from our point of view of course), but that our worshiping of ‘progress’, from health to athletics to computers and cars and weather control could be less neurotic, rhetoric or hypnotizing: and possibly less focused on everything that just “grows” and gets “faster” or “stronger”, since one should know by instinct that those are all very relative and not necessarily ‘good’ (less destructive) achievements for our species or planet (that one could want because they are ‘thrilling’, but not because they are a ‘progress’).

Just like with politics, when I think about progress I am ambivalent and wishy-washy. I want emancipation and education for all, and yet the way I see it the concept of progress can ruin many things. I find myself speaking in terms of ‘decline’, and ‘decadence’ of many things that I imagine or know were better in the past, and still I know that this ‘decline’ isn’t any less relative and dependent on my personal point of view than any idea of ‘progress’.
For example, the idea of a progress or decline of the arts (which I myself advocated so many times) is a gigantic foolishness: there is no such thing as a progress of the arts, because arts always go to the origins (I am eager to go into this in another post or in the comments).
Arts either exist or do not exist, end of story. My inability to be fulfilled or thrilled by new forms of art is just a problem I have.
The progress of human society toward democracy (or socialism, or whatever you want) is also another incredibly limited idea, since peaceful or extremely educated societies existed also in the past and nonetheless they are dust to dust now (because societies are also forms of adaptation and not ideas).
Science is certainly always making progress: but even there many could argue about the directions science has taken, lead on as it is by military technologies or pharmaceutical empires or corporations.

So to sum up this is the thing with the idea of progress I deal with in my mind: it is needed and yet it is always inexact and relativistic and disappointing. It is often used as a ideological tool against or in favor of something and it can’t be split into parts and observed scientifically.
It is a veil that doesn’t help me to see anything better.
More importantly, it is the gloom mark left on our bodies and minds by the long story of illusions and delusions of all those who once walked this planet, knowing of the ways of the world just little as we do.

Instead of killing Fazul Abdullah Moham-med, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Taha al-Sudani, supposedly “al-Qaeda” operatives responsible for the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the Pentagon killed “herdsmen … gathered with their animals around large fires at night to ward off mosquitoes.”
–read at another day in the Empire

“The nomads were bombed at night and during the day while searching for water sources” says the article. That’s why I wanted to mention this, aside of my feelings of disgust for everything that military america is doing to the world which are pretty obvious at this point and not really pertinent with this blog.

Because searching for water sources is really the daily task for Somali herdsmen and people of the villages, what my father used to do in Somalia when I was a kid was to design and help building aeolian-generated water plants scattered in the scrubland, so that people could be slightly freed from the slavery of looking for water for hours or even days on end.
I remember so well the trips out of Mogadishu to the villages where the plants were build, and the people that lived there, and the cattle of humped cows and dromedaries and black-headed sheep crowding the tanks of red-brown waters.

Clearly when the war started hitting hard all the work my father had done in the years rapidly went to hell: all the technicians were gone, and the University of Mogadishu had no money or reason to exist anymore and the Italian government, largely responsible for the worsening of the situation, was busy looking the other way– so the people went back to search for water the old way, along the old tracks for days on end.
(Were later the powerful army of the empire obviously spotted them plotting international terrorism –and excuse the rhetoric ironic end here).

–in picture, above: nothing less than two of the pictures taken at the water plants somewhere in Somalia, with my then plastic-toy-camera.

Dagospia.com featured today a bleak summary of the receptions of Roberto Benigni’s 2005 movie “the tiger and the snow”, out in the U.S. now.
It would be useless to link to the article since the bastards at dagospia hide their materials after few hours and you have to pay to read. A fair gist of the tenor of all U.S. critical response to Benigni’s new film can be read at the reverse shot blog.

Have you read it? Ok. Well, let me tell you that not all of us “old-world cretins” are crazy about Benigni either. I have avoided anything from this guy since “Il piccolo Diavolo” and have no regrets.
When he got the award for “Life is Beautiful” and all the people in the U.S. went crazy about him, many here including me thought “how can those new-world cretins love that sort of stuff?”. Because Benigni can be so rhetoric and bloated and self-indulgent and disloyal and unbearable. And Nicoletta is a stiff tragedy mask, everybody with a little taste knows that.

On the other hand, it is certainly unfair to tie forever one artist to his beginnings, but what Benigni did back in the seventies to the early nineties and around that time was pretty unique and fantastic. One of the greatest comic talents Italy ever had since the times of Totò (seriously).
The way he could demolish and make fun of everything… the range of voices and faces and inventions and crude imaginary he had was amazing….
I saw Benigni once performing on stage when I was a teenager or so –for a two hours show– and came out devastated: in physical pain for how much I had laughed.

But all comic talents get bored of their role after a while, and after that everyone is easily disappointed.
I mean, I loved him in “Down By Law”, mostly because of Jarmusch’s genial touch. And the readings of Dante’s work he made some time later were great stuff. But Benigni in the last years really took a regretful turn. It seems that he wants to be a sort of new moralistic Chaplin, but you can’t be a new Chaplin by definition, and the memory of the world isn’t that short, plus the world isn’t that delicate or innocent anymore.

I am almost finished. I only wanted to add that the reason why I felt like writing this post is that the case of Benigni is a typical case where Italy’s destiny in the world is so perfectly illustrated.
Italy has too many friends and admirers that are no real friends nor real admirers. They look at the boot in the sea seeing a myth and a fable and an idea that isn’t real. Then comes the moment of revelation where the sloppiness and the provincialism and the conceit and mafiosaggine that all the admiration had overlooked tragically emerges.
So what I wish for my country are not more applauses, at least for a while. Instead I hope that Italy could one day cease to live on its past fortunes and start to honestly face a reality where the sheer word “Italian” doesn’t make up for everything anymore. And where awards must be really deserved.

maybe my reader thought that I was out these days for the weekend, but I was not. I was writing all along, always at home. Translating too (stuff coming in the next days). I was about to get out of the house on saturday night, then friends canceled. She went out with “her” friends. Since when she decided that Gisa was her enemy (long story –about the aborted baby — next time) we seem to have a sort of competition going between “my friends” and “your friends” which is really sad and stupid. Who are these “friends” anyway.
Our thing here is kind of falling apart recently. I am unreasonably mad at her for the little stains of her character — a certain selfishness with the “others” sometimes (she, the generous one), or better a form of uncleanable resentment and grudge towards given people –that disturbs me — or scares me as a foreboding — her deliberate disregard for all that keep us apart, I mean, the choice not to see and turn the other way whenever there’s a chance to talk– subtle ways to make me feel guilty for trying to have a better life and shaking up our menage a little (so I get it –false)
but I know these are all stronzate, you know?
The real question remains the same, who knows if I really love her?
No, better: are we really meant to be together? That’s easier, I think the answer is no– we make each other unhappy now (it wasn’t always like this). I make everyone uneasy after a while…

I was soo optimist only a few days ago but that’s with getting old –nothing lasts real long.
I must read again the “Song to Duration” by Peter Handke. How did he do it anyway? (I mean, in general)

Here is a couplet translated the past night instead. From poet Antonio Porta:

with deafly hollow words I motion
to say: see, I don’t, I don’t understand, so there:
how rhetoric is the question: I haven’t had, you
haven’t, you can answer, had anything from the mirror

Every time I drag myself down to the navigli beyond the bridge of Via Cassala to see Jawa, I bring with me questions for her, and bits of a discourse I would like to make. Then regularly there’s the baby, and her worries and her enthusiasm for the baby, and I give up and put away all my anxiety to speak more seriously or passionately with her. I reckon that everything is different when you face a mother.
Then coming back there’s the rumble of traffic and the heavy air to breathe and everything is more confused and lonesome– I wonder whether this is a sign that I’m finally growing up, and that I am beginning to develop some form of mature resistance to my constant craving for real connections (if so the thought disappoints me).
I walk, the dusk descend on the city and the people and me. I go over the two hours spent in her kitchen. I reenact the three windows on the roofs of Milan and the balconies and the far mall sign that seem to be resting under a coat of clouds. Occasional pigeons and the intense silky violet of cyclamen sticking out beyond the window panes. Lifegate radio playing and preaching.
I am stretched on the pavement with her, we speak of the winter that didn’t come this year. Of the gorses blossoming in January. I watch her long legs in the corduroy jeans as we crawl on the pavement around the baby. We accidentally touch each other but there is no hesitation. I watch her hands and realize I never saw how long they were. She turns, is her ass always so beautiful and inviting? Quite– I wish she didn’t kiss me on the mouth when she welcomes me or when she says goodbye. She closes her eyes too.
I listen to her telling about her residual fears after the little boy’s accident. I listen to her plans to stay home without a salary for six months more. She says that she would love to give a little sister to the boy, and that they’re trying but so far no luck. This could be the moment to ask her– does he knows that there’s a remote possibility that the little boy is mine? Of course not, right? But I don’t know about the menage you two guys have. Sometimes I wonder —
Although maybe the little boy doesn’t look like me? Or maybe he does?
I look at him. I never saw such a charming smile in a one year old little thing like this. Is his mouth similar to mine? Do I smile like this?
I would like to ask her, aside of the baby, you know– How much does he knows really?
I would like to ask– Do you have the same memories I do of those days, kind of wrong and right at the same time? Do you know that I made a mistake, I told him I used to live in Via Savona at that time? So close to your house. A mistake. Nobody knew. I wish the baby wasn’t here for a while and I could ask you to undress like you used to do, shyly looking away or down and then suddenly looking straight at me–
Listen Jawa, I’m going– I says. They escort me to the door. There’s the light kiss on the mouth and the eyes briefly closed. The charming smile of the little boy as the door closes and then a corridor– steel pipes running along the roof of it.

Now all the trams of Milan have canned voices reciting the stops. The city glides away, all the cars are rolling. We sit and we stand in the tram and nobody speaks. The canned voice goes on calling the stops, sort of evil aristocratic tone. A girl touches my hand as we reach for the same support. No hesitation. I look at her and she looks away. The canned voice calls Alzaia Naviglio Grande and at these words I feel like a strange emotion in my stomach, for all the things not told, the things not done, the lives not lived. It is like a punch or an embrace and for a brief moment I am suddenly surprised of being here, now, and everything seems right and enviable, even the city I always hated.
I climb down the tram in a state of marvel, and there’s a large sign that says “absolute zero” –and when I turn southward this incredible sunset is tearing the sky apart. The air is warm and dense. The winter didn’t really come this year.