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

– Jago Noja

I broke the tile my father gave me years ago. On the tile was printed, as if written, the old African moral tale about the lion who wakes up every damn morning in the savanna as the sun comes up, and has to run to catch the gazelle, and so has to do the gazelle, and the “it doesn’t matter if you’re a lion or a gazelle when the sun comes up, you better be running” finale.

My father gave it to me coming back from one of his trips, sometimes before I left his household for good, to go to Venice. I think I was 21 or 22. Nothing was good in my life back then, just as now, if not the idling moments when I lounged somewhere in the house reading or drawing.

Scarcely at home, where I lived with his wife and my stepbrother, my father was not able anymore to just scare me about things yelling at me or slapping me in the face, because now I was taller than him and hopeless. Yet he couldn’t stand his own worries about my “laziness”, which is a capital sin, although I think that not standing your own worries is actually a capital sin, and the tile was just an episode in his continuous struggle to force me out of my wasting-time attitude and having me back at worshiping him. The years I had repeated at high school, my indecisions about the University, my political inconsistency, my failure at understanding how much he was doing for us, everything that made me look as a lost case drove him mad.

For my part, I hated the tile from the first day. It was his preaching tone immortalized. The “life is hard” rhetoric he always enjoyed to throw at others, because he hates life, or so I assumed (now I don’t anymore. Now I think life hated him, mostly).
Yet I kept the tile, because it could make me look good at the eyes of the girls visiting my place and admiring my shelves of books and stuff, making me look like some hard-working committed yet ironical fellow.

Libi was asking me about my mood tonight, my mood which is about to crack into dumb desperation, and I wasn’t trying to find the words. I was looking casually at the tile, that was still in display among two rows of books. I had recovered it out of the boxes months ago along with the books, and put it there automatically.
“Why in the hell did I kept that tile for?” I thought. “To be preached at distance during all these years?”
I stood up leaving Libi there on the small couch and went to the kitchen and broke the tile against the kitchen sink.
The pieces, shaped as arrows or continents, got into a muddle with the dirty plates, so I frantically tried to retrieve them sinking my fingers into the oily waters.

I think I am going mad. I’m actually falling apart.
The other day a neighbor caught me on the terrace talking by myself in English while replanting sunflowers shoots. When I realized he was behind the bamboo fence waiting for the elevator and listening to me I tried to smoothly change my American loony monologue into some sort of a song I was singing casually– something that never works.

I retrieved most pieces of the tile and threw them in the garbage. I was surprised I didn’t do it before. Later I went for the garbage and rescued all the fragments I could find, worried to be overwhelmed by guilt one day.
No surprise I hate my guts when I meet them in the bathroom.

I forgot to say something in the previous post. This always happens because I’m getting dumb: my theory involves a joint work of a continuous use of the computer in the last seven years and the stupidity of computers themselves that is contagious. So it happens that what I want to say very often slips away before me, just when I’m about to reach it.
If it’s not Alzheimer, it’s Windows, that’s the idea. With my luck it will be both.

All the same. What is more important (or more baffling) about those phrases I was talking about, full of common sense and emptied of anything else, is when someone you love, someone you’re loved from, uses them with you. Maybe on a long-distance call, or when you finally meet just for a few moments between lives.
It’s the lowest point reachable in a relationship, just an inch above methodically hitting each other in the head with a pan every morning.
I say it for experience, although I never tried the pan, if not metaphorically. I’ve suffered many long-awaited distance calls when trivial phrases like “I’ll hear you then” or “I’m fine”, said in that certain tone, were one thousand times worse than anything ranging from “this guy just gave it to me in the ass today” to “I ate ice cream yesterday, and it was good”. Not meant metaphorically.

What I like less of the typical conversation (particularly — but not only — when on the telephone) with a friend or a relative, or a colleague, it’s the ineffable moment when, after some intimations of usable, apparent communication, indescribable phrases emerge and take over. Phrases with large elbows and a calm bullying way to make room for themselves.
Now I will try to describe them.

I am talking about those phrases that are totally formal and useless, pervaded by a phony condescending tone, most likely derived by the tone of generations of civilized formal parents and relatives — greeting each other with contempt or indifference or guilt at middle-class family reunions.
These phrases introduce the goodbyes too much in advance, sometimes even from the start, and are meant to placate and blandish the interlocutor with shovelfuls of common sense, particularly if (as it probably happened with me), the first part of the conversation was too outspoken or had a couple of uncontrolled swerves into sincerity.
You may think that only “old people”, traditionally loaded with common sense, fall into those kind of things. But no. They are an everyday tool in the hands of twenty-thirty years old.
But it’s too difficult to describe the actual tone, quite repulsive, of this sort of anything-phrases. They just pile up words without any intent but to draw a distance and to normalize. And how do you normalize communication?
Well, using many adverbs and prepositions, assuming a philosophical tone, tightening the corner of your mouth in an half-smile, those kind of things.
Any language has its own sort of horrible empty phrases, that usually fill 80% of any conversation going on, so it’s quite useless to report them in translation. Maybe I’ll try one day.

The point is that there are certain days when you are so receptive and self-conscious you just feel the fabrication and insincerity of every single phrase thrown at you.
You know that that sort of very tested kindness has been chewed by a thousand mouths and is now supposed to fill your own.

— in picture, above: Francis Bacon, second version of triptych, 1944

from the hangouts of the day– everything changes in the way I see her body– I don’t know if it is different from the way I ever seen any– because I camp in my head– When I am turned on– the consistency of her body is important, the way it feels as I grab it– when, feeling ridiculous, I push her down weighting on her– or clenching the back of her neck in my hand, from behind, pushing her down to– when our eyes meet and there’s a glimpse of scare that keeps anything ridiculous down with the body– the only reason left for violence– if I am feeling warm and I want to be close, it’s important how it moves, battlement hollows making way to my body against hers– if we walk down the streets, it’s important that her arm slips under mine– walking over the pavements gray– from where the lifted dust reaches for our hairs, our nostrils, the depth of our bodies walking in the last sun– or anything killing it until it’s alive

Every country has its own rhetoric to endure. In Italy, after twenty years of Fascist bombastic rhetoric, and fifty years of hypocrite anti-fascist rhetoric, and ten years of unbelievable Berlusconi’s rhetoric, it seems like we’re back to the anti-fascist one, which undoubtedly is the lesser of the evils. But, how much sick the rhetoric about the Resistance can make me?

It doesn’t really bother me when it comes from our politicians: “our Constitution was born from the Resistance against fascism”, “in the Resistance are the roots of our Republic”, “Democracy wouldn’t exists in Italy if it wasn’t for the Resistance”: for those voices are as weak as they are remote to me. Sure, they can be heard more distinctly now that Berlusconi, that hideous prick, is not in charge anymore, but to me they’re just meaningless symbols used to draw their phrases to their ends, they don’t count.

But, when it’s from voices of friends, people I know, or bloggers whose writing I enjoy (sometimes), I really have problems with it.

With my friend R., for example, I just stopped arguing about it, because the Resistance it’s just so perfect a myth in his imagination there’s no possible actual debate about it. In his idea, if you have objections about the absolute relevance of the Resistance against Mussolini in our lives (something that happened sixty years ago), you are probably someone who would not fight against Fascism now, if it showed up again.
Bad argument, you know? Because, what do you know, really? Maybe fascism will be here and you won’t recognize it because it will have a face friendly to you, and unfriendly to me. It will be called like your favorite party, or your favorite website, and you will be in the crowd clapping. Life is so unpredictable.

And Babsi: “The history of Italy cannot prescind from those sentenced to death [in Fascist prisons]” (it never did, actually); “This country is really ugly because its memory is short and it doesn’t respect those who founded it (…) I sort of despise those who do not honour communist partisans”
Communist partisans. No thanks, I do not honour them. So, Babsi, despise me, please.
Not that I think that their contribution and sacrifice to Italian History it’s not important. It obviously is, although there was Liberal and Christian partisans involved too. Most remarkably, there was the considerable help of U.S. and U.K. in the matter too: ’cause without their help against the Nazists, no “Resistance” alone would have make any difference. So if you want to honour Communist partisans, it means you should also honour the American and British flags, or generals, which is probably something you don’t want to do in this particular moment.

It’s not like Fascism and the fight against Fascism are the only things that existed in history, anyway: because romantic and generous events (whether the idea we have of them is plausible or not) are countless. Should we feel them all?
Personally, I have better dreams.

No, I don’t honour Communist partisans: because I did not come into this world to honour anybody. This sort of honouring is a waste of time and a bitter lie to me.
I think you can only respect and honour someone you knew personally. Stendhal, for example, honoured and respected, in his own words, “only one man: Napoleon”. For the good reason he knew him in person, because there is no another way to judge anybody.
Sure, you can sympathize and dream and wonder and be thankful to many persons you read of. I am thankful for the existence of a bunch of characters from the novels I read, for example.
But this social and political “honouring” and “respecting” is just sick hypocrite demagogic bullshit and it deserves all possible mistrust.
If I was living at Mussolini’s times, it would be different. But I’m not. Fascism, for me, is all that wants to submerge me in its rhetoric. Disney, for example. Football teams. The fight against Cancer, against Terrorism. The heroes of the Resistance.

I don’t feel this urge of constantly picturing myself among the partisans to feel I’m less privileged, or to imagine that I actually have enemies, or that I don’t live in the privileged world that keeps all the rest in poverty as I do, or that I am not unfit to the battle as I am.
I’ll leave these chimeras to those who enjoy them. Let me live my times without this lie, please, ’cause they’re hard enough.

Finally, about the point made by all the mentioned rhetorical phrases: I couldn’t disagree more. Italian democracy it’s not based on the Resistance against anything. The Italian Republic, as it was born from the hashes of Fascism and WWII, it is based on the complete surrender to Mafia, the American ideology, the Atlantic Pact, and all sort of various patronages (the Vatican, camorra, ‘ndrangheta, magistrates, Unions, corporations, FIAT, nepotism as a method, etc): it is based on the strict limitation of any individual freedom outside of these patronages.
Second, it is based on the Yalta divisions, according to which Italy was a country to be split among the communist party and the democratic-Christian party, with the latter at the government and the former at the opposition. Berlusconi’s perfect dream is Stalin’s dream. A country where, as noted already, nothing was supposed to change, ever, because the equilibrium among west and east Europe was too weak to stand an authentic Italian democracy. Stalin didn’t want it just as much as Truman didn’t.
Third, Italian democracy is a lie, because Italy it’s not a real democracy but an oligarchy (I think I have remarked this point already). So, am I supposed to be thankful for this oligarchy? Because there’s still freedom and a little justice, should I honour those who froze this country under this oligarchy with its phony factions?

Sure, I go under a lot of pain when I see our Constitution tore apart by the arrogance of folks like Berlusconi.
But not because this Constitution, and this mafiosa parliamentarian democracy, are something to be thankful or respectful for. It’s only because, as experience teaches us, the worse is always to follow, that’s all.

First: Fausto Bertinotti, leader of the extreme-left communist party “Rifondazione Comunista”, after the good results at the elections asked and obtained (yesterday) to become President of the Chamber of Deputies, which means a great deal of power and influence, but in an institutional (non-partial) role.
Why, would you ask, he went for that, considered this supposedly is a leader of the local anti-global and anti-capitalist movement, followed and voted by many who have not very much faith or interest in the institutions or the State? Why hasn’t he asked for the Ministry of Labour or something like that? Did they really voted him to seat there wagging a bell to keep order among the oligarchs? I’d doubt it, although, you never know of what people can be happy for.
After being nominated by the parliament, during his inaugural speech he dedicated his “victory” (although it’s not a victory but an assignment the assembly gave him, with a small majority) to the “operai”. “Operai” in Italian means “workers”, but not any kind of worker: “operai” are only those involved in the production of things. Funny, because most of his voters now are not “operai” at all, but people with precarious service jobs in the tertiary. “Operai” was just this Marxist reference dropped there to reassure them the new role was not going to corrupt him or something.

Anyway, why not being more useful to the “workers” taking active part in the new government, trying to do something good there? (In fact, as many observers noted, having asked for the Chamber of deputies mr. Bertinotti renounced to any further front-line important seat in the government for his party) Why did he do that?

I have an answer: the reason is that, somehow, he already knows this new government won’t last. And he knows that after the fall of the government and of Romano Prodi there’s a chance for a big coalition among the center-left and the center-right that will leave out all the radical parties including his own.
So, mr. Bertinotti just looked ahead in this deal, because being President of the Chamber of Deputies will last longer than the government, giving him prestige, possibly for the whole expected five years until new elections. He knows Romano Prodi’s government will end way before than that, putting his party out of the spotlight.
I think he’s giving a hint to everyone, actually.

Second: Italy has officially the oldest political oligarchy in the world. Since it’s an oligarchy we’re talking about here, whose only purpose is to prolong its permanence in the institutions regardless any change in governments and balance of powers, the rate of elderliness among its members it’s actually a sign of success.
President of the Republic: 86 years old; President of the Senate: 73 years old; Next Prime Minister, 68 years old; Former Prime Minister, 71 years old, President of the Chamber of Deputies, 66 years old, and so on. Pension is NOT an option for them, it’s a bad word.
I have nothing against old men, even thought they are the ones who screwed up this world the most. But when Giulio Andreotti, 87 years old, was about to be voted as the new President of Senate, I wondered if they actually weren’t all mesmerized by the past Woytila image we all have in mind. After all the oligarchy is always at Vatican’s service.
Remember Woytila? Climbing stairs as if it were the Everest? Shaking all the time, crying for the old polish song, mumbling in the microphone incomprehensible preaches? Imposing to the world, for a decade, the show of his illness as if it was a merit itself?
Now, who among the oligarchs wouldn’t be happy with a nice old italian leader going around trembling from photo op to photo op dribbling saliva and losing memory? We might even start to gain respect in Europe finally. We could move our partners to pity.

I wish my typical paranoia was working in this situation, but it doesn’t. She just goes and comes whenever she wants.

Yesterday, April 25th, was the anniversary of an important day for Italy, the liberation of Milan from the Nazi occupation (y. 1945), which is virtually considered the liberation of Italy from fascism. Every year in Milan there’s a march in memory of that important day, and very often the march is an occasion of sparkles among factions.

Usually, since the end of April is a period of elections for Italy (soon we’ll vote for the new Mayor here in Milan), a special act takes place on the scene of the march: some eminent member of the right-center coalition walks for a little while in the middle of the left-wing crowd, until people start insulting him, pushing him away, calling him fascist, sometimes coming to blows.
I have recorded episodes like these since when I remember. Since 1994 (the advent of mr. B.): members of Berlusconi’s party, members of the Northern League, members of former-fascists parties, conservative journalists, Berlusconi’s TVs’ reporters… etc.

This happens every time, clockwork, at least when a right-wing representative shows up, if it is useful enough for him or her to run a little risk to gain a lot of respect.
This happens, because the left-wing marches are plagued by handfuls of imbeciles who feel very safe and strong in the crowd, and the examples are countless.

This time the right-wing candidate, the former Minister for Education who is running for Mayor, had to walk only few meters in the crowd before the insults started pouring down. She felt intimidated and left. From what I read, and pretty obviously, news headlines are making a party with it all over the place.
It obviously all turned out to be this huge, gigantic present of the mentioned imbeciles to the right-wing candidate, soon to be new mayor hands down. To humble her opponents even more, in fact, when she received the insults she was actually pushing in the crowd her father on a wheelchair, who is a survivor from a nazist concentration camp.

O-K.

Alas, this is not all. Later during the demonstration, some other imbecile decided to burn an Israeli flag in the middle of the march. Not very wisely, since the two imbecile acts got immediately linked in the news and in public imagination, and will forever be, whether they actually were linked or not. How burning an Israeli flag had anything to do with a march in memory of the liberation against the Nazism, anyway, it’s everybody’s guess. I think the only reason is what I said before, namely the perverse way by which one can feel safe and strong and cowardly protected in the crowd (reason why I avoid marches whenever I can).

(Mind you, I have many reserves against the Israeli government. I think they committed and are committing many crimes. And on the other hand I wouldn’t find that insulting if someone, for example in Lybia, would burn an Italian flag during a march because of what we did there during Fascism. But, when the country you are protesting against is no larger than Tuscany and has thousands of enemies around the world already, and finds itself at the end point of a long line of persecution along the entire history of civilization already, it doesn’t take a lot of courage or pride to add your own burned flag to the pire. It is almost convenient, in certain circles, more than it is political meaningful, which obviously isn’t).

Anyway, the neat result of the whole thing is that, now, it is out of the question for the left-wing coalition to possibly ever take back Milan from the hands of the dull, greedy, insensitive, tree-cutting and shit-eating Berlusconian coalition. The easiest trick with milanese voters has always been to make one part look not 100% regular and reliable and middle-class. And the trick succeeded.

Not surprisingly, the most known and used tricks are the ones that work better.

Now, as I was saying, I wish my typical paranoia was working in this situation: I wish it was true that somehow these imbeciles were actually placed there in the march by some infiltrated group secretly working for the right-wing coalition. But it is not so. These imbeciles are a genuine product of the communist anti-fascist left-wing Italian galaxy.

Sure, all the left-wing leaders are censuring what happened after it happened: but with this, they just make everyone touch how much they are detached from the crowds.
Sad or not, it is a fact.

What I make of it? Well, I don’t like what the left is in Italy right now: but probably I won’t like what it will be tomorrow, reduced from the rule of the oligarchs, to the rule of the imbeciles. As Flaubert said talking about the radical left of his times, it’s probably for the best, because the kingdom of idiots is always shorter.

— in picture, above: detail from an engraving by Bruegel

“There are persons who love life. I’m evading it.
I never understood why folks are thrilled by society events. As far as I’m concerned the restaurant is for eating. I suspect who thinks otherwise. Public relations make me sick.
If one wants to take drugs and listen to music he can do it at home, there’s no need to go to the disco. You can hang out with a couple of friends, or even better, alone.
But discobar culture is blossoming in Milano. In spite of the blood-curdling quality of life people goes out to socialize, without even dropping by at home after work to cry, as they should. Moreover it seems that most of the people don’t use tranquillizers. These are disturbing facts. One asks himself what their eyes are seeing, Laguna Beach? (…)”

Oh, once again. Another book I would like to throw into the Venice lagoon from an helicopter, in thousands copies, to clog the high tides.

“Legendary for fabulous food, persistent men, and a lyrical language, Italy has inspired many great love affairs—with the country itself. From the notorious occupants and cuisine of Sicily, to the ancient marvels of Rome, to the couture of Milan, women throughout the ages have invented and reinvented adventure in this diverse and voluptuous land…”
(From Italy, A Love Story: Women Write About the Italian Experience)

Jesus, “women write about the italian experience”… who are these women anyway? Do they have eyes? Do they have any brains?

I’ve had enough of this absurd nonsense about Italy. Will this undeserved fortune ever come to an end? Will all this cretin commonplaces ever be over once and for all? Will all the Caravaggios and the Tuscan hills and the Sicilan sea urchins ever dissolve in a great blaze of oblivion? Will this country ever be generally known for what it is, a sinking piece of rotten land that should be run over by a giant road roller? And will my smart countrymen ever have the courage to discourage these ideas instead of riding them when they’re abroad?

I’m sorry. But I know how sadly disappointing Italy can be, for real. I have been ashamed of my passport too many times already. From China to Russia, from America to Africa, so many keep looking at this damn country without seeing it. And then when they’re here, they just can’t believe it. Who really comes to stay, who has eyes to see, cannot but be disappointed.
I have seen too many dreams go into pieces in small ugly apartments (half the size and double the price of, say, Honk Kong cheap housing projects), at working places (ending up touring Russian tourists in Venice exchanging bribes with the local Venetian mafia, for instance), at art schools (where not the great history and tradition of Italian ancient masters is taught, but a pointless rootless modernity that despises and neglects anything “traditionalist”), in the love making beds (where silences and long faces and misunderstanding and long boring evenings rule above romanticism and sensibility)… the list continues.

The sick richness of some parts of this country (the 60% who voted Berlusconi in my city, for instance), its eternal incapability of respecting any law, the unbelievable exploitation of labour, the general mounting egoism and indifference, all the generations of broken dreams that populated this lost land… when all of this will ever be part of the picture taken?

Well, I guess, not until people in this world will blindly keep on summoning such visions, of remote golden lands supposed to save for us all the good ol’ things forever. But those places are not from this earth anymore. Only admitting this could give us the force to regain those places back from hell. And I hate the compromising way this post just found to end.

I don’t know why something I have drives girls I’m with to write me messages. I mean, notes and letters and stuff.
S. leaves me short messages near the laptop everyday. And longer, more important occasional letters she leaves upon the laptop whose lid she closes. It’s a habit between us, for Libi to keep the dialog open by continuously scribbling me stuff, from the most trivial to the most crucial thing. She is very good at it, you know, describing her feelings, every effort she does, a shopping mission, the bills, the fights, jobs, emotions, orgasms, whatever. And here I should copy down some examples, but it embarrass me to read them over. This embarrassment is part of the problem I have with these messages and the reason of this post.
Just a random excerpt from a letter:

“I am at my parents’ house this morning… I am feeling my eyes neater these days, for they can see things more clearly, all that you’re letting me see of you, everything I feel by staying with you. I understand you… to the point you let me understand you. I wish you could get some strenght by seeing what you are giving to me. It’s not easy be with you but.. (etc)”

In the past, when on occasions I shared the place I was living in with other girls for a while (it happened a few times), I happened to find messages near the laptop, against a tea cup, stuck on some door or window, over the bathroom mirror, upon the bed, in my pockets, in the wallet, in the book I was reading and so on. Usually it was in the morning because they, the girls, usually woke up before me.
All the messages have their singularities, but they all have in common the description of an effort: trying to reach me from a difficult position.

I don’t consider this the effect of a weird mysterious quality I have to titillate curiosity and to entice and interest women. The thing is that I am the kind of guy who in Italian is called “un orso”: a bear. Please note, this has nothing to do with the husky gay this definition refers to. To be a bear or to make the bear in Italian means you have that kind of attitude where you prefer to remain by yourself, avoiding any contact with “the others” when you can. Just like the bears
You know, the kind of guy who easily grumbles showing impatience when is forced to deal with social commonplaces everybody seems to find important.
In one word, “to make the bear” in italian means being unsociable. Well, as the real bears are supposed to do in the woods, unsociable except for mating, breeding and making friends when you’re young (yeah, as a bear, there was just one and only one occasion to have real friends).

However. I believe I am the recipient of all those messages because I am a bear. It is difficult to communicate with me, rarely I pass on what’s on my mind to the others. This ends up being very stimulating to the compulsive letter-writer talents the girls have. After all they just want to describe their feelings for the situation trying to go round an obstacle. Plus, since I am always there reading something, to write to me in particular doesn’t seem like a bad idea.

Unfortunately, the messages have no tangible effect in the end, because I am not capable to answer to them anymore. I mean, I am unable to reciprocate them by writing notes or messages in in return. Sometimes I even have troubles reading them.
Years ago, at the early beginnings of my career with women, I used to write back, a lot. I even could start the writing in the first place, be it a letter or a message or a post-it.
Now I don’t know what happened: they write me, practical notes about where they’ll be during the day, or thoughts about us together, or anything from warm to sweet to angry disgusted caring or erotic, and when it comes my turn to have a chance to scribble down a note, I don’t even try. I simply acknowledge their messages and that’s all.
To me, they gleam against the background of my life in a very particular, unique way, but they do not seem to be directed at me, they just “appear” on my way.
Just a couple of weeks ago Libi looked at one of my notebooks that was left open on the bed and she said: “so, that’s your handwriting!”

So, is that really because I “am a bear”? Is that because I am so self-involved I don’t really care for anybody’s feelings? Is that because my heart is empty?
I don’t know. What I feel is that I don’t write back because I know my words would be taken too seriously. They would be read through like the Bible and kept away forever, and I don’t want that. This scares me, I guess: that’s how small I turned out to be after few bad experiences. And the fact that these fears I have are stronger than a minimum sense of decent reciprocal behavior is kind of pathetic.

I know this could be configured as a pathetic inability to love or some sort of serious depression, fuck the word.
Anyway, this has nothing to do with being a “bear”. I know bears seek for love like everyone else.