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

– Jago Noja

perhaps because I am not so much into blogs these days, but lately, when I take a little time off for blogland (OK, maybe too little time, but then again, I must also be unlucky then), I read so many automatic, predictable, conformist and inconsiderate opinions about issues on blogs I like that it really puts me down (and I wonder, why I liked these blogs again?)
But they do reflect something that happens in real life too. I mean this thing of automatic opinions that are used and not actually considered before use, just thrown at you over and over again.

Like, it comes out a movie and Libi is like, whoa, it’s wonderful, and A. at school is like, it’s fantastic, and I read about it on the web and it’s all ‘wonderful’, ‘literary’ (what the hell that means?) and such, and then the Oscar mafia comes out with, whoa, masterpiece, so in the end how could anyone not agree? (this is how opinions are consolidated: with the numbers, not the reasons.) And then you watch the movie, and OK, beautiful pictures, but c’mon. There’s emotion all right. But there’s also nothing into it. There’s nothing into the story, into the characters. Cool serial killers and tired straight old policemen. Again. Is that fiction about life? It seems like people enjoy it because it does NOT disrupt their idea of the world, it only spices it up a little.
“The world is dangerous and I am not a killer: that’s why I don’t live.” Like, here it is the flattest interpretation of your day, plus a little unrealistic flirtatious pretentiousness (southern accents and solemn ironic monologues), plus guns and blood and chasing, and all the rest of the usual shit hollywood has been pouring over our trashed heads for generations.
Enjoy. Life is not ambiguous, it is just plain scary. And you’re a baby.

The day them mafia bosses there in hollywood or the big apple will be able to pull out a film about life and death and consumption and disorder without using weapons of sorts, murder, and other forms of desensitizing violence I’ll really try to listen and watch hard. Otherwise, sorry, I’m sick of the celebration of violence masqueraded by ironic masterpiece.

“This movie is really cool, you should download it”
“Wait. Is there even a single gun into it? A murder? A rapist? Is there a so-debauched christian fundamentalist? A car chase? Dismembered rotting bodies? Is there the end of humanity as we know it amidst savage barbaric violence? Is there even a second of any of that?”
“Actually…”
“…”

and, funny how the same happens with much more serious issues, where bloggers I happen to read and used to like rush to support, say, Kosovo independence. Without hesitation, because of the above-mentioned automatic reflex, in this case applying to the rule that it is so cool to support whatever people struggling somewhere for whatever independence, and, who could be against it, right? they declare how much they care for the oppressed. This is done without even bothering to explain why they feel they should declare they support Kosovo, why this drugs-&-guns-smuggling-UN-supported mafia enclave should be cheered when acting like a chauvinist scoundrel, while being supported immediately by all the racist scoundrels of western Europe, when the same people and entities are so strict and picky with independence movements in their own countries. Don’t bother to ask.

Yes I not only will pass, but I am not listening any more if more than two blogs or individuals at the same time come crying to me at the altar of this or that masterpiece, this or that convenient idea etc. Especially if this is done without really wanting to explain why.
It’s annoying. Sad to relate, maybe, but in the end –with very few exceptions– to me blogs are interesting only when they revolve around slices of personal life. Singular point of views, the phenomena of existing. The material is much harder to handle than any goddamned opinion and the quality of the product can get to be so much more superior, with maybe less posts and more respect for the reader (Hey, I’m not talking about myself here, this blog is in a coma, I know it).

Which reminds me, sorry for this post of opinions against other posts of opinions, won’t happen again now.
Love, etc.

the mind is a city like London,
smoky and populous: it is a capital
like Rome, ruined and eternal.
— Delmore Schwartz

past the ledges of the orchards and the vines the car slopes up through the quiet naked woods, downy oaks robinia and salix (especially robinia) (still the bright beige leaves of the oaks hang from the ascending branches obstinately) standing above the underwood of brambles and hazels with joyously unrolled yellow male flowers, at first the shattered gravel road whose bends seem to disappear out of the slant and into the trees, then fading into concrete, sudden civilization of garages and magnolia trees across montevecchia alta hills down, to the inevitable lowlands, the consistent street lights, the wide round abouts, the trucks one after the other, the honks, the cedars, bar tabacchi, farmacia, casalinghi, the incongruous architectures of Brianza, the blue and white and brown signs of towns and cities to reach, the giant malls offshore into the parking lots, and going rolling and hanging into the traffic, rapidly squeezed into highway east and very fast, passing many cars, going south, the low enraged sun blazing white hot on the concrete and into the eyes, hazardous moving from lane to lane to the exit few miles ahead and finally at the streetlight of viale forlanini, in front of me the low canyons of the city, sky fading to white, rumble of the restless souls, people rushing down the sidewalks, in and out of the many shops, gatherings of more waiting for the tram 12, haze of gases and dust all and above, mothers crossing the streets with probably folded up babies in strollers, VIP cars pushing into the reserved lane, white trunks of the plane trees going up and in the sun, I look for a parking spot, hot in the face, lowered windows, in my green gardener suit and the whole car dung-smelling dust crackling, today I stole from work batches of preserves and jams now scattered on the passenger seat, I am coming back from the absurd organic farm up in the hills where I work this week again. I find the parking spot. From the warm valley where the only sounds are chirping of birds and far away hammering in the orchards I am here bumping the car up above the curb and civilization is everywhere and immediately completely all around and rightfully irreversible and ¿just how absurdly it is to forget all about it for a underpaid brief day of hard-working dung-shoveling illusions?
Moh’. Who cares? For the failures? I drove a 1978 Lamborghini tractor with a trailer today up and down those ledges and thought I would overturn it any moment, and hated it. I can walk home with a fair walk and joyful.

–In picture, above: the aforementioned tractor. Music: “because of this”, mark lanegan

Therefore I believe this basic assumption to be true, that falsehood is beloved; falsehood by day and dreams during the night: here’s a human being.

— from Gustave Flaubert’s letters

I don’t understand the world but when I am lucky I can see clearly how the world is largely unexplored and unknown — and catch some breath: still nothing makes sense — despite all the technique and the data– I mean what surrounds me, what happens under the light of the day, what the souls and the bodies are doing today, what their hopes and excuses and impressions seem to be, what is consumed and missed and redone: unknown, the minds are unknown, the pains unknown, the thoughts of the cats, for example, unknown —
but then the stroll ends and you drag your feet back in the funnel where things are aimed at something and clocks tick noisily and nosily, and walks have directions, and manly hands are shaken–
 

the most relevant thing I learned at gardening school is probably that gardening doesn’t pay, since it obviously is yet another job ruined by the miserable idea that we all have to work faster, faster, harder, harder, €5,20 per hour and thanks, lest we drown, uh, fear, don’t even think about drowning, run, work, swim, are you a fool? so for example it doesn’t really matter if you shove that lavendula in a pot you just filled with acid soil because you just have to run, christ, screw the €8 pale lavendula, someone is going to be charged for it when you replace it next year– no fear — what really disturbs me is that I’d take the same decisions, I’d do the same things to survive–

and the more I am attracted by the world of the plants — taste developed not, I shall say, out of some very popular nowadays hate or disgust towards humanity, which I don’t share at all, in average I still like humanity, since I don’t hate myself all the time, the others are not my obstacles– the more it seems impossible to me to fit into the proposed categories of mindless unstoppable working mania that colonized entirely the italian world of gardening, along with all the other worlds, somewhere I was so naively trying to escape going in that direction– like if there was a direction where to go expect retire from this totally uninteresting race whose prices I don’t understand and whose prizes I don’t get
 

but I am accustomed to my naivety, it just makes me smile a bit– a falta de algo mejor–
yet I never would have imagined a good, almost-imperceptible-as-it-should-be, well done pruning could give satisfaction, probably enough to a soul in need of small things like to heal itself, or to survive its own sickness a little longer–
 

post scriptum, so ends another year. this year I learned very little, right now I can only think of very depressing things like that i get more stupid, all people I can think of getting everyday more stupid, which is another way to say more scared, more defensive, less curious which in the end means less interesting. what is it happening to the world? I’ll tell you what, maybe we really managed to sell ourselves to the idea that we are not worthed. like there was some very high standard we failed –and I can’t really see it anywhere– or that we are so much worthed that nobody will ever understand us, which is the same thing–

music: Django Reinhardt, Minor swings, September songs etc.

pictures: faces (always faces!) I scribbled next to the notes of arboricolture, phytopathology et al.

also: my most thankful thoughts go to all those who left comments or sent emails and got no response or lame responses. I wanted to answer you and do it in a sensible manner, but then it was hard to get it done, then it felt stupid because too much time had passed etc. you know how it goes.

so many times songs are there for those who want to look into their own feelings, sadness for example. so happens to me as I listen to “Bene” by Francesco de Gregori, I watch my buried sadness with affection and sympathy– while the tears accumulate at a higher rate inside, effortlessly — and so once again, the absent melody enthralls me, words that go around and around things explaining nothing, only scraps for grabs, besides who can tell a whole story? It’s a beautiful song. I think song writing is in the making these things generic and general– everything becomes mine, the mood, the poetry in the bathroom, even the “vietnames face”. Especially the vietnamese face. I won’t get into that.

“ma un uomo camion vive ancora in me..” (Paolo Conte)

I’m defoliating the young ficus carica that we are explanting because the rocky soil has to be minced again. Above is the unequal sky, gray and azure and always changing –a cold wind comes from downfield — I lent my windbreaker to Susy but I don’t feel cold– working and running up and down and all. I first met Susy this early morning, we shook hands– exchanged our reciprocal biographies in three phrases– later I tried not to look too hard at her sweet smile or to listen too intently to her warm accent. She took tools from my hands once or twice and gently said “I do this now”. It is a week of apprenticeship and I came down south. It probably wasn’t a good idea. Everyone is very nice to me and knows more than me about everything. But it’s not that, maybe just that it was a long road to get here and my first impression was that they don’t really need me here– I grumbled against the school for sending me out to a apprenticeship after just three weeks of school. And letting me pick the one I wanted, too.
Susy tags the vases, I shorten the taproot proboscides that make funny angles or just don’t let the plant go and we stick the little creatures into the vases. It’s my first really ungrateful doing with plants– when I go up to the road and line the vases along the stonewall where the rows end “so they don’t get stolen” says Very Friendly Bruce (the boss of the 10 hectares foundation) and that’s where I cut all the leaves down mercilessly. Some of the varieties have dark buds, pointed and with a hump– now unprotected– others are of a bright green almost white– the leaves fall to the ground and make a bed of silvery green that should be raked away and composted or burned but will remain here– some of the nano fruits are oblong, they fall too– It’s a conservative foundation and there are more than 170 varieties of ficus carica in the two or three parcels where we are working. I look at the little plants coming up from the rocky soil, shaking slightly and elastic in the gusts of wind and wonder what’s the why or sense or the beginning. When I bow and get my nose into the small plant to cut the succulent branches that are hard to get I can smell the sweet obvious smell of the fig– I wonder if that moment is to be considered part of the notorious idyll of this outdoor life– because maybe the fact that it doesn’t feel idyllic depends on me not being ready for it– and I wonder whether it should be used as a lever to turn inside out all the painful or squalid thoughts rushing through my mind instead. To be into the light, to stand up to light wrote Max Frisch: not flattering to light itself, only a desirable task like submitting oneself to Time as if it was Eternity– I want to learn how to do that and many other things but my mind knows other things better: I often get distracted. I think about her again, and again I see her and hear her in my head– Martina– so that I wish I could close my eyes and make it go away– with the obnoxious moaning of why and why and why– And this morning I felt sorry for myself a lot, foolishly, there in the densely parceled land– myself extraneous, alien, guilty, ignorant, “getting old”, incapable of clearness and peace– indifferent to the parcels besides, trying with smiles and loud phrases and stupid brown-nosing and aping knowledge to melt with the thing all around me– the people and a job to do, a role in the job to do– being useful– being accepted by the others and all the crap–
But then in the end I felt unreasonably glad that I was doing this job, later glad that the job had ended and I was tired and the sky was definitely now different and that we are were all in a good mood, that the sun kept showing up between one cloud and the other– and we all got to the storehouse dragging the soles of our shoes to get the bigger pieces of soil out–
Everybody was smiling and raising hands when we said goodbyes and I drove back home and the radio was playing and I made the turns when the road made turns and had no further thoughts or feelings or compassion left.

The school is at the end of a narrow gray road across a field, hidden in a bunch of ornamental trees of different sizes and colors. A smell of wet grass and soil pervades the air when I walk to it in the morning. I take a tram, the subway, and a bus to get there and it takes an hour and a half. I bring a book to read (these days is “The Deception” by Nicolas Born) during the three hours of commute everyday. The school itself is eight hours and boy I can be tired when I get home. Definitely not accustomed to it.
There was this quote on this blog since its first day, more than two years ago, a quote by Mark Twain that went: “Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you. If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood is what you were intended for.”
It seems funny how in the end I got to sawing wood. I am taught how to use brushcutters, hedgetrimmers, pruners, lawn mowers… luckily there are other major things to study –such as identification of plants, phytopathology, botany, design of gardens etcetera.
They say it is a famous gardening school. I still don’t know if it makes any sense this me being there but I think I’m okay with the learning thing. (to be continued)

“Me, Love’s servant? I wasn’t at all! And suddenly my heart felt ugly, I was sick of myself. I thought that my aim of being simple was just a fraud, that I wasn’t a bit goodhearted or affectionate, and I began to wish that Mexico from beyond the walls would come in and kill me and that I would be thrown in the bone dust and twisted, spiky crosses of the cemetery, for the insects and the lizards.”

— The Adventures of Augie March

I am reading this book slowly, partly because I am reading other things and partly just because its language is sometimes difficult for me: and also I was very impressed and got clobbered by the fact that as soon as Augie finds love he goes to Mexico following obviously eagles and snakes. It took me by surprise and had me sliding down memory lane (again).

“And so”

And so we were laying in bed inside the room by the open roof. Our naked bodies etcetera, one against the other dark against the white sheets etcetera. Above our heads the mosquito net which bothered us during sex when one of us stood up on top. Outside, incessantly, the sea– but I wrote these things already.

We had an argument because Eli had invited us to go with her to the disco in the village nearby, and then Martina said she wanted to go alone. This wasn’t the argument because it was me the one who nicely took it out of her that she wanted to go alone — advantages of being more experienced — and then, OK, I said, but tomorrow it’s our last day here, isn’t it kind of stupid? It wasn’t. I also took it out of her that she wanted to be alone the following day as well.
She was funny to look at, her profile sulking in the pillow, senses scanning the roof and the noises, at moments making a long face, casually asking, does it bother you?
Now I am forgetting spanish all the way… I don’t know if she said ‘¿te molesta?’ or something else.
She was playing the part, let’s be real cold and forget all about it, this was but a small amount of the ominous fury she was going to be capable of, stomping on the things she feared she wasn’t able to keep from happening, the pain mixed with grace– but spontaneously I knew better, again the lousy advantages of experience — and said: of course it bothers me, I want to be with you — I said it in a gentle way — and I knew she didn’t expect the straight self-exposing dope, a degree of sincerity yet to be known by her– that’s when the argument started, pure obstinacy on her side to make things slump — I need to be alone, I came alone, I have to go away alone, she said. It’s all right, I said, it’s a pity, but all right. Just don’t be upset now.
But she dressed up in a hurry, in the remaining seconds during which we didn’t look at each other. I felt kind of hurt because of the impersonality and the swiftness of this small tragedy — her behind disappeared in the short jeans skirt, her small lovely breast in the top, her dear mouth disappeared behind a door closed in a rush. I said ‘stupid’ as the door closed and regretted the sedate casualty of the remark. Then the sea only made noises.
I stayed in bed for a while more. I didn’t know of what she was capable of at that time and didn’t really worry.

Then I got out, climbed down the stairs, looked down from the terrace to the sea, the empty uneven beach and the foamy round waves under the big clouds — I went further down, to the beach and to eat. On the way to the restaurants I found abandoned on the sand a bracelet with little colored stones stringed to a leather ribbon and took it.
Later it was still bright, it was bright until late. I got to the internet place, started reading or writing emails, emails that probably contained omissions or lies, and from the monitor I raised my head and there she was, out in the street, licking a white ice cream with her red red tongue and looking at me through the window hole with the same dark serious eyes in abeyance. I smiled, got out. She came close to me and said “I am impulsive”. I opened my arms to make her come close and stop her from explaining things, and we hugged and didn’t let it go. The girl of the internet place was sitting under the porch with her baby just out of the crib and looking at us. The baby had learned to walk. The dusty road was empty and quiet. I felt Martina’s grip and her smell. It was so simple — and mysterious at the same time. What were her thoughts in that moment? What her feeling? In what area exactly our feelings were meeting? What name or address it had? But we were happy and relieved and no words were needed. Has my heart ever beat that fast? (Yes it has. It doesn’t matter.) Eli went alone to the disco that night and Martina told me that when she came back it was four in the morning. We were finally asleep.

“I hate these memories”

I hate these memories. They come to me across the things I read and the music I hear. Funny how I listened to all those songs so keenly the first weeks and now the sheer idea that something like “our” song might exist and might be heard paralyzes me. I thought those things were supposed to go away or not to hurt so much. At the same time I feel like I am pushing the memories to the surface where they should evaporate and dissolve. Because they will. The thing I like most about astrology, whatever kind of astrology including the mayan that Martina liked so much, is the knowledge that the wheel keeps turning, always, although in a complex uneven way. So nothing lasts identical for too long. I feel that I am turning, my hair and posture are already half-way– I soon am going to look at something else: this is so terrible and unjust– and these idea of sending her a picture one day of myself from the garden where I will be doing— whatever, should it be possible, I won’t care to send her anything anymore. That’s how it goes. Etcetera.

there was this check from the car’s insurance company abandoned in the drawer and I knew I had to wait before to cash it– with its three damn zeros. Now, wow, it entirely disappeared inside the subscription to what will be my task for the next six months — going to school. And it didn’t even covered the whole crap.
Awake all night… and my mind is fluctuating and dizzy — my face as if pushing forward around the nose and distracting me– ideas are made up in an approximate rational state — occasional terror due to the shape of things to come– but it is a cool sunny morning out, and one day soon I’ll cut my hair again– and nothing is all right, reasons, methods, conditions, covered portions of the truth in my life– but che cazzo ci posso fare.

“Oh, I know that there is no hope for my country: it is more than a knowledge for me, it is a condition, the condition of being italian — this funny thing bound to decay and dissolution and without a hint of good future in the zodiac. Not just a spectator of this, mind you. Part of it. It is something that must be experienced to be understood. For this culture and for these people I know there is no hope left: something else will be called “italian” tomorrow and probably nobody will even know the difference. But I know. And I certainly make no exceptions to this gloomy vision because of a demagogic comedian who seems focused on attacking what is already so weak and without respect in people’s mind– trained by ten years of Berlusconi & co. to just despise the “small theater of politics” and everything around it — so that he gets the easiest satisfaction, the easiest applaud. While the country keeps falling, steady.”

— yep, the discussion down at Blog from Italy continues. My rhetoric touches new peaks, someone should probably stop me.

What I wanted to say: I imagine a politician who would speak only about the greyness and ugliness and unfriendliness of our cities; of the diminishing of our culture, the crumbling of our fantasy and imagination; of the egoism and disruption and sadness brought by giga-malls or parking lots, or by a new soulless skyscraper; of the absence of the children from the streets; of how things are not simple but tragically simplified– of how hard it is to recognize and keep love: and not talking these things as side issues in order to dramatize the supposed real deal, any football issue like corruption, war on terrorism, heritage of communism, gay marriage, global warming or unemployment or whatever.
No, I dream a comedian-politician that would talk only of such problems, such as they are perceived: problems as phenomena. The trees getting old and isolated. The many cars. The villages emptied out. The oppressive nature of the excessive order, and its contrary. The sweeping of death and decay and shit under too many rugs. The depressed faces of the people going to work and the sadness of the too dark clothes and of the leashed dogs. The triviality of the opinions. The everyday triviality of beauty. The too many things to conserve that are wiped out.
Without rhetoric and without arrogance and without pushing a sense of guilt in the listeners. Without advocating global projects and new authorities and key-words to open all the doors. Without looking directly in a camera and without looking elsewhere. Without making supernatural alliances with remote entities because “we are all in the same boat”. ‘Cause that would not be within the phenomena. I imagine someone able to speak about all these things without getting into the theoretical or into the partisan, not even by mistake not even once.

In other words, I imagine the weakest most unrealistic most absurd and most useless politician to hear or to support ever.
That one I would support, eagerly.

added at past seven a.m.: I think my political vision is kind of muddy.

talking about the sad Grillo thing of the other day, I expanded myself on the subject in an interesting discussion going on Blog from Italy, in case you were interested. So I am not going over it here. But it is interesting, though. I don’t pretend to understand everything or that my interpretation of the facts is the right one… But I do see things like Grillo’s v-day as key moments where the self-destructive instincts of the Italians give their best. Our imploding grotesque antique people. I know them instincts quite well. I have them in my blood type (type self-destruct). And isn’t the title of this blog…? Etcetera.