IN ENGLISH
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Ducks do not know
Ducks, those that plough the little river called “Vernavolina” and that I can see from my balcony, do not know about what is going on and keep on ploughing the water peacefully.
They do not know that those who first were called infectors (that is, “Chinese people”) now encourage the detractors (that is “Italian people”) and they do not know that those who mocked our Country (tha is, some French people) now have fallen prey of what caused their derision.
They know nothing about “Patient One” and nothing about “Patient Zero”. They know nothing about “Red Zones” and nothing about “Yellow Zones”. Nothing about unobtainable disinfectants and medical musks and nothing about forbidden hugs. They know nothing about safety distances and nothing about “droplet”. Nothing about daily reports and nothing about Facebook video messages. Nothing about working in shifts and nothing about smart working. Nothing about closed schools and nothing about graduation ceremonies by phone. They know nothing about virtual lessons and religion homework: “Pray! Pray! Pray!”. They know nothing about Masses without the peace sign and nothing about Masses without congregation at all.
They know nothing about depatures firstly delayed and then cancelled. They know nothing about the fear to infect weakened people, like your sick father, and know nothing about couldn’t-care-less attitude and irresponsibility of people who did not renounce a trip home infecting a sister and bringing the disease over the sea, in a small town of an island usually appreciated only during the summer and then wanted destination by those who wished to leave contagion areas.
They know nothing about proper measures or more or less approximate measures. Nothing about besieged supermarkets as if we were in war time and nothing about public transport first overcrowded, where it was impossibile to keep safety distances, and now desolately empty.
They know nothing about cancelled, national and international, flights and nothing about interrupted connections. They know nothing about TV and internet bombardment. Nothing about fake news and consequent panic. Nohing about hospitals going through a terrible crisis and exausted medical and paramedical staff.
They know nothing about “Milan does not stop” and nothing about “If you care about yourself, stay at home”. They know nothing about people who care about their own and other people health and nothing about people who care only about economical damages.
They know nothing about been touched seeing a priest who, alone, prays on the top of the “Duomo” and the smile caused by the image of a little town priest that, in a van, with a megaphone and Our Lady statue, goes trough the roads and, stopped by the authorities, justify himself with a simple “Work reasons!”.
They know nothing about all this. So the blooming trees in Milan do not know. So the clouds, the birds, the sun, the air do not know. Certainly not…
But we do! We do know! We know all about this, firstly almost careless about the far away disease, then more or less puzzled in a metro overcrowded in Milan, then suddenly frightened after a week-end when everything changed, then almost bold maybe to encourage each other, then fallen prey of panic and anxiety, and now all united, in Italy and not only in Italy, by fear and, at the same time, by hope to get soon over all this!
I receive worried messages by my dear friend Chieko in Japan and photos of my nieces’s and my nephew’s drowings hung outside home in my town in Sardinia: “Everything will be okay!”.
I am in touch with my sisters in Spain and Portugal, where now are settled safety measures against the disease spread.
Surely everybody hopes to keep safe and that the virus passes far away from us and our family.
But there is people who cannot avoid thinking about what can be gained in a situation of crisis. There is people who think only about economic damages, as if it were not true that when health is lost everything is lost and that money can give us a “decent” life but does not give happyness; maybe money can give more opportunities to be better cured … when there is a cure. Now there is no cure, for anybody, and the desease does not distinguishes reach people and poor people.
Instead, our rulers and our employers can surely distinguish people who can stay safely at home (so says the rule) and who cannot (so says the rule). All of us have to stay at home but there is who have to go to work because the Country cannot stop. So it is a duty to stay at home and it is a duty to go to work for those who are not exonerated and justified by the State. So, are there second –rate citizens?! It is still possible to improve the settled rules.
Because (and I speak ignoring everything about financial affairs), at the end of the day, what it matters is to ensure first Life and Health to everybody and then, surely, economic security to live with dignity, as our Constituion says, but not exorbitant profit and gain for those who have so much and so much keep on having.
So? So, let’s stop and think… Maybe it is not a “divine punishment” but it seems that the Nature revolted against Humankind and their mistakes in their lifestyle and customs.
Cheer up but think too!
Almost twenty years ago, after some months in Milan, I wrote
What for?
Deterministic product
Of the meeting
Not random at all
Of subatomic particles
or
free choices fruit
in the world
of Impredictable
we keep
- being whatever we are -
on managing
Our dayly life
Without stopping
To think about
What we are
we could
Or
We could not
be
What for,
After all
If what
We are expected
is
that we keep on
managing our dayly life?
Now, what we are expected is not anymore that “we keep on managing our dayly life”. Now our dayly life is changed, there are new rules of life and, in some cases, new rules of survival.
Let’s abide by them trustfully and do not forget to think about before, the past, and about after, the future.
I finish with the quote that Ernest Hemingway chose for his literary masterpiece “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, that I read ages ago, in October 1989:
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee”
John Donne
1573-1651.
Pavia, 13 March 2020
P.S.: Now I can see from the balcony a father who plays with his little doughters. It is an image of joy and hope!
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REVIEW
“L’AMORE MOLESTO” (“Troubling Love”) ELENA FERRANTE
Who is “Elena Ferrante”?
A lot of people ask it to themselves, since the first publication of her/his first novel, “L’amore molesto”, “Troubling Love”.
In one of the rare interviews, asked about why she/he had decided not to reveal her/his identity, the author who named her/himself “Elena Ferrante” answered:
“Because of a bit nevrotic desire of intangibility. Writing exerction touches every part of your body. When a book is completed is like if you were searched without respect and you only desire to gain integrity and to be the ordinary person you were, in what you do, what you think, what you speak, in your relationships.
Your literary work is public: there you can find everything the author wanted to say. Nowadays who really cares about who wrote it? What is essential is the final work”.
So, we can say that “Elena Ferrante” is the mind who conceived his/her literay works, the pen who wrote them and if it is a woman or maybe a man, perhaps should be of little interest.
After taking part to the “Strega Prize” 2015, now that the series of “My Brilliant Friend”, published in 2011 and followed by the three novels “The Story of a New Name” (2013), “Those Who Leave And Those Who Stay” (2014), and “The Story of the Lost Child” (2015), is going to be an international TV series, Elena Ferrante books are “on the crest of a wave”, known and loved not only in Italy, as I have been able to see last summer in Edinburgh.
And, obviously, Elena Ferrante books are so much wanted in lending libraries too.
So, I wanted to discover Elena Ferrante first novel “L’amore molesto” (“Troubling Love”), written in 1992, a success not only in the literary world.
The novel, as a matter of fact, inspired the 1995 film, with the same title, of the director Mario Martone, that took part to the fortyeight edition of the film festival in Cannes too.
For lot of people it would not be a new discovery, a new reading.
You can read the novel in a short time because of its brevity and also because the story is appealing and fascinating.
It has been depicted as a “domestic thriller” even if the novel did not need such a label to catch the attention of the readers.
The author dedicates his/her work “to my mother”.
The beginnning “My mother drowned during the night of May the 23, the day of my birthday, near the so-called ‘Spaccavento’ area, not far away from Minturno. ... My mother had taken the train to Rome two days before, on May the 21st, but she never arrived” is enough to raise curiosity and interest.
So, since the beginning you can guess that the story is about this obscure death and the reaserch of its reasons, research carried out by the storyteller who speaks in the first person, research not only about her mother death but also about her identity.
“With her, I could only be limited and insincere. She used to go back to Napoli at the very first sign of impatience”.
So, we can discover that the relationship mother-doughter was not, as it often happens, easy, and it keeps on not being easy, after the misterious death, to face the memory of this relationship.
The storyteller recalls childhood memories and the story goes on between present and past.
When she was a little girl, she used to stifle anxiety and worries about her mother, closing herself inside a boxroom: “The boxroom was a good antidote. It frightened me so much that I could cope with anxiety about what happened to my mother... I recalled it when I discovered she left but never arrived”.
Three calls from her mother cause worry and anxiety: “I received the first call in the evening. My mother told me peacefully that she could tell nothing: there was a man who stopped her. Then she laughed and hung up. At the beginning I was surprised... At seven ‘o clock in the morning my mother called again. Although I bombarded her with questions (“Where are you? From where are you calling? Whit who are you?”), she limited herself telling me, aloud, pronouncing them clearly, almost enjoing them, some indecent words in dialect. Then she hung up. Those indecent expressions caused me an untidy regression... The third call arrived at ten ‘o clock in the evening. My mother talked confusedly about a man who ran after her to take her away rolled up in a carpet”.
Amalia, the mother. Delia, the doughter.
Amalia with her Singer sewing machine, with her “sewed, unstitched, turned inside out” suit, with her patched underweare, Amalia “swollen with slaps, punches, kiks”, Amalia who “when she was a little girl, hurted herself continually without crying”, used to say “then it stops”, as her mother had teached her, Amalia who, as Delia says, “seeing us happy, was happier than us”... Amalia who dies the very day of her doughter’s birthday.
And what about Delia? Delia, looking for the truth about what happened to her mother, looks mostly for herself. “It happened that, after years, I wished to loose every root in her, even the more deep: her gestures, the inflexions of her voice, her way to take a glass or to drink from a cap, how you wear a skirt or a dress, the order of things in the kitchen, in the drawers, the ways of most private washings, the tastes of food, the repulsions, the enthusiasms; and then the spoken language, the city, the rithm of breathing. Everyhting remade, to become me and to detach myself from her”.
Is Delia successful in her search? Only at the end of the novel you can find, perhaps, why “the indecent words in dialect” and, only at the end of the novel, you can find, perhaps, an answer or, maybe, a new question.
But what is this “troubling love”? The one between mother and doughter, maybe. The one between husband and wife, maybe. The one between lovers, maybe.
They say a doughter do not understand completely her mother until she become a mother herself... Well, not every woman become a mother but every woman is a doughter and so every woman can, or al least try, to understand the relationship between Delia and her mother, or better, the ways Delia sees her mother.
Somebody suggested to read the novel from a psycoanalityical point of view.
It is certainly possible but, perhaps, not essential.
What is important is that a literary work is convincing for its readers, both “amateurs” and “professionals”, and this is what happened for this novel and for the following works of “Elena Ferrante” who, in spite of or maybe because of the mistery about her/him, has been successful in satisfying her/his readers expectations.
Enjoy the reading!
Pavia 13 February 2016
Translation: Pavia, 25 March 2020
Here is the English version of an article/story I wrote during the summer of 2000 in my town, Sardara, to take part at a literary competition whose title was, more or less, “The best trip of your life: what you did, what you did not, what you would like to do”.
I had chosen to write about my experience in Edinburgh, after University. It was my first trip abroad all by myself and I fell in love with that city.
After years, having visited other beautiful cities around Europe, I have to admit that after having spent more than one year, thanks to a scholarship, in Vienna or Lisboa or Brussels, for instance, I would have found marvellous and unforgettable Vienna or Lisboa or Brussels… and the experience in those cities as a young student, full of hope and potential. Now, after more than twenty years, those hopes and potentials are lost or disappeared, and replaced by the hope to have serenity and good health for my family, my friends and me and with the desire to be able to dream, at least a little, again.
Happy this annus horribilis is ended (after a 2019 horribilis too)!
Good health and serenity in the New Year to all who take time to read my writings! And, as always, thanks a lot!
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
NICE MEMORIES
What I did? I went there. What I did not? I did not stay there. What I would like to do? Get back there.
Chieko crossed half world to visit me. Flying from East to West, Osaka-Milan, she came back seven hours. Instead, - it is a matter of “territorial continuity” (that there is not) -, to reach my Island she had to stop in Rome.
I almost got a stroke when we hugged at the airport.
We separeted three years ago, saying goodbye as foreigners in a city where she would have come back after summer vacation.
Marcin got up early to help me with my luggage that weighed much more than the allowed twenty kilos. It was raining and, at the airport, for some time unable to move with all the eavy luggage to drag, I stayed still under the rain. It was a grey day and it was not necessary a special meteoropathic sensibility to feel in sintony with that weather.
I had read in a female magazine that one of the ten things better then sex is the first trip abroad all by oneself. So it is easy to understand that, at the end of that experience “better than sex”, I did not feel at the seventh heaven. Even if I was going back to my Island, my family, my home, my friends.
I had left my town around five o’clok in the morning fifteen months before, had a stop in Rome, then in London for some hours and finally reached Edinburgh in the evening.
In every airport I called home to reassure my mother and, “being woman”, I had to visit the toilets to check, and in case change, sanitary towel.
In Rome, travelling students did the countdown aloud all together making smile an English-speaking couple so, I, reassured by that smiles, said to myself “everything will be fine”.
Left London, flying to Edinburgh, amazed I admired the sunset twice.
Reached my destination, in the city immersed in darkness, when from the taxi, in a house with big windows and the lights on, my eyes captured a nice bare-chested boy, more persuaded, I repeted to myself “Yes, everything will be fine!”.
At London airport I met Alessandro who reached me to keep me company.
After less than one week, he came to Edinburgh for some days.
Arrived with the bus early in the morning, he found a desert-city that seemed to him a big town. A lady from Bristol too, with whom I had dinner at Pollock in a summer night, considered Edinburgh not a “city”.
Someone, to encourge me before leaving, said that it would have been an alienating experience.
I knew I would not have found images as of a postcard. As a matter of fact, it was much better!
And, notwithstanding my first stammering in English, maybe because Edinburgh could appeare like a town and not a “city”, nothing alienating at all.
At the beginning, I warned everybody “My English is very bad” until one day the plumber, Scottish, answered to me, amused, “Mine too!”.
One morning, Alessandro and I decided to have lunch with the tradicional Scottish breakfast. I had not yet read and seen Trainspotting but I did not eat either the beans with sauce or the black pudding. While Alessandro was away, a couple buttonholed me asking where we were from: “From Italy” “What part of Italy?” “From Sardinia” “Well… Not from Italy really”.
As I would have found some time later, at Tesco, some items made in Italy showed “Italy”: “The big Boot” and Sicily. No trace of the “Foot-Island”.
So I had been happy to find (and buy) the Nuragus made near Cagliari.
At Pollock Halls I had a room of my own but at the beginning I missed a, very little woolfian, bath- room of my own.
I changed room three times but, lukily, every time, even if from different perspectives, it was a room with a view: the park and the… car park.
In Grece I had admired the hill with Agamemnon profile; now from my room I can gaze at the, facing one another, two profiles of Napoleon and Eleonora d’Arborea. From Pollock’s windows I could see, very near, the back of a lying down lion.
One of the few things unchanged from Muriel Spark’s Edinburgh in the Thirties.
Later on I would have discovered its name is Arthur’s Seat. Marcin had told me that, if someone wanted, could reach the top and cry aloud up there. Chieko had climbed the hill more than once. At Pollock, they organized even a night excursion. I knew that from the top, the view, thank to the wind too, was breathtaking but I have never been a greit climber. Neither Ayako, but, one evening, one of the last of our stay in Edinburgh, we decided at the last to try the big enterprise, from the easy side obviously. Well, I have to admit I did not reach the top even that time. Maybe because I feared vertigo. On the other hand, the view was marvellous at the foot too of Arthur’s Seat.
Walking along the Salisbury Craigs I could distinguish Holyroodhouse Palace that, to tell the truth, I never visited, and follow the outline of the buildings along the Royal Mile, distinguish St. Giles Cathedral until the Castle (visible from almost every spot in the city), glimpse the blue-decorated bridge, Calton Hill, the Firth of Forth.
One evening, a boy stopped me. He was sitting, his bycicle on the ground. Taking out tobacco, cigarette paper, lighter and an, to me, unknown dark dough, he said “Where’s the police? No police!”. The wind was strong and he asked me to shield him. So, that time, reawakened homesickness for the far away native land, I entitled the letter for my sister “Canna al vento”.
When I had been in London, some months before, I savoured again the “mirto” that Alessandro had given to two of his Irish friends. They had cooked “lasagna” and I, after refusing to eat beef for months, notwhitstanding pollockian assurance it was Scottish beef, trying not to appear rude, I had dinner eating lasagna thinking, not reassured at all, at the so called famous “mad cows”.
I had seen Trainspotting (the film) but I had not read yet the book so I did not know about the glorious trip Edinburg-London, by bus, of Mark Renton and company. Alessandro had assured me that the only negative consequence would have been a tiny backache the day after. Luckily, the day after my back had not suffered from nine hours contortions on the seat. In return, during that nine hours, I vomited continously in the mini-toilet.
London surprised me. I had imagined a grey city, foggy, full with very tall buildings, terribly chaotic. Nothing at all, but I already missed Edinburgh.
While, at the British Museum, I was visiting one of the halls of roman art, we were invited to leave without panic. Alessandro, that morning engaged as volunteer, had later told me that fire worry is very British. One of the first days at Pollock, not being enough the central heating, I had turned on the heater. Immediately an unmistakeable smell of burning dust emanated and, few minutes later, I had been deafened by the shrill fire alarm. Only later I would have discovered they were the weekly drills and that I was innocent and not guilty.
The last Saturday before my leaving for good, I did not go to Aberdeen with Chieko and David to visit Iftikhar. I had already promised to Marcin and Kien Kok to go with them to Glasgow at a party at Eric’s. We spent there that short and clear night of June. Eric told me I was charming while sleeping. And now who tells me? Who tells me Morning dear as at Pollock?
My room D10 was on the ground floor: squirrels could come and eat on the windowsill. Squirrels grey and brown, plump and funny, not as small and reddish as those I saw in Vienna.
I did not tell my parents that one night that room had been visited by burglars and that, consequently, the police had enviably labelled me as a “crime victim”.
Now I do not see squirrels on the windowsill. In return, bats, that are a protected species, glide from the roof gutter of my house. It means here the air is not polluted, fact that, naturally, cheers me up.
They say happy places do not exist but only places where we have been happy. Well, I enjoyed living in Edinburg and living, as we all know, does not mean being continously happy. Well, I enjoyed living there and maybe the most beautiful trip of my life will be the one that will bring me back in that city which, as Ian thinks, is the most beautiful in the world and I could not fall in love with, city where I spent fifteen months of international friendships, Chelidh, pollockian dinners at the time of afternoon snack, seminars and lessons at the time of a nap, shopping in Princes Street or at the charity shops, strolls in Holyrood Park, Masses at St. Columba or different cerimonies around the city, ball lessons in a deconsecrated Church, latin-american parties, homesickness, missing, leavings, goodbyes, letters written and received, lost meetings, pale sky, double water taps, washstand instead of the “bidet”, high-calory desserts, tastes of haggis and whisky, trips to the Highlands or the Borders, libraries with open book-shelves, films in Common Room twice a week, unsolved dilemmas as “With his rings, has he a fiancé or is he otherwise sentimentally engaged?”, inopportune panicking from bad English, small secret happyness like to hear (and to understand) “I look like a balloon” in a dressing room, explosive joy jumping at the Cheilidh, pint and half a pint, cider and beer, sorry, please, thanks, yes and no, come on, see you later, hy and bye ... and yes, surely and obviously, the usual and common “What a bloody nuisance!” too… from Edinburgh nevertheless!
Versione originale in italiano scritta a Sardara nell’Agosto 2000.
Traduzione scritta a Pavia il 31 dicembre 2020
"Canne al vento" ("Reeds in the Wind") is the title of Grazia Deledda famous book. In Italian, "canna" means also "joint".
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Review
"A Quiet Place" - Seichō Matsumoto
I haven't written reviews of literary works for some time, not because I haven't read books, but rather because I haven't had the inspiration or the right mental and spiritual predisposition to do so.
In a few hours I read "A quiet place" by the Japanese author Seichō Matsumoto and I decided to write this invitation to read because I discovered that he is not so much translated in Italy despite being a very prolific and well-known author in his country.
"A Quiet Place" was published in Japan in 1975 and in Italy in the past year, by Adelphi.
That the story is set at the end of the sixty-nine or in the early seventies can only be deduced in advanced reading for the reference to the murder of Sharon Tate and the presence of a Japanese hippy commune in imitation of the American ones.
For the rest there are no particular temporal references and the events narrated could well take place in more recent years: this as regards the temporal location.
As for the location in space, it is well identified: the story takes place in Japan, with its customs, traditions, habits, social conventions, with its geography and its furnishing elements such as futons, fusuma, tatami mats and naturally with its culture, with its haiku, kouta, nihonga, and, inevitable, with its geishas, perhaps the only term in the original language of which even the Western reader not familiar with Japanese terms knows the meaning.
“When the news came, Asai Tsuneo was in Kobe.
It was about half past eight and he was attending an official dinner with a group of industrialists from the agri-food sector. Asai, an official from an office of the Ministry of Agriculture, had arrived the day before with the new head of cabinet Shiraishi, who had received that appointment just over a month and knew little or nothing about food policies. They had visited some canning and sausage factories in the Ōsaka and Kobe area and the next day they would leave for Hiroshima”.
Thus begins the story: Asai is the protagonist of the whole story and the narrative unfolds and develops precisely on what happens to Asai, both as regards the events of the world-outside and for those of the world-inside, that is, for both objective and subjective events, facts and feelings, events and subsequent reflections, actions and consequent fears and obsessions.
The news that reaches Asai, at the end of an important business dinner, is that of the sudden death of his wife Eiko, not from an accident but from a heart attack.
Asai immediately returns to Tokyo and decides to find out how and under what circumstances Eiko passed away: yes, his wife suffered from weak heart, so she had always told him, but her death seems suspicious and unclear to Asai.
And so he retraces Eiko's movements, tries to find out what she had done, who she had met, where she had been before she died away from home.
His research catches our attention, it keeps us tied to the book. The reader can feel empathy with Asai and his perplexities and follows him, accompanies him with his mind ...
Until, with a change of perspective, approximately two thirds of the length of the book, "what happened happened".
Roles and points of view change and perhaps the reader feels less empathy and more detachment from the protagonist.
The narrative is always compelling but obsession and guilt become predominant, "crime and punishment" take the place of what could appear as an "innocent", justified, personal and very understandable search for truth.
But I do not want to reveal further and I leave to each reader, who wants to accept my invitation and follow up on this report, the pleasure of reading and individual discovery.
Enjoy the reading!
Pavia, March 6, 2021
Review
“Leave the World Behind” by Rumaan Alam
The Italian translation of “Leave the World Behind” by Rumaan Alam, published by “La nave di Teseo Editore”, was released in March 2021.
On the back of the cover there is a quote from "The Washington Post" which defines the book as "a perfect thriller" but also "a work of high literature".
Well, I leave the judgment on the novel being a perfect thriller and a work of high literature to readers who will accept my report ...
As for me, I can say that I read it in one day, certainly bound by suspense but I , above all, by the author's prose which supports a plot in itself essential and almost sparse, also considering the length of the book itself.
An American, "petty bourgeois" family leaves New York City and heads to Long Island (that of "The Great Gatsby") for a vacation in a rented house: father, Clay, mother, Amanda, and two children teenagers but "still mostly children", Archie and Rose.
"The house was made of bricks, painted white", "It looked old but new" "solid but light", as safe as that of the smartest of the three little pigs, there was also a swimming pool, the sea not far away and it was surrounded by woods .
“He respected the friendly slogan of the description. Enter your beautiful home and leave the world behind you”.
The holiday begins and only a few “off-screen” hints suggest that something is looming, a threat, a suspicion of imminent danger, even if we don't understand what will ever happen.
And then, here is a noise, “shuffling of feet, a voice, a low murmur, a presence. A disturbance, a change. Something ... Here someone was knocking on the door. What should they have done? ”.
The author quotes "Guess who's coming to dinner?" but is it who knocks to constitute a danger, to represent a threat?
The voiceover insinuates, suggests, teases and the narration goes on, no one is killed, not even a wound until it is understood that the scenario becomes what is defined as "dystopian", a dystopia however not distant and improbable, but close, very close to us, almost present and very probable, almost almost predictable.
The coexistence of four adults and two teenagers in the brick house takes up the whole narrative. Also cited is "that film in which the man pretends for his son that life during the Nazis was normal, even beautiful".
The characters are outlined with their speeches and their behaviours, their instinctive fears and their reassuring reasoning while nature rebels, daily certainties are lacking, the house in fact remains isolated and far from the rest of the world.
All for two hundred and ninety-eight pages. Pages of anxiety and trepidation for what happens and what does not happen, for what is expected and for what is not expected, for what is revealed and for what is not revealed, starting with the opening words:
"Well. The sun was shining. They took it as a auspicious sign - people turn anything into an omen. It was as if everything said that there would be no clouds on the horizon. The sun was in its usual place. The persistent and indifferent sun”.
As mentioned above, beyond the plot, I found the author's prose, his style, his talent with words and storytelling to be remarkable and personal.
I leave it to the readers to discover it and immerse themselves in the story of "The world behind you".
Enjoy the reading!
Pavia, June 26, 2021
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A BLUNDER
Where the beach is always deserted, there is a beautiful naked body between two mountains of Posidonia.
It is a gymnastic, toned and tanned body. Motionless. Obviously, since it is a corpse, but there is no sign of violence. No apparent wounds, no visible blood or bruises. It almost looks like the body of a sea god. Maybe I'm exaggerating but, you see, the body is mine. Maybe that's why it still looks so beautiful to me. I will not be here for long: I do not want to witness the rot of my material support, in short, of my hardware. Just the time to tell you how I ended up food for worms in my prime, if this is of interest to you.
It hasn't been long since the trumpeted gay parade in the Eternal City.
Free to think as you please, but, frankly, I don't see why you should be proud of your, let's say, sexual orientation: straight, homo, bi etc. that is.
However it is not important now.
It all started, or ended, while we were watching TV. We were having lunch with my parents and mom: “What's this doing there? Didn't he say that the parade was inappropriate and that it would be like having an anti-Semitic parade in Jerusalem?”.
"Incoherent" "Opportunist" "Oppiomaniac" "They change their mind as the wind changes" and my father: "But values no longer exist? Consistency is also an ethical value".
In fact, for me consistency is inherently morally neutral: can one be consistently good as well as consistently bad, or not? Now I can say it from above about my spiritual purity.
But what my father says is also true: basically consistency also means reliability and a sense of responsibility, perhaps. The fact is, my father can't stand pretense. He believes that we must go as far as social martyrdom, he says, in order not to live in whitewashed tombs.
He had seen Paolo and me together several times. Our "bond" was no longer a mystery to anyone at home and in fact that day Paolo was having lunch with us.
Paolo is a few years older than me. He is a serene and balanced person. We met at the faculty and we have some interests in common, such as swimming and reading, but above all we laugh together. If you think about it, it's not that easy to be in tune on laughter. I am not talking about “induced” laughter, from jokes or comic films, although it is difficult to laugh at the same jokes or to find the same movies funny. For example, many find Fantozzi's misfortunes amusing. Not me. One laughs at a person and I find it too anti-educational. I found it, I forget to use the past tense.
However, I said, it is not easy to laugh at the same things, at the same nothing. Well, there was this harmony between me and Paolo.
Laughing is a gift from the gods and we were grateful to the gods for this gift. We didn't care about people's gossip, nor about giggles or teasing. We felt above these human-too-human miseries.
As you may have guessed, I am not quite ready to leave this world forever, and perhaps that is why I am taking too long. Forever. It's scary for everyone, right?
Well, I come to the point.
We talked together fairly quietly, as usual, after all. Then, left alone, the tone of voice had changed and the discussion had degenerated into a banal and perhaps very predictable quarrel.
"But what does it cost you? You can tell me. Haven't I always understood and helped you?"
"I've told you so many times. It is not how you believe and how everyone believes. Believe what you want to believe"
“I don't understand why you insist on denying. Everyone sees it. It's love, isn't it? So say it! Say that! Say that!"
"I love you too, for that matter, but is there a need to announce it in public proclamations?"
"I love you too, I have always loved you. You know that, right?"
And so he hugged me. I have not heard anything or almost. Just a pinprick and him, from afar, saying: "I did it for you, because I love you and I couldn't bear to see you still suffer for your inner torments. The world is cruel. You didn't deserve all that evil”.
No hard feelings, no, but, you see, the fact is, yes, he always helped me but he never really understood me. He never wanted to believe that there were no inner torments in me, that I did not live in appearance and that one of the interests that Paolo and I had in common was love for women.
Women, my poor father!
Written in Sardinia, during the summer 2000, after some months from the gay pride parade in Rome, the same year of the Catholic Jubilee.
Tranlated in Pavia on June the 26,2021.
Clicca qui per modificare.
The ring
Once upon a time there was a powerful sultan who wore a very precious ring on his finger, ring of which he was very, very proud.
One day a very dear friend of him, so he used to say, came to court before leaving for a long journey.
And this friend said to the sovereign: "Dearest, as you know, I have to go on a journey that will keep me away from you for a long, long time and therefore I ask you to give me your precious ring so that I, every time I look at it on my finger, I will remember you".
To which the sultan replied: “My dear friend, I know that you have to leave and go far away but I will not give you my ring so every time you look at your finger and you don't see it, you will think of me not giving it to you! ".
Whenever life denies something, whenever something doesn't happen, I think of the finger without a ring.
A lack: a gift, a letter, a love, a chance, a friend, a word, a gesture, a goal.
What has not happened, what has not been verified weighs in our lives as well as what has happened, what has been verified.
It is part of us, of our history, of our existence.
And it is entirely personal, intimate and therefore precious and beloved, at times.
Sometimes, because often what does not happen, what is denied to us remains with us, it is in us, with a touch of regret and even distress.
Yes, because what did not happen but could have happened, what has not been but could have been, leaves a little bitter taste in the mouth, as we use to say.
Among the thousand possibilities of life, only one lets itself be lived.
And it is undeniable that an "if only" creeps into our mind which is countered by a "it had to go like this and it couldn't have gone otherwise".
And so of the thousand worlds only one is actually possible, only one that from “in potential” becomes “in act”.
And this is how the life of each of us is configured: what is coexists with what is not, the positive with the negative, the full with the emptiness.
Like the bicycle wheel, which turns and works because the spokes alternate with the air.
Not everyone realizes it, not everyone thinks about it, but this is how each of us goes on.
The story of the sultan and the ring, read in an elementary school book, often comes to my mind in various circumstances.
And not only in the case in which life, others deny something to us, but also when we ourselves deny something: a gesture, a thought, a gift, a love, a possibility.
And this is not always negative, sometimes it is a necessity, often a choice of life, always an expression of freedom and of the will of self-determination, a giving shape to our existence, to our ego.
Maybe not with a smile we will come back to mind to everyone, but we will come back to theyr mind anyway ... like a missing ring on a finger!
Version in Italian written in Pavia on February 2019
Translated in English in Sardara, on the 31st of October 2021
Here is the english version of an article I wrote some years ago. The economic situation, up to a certain point, has changed, or so we are told, but I believe that the basic reflections are still relevant. Are we citizens or consumers?
I love shopping
Some time ago I bought a new epilator because the one in my possession seemed dead, too slow, and so, voila, the last or the penultimate model had become mine. Too bad that after ordinary use within a year or so, the last - or the penultimate - model has quietly expired, no longer able to "epilate".
What have I done? I dug up the old pre-retired device that so, so very slow, evidently was not, it is not.
I also had a laptop, slow slow and noisy and consequently, a little over a year ago I decided to replace it. And then I bought a new laptop, beautiful, almost aerodynamic, yes in short, "almost futuristic" (actually a middle between the least and the most expensive). And now, just over a year after purchase, this beautiful specimen leaves me in the lurch! Yes, in short: he left, passed away, deceased, dead and almost buried!!!
But, anyhow, I find myself exhuming the old laptop which, slow, slow, started again with puffs and sighs, and sighs and puffs, of the fans - a very pleasant sign of life! -. The Internet also works, I have already checked by surfing my most frequently visited sites. And the word processor that I can't do without, still works.
Ergo, little thought of the evening ...
First of all, for those wishing to be malicious, it would be argued that both the epilator and the laptop "died" just a short time after the manufacturer's warranty expired: the suspicion, and more than the suspicion, of obsolescence programmed touches me. And it seems to me more than legitimate!
Then, I wonder: "But was the old little device really so unefficient in its use?" "And the old laptop was really slow slow and excessively loud?" "Were they to the point of necessarily being replaced and set aside?" "Or maybe I wasn't too hasty, I too was prey to the "shopaholic" syndrome, in this society that pushes us to consume consume consume?!?"
And yet...
The homo oeconomicus of classical economics has been the object of criticism from later economists and certainly the "rationality" of the choices, which was one of its characteristics, does not seem to belong even to me who, to some extents, am addicted to purchases.
Yes, drug addicted, maniac in short,... but certainly not at the levels of Rebecca Bloomwood, Becky.
Surely it is not only women who are shopaholics, just think of the mania for cars or electronics, I think more distinctly masculine. But since I am a woman and I speak of my experiences, I speak in the feminine.
What about telesales created specifically to capture the attention of housewives? Mattresses, pots, food processors, linens and various accessories for the home, all on display there, very convenient and super attractive, given the unmissable offers that expire "today" or are valid "only for a few more days".
Then, for everyone, here are the online purchases, practical, inviting, just a click away; they give you one more reason, a reason for your expectations: the courier will arrive and you can follow the path of your orders step by step.
Although I love the books exhibited in bookstores and libraries, there to be touched and chosen, I let myself be tempted by the online purchase of books, both new and used.
Everyone has their quirks, their weaknesses, their Achilles' heels: I like to read! And I certainly read books borrowed from libraries but I don't give up having my own books, nothing to do, I capitulate!
On the other hand, I am not attracted by technological innovations in the field of cell phones and the like and in fact I still have two old bitchy phones that, I hope they won't leave me in the lurch.
But, in our society, at this particular moment (which has lasted for years and will continue to last, according to the forecasts of economists and experts in various capacities), it seems that we are no longer consuming enough and that it would be good to relaunch purchases. It seems ...
Now, even if I'm not an expert in anything at all, I'm beginning to have doubts.
Since ours is a society founded on consumption (more than on work) since even those who do not work must eat and live and therefore consume, at least the primary goods, the goods necessary for subsistence, I believe it is sacrosanct to protect the "consumers" and therefore I believe that the legislation that recognizes the individual and collective rights of consumers and users precisely, such as health, safety, product quality, adequate information, correct advertising, I believe that such legislation, I said, is to be greeted positively and not with the derogatory connotations of those who speak of "consumerism", from the English "consumerism", to indicate the movement for the protection of consumer interests.
Therefore, you do not want to deny the positivity of certain goals but certainly we remain perplexed if we think of the link between the activity of large producers and the various forms of more or less hidden advertising to launch more or less subliminal messages to induce potential buyers to feel the necessity to satisfy needs which, far from being necessary, are rather superfluous and voluptuous.
And even more perplexity arises if we only pause to reflect on the contents of those messages that lead to an almost forced purchase, perhaps resorting to loans and therefore to debt, to spending beyond one's means and the standard of living permitted by own income.
Messages that reassure you: if you buy not only you will feel satisfaction and self gratification, but you will also be socially more "in", you will be in step with the times, you will be fashionable, à la page!
Messages that lead to the standardization of tastes and needs, to social massification and to what is called "globalization".
I have read that in Greece, the economic and financial crisis that is gripping us has caused a return to forms of bartering to meet one's needs.
And then, without canceling the positive goals reached in our society, perhaps it would not be the case to reflect and rediscover new forms of "trade", of exchange, not only economic, new forms of relating and coming into contact with other people, with other individuals, not just as "consumers"?
And what if instead of chasing the latest model of everything, fashions and trends, you don't try to do a bit of downshifting?!
A word that denotes a trend, a new and different vision of social relationships and individual values, on which it is worth pausing and reflecting.
It doesn't hurt!
Written in Sardara on October the 24th 2014
Translated in Sardara on November the 9th 2021
Review
“The last day of a man sentenced to death” - Victor Hugo - Newton Compton Editori - April 2014
Newton Compton Editori has recently published some texts, classic and less classic, at low prices and that everyone can afford. These include Victor Hugo's “The Last Day of a Man Sentenced to Death”, first published in 1829.
Hugo's writing is preceded, in this edition, by the introduction-essay "The last night of life" by Arnaldo Colasanti as well as by the Preface by Hugo himself to the fifth edition of March 1832 and by the "kind of preface in the form of a dialogue" that accompanied the third edition.
As the author explains, "The last day of a condemned person is nothing more than a plea, direct or indirect, ... for the abolition of the death penalty .... it is the general and permanent plea for all the present or future accused ... And for the plea to be as vast as the cause, he had to - and for this reason The last day of a condemned man is so done - to prune everywhere in his subject the contingent, the accidental, the particular, the special, the relative, the modifiable, the episode, the anecdote, the event, the proper name, and to limit oneself (if this can be said to be limited) to advocate the cause of any condemned person, executed any day for any crime. " He intended to "give his ax blow ... to widen ... the cut opened by Beccaria, sixty-six years" earlier, with his famous work On crimes and penalties.
Hugo's work captivates from the beginning, ca va sans dire:
"Sentenced to death!
I have been living with this thought for five weeks, always alone with it, always frozen by its presence, always bent under its weight!
At one time, because it seems to me to have been years rather than weeks, I was a man like any other. Every day, every hour, every minute he had his own idea. My mind, young and rich, was full of fantasies .... It was always a feast in my imagination. I could think of what I wanted, I was free.
I am now a prisoner. My body is in shackles in a cell, my mind is imprisoned in an idea. A horrible, a bloody, a relentless idea! By now I have only one thought, one conviction, one certainty: condemned to death! ”.
And so, from the recalling of the issuing of the sentence, up to its execution, the reader is transported, with wise but light mastery, into the last mental journey, deliberately obsessive, of the condemned to death. And, if before the sentence, faced with the possibility, proposed by the lawyer, of a life sentence to forced labor, the protagonist exclaims indignantly: "What do you say sir? ... rather a hundred times death!", the same protagonist, ahead in his journey, finds himself thinking: “Grace! The grace! maybe they will do me the grace. The king is not angry with me. Go find my lawyer! The lawyer, quick! Prisons suit me. Five years in prison, and that it all ends - or twenty years - or life imprisonment, with Russian iron. But the grace of life!
A convict is something that still walks, that comes and goes, that sees the sun".
Well, he, the condemned man, finds himself realizing that life is preferable to non-life, that being there is better than non-being, that existence is more desirable than non-existence and that, as far as life, the being there, existing may be hard, relentlessly difficult and desolating, to the limit, at least apparently, of one's own dignity, they instead have value in themselves, they are a value!
We all know that we are destined for death, for some this is the only certainty of our existence, certainty and destiny which, in themselves, give value to the opposing weight, to life precisely, while it lasts.
Life for Life therefore, the main value, the pivotal value for all those who believe they are part of a society and not of a "suicide club", as has been authoritatively said.
But, in our "modern" societies, nowadays, why should one read this work of Hugo, his "harangue" in the form of a non-harangue ?! He does not plead his cause with philosophical, ethical and political theses, antitheses and reflections: he allows his protagonist to expose all his anguished and distressing thoughts, relying more on emotions than on rationality, more on the "heart" than on the " brain ”-you could say-, a choice that certainly favored the“ hold ”on the readers and the success of the work.
Certainly there is no claim, in these few lines, to account for the rich debate relating to the death penalty, including the comparison, which has been and is envisaged by some, in terms of material costs between said penalty and lifetime prison.
However, one cannot fail to underline that still in many, too many "evolved" countries, the death penalty is nowadays provided for by State laws and many, too many, individuals see themselves deprived of their primary good at the hands of the State itself .
Well, all of us, descendants of Cain, are called, more or less often, to make choices and weigh opportunities, putting on the balance of our decision-making process values, principles, different goods, values, principles and goods that often if they do not coincide, at least they involve or touch upon the value, the principle, the good of Life.
Maybe we think that supporting “Hands off Cain” so that the death penalty is no longer used away from us, is enough to exempt us from making valuable choices in our daily existence; maybe we let others make these choices, deciding for us; maybe we believe that certain values, certain principles, certain assets, are "acquired" and are not in danger in our societies ... maybe ...
Here is the answer to why to read Victor Hugo's harangue-non-harangue: to shake up our dormant consciences, so that we question ourselves, so that we doubt and we seek answers, hopefully personal and not pre-packaged, which does not mean to say that such answers are not and cannot be shared and shareable.
It could be considered unfashionable, nowadays, to talk about values, principles and goods: the value that everyone agrees on is the value of money, not just what could be defined by an expert in economics and finance, but above all as a good with which to weigh all or almost all the other "goods" of our existence, in such a "natural" way that we hardly think about it anymore. For example, it is enough to reflect for a moment on the good "work", well placed at the cornerstone of and by our Constitution: it is assumed that a work activity is "paid" with money and one is led to think that the more a work activity is paid, the more it is, or must be, considered "of value" and prestige, personal and even social. Not so, however, if the same activity is not "paid" in monetary terms, be it the activity of a housewife or the writing of a review for pleasure (as an "amateur" in fact, which literally can mean by "Incompetent", "inexperienced" as well as from "passionate", "amateur").
To conclude, let us return to the words of Victor Hugo who, in his Preface, also sets out some "contingent" events on the parliamentary discussion in France on the subject of the abolition of the death penalty:
“Four men of high society, four men in the way ... had attempted, in the high political regions, one of those daring blows that Bacon calls crimes and that Machiavelli calls exploits. Now, crime or enterprise, the law, brutal for all, punishes this with death .... What to do and how to do? ... There was at least a mahogany guillotine!
Good! all that remains is to abolish the death penalty!
And here the Chamber gets to work.
...
we would have preferred the Chamber to choose another occasion to propose the abolition of the death penalty.
...
What happened? that, since you weren't sincere, others distrusted you. When the people saw that they wanted to cheat them, they took it out on the whole matter without distinction, and what a remarkable thing! People took the side of that death penalty, of which they also bears the full weight.
...
The ministers' trial was completed. … The four lives were spared. Ham was chosen as the middle ground between death and freedom. … There was no longer any talk of abolishing capital punishment and, once it was no longer necessary, utopia again became utopia, theory, theory, poetry, poetry. "
This story, which is worth dwelling on, appears significant because it sheds light on the political and social mechanisms that underlie many decisions that affect us, decisions of politicians and of the people as well, hopefully "people" and not "mass" , "Flock", but this is yet another speech ...
Written in Pavia, on July, the 17, 2014
Translated on December the 15, 2021
"The professor entered the classroom and began by asking: "What is freedom?" and we in chorus: "Do what you want!". To which he replied: "What if I slap Giancarlo now?!", he who for once was good and silent...”
So begins an article that I wrote almost six years ago, after the terrorist attack, that everyone remembers, on 7 January 2015, in Paris, against the headquarters of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
That event made me reflect not only on the problem of freedom and tolerance but also on the power of the media to create a "mass thought" regardless of culture, level of education, social class: a widely and rapidly shared thought in an almost totally passive and uncritical way, which scared me almost more than the terrorist attack itself.
Now, freedom, in its various declinations, is invoked against the provisions of the States on vaccines, swabs, masks, quarantine etc.
But, in the words of Herbert Hart, what is expected from the law is that it is a social institution aimed at the continuation of existence, not that it is the regulation of a suicide club.
And it is a characteristic of legal systems and law that there are not only rights and freedoms, whether natural or protected by positive law, but also duties and responsibilities.
So, let’s think before embracing certain lines of thought and adopting consequent behaviours that, in a society governed by law, are not free but liberticides.
And the journalists and the various media think about it before giving space to those who proclaim such lines of thought and adopt such behaviours.
And, most of all, let’s think that the primary assets in a society that is not a “suicide club” (as hopefully are not our societies ruled by the Law of the States) are life and health!
Freedom from – Freedom to
The professor entered the classroom and began by asking: "What is freedom?" and we in chorus: "Do what you want!". To which he replied: "What if I slap Giancarlo now ?!", he who for once was good and silent... We were blown away, speechless for a while, then - young minds - we tried to develop our thought. We came to the conclusion and agreed in formulating an answer that sounded more or less like this: "Freedom is doing what you want while respecting the freedom of others, doing what you want without invading the other's sphere of freedom". It seemed like a good definition.
It was, in nuce, the problem of freedom and tolerance, summarized in the famous phrase attributed, with variations, to Voltaire: I do not share what you think but I will fight to the death so that you can continue to think it. The "Treatise on tolerance", published in 1763, was inspired to Voltaire by a story from the news and it is now the recent story from the news in the philosopher's homeland and its worldwide echo that have led, after the elephantiac wave of "I am Charlie ”, to the reformulation of the concept attributed to the French thinker, in the words of the Lebanese author Dyab Abou Jahjah: “I am not Charlie, I am Ahmed the dead cop. Charlie ridiculed my faith and culture and I died defending his right to do so ".
Everyone is free to think as he believes and as he wants and these few lines are meant to be just an exposition of my very personal, shareable or not, reflection. I will not go into philosophical-juridical questions, much less sociological and political ones.
Everyone in Italy has launched themselves in defense not so much of the freedom of the press but of something more, as indicated by some phrases such as “But it would be a serious mistake to divide today on freedom of expression, which must always be defended, even when it becomes freedom of desecration" and "Derision is a human right”: two of the many that can be found online, in articles and comments by journalists and thinkers, experts in various capacities.
To ridicule everything, a religious "faith", a "culture", is it really a "right" in our societies ?! So it would seem from what everyone is saying, including the Lebanese author Dyab Abou Jahjah, cited above.
Well, I, without any pretense of originality (someone who has already made similar reflections there will be), I am not convinced.
It will be for university studies, it will be for my previous training, including moments of brainstorming in middle school, but I find certain excesses - which appear to me to be such - irritating and provocative.
It is a textbook, in the lessons of constitutional law, the teaching that freedom of the press often clashes with other freedoms and other rights that must be protected in the same way and that it is not taken for granted that this freedom must always and in any case prevail: it could have to be measured with the right to privacy, honor, reputation, confidentiality, security and so on.
Certainly no one invokes unreasonable and unjustified censures and limitations: precisely the freedom of the press was, as is well known, one of the freedoms affirmed in the first declarations of rights and in the first constitutional papers.
But, speaking of "freedom of desecration", "human right" to "mock", "right" to "ridicule" seems to me a form of obtuse and irreverent fanaticism as much as the forms of religious fanaticism that one would like to fight with pens and pencils.
Nothing justifies resorting to violence, threats, terror but mocking a creed, a faith, taking away the sacredness of those who for some (few or many do not care) are founding values of a life or a society, ridicule everything and the opposite of everything with the claim to exercise a "right", whether natural or protected by positive law, and to be more "evolved", "liberal", "far-sighted" and "open", seems to me an expression of intellectual arrogance and moral bullying, liberticidal and socially suicidal.
I imagine that my thoughts are unpopular and considered by some to be retrograde, but I too avail myself of the freedom of thought guaranteed by our Constitution.
In short, "freedom to desecrate", "human right" to "mock", "right" to "ridicule" seem to me invitations to different forms of intolerance and lack of mutual respect.
Basically, you invite people to slap someone without reason or you invite them to slap each other!
I conclude with the famous verses of Bertolt Brecht:
To posterity
1.
Indeed I live in the dark ages!
A guileless word is an absurdity. A smooth forehead betokens
A hard heart. He who laughs
Has not yet heard
The terrible tidings.
Ah, what an age it is
When to speak of trees is almost a crime
For it is a kind of silence about injustice!
And he who walks calmly across the street,
Is he not out of reach of his friends
In trouble?
It is true: I earn my living
But, believe me, it is only an accident.
Nothing that I do entitles me to eat my fill.
By chance I was spared. (If my luck leaves me
I am lost.)
They tell me: eat and drink. Be glad you have it!
But how can I eat and drink
When my food is snatched from the hungry
And my glass of water belongs to the thirsty?
And yet I eat and drink.
I would gladly be wise.
The old books tell us what wisdom is:
Avoid the strife of the world
Live out your little time
Fearing no one
Using no violence
Returning good for evil --
Not fulfillment of desire but forgetfulness
Passes for wisdom.
I can do none of this:
Indeed I live in the dark ages!
2.
I came to the cities in a time of disorder
When hunger ruled.
I came among men in a time of uprising
And I revolted with them.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.
I ate my food between massacres.
The shadow of murder lay upon my sleep.
And when I loved, I loved with indifference.
I looked upon nature with impatience.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.
In my time streets led to the quicksand.
Speech betrayed me to the slaughterer.
There was little I could do. But without me
The rulers would have been more secure. This was my hope.
So the time passed away
Which on earth was given me.
3.
You, who shall emerge from the flood
In which we are sinking,
Think --
When you speak of our weaknesses,
Also of the dark time
That brought them forth.
For we went,changing our country more often than our shoes.
In the class war, despairing
When there was only injustice and no resistance.
For we knew only too well:
Even the hatred of squalor
Makes the brow grow stern.
Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice grow harsh. Alas, we
Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness
Could not ourselves be kind.
But you, when at last it comes to pass
That man can help his fellow man,
Do no judge us
Too harshly.
Poem translated by H. R. Hays
Article written in Sardara, January 9, 2015
Translated in Sardara, December 28, 2021
BOH
"Boh!". My Italian teacher always said that "boh" does something when it falls to the ground and therefore you should not answer "boh!".
Yet, as I discovered years later, "boh" has moreover literary dignity. It is in fact the title of a work by Moravia, a work in which women speak, women as seen by the author of course.
Now it is my little girl who will turn two in a few months to answer "Boh!" when she does not find someone or when she cannot explain something to herself.
My husband often travels for work but we are a very close family: my husband, our two little girls, Natalia and Marina, and myself.
Nobody would have bet a lira (now a eurocent) when we got married but, after almost ten years, we are still together. Of course, difficult times are not lacking but we have the spirit and strength to overcome them.
Our little girls are a joy. To follow them, I stopped working for a few years. I am a freelancer and work as a full-time stay-at-home mom is unpaid but, thanks also to my husband's salary, I could afford it.
In a few months Marina will go to kindergarten and I will resume my business.
Natalia is in third grade. She is a super lively girl and faces everything with enthusiasm and joy.
We moved to this town in the province because the quality of life, in our opinion, is better than in the city and also because, to be honest, we were able to afford to buy a villa that we could not have in the city.
Our house has a beautiful garden around it. Although I don't have a green thumb, I manage to let survive a few flowers, mostly geraniums and daisies, and the girls have a large lawn for their games.
We also have a guest room and both my parents and my husband's parents have come to visit us several times.
Little girls love grandparents and grandparents relax with their granddaughters like they couldn't with their own children.
Now it's up to us parents to play the part of the strict and even say some no.
These days it is not obvious: it seems we should allow everything to the children without denying anything but my husband and I think differently. If you give everything to your children, they will no longer appreciate anything and will consider everything as due.
Our parents, although we come from different backgrounds, raised us this way and, it shouldn't be for me to say, we have grown up well.
I said no one would bet a penny on our marriage. Our parents warned us, it wasn't going to be easy. And, in fact, it wasn't easy. Even so-called friends, even the priest from my village, were skeptical but, luckily, our families supported us.
And we were very convinced of our choice.
We already had some thoughts about the possible problems or obstacles that our children might encounter, at school, with friends, in society in general. But, thank goodness, that wasn't the case.
We are in the third millennium but certain taboos still exist, tenacious and rooted.
My husband and I met in the office. He was a client then and we had followed a complex practice for his company. One day we went out at the same time and he invited me for an aperitif. I had not pretended to have an agenda full of worldly commitments and I accepted immediately.
And so it went. We had liked each other, we liked each other's company and then we started dating: we went together to the cinema, to the theater, even to shops or we stayed at home doing nothing.
When we decided to get married, six months after we first met, we knew that we should first of all communicate it to our parents who might not be ready. But no, not only were they understanding even if a little surprised at first, but they encouraged us and said they would be by our side.
And everything went smoothly! With their support, we would have been invincible!
We were both far from our homeland and perhaps also for this reason, we felt and we feel in harmony. After all, it is a physical distance, which still persists, after all, but not mental. We try to keep our roots alive, starting from culinary traditions, and pass them on to our little girls.
Natalia is happy at school. At least the teachers have not reported any problem to me and she is calm when she comes home.
We hope that Marina also fits well in kindergarten. Perhaps at first she will suffer a little from being away from her mother for hours and maybe I will suffer too, but this happens to all children (and to all mothers).
The other day she was playing with her Lilly doll that s had wanted so much because she said it was just like her.
She had recently started with her "whys" as well as with her "boh".
"And why isn't Father here?", "And why is Natalia older than me?", "And why does that lady have a mustache?" and here it is, unexpected but perhaps completely justified, sincere, spontaneous, the last one because it was born from the simple confrontation between herself, her sister, her father, even her doll Lilly and ... me: "Mom, and why have you white skin ?! ".
Written in Pavia, January 20, 2019
Translated in Pavia, January 25, 2022