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.

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

I sit on the bunk bed in the small bare room. The sliding window is half open, so are the blinds, and a faint cold breeze searches the room.
Through the not blooming branches of a tree that almost reaches for my windowsill, comes in from the outside the rumble of the city, endless engine noises covering sparse traces of voices and creatures. Occasionally cars run 20th street, but mostly it's the constant pushing uptown of the traffic on 8th avenue to give the rhythm.
There's an indistinct smell in the room, a mix of clothes scattered around and in the bag, shoes, the old faint red carpet, and the car exhaust rising up from the street, gasoline, tires, dust, maybe some remote coffee place spreading aroma along the sidewalks.
I try not to move my leg and wonder what the best position is supposed to be. My feelings, mostly shame for this failure of my body. An old injury, the right meniscus that got broken so many years ago, waking up again, so badly, without an obvious reason. Sure it must have been the weather, I argue, 'cause changing weather always caused my right knee to hurt a little, to swollen when I used it too much. And I always limped a little, unnoticeable. But it never happened to hurt so distinctly, for so many days without ever getting better -- at moments so stiff and painful and unavoidable. What a shame.

I am worried by the thought that it might be self-sabotage, too. That's probably what the feeling of shame relates to. On some level, am I maybe causing this to be so bad so that the whole trip is screwed? I wonder. Out of fear? Out of guilt? Because Libi everyday reminds me how lonely she's feeling, how unreasonably far I am going? Because my father ignores my emails, ignores to acknowledge my being away? My keep trying to be in my own way?
Because I still fail to get hold of concrete reasons for my choices, and to mark significant steps forward?

Could be, I mean. After all there must be an explanation, I say to myself. I might need a traumatologist, or I might need a psychologist, or both. Together analyzing me. Plus an acupuncturist maybe.

I felt so bad this morning that I had to cancel a get together with Robert, one of the fellow Userlands contributors, because of this fucking sabotage (if he ever received my message, which, at this point, not having received any answer from him, I worryingly start to doubt). And it's not like I make new friends everyday. But it was crazy to think I could go around walking, when just half a mile around the block it's painful to do.

I sit on the bed, writing and drawing, the room enlightened by a uniform white light pouring in through the blinds. I look at the knee and it looks fucking normal. I touch it and it feels normal. A fucking normal knee that hurts every time I move it.
I have these absurd fantasies of being frown upon, wondered about, by the latino girls cleaning the rooms, and the guys at the reception, or by the guests I meet more than once a day while limping up and down the stairs.

Weird limping guy by the half-mad half-desperate expression on his face, roaming around the hostel. Call black-uniform anti-terrorism homeland security squads and have him shackled away, over.

I get out to grab a cup of coffee and something to eat. It feels pretty lonely to stay in line at the Deli, random individuals as we are, each of us getting the preferred food the way we want, each going its own way to eat it by ourselves. I'd rather have the wrong, the least special food and have it shared at a table with these people. Everything feels wrong. I limp back at the hostel. Soon I fall into a worked up, raging sleep.

I dream with clarity of my father's face, so regular and severe. He doesn't look at me, he looks so much younger, taken by his life, going away. In the dream I clearly know he's wishing he had a different son, the one he wanted, someone who was expected to come out different from everything else, brand new, of the brand new world, and certainly not so similar to his mother, or what's worse, to his grandfather. Not so fragile or introverted or a day dreamer.
He wishes for it, but it's not like he cares much.
He keeps looking away, seems like having better things to do, and in the dream I want to ask, what about me, can't I have better things to do now?

Libi does everything... Sometimes I look at her and get excited only to think that I can order her to do anything that comes to my mind-- the only obstacle being my mind itself, so often hazy of bad thoughts and worries and obsessions--

It was shortly after we met that I learned how Libi's heroines were maids and waitress and servants. Back then she was preparing her last exam writing a dissertation about an old italian movie... the movie revolved around the self-immolation of a maid of all-work, and her descending path from dignity to subjection. She thought she had picked that subject out of her feminist sympathies.
I remember one afternoon, she was reading and writing in bed and telling me about the movie and how the story tragically went and I said, "that's obviously your sexual fantasy."
She looked away for a second. Outside was a clear day, the white clouds upon the roofs--at that time we used to get out in the city quite often and we probably had to get together with someone else that day. She was asking for help to normalcy and friends, out of the window and in the city where her self was at bay from anything so obviously deep in and pushing-- I don't know what she was thinking--

"No, what do you mean", she said. Blushed. We swallowed (or maybe that was later). I said You Know What I Mean, and she said No I don't.
"I mean that's your fantasy, to be a servant and to be humiliated and obey and all the rest."
Libi looked at me, I said, "hey, you know that's fine by me. That's actually what i want, so-- there's no problem."

Libi does what I want. Sometimes I complain that she isn't horny enough, that she doesn't throw herself at me.
"That's not my role", she says. I'm an object. She's right I guess. I am probably the one who's not entirely up to his role.

I always envied sexual victims and preys (consensual, doh) because I always felt that their vision and their bravery were clearer and stronger than mine-- They knew what they wanted and how and possibly even why. I always turned to them with the hope to find in that certainty, in that vocation a hint of what possessed me but I could never find it. I can understand someone else's craving for humiliation or punishment but what about me? Do I really want to hurt or humiliate these persons? I love them-- I don't despise women at all-- why I get so excited at the sheer idea of having no limits or respect -- no interactions outside the one of the voice that gives the order?

all I could think of was that the disposition to master or humiliate was due to some feeling of insecurity toward sex that I had. That kind of ruined it for a while (still does, off and on). I also thought about the loads of S/M porno magazines I used to find in my mother's room when I was a kid --and how that conditioned my fantasies-- but the truth is that I discarded those that i didn't like. Already then I immediately went for where my fantasies were--
So I don't know. I guess I am still searching.

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

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

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

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

when I walk down the
streets and
it's cold outside,
I have a paper scarf to
wrap my neck with--
all written by fingers of bees
all drawn by drools of slug.
when into the cones of lamplights and moths
the scarf waves about me and I read--
bits of phrases and pictures minute
yet I still have to get
what my paper scarf is about?
is it a story?
is it a classwork note?
is it just about my neck?
what should I do with those lines and dots?
Oh and I know
not the wind nor the cold will rip
my paper scarf--
but my clumsy hands.

I'm experiencing absurdly long loading times on this blog. Every page seem to be hanging for tens of seconds before showing every post. I don't know why. If you are experiencing it too, my apologies. My hosting service is not answering my emails. They're probably got drowsy waiting for my blog to load.

**update. They're actually very kind. They say they are experiencing no problems. So I must be dreaming, which is the story of my life.
Is anyone of you noticing loading problems on the page? Like, around ten seconds for each post?

**update. It seems like it was a plugin causing it all. Well at least I wasn't dreaming.