And yet were there still more pictures?
Yesterday, March 30, 1988, in the La coruña wineshop in Galicia, Spain, the children sitting between the casks at the back of the room kept looking at the television while conscientiously doing their homework. Or the day before yesterday, in Vigo, on the Atlantic Ocean, there was a kind of marriage of river and ocean waves: one did not incorporate the other, but rather, there in the estuary, incredibly gently with a light snapping sound, one was dissolved into and extinguished by the other. The river's murmur met the tide's rush and, with a stronger murmur, the river and ocean waves crept first to the edge of the river's mouth and then, with the ebb and flow, stole into the land's interior (...)

-- Peter Handke

So, Peter Handke wrote the above twenty years ago today. It is the beginning of a three-pages long micro-epic later collected in the splendid little treasure Once Again for Thucydides. This epic is entitled "Last Pictures?", and I think it could fare as the germinal manifestation of Handke's 2002's masterpiece novel Crossing the Sierra de Gredos, also set in Spain, whose original title is "Bildverlust": I think "Longing for the Picture".

Well, nothing, only it is funny I bumped into this today, having found Once Again for Thucydides laying around in the house and having browsed it while putting it back on the shelf.
In case you were wondering, the book has nothing to do with Thucydides except that Thucydides stays as a early model of the art of telling a story of something experienced first hand, and not heard of-- nor completely invented.
And what about the last, longed for pictures? It's about the same thing, I think, because nothing is harder to recover and easier to lose than a portrait of what we see, what we experience. The greatest loss in everyday's life, is the day itself, our ability to describe it and save it: not what we made of that day, with our careers and loves and cries and tasks and ideas, but what unrelatedly made that day around us, the little slice visible to us and put together by the accident of us being there then, I mean here now. End of the post.

"What is the matter?" Molinari shouted at him. "Has using that time-travel drug scrambled your wits, you don't know you've got only one tiny life and that lies ahead of you, not sideways or back? Are you waiting for last year to come by again or something?"
Reaching out, Eric took the paper. "That's exactly right. I've been waiting for a long time for last year. But I guess it's just not coming again."

-- Philip K. Dick, the novel I finished to read today; in picture above, at gardening school in the morning fog. days of exams.

question: what are you going to do at 75, childless, jobless, without a pension, a insurance, savings, retirement plan and the whole package? uh?

answer: I don't know. I am physically unable to think about it. Present, Past and Daydreaming take the most of me, keep it very busy. I don't extend to the future, I can't plan. I reckon I should, but the rest I am left with is used for despair, laughters, efforts of sincere wonder.

Hey, but you look dumbfounded. Sorry next question.

--In picture: this morning.

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.

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.

"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.

So it's nineleven again. Fifth recurrence of the stupid day terrorism made the rampant globalists ever more arrogant. The day the Global Technological Police State was given its well crafted perfect excuse to take over. Or if you prefer, the day of the greatest defeat ever inflicted to the Islamic world since the foundation of the state of Israel (it's a fact, not a opinion).
Nobody on earth is supposed to ignore this day. I wish so much I could ignore it. Truth is, I can't. Makes my blood boil instead. The lie running naked in the streets and being called truth makes my blood boil, on and again --even if I have been knowing it was a lie for the whole six years (since day one, actually).
The morons repeating it and drumming it carrying around banners made with fake videos and inconsistent evidence and disposed clues and unproved facts make my blood boil. I don't feel as much impotent as I feel discouraged in front of them.

Outside, it is really the end of summer. After a sunny day the evening streets of Milan are definitely busy--like any day of the year (schools opened this week). Maybe it's only because the days are getting so shorter and the pretty windows of the many shops glow brighter along the sidewalks -- the crowd moving in front of them casting more significant clouds of shade and light -- or maybe it's the cooler wind that now and then can be felt. If it wasn't for the propaganda, let alone nineleven from the point of view of Milan man-made end-of-the-world globalwarming wouldn't cross my mind. If anything because nothing like propaganda happens "globally" (in the same way all over the globe).

So it occurs to me this funny thing, that "everything is connected" like every cretin likes to say, only because propaganda connects everything. Otherwise the hell things are all connected, they are not. Our major weakness as individuals is exactly in failing to protect ourselves from forced connections between our lives and others'. To a certain extent, connecting dots and grasping common destinies is emancipation and is knowledge. Beyond that extent anyway it is a curse that instead of uplifting us individuals puts a burden on our back. The burden of remote things whose truthfulness can't be measured and whose reality can't be touched.

I think that the ambition to connect everything comes from a need for rationalization and control of reality that is actually impossible without descending into the pathological. It is a tool used by the gate-keepers to make everyone feel smaller than them.
Meanwhile walking down the streets without feeling that burden, of the remotest connections converging on yourself as terrible persuasion tools, is getting harder and harder by the day. Especially on stupid days like this one.