In Nicaragua there's a island in the middle of a big lake, and there are two volcanoes on the island, the island is actually made by the two volcanoes dabbing each other. One of the volcanes is sleeping and the other, named Concepcion, is awake. The tip of the two volcanoes is almost always hidden by a dense blanket of clouds, and both are covered by a thick rain forest populated by mysterious and dangerous animals and insects. All around the coasts are the villages, and long long beaches made of brown and black sand. The water of the lake is of a light brown color and you can't see the other side of it. The spanish who first came here called it Dulce Mar. The Nicaraguan cowboys ride along the beaches, taking the cattle down to the lake to drink, and to move it from one part to the other of the island. Sick and thin dogs by the ghostly appearance follow them, without hopes. People is very good looking and shy and prideful and authentic and all the other too much used trite words, they rarely smile, they jump in the waters of the lake with all their clothes on, they love bicycles, they always wave back if you wave first, the girls have black eyes shiny like pearls and white teeth, all the pupils at school wear blue and white uniforms, and the men are almost always serious and focused on something, but not always. Sometimes, walking across the villages far from the coasts, you can hear music being played in the small houses by two or three instruments, and people singing and dancing in the inside of the houses in the dark. Almost all the houses have pavements of dirt and pallets on the floor and kitchens made of piled stones or pieces of wood on the outside. Sometimes there's a hammock, often a radio. All the radios play the same station.
The food is either bad or very bad and makes you worry, like the water or the insects, especially if you don't have any vaccination like I do. There is always rice and beans to eat and chicken and few other things but soon you get accustomed to it. Not so much fruits, and some mediocre fish from the lake. But food doesn't matter anyway.
There are acacia trees by the red flowers and the long blisters of seeds, looks like africa, and sick banana trees growing on fields covered with trash, and blue birds by the long wide tails and the loud strange songs. A strong wind is always, incessantly, blowing hard across the island coming from the east. They say that the wind ceases only when there are hurricanes sweeping the gulf far away, but I wouldn't know. The wind never ceases.
This island is one of the most beautiful places I ever visited in my life. I wish I could stay here forever, lounging on the hammock, walking across the villages, getting to know the people and building my own house and stop waiting for something or searching for something. I don't know in how many years this place will be turned into a miserable fake resort for north american tourists (sorry, but it's true, Costarica is the perfect example), probably not so many. Everything is for sale in central america.
And it's always that strange mixed feeling, to be finding and losing things at the same time, following the tourist everywhere he or she goes.

A different version of this quite short story has been published on the amazing anthology Userlands edited by Dennis Cooper for Akaschic books, NYC.
Honestly I always hated that version of my story, it came out all wrong because of a series of stupid personal reasons that got in the way, and I always regretted it especially because of all the other amazing Userlands authors that surround it with great pages.
Anyway. What follows here is a version of it I might consider now decent and final, and that I read with defective pronunciation at Bluestockings, NYC on March 22nd 2007.
Some of you reading this might be reminded of an old post on this blog which in fact was the original inspiration both for the first and second version of this very piece.

*

you weird people by corpodibacco

I know that the smile of the grocery girl is because of my mother, her crazy looks, untidy hair, her odd clothes, the strange hat, the jabbering. You all must be weird people, says her smile, putting those useless animals before yourself.
I cave in with my own phony smile. Like I'm not like my mother. Not to be confused with her. Not of the weird people.

Outside the grocery store dogs and people move about in the brown shadows of the trees, and the metal bodies of the parked cars shine dryly, the edges white-hot under the sun.
We move out into the light and I reach for the trunk, squinting, crate of carrots in my hands, warning the old man that the car is a mess, 'cause that's the way my mother keeps it. He says okay and starts to fight his way into it, moving empty bottles around, dried sheets of old newspapers torn to pieces, the snow chain case that will tumble against his feet every time we accelerate, various slabs of dried mud spatter all around the inside, including the seats. As we slam the doors the overloaded ashtray exhales out gray and white particles that flit between our legs.
Dogs share the car, I apologize to him. Would he appreciate it if I started blaming my mother for everything? I wonder. I am willing to. He repeats three times, No problem.

In two minutes we are at the pharmacy, a quiet door gaping out on a narrow lane abandoned in the shade. At the opposite end of the alley the village suddenly disappears, and the curvy hills shine in the distant land before the Italian sea.
The old man and I part ways with a wave and a grumble, but then he calls me from the other side of the road, and he says, the grocery girl, she's my daughter. She's a good girl.
In my paranoia I figure he has a scheme that I should marry her.
The round face of the pharmacist takes its time to scan mine. There's a priest-like morbid aura about it, eyes of repressed sexual desire in the gloomy colors of the store as he hands me back the prescription.

Later I stop by an abandoned lot along the road across the olive groves in the countryside. The landscape is marked by scattered trulli and modern cement angular houses half hidden by the green.
The cats flock over meowing and rubbing themselves against the edges of the low stone walls as I get out of the car. I have detailed instructions about where the cat food has to be dropped. The small bowls and the old aluminum pans, one for each cat, are important. The pecking order is important. My mother is crazy.

Back on the shattered road I think of her, and how it would be if she died. Because she's at the hospital I am entitled to this thought. As the road winds down the hill bordered by more stone walls, further into the land I am not familiar with, I imagine a funeral, words of condolence and affection exchanged, how I wouldn't cry, unable to, maybe later on, and how unsatisfactory the long awaited sense of liberation would be, secret joy for a new life that in the end doesn't come about.
I wonder if the disappointment produced by my imagination makes me a better person or is it that I am just unprepared, that there is no way to be prepared but to imagine, and be disappointed.

As the car jolts against the roots cracking the driveway, the eight dogs rush out of the house barking and howling against the fence to cheer for my approaching smell and figure. The wind is ruffling their fur, scraps of toys and rags are scattered in the yard, their animation is irrational and sweet. All my perceptions are now flattened out to a uniform complacent, absurd lack of criticism, as I mentally go through the returning-home procedures. One bone-shaped biscuit for each of the dogs, in a rigorous hierarchical order. Two biscuits for the biggest one. The oldest barks fiercely and runs across my legs. He knows he comes first.

Hours have gone by when I'm finally done feeding the dogs and the horse and cleaning the stable.
At this point outside it is quiet as inside, only residual puffs of wind are stirring the foliage and shaking the hanging clothes. At moments, there's the crunching noise of the horse chewing on the last bits of carrot scattered in the hay. That's when I feel how after all my mother was right, to come to live this far from everything, here where communities are remote lights out in the dark and being this far and invisible is the safest thing you're left with at the end of the day.

But then some of the dogs are barking from very far out in the field, possibly at a fox. They're too far to be called back. I mentally pray not to find the fox slaughtered in the field the next day, not to have to get the shovel and the black bag and be seen from across the field again, gleaning the fox remains strewn about the meadow, carrying the rolled up formless bag to the dumpster down the hill, carelessly tossing it as if it were no corpse. But the dogs continue to bark, excitedly.

The milk of buffaloes (Italian buffaloes: see picture above). With the milk of buffaloes in Campania they make the "real" mozzarella (not the glossy white plastic you can find on most pizzas nowadays). But buffaloes are wild animals, not easy to tame and milk. Here is a bit of a story Guido Piovene run into, at the breedings in Paestum, Campania (y. 1953). Makes you think at the very beginnings, the mysterious moment when men began to tame wild animals with wise respecful tricks. I doubt things are still made that way though.

This primitive animal is strange and intelligent. She refuses to be milked if her calf is not attached at her nipple; only then, to feed him, she releases her precious milk, which otherwise she can hold back. And so, for each milking, the calf is shown to the mother; this ceremony, though, requires a sort of rite. At the moment of birth delivery, the only man the buffalo recognizes, the keeper, yells her name into her ear. The name does not consist of one word, but of a sung phrase. The buffalo does not forget the phrase anymore; it becomes her proper name forever, and at the same time the plea of the calf asking for milk. Even among two hundred buffaloes, each one of them knows her own distinguished phrase. The keeper told me some of them, which I transcribe from the local dialect: "She meddles in everything; you're never happy; the song is nice to hear; I like her because she's good looking and young; Donna Rosa controls them all; you are being presumptuous; I am truly beautiful". Other phrases, according to the moods of the keeper, reflect political ideas or sport passions; with some the keeper take advantage of his master, and even insults him, since the master cannot interfere between the buffalo and the keeper. As I said the phrases must be sung; it is an oriental chant, certainly of remote origins, similar to the one the muezzin sings from the minaret, and that the keeper sings at dawn before the cattle. After the song the buffaloes get out of the cattle and docilely give themselves to the milkers; without the magic phrase they wouldn't come out and they would use all their wild fury to rebel against any attempt to milk them.

(Guido Piovene, Viaggio in Italia, 1953. Translation by Italy is falling)

it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society
-- krishnamurti

I keep having these thoughts, like being all for the animals and stop caring for anything else in the world except caring for the animals, defending the animals, vindicating the animals of all the pain inflicted to them. How comforting would be not to have other issues then. My place among the others, the future of the others, the war, the fake wars. All the rest, the job the parents the loves. Just the animals, just because they're the weakest most endangered thing alive around and they look a little like us and they can save my soul.
It was the same with certain spiritual or political ideas just the other day. Nothing is real except the anguish which creates everything.
I know it would never work, like say being all for the people and socialism and about injustice and all like that, like my brother who would despise my being for the animals or the plants and not for the poor and the laborer.
I don't go for the absolutes and I get bored and confused when i try to put together things so irreconcilable like billions of humans eating the planet out and the rest of the things alive. Make out the puzzle and you'll only see what you knew already, everything eating everything out forever.

So I say, just forget it, it wouldn't drag me down to my real problems anyway.
I had three very hard months life is a mess as usual and I still have to come out of it. I wish I had the strength or the will or the faith in words to try to tell about it, and stop thinking about new funny ways to commit suicide or be forgotten and become a hobo. I don't know yet if I am going upward or downward. Years later. My hope is so young yet I am no longer a boy but a man decaying. A caveman decaying. I don't know a soul who would forgive me for being what I am and also not being able to tell about it. Etc.

There are many who suffer for the fate of the animals, but most of the people either do not care, or they think it's something not important compared to the fate of humans (of course, there's also the small minority who hates animals or think they are there only to be hunted and annihilated, but they're just too incomprehensible for me so I'll leave them out of the picture).
Now, among those who do not care that much about animals are those who think that the fate of humans in term of justice, freedom, fights against all sorts of exploitations and so on is the most important thing in the world, in front of which the point of view of animals disappears. They're particularly disappointing to me, because while they pretend to be very caring about the destiny of those who suffers, they just fail completely to see the suffering inflicted to all the animals. What are they sensitive for?

They just don't get the point, if you listen to me. Humans are everywhere, the world is filled with them. It is obviously a successful species. It doesn't need that much help to get to be even more successful. But it has left only the crumbs for the animals. Those animals that are not bred in captivity by humans to be eaten or used for food in different ways, are forced into degrading and shrinking environments without much hope to make it after this century as a species.
I can't help it. When first I read the story of the bear from Trentino few days ago I just hated this world because it is so less and less meant for animals, and I am too sorry for them. I know life is generally meaningless as Nature conceived it, and cruel to everything that is alive, but I feel sorry for the animals because they keep trying to be successful but it's sort of too late for them.

The bear I am talking about is a two years old male bear of a monitored kind, Slovenian origin, who trespassed the Italian border from the Adamello National Park, in the region of Trentino in Italy, to Baviera in Germany, few days ago. Out of his relatively human-less environment, probably looking for a female bear on heat, the bear found himself in a much more developed area, with lots of farms and villages. So he killed chickens, pigs and other animals to support himself. In the region of Baviera it is not allowed to hunt bears, particularly of this protected species. Nonetheless, the authorities decided to allow the hunting of the bear, and the regional minister for the environment, Werner Schnappauf (Csu), said the bear was getting 'too dangerous' and had to be killed.

Today it's on the news, the bear has probably been killed by some poacher encouraged by the authorities, who's probably stuffing his fucking trophy right now.

It's a fact that the bear killed eleven sheep, and plundered many hives. In spite of that, a bear it's not really dangerous in this situation if for one thing: it is economically dangerous. It is not a Grizzly bear we are talking about, but a young brown bear scared by humans who doesn't know fowls are there for humans only. Farmers are pissed off because they lose their living properties, and politicians are scared to lose farmers' support. But let's consider the recent unfortunate extermination of thousands of chickens and other birds because of the avian influenza scare: the region of Baviera compensates financially the losses caused by the bear just like it does with those caused by the avian influenza, so where is the fucking problem? They should have taken their time and captured the bear with soporific bullets or something like that, sending it back to Trentino. Although I admit the whole scheme must be too complicated and expansive for the lazy mind of a politician, when it's so easy to simply suggest to all animal killers at large to just feel free to go on and take the problem away, having some fun.

Poor bastard bear who didn't know shit, of our borders and our crazy attitudes, and our staggering fast way to communicate each other something silly he did, walking into Baviera.

*** update: apparently, the bear has not really been killed. It has been spotted alive again. This post does not make much sense then.

The usual Beppe Grillo, very famous Italian comedian & blogger, in this quite O.K. although scary post wishes for the all the planet's fossil fuel reserves to finish, so that pollution, deforestation, desertification and all that crap may come to an end.
For as much frustrated as I can be with this crazy non-stop consumerism, and for as much I can loath cars as well 'cause in the long run they make everything miserable, I must say it'd be no use to favor such an outcome. We might as well wish the end of humanity and of any animal on the earth.
In fact, following what I just learned from this beautiful book, which I just finished to read (mind you, it is not a book about environmental issues, but about how life came to be on our planet: it's six-hundred pages long), if all the fossil fuel of the world was consumed it would be the end of any living species that needs oxygen.

Incidentally, having said that oxygen is produced by green plants and algae, it is an oversimplification to leave it at that. It is true that plants give off oxygen. But when a plant dies, its decay, in chemical reactions equivalent to burning all its carbonaceous materials, would use up an amount of oxygen equal to all the oxygen released by that plant during its lifetime. There would therefore be no net gain in atmospheric oxygen, but for one thing. Not all dead plants decay. Some of them are laid down as coal (or equivalents), where they are removed from circulation. If all the fossil fuels of the world were burned by humanity, much of the oxygen in the atmosphere would be replaced by carbon dioxide, restoring the ancient status quo. This is not likely to happen in the near future. But we should not forget that the only reason we have oxygen to breathe is that most of the carbon of the world is tied up underground.

(From Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale, p. 565)

So, waiting for our fossil reserves to finish it's like waiting the end of humanity to see what happens next. Only you can't breathe it to the next scene.

This is supposed to mean we should do something regardless how much fossil fuel reserves we have left, but personally I think there is more or less nothing we can do for the sake of humanity or the planet: I think that we will screw it all (for just a while of course, a glimpse of time before Life continues luxuriantly without us) no matter what we try to do to avoid it. Because O.K., species destroy their enviroments and then go extinct, that's what they do if they have no predators. Nature is that dumb. Those who just try to get richer and richer regarldess the sake of the environment are stupid and egoist, but they have a lot of arguments on their side: the most important of all being that God gave us this planet.
I often thought that the idea of creatures from Mars coming to destroy us came to people's minds when most of us realized we were going to be too many, and nothing was really going to change that. I think deep down we were craving for predators, and we still do because we know it would be right to have them, so we just tried to summon them from outer spaces, since on the earth they are nowhere to be found.

Anyway, just for the sake of Beppe Grillo's argument, on my side I'd favor forbidding cars: I'd make them taboo. Only kings cardinals politicians showbiz kids and mafia bosses could go around with cars. We all could kneel or laugh at their passage, depending on how we feel, and as they would rapidly disappear pushing the crowd aside, we could regard them for what they really are, those who are not unimportant enough to walk.

Life at the old oil mill is not so dissimilar from life in a farm. At six, you are awaken by the dogs, to whom you're supposed to provide a morning biscuit. Differently from a farm, you can yell at them or throw them a shoe and turn on the other side, but this is not going to help much.
They try to wake you up until eight, when you finally give up, arise from bed and throw the biscuits at them in the usual precise hierarchical order. Eight biscuits, one apiece.

You have then to forage the horse, clean the paddock around hoping the black bastard doesn't kick you in the head. Right away, the dogs bark all around you to have their walk all around the lot, and you better go or else your breakfast would be hell.

Half an hour later you're back from the walk, but it's not time for breakfast yet, because now your crazy dogs have to eat. Again, otherwise your breakfast would be hell.
To fix lunch for these dogs takes a long time. From half to one hour, if you haven't cut and cooked all the vegetables already. Every dog takes his precise amount of food, a mix of rice, vegetables and turkey meat. You obviously don't want to think about bird flu during the process.

Then it's time for your breakfast, but it is also eleven already. You can't lose too much time on your tea, instead you better get on the Fiat Panda and drive to the nearby village to get the huge quantities of food required by your fellow animals. Stores and markets there close at 1 Pm and won't reopen until 5.

Hey, and don't forget on the way back to feed the stray cats!

As you get back, the dogs bug you until you give them the getting-back biscuit. After that, you have a little time for yourself, usually wasted staring blankly at nothing asking yourself moronic questions, or watching the most stupid afternoon shows on TV.

Around 2 Pm you take the dogs around the lot again, and right after that you lock them in the oil mill area and free the horse in the field, minding not to be crushed by his junkie need of carrots.
A young soldier, horse-lover from a nearby village, will come three hours later to pull him in the paddock again, clean him and some other stuff I can't really do. Your mother found him somehow through one of the friendship chains everybody shares here. He was in Falluja last year during the famous battle of the bridge but he doesn't talk much. He comes, look after the horse and goes. He's paid, but you bless him.

Anyway, before that, you must have noticed how the house should be cleaned. But you better do it fast, 'cause at four you have to start preparing the food for the dogs again. They eat at 6, but you probably have to cook meat and vegetables from the start this time, then the food must cool down.

As the soldier goes, you forage the horse again, start fixing your own dinner and crumble in front of the TV, as stupid and yelling and political as ever. A lot of half-naked beautiful bodies though.

The evening continues like this, with your remorses for not writing and blogging, and the laconic phone calls, until you go to sleep, and the dogs all around your bed constantly wake you up during the night, by snoring, running in and out, having bad dreams.

As I said, it is not dissimilar by a farm, but you don't produce any commodity nor goodies here. Only dog turds, horse turds. Lots of them.

-- In picture, above: Max looks at the sunset. Everything is beautiful around, and quiet.)