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

Q. what else can i say? well, an advice for free: you could avoid people commenting, so you won't know how your readers are alike and you won't be disappointed by them.

A. Why, mr. Girogio, I get two comments a month when I'm lucky, what difference would it make? Plus, I do want to know people's feelings about what I write. To me, this is one of the few good reasons left for blogging... If anything, I am tired of my unknowns to be so silent. But I don't want to really change anything, or to really complain about anything. I write so little, with such difficulty. And I'd rather stop writing in public than close the comments down. To quote that supposed anonymous blogger (which isn't anonymous, really) in the previous post was just a way to lash a feeling out, that's all.
I don't know if this happens to the others too, if it happens to you. I think it is the impressions you accumulate with time. I think that I will never know how my readers are like -- but I keep growing involuntary feelings about them, how they are and how they are not, layers of impressions, probably false, that can worn out the relation with this theoretical readership, and with the general idea of writing "for the readers". Especially when writing terrifies you because it became so darn serious and personal and exposing. Which is the reason for the other quote... I think. It probably was there for those who were supposed to understand it. Although I am not so sure anymore [goes on mumbling incoherently]

"... ma io dico rubare quando il furto è fatto per mancanza d'immaginazione, di 'genio' come si dice a Napoli. A coloro che rubano idee dagli altri quando sono a corto delle proprie, a coloro che rubano frasi e stili e parole e trovate quando la loro immaginazione è smagrita o insecchita dal troppo sole, bisogna anzitutto far sapere che abbiamo visto, sentito, annusato. Li abbiamo visti, spezzare sbadatamente i rami nel frutteto e lasciare cartacce in giro. Bisogna mostrare loro che stanno sbagliando o sprecando tempo. Che scrivere è una strada difficile verso la verità, la verità dell'esperienza individuale beninteso. Bisogna che essi sappiano che parole e stili non sono che risultati o espedienti, i quali lasciati soli sono come innesti senza gemma. Puzzano di originalità, che è il più fasullo dei frutti. L'originalità, altrimenti indispensabile, non è necessaria se si toccano esperienze autentiche... e voglio dire, di certo non intellettuali (...)"
-- Scipione Corsaro, Il mio albero

"I'm not closing this blog but I wish I had entirely different readers. I'm tired of these unknowns. I want new ones."
-- Anonymous blogger

The closer is the day, the more things I don't get done, including blogging, and the more things I postpone to the imaginary day after tomorrow when all the packing will be done with few expert focused hours of work. With the effort to keep my nervousness at bay, to reassure Libi and the silent or explicit questions to answer, I feel pretty much hollowed out, in a way that worries me only because I wouldn't want it to grow inside and extend itself across my days of travel.
I see the landscape changing all around, spring breeze celeste sky, I order few dollars at the bank, the terrace is getting thicker of blossoming plants, friends on the telephone can't make it or can't be reached and are told goodbye, rushing through the city teeming with the usual machinery-life, the emails to answer are accumulating, the birds chirping and the long lines at the police station to get my passport get shorter by the minute. I try to knock myself out with ideas of places and feelings of travel or walking by or swimming or new smells but it all remains in a lingering state where I can't really express it let alone make it real.
It's not a problem. Nothing is ever final anyway, anything is a sensation, anything is transient.
I read news about Italy, all bad and phony, but I don't feel like commenting anything anymore because it's like all is left to feel and relate would offend someone --and anyway I am not alert enough to make justice to it.
Just like these odd days, soon my posts will be slightly rarefied, because of me being around and far from home, but so you know, I intend to keep the blog updated and going, getting back at it every time it's possible etc.
Meanwhile I have to put an end to this post 'cause it's like I am having a shortage of breath or something.

-- in picture, above: something that hasn't much to do with the text below.

... dietro si sentivano odori di cucina, dalle imposte penetravano i fumi e lei camminava senza affanno mentre dentro, lo stomaco si chiudeva ed apriva molto vicino ai polmoni, dandole calore, emozione, incertezza. Voleva una cosa, quella cosa: e dicesse pure Giuliano che lei non capiva la sua gente, dicessero le voci che era matta. Forse c’era l’amore seduto su di un piccolo trono in fondo alla strada.

-- 3 phrases from my old novel

When I was 25 to 27¹ I kind of tried to write a novel. I had tried many times before, pieces of novels that never made it after the first twenty pages, but that one was to be my great effort. The novel was in italian of course, and here and there, what seemed to me a beautiful italian. Well, certainly the best I was able to come out with¹.
The novel had a good title, or at least what I thought it was a good one, and no serious idea behind it. I had few models in mind and a hazy idea of where I was going and I thought it was enough to make up a story as interesting as I imagined it to be.
It had a city, a island, it lacked irony and had few too many characters in it, I think two of them were especially both me and they had arguments for most of the novel and I think they really argued to decide where the novel was going.
In my mind I was writing for my enemies too, all those writers who were headed in the wrong direction and whom I wanted to wake up with a whip like Indiana Jones. This constantly caused the story to resonate with the books I had read, hated or loved, a resonance which had no reason to be --if not to display how smart and well read I was.

But something else that I wasn't considering at all brought the novel to a strand and to its natural death after almost two hundred pages.
I lacked honesty. And I wasn't brave enough. I mean, sometimes you feel all you're reading are coward writers, or dishonest writers. I know because I've been one when I first had tried, when I hadn't a clue. Today at least I know these treats are more than important, they are crucial, they are all that it is to it. Bravery to show yourself naked. Honesty in forging the impressions and the scenes. Etcetera.
I had no clue, all I could think of was that I was going to be a writer, not knowing that all I was trying to do was to make myself look good. Good in a smart way, sure, with carefully balanced stains and flaws and heroic mistakes but still, using the novel in an artificial manner.
In my defense, I had nobody to ask advices to. Well, I didn't have the humility either, so I probably didn't even look for it.

So finally the novel wearied me and disgusted me, as it had to, and I hated it-- except maybe for few paragraphs here and there that probably still today I could forgive or use.
I shoved it into the proverbial drawer with other short stories and fragments i had tried to write before and during and right after the novel --and it was twice humiliating not having had the courage to just destroy it. Still today I am ashamed of not having had that courage. I think it was a perverted form of creative stinginess on my part.

Neither the novel nor the stories where ever read by anyone anyway. Except for Rulla who read some of the short stories behind my back during her raids in search for clues of my cheating on her, then throwing the pages in my face with rage during our fights.
"So you fucked her, uh?"
"That's a story! Leave me alone!"
"It's a 'true' story! You say it right here: 'a true story'!"

Although I had had the dream since when I was fourteen, and probably even before that, after the novel had appeared to me as the gigantic error it was, I thought it was really over with writing ,and I was almost fine with it. A different chapter of my life had began, I was told I had a career, I was told that the world was accepting me and pulling me on -- it was fine to let the writing go. I figured I was going to be like Svevo and get back to it in my old age, with more humor and understanding. Then the "carrier" proved itself phonier than all I had ever written -- and when we (me and the career) parted ways, I ended up thinking about writing again. Later ended up blogging.
But I didn't really think about writing another novel and going down that scary road again, at least not until recently. I didn't feel the urge because at hand there were other more immediate ways to communicate. I guess that's another thing to thank blogging for. One of the many, along with: the unpredictable readers, the exercise of humility, the mandatory discipline, the constant inspiration, the sharing of ideas, and, most importantly, the bits of courage and honesty sparkled almost everyday by the effort made to describe oneself.

_{1. In case you're under the impression you've read this post already, it's because I posted one very similar yesterday, and then I immediately removed it. The day after I noticed that some aggregator, like the Google Reader, in those few seconds that the post had stayed on line stupidly had grabbed it anyway. Well, who cares. This isn't much of a better post either --only possibly not so aimless.}

2. English language came to me later on, after years of illiterate macaronic english. Just like it had happened with guitar chords, when after years of strumming and tone deafness all sorts of chords blossomed out of my fingers, and even bare musical ideas and a voice.

I haven't followed the awards. I don't have a TV set, I never go to the movies, I am so out of touch I don't even know the name of most of the new Hollywood icons. And the old icons, all former alpha males with their hairplugs and gigantic white fake teeth, I am happy for them if they're still alive and kicking but, I'm sorry, they just bore me to death with all their self-indulgent aura and all.
Shiny gold disturbs me. Fanfare makes me sad. And the italians at the Oscars? Forget about them! Judging from Salvatores, Benigni and Tornatore, they usually begin to destroy themselves and to cover their own country with shame shortly after the ceremony, so I'm not even going into that.
The only thing that can surprise you when you're so out of touch with something, is to see other people interested in it. So many posts about the Oscars the day after. How anyone can be sucked up into that, you are left to wonder. But that's also so subjective. Honestly I don't really have a point "against the Oscars". I am only completely out of touch and happy with it and I wanted to say it, since today my mood is doing much better and all.

--in picture: shiny gold, ugh.

because I like the strain that came out with it, all pissed off, I decided to quote myself from a comment I just made here. Always in defense of commentators:

...I never read Genna's blog... but I read the post you talk about. I totally disliked it. Patronizing and bossy. And really exaggerated. He wants us not to do this way, he wants us to do the other way... typical italian famous blogger. He seems convinced that the simple fact of deciding to have a role as "the one who writes the posts" vs. "the one who writes comments" makes you special. What an ass. The point is not "creating content". It all depends on the quality of the content you create. Or the honesty of it. And if your posts are dishonest, they can still give you many readers and many comments. Or not. So what that proves? Nothing. If you're dishonest you can get a lot of pointless comments that sneer at you. In that case the comments are probably better than the content. (Comments are a different kind of content too, so the whole pretext is stupid anyway.)
I think he's putting those who provide content on a pedestal only because he's one of them.
And he compares writing comments to vomiting! He can go to hell as far as I'm concerned.
And anyway. Nobody seems to conceive spontaneity as something more than anarchy to be regulated. That's so wrong. The way I see it, spontaneity is the only decent fertile common ground we should try to preserve, and let be. Montessori wasn't on the mille lire for nothing.

ps. thanks to maateo for providing the occasion. Hell, in a vomiting comment.
pps. In a totally unrelated issue, I want to notify that I have worked it out with the "write" page. Now it actually serves the purpose to write to me. Oh, and there's also a "phrases" page now. Always just in case you were interested.