The shape of the city is unfathomable, all around are hills covered by trees and houses, streets going up or down, old colonial buildings and low colorful squared houses... It's still the same lazy suspicious dirtiness everywhere, just like along the road to the border, in the middle of nothing, piles of trash threw from the cars into the bushes of the beautiful plateau, for miles on end of narrow winding road.
From one of the undescript low bridges of the city me and the Swiss guy assist to an improbable match between Milan and Genoa (so the shirts seem to say), while black birds fly high over our head, because next to the soccer field is a garbage landfill. We just had a coffee at a dunkin' donouts, which was basically the only thing open early on a Sunday, and I don't complain. Even earlier I got into the main church, the local baroque colonial white Duomo, where the bishop himself was conducting the rites. His voice sounded just like that of all the catholic priests in Italy, mellow and phony, and his words equally empty to me... but I was moved because there were so many people in the church, and like I saw happening in Costarica and Nicaragua, they sang a lot during the mass, all together, with strong participation... and I am always moved at the thought of not being part of a group, of being cast aside, by myself, where I only can be.
I fled the church when the bishop started walking down the aisle sprinkling holy water on the herd. Not that I had anything against the holy water.
I think I'll have a meet up with the Irish couple later, or tomorrow, when we'll go together to the Copan Ruinas, at the other end of the country. Travelling at stages with other tourists is good and bad, plus nobody seem to want to actually let the things around touch us. But the loneliness can be unbearable too, sometimes.
From Copan on, it will be Guatemala, which should be grand, as the Irish would say, although my slow homecoming seems to be going so fast now.

In the basement of the famous music club, breathing hot air under the low ceiling as I walk amidst the little crowd gathering, I feel ill, disturbed by my weakness, dizzy of pharmacy drugs and nasal congestion. The self-sabotage keeps moving forward like the only thing moving forward inside me.
I wonder if the bacteria of my cold, or the viruses of my flu are spreading themselves around the room as I move around.
There are many young italians here, guys probably living in the city. I look at them, listen to the italian chit-chat all around me. I don't feel any bond, any special sympathy for them. I wish there was no italian language at all down here tonight. I don't want to pay attention to it. I look at them, all happy and relaxed, so casually conscious of their appearance. I'm not one of them. Neither I am one of the locals of course. No doubt about that.

Me and Loris* hug awkwardly in a corner near the bar. He's nervous and excited for the show about to begin. We talk about the tour, the positive reviews that made him happy. We drink something, I have a beer because I don't know what to order, I tell him I admire his courage to be a small fish in the biggest sea here, when he's such a cult in Italy now. He says, I am tired, I can't wait to be back in Italy.
When the show starts, the music is definitely too loud for me, the voice almost unintelligible, also because of the chewed sort of italian-british accent Loris pulls out when he sings. The choreography they use during the songs, partially coordinated and partially improvised on the very limited same-level stage is pretty amazing, and even hating the loud volume as I do the sound is evidently great.
Loris has a couple of winning numbers, like when he plays the guitar stroking the strings against the tripod of the mic. An american girl near where I am standing, shouts to a friend: "I don't understand a word! [unintelligible] He's awesome!"
I am leaning on a column at the back of the room where the loud music drums less violently against my sensitive ears. They will be buzzing for hours at the end of the night.
I wonder if all these silly precautions and fears are a definitive sign of my being irremediably old. But the truth is, I always was like this. I always had sensitive ears, always felt alone and about to fall when I was sick, always had a sense of not belonging to the place where everyone else felt at ease.

Someone is dancing in front, I see the bobbing heads and arms backlit against the sweating faces of the band, in full light and with eyes mostly closed. There are many wild cheers at the end of the songs. I applaud, listening to the distinct smack of my hands and feel alone and displaced. I would love to be able to talk to the asian girl sitting next to me, or to some of the guys there that seem so nice and cool. But the music is too loud anyway, and I wouldn't know what to say. I actually had more fun at the gay bar the night before, at the reunion with the anthology guys. And not only because in the meantime my cold developed into something nasty and feverish. Here everything seems to be dragging me in a place where I can't be, where I am no good. Here I don't learn nor I see because I am only worried to defend myself, somehow.

Hours before, in the afternoon -- a long conversation with Libi. Finally with a prepaid telephone card that didn't let us down. She was having a late dinner with friends, and I was bowing inside a telephone booth on 14th street. She said, it seems like three years you've been away. They will feel like twenty before you come back. Don't be such a Penelope, I said. Although I actually wish I was a Ulysses.
I told her I was thinking of going to Loris's show anyway, even if the cold was getting worse. I told her that I needed to make things happen.
We talked, putting a lot of warmness in our voices. Things seemed patched up between us now, although I kept feeling a sort of pressure from her regarding the direction I had to take, the things I was considering to do. My not saying, I love you I miss you, I'll be back soon.
We discussed the practical things, the package of winter clothes I wanted to send back home, the destinations, the accomodations. Nothing useful coming out of it, except the illusion of working out the loneliness.
I told her how naively admired I was, of the guys of the anthology, how I was amazed by the humanity and beauty and diversity of their characters, of their souls. How the city was contradictory in that regard, so that at moments you felt surrounded by so many authentic interesting people and stories, and at moments solitude and deceit where everywhere, with every step, into every shop and with every trading act, muttered words of courtesy, cash exchanging hands, friday night competitions to get cabs, racism and hypocrisy of all the parts. I was wondering how amazing it should have been to fall in love with someone in a city where you can feel so lonesome and left out, and cheated. And because of that, how probably rare and misunderstood falling in love must have been. Not differently from other cities, of course, the cities we knew already. But so obvious in the feeling of the place, when you're a stranger into it.

At the end of the concert, moments of blessed silence. Me and Loris exchange a slap and then I climb up the stairs and get out of the club, while the band hurriedly packs up the instruments. There's a long line of people on the sidewalk outside and after few minutes breathing fresh air, checking for new messages, I realize there is no way I can get back in the club now. The line extends itself down the stairs and it is impossible to cut in front.
I wait outside for half an hour. An hour. I start feeling very cold and tired. What a crappy night. No dinner or hanging out with the band, for me. I am going back. I go back. So nothing happened in the end. Slowly walking through Soho and the village back to the hostel I stupidly keep calling home as I talk by myself.
I know I won't be leaving for any place the next day. I lack the courage to embark on a bus and leave the city. Humiliated by my weakness, I feel too sick and about to fall.

_{* As you know, not a real name. Never real names.}

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?

Folks shovel the snow away from the parts of the sidewalks in front of their building or stores. At the corners of the streets the snow accumulates creating valleys of brownish waters between white mountains. People jump around to avoid them. Leashed dogs skid and never lose balance. In Chelsea, Avenue 6 there's almost nobody around, the small Starbucks almost empty and silent. Later a little more to the south east, there are the banners, and I guess I'm wearing my green sweater for st. Patrick today, although the only Irish I'm familiar with is James Joyce and it's not like he wanted to be considered Irish anyway.

I am so not prepared for this kind of weather. My shoes are not water proof, instead they are soak wet, my burgundy jacket not even seriously protective. When the wind blows I lose contact with my ears.
But I love the steam coming out of my mouth, the cold in my hair still wet from the shower. I know all the basic sensations, walking on the hard snow, the too warm insides, the smell of the subway, the long coffees, the endless coffees sipped in the soft music of the Starbucks, with all those silly misused italian words.

Last time I was in the city it was easy to be under the illusion of being a part of it, of being just another citizen, in spite of not having anything to do there. It's odd, or maybe not, how this time it's not so easy.
My obvious not belonging here. My not being one of them. My not having the financial and emotional means to be one of them. See, there, I wish I was one of those folks shoveling the snow from the sidewalks, scattering grains of salt on the frozen parts, just to know how it feels. I'd be singing some song and someone would smile at me as they walk by.

So I bring with me my not having a purpose. Hands in pockets, a silly smile on my face, always there, telling what I am, a spectator of the most trivial things, and all the other things, unreal only because I am unreal.

Once again I think of that phrase from the Nicolas Born's novel I am reading, The Deception . Well, I forgot it in Milan, together with the stupid cable to download the pictures from my camera (shit), so I quote from memory: Ends and Goals are never so important as Means.
Whether you're waging a war, or helping someone, or just going on with your life. What really count are the ways you're adopting. The real truth is that the machiavellan logic should always be reversed. So it doesn't count why you are at war or at peace or at love, it counts how you behave to get there. And if your ways are sick, or rotten or phony, then even your best aims aren't any good, and what you're doing isn't any good.
I don't think this forgives me for feeling so aimless, still aimless, after all these years. Does it? Even ashamed of having come all this way to feel like this, on my first day, and also, not really caring: and still feeling good and not caring. I wonder what's wrong with me.

-- In picture, above: saturday morning, "except sun"

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.

To live between terms, to live where death
Has his loud picture in the subway ride,
Being amid six million souls, their breath
An empty song suppressed on every side,
Where the sliding auto's catastrophe
Is a gust past the curb, where numb and high
The office building rises to its tyranny,
Is our anguished diminution until we die.

-- Delmore Schwartz

These are shitty days. Nothing is clear in my mind. My life and Libi's just dab each other and doesn't even seem to be related anymore. I wake up at six or five, have my breakfast, set up hers, open the computer. Invariably I wish I could go out for a walk in a city that still makes me curious, but the city repels me. Its activity, its rudeness. The tragic solitude of the truancy walks in the parks in the morning--
Solitary birds now sing in the empty hour above the terrace, when the sun is still behind clouds and my plants seem to shiver for the cold, the dirt dried and hard stamped by the hungry pigeons. But the young leaves, small on the branches are still bright green and pointing upward, close to the bark, the first flowers are blossoming and ready to receive the visits of unobtainable hymenoptera with wings. Like church bells the birds remind me of the summers on the Lugano Lake, and the heart skips a beat for all the days that are gone by--
I daze myself in a computer stupor, keeping the fears asleep, when I should go 'round and fix a number of things before I leave --the things that everyday I postpone-- passport, fines to pay, travel books to get, presents. I am eroded by absurd sudden worries, triggered by things I should never read --like that I'll have Alzheimer because there's aluminum in the crowns that cover my teeth, and mercury in the fillings-- and I grab my ears and shake my head and moan in the secret of the orange bathroom whining for my Alzheimer years to come--
Later Libi wakes up and we smile to each other but she doesn't come to me to hug me like we used to do. I don't tell her how attractive she is, ruffled like a cat -- then she goes to bed to read and finish her coffee and I only hear the noise of the leafed pages.
"Do you like this book?" I call from one room.
"Quite" she answers from the other. I gave her the book--
Oh, dear friend, dear lover, I know how complicated and lost I am sometimes-- it's like I feel that you can't reach me, and that you don't even want to try anymore because I'm leaving anyway.
I wonder what Libi is talking about with her therapist. And I am never going to have one, I swear to myself once again.
Every house in the city contains habits and words not visible in the picture-- everything that goes on in the shape of the unsharable habits, like everyone turning its back to you--
I wanted to be closer to Libi these last weeks before leaving for three months, or more-- instead we are nervous, irritable, defensive. Libi seems to be tighten up in her world, full of hours at the atelier, going for shops and suppliers, trams to get and the theaters at the end of the day --Every moment is like the negative of the separation, somewhere where the separation hurts but it's not told or visible and this makes it all the more hard and wrong--
She said she was worried that I might not come back-- I don't know if I've done enough to, I don't know, reassure her--
Sometimes, often, Libi goes to the movies alone, sits in the first seats and sinks herself in the marvel of the the loud voices and the gigantic pictures --and I think of her, there, following a story and shedding few tears or laughs. We are never so much apart like in those moments --and not because I'm not there. Sometimes she falls asleep and snores in the theater and someone notices her, but no one wakes her up. I wouldn't wake her up either-- I wish I could give her a similar sense of wonder and protection, or carry her away instead of being the one who's deserting the nest and leaving her alone-- but we are past that moment and perhaps I didn't wish hard enough.

And finally to get out --and let the city beat its drums all around you, the shops to yellow up your face in a sudden glow, the people on the sidewalks to walk past you forever-- to forever mistake everything about you in a glimpse-- it's reciprocal-- let your indelible suicidal thoughts to mix up with all the other feelings and let 'em get lost for a little while, in the annoying feeling of the city, the smell, the babies carried in a rush, the dogs dragged away from the smell of feces and death-- the conversations through the earpieces smaller than a finger, punctuating the solitude of the souls in all the mirrors-- etc.

In Piazza del Duomo the bars are open, and under the arcades to Corso V.E. people crowd the street performers and the stands. There's the silver cowboy on a podium who produces odd whistles and mimic stuff, and the couple of mustached accordion players playing Bach (one of the two accordions has only buttons on both sides).
There's the fortune teller, who reads the hand, the tarots and the horoscope for singles and couples (but there's only the table, two chairs and no sign of him) and there's a bunch of portraitists some very good and some lousy, who all look like solemn Afghan goatherds: some of them copy pictures pinned to the drawing sheets, scrupulously and unfaithfully repeating in big the unaware stupefied faces of the portrayed.
There's a young fellow who makes the circus thing with the pins and nobody considers him, and the little stand of the Lottery where from until a while ago an half blind old man used to yell "lotteriadilmerano" with thundery voice.
There are the Chinese, who paint names on grains of rice or sell scarfs and plastic toys with all the lights and the sounds, and there's a long line of phony stands of supposed authentic stuff. There the Milanese disorderly wait their turn to grab free samples of authentic phony cheese and salami, or poke among the authentic phony Latino-American craft work. I wonder what is with us that we can't wait in line, but we are only capable to throw ourselves at the counters hoping to be the first ones addressed by salesmen.
Everywhere flashes go off and tonight I am one of the notable fellows in the back of at least five snapshots. Corso V.E. in fact is a long stout parade of modern prisoners enslaved by their new Xmas mobile phones who command them to stop and picture their friends and relatives every few steps. There's a father photographing his daughter across the window of a bar (she smiles directly at the camera) and a bunch of women posing in front of the enlightened symbolic plastic trees.
Few steps forward there's a TV troupe waiting for the link to broadcast directly from the Corso. At the center of a circle of smiling witnesses a young man by the melancholy look faces a camera under the aggressive floodlight, microphone in a hand. He wears a long blue dress and a blue hat covered with golden stars. Nobody is saying anything.

This central Corso, now called V.E., was formerly known as Corsia dei Servi, "Lane of the Slaves" after the captive Slavonic people who lived and worked in the city, just like in Venice there's a "Shore of the Slaves".
But it's sad to think that nobody will ever name a street after us modern slaves because we don't even have the time to know what we are.

It's the first day of the year (actually I am writing in the second day already, and superstition wants that because of that I will be writing less this year, which is just as well) and the square with the cathedral and its surroundings seem to be the only area alive in the city.
As soon as I walk away the streets are so quiet and dark, and the perpetual city-garage of parked vehicles is interrupted by many vacant spaces, and sidewalks and streets are littered with the remains of fireworks launchers and bottles of spumante and beer.
I cut through the Polyclinic, which day and night is opened on both sides almost completely without surveillance. Directed to Via Orti on the other side, I pass by the "Guardia II" pavilion, where the mental patients are held and where from they often yell to the passersby, or spit on them, or throw cigarette butts at them.
But tonight also the "Guardia II" is quiet.