Libi came back from the beach. I was glad to see her. I badly wanted to make love, to say things, to make her do things. She came in with the collection of bags and packs she was bringing with her smile, a reddish tan, splendid eyes, came to me --I grabbed her wrist firmly and put her hands on my dick and started to undress her with the other hand. She complied seriously, the act, our act had started beautifully. We kissed for long, which is something I not so often do... But for a magic moment I was feeling freer or lighter, I don't know. Our hearts were beating fast, we moved from the kitchen to the floor of the room to the couch to the bedroom. It only was bad knowing that this was also welcome as a symbol for making amends for something else, which is the tragic ugliness of familiarity... It took a while to take off me all the urge and the mysterious need. I know that making love can help much. I felt almost non alone. I almost hoped I had done something good, given something good--

Today everything's wrong, Libi again is asking me the wrong questions and I, feeling miserably alone, knowing to be unbearable, not knowing what to say, only thinking I have to go away, no inertia this time please no inertia. So different can be two days one coming next to the other.
Later we were sitting at the table and I wasn't listening anymore. I was recalling similar moments from other years, different table, walls, glasses, voice, face, questions. Recognizing a moment I didn't recognize back then, but that I was now feeling clearly: the moment I came to know I had to go, I had to be away.
As much as I love this woman, I was thinking, whom I can't make happy now (where I wish "I" was written lowercase) And if I don't want to leave her, but make her happy --it doesn't matter because I have to go (where?), however long it is going to take to make it happen because everything is for me and for her so unbearably difficult-- And I went on imagining a reunion later on. Our being finally together because I was coming back finally healed in my spirit and my emotions. I couldn't look at her but I wanted. I felt this grip in my stomach because yesterday it had been so different and now it was shit. Then I thought how life is actually much shorter than that, and how there is never going to be the time to achieve anything else but adaptation to this personal disaster and limitation and emptiness -- and so I drowned into that sea of anguish and premonitions and Libi went to bed, without us looking at each other anymore that night.

Anything sorts itself out,
except the difficulty to be, which never does.
      -- Jean Cocteau

Every now and then during the day I call myself stupid for something that crosses my mind. Memories of past scenes from the story of my life pop up unexpected in my head and drive me into a concealed embarrassments that can be shaken away only by calling myself "stupid" briefly, unheard. Of course the embarrassing events of the past are not really embarrassing for any sane person but me, but that's how it works. Petty stupid things dominate me in that moment, like a wrong word, a trivial mistake, someone I disappointed for something. I mean, years ago, even.
It's stuff nobody probably remembers, not even me until bits of it come to surface again. When they do, I am cutting a tomato for lunch, or browsing a website, or reading, or htmlzing a website, or pruning the woodbine, it doesn't matter. The memory unfolds, and I regret it.
I don't seem to be able to control at all the embarrassment that follows, so useless and neurotic, all by myself, if not by blaming my weakness, my oddity, my confidence or lack of confidence. There must be some pleasure in it, but I don't really know which is.

It's like that thing that keeps happening when I'm in bed alone, about to fall asleep.
-- No not masturbation, another one --
When I'm in bed alone, and I get drowsy over the book I'm reading, and I know I am about to fall asleep, suddenly, in the wrong moment so to speak, I realize that undoubtedly I will die, sooner or later, maybe in a short while-- I will cease to exist and there will be absolutely no place left for me, for my mind, my personality, my body, my feelings, my voice. All blacked out. Nothing left.
I mean, it's not something that will happen if I am not careful. It will just happen, for sure, one hundred fucking percent. Me no more. And all the rest of the planet going on.
At the unbeatable plainness of this vision my heart start banging in my chest fast, and I have to move about in the bed to push the whole thing away. Insane person! of course it's no use to worry about dying, I repeat to myself, since it has to happen anyway. I think about genes, and about all those rules of Nature I like so much to read about, and I wonder why I don't seem to be able to get along with it. Should I take drugs? I wonder.

It's all because you have too much spare time, says a voice. For your wanderings, it says. Because you lead an absurd life, it says. It's because, says the voice, you are closed up into yourself, cowardly worried to be deluded, unwilling to cooperate with your future, your destiny --all that sort of crap, says the voice.
I wonder about the voice, then I stop -- maybe I am opening the fridge, or jumping onto the tram, or washing dishes -- and I have a sudden revelation.

Sudden Revelation: to do nothing is the only way to understand how everything is vain.

That's when my mother calls. The cell phone vibrates in my hand, showing her name. I haven't heard from her for weeks. I haven't called, neither she has. For a moment I have the vision of her face, her figure walking down across the grassland to the ulives behind the stone wall, followed by dogs. She wears a captain hat, and looks away.

(to be continued. Second part is ready but it all came out too long)