The expanse of stones of the Nure is white under the sun. I squint and the young willows and poplars of the riverbed stretch out in the glow. That's where the valley gets narrower, and all the houses on the hills are there. I think that I am bored and that I should have ignored the message. I think that there's too much Robinia. The waters of the river are visible in pools and shallow and not very inviting. Behind our backs goes the muffled pump of the music from the public swimming pool. I think what am I doing here?
My neighbor's daughter in her swimsuit is splayed on her old deckchair and me, I sit on a larger rock. She talks about her old mother, listing and discussing her diseases which her mother also lists everyday. Then she talks about herself. What she does. Her relations with the world. Her boyfriend. Her "company".
"And there is Martina, who is my cousin, and Susy my girlfriend and her husband and there is Luigi, who is so funny, and my sister, the other sister is married and I never see her although she lives right here in Bridge, and sometimes there is Giovanna, only when we go dancing, and my boyfriend he's rarely there, and there's a lot of people we meet when we go to Tuna, like, the girl that works at the butcher here at the supermarket, you know? And that guy we saw at the parking lot and lots of folks from Plaisance as well."
She has a meticulous tone as if it was essential to be very accurate. I am quelled.
She moves about the deckchair with her half naked body, I can't see her eyes because of the sunglasses which bothers me so I look away and think what am I doing here? I thought I wanted something but I think I don't want anymore. To make sure I interrupt her and ask about sex.
"How's sex around here Ely? Is it easy to have some?"
She looks a bit taken aback. Shrugs. Takes off her glasses. "Not really. I mean. I grew up in Plaisance and even there, when I was twenty or so, it was not something a young person should want easily. Why you ask?"
"Oh, you know. To have an idea of how it is growing up around here", I lie. I feel sorry. I think she is very nice and charming. I am bored and I think, what am I doing here?
I insist to go walking up the river a bit, to look for chances to bathe. But there aren't any, no there aren't we agree, except there is one, one big pool, with transparent deep enough waters and under the shade of prostrated branches of Robinia, but she says, I wouldn't swim here. You can drown easily here she says. I am still looking at the still waters as she walks away. I want to jump in the water, monday is near but she calls me to the car, the car which is roasting under the sun in the empty parking lot.

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.

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.

(...) I'm too unhappy to write, to answer to anyone. It is not the effort to put sentences together, but the idea to send and to give, that's too tiring a thought. I don't know what it is. I have no voices in my head --only a dull annoying mess without a shape... wish to be put to sleep for good--

I got your message. "Hi, how are you doing?" you wrote. "Here it's working to the bitter end. I am not particularly happy but I'm living in a calm state, of physical and psychical silence --which I find enchanting. I'm sending you a kiss even though, harshly said, this place is eradicating any form of affection from my heart."

Nina I am not interested about what is eradicated from your heart.... or what not. How can I tell you this? You're probably too young and unexperienced to know that the heart isn't a patch of earth from where you "eradicate" stuff... nothing is ever eradicated.
Maybe the heart is a blackboard badly cleaned by a dusty eraser... how about that? All that has been removed can be written again, in a jiffy, sometimes the trace of it is still visible beneath the whitish hand-made curves of pulverized chalk, if only you look close enough, if only the light in the room is right.

I never cared much for the declarations of un-love (de-love) just as I never really minded the declarations of love... What's a declaration for? Illusions of control... (So you're over me? When were you under me?)
It was a long ago that I heard from a girl the words of love for the first time -- we were hugged kissing on a green bench in some public garden in the city, the girl's brown eyes were wide open on me.... all I could see and think was that she was all in her eyes looking at me, and that she was waiting for an answer I had to give. "Love is in the eyes of a girl". The answer had to be given. I just wanted to run... I'd still want to run to this day, if it wasn't that I need to be loved.
All I ever cared in my life were the feelings, all kinds of them: I put everything second to the feelings that were felt... including my sanity and my job but the feelings I only cared for were those that cannot be contained into words, and cannot be exchanged like goods or favors-- they are there, in between, and I am here, we are here, they're in between.

Declarations are even less important when you're away, Nina. One sees the real face of the heart when is next to it. Heart isn't a wireless fucking connection from a 12 miles high spying blimp or something-- true we haven't done anything, changed anything to be together because we never wanted to... but if we meet tomorrow, who's to say what's written on it? I know that this doesn't change anything, fuck, who wants to change anything?

I can't talk to Libi and I can't talk with you Nina about what's happening because of all the lies I said, and all things I omitted. Because I don't remember the dates, I don't know who or what came before and I am too ashamed to ask. Yeah I lied to you too, I've been hiding my feelings and I've been unable to share my worries too many times. Always took life from the wrong side (...)

like when you worry if the cat does not sleep between your legs at night,
that it might be refusing you, not deign of its catty favors
or when you worry to scare out someone if they're waiting
at the elevator when you climb out, so you move a little to the back
to give them time to spot you in the cabin--
or when you're laying in the dentist chair, eyes on the round mirrored lamp,
white ceiling, gurgling aspirator sound coming from your mouth
and you think and you think, why am I trusting this guy, what if he is like
a auto mechanic, who's unscrewing the right bolts to slowly destroy my mouth--
"he keeps finding wrong teeth", you feel old and naive and gullible
and why the help girls are so smiling all the time? what if is it all a scheme--
"they're not really hitting on you", and you feel old and naive and gullible
--open wide, he says
like when everyone keeps looking at you on the streets, men and women need to give a second look at you
as they pass by because you can be really handsome,
clerks chin up want to serve you before the others and you just have to step back
-- and you feel sorry, for every look, for every eye contact
for every imagined brushing against and going by, not stronger and a winner anymore just sorry
like when you're driving and you stop to let someone cross the street
the thing no one does in your city and you clutch the wheel and you pray for
the passerby not to thank you with that white hand with that hurried, scared wave
-- which the passerby invariably does
darkish coat now trotting to the sidewalk isle
like when you're making love and waiting for the moment when your thoughts are carried away
and the thoughts carry you away instead
and when you have the crucial thoughts the last seconds before falling asleep,
the glow of the lamp still burning somewhere next to the bed, dark house
and you are too drowsy to write them down and so you just desperately pray to remember them in the morning
and in the morning they're always gone-- hollow caves of the brain devoured by another vain night
or when you get into the shower and invariably feel sorry for all the water you're going to use, the
soap spread to the dead rivers to the warm seas.

maybe my reader thought that I was out these days for the weekend, but I was not. I was writing all along, always at home. Translating too (stuff coming in the next days). I was about to get out of the house on saturday night, then friends canceled. She went out with "her" friends. Since when she decided that Gisa was her enemy (long story --about the aborted baby -- next time) we seem to have a sort of competition going between "my friends" and "your friends" which is really sad and stupid. Who are these "friends" anyway.
Our thing here is kind of falling apart recently. I am unreasonably mad at her for the little stains of her character -- a certain selfishness with the "others" sometimes (she, the generous one), or better a form of uncleanable resentment and grudge towards given people --that disturbs me -- or scares me as a foreboding -- her deliberate disregard for all that keep us apart, I mean, the choice not to see and turn the other way whenever there's a chance to talk-- subtle ways to make me feel guilty for trying to have a better life and shaking up our menage a little (so I get it --false)
but I know these are all stronzate, you know?
The real question remains the same, who knows if I really love her?
No, better: are we really meant to be together? That's easier, I think the answer is no-- we make each other unhappy now (it wasn't always like this). I make everyone uneasy after a while...

I was soo optimist only a few days ago but that's with getting old --nothing lasts real long.
I must read again the "Song to Duration" by Peter Handke. How did he do it anyway? (I mean, in general)

Here is a couplet translated the past night instead. From poet Antonio Porta:

with deafly hollow words I motion
to say: see, I don't, I don't understand, so there:
how rhetoric is the question: I haven't had, you
haven't, you can answer, had anything from the mirror

"How do you move in a world of fog, that’s always changing things. Makes me wish that I could be a dog"
-- Tom Waits, "I don't wanna grow up"

Vanni says that thinking too much about the fact that you are getting old, makes you even older. I haven't seen him in five years and he still has that power to make most of my arguments powerless.
He is right, of course. Why do I think so much about it?
"The lost occasions" I defend. They proportionally or even exponentially can increase your anguish to grow up and get old.
"Not to think about it is the answer" he says. "They do not exist."
Yeah I always thought that. It's like the others-- or life itself --keep putting them before your eyes without a good reason. But it's hard or pointless to explain that I also need to speculate on the sheer fact of growing old and wasting the time of life away. Or think out the mystery. Because there is no actual way not to waste time, since this is the only compromise possible in being alive unless you want to embrace the rules of nature in their entirety, which would be a nightmare, although not a waste of time --if you're lucky.
"Why would that be?" Vanni asks.
Because the reasons of genes and selections, which I would never doubt since they are a scientific fact, are also one of the most depressing things on earth. They cause immense suffering and injustice and any decent life of a free person should be imagined with at least one foot and one hand outside those boundaries.
"It can be fine inside the boundaries" Vanni says.

I never really could find a pal whom with share my speculations. The maddening efforts to describe the trap aren't really worth it to most of us. But on the other hand I always masturbated alone.