"... 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

when I walk down the
streets and
it's cold outside,
I have a paper scarf to
wrap my neck with--
all written by fingers of bees
all drawn by drools of slug.
when into the cones of lamplights and moths
the scarf waves about me and I read--
bits of phrases and pictures minute
yet I still have to get
what my paper scarf is about?
is it a story?
is it a classwork note?
is it just about my neck?
what should I do with those lines and dots?
Oh and I know
not the wind nor the cold will rip
my paper scarf--
but my clumsy hands.

When the soul of a man is born in this country, there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets
-- James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Since when it started I should have posted this famous quote above as the very blurb of this blog. It certainly speaks about something that could be said of every time and every place, but it fits like a glove to the falling country (and how I see my position into it). At least talking about how coming from a certain place and culture can be a senseless burden carried on your back, instead than a part of your body you can use.

I think that what disturbed me about this quote (other than it referring to the 'man' forgetting the 'woman', which is a too common fault even to be mentioned) was that it didn't include the 'family' among the nests flung at the soul. (Obviously 'family' in Italy is any sort of 'mafia' you belong to, but as my reader knows I don't need to think to mafia to imagine family as a trap.)
However, it's the wrong way to look at the metaphor. Family is the first and foremost net-flinger, not a net itself (because family is not a 'value' as the imbeciles like to believe).
Inevitable family members will be the first ones to use a net to restrain a soul from flying or to send it to fly in a direction and not another.
Why? -- More or less for the same reason why dogs smell each other's ass: because they can.

Individual freedom, when not entirely crippled by a repressive society, largely depends on the effectiveness of family's nets, or on their health. Meaning that they better be ineffective, obviously. This post was a shred of thought about that, and this is the end of it. Oh and in picture above is a detail from Robert Betchle's painting '61 pontiac, 1968.