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.

this year I made propositions and didn't stick by them and I am not going to do the same mistake --this year I envied a bunch of persons but less than the last one-- I envied those who were living abroad and robbing me of their experiences-- those who were making it in the city and those lost somewhere outside of it-- I envied every writer for the beautiful phrases and for anything I didn't think of--
I grew many plants and killed many plants and longed for a garden, for a dog and a tree-- one windy day I texted someone and had a lover for months but I didn't fall in love-- I didn't answered tens of calls-- never those I really was waiting for-- I masturbated everyday anyway, in and out of my dreams-- one cold night I was attacked in a restaurant by a little man and later mobbed out of a lousy job by the same little man and so discovered God had given me enemies-- but harassed by the thought I just considered them people to shun-- even if my fingernails were livid for the excited emotion, the commotion, the woman said-- someone said it was like at the Leoncavallo, it was sad-- The little man is still out there in the city and the idea bothers me--
Friends disappointed me because i was too far out to be reached--
I worked on my English writing with desperation and never ceased one second to think that it was absurd-- to write this language without speaking it everyday alive, every page was covered of that invisible shame unfortunately--
I almost had a child and lost it --no I never lost it, she did, I never had it-- after three months of stupid fighting about abortion, about having a job or money-- or disappointing her parents by running away to start a new life away-- money, position, middle-class fear, it was all hidden there-- I wanted the fucking baby? Sure, and I cried in the surgery at the maternity hospital and didn't know I was about to-- but I didn't go on vacation because we were dismayed by the baby we finally had wanted, before the baby died all by itself and was flushed down the toilet --we went three times to the hospital and three times came back--
I was guilty--
I didn't make a buck and I went on spending the money stashed-- I visited my mother three times, handled the dogs and listened to her fading mind-- I never went to visit my cousin in London, JD in New York, DC in Paris, my sister in Rome, V. in Moscow-- I looked at Libi with suspicion because she wasn't like me, ready for the flight-- then I loved her again and betrayed her again and got back at her again-- she sewed my clothes and I played the guitar for her-- I put away the guitar and blogged so hard I got a story published on an anthology printed somewhere in America-- I received the book by mail and my story was so bad I had to put the book away-- nobody knows of it except Libi-- I went on writing hard and always aghast by my inability to live intensely like I had hoped to-- irretrievably every new year-- with every summery falling star I wished the wrong desires, not feasible--
I endorsed all the paranoias available on the net and discarded them but stuck by them, I worried for the illnesses I was going to get for being alive-- I hated my father for what I was--
I didn't fucked much-- but I played with Libi enough to be proud of us-- without booze or drugs-- us the inhibited ones--
I traveled alone into cities by resonant names and never felt really free except at night in the hotel rooms, the stranger beds, the yellow dim lights and the television sets-- without any fear to die in my sleep--

(you may want to read part one and part two first)

That year you finally followed your girlfriend to the Plants Acknowledgments Class, both of you finding it fanciful, then moving, then nothing was the same anymore. You entered the Simulation of Neolithic Life, and I saw you only three years later, you came back with this story about how you had had two children, and how they were both dead, and how you couldn't smile anymore.
"It gives me this little pain on the edge of the mouth", you said.
"Nobody has children", I told you. "You didn't had children. It was a simulation, that's all". "One had eyes like yours", you said, "with the same sorrowful attitude in his eyebrows as you have".
You had hair now so the antennas wouldn't fit, and you didn't want to make love at all, or even talk, or look for a job. Only the idea of money would light the desire in you to taste something new again. You said once you loved a guy, and I asked you quite stupidly, in reality or in simulation, so that you streamed your tears.
I had to yield you over to the Group, you know that. There just wasn't enough room for your depression in the farther house.
They came on a white day, all theet and acting voices, they immediately groped you, shaved your head, pilled you, spoked to you in a coded blurry language and hauled you away. They handed me this squared paper on a pad, the letterhead GROUP OF THE BODIES beared a sort of new blurb below it, Committing your flesh to the Canned Spirit, and a small neat cross was marked were I had to sign.

(you may want to read part one first)

The two containers ended on the balcony, forgotten because they had no use. The dog, as head of the family, peed on them.
So it came the year we moved to the farther house. Remember, the Mediterranean sea was closed over, they had the most serious drought all over Switzerland, Los Angeles for two weeks looked as a marsh on TV, then a lagoon, then as if nothing was the matter, a city over water. That year the Big Northern Coalition disembarked in Sicily and in Sardinia, and as we moved away we used those plastic containers for the square memories, the musical wires, the antennas, the boxed silences, the furry games and you said, triumphant, "so dad, that's what they were made for!"
I hadn't yet yielded you to the Group of the Bodies at that time. And getting back from school you would easily be cheerful, with your redden lips, tired eyes, absent-minded, and it was nice to have you around. We only had two Touchless Inspections a day.
Sometimes, making love, you would hug me saying things like, "lucky we ran into each other".
"I am your father", I would rebuke you, "I didn't run into you". "I'd like to think you did, if you let me", you said. You used to let me anytime I wanted then, so in the end I left you alone with your dreams.

(continue to part three)

(In picture: thoughts of the whaled-head man, detail, draft)

The year when it snowed in June, when World Poulation reached eight billions, when Italian Government had to ration Energy, when the Man got to the Moon again, the year when it rained all year long, and the Perpetual Greyness of the sky spreaded to leaves, to passerbys' faces, to cars chromes. The year when Antarctica extended itself up to New Zeland, the magnetic poles were inverted, the Amazons turned into a bizarre pattern of deserts and woods, Venice melted in the mud of the laguna. The year when Record Labels ceased to print CDs, Publishing Houses to print books, movie theaters to exist, restaurants to stay open in the nighttime, trams to be public, swimming pools to be public, cars to be used to go to work, clothes to be dyed, hair to grow luxuriantly (barely surviving on the heads). The year you came back from camping tanned and smiling, you had two white plastic containers with you collected from some place on some beach, and you proudly showed them to me, saying: "dad, but, are they ancient?"

(continue to part two)