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.}

As though the sky now partook of an alien system, it became too high for the high towers of civilization in the foreground of the picture, and against the compact, menacing background the human landscape degenerated into a junkyard. The deep blue with which a time grown plethoric weighed on the world was the essential -- the scattered leaflets down below, in which only fear of life or death could beguile him (or anyone else!) to find the slightest meaning, were a secondary, minor factor.

-- Peter Handke, as quoted in this article (thanks to Greg for pointing it out)

-- in movie, above: just the nothingness recorded by my little camera from inside a coffee place.

I sit into another coffee place of that silly chain, just next to Korean town, on 32nd. I stretch my right leg under the table close to the window. The knee still bothers me, and at moments it seems like it is never going to stop hurting. But I decided not to let it ruin my trip, so I stick to the plan. I just leave it there, eat a sandwich, take the drugs. My leg smells of hospital, it's the bengay cream. My pants look a little like hospital pants, all pastel blue as they are. Girls check me out because I look like a doctor on a break. I try to accustom to the part, looking heroic and bored and undisclosedly fit. It's not hard, that's a little how I feel, together with lost and displaced and good for nothing of course.
People are using laptops on the few tables around me. Everyone went to typing school and writes real fast. So fast and aggressively it distracts me from my thoughts. Not that my thoughts are so relevant at this moment of the day. A table of Korean youngsters produces collective burst of laughs at given intervals, and two incredibly attractive young Indian girls talk animately and with a lot of mannerisms at a table behind them.

I just ended the worse conversation on the phone with Libi. I called her from a public phone on the street, it was chaotic. She was sleeping, I woke her up, had her telling me about her day. As soon as I started talking about how I felt she used her long pauses and was all defensive and then I told her about my dreams, the bare bones of projects I would love to have, it was as if everything emanating from me was there to threaten her. She said "I knew this was going to happen" and I had no idea what "this" was, and then the voice said "thirty seconds" ridiculously soon, damn polish prepaid cards.

A middle age guy from the next table gives me his videocamera to film him and his ten year old son eating pizza together. They actually took pizza from Sbarro and brought it here. I don't know why he wants me to film that. The proposal is so unexpected and the man so nice I can't think of anything, any rudeness, to avoid the thing. So I film them, the dad acts like he's making a toast with his son with the pizzas, and I even wave into the camera to convince the little kid to wave back. He does, with a beautiful smile, and asks me what's my name. I tell him. Must repeat it a couple of times 'cause it is unusual. His dad is convinced that I must be Russian. I am italian, I tell him, and he says, really, me too. Born here, though, he says. i fail to manifest pleasure and surprise. He gives me his card. Frank Positano, there's written on it. Photographer, New York. He looks expectant but I don't know what to say. "You're a photographer", I say. "Interesting."
I give him back the camera. Our moment is over. I put my own little camera on the table and start filming the outside, just out of nothingness, I hope he doesn't notice.
People walking by. Neons flickering. Girl with stilettos getting off the cab. Korean people converging to 32nd. Cars and bikes passing by. Music suggesting arbitrary feelings unasked for. I just sit there in a daze and let it flow in and out until it's time to go.

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?

The Wanderer. Success through smallness.
    Perseverance brings good fortune to the wanderer.

Changing yin at the bottom means:
If the wanderer busies himself with trivial things,
He draws down misfortune upon himself.

Changing yang at the top means:
The bird's nest burns up.
The wanderer laughs at first,
Then must needs lament and weep.
Through carelessness he loses his cow.
Misfortune.

-- I Ching, Hexagram 56

Internet says that the Greyhound to Sarasota costs 135 dollars. I kind of hoped it was cheaper but I guess it's okay. I just printed the timetable even though I still can't buy the ticket until I know that I can actually walk with this knee. I don't know what's going to happen if things don't get better, unless it's my intention to let NYC devour me alive for my money.

I am actually tired of the way money is sucked from people here in the city. It's not for the money, I'm game going for broke, I haven't been doing much else in the last years, but the ways, and the reckless lack of sense of proportion, that hurts my nerves.

In the meantime I'm on for the craiglists rideshares too (Ok, I lied in the ad, it's not that I love to drive. Unless I'm on secondary roads and I can go as slow as I want.)

I am trying a funny cream for the knee that is called "bengay", it is meant for joint inflammations and similar things and I'm trying to believe in it. Although, they should probably write on the boxes that, after you rubbed whatever with bengay and you still have some on your hand, you better not touch, you know, there. I tend to have this reflex when I'm alone in bed thinking and doing nothing, looking up at the ceiling or whatever, touching myself. Bengay sort of roasts your genitals alive if you do. I mean, it could also be pleasurable for some, but I think it's one of the classic side effects you should be warned about.

Greyhound says that there are eighteen destinations between here and Sarasota, and three transfers to make. To read the list of the city names gives me a momentary feeling of upcoming adventure, and fuzzy unreasonable expectations. But they're probably going to be all big cities taken over by cars and business, where all the good things, if any, will be hidden to someone like me. Be in the city like from behind a window. Get off the bus to pee and have coffee and get on it again, like the cliche wants.

It doesn't matter. The ways of the trip don't matter. So many things don't matter since when I left. Had I to write down a list of the things that don't matter, or matter in a very different way now, it probably would come a list as long as the list of cities touched by the greyhound bus between here and sarasota, florida in a little more than a one day ride.

-- in picture, above: a different sort of bus running through the village

What once had become a challenge to extremes had become a laughable weakling dripping in saccharine date rape and schlocky bruises to the torso and forearm like teenage suicide reminders.
Stripping down to the most unbearable truth-the awkward silence, the too loud laughter, off kilter smile or gruesome expression that passes by in the blink of an eye, real submission, dressing to be seen, not dressing to pretend to want to be seen.

-- Young and Stupid finally posted. You can read more here

Yes, there've been many, many times that people who have been molested or who suffered a lot of emotional, physical, or psychological abuse when they were young have either written to me or talked to me about my work and said they felt connected to what I've written in relationship to those kinds of experiences. Honestly, those have been the most important and meaningful responses I've ever gotten to my writing both because I feel like those people have a deep understanding of what my work is trying to do, and because, especially at a certain point years ago when I was constantly being accused of glamourizing and romanticizing that kind of violence for shock value, their seeming understanding and appreciation of what I'm trying to do really helped me believe and stay on course, by which I mean continuing to write about those kinds of acts with what I hope is their full intensity and complexity, attraction and horror and damage intact.

-- Dennis Cooper wrote today, in the p.s. section of the day

And Porcelain Skull posted, too. New great pictures.
I am staying put tonight because I barely can walk with my knee, whatever is happening to it. I put more dollars in the dollar-sucking machine attached to the PC and read and write. Blogs are always there to help.

a place is a place,
roads lead to its hammered doors,
thru curtains of smell and decaying,
legends of lies, stouts
in the land where rolls of dollars open every door,
or you might be closed in, closed out
brave ads imitating life from every dried wall
failing to consolidate the myth,
because this is not what we wanted,
it's what we're dealing with.

I think I went fast to the end of my story, because it was so short. Trembling a little and nervous, or probably terrified. But all the amazing people were there. Having heard the others read made me feel better. And Math, she was so calm and so expressive and lively when she hosted and read Dennis' letter she made even me calm and collected.
Everyone was great, and I envied those who moved to laughs the listeners, and everyone else, each one of them being younger than me, closer than me, more connected than me to everything around, the city, the language, the nation, the places.
I came all the way from Milan, Italy and suddenly I wasn't even supposed to be reading anymore and nobody had told me but in the end I read anyway, and I was happy. And all the time I was learning again how everything about this vague dream, this wanting to write in english, wanting to do without my roots and my falling nation is a folly, A FOLLY, but still I can only follow that quivering thing deep in my throat, can't help it, there are still living narrow dreams there, irrational, unmotivated, unplanned, useless, that keep me going and alive.

I rewrote the story for the event just two days before the reading, in bits from different cyber cafes and internet points in the city, foreign computers, and of that rewriting I am happy too. Because of different accidents the story that originally got on the anthology was so wrong, and I always hated it and I still hate it, there in the middle of so many great pages. But just to change it into something else, something I now feel for and can defend, it has been emotionally important, even if it is not important at all.

I read, stumbled on the words a few times, probably pulled a ridiculous accent, and the girl behind the counter started to loudly run the coffee machine as I went on, and in the background the traffic on Allen street steadfastly kept running. But I was focused on the page and just trying not to screw up my pronunciation too much like Dita recommended me, and I felt fine. And the story was short anyway. The bookshop small and cozy, well illuminated. Afterwards I signed copies of the anthology and didn't know what to write and I only wrote stupid things and I rather should have just signed the copies, I was so unprepared at the idea and I always hated the thing where the writers sign books and instead, I suddenly realized how these things can be important, and pleasurable, because they make people closer, in indirect ways I am only starting to understand now. I was impermeable to that in Italy. Barely disturbed by such scenes. And it's like how it is important to remember names when you shake hands with people, and instead I always forget them. Although I never forget the faces, and probably too many other details I keep with me forever, possibly without a reason or a use.

Later the bar was dark and lovely and only my inability to be easygoing and easy at making friends and be interesting or carefree or whatever prevented me to let myself go and fully enjoy all the moments. But none of these anguishes is much important.

This morning right after dawn I descended seventh avenue from uptown, dragging my luggage and homelessness back to the hostel that kicked me out for two days. Black people and Latinos where everywhere around the opening places, off and on trucks, pushing carts, delivering, arranging, preparing, cleaning and setting up the city for the later people, some of them look so tired or sad in the gray early saturday, others all busy in the frenzy anticipation of the rush hours to come.
Few mellow groups, each with its own leader seemed to be coming back from parties, famous actress passed me by too in the very changing light above the city, as the shadows thickened at the base of the tall buildings, and only occasionally the cold wind came pushing from the side, channeled through into the streets.

The coffee places were still closed, my knee still hurting, still limping all the way, but I wanted to walk anyway, lugging the sad wheeled case about to fall apart or explode.
All the emotions at this point were drained out. All my feelings, back to a familiar state of disillusioned hope where nothing is clear except solitude, of myself and so many, the necessary condition to be dragged across the puddles like a broken case on wheels.