The apartment is silent. I finished writing a political thing about the supposed terrorism, posted it, and as always I'm depressed and sad. Politics depresses me. What I write in that realm always leaves me unsatisfied and dubious. Worried for everyone's reaction. I would mind less if I had to write about my intestinal habits or my kinky dreams or whatever. I wouldn't mind at all actually. I wish I had the time or better the urge to draw today. To post a drawing would cheer me up, it usually does...
Eat a yogurt, read some blogs. Admire a number of them. Avoided DC's again for fear of being annoying for mysterious reasons I wouldn't get --or to write something toady or silly (I'm crazy). There's a mountain of dishes in the sink I should wash, piles of books around the small green table. Today after I worked out I looked at my sketchy muscles in the mirror and made faces. This makes me smile if I think about it now.
No sex today, yesterday. Masturbation upon awakening, mixed in the dreams. Jawa, Rulla, made appearances today in it. I should translate some poetry, find the room to write some. Should finish a website and the logo for Libi. Tomorrow open mouth to the dentist. Tragically tired... And yet is life that empty?
Maybe tomorrow will come the courage to go to Jawa's and talk. With my luck she won't be home. I have been thinking about Piero and them every day since the last time we met. Wished I had someone, anyone to talk to about that. Because I don't know if I am crazy or not. Or what. I played all the possible outcomes of the conversation over and over in my head. "...You'll think I am crazy..." "...do you remember one year and ten months ago when you said you were pregnant? I asked you, wait, there's a little chance that I might be the father? And you said..." "Jawa, don't worry. Don't be scared of me..." "fuck, let's talk blood types. You guys are physicians after all..." "...I don't even imagine this could change anything: it couldn't. I just... would like to know, I guess..." "...I don't want to barge in your lives... I'd never..."

And what if I'm wrong? Should I be ashamed, and how could I avoid the shame? After all the first time I saw the child I felt he looked like his father. I said that out loud. The first impression should be the right one. He looked like his uncle actually. But maybe I was deliberately trying not to see that he looked like me. I remember that day, me and Jawa where waiting at the railroad crossing behind the little church next to Naviglio Grande, and the bascule lifted and the cars began moving next to us and we were on the sidewalk and in the rumble I said, to the five months old thing in her knapsack, I said, let's go my child. It was inadvertent, but Jawa didn't say anything, not even, yeah, right. She deadly serious looked away. I am still thinking at that and wondering. I thought, shit, I wish it was something one could talk about. And, incredible, it still is something you can't talk about. But I shouldn't complain for it-- after all I so obviously enjoy having secrets, don't I? They're the freedom I wasn't allowed to have as a child I guess. Or some other bullshit.

Since I must do something, I think I'm removing the fucking political post. It took me one hour to write it... that should make me feel better. To end with a similitude, I'll say that politics are just like italian coffee. No lasting. Overrated. Poisonous in the long run. Easily bitter as gall in the wrong hands. Needs rubber to work his way through. Chauvinist. Obscure. Needs sugar to be swallowed (end of the post.)

sitting at the green
table again, night fallen upon
the falling country
marroquin boy carries away our garbage-- Milan has long spent
its love at 5AM

I am still in chains to the city who says
bury yourself in plane site and do not cry
all the wishes are done with, all loves spent
all clothes are hanging to the wrong wires

heat the steel kettle, pause the droning computer
easy because she also sleeps
di là in this wrong house (her house)

how was Padova? why didn't you come?
quando scopiamo?
I fear for myself --if I see the chains
Yea I cut them hair, Milan said they
were definitely too long.

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.

My last night in Budapest, it was raining, it was cold. I had been walking around all day. The next morning it was going to be the early train to Zagreb but, being my last day in Budapest, despite the rain I moved closer to the center.
I took the wrong path, then the wrong tram, then finally the right path again and after an hour I was still walking under the rain, freezing, my feet burning, still directed downtown.
I wanted the people, the bars, some animation, hear voices, see faces.

Then I started to talk with God in english, you know, those kind of things you do when you're alone. "It's my last night in the city. Aren't you gonna make me meet an hungarian woman tonight?"
You know, I didn't want to have sex or anything. I'm just imagining some talking, listening, unexpected meeting with unexpected people of the opposite sex. They say you make new friends when you travel alone, but it's not so true. At least not anymore. You do, if you pick them in the same category you are from (tourists meeting each other in the hotels). Otherwise there are certain barriers, and then everything seems to disappear from you hands as soon as you leave.

Half way downtown, the shape of St. Stephen cathedral appeared in the haze and it was unreal, fantastic in the frayed glowing of the streetlights under the rain. Nobody was around. All the places were closed. After a while, I talked with God again.
"Would you give me a dry bench instead?"
(pause)
"No! Forget what I just said! I'd still prefer the woman if possible!" This must have pissed God. I knew it, so I tried to haggle, making things worse.
"Let's say that if you give me the dry bench I'll know you are not going to give me the woman?"

Next thing I knew, at the bus stop of the 56 there was a dry bench. I sat on it, disconsolate. I rested my feet and resumed walking after a while, hoping that maybe God had decided to give me both the dry bench and the woman anyway. See, I am an optimist.
I also thought that probably real hobos have this sort of conversations all the time. They never get the company. Only sometimes, the dry bench.

Then, down along the riverfront, walking by all the big hotels, I finally had beautiful Hungarian women throwing themselves at me.
"Hey! where are you going?"
"Nowhere, just walking"
"Wouldn't you like some company?"
"What do you mean?" When my feet are burning, my mind is particularly slow.
"Where are you from?"
"Italy."
"Oh, Italy! How nice! Now, what about a nice hotel room and some company?"

You know, I never went with a prostitute in my life. I don't think I ever will, unless I get really desperate. That night, rebuffing prostitute calls all the way to the central bridge, I really thought God was making fun of me. "You read that thing on the blog about Hungarian women, did you?" I asked him.
But, you know, there are many who reads you but never publicly admit that they do, even if they get ideas from what you write. God is just one of them.

Finally I had reached the center, after all. It was all closed down except for the tourist-trap night clubs. I walked all the way back to the hotel and it never stopped raining. The next morning I was directed to Zagreb, on a train that left the bitter and sweet city of Budapest right on time.

-- p.s. thanks to you all who are commenting and sending emails to me these days. I'll answer you all as soon as i get back in Milan. Promise.

In the dream I was sleeping somewhere, in an unfriendly school maybe, and I must have tried to say something out loud, because then I felt these hands against me, my back and the back of my skull. So typically the dream turned into this story where someone was sneaking behind me to kill me, and I couldn't move to struggle or run away. Actually, I think that the dream's imagination made up the entire story of me sleeping and getting killed the moment I felt threatened, nonetheless it made complete sense and was very persuasive in the context.
I tried to scream to call for help and I must have screamed in the real world for a while. But the hands remained there, since it was just Libi trying to soothe me (so much for meddling into someone's dreams to save him out of trouble, I guess).

I never entirely woke up, I just managed to roll away from Libi hands to calm down. I knew my mouth was dry because some weird new allergy clogged my nose, and I knew I had to wake up to get me some water. But I had to finish my dream first.
There was a memory of when I used to go visit my dad in Trento, few years ago, before he retired to Liguria. I was a student in Venice and sometimes I had to ride the Valsugana "little train" up to Trento to stay at his place a couple of days. The Valsugana "little train" was a blue and white diesel train with two carriages mostly used by students in the weekends. Among them was this beautiful girl I really liked, from Borgo Valsugana. She had long gorgeous legs and long black hair, and I never dared to talk to her. I never knew her name. But this has nothing to do with the story.
I was never happy to visit my dad, it was very stressful (in fact I don't do it anymore). But it was an occasion to eat real food, meat for example, since I never had any money.
At my father's I used to sleep in the living room, on a small folding bed shorter than I was. Before falling asleep into it, all my care was devoted to resist at masturbating into it. I stayed awake until late instead, reading. I used to read a lot then, in the before-I-had-a-computer days.

Many of those nights in the short folding bed I could hear my father screaming in his sleep, which was something he probably always did since when I first knew him and we all lived together under the same roof. From those days I think somewhere in my mind rests the conviction that grown-ups scream in their dreams, so that others can pity them and admire their troubled soul.
Now every time I have a loud dream I get in the back of my head some immediate reward, because I finally got to be a troubled adult (not that I ignore how much it sucks to be one). But then I also get some guilty feeling, because during those nights in Trento I never got out of bed to wake my father out of his own bad dreams.

I left him there instead, calling for help. I just stayed still, turned toward the wall that divided the two rooms, until he had finished calling. I probably thought he couldn't appreciate my helping him out, since he always made so much to hide all his soft spots (but then I knew them all).
Probably I also had thoughts like "now you see what it means to be scared, jerk". What a jerk I was.

In the dream I wondered if I had to make up for this. Call him, visit him, soothe him out of his bad dreams. But isn't it exactly this that scared you even more tonight? I argued.
Then I remembered Art Spiegelman's miraculous words: "I'd rather feel guilty", and slowly I came back from the sleepers.

So we are four at Gisa place again tonight. I came with Libi, and this guy Paolo has just arrived, who was Libi boyfriend a while ago, more or less at the same time I was Gisa boyfriend. Actually, this Paolo must have been the love of her life back then so it should be interesting to look at him, which I haven't done yet, except when we shook hands before but I had the baby in my arms then, luckily, and was busy already with the meal thing that I always offer myself to do in order to avoid greetings, so that I can yell them from the kitchen where I am safe.
This isn't supposed to feel weird or anything, because a lot of time has passed, and also because there's the little girl among us, almost seven months years old, restlessly babbling and screeching claiming attention from everybody, so we're not even four, we're five. The title of this post is wrong.
These were the initials anyway.

We are four and waiting the fifth to fall asleep, the lights are too low, I am at the stoves preparing what Gisa told me to, although I am trying to be a vegetarian, still not a dogmatic one. I know Gisa is glad of this night only because she is really devastated by being a mother, and feels easily left alone, and irrational. She needs company to keep it up with reality every single day, and I know I have been neglecting her instead, I fear only because I am not so exceptional at her eyes as I used to be.
Weeks and months has passed, but things doesn't seem to change into something less tiring for her and the baby while Loris is almost always away, with his rock star life, and she is constantly jealous, mostly without reason, but, who knows.
To the point, so I go on blending the stuff in the pan, and listening to them talking in the background, and I'm thinking that she is glad of us being here, but not so glad because this is not what she wants after all.

At the edge of the picture there's the city rolling outside the windows, car lights reflecting into the canal and a dog barking from a balcony against the traffic. Wind bends and shakes the branches of the shrubs out there in the courtyard, very strongly. It's late and shops lights are going off not one by one, but all together, or in groups, and when it happens the streets are left alone, barren of trees and visible life, just drawn over and over by cars. The intermitting lamps from Gisa Christmas tree appear and disappear on the window pane, glowing their strange patterns three months late.

I know she'd rather mingle into a drugged night, an endless party of sorts, with lots of cocaine or kinky stuff, the backstage situation at a one of Loris's concerts, some of the other things I don't do or I wouldn't do right, so it gives me a little pain to be here just as a faint friendly substitute of something more brave and meaningful which is not here. She just got back from Berlin and she's even more depressed than when she left.
I see this as Time which is passed and has made us different.

Not that we're here to do orgies or anything like that, just this boring dinner we're about to have, where nothing really is going to be told. I feel it so, as I hear Libi and Paolo talking, he talks about his job in a low, resolved slightly bored way, arm folded, making faces at the baby in the walker. At every phrase I think about the time when those two were together for life, and I can't decide if it feels reasonably possible only because Libi is so malleable by her men's attitudes, or if it doesn't feel reasonable at all.
I turn and see Gisa in a daze in her chair. She's above the conversation and her eyes looks dreamy and desperate and too tired already. No talking could be more distant from her than the one going on right now, and I may call her attention over the stoves, or try to change the subject, or ask her some stuff I might need, but I don't. I get my eyes back to the pan. I feel like I'm not so different or so interesting tonight. I fade out in the background again.

Later we're all a little drunk, and finally the baby is asleep, Libi fills her glass again and glances in my direction as if to ask permission to drink another glass. I don't know why this always happens with the girls I'm with, that they end up asking me permission to drink when we're out. She fills our glasses too, smiling around as if to excuse her. Her smile is beautiful and tender, shining in back light when she tuns back to me.
Now I can look at him across the table, but I don't seem to be interested anymore. The conversation falls into pools of silence now and then, and when it's late enough into one of the pools we can hear a freight train whistling across town. I think it's the sound of Middleland sleeping. Gisa needs cigarettes, so we all go out. We separate down at the corner, I hug Gisa rubbing her skinny back, thinking how much this girl can get skinnier before she disappears. In my hands I have a transparent sealed box with the remnants of the meal she didn't even wanted to have around in the house.

I am driving back to the house. Libi is leaning against my shoulder as I drive. The streets are empty, and everything is tainted with the orange cheap light of Middleland's street lamps.
"You know I wouldn't exchange you with anybody" Libi says.
"Mh." I say.
"I want to have sex" she mumbles.
I don't say anything, she touches me and I just touch her back. I wonder whether our relationship is going higher or lower or sideways (I am still a little drunk), and I decide i don't want to think about it, because I learned that if you don't think about it, and you try not to define it, however it goes it's healthier for everyone.
Then I am struggling to find a parking spot near the place. I drive a couple of times around before settling for an half-illegal one, for that's how much illegal this city allows us to be.
"It's just that I really didn't looked at the guy", I say before we walk out of the car.
"Yeah, you probably didn't want to." she says. She must be really drunk to be so outspoken, yet it feels OK.

"How's going?" I ask to Libi few minutes after the sex. She nods her head in sign of approval. I was wondering if she finally had an orgasm or not, but I prefer not to ask since she's so nice not to fake it. The issue is one of the many reasons I envy homosexuals for.
Sometimes during sex, if I'm coming too early I think about football players playing, or about ugly TV faces, to cool me off. If I'm coming late, I think about my ex-girlfriends, usually two of them who were the most masochistic ones. And all these thoughts jumbles in my mind as I have sex, so I rarely have any hints of what is passing in the other's mind.
"I 'm feeling like trying the headstands again", she says, just a moment before falling asleep, snatching me a smile. But it's nothing about sex. It's just this thing we tried to do one sunday afternoon, to get to stand on our heads, because I had just read about it an a Saul bellow's book. And that's a pretty stupid way to end this post, but it's the way it ends.

It's four thirty in the morning, I definitively am coming out of my drowsiness, hearing the blackbirds singing out in the dark, strangely realizing only now the meaning of the locution "in the dead of night" in that Beatles song.
I've been stepping in and out of my dreams for a while tonight.
S. is softly snoring at my right. I know that just as I will make a move to get out of bed she will come half out of her sleep, and her hands will reach for me. So I remain still.
Her mother's cat is curled up between our legs. The blackbirds are singing about in the area they consider theirs. They have quadrichromatic vision, seeing everything they need to see among the roofs, and courtyards, and the patches of green where they will be looking for food. They know nothing of my stomach though, all knotted up. I don't remember what culture or religion considered the stomach as the seat of all emotions, but I think they were right. All my emotions are there, they actually never move out from my stomach where evidently they feel quite secure.
All these thoughts I have been having tonight, how inconsistent my life turned out to be, how vain my wishes, my brother whom I secretly envy, my father whom I feel guilty with and yet whom I can't stand, his wife, whom I can't love, all the friends who vanished, from whom I vanished, and my place among their thoughts... I wonder is it a big, considerable sunny spot? Or just the occasional appearing of a name and a memory? All these faces and voices and foreigner thoughts fill my mind, but the stomach is the one who feels it. All warmed up and stiff and closed up and all.
I get out of bed, and Libi reaches for me with a soft moan. I touch her for a second. It's everything O.K. Later I can hear her sleeping, as I silently move around to fix me a tea. The blackbirds go on. There's at least two of them around in the courtyard. Their singing is a marvel, the optimism of certain parts of it, when their song goes up ad halts there, with few notes, no moral ending of sorts.