Invers come ona pidria
-- Milanese saying

(...) Well, damage oneself, all right. But deliberately that's the knack, thus in a perverted way, so that half of ourself remains asleep during the whole process and can later complain about it. You can do it for too much self-involvement, or too much confidence, or hatred for yourself. Self-damaging behavior is for example when we are loved, and we do everything we can to convince the lover that we do not deserve to be loved. Or it is when we deliberately damage our public face, that still gets credit, because we intimately doubts its integrity or merit, or because we hate that public face for being more popular than the unconfessed face we have. And it is a lot more than that.

Nina to Corpodibacco 05:25 pm
Come with me to Ferrara at the end of August. There's a terrific conference about Baroque Music and Science. I have to go anyway because I present a poster. I understand why you are not answering me. I understand everything. But I am sorry not to hear from you.

Corpodibacco to Nina 5:09 am
Nina, I don't give a shit about conferences and posters, go figure.
Anyway, it is not that I'm not calling for resentment or incomprehension. It's just that I'm left without bridges to connect myself to the others. I'm not getting anywhere... let's leave it at that. Libi soon will go to Paris with a girlfriend, but I don't know what I am going to do.

Nina to Corpodibacco 9:32 am
I haven't asked you to come to Ferrara to look at my poster. I don't give a shit about it either, don't you worry. I was asking you to come to be with me, but considering that you keep looking for the abysses and basically you adore this inertia of yours, stay in the deep shit where you are.

The sense of comparing someone to a upside down funnel is that a funnel cannot stand in any other way but upside down. Someone who is like that is someone integrally wrong, wrong by nature, and not seriously meant for this world, like a funnel is not meant to be piled up with the rest of the dishes and pans. Sometimes this happens because of fear, haste, or because of confusion, or because of the transiting planets. Some other time one is just born like that, invers como una pidira, upside down like a funnel. If you put two or three funnels together the results can be funny but certainly unusable. Or painfully ludicrous.

(...) 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 (...)