"That guy is a dick!" yells Roger in the car. "You was a great man Max cuz you didn't flip out or anything. Way to go man."
"I was ready to kick his ass, porcodio" says Max driving. I can see him smiling from the back of his head.
"I was laughing, laughing all the time, trying not to laugh at his face" says Sheila to me, barely audible in the exchanging loud cussing of Roger and Max. They are talking about the Restaurant manager, who had the nerve to get into the kitchen and grill some meat himself like if the chefs weren't able to cope.
"He's a fucking piece of shit", says Roger to me, "this place is fucking garbage, man. Fucking garbage!"
I don't say anything, I can't think of anything funny to say.
"I never liked him from day one" says Max with his thick italian accent.
"Me neither, man, me neither." Roger growls leaning back on the seat. His face is still sweating. There's a acid smell of food in the car emanating from the bodies.
As if to himself, the eyes sparkling, Roger starts telling the story of when he and a mexican got to each other's face in the kitchen. "I was spitting all over his face man" he says. "Get the fuck out of my kitchen! I told him!"

I look outside. Fruitville boulevard, Sarasota, going by in the dark. The distant red of the stop lights doesn't slow down Max, our faces appearing and disappearing in the occasional glare of the car lights coming in the other direction.
A tan Chevy approaches our car on the left lane. There are two old ladies inside, and one of them, the passenger, is cleaning the inside of the windshield with a rotating methodical movement, the way she probably does with her windows at home.
Between the two ladies there's a dangling chain hanging from the rear view mirror, with a plastic stone at its end. In a trance I look at the piece of plastic dangling by, sparkling blue, while the lady goes on with the circular movement of her hand.
The two car cover some road next to each other, and the stone keeps dangling, the lady cleaning the windshield, I watching. There's something abstract and absurd about the scene and I suddenly feel uplifted by it, as if I didn't belong there anymore. Eventually Max slows down and the two ladies glide away along the lane. We're almost home. It's my last night here.

I am happy that I sent back to Milan a second box of clothes and stuff, that my luggage is even lighter now. That I choose a destination, entirely by chance only because a ticket was available for some two hundred dollars. That I am leaving soon. Sarasota has been a blank in this trip, as I waited there for a call from my brother in Venezuela that never came, waiting to find the courage to do things I couldn't do, listening to Sheila and Max fighting, envious of everyone's experiences only because they seemed to belong to a world where things kept happening, surrounded by people who were rarely moving or intense, and where many words got lost forever in the untidy box of the memories picked on the go.

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.

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.

nothing is clear at all,
I've been out here since forever
clear is not love, age is not,
learned: nisba
only it's too late to be innocent and make mistakes
only be evil when you're weak
lie when you're hurt, snitch if you care
and kill not for passion but out of fear
go to bed coi rimorsi stuffed in the pillow
awake the ghosts in the grinding of your teeth
consider the hydraulic erection in the morn
cazzo duro and you're all set
enough longing for a mother's arms, friends who likes you,
not in awe of you--
undress and be undressed
say out loud, my heart beats
glide down over
young cities of quasi innocent people
quasi unnatural, not always devouring
to a quasi window, a quasi view,
a quasi desk were to sit and write
in whatever language you like,
in the place that does not exists
where you hold and listen, no engines no drones
it's them singing fighting making love, and singing again
and you quasi are one of them.

* nisba means nothing where I come from