The smoke finally exhales from the cabin when we halt at the checkpoint. The guard emerges from the white and black shed, unarmed, exchanging salutes with the driver in the mute night, and we pull away, with the bright lights steady on. Our driver seems unresponsive to the pleading flashes of the few cars coming the other way. He passes trucks without hesitation, in bends and straight stretches alike. Unemotional elongated face on a seriosuly long body, very stern and bony, menacing to the superficial observer. Chatting with our boss in the front seats, as always it is difficult to say whether they’ve ever met before, and they probably haven’t.

We cast our rushing light to the backdrop of the night, illuminating instants of pines and acacias, the amorphous red iron rocks of Jebel al-Akdhar, the so called green mountains. We left behind the few still open diners when we left the larger road from Bengazi, eating houses without window panes, gaping onto the road in pools of light and moths and offering a colorful collection of countless scraps hanging from their walls.
I imagined music in those diners, similar to the moaning and beautiful arabic music filling the car cabin as we go. I imagined sitting and smoking the shisha again, which so perfectly slows down the flow of time. Talking in our unpolished english about religion and politics and women and our biographies.

Judging from the dark void punctuated by these few signs, we could be headed everywhere, Chiapas maybe, or Athens, or Sassari.
But we are going to al-Beyda, "the white": the only place in Libya where it snows in winter. My book says that the legend wants al-Beyda to be where the garden of the Hesperides was, and I indulge on this useless thought, that we are going to visit a garden and a farm with apple trees where possibly the most legendary garden, with its golden apples, was.

The book also mysteriously refers to a very sweet kind of berry that grows only here, the shmari; we’ll later discover this to be nothing but our corbezzolo, or Arbustus unedo. The shmari is then an old friend, whose presence is not surprising, but familiar, like so many things can be familiar to us people of the Mediterranean, well, rethorically speaking. To be continued.

Lontano lontano
oltre Milano
oltre i gasometri
oltre i manometri
oltre i chilometri
e i binari del tram
Lontano lontano
molto lontano
oltre l'acqua corrente
e l'elettricità

-- Paolo Conte

Actually, running water and electricity do exist here. Concrete, and sand and sea and pines and oleanders too. I saw two dromedaries tied to a fence just outside of the airport. We had just landed with all our wrong intelligence, realizing the hot concrete of the airport was not adding that much to the heat, and were being rushed to the city by a laconic driver in a refrigerated car, to a little later be lodged into rooms filled with the smell left into the carpet by generations of smokers. Our contact is passed to me on the phone, we exchange polite and not entirely intelligible english. Nobody speaks italian, that's certainly a significant wrong piece of intelligence we had (my fellow traveler gardener not speaking much foreign himself).
In the hotel lobby, rich arabic business men lounging on the divans and near the reception half emancipated overdressed very sensual wives never looking sideways. I know I shouldn't look for a couple of reasons.
I think about Milan, only yesterday night I was packing in the heat of the night -- not so different a heat from here except for the humidity of the south mediterranean moving across the city -- trying to shove one more book about gardening into the bag... Libi was asleep. She had asked me not to leave for the third time that night, again this morning, obviously I felt like shit. Gisi called and told me that her beloved dog I lived with for a long time, few years ago, died this week, suddenly. I cried over the phone, almost silently and without words, I can't say I left with a light heart, but hey, I wouldn't have a light heart anyway. Never had one. I was so terrified I didn't want to leave anymore, but I left anyway. That's experience, I guess, when you lack recklessness. Little it matters, now it's the time of the great expectations, namely going for a walk, watching the unknown, listening to it, and all the rest.

You know how it is with me baby
You know I just can't stand myself
And it takes a whole lot of medicine darling
for me to pretend that I'm somebody else.

Joliet Jake Blues, Guilty

From the terrace where I am standing I can see the whole beach... you can't tell from here but I know it is a beach of dark smooth stones, opaque and hot but shiny when wet, and the crowd sun bathing on the stones has troubles turning upside down when stretched, or moving without some kind of shoes on, timidly reaching for the cold waters of the mediterranean. (I bathed for one minute this afternoon).

(And other thoughts: They say gardens of presidential villas in North Africa are waiting for me and my too young colleague --waiting for prestigious italian gardeners which we are not. I am leaving in four or five days. My passport is exchanging hands. All I can think of is how much I am unprepared for the job, or if I really am not. The contract is not even here, it is there. Hopefully not in arabic? Unfortunately these consideration are even too much rational. It's unfathomable what the required tasks will be, the embassy does not leak details, the agency does not. Security. Or arrogance. We don't seem to care. Am I really about to be back to Africa after almost eighteen years? (a kid without a clue, in Somalia). Libi resents it all, coming really close to detest me. But not even for a second I had the faculty to say 'no', probably because I had nothing equally sane to oppose this thing to).

I can see Libi's naked legs behind the terrace corner, a girl asleep in the sun. The dark tent above my head flaps in the wind and the cat is still nervously exploring the place not known. Keeping the head low and eyes wide, refusing food.
If I close my eyes I can recognize Liguria as I experienced it many times during the endless afternoons at my father's court, one mile away on the other side of this small mountain, with a slightly different landscape around, not observing, maybe reading a book or trying to sleep.
Someone's working, hammering and sawing on the other side of a rib of trees which gives a close echo; the birds chirp and sing below and above, the turtledoves monotone coo goes on at short intervals. The wind. The hairy bees droning by, very close, far as well. A child yells powerfully from a large distance, probably the beach, and the neighbor's dog barks again. From down below in its garden he sees the seraphic cat moving along the edge of the terrace, the cat's in need to be menaced. Another La Spezia bound intercity runs by without stopping, right in the middle of everything alive, an insane rumble that shakes the village for many seconds, then it is the bellowing dissolving inside the tunnel; then again emerges the skewed engine noise of the occasional moped taking the bend; then it's the turn of a bubble of silence, wide and frail, inside the silence the sea breaking against the shore, and then it is the someone hammering again. (I recall myself hammering in a silent valley up north, realizing I was being the background of the landscape. What a stupid thought).

So is the punctuated activity of this greedy and sober land. Nothing bucolic. I have no particular feeling for it, but we spent these few days with little joys and this is more than we usually get, although everything is also sad, of course, and unjust, sadic, filled with guilt and loath and fear and things not said and disturbing milanese fixation with perfection and happiness.

I don't get phased out by none of that, none of that
helicopters, the TV screens, the newscasters, the..
satellite dishes.. they just, wishin'
They can't really never do that
-- Mos Def

I tried to cry this morning in front of the mirror in the bathroom. I felt this thing down in my throat and the corners of the mouth turning downwards. I put my face in my hands but obviously I couldn't cry. Except for the movies, I can't cry. My own expression scared me when I looked up. I was ashamed. I am not gonna do it again. I am not a winner, I never was. Martina is lost for me, I will be lost for Libi. So much solitude is passing in my hands now, rivers of it -- "True love leaves no traces". I wish I knew what is true and what is not. Everything seems true to me. Like this alarms going off, I hear, like the restaurant we pick, we enter, compared to the other where we are not.

When in Mexico city sometimes we went to eat at the "Stupa", in the Avenida 5 de Mayo. Despite the name, the "Stupa" was just another Mexican diner open around the clock, somehow always full of people, which other than being somewhere in the center had the advantage of a great choice of food and popular prices. It was fun to stay in line waiting for our table, in the busy early Saturday afternoon, doing what lovers do in these cases, wooing and causing envy or sympathy and wondering what we were soon going to order with our micheladas. Martina used to say that me and her looked exotic together, she shorter and darker, sparky, me a tall "guero" absent minded and aloof. I nodded at the description. But I thought of us as normal. I didn't see anything exotic. Maybe except the fact that we talked so much about love and books and movies. We would sit at a white table in the larger smoking area and order and drink the bitter salted acid micheladas and have our difficult conversation, me always checking for words on the dictionary, both trying not to be distracted by the TV screens and failing. She smoked very greedily and her hands trembled as she held the cigarette.
That said my memories of the place aren't very nice, because of the last night we went back there, as we were running out of ideas. The weather was quite bad that night, rainy season and all, but was even worse between us two. Who knows what doomed on our story then. It ended with Martina slapping a 100 pesos note on the counter (there were no table seats available and we weren't in the mood of waiting) and running away, and me, after stupidly asking for the check and paying, running in the night after her in the wrong direction, and missing the last train. I guess we were so mad at each other for having misunderstood so many things. Coming back walking under the rain I kept promising to myself I was directly going to the hostel and to sleep. The following morning I had to catch a cab at five in the morning; I still had to pack; it was already very late. But then at parque de españa I turned left. Below the fancy hotel at the corner of the Avenida two guys were playing the spring of the sculpture-car and laughing. The car only sung "Veracruz", which was ridiculously sad but not enough to be ironic as expected. I got to the condo where she was temporarily staying and the doorman smiled at me and opened the front door. But there was no such a good reason for me to be there and be smiled at, I knew it. Upstairs... I remember her opening the door, she had changed her clothes, ready for the night. But she wasn't sleeping. The small apartment was full of smoke of cigarette. She asked if I was coming to continue a fight. All it was so glazed but I said I just needed to know that she was all right. We barely looked at each other and didn't touched each other. So I said I was coming to say goodbye and she corrected the verb I used and that's how we said goodbye. I was very careful not to slam the door as I got out. There had been moments so intense between us they were painful to even describe or think. Now any effort was lost. I was punished for leaving Mexico and going back to the other life, or maybe for something else it will took me a long time to understand. Back to the hostel I couldn't sleep until much later, mainly thanks to the idiot in the bunk above mine that expected to fall asleep without a sheet 'cause he didn't know how to make his own bed, and slept only with a wool blanket over a bare mattress in a room full of mosquitoes, and couldn't close his eyes, and me with him. The morning after I got to the airport and entered into the safer mechanism of traveling, which certainly is a big illusion, but a good one though, it keeps the bad thoughts away somehow, like a good job.

There's a chance I might be go back to work at the university. This time relocating no less than Sardegna. Which on one hand I would welcome as a god from the machine. Yet it is only a small chance and I am scared to explore it. I have to return a call and I keep postponing. Why? Maybe because so much time has passed -- since when I was a normal person in the world. Will I be able to return to civilization and accept all the downside of it? But it is more important to break out, says the voice. Over and over. Why? From where? Being out is really finally being different, imagining differently, walking about differently? Is it really possible only because/if no one is there expecting you to be what you always were? Libi shakes her head in disapproval. Wish I was back in March walking with Dita down the avenues of Manhattan and knowing what I know now. It was only three months ago. I wish I could start that journey over -- it's not over.

-- In picture, above: climbing the pyramid of the Sun with herds of tourists, in theotihuacan

...but the village wants to give me something other than products to buy, something that I can't use. So I just sit there, writing postcards that are not sincere and are not funny, trying to make something happen in the mind, something revealing, shivering at the thought of being back soon to the life I had before (isn't travelling life? yes-- and no), in the house that isn't mine and to a job that isn't going to be mine. What a folly, what a waste, to stretch the rope so, and still being attached to it. I kill a small fly with a quick slap. The insect's body is smeared across the palm of my hands, bits of it are trapped between my fingers. I don't feel nothing, no sense of success or relief. If only they stopped to play the music and we could go down to the lake and look at the stars and talk about life and other stronzate without the need of the booze, the radios, the yelling laughs of the lost moments [probably in San Pedro, Atitlan]

Outside goes on the happy and sad music of the band hired by the local association of vendors. In front of the stage, only the drunks dare to dance, while a large platoon of people by the beautiful, colorful clothes stands in silence, looking and listening. Everyone is shy, and also, the mexican music playing is obviously not their music. The town, voided of tourists (us two are the sole representatives of the category) appears finally as a shred of truth after all the set-up stages for gringos, but the truth is nothing special. Not that special places really exist. They should not be considered as such, probably, and the only decent question is always: what I am doing here? For many the answer seems always to be, I am here to drink cheap, to take pictures, to buy stuff. I don't think I am different from anyone else. I am a stranger, and I don't have a good reason to be here, no special keys in my pockets. Because the force of tourism is such that you cannot pretend not to be one.
The town around the music and the market, dirty and old and vexed by cars, ugly restaurants, ice cream place, hardware store, and two white churches on the opposite sides of the square, around the market stretch on the pavement of the square, around the forever dried fountain. Everything is obvious like in any other country of the world, like in Puglia, or in Somalia, what is that, being people? [in Chichicastenago]

When the night falls the faces become confused, the cars in the streets impel the passersby with imperious honking and the little kids disappear behind the corners of the streets. My wet clothes are wavering up on the roof of the hotel in the cold night wind, and I can see my blue pants slapping in the dark night, glowing orange from every side. What I learned from this trip? What questions! nothing, nothing of course [in Copan]

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?

Folks shovel the snow away from the parts of the sidewalks in front of their building or stores. At the corners of the streets the snow accumulates creating valleys of brownish waters between white mountains. People jump around to avoid them. Leashed dogs skid and never lose balance. In Chelsea, Avenue 6 there's almost nobody around, the small Starbucks almost empty and silent. Later a little more to the south east, there are the banners, and I guess I'm wearing my green sweater for st. Patrick today, although the only Irish I'm familiar with is James Joyce and it's not like he wanted to be considered Irish anyway.

I am so not prepared for this kind of weather. My shoes are not water proof, instead they are soak wet, my burgundy jacket not even seriously protective. When the wind blows I lose contact with my ears.
But I love the steam coming out of my mouth, the cold in my hair still wet from the shower. I know all the basic sensations, walking on the hard snow, the too warm insides, the smell of the subway, the long coffees, the endless coffees sipped in the soft music of the Starbucks, with all those silly misused italian words.

Last time I was in the city it was easy to be under the illusion of being a part of it, of being just another citizen, in spite of not having anything to do there. It's odd, or maybe not, how this time it's not so easy.
My obvious not belonging here. My not being one of them. My not having the financial and emotional means to be one of them. See, there, I wish I was one of those folks shoveling the snow from the sidewalks, scattering grains of salt on the frozen parts, just to know how it feels. I'd be singing some song and someone would smile at me as they walk by.

So I bring with me my not having a purpose. Hands in pockets, a silly smile on my face, always there, telling what I am, a spectator of the most trivial things, and all the other things, unreal only because I am unreal.

Once again I think of that phrase from the Nicolas Born's novel I am reading, The Deception . Well, I forgot it in Milan, together with the stupid cable to download the pictures from my camera (shit), so I quote from memory: Ends and Goals are never so important as Means.
Whether you're waging a war, or helping someone, or just going on with your life. What really count are the ways you're adopting. The real truth is that the machiavellan logic should always be reversed. So it doesn't count why you are at war or at peace or at love, it counts how you behave to get there. And if your ways are sick, or rotten or phony, then even your best aims aren't any good, and what you're doing isn't any good.
I don't think this forgives me for feeling so aimless, still aimless, after all these years. Does it? Even ashamed of having come all this way to feel like this, on my first day, and also, not really caring: and still feeling good and not caring. I wonder what's wrong with me.

-- In picture, above: saturday morning, "except sun"