danny

Ho sbagliato tante volte ormai che lo so già 
che oggi quasi certamente 
sto sbagliando su di te
ma una volta in più 
che cosa può cambiare nella vita mia… 
accettare questo strano appuntamento 
è stata una pazzia! 
Sono triste tra la gente 
che mi sta passando accanto 
ma la nostalgia di rivedere te 
è forte più del pianto: 
questo sole accende sul mio volto 
un segno di speranza. 
Sto aspettando quando ad un tratto 
ti vedrò spuntare in lontananza! 
Amore, fai presto, io non resisto… 
se tu non arrivi non esisto 
non esisto, non esisto… 
e cambiato il tempo e sta piovendo 
ma resto ad aspettare 
non m’importa cosa il mondo può pensare 
io non me ne voglio andare. 
io mi guardo dentro e mi domando 
ma non sento niente; 
sono solo un resto di speranza 
perduta tra la gente. 
Amore è già tardi e non resisto… 
se tu non arrivi non esisto 
non esisto, non esisto… 
luci, macchine, vetrine, strade 
tutto quanto si confonde nella mente 
la mia ombra si è stancata di seguirmi 
il giorno muore lentamente. 
Non mi resta che tornare a casa mia 
alla mia triste vita 
questa vita che volevo dare a te 
l’ hai sbriciolata tra le dita. 
Amore perdono ma non resisto… 
adesso per sempre non esisto 
non esisto, non esisto…

why did you have to give up on me? why not the wait, why not the options? why not a different future, a present together? why did you have to give up on that, on me?

i’m getting so used to miss you. i see girls and they all remind me of you, for little reasons i cannot understand, that i want not to understand, that i don’t care about anymore.

i remember you because i have to. pictures come to my screen once i stop using it for a while, and your face floats from corner to corner, smiles, dresses, dances and all. i remember you because it ties me to those memories i need to tie myself to, now that i feel drifting away. funny thing is the feeling is not related to what i’m drifting away from, as i already don’t know; my life or the lack of it, or something else. i don’t know anymore.

i’m getting use to miss you, but then i’m getting use to a lot of things and issues lately. it is easier than fighting what is right now. let go, swim down the current. i’m getting used to everything these days, so it does not matter what happens anymore.

i’m getting used to miss everything. soon i won’t miss anything, and my life will, then, be back to me.

being lonely is not about not having people around to entertain you or to even keep you company. it is about not having someone around that understands you.

understanding someone is that little thing that separates friends from acquaintances. is that little thing that makes you feel lees out of this world and more an important part of it. it is what makes you rooted on humanity, finding resonance on other souls, and then learning from the differences and dwelling on the similarities.

being understood is a wonderful feeling. it is being part of this world, and an important, needed one.

i feel mighty and insignificant, like a super ant.

my life is spread along the vast internet, in pieces here and there. since more than a decade i have left traces around the web: blogs, sites, posts, comments. they amount to so much, they cover so much surface, and yet they don’t seem to build up to much in the fabric of the online life around me.

now i realise the problem is they’ve been sparsed moments without an objective to glue them together. i had the faint glimpse they were growing into a professional personality on the last moments in london, and now they’re back into oblivion, with just a slight patina covering the last months here in new york.

here i’m the newcomer, the outsider, a boy that looks too young for himself, whose experience does not radiate like a magnificent sun, but more like a binary star that passes for a bright spot when seen from afar.

this sick pedantic way of restarting it all seems the worse strategy on which to build a saga, let alone a simple life. all the ashes from that previous life blown to the wind by the turbines of the last boeing 727-400. all relics burnt and sold and left behind in the fragile memories of those who shared a moment with me. all learning just an opinion, all knowledge just a memory in my soul.

the truth seems blunt and covered in tar, stickily taking me with it to new beginnings where all is new and i’m not much of what i have been, where i have to prove it all again.

once a professor moves to another faculty is mostly because he was called to, summoned. if not, it might be painful and tragic, to convince the new world of those old assented truths he has made his and proved a couple of possible times.

like a fellow, i must find the catalytic point where it all comes together, the philosopher’s stone that will transform all the materials i’m made of into what i really am.

still here, still looking, not a clue. but it can’t be that far. it just can’t be that far, i can feel it.

just another alchemist, that’s what i must be now.

one day you were among your good friends, not too many but the right ones, with a decent job, in a lovely city, getting to that place, very close to that place where you feel you finally got it, you finally belong.

next day you’re in a new land, new city, big as it can be, no friends, no advocates, no references, all gone to square one, where peers don’t even care much for what you do, where mates are nowhere to be seen, where you feel alone and cold.

go figure, go fucking figure.

accept disgrace willingly.

life is not fair, life plays with you. it feels like so, but it is not.

there seems to be a plan. there seems to be a pattern. life examines you, carefully, constantly. tests are always the same ones. disgraces are always the same. until you pass the test.

until you know what the message is, until you realise what you can change, then it all changes.

life becomes a friend, a good friend. the one friend that told you, painfully oftentimes, what you could be. and you’re it now.

blessed souls accept and continue. life knows it, and keeps playing it incessant game of letting you know. blessed the soul that accepts and moves on.

Accept disgrace willingly.
Accept misfortune as the human condition.

What do you mean by “Accept disgrace willingly”?
Accept being unimportant.
Do not be concerned with loss or gain.
This is called “accepting disgrace willingly.”

What do you mean by “Accept misfortune as the human condition”?
Misfortune comes from having a body.
Without a body, how could there be misfortune?

Surrender yourself humbly; then you can be trusted to care for all things.
Love the world as your own self; then you can truly care for all things.

— thirteen – tao te king

Now Free,
Free as a bird to settle where I will.
What dwelling shall receive me?
In what vale, Shall be my harbour?
underneath what grove
Shall I take up my home?
and what clear stream shall lull me into rest?

The earth is all before me, with a heart
Joyous, nor scared by its own liberty,
I look about, and should the chosen guide
be nothing more than a wandering cloud
I cannot miss my own way.

— William Wordsworth

he listened to the voices, once again.

then he shot.

he pulled the trigger, slowly but firmly. he could see his victim’s face. he has thought of this moment for as long as he remembered. he knew it completely, by the second, by the centimetre. he has dreamt it. he lived for it.

it was power. killing hector was not only payment for an old debt, a family vengeance, but a moment of power. the power of killing a human being. the power of being able to murder, to steal a life, to end dreams, hopes, passions and fears in one second, as they never existed. as they never existed for him, anymore.

then, he felt his hand slightly trembling, the warm gun shaking. he realised the fear and the quivering, the anxiety. he realised he was afraid. he realised he did not feel mighty, powerful, omnipotent, as he foresaw it. the murder would not make him strong.

his eyes got watery. his legs shivered. his soul, his inner guts, started to tremble. he felt like puking.

he utterly saw it. as he killed hector, he saw he himself reflected in the futility of that death, in the ephemerality of his own life. he realised he was mortal, fragile, vulnerable, and that he would die one day, whether at the hands of his own enemies, those who will be him, or in a less respectable situation.

he felt, as the fear invaded every nerve and pore of his weightless body, silently, starting to disappear, inexorably. paradise lost…