Gaining MOmentum in Italy and in the U.S.: the pursuit of happiness or mystification of reality?

As the game of my dream raises the stakes and my sacrfices show the others a mountain apparently too high to climb, people can’t hear me anymore in this country. They just don’t. I feel like a complete stranger in the middle of the night knocking on someone’s door struggling to convince him to open it, because my intentions are good and he can trust me: Hello is there anybody here? I’m speaking Italian, your same language-At least I thought, I hoped. I knock , I talk, I yell, I scream, but nothing. Apparently, they just don’t understand my words anymore.  I know I can achieve my dream. Just trust me, open the door and I will show you. Yeah right. I’d better move on, or out here I risk to really get sick!

I always do what my heart and guts tells me to. Practically, I never listen to people. Stubborn? I prefer to say detemined. Straight like a train. I wouldn’t have made it this far otherwise. Yet, sometimes, it would be nice to go back to planet earth and live like a simple human being that would like to talk and act amidst the silence of agreement and support, rather than amidst the noise of a high and non-conscious barrier impeding all my closest affections to really hear me.                                                                                                                                                                                                                I must say that  my parents are very opened minded and supportive. They adore me and so my close friends. I’m lucky. Nevertheless, there’s something in them that at some point stops them from understanding my intentions until the very last word. It’s like if they had all the genes, like me, except for one, that one that makes them a different species from me and too far to listen to me anyway, despite my efforts.  It’s like a Chinese making a declaration of love to someone from Island. The intentions are ideal, but the language definitely not.

The more time I spend in Italy and the more I feel I’m in a constant battle against everybody,  against the country’s uncouscious mystification of reality.

Our main problem? 

It’s not the economy, the bureaucracy, the tax system, the infrastructure, the mafia, the lack of real investments and R&D in every key field.  No, they all don’t work. We know that already. It’s a fact that every international institution and agency would tell you with pages and pages of studies. You name it. OSCE, IMF, UN, World Bank, WTO, European Bank, EU. Even our politicians admit it in their usual “1 minute” TV segment of daily populism and qualunquism, great to gain a bunch of  further protest votes against whatever government is in power. No that’s not it. These are all the effects  we unconsciously adopt to mistyify reality. Because there’s no  job and no real possibility of true success, as we reach a certain level, position and status, we acquire a mystified version of reality, a distorted “forma mentis”,  a twisted mind set about our life: we stop dreaming, we stop aspiring, because it’s implicit and commonly accepted that you cannot possibly gain more than that. The average “lucky success” in Italy is to have a permanent job, or as we call it a “fixed place” (as legacy from the 50’s, from our grandparents’ fear to guarantee their son some security after WWII )  that can provide about 1800 euros per month,  30 paid days of vacation per year, about the same days of further “sick days” and a costant idea of how to get a new plasma TV set (with rates payment of course) and where to go on your next 15 days vacation in August. If you only dare to dream more than that, to aspire to something bigger, you’re not grounded, you’re a dreamer. In case you get excited, gaining momentum, well, get a grip, and slow down because as Jack Nicholson says “what if that’s as good as it gets”.  We are satisfied with that little garden that we can afford to cultivate, so to maintain intact our acquired privileges, without having the guts to develop a real vision, a dream.

The Colosseum is our problem. The primary cause for us to mistify and mortify reality.

Scent of an emotion

How do you exactly catch an emotion and make it yours? Is writing, or maybe painting enough not to make it vanish?

How do you view it rotating around it of 360 degrees, so to admire and discover every tiny shade, or hear every note of it?

It’s like a perfume:  as you feel the scent, it’s gone, you can’t catch it, if not in your memories.  Too slow anyway. It’s impossible. Unless, of course,  you read the book, “Perfume”. Then, you would know that it’s something so ethereal to possess that it may be even something worth to kill for to make it finally still. For the scent, or for the emotion that it makes you feel? Then, I definitely want to live as long as I can to find it again, feel it again, catch it and be one with that. 

Scent of an emotion. Like the wind. You can’t see it, you only feel it. Scent of an emotion.

Catch it if you can.

Nocturnal Angels

What we feel

can’t be explained here

you have a surprise

that you don’t even imagine

back, you can’t go

you can’t go back down

when you fly

you can’t fall anymore…

you see roofs and houses

and big the suburbs.

And you see how many things

are only trivialities 

And from here…and here angels don’t arrive

with fireflies and cicadas

And from here…and from here…

you can’t see those summers anymore

those summers

Here’s logic

to change ideas a thousand times

it’s easy

to feel  like you’re to be wasted

Here you have no excuse

that can keep you up

Here’s the night is dark

and there’s only you

You live on the edge

and you smoke your Lucky Strike

and then you realize

how badly you will curse them

And from here…and  here

don’t arrive “the orders”

to teach you the good path

And from here…and from here

here the angels don’t arrive!

2:30 am- Gli Angeli- The Angels, by Vasco Rossi- an Italian song.

It’s been filling up my bedroom, over and over tonight:

Tonight,  words don’t arrive here. My angels can’t reach me. Not tonight.

I’m far away from them, too close to my emotions to be  able to distinguish them.

Out of focus. Out of place. Out of touch.

 May your angels be with you tonight.

Good night

Your Last Mile

At the last mile of a 26 miles marathon you discover where your real motivation to suceed lives, as your leg muscles become tight like a baseball bat and the pain weakens all your “yada yada” motivations that have convinced you so far.  

You’re left alone with yourself.

There’s nobody else, no further excuse, or justification, but the real answer to find  right away. If you want to complete the journey you have to filter and look through all those alibi that so far you might have been so good to tell yourself and the others. It’s a countdown against yourself: the body is gone and your will is all you have left and its fuel is exclusively the raison d’etre of your drives.

You find that motivation and you have found yourself: what inspires you to overcome your discouragement and achieve your goals.

What are we really driven by? Is it Passion? Carrier? Fame? Money? As the moments of discouragement increase your insecurities, damn present like a gigantic owl staring at you night and day,  you quickly go through them to surprisingly realize how many of these are actually useless for you to even move of one inch in your journey. Until you’re not in pain, you can’t learn. Until something is taken away from you, you can’t comprehend its real value. Rhetoric right? But that’s seems to be our curse in life, to become wiser from mistakes and stronger from a challenging experience. And that’s exactly when you joyfully discover that at the arrival the motivation you find in your heart is diametrically different from the one you had in mind at the start.

Mine? It’s the enthusiasm for the stimulus and the challenge of a brand new adventure. I want to learn how to exceed my limits and overcome my insecurities in a world that has been inexorably getting wider  to be comprised within one single glance. Oh, and to have fun too of course.      

As I become older time stretches: it’s not anymore about a sprint in the park, but more like a marathon on the road, where you have to pace yourself, develop a plan, following an horizon that acquires further layers of vision, like a painting of Giotto introducing perspective for the first time. No more “walking like an Egyptian”, but a composite vision of reality to make yours.  Except that in this painting, we’re not the viewer, but rather the painter himself, and perhaps, to duplicate Giotto’s  perfection may take some time and a lot of perseverance. I can see my painting has been growing: challenges increase, colors enhance, characters adds to an unfolding story defining always more precisely its shape on the canvas. Battles increase exponentially, but fortunately so do rewards.

The frame of the painting? Finding a woman I would love to share with our mutual stories, blending them upon an horizon to define together.

I have to thank two friends of mine that finally got married last week end after so much they have been through, for better and worse. I personally think it was the wedding of the century: moving, elegant and fun. They got married in the country, outside of Rome, where the grass is green and the girls are pretty. Yes, paradise city has a name:Bracciano, in the roman country. A tiny VI century church on top of a green hill, with a botanic garden, what else could you want? A view with a lake at the bottom where all the guests got lost dreaming about the perfect wedding. Then, someone should have said  to them: “Ehi, Turnaround, what you’re looking for is right here baby”, on a Saturday night of May under the stars of  Rome”, pardon, of Bracciano, a lovely town  one hour away from Rome and miles away from the the hassles of the city. I will personally remember that magic night for a long time. Grazie Enrico, thanks Kelly.

Their last mile to the wedding has been challenging. When he moved to New York the cultural clash definitely had a violent impact on him, so used to La dolce vita of Rome. Yes, after all, in Rome there’s a quite of a lifestyle. On top of that, he had some health problems and she has been continuously present, next to him, physically and morally with such a determination and love that was absolutely moving, regardless her hard time that I’m sure she must have gone through at the time. My “just got married” friends taught me that perhaps, “together” is a realistic and possible way to face your own challenges and find your own motivations. They taught me that there’s no battle too big, if you have a dream in your mind to make it true. They showed me over the years, that what I have on my mind and in my heart is actually possible to achieve. Grazie, I’ll never forget the shivers Enrico gave me on his speech, putting in the right “Giotto’s perspective” the real values that are worth to  pursue in life.  Maybe on your last mile, you’re not alone: a friend’s advice, someone’s smile, someone who truly cares about you can accompany you to the arrival.

I started this blog as a way to comprehend the world around me, and find my horizon curving toward my dreams: “Nec ridere, nec lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere” is the tagline I had originally  chosen to fly over my thoughts. “Neither laugh, nor cry, nor hate, but comprehend” is what Spinoza wrote, a philosopher I particularly like for his capacity to comprehend the potential of feelings in influencing the understanding of the world. He thinks that we are at the mercy of our passions, influencing our objective capacity to use our minds. I agree with him. I do agree, but I think I couldn’t leave without my passions.

I want to laugh, I need to cry, so that afterwards, I can comprehend how to finish my last mile.

Are you ready for yours? The result might be sweeter than a pancake:)

Now, it’s finally the ultimate Spring “Break” for hormons!

That’s the cherry on top of my long work day ending  at 1 am. I finally open the newspaper to see how more entertaining the world got today and here it is, the ultimate boost of optimism, right before going to bed:  Seasonal Affective Disorder, also known as SAD,  the latest and almost unknown type of depression caused by Spring, as the changes in light-dark affect the production of neurotransmitters in our brain, like serotonin and hormones, like melatonin, both responsible in regulating our mood. Can it get any better? Now science is telling us that in spring our mood may  change not because  hormones make us all fall in love like crazy, but actually because they turn us off and make us depressed. Great, I can’t wait for summer now.  Are we all gonna turn into  suicidals in June?

Marc Hauser, professor of psychology and evolutionary biology at Harvard University, in his book “Moral Minds- how nature designed our universal sense of right and wrong” claims that our brain is capable to automatically originate the roots of a natural moral system on which our cultural nurturing eventually applies the specific ethical parameters developed by society. Interesting right? It gets better. Infants, regardless the gender,  appear to have inside core notions, such as geometrical and mathematical principles that come as “forms of knowledge that human beings get for free”, says on an article from “The NewYorker” Mrs. Spelke, professor of cognitive psychology, once again, at Harvard University, conducting a study on how infants elaborate information from the outside world. It seems like the confirmation of Socrate’s theory about the possibility for an ignorant slave to actually have geometrical notions. So apparently, science has been increasingly explaining human being in light of Descartes’ res estensa. It’s all about the body, genes, neurons, chemicals and so on. Not that Descartes knew dna of course! that may be a stretch.

But then, a friend of mine sent me an L.A. Times article about an inmate who  have killed 3 policeman and slaughtered one guard in jail, painting with colors made out M&M’s. He mixes them together with other substances like coffee to obtain each shade of color. That turned out into an exhibit at which, of course, he wasn’t present.  So my question is, how is it possible that the emotional outcome of a murdering existence is decoded through the nuances of M&M’s colors used to depict a pastel and colorful world that apparently should not be so colorful in his mind? In other words, is human being defined by design of nature, as science has increasingly been explaining us, and religion practically imposing us, or can  human being also be defined by imprint of society? 

I’m not sure that the microcosm of human being can solely be explained with black and white mechanistic and deterministic theories of causes and effects applying to the macrocosm of the universe. Perhaps, those M&M’s colors, although produced by a sick mind, must reveal some more profound nuances in the human being, not only originating from nature, or society. Genes, god, nature, nurturing are only some of the answers that mankind has found over time. Depending on the historical period, we used all type of instruments such as philosophy, religion, science, psychology, sociology and now neurology. Every time, each one seems to perfectly cover the truth, like a comfortable blanket warming up a baby. At least, temporarily.The baby eventually grows up and you need a bigger blanket and a broader answer.

I started writing about the human being definition last summer, in a sort of draft/article that got to 15 pages so far and  now, this spring thing made me actually think about it again. I don’t think I’ll have the  time to finish it. At least not until next summer, when I’ll have some free time.

However, what I know is that now is Spring and I’m actually quite happy. Am I from Mars? Then I recently had a  close encounter of the third kind:)

Good night…

  

The Big Apple Grand Ball Finale…only for this time of course

Back to Rome. Here I am again.  Different time, different language, different lifestyle for Cinderella man (without too much victimism, proudly ME, not Crowe) at the end of the grand ball: the skyscrapers shrink into regular 4, 5 story buildings, more or less ancient, roads shrink, time shrinks, toward the future, 6 hours ahead and so do options and mentality, down to the very minimum requested, so to live a relative and tranquil life, without too many hassles, nor ambitions. But that’s  another episode of the story:)                                                                                                                                                                                                             There is actually one thing that I do acquire at the  end of the Big Apple Grand Ball: a car, my small car that through the impossible traffic and roads of Rome turns into my favorite catalyst  for my laziness, out of the long and metallic subway pumpkin in New York. Nevertheless, my metrocard is still proudly in my wallet. Oh yeah, and on the way out,  in the gift bag I get another perk,  a lovely jet leg. After more than 10 years doing back and forth from the States, I still can’t figure out a way to rapidly adjust: I don’t know whether I’m hungry, tired, sleepy, or all of these things above, combined in a very twisted way for my emotions.  Partial solution?  Running in the park. What a long day I had today.

After a red eye flight, I get to Rome at 8am, strangely on time for Alitalia, whose acronym for those of you who still don’t know is ”Always Late In Taking-off, Always Late In Arriving”. Just the time to wait about 35 minutes for the luggage (there you go, now I finally recognize the good old Italian style!), hit a little bit of traffic on raccordo anulare, the highway ring around Rome and 45 minutes later, I’m home. Hold on, not for long. A quick shower, a few minutes to hateandlove my new old home for the weeks ahead and I’m back in my little car on the way to work: ” Ciao Daniele, here’s the American, finally  back among us. When you’re there you just forget about us, eh?!”-I can’t really say it’s not true! - That’s the usual welcome from some of my colleagues, that I actually love. They’re all great.                                                                                                                                                                                                            I am again in my office, by the Colosseum (yeah, maybe I have to recognize that’s another perk I get), in my room, looking at the picture of Manhattan, on the right side of my desk, taken at the end of August 2001, yes, just a few weeks before. ( pictures from the place you want to go to should be located on the right, as the fen shui says, according to one of my best friends. why not, let’s give it a shot, right?!).                                                                                                                                                                                                    Before starting again with  the Tribeca Film Festival (www.tribecafilmfestival.org) and the Rome Film Fest account (stay tuned for more,  coming soon a great festival in October,18-27: www.romefilmfest.org), I work a little on my other account, biotechnology. More precisely, the development of an implantable biosensor chip capable to monitor, detect and transmit wireless to a computer, the human being physiological functions, such as blood pressure, ecg and the level of glucose, i.e., very important for diabetic patients. Did I ever mention you that my job is like three in one with two different lives in 2 continents? Again, as above, that’s another episode:)                                                                                  

Finally, at last, but definitely not least, I gather all my good willing and very last few drops of energy and go running to Villa Ada, the park close to my house. I change clothes in my car, as all we runners do around here after work, and here we go: a spectacular hill to conquer through narrow paths covered by gigantic trees, starting from a  pond with a little stripe of green land in the middle, where in a few weeks they will hold outside concerts for all summer. It’s nice to run with live music on. It reminds me of Central Park in the summer, running on Sundays with the Jazz Festival on. I saw India Airie two years ago. She was great. She brought her mom on stage singing with her.                                                                                                                                                                                                           The entire loop of “Villa Ada” is about one hour and that was mine today. Here the parks are called “villas” since they used to be private villas of noble families and this one used to belong to one of the members of the former royal Italian family from Piedmont, Ada Savoia.

I stopped by Marcello’s house tonight, my buddy, my best friend, practically my brother. We’ve known each other since we were 6 years old, we went to the same school and we played basketball together in the school team until high school. Then,  we stopped growing and therefore we stopped playing. It was really fun to play with the schools in Rome though. We weren’t a really good team, but we most certainly had a lot of fun. Now, I try to make it in the big apple and he’s trying to make it with his bar, working on opening maybe another one. Hold on, not an american. the italian one when you go for a coffee and a cornetto. It’s always comforting to go back to Rome and go to his bar, or at his house for my ”New York report”. Different lives, in different cities that come together in one night with a brother. I know, it sounds cliche, but you all know out there that is nice to have someone you can always rely on, regardless how long you haven’t seen him for, or spoken to. 

 It’s 8pm in New York. Here, on the other side of the ocean, about 6000 miles after,  is 2 am. I can’t sleep. I’m jet legged and on top of this, I have a lot of things on my mind, old and brand new and some of these are really good, don’t get me wrong, but still… I’m an hopeless optimistic and I always think that things will work out the way I want to. After all, have you ever seen a pessimmistic accomplish anything in life? My goal is to achieve  a dream, and at the moment, there are 2  on my mind. The hard part? Blend them together. In time, I don’t rush. I like to consider myself as realistically optimistic, achieving a dream through realistic instruments, although  for most of the journey it gets hard. Especially on my first night back to Rome, where I would love to be completely  somewhere else. In Columbus Circle, maybe at the Starbucks on the corner of Broadway…Around here, instead, everything is more silent, all I’m hearing is my thoughts shaped with the sound of the keyboards typing; no fire fighters, no sirens. It takes me awhile to readjust to this silence. Not to the blinders though. Why is it that in the United States people don’t usually sleep with the blinders on their windows? Wouldn’t it be so much darker and resting for you? If anybody has an answer please…make my sleep and perhaps yours as well, better:)

Golden dreams…

an asymmetrical mirror of behaviour

Sometimes I just don’t understand why gestures can’t correspond to our intentions in people’s eyes. People perceive the effect, not the cause and as if that wasn’t enough, we do our best to actually cover that and mislead the purpose of our actions; the tone of our voice, an aborted hug generating a perceived coldness. A word said with too much emphasis, or with the laziness of a thought. 

It’s almost impossible to eradicate a preconception about us and establish a different vision of our pattern of behaviour in the people close to us. We’re generally perceived as they know us, as a repeating expectation of behaviour.

On the contrary, in people that do not know us yet, the stake is to imprint in them the right vision about us. But then, are we really who we think we are, or the others actually perceive us in a different way than we do with ourselves? Again, gestures don’t correspond to our intentions and therefore, we think of the intentions and the others, of course, only see the gestures, or the missed ones…should have, could have, would have…

Columbus Circle

Sitting over words
very late I have heard a kind of
  whispered sighing
not far
like a night wind in pines or like
  the sea in the dark
the echo of everything that has never
been spoken
still spinning its one syllable
between the earth and silence.

W. S. Merwin

Still echoing…Good night

Scusi vuol ballare con me? Grazie, preferisco di no

Passeggiando verso mezzanotte,  sotto ai portici di piazza Augusto imperatore, in una serata fiacca, con il silenzio delle strade vuote della città già semivuota, tipico preludio del ponte del primo maggio, appaiono decine di coppie, ragazzi e ragazze, donne e uomini che vestiti eleganti, ballano sotto la luce gialla dei lampioni, ma ballano davvero. Danzano guardandosi fissi negli occhi, seri,  al suono di un tango argentino proveniente da casse nere improvvisate, appoggiate sulle loro stesse custodie da cantastrade che sembrano usciti da un film di Fellini. Un amarcord del circo al ballo del Gattopardo. La Strada? No, piazza Augusto imperatore. A Roma, di fronte al mausoleo, accanto a Gusto, in una qualunque sera di mezzanotte. La luce era onirica, ma non era un sogno. Mai visti prima. Ce li hanno buttati dal cielo e anche alla svelta…una delle sorprese più bizzarre e belle che mi siano capitate. Era un pò che non mi stupivo per una cosa tanto bizzarra eppure tanto semplice come ballare nel mezzo di un strada sotto ad un portico.

Se siete amanti del tango, piazza Augusto imperatore è la vostra balera.

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