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.

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…

  

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.

1,2,3… 

Appunti sparsi su “Novecento” che poi per me sono i motivi per scendere dalla nave.

 “A me m’ha sempre colpito questa faccenda dei quadri. Stanno su per anni, poi senza che accada nulla, ma nulla dico, fran, giù, cadono. Stanno lì attaccati al chiodo, nessuno gli fa niente, ma loro a un certo punto, fran, cadono giù come sassi. nel silenzio più assoluto, con tutto immobile  intorno, non una mosca che vola e loro, fran. Non c’è una ragione. Perchè proprio quell’istante. Non si sa. Fran. Cos’è che succede a un chiodo per farlo decidere che non ne può più? C’ha un anima, anche lui, poveretto? Prende delle decisioni? ne ha discusso a lungo col quadro, erano incerti sul da farsi, ne parlavano tutte le sere, da anni, poi hanno deciso una data, un’ora, un minuto, un istante e quello, fran. O lo sapevano già dall’inizio, i due, era già tutto combinato, guarda io mollo tutto fra sette anni, per me va bene, ok, allora intesi per il 13 maggio, okay, verso le sei, facciamo sei meno un quarto, d’accordo, allora buona notte, ‘notte. Sette anni dopo il 13 maggio, sei meno un quarto: fran. Non si capisce. E’ una di quelle cose che è meglio che non ci pensi, se no ci esci matto.Quando cade un quadro. Quando ti svegli, un mattino e non la ami più. Quando apri il giornale e leggi è scoppiata la guerra. Quando vedi un treno e pensi io devo andarmene da qui. Quando ti guardi allo specchio e ti accorgi che sei vecchio. Quando, in mezzo all’Oceano, Novecento alzò lo sguardo dal piatto e mi disse: ” A New York, fra tre giorni, io scenderò da questa nave”. Ci rimasi secco” . A. Baricco

Io invece ci sono rimasto troppo bene.  D’improvviso  tra sette giorni scenderò di nuovo a New York. Non dalla scaletta, ma dal cielo,