Who I am and what I do in life is definitely the most vague and vague topic I can talk about. I was asked to introduce myself, nothing new, I do (as everyone) very often, almost daily. There are many times in life to introduce ourselves to a lot of people. Several reasons, different formats, different reasons or purposes. Many standards, many nonsense, things said automatically, arguments avoided and so on.
We all look very boring when we introduce ourselves, actually we are all really interesting people.
We all look very interesting when we introduce ourselves, in reality we are all terribly boring people.
Here it is. No kidding. I really think both things.
So what? So I prefer talk about what I like, which, probably, is also the most honest way for saying something. There are a lot of things we know something about, never everything, others we know nothing about.
It’s a stream of consciousness, I know, but the fact that what I’m saying does not have an architecture does not mean there’s no construction. That is, it is more a thought than a thinking, a work fruit of my “free”mind. Surely it is more free than my tongue. I hate the feeling of not being able to express myself: when the will of speaking impacts the tongue, and the lexical articulations we know are not enough to say something. The feeling of when you do not know an idiom (in my case the Portuguese) and you find yourself communicating in a language (English) that belongs even less.
This feeling is not casual, because the impossibility of properly speaking a common language amplifies and plasticize what we live every day: the impossibility to communicate of our feelings.
Expression and communication are worlds that have moments of contact, but they are distinct banks of the river.
Communications can generate emotions (” the shape of the voice ”), and emotions do not require a communication that follows them. We all experienced a moment of real emotion, full of pure feeling, which only filled us without wanting to overflow. He does not need to leave us; not like all those kind of things we say only to forget them. Communicating means transmitting, but the majority of what we transmit is useless both for us and for those who listen to us. When we have to transmit something important for us, our knowledge, our life, we do not have the right means. Like me, now. It is the direct consequence of a wrong culture: by confusing the saying with revealing we have developed a deficient and extremely incomplete vocabulary of feelings.
At the same time, learning Portuguese is a specific aim of my Evs; it’s for my personal pleasure. This language fascinates me very much, with an exotic sound and almost mystical grammar. And it is the language of writings and songs that I already love.
In a someday of spring I was fantasizing about myself and my future. Nothing new, but that time specifically I dreamed of my little cinema in Ancona. Immersed in the romanticism of those dusty chairs, the light of the screen that floods the room, the emotion that generates that language in me; rounded of the poetry of the sea. Salsedine and films.
What a silly dreamer I am … the films no longer exist.
Now I’m in Portugal, Margem Sur del Tejo, I live in Laranjeiro. I am writing these lines in the Rato office in Miratejo, and I realize that nobody presses me. In general, I noticed – because I like it a lot – that here there is a relaxed atmosphere. The air after the economic storm of past years, it seems to have been faced by the population with humility and dignity, without crying, without hysteria. The difficult moments have caused suffering, but they seem to be very aware of what mean sacrifice, patience and poignancy. I think this is the reason of this serenity: they know that the future is not made of abundance, they are disillusioned, and therefore the soul is not drowned by chasing a chimera. It is the disenchantment that allows their political situation, they are not wary, they do not have that violent capitalist voracity. They know they do not have much, but they know how to do it. They appreciate, thank, they do not complain.
Where I live, it is a very quiet area during the day, and very noisy at night. I have never heard anyone who, looking out the window, intimated to go away to the various groups that are in the streets. There is not that same hateful arrogance that there is in Italy, the old ones (not only in anagraphic sense) who feel themselves owners of the city and the country. I speak of those generations who grew up in the idea that certain privileges are their rights, that there is a right of moral property of the country related to their intellectual, social, political or economic influence. This is the biggest problem in Italy, which condemns it to mediocrity: the tendency of everyone to perceive and consider the public as private. Everyone is a slave to someone, and at the same time, everyone is master of something.
How sad, I do not even want to think about it.
I feel almost demoralized now, but I’m used to feeling like that. I do not have a life project, nor have I ever had it. I go a bit ‘random, I do not reach concrete goals, but I feel good … sometimes. Somebody scolds me, but they do not believe it either. They know that I am like this: I want to do many things, but just few things that are actually completed. Not that I’m sorry, I feel a little bit like that, incomplete, always looking for something that is never there, not because it does not exist, but which – simply and cruelly – it is impossible to communicate with.
I’m not the only one, of course. Rather, there are a lot of people who feel like me, and then they end up talking about themselves, boring everyone execpt them. Actually I prefer avoid this topic, but if someone really cares, I try to do my best. Maybe the results then are not so good, even yet in this case I’ve been working on it for several days. Also of this I will not make a problem, because there is a fine but fundamental border between believing in what you do, or falling into paranoia for it.
I believe in what I think so much more than in what I am. That is, I think it’s interesting what I live and not who I am.
Indeed, I think that “to be” is an old problem, anachronistic like all identity problems.
It is certain that we are alive without being responsible for it; this is the first awareness. Then, to refuse or to accept everything are opposite but equally stupid things. We can always decide. So we always choose based on our prerogatives. Aware of this, we just have to do our best, both for personal and collective evolutions. Fight with or against those in positions of strength. You choose by instinct, reason, mood, belief, malice, love, fun or boredom. Everyone has the right to have their own reasons, and we must always be serene in the judgment of others. The important thing is to enjoy and live life, not to suffer it. Throwing it, being afraid of it, would be just an enormous nonsense.
Mamma Mia! Writing and reading my words is like keep on to talk to myself, and I’m really sick of hearing my voice in my mind.
Ok stop. For today, that’s okay.
