Because the night

"Don't forget. Always use your voice"
Patti Smith, Torino May 6th 2017

Saturday is long gone, but I'm left wishing I could re-live it over and over, like in "Groundhog Day".
Barbara and I met in front of the Auditorium Rai, shortly after 8, had a coffee, chatted a little while we waited for Patti Smith's concert to begin.

Surely not the most technical-woes-free concert I've ever been to, but the most moving and thrilling in a long time.

The audience was the first bonus point. It was packed of committed folks, fans from all generations and walk of life that were there to listen to Patti and not to chat about their holiday plan or hairdresser while coming and going from the bar or munching pop-corn (it did happen at the Wilco's gig in NY, further proves for my theory of the spoiled crowds in big cities). There was a buzz while waiting for the concert to start that transformed in sheer exhilarance when She appeared on stage and reached its peak on the encore.

Then the concert began.
Then there was Patti on stage and nothing really mattered. If she stood on stage reading a grocery list, she would have probably delivered the most beautiful grocery list reading ever.

She's a magnet that draws you in.
When she sings and when she speaks.
When she laughs and when she dances.

She is strong and mellow.
She's peace and calm, she's rage and wisdom.

She leaves you standing, she brings you the smile you wear on the face and in the heart when you walk back home.

Fighting on the stairs

The facts:
1. I sold my flat back at the end of March.
2. I am going to sign the purchase of my new flat at the end of May.

Logical conclusion: I had to find a place to live for the two months when I'd officially be with "no fixed abode" (that's what I am according to the city register right now, it's certified homelessness).
The best solution to the problem turned out to the the simplest and closest to home. I moved one floor above, renting out my friend Pippo's flat.
Very quick move, just one floor up; it meant I could keep living in a place that was familiar to me and I didn't have to spend extra time looking for a place.

So I moved up and it felt I moved into a different world: no more quiet evening. It's a non-stop festival of people screaming, arguing and telling each other to f**k off.
The days I've worked from home, I also discovered that there are other neighbours fighting during the afternoon. Great, they take shifts.

Days passed, with me trying to make sense of this change: how can a set of stairs extra drop me into a whole different universe?
And then, one morning I woke up and found this on the stairs:

I tried to make a sense of the whole situation: fights, insults, a psycho as a neighbour.... mmmh no, let's make it a couple of psychos living on the 2 flats near me, and now somebody spooned soil out of a vase and left it on the stairs.

What's the meaning of it all? Is some superior powers trying to tell me something? Maybe to double check my door is locked at night?

I'm not sure, the only "logical" step I took was choosing a song fit to the situation and make it somehow better. And since all my musings somehow lead back to the Frames:

"I'm living out in the old house
And fighting on the stairs
And staring at the windows
Breeze blowing through the years"

... an alien, I'm a legal alien

Serious frowning face.
No smile.
No greeting.
"Where are you from?"
- Italy
"When did you arrive?"
- about 40 minutes ago… on the plane that landed in this airport…
“How long do you plan to stay?”
- 5 days
“Are you planning to return to your country after that?”
- Yes
“So when are you leaving the United States?”
- Wednesday

Evidently whoever runs the New York tourist board is not really in touch with the border control at JFK.
Either agents in San Francisco and San Jose airports are just naturally more relaxed (blame it on the California sunshine) or the mood has changed dramatically in the States in the few months I was away.
The moment I left the airport, a part of me went back to the last question the agent asked me:
“So when are you leaving the United States?”
- How about now, since you’re asking it so kindly?
But that would have been a pity, because I would have missed out on the Wilco concerts and on kilometers walked all over New York.

Wilco were great but my amazement at crowds using gigs as a social event to chat about their last haircut or spending time on Facebook remains. New York will also go down in my personal history as the first place I went to a gig where people eat pop-corn as if they were at the movie.

As for New York, I walked a lot, spent a lot of time in Central Park and in museums. I wandered around library, yarn stores (oh the wonder!) and bookstores, tried to find a decent coffee and failed miserably. I thought I've become a bit better at adapting with coffee, but it looks I'm still my old grumpy and picky self.

New York is a beautiful and vibrant city but, as we say in Italy, "bella ma non ci vivrei", beautiful but I wouldn't like to live there. It's a basic, first reaction, one I've learned to trust in the past years: it's a wonderful place to visit and explore, but it's not a place that fills me with any other emotion that would make me move there. New York was perfect as a tourist, a visitor, an alien dropped there waiting to return to her mothership. I wouldn't fit and to my dismay I discovered that the New York accent grates on my nerves. It never occurred to me how irritating it is. Sure, I've heard it before, in movies and tv-shows, but they have a time limit that allows me to go back to more friendly pronunciations. Being immersed into it however is a whole different experience, one I wouldn't probably enjoy repeating on a daily basis.

sunflower for Elaine

I saw the plastic sunflower in one of those 1€ shops that are sprouting out all over town. I bought it some months ago and put it away in the wardrobe.
Well, not exactly. I probably just threw it inside the wardrobe when I had one of the first flat visit from the estate agent. and then I just forgot about it.

This past weekend, however, I had to empty the wardrobe as I'm donating it to a charity and the sunflower reappeared.
It lost its plastic smell and acquired the lavender smell of the moth-repellent I use for my yarn.
I decided to put the sunflower on the bicycle, my good old Elaine Marley.
I was not fully convinced about it, given the spectacular speed things get lifted off my bicycle (basket, bell, front light, back brake... you name it, it was stolen at some point).

But the weather so nice, so warm, I thought the sunflower was an extra bright spot to welcome spring.
Welcome back, lovely season.

This morning I went for a blood checkup, and while I was walking back home from the metro station, I thought that not taking the bicycle had been a smart idea, given the way I fainted after the exam.
I guess it's normal to feel a bit misplaced after having fainted, so I guess it's normal my reflexes were as slow as my brain cells in that moment.

I was less than 1 block from home, when I saw a guy cycling from the opposite direction pass me by.
My thoughts progression was:
1. Oh look, his bike looks a lot like Elaine.
2. And he's got a sunflower on it.
3. Come to think about it, I put a sunflower on the handle just yesterday.

By the time I completed thought #3, I had reached my flat.
And I had also reached thought #4:
F**k, some f*****g t**t stole my bicycle.

So long, Elaine, wonderful reasonably-priced bicycle. I'm going to miss you. And I'm also going to start using more and more the bike share: bicycle there probably won't be named after Monkey Island's character (and surely lack the character you had) but, even if they were ever to be stolen, my emotional commitment to them would be pretty non-existent.

Needless to say, packing is on hold until I'm done crafting the voodoo doll for you, bike-thief.

Giant Pineapples

Some years ago my parents did the supreme act of self-sacrifice, unconditioned love and this-is-probably-karma grandparents can do: they took the grandchildren on holiday for some weeks in August.
They loaded the car with the whole house, managed to fit Sara and Davide into the car as well and they drove down to Abruzzo.
They arrived in Pineto safe and sound and there's where legend started.
Well, it's not a legend, because we got witnesses and photographic proof of the existence of such trees. So not fake news here, maybe irrelevant, but not fake.

What happened is that Davide (remember: Davide is a boy, at the time he was really small, plus have I mentioned that being a boy he’s got XY chromosome? He lives in his own world made of Star Wars characters and dinosaurs, and yeah, he’s a boy) pointed at something and exclaimed, all excited: “Look, look! A giant pineapple!”
The giant pineapple turned out to be a small palm tree that was in the garden: small, larger than tall, all those leaves on top of it, to Davide the palm tree turned into a giant pineapple. His grandparents dutifully laughed at it and recounted the story immediately to the lucky ones left at home (aka Davide’s parents).

Because of this small family story, every time I see a palm tree, I immediately feel a bit more cheerful and think about my nephew’s limited botanical knowledge.
It’s a bit silly, yet not as silly as nor blatantly stupid with what has happened recently with some other palm trees in Italy.

To cut a long, and honestly quite boring, story short, a big coffee chain multinational is opening its first store in Milan city centre.
It’s a big thing, and I guess the cafe will be packed with people once it’s open: it will make lots of money, because it’ll be the place chavs and hipsters alike will go to take a selfie of themselves sipping overpriced, burnt and quite diluted coffee.
To celebrate the opening of their store, they’re paying to have a small garden with palm trees built in Piazza del Duomo. My level of engagement to this news was somewhere shifting between “I don’t really care” and “Should I have frittata or pasta for dinner tonight?”

But things can’t be so easy and so it happened that some idiots thought of using this whole thing as a way to advertise their political agenda: a political agenda based on populism, fascism, racism, bigotry and plain ignorance.

And the rants and interviews started, with poor excuse of politicians stating it was an attack to the traditional values of the city and obviously every single racist twat of the city and the nation had to chime in and start the usual choir about migrants, migrants coming over to steal our jobs, etc.

Nowadays they don’t even bother with the “I’m not racist but…” bullshit.

No, no: they immediately go for the racist core, talking about Italy becoming Africa. One could argue that is global warming that is turning Italy into Africa, not migration, but hey! once you got a scapegoat in the migrants from Africa, why bothering trying to use the brain?

I still don’t give a damn about the coffee. But I feel sad for that poor thin giant pineapple that some idiot set on fire in the main square of Milan over Saturday night. Heine said that “where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”
He was right and we know it.

Wonder where we’ll end this time around.


As a small token of faith in humanity, i still got some photos around of my nephew next to his giant pineapple friend. he’s a boy, he lives in his own world made of Star Wars characters and dinosaurs and yet he knows better than a lot of hate-spitting people around.

Gifts

2016 was a challenging year, but it has had its positive side.
I traveled a lot.
I met new friends.
I kept in touch with old ones.

I did all of this because I went to gigs. I went to a lot of concerts, my 2016 had more concerts than months.

Going to a gig is sometimes a bit tiring: I didn't go to a single concert in Torino, which means I had to travel to some distance each time.
It requires preparation too. You learn a lot about time management when you got a finite numbers of days off you can take at work and places to go that look relatively close but requires 2 or more transfers.
Yet I get more than feeling tired and noisy ears: I returns with lots of memories and happiness, and that's what I go back to whenever I feel a bit down or moody. Yeah, life is bad enough, but Virgi remember how amazing was Astral Weeks in Vicar Street? Or Neil Young in Milano?
I returns with new music I want to share with my friends and yeah, sometimes, I added a skein or two of yarn to the luggage, cause it's a nice souvenir. So, the only good resolution I have made this year is to keep the gigs momentum going.

Yesterday the postman buzzed as I had received something that didn't fit my letterbox. I was a bit puzzled, I don't even received bills as paper mail any longer. Sometimes some funeral home leaves some uplifting letter asking to think about my future and prepare but they're not bulky.

Mmmh, I wondered, was it some Kickstarter project I backed up in the eve of the times and completely forgot about?

No! A look at the handwriting and I knew it was a real letter, from a real person, a real friend. And inside... voilà! Meeting him and becoming his friend has been the best gift, but I don't mind the book either!

Backpackitis (or fear of Monday blues)

Backpackitis is a psychological and physical state of unwellness, which hasn’t reveived the deserved amount of attention from the scientific community. Members of that community found observing chitas rewriting Shakespeare more appealing, but perhaps this is due to some unresolved trauma or painful event they suffered in the past.

It primarily hits children and youngsters during their academic years but, due to the lack of adequate treatment and vaccines, adults are subject to possible infections too.

Its symptoms normally appears on Sunday, around lunchtime: a vague feeling of sickness and prostrations starts to appear, causing a sour mood to appear.

The mood of the patient deteriorates over the afternoon; a definite sense of dread and despair sets in, once the patient eyes the backpack, normally discarded in a corner of the room, and realizes he has to go back to school the morning after and has to get the backpack ready. 

The anxiety and bad mood can be magnified and exacerbated by factors such as assignment that was supposed to be done by Monday but won't be ready till the beginning of next century, realization of meeting again the least liked teacher of the lot, having not studied for a test, missing renewal of the bus pass.

As mentioned before there are currently no vaccines or medicines that can cure the disease. Temporary solutions are provided by enjoying long and short holidays, with the side effect that the return of backpackitis will be felt even more on its resurfacing.

Yours truly was victim of it yesterday evening, while looking at her own backpack and wondering about whether or not the access password was scribbled somewhere.

I'm however happy to report that the kind and generous appliance of chat with friends and Belgian beer kept the monster at bay.

Reality, 250 mt away

I'm looking for a new flat to move into. Good part of my family either laughs or wonders at the notion that, after spending almost an year refurbishing my current flat, I am looking forward starting the cycle from scratch.

I have a full list of requirements, first and foremost location. I don't want to move too far away from my neighbourhood. I like it a lot. It's close to green areas, city centre is barely 10 minutes away. Houses were build in a time where building regulations were not planned with Hobbits in mind, so none of my friends can reach the ceiling if they stretch their arms.
Above all, I love the feeling of belonging in this small "village".
Yeah, we got the Chinese hairdresser, the Egyptian kebab, the Romanian grocery store, but it still feels like a village.
There are two places in 300 meter span you can play boules, people will chat with you in the shops, in the supermarket, at the bus stop. I don't know that many people, yet I feel I know them all. I "know" the people I'll meet in my daily routine, the women at the supermarket cashier, the owner of the kids bookshop downstairs, the girl of the tattoo parlour across the street. I think it's a good life the one I'm building in this small area of my hometown: a life that moves on, alongside the lives on many other fellow humans. People get married, people split up, somebody has a baby, somebody else passes away. Life being life, essentially.

I'm on holiday right now. Trying, as much as possible, to unplug from reality, this morning I felt I was in a good spot, slowly buy surely reaching my goal. First time I checked the mobile in the whole day I'm way into the afternoon, that moment it's too late for coffee and too early for spritz.
There's a message from mum. Unconnected news from home, weather report and then a news.
"There was a femicide in the street you live."
And reality crashed back in.
I don't know anything about this woman. I know that she was beaten to death by her husband and that her husband enjoyed playing chess. I know her name and age, but I don't know what she looked like. 
Did I ever bumped into her on the queue at the pharmacy, at the supermarket or the post office? Did I cross her path on my way back from my morning run or my walk routine to my parents' place?

I know that she lived barely 250 mt away from me, but I don't know whether she felt safe as I do in my small village within a big city.

I know that she will become a number in our general statistics on women killings, I can foresee the comments and opinion about her and her murderer, but I don't know how the life of her family will be from now on.
I know it's such a common occurrence nowadays that the news will be reported blandly and people will move on.
Sometimes I wish I could forget what I know, because it'd be so much easier. It's hard to avoid uttter dismay and despair towards the current situation in Italy and towards mankind, it'd be simpler to give into resignation. But 250 mt away from me lived a woman that I didn't know: I just know she deserved much more than what she got in the end, and I know nobody should never ever forget it.

One in, one out - Part II

Sometimes (most of the times, actually) movies shouldn't have a sequel: you start well, with a fairly decent movie, with normally a baddie that is more interesting than the main character and then you find yourself, 20-30 years down the line starring in a movie with some silly title like "It's too hard to die, so I'll settle for some Vodafone ads, thank you".

Without having to wait 20 years, I can report about the state of my minimalist approach to the book shelves.
The project is still ongoing, even though I wonder why, given I'm the best and worse sabotateur of my own plans.

Just like any sequel movies, the beginning of chapter 2 starts in a presumably unconsequential way: grey sky, rain drizzling down gently, our heroine is in Vienna. Life goes on as usual, and I've used a business trip as a valid excuse to try out Sacher Torte at the Sacher Hotel and visit a beautiful exhibition at Albertina on Pointillism.

The exhibition is so beautiful, that after thinking over it for a day, I’ve decided to head back to Albertina and buy the catalogue of the exhibition. Damn. It’s heavy.

Culture weighs tons. But the book is so nice, that I decide that yes, sod it, I want it, I’ll buy it.

Any sense of guilt of adding up to my collection is soothed by the notion that, before leaving home, I had already prepared a bag with 7 books to be sold. Seven books to be sold minus 1 book I was about to buy equals 6 books allowance.

I sold them yesterday: 7 books equals 16 euro.

I felt pleased with myself. "See Virgi? It's not so hard, is it?"
I felt relaxed: 7 books out, equals 16 euro and a +6 books in tolerance. I reasoned that with some well aimed lending from my sister's bookcase, 6 could be the right number to get until Christmas.

I was thinking all of this, walking in the city center, enjoying the sunshine when catastrophe hit. The main shopping street of Torino was full of book stands. I somehow forgot that Portici di Carta was planned for this weekend.

It’s an event where bookshops put stands under the colonnade of one of the main street of the city center. New books, used books, antique books. Basically a strip of temptations leading me to perdition and to the metro station.

“I can do it, I can do it. These are old new books, I can buy them in bookshops as well, no point in getting them here”. The first 200 meters were easy, but then the used books sections started and…

And I happened to see a 1937 edition of short stories by Stefan Zweig, hailed by the editor as the most interesting voice coming from the German speaking areas of Europe. It’s a bit surreal, thinking that in a couple of years things would take a turn for the worse in Austria and probably by then Zweig’s volume had already disappeared from Italian shelves, given the ’38 racial laws that were put in place by Italy.

It was just 5 euro, how could I leave it there? I didn’t obviously.

7 books minus 2 books equals 5 books and 11 euro. That’s ok, I reassured myself, just keep walking.
The end. 

nd credits roll. People leave the cinema commenting on the poorness of the sequel.

In doing so, however, they miss the bonus scene in the middle of the credits.

I knew it was going to happen. I knew that my will is as strong as a melting ice-cream, but did that stop me? No! 

7 books in the end equals to 1 book allowance and a -2 euro final balance. 

The concerts planner

This year has been quite a shitty one.
If you trust old sayings, it's because 2016 was born with the misfortune of being a leap year.
Part of me thinks that I can’t discriminate an year over its divisibility by 4.
However I've already lived through a pretty good number of leap years to know that 2016 is the typical overachiever, overdoing it just to show off.

Even so, there's been some good things too.
This year I printed 2 blank calendar templates, one for the office and one for home and I started noting down gigs.
I started to write down the name of the artist on the day I was going to the concert: at the beginning of the year I already had a couple of gigs lined up, gigs that I still have to see (Francesco and I were quite keen at getting our hands on tickets for Wilco).

The gig-plan is the only agenda I’ve been keeping up to date in the past 9 months. I’ve missed appointments because I wrote them down at the wrong time, on the wrong day, at the wrong address.
Or a random combination of the 3 wrongs above. And guess what? When it comes to meeting, 2 wrongs don’t make a right, but more likely some awkward conversatio on the phone, apologising for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But the gig agenda is still keeping up. So far it suffered only one set back, in July. On the 13th I was supposed to go to Carroponte to watch Counting Crows playing. Adri & Fra had taken a day off well in advance, "parked" the kids at the grandparents, we were all set. Then a monsoon decided to fall over the area that hosts the Carroponte and the concert was cancelled only one hour to go. I think that in a couple of years the 3 of us will be able to talk about it without swearing. I think...

It's not just the concerts I enjoy. Sure the music is the main thing, but there are other parts of going to concerts. The first one is "going": in the last two years I've been to only one concert in Torino, all the other gigs have been somewhere else, scattered around Italy and Europe. Travelling is always mind-opening, even if only for a couple of days.
And then there's the people. Sure, at concerts I meet way too often people that spend their time on Facebook, taking pictures and videos (while I am singing murdering the song just one row behind them, I can't imagine the sound of those videos), leaving in the middle of a song to fetch a beer (yeah, when it comes to concert, I'm an orthodox and a snob). But then I've also met cool people. People that I might or not meet again, but that I formed a bond with thanks to the songs, or the mosquitos trying to eat us alive in Milan. People that weren't even at the concert but I happened upon in my wandering the day after and spent some good time talking about music.

Now October is starting and while the year starts accelerating towards the Christmas break, I'm getting ready for the next big round of concerts. Five, or maybe six of them, depending on whether the magic of the fairy ticket works out as I hope.

My summer with Natalia

It started by chance, while looking for alternative and solutions for the shelves crisis.
I found the podcast of an Italian radio program, "Ad Alta Voce" ( Out aloud); it broadcasts 5 days a week and it's all in the title: novels are read out aloud. When I subscribed to the podcast, they were halfway through Carlo Cassola's "La ragazza di Bube" (Bube's girl), read by Alessandro Benvenuti.

"La ragazza di Bube" is one of those novels you read at school. No, let me rephrase that: "La ragazza di Bube" is one of those novel you're made to read and write a paper about it.
And that's what I did: I read it and dutifully wrote a paper highlighting the main topics, the style of the writer, the historical background, etc. etc. I also dutifully avoided voicing my own opinion, because that wasn't requested, so my teacher could only suspect (if she ever cared) that I found this novel a terrible bore and the 2 main characters, Mara and Bube, quite insufferable.

So, no big surprise that, when I subscribed to the podcast, I assumed I was going to drop out of it very soon. Oddly though I didn't. I believe it's all because of Benvenuti: he's an amazing actor and his voice brought the story alive. I quickly caught up with the previous episode and every day I'd scroll the episode list to see if any update on the podcast was coming up.

Oh no, time didn't change me that much: the novel is still a terrible bore and I still find Mara and Bube insufferable.
But the podcast stuck with me. I retrieved old episodes, I kept up with new novels being broadcasted.
And then on the evening of my birthday I had some catch up to do, having been away for a small concert marathon, between Ferrara and Milano.

The kitchen window was open, kids were screaming in the street, I had just started chopping aubergines for dinner when Sandra Toffolatti started reading of "Voices of the evening" by Natalia Ginzburg.

None of my teachers at school deemed Natalia Ginzburg worth more than reading some bits and pieces contained in the Italian literature manual. I didn't have to memorize date and place of birth and death and I wasn't even asked to write a report about her. I knew about her life and her writing of course, but she just skirted on the edges of my reading, never too close to take a honest look at. And I wonder why: from the first few sentences I was hooked to the novel.

It's so well written, minimalist, many things left unwritten, many other described to the smallest details. The name, the prose, everything reminded me of my grandparents village. I enjoyed it so so much, I was sad when it finished. But the bittersweetness lasted the time of the weekend, as on Monday "The Little Virtues" started. Too much of a coincidence, right? A small research and it turns out Natalia Ginzburg was born one century ago and there was going to be a special series of "Ad Alta Voce" in her honor. 

After "Valentino", it's now the turn of "Family sayings".

It's become a sort of habit for me. I listen to it in the late afternoon, early evening: I might be lazying on the armchair, knitting, sitting on the small balcony of my bedroom, or doing some chores around the flat. I just know, I just feel it's time to listen to my daily dose of Ginzburg's prose and I happily tune in.

At that point, whatever I was doing falls into the background, most of the time I end up sitting on the floor, hugging my knees and staring at a vague spot on the floor, next to the mobile.

When the music of the piano signals the end of the episode, I regret it's over already, wishing it could have lasted 10 more minutes. Why do they have to make episode so short anyway?

But then I also wish episode could be 10 minutes shorter too, so that the reading would span for a longer number of days.

But "Family sayings" will wrap up next week and I haven't checked if some other works of Natalia will be read. Yet I know the moment they stop and Natalia will be gone, so will be my summer and I'm not ready to let go any of them.

One in, one out

When I moved back to Torino, one of the things I was most looking forward was the notion of my own library being finally reunited. No more books scattered around, no more digging through the shelves for a volume that is in the other city. No. Just one single and hopefully organized collection.

My dreams of shelves glory crashed almost immediately, due to a sudden and sad realization: space is not something one can ignore.
What happened is that I brought all my books back from Milano to Torino and added them to the one I already had in the flat.
Then I went down to the basement and got out the boxes of book I put there. Ok, shelves are starting to look a bit packed.
Then I went to my parents flat and brought back from there the ones I left there at different stages of my like. My mum also managed to sneak in some extra books for good measure. Ok, shelves do look way too packed, can I stack layers of book one on top of the other?
Then I discovered also my sister had books of mine in her flat and she was very keen to give them back to me, as she's running out of space too.
At that point there was only one thing to do: I went to Ikea and bought extra shelves to add on top of my book case.

Now got one shelf and half of free space, but I can't feel relaxed. It's obvious to me that, by my reading and shopping standard, it's a very tiny space. It can't last forever, but I need it to last as long as possible.
I decided to patch things up: I am trying to listen to audiobooks, reading more e-books (audiobooks are a bit more successful than e-books at the moment), going to the library.
I'm also trying to do something I've never been very good at: selling books.

As a Austen-esque Miyagi-san, I embraced a new mantra: "one in, one out". For every book I buy, one book has to be sold. For every new book I put on the shelves, an old one has to be taken off them. And possibly not be put on the bedside table or somewhere else in the flat.

So far it's going pretty well, I've got a certain number of books that, to be honest, I haven't reopened once since I finished reading them the first time. Also I've found out that I'm becoming slightly less attached to things. I'm less worried than in the past of the risk of becoming that kind of hoarder you see in TV shows, even though there are still some exceptions. For example, I still haven't decided whether the books I got for my birthday should count. And I decided that the volume of "Harry Potter and the cursed child" I somehow bought last week while waiting for the train is not really going to count. How come? Magic!

Here, there and return

Almost 3 months have passed and well, apparently there is still some soul reading the lines I wrote  on the blog.
What happened in the meantime?
Well, first and foremost I'm still alive, which should never be taken for granted, especially considering how shitty 2016 is turning out to be.
I let May pass anonymously, doing pretty much the same things I did in April. Then I went on holiday.
Now that my blood pressure is 2 floors below, seeking solace in the basement, and the fan is helping but only just about, it seems weird to remember that just few weeks ago people were complaining about the crappy weather at the beginning of June, and how rainy and cold it was.
When this was happening, I was enjoying the nice and warm weather of Ireland.

I dropped in what was probably the longest spell of good weather of the past years. It rained only one morning and I didn't care much about it because I spent it lazing on the sofa and reading. But for the rest of the time the sun was shining on me as I walked up and down in the Burren and when I put my feet in the ocean... just to retreat quickly, because it doesn't matter how lovely the weather can be: the ocean is still the ocean, i.e. very cold.

The time flew quickly but gently: many cups of tea, lots of poetry, chatting, music, cloud-tree-rock-spotting. Around the Burren you can find shapes of about everything: dogs, rabbits, scary people, thinking people, noses and hands, ships and planes. 

I noted down lots of name, titles, quotes that are still waiting to be organized and will probably remain so for another 6 months.

I stocked up on books at Charley Byrne's and stumbled by pure chance on a knitting meet up. It feels like a lifetime ago. I guess this bad feeling has to do with the fact that, after 10 days of blissful, fruitful laziness, I went back to work.

From Ireland I went to California without stopping in Torino first: 2 weeks away from home, with nice weather, lots of music shopping I didn't really taken into account, so that when it was time to head back to Italy, in between books, CDs and vinyls I looked (again) as I was moving my whole house content on the red casket on wheel, otherwise known as my suitcase.

What else? Oh yeah, I turned blue. Well my hair did turn blue, more or less the shade of this Hawaiian punch: 

Circles

Most of what makes life is routine. Utterly boring routine. As much as we all like to think and dream, routine is our life and we get used to it incredibly well, in spite of that little voice we can sometimes hear whispering from the back of our mind: "This is just like the Matrix, when it was one single movie and you think it was cool, only to find out it spiraled out into a trilogy and you were left wondering what the hell is Monica Bellucci doing there. You know that, as much as there is more and better stuff in world cinematography than the Matrix, there is more in life than this routine, so go out and get it!"
Pity most of the time the voice is muted by the need to start the washing machine, or ironing or paying bills or, even worse, going to work.

Today was meant to be yet another routine Sunday: bit of cleaning, bit of crosswords, reading, buying flowers, sitting on the armchair thinking of sorting out the wardrobe. Usual. But then I remembered there was a street fair not far from my flat and thought it was some good chance to find flowers for the kitchen there: only 2 hours after deciding to go, I was ready, which is by itself an amazing achievement for me, something that should have made me notice I was quite resolutely stepping out of routine.

I walked through the street fair, dodging political activists trying to flood me with their leaflets (mayoral election are approaching quickly) while accepting the kebab and pizza place menus, looked at the shops and the market stalls. There's a shop, right on the corner of the square. I walked by it twice last week, but at odd times so this was my first chance to have a look inside. I was curios because it's hard to label: from the outside it looked like a gift shop mashed together with a record shop. It's an odd mix, could it truly be so?
I opened the door, stepped in and... yeah, "L'emporia di Pinin" (Pinin's Emporium, what's not to like in a shop with such a cool name?) is a gift shop mashed together with a record shop.
I started browsing and before even reaching letter B in the stacks I already found out what I wanted.
I took the record out and had a look at the rest of the shop.

The guy sitting next to the records put some music on (to cover the atrocities played outside) and when I reached the counter he asked me why I picked that specific record.

"Oh, I like the Autumn Defense a lot"
And so it started a conversation with him, and the other 2 shopkeepers about music, Autumn Defense and Wilco, Wilco's gigs of the past and the future.

I left with best wishes of enjoying the record and I walked home almost as fast as a London commuter. I put the record on and listened to it twice. It's a neat album and the proof that I might not escape it wholly but I can still give routine a run for its money every now and then.

Most of the time I feel a bit of an alien when I talk about music: I try to stick to the usual suspects (my sis, Ciccio, Francesco...) because I know that they will not look at me as if I've grown a second head overnight when I talk about my favorite artists.
If I chat with a colleague or a stranger (sometimes the 2 categories overlaps, at least music-wise), it's a painful experience that can be sum up as follows: Virgi tries to explain the music she likes by naming some bands, person stares blankly at Virgi, Virgi explains the genre, "Is it something like Swedish House Mafia?", Virgi sobs in one corner.
Today nothing like this happened. Routine was broken and it might look a very tiny, unimpressive change in the routine: but it felt huge to me; it relieved me from some musical loneliness, so to speak, and gave me a new refuge from routine, at a walking distance from home.

March in few lines

The blog laid abandoned, uncared for and unvisited for more than a month.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been to London, saw Glen Hansard’s gig, changed hair colour twice and moved back to Torino definitely (well, as definitely as my movings, or pilgrimage around Europe can be).

And now I’ll have to decide what to do with the blog: as usual, winter has been harsh to my mood, and I feel as if I don’t really have much to say. Blogger’s block?

Perhaps, because at the same time, my mails are flourishing. Some days I’m just tempted to go and close the blog, some other times I convince myself that I just need a quite moment to gather my idea and start again. I guess we’ll discover it soon enough.

chaos, redux

I had packed everything I needed to move. Midway through packing I looked around me and reassured myself that yes, it was all chaos around me, but chaos would be gone once I finished packing. Looking back, I'm not sure what I was thinking. Was I even thinking? Maybe I was simply deluding myself.

Nothing is created or destroyed, but merely transformed, right? In my case, it's better to say that "chaos is created, yet cannot be destroyed but merely boxed and moved".

So the moving happened last Sunday. I obviously had to pick the day with the heaviest amount of rain of the last 2 months, as my own personal implementation of Murphy's law.

In a Miyagi-like move, boxes out boxes in, in the early afternoon the chaos had moved to Torino.
It was somehow neatly hidden in boxes and bags and then one hour later it was scattered all around the flat.

Ah, it feels good to see things don't really change: I reckoned that as long as I made enough space for me to lay on the bed, dug a small path to reach the kitchen and the bathroom and have enough room to open and close the entrance door I was going to be fine.
And since I managed to do all of the above, I felt that order could still wait a little. After all, I suspect chaos loves company.

chaos

Thursday night finds me fully awake around 11. I manage to fall asleep at 3 in the morning. I wake up 5 hours later, feeling like a zombie.
Friday night finds me in bed by 11. I'm just too tired.
Saturday morning and my eyes are wide open by 5:30. I feel and look like a zombie.
Internal clock, seriously, WTF?

Anyway, no time to waste on eye bags and general feeling of unwell being cause Saturday is the day. I'm packing! To avoid any possible danger of procrastination, I do the only thing I know to force me to get started for real. I drop almost everything I got in the bedroom on the bed and around it.

Simple as that: if I want to sleep, well I need to pack.
And that's what I did: put some music on and set to work for the whole day. I still have a "couple of things" that needs to be packed away but I still got 5 days before panicking officially and, most important of all, I cleared the bed in time to crash on it in the evening.

It's satisfying to see chaos reducing little by little. And to see the bed resurface too (by 3 in the afternoon my intake of coffee was spiraling out of control).
The house is messy, but chaos is gone from the bedroom, or so it'd seem.
Because what I did was boxing my chaos in some boxes, so that it can be easily transported into a different place where it will be explode onto my face the moment I tear open the first box.

And I apparently forgot to mention (till now) of the chaos that is having a limbo party in the leaving room. Oh well, I still got 5 days (well, evening) to sort it all out.
Shit. While typing I realized I only got 4 evening as I'm taking the train back to Torino on Friday.
Ok.
Panic.

Order, plans and other failures

In two weekends time, my brother in law, a wonderful man that we affectionally call "he who closes the coffee machine so tight that not even the Hulk will ever be able to open it again", is going to come and help me moving all my stuff back to Torino. Reason why next weekend I'm staying in Milano to pack the above mentioned stuff. If I just have a brief look around my flat, I can only shudder, close my eyes and hope for the best.

Up to few days ago, I felt rather confident: I'm going to use one day to pack everything and spend the rest of the weekend resting or meeting with the few friends I got in Milan. But then, yesterday night I had the insane idea of starting packing a box and now I'm not so sure 2 days will be enough.

First of all, if thieves were to visit my apartment tomorrow while I'm at work, I wouldn't probably notice the difference. I got things scattered all over the place: documents, photos, books, DVDs, mismatched pair of shoes (I can understand mixing socks, but shoes? Seriously???), an amount of cables that could be probably wrapped twice around the Equator line. And also: plug adapter, inflatable dress hanger (I knew I had bought them! Wonder how they ended behind the summer shoes though), an amount of pens to put any stationery shop to shame, newspaper clippings, screwdrivers and paper clips... Where do all these things come from?! Was it me amassing them over time?!

At this point I should have just taken a big bag and started throwing stuff away. I didn't so now, I have no place to sit on the sofa, and just some tiny little space on the desk to place the MacBook. All this chaos is slightly driving me mad(der than usual), but somehow I find denial much more relaxing. But this evening is completely different: I'm focused! I'm determined! Nothing will stop me and nothing will distract me! Oh look what I found!

The baby Groot amigurumi! I thought I lost it! Oh, you see, it's not complete, it still misses the smile, the arms, well the branches, and I need to find a small vase to put it in. Well arms are a small little thing, it shouldn't take me too long and I'm pretty sure there is some small box or vase around this mess I can use. I think I can first finish the amigurumi and then take care of less urgent task, like putting my house and life back in order.

The uglified Milanese

"Il milanese imbruttito" is very popular in Italy: it's a webpage and Facebook account making fun of the different type of people living in Milan, always on the run, always focused on business, always ready to snap.

The Sanremo week

The question is now how to describe to non-Italians what the Festival of Sanremo is. The big issue here is why: why is the festival still a thing and why should I bother trying to make any sense out of it?
Well, let's define it first and move to the finer details later on.

You don't really have to call it with its complete name "Festival delle musica italiana di Sanremo", Sanremo will do: everybody knows what you're referring to with that name. It's a week long competition that has been running for 66 years: journalists, photographers, pseudo-celebrities and singers flock to the town and it feels the whole nation has fall into a sick z-version of Groundhog Day. Everyday is the same: non-stop talking of the festival, tv, newspaper and so on talking about the songs, singers, etc.
Most of the song are hopelessly bad, it's a mashup of the worse of average dumb television.
It's more a marathon than a music show: it runs way over midnight and it's followed by an  after festival show that runs until... I don't know, I never watched it, but I know it exists.
It feels impossible to escape it. But at the same time is extremely easy, cause switching the TV off is more than enough to cut more than half the pain away.

So far I watched only 5 minutes of the festival, when Elio e le storie tese were playing. Francesca texted me when they finally made it to the stage and when the song was over I turned the TV off and went to sleep, as it was quite late already.
I am a snob when it comes to music and guess what? I'm perfectly fine with it.

The week of Sanremo means that I watch even less TV than usual and spend more time doing other things. This year I've been writing a lot of mails, listened to music and discovered poetry.
The big final is on Saturday, but I'll be in Torino where I don't even have a TV set to keep off.
In the past I would make an effort to read some news about it, because it was impossible to avoid the office chit-chat about it. But since I don't speak to anybody at work, it felt right to not bother at all and spend my time otherwise.

I could have started packing my stuff, since end of month is going to be here soon and then I'll have to move all my stuff to Torino. But I thought spending 32 minutes listening to Dave Matthews Band with Bela Fleck & the Flecktones would be much much better:

And at that point it was too late to pack, but look! I still got some spare 23 minutes for one more song: