Montecristo

Finished reading the Conte di Montecristo from Dumas. This novel is the story of a revenge, a tremendous revenge of a man who is re-birth. Nice book, in spite of its 2 volumes of more of 400 pages each, I have swallowed it in less than 1 month. In his writing, Dumas does not pay too much attention to the writing style, with surprising bad results every now and then: melodrammatic dialogs now and then. But he puts everything on the story, the building of evil and execution of revenge.

The books starts poorly, with good characters which are far too good, and bad characters which are clearly bad. Looks like a US movie. But things change fast, as the doubts find his way in everybody, and feelings get mixed.

A nice novel, in the end. Above all, because a legend says that the torcederos, i.e. the people makng cigars, were entertained with the reading of a book, and some of them liked this book so much, that their cigars took their name. Clearly, Montecristo are the best cigars in the world, as Pepe Carvalho smokes them in his melancholy excesses.

Anniversary

Today we celebrated our wedding anniversary. Weather was wonderful, so after a quick visit of parents and relatives, we headed to the Grote Peel. The Grote Peel is a natural park in which people is trying to preserve the old condition of a dutch "veen", i.e. the ground water is kept as high as possible (no drenage) and grass is minimized.

Those kind of "veen" have been destroyed by mining peat, which is the english for "veen".

The walk was nice and relaxings. We could not see a lot of birds, which were hiding from the heat and the tourists, but we managed a couple of frogs. Milo really enjoys those excursions, whilst Kyara can't wait for doing something more urban.

Cutting edges

Today I cut my nails.

They were a part of me.
They really felt like me, but after I cut them they were others than me.
So,
now I am a different me, at least a lesser me than I was yesterday.
You said that you loved me,
will you still love a lesser me?

But I feel the same,
only with shorter nails,
but still me.
So, I feel I am not contained in my nails.
But where then? Where am I?

I have tried to trace the boundary of myself by tracing the boundary of my body.
But, is it the right thing to do?
Those are violated daily, for instance by food.
I ate a peer today.
It wasn't me, before I ate it.
Then it entered me, and joined me.
Partially, since part of it will be expelled in a way or another,
but still, my stomach corroded it,
my guts absorbed it.
That peer does not exist any more;
I do.

What am I?

Maybe I am a process.
Like the software in a processor,
what I am is what I do.
Now I am writing this post,
so I am the post.
And you,
you said that you loved me,
reading this post,
are joining me now.

While walking I am a walk.
While sitting I am sitting.
While loving you,
I am the love,
and later I am the sleeping.

One day I will die,
as a program stops when the underlying processor breaks down,
and I will be the death.

London (2)

Daniele lives in a house in central London made of dirt. Such houses cannot be cleaned, and every attempt to do so is futile and dangerous.

Saturday was a good day to be in London. Wheather was warm, and the city seemed to explode in the celebration of this unexpected summertime. Daniele and I walked, and walked, and talked about life and procedures for happiness.

Refusing to merge with London night life, we celebrated a birthday party at Cafè de Paris; in such a poetic place the host and their invitée evoked ancient poets, and clarified existence by the myth. Daniele could not join the hymns, because of his imperfect use of the language; he adopted contemplation as a mean to enlightment.

Going back home we got trapped in the usual 3am traffic jam at Regent street, which reminded us of materialism and vulgarity.

Sunday Daniele and I said each other good-bye, promised promises that won't hold, and parted. The rest was insignificant as expected.


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Post post: pictures of the poetic birthday party can be found here. Daniele and I are easy recognizable in one of those.

London

Amazing. They have water here, and food (though a little bit fattier than what I am used to), and even electricity. All those worries for nothing....

Yesterday I have seen London tower, a castle build on old roman walls. From there we took a boat to London-eye, which we didn't visit - preferring the more joyful graves in Wenstminster Abbey. I have learned that London City and Wenstminster City are 2 different cities within the same urban area, which we call London, and that the Big Ben, the Parliament as well as Buckingam Palace are all in Wenstminster and not in London city.

At night I called home, and I was asked.....yes darling, I miss you all already, we didn't see each other for about 12 hours.

Going out was easy. London is full of people, pubs, restaurants. You can drink whatever, wherever, so we ended up, unwillingly, into a Dutch-pub, where they served me a Leffe on a pint glass, with almost no foam on top! Those british know nothing about beer, even though the only thing they do at night is drinking.

In the rare occasions Daniele was not looking at women, we managed to have some conversation. He confessed me that he feels like being a number in his new job, and that London is not as exciting as a small village on the Mediterranean area. So he is slowly and painfully raising some money in the difficult attempt to come back to Sicily, and start a real life there, and for good.

Today is sunny here, and warm. We are going to play the tourists all day long.

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The computer I am using is playing all mp3 and wma files accelerated, whatever players I use for the job. I have two suspicions: an analog one (being the computer a german one, I suspect a mismatch between the clock of the audio card and the supply voltage in UK) and a digital one (the mp3 codec is an old one, probably misinterpreting all new formats). But I couldn't solve the problem, yet.

Worried

I am worried. On Friday I will fly to London, UK, and I don't know what is going to wait for me up there. According to experienced people the biggest problem is food, but I am not going to stay long, I guess I can manage for 2 days. Water is a more serious problem, but I guess I can always distill some Thymes water for drinking - or switch completely to beer (which in the past was used as water to prevent deseases caused by pollution). I will bring some battery powered devices, and a manual recharger, even though I am not sure what I can do with those in such a country. I feel like Cristoforo Colombo, travelling towards the unknown and the "uncivilized". Exciting, but dangerous feeling. I should have listened to the wise advices and never made those tickets.

Buona Pasqua

Today we searched for eggs in the garden. It was a difficult quest, requiring focus and determination. Happy Easter.

Le Grand Content

The difference is why you drink