Charlie's Angels

I met Carmen on monday; in the evening, after a terribly long day I was waiting for a miracle to happen and give some sense to my time. So I pulled her from the telephone and forced to meet me. After 7 years. We walked through Catania´s boulevards, ordered an aperitief and walked again. We spent 4 hours together, but it looked like those were not enough. My first memories are of Carmen, calling me Giupeppe from her tricycle through the barks of Wolf, my godmather´s german sheperd. She opened herself to me and told me some of her secrets; I did the same with mines, feeling comfortable, and happy to have met her accidentally. So nice to feel so close to a person you barely contact and never see.

Giancarlo picked me up, as if he were doing it every day, as if time had never passed, as if I never flew to The Netherlands. This time we were with the two of us, and headed to the Ostello, a Youth hostel built on the subterranean river flowing under Catania. It was a Monday night; still the terrace was full of young people drinking beer and smoking pot. No girls managed to join our conversation, and we felt close and happy and proud – beer was taking power over the accumulated adrenaline of the day. We headed to La Chiave, a place where I used to get drunk on peach-vodka added-up kilkenny when I was 16, but we managed to get only to the Irish pub. And there we saw 4 angels, sitting on stools, singing their call to microphones, and flapping their wings on us. Florinda was charming us with her smiley voice, De Franco sisters were providing a simple but solid basis – everything you would expect from good pop music; Erica embraced the whole with her violin and directed by slowly moving her eyes. The music flew direct, raw and uncorrupted, and made me think of Musica Nuda by Perrucci e Magoni. Giancarlo decided to approach Erica, and asked her for permission of publishing this picture here; Charlie was nowhere to find, so Erica stayed with us and chatted the whole break. The whiskeys I drunk had their effect on my empty stomach, and I managed to make myself ridiculous again, by dancing, alone, on their final hit. Still I did not hesitate to thank them for transmuting this wonderful day in a unforgettable night.

Thanks ladies, I hope Charlie will let our ways meet again.



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Translated in italian upon request:

Ho incontrato una mia cugina che non vedevo da 6 anni. Abbiamo passeggiato per I viali di Catania, bevuto un aperitivo, e parlato per ore. Sentirsi cosí vicino ad una persona con cui raramente si é in contatto é stupendo. Le mie memorie piú remote sono di lei su un triciclo che mi chiama Giupeppe, avevo credo 4 anni, e lei 1. Si é aperta con me, e mi ha raccontato alcuni dei suoi segreti. A mio agio, ho fatto lo stesso con i miei. Sono contento di averla incontrata per caso.

Giancarlo mi é venuto a prendere come se lo facesse ogni giorno, come se il tempo non fosse mai passato e non fossi mai fuggito in Olanda. Questa volta eravamo noi due da soli, e ci siamo diretti all’Ostello, che é costruito sul fiume sotterraneo che scorre sotto Catania. Era lunedí notte, e ciononostante I tavolini erano pieni di giovani che bevevano birra e fumavano erba. Nessuna ragazza é riuscita ad intromettersi nel nostro dialogo, ed eravamo vicini e felici ed orgogliosi – la birra assumeva il commando sull’adrenalina del giorno. Ci siamo diretti verso La Chiave, un posto dove mi ubriacavo a birra corretta con vodka alla pesca quando avevo 16 anni, ma siamo riusciti a raggiungere solo l’Irish pub. E lí abbiamo visto 4 angeli, seduti su sgabbelli, che cantavano i loro richiami al microfono, e che battevano le ali su di noi. Florinda ci affascinava con la sua voce sorridente, mentre le sorelle De Franco formavano una base semplice ma solida – tutto ció che ti potresti aspettare da della buona musica pop; Erica avvolgeva il tutto con il suo violino, e dirigeva con lenti movimenti degli occhi. La musica fluiva diretta, cruda e incorrotta, e mi faceva pensare a Musica Nuda di Perrucci e Magoni. Giancarlo si é deciso ad avvicinarsi ad Erica, e le ha chiesto il permesso di pubblicare questa foto su questo blog; Charlie era introvabile, e quindi Erica é rimasta a parlare con noi per tutta la pausa. I whiskey che avevo bevuto ebbero effetto sul mio stomaco vuoto, e sono riuscito a rendermi ridicolo per l’n-sima volta, ballando, da solo, sul loro ultimo pezzo. Eppure non ho esitato a ringraziarle per aver trasformato questo giorno meraviglioso in una notte indimenticabile.

Waiting

Being ill means to wait. Saturday my father has been recovered in the hospital. Preparation for the operation did not start before Sunday evening. The rest was just waiting. I did not manage to sleep much, as I suppose my dad and mom could not either. Luckily Elio e le storie tese was playing in Catania. Edo and I attended their concert, at the university campus, together with a multitude of students and fans. It was just the stupid kind of fun I needed so desperately that night, it was just perfect.

Monday woke up at 6, and drove to the hospital, where my father was waiting. At 7:30 they guided him to the surgical room; I kissed him good luck, and did not know whether that was the last time I would see him. I left my mom there waiting, and preferred to go home to wait. Operation ended around 14:30, so I went back to the hospital and waited there for the intensive care room to open its doors.

I was allowed in, and there I saw my father, lying on a bed, hanging on machines. He was conscious, awake, and experiencing deep pain and begging for help. I hate hospitals, I hate the rotten orange smell hanging around; I hate facing pain, facing helplessness, and my ignorance. I hate my fear. I could not pass out, so I opted for sweating my claustrophoby. Running away was no option, so I put my panic in the waiting mode, and counted the seconds between me and the end of this visit.

In my soaked clothes I waited for the intensive care host to help us through the bureaucracy. Medical data are still passed with huge paper directories, which are filled by hand with all kind of incorrect data. Every hospital department fills those forms again and again, and manages to credit the patients with diseases they never had, make them younger or older, and eventually changing their gender. I undersigned a number of statements, including any discharge of responsibility for the hospital; never discussed those kind of things with my father, I had no legal right in signing those papers.

Operation succeeded, and my father makes a reasonable chance of surviving this, still we will have to wait for some check-ups to confirm the good news. Went home. I haven’t had lunch, so I decided to fast the whole day and skipped dinner as well. In the city Charlie’s Angels were going to play some celebrating songs for me – but that’s the story of another post…

Lemon

Expensive items help us recognizing the value of the thing surrounding us. You might need to work harder to get them, so you will appreciate them more. Like lemons. I used to have three lemon trees in Sicily, and lemons were for free in the whole year. Every now and then I would tear a lemon leaf from the three, and stick my nose in it, just for the sake of it.

In the Netherlands lemons are a rare fruit, wanted as expensive. So when you cook, you should use the juice as the skin. As in the polpette alla siciliana, that I preparred today. An attack to the success of my diet, made of minced meat, pecorino, flower, pan grattato, persil, wine, eggs, laurie, and with the unmistakable taste of lemon in it. Recepy is not mine, so I wont publish it, but the dish is as close as an oral orgasm meat balls can get.

Whores, brothers and travels

Bordels were a place of inspiration for artists. Often whores, the most by women hated kind of woman, revealed more life and poetry than ever hidden in the life of the common man. That´s why the italian law who closed bordels at the end of World War II has always sounded hypocrit to me. Bordels are now, at least in Italy, associated with the fascism years, the pre-war era in which whores had a recognised place in our society. Camilleri's La pensione Eva is a travel into the myth's of sicilan's bordel, and the initiation to sex of a young guy. Very well written, the story flows from shyness to curiosity, desire and passion, love poetry and luxury, pity and greed. It's a good book, but I guess for the 6€ you could rent Paprika from Tinto Brass and get even a better idea of what that world looked alike.

Pepe Carvalho does not need to visit bordels. His woman is a whore, and they know how to enjoy themselves between the recepies that Pepes creates. The problem is that Charo has left him for Andorra; tired of waiting for him, tired of fighting for a place Pepe did not allowed her. So Pepe wanders through Barcellona, following the case of someone apparently suicided because of intrigues and briberies in the city building its facade for the Olympic games. Il fratellino is a bundle of stories in a book (being il fratellino the longest one). Since I have almost read every book of Manuel Vasquéz Montalbán, I had to use small stories to fill-up my evenings. But small stories do not fit Montalbán writing - too much synthesis of facts, in a style in which facts are unessential, but far more important is how one lives them.

To follow his stories Pepe Carvalho often travels, but it is never like the travels of Bill Bryson. A book about travels is something you should never bring with you while travelling, so I did not. Bill tries to follow the pattern of a trip around Europe he did when he was younger. He succedes in following his impulsiveness, his love for big cities and capitals, his marvellous literary fantasy. The guy is fun, very fun. Sometimes he is so funny that it gets boring. The book is well written and gave me the feeling of what it means being a tourist. Most interesting part was to see how being tourist changed over the years - and reminds me on how being a tourist like Bryson is, is already past tense.

Changes

Hey boy, the times are-a-changing, it's blowing in the wind. Stock exchange markets are going down, Bush mandate will be finished for good soon, Beppe Grillo organised the V-day, and world temperature is rising. So I took a look at the mirror. And saw that I changed as well. Wrinkles have appeared on my face; not only on the corner of my abused eyes, but also on my forehead. Long thin wrinkles alternate with a texture of tiny movements, irregularities, malformations. Most of my hair has abandoned me long time ago. Of the remaining ones, some have changed political faith - the most common and false conversion, from fascism to catholicism, and scream for recognition. The route is traced. After this only Viagra will follow, and after that demency, diapers and finally death. The times are-not-a-changing.

Holidays in France - III

Summer has been a chimera this year. Except for the holidays. More than the sun, more than the see drying salt on my lips, a circus has remained impressed. They announced themselves with a megaphone, mounted on a car driving at walking speeds among the mobile homes; they promised exotic animals, acrobats, magicians and clowns. They gave us a dream. To occupy the empty space of the square was a silent exercise, that took a complete sunny afternoon. The magic was inside the space of the yellow tent, hiding the impossible to the non-paying eyes.
A man, his wife, 2 guys coming from an impossible part of this world, and a young girl captured our attention for 3 hours. They did everything, from equilibrium tricks, to acrobacies, and domating wild animals. They gave us presents, they sang for us. They let us touch their serpents. They brought us somewhere else, in a place that did not exist, but was created by their simple presence. And now I am full of yellow.

To escape the hypnosis I visited the beach. The sand was fine and white, the water fresh and blue, the girls were beautiful and topless. I have never seen so many naked tits crowded in so little space. It was exceptional, I could not help but stare. Nipples, tits, navels, asses - my god! I have learned an amazing number of dissimulating techniques to allow my staring to prolong above any decency limit; some included sun glasses, or the participation of my kids in astonomically boring games which were targeting solely the contemplation of 20 years old breasts reacting to the temperature of the sea water. The most advance techniques that I developed consisted in actually staring at the very tit, but doing it so evidently that it did not seem real, or looking just a couple of centimeters below, or above, or before. Every cell of my retina has been exercised. Any form of dissimulation failed when I saw her. The silicon tit. No magazine can make justice to a real round shaped, rock-solid Si-tit. Its unsensitivity to every external stimulus, including gravity, the spherical shape, the tense nipple. Unbeatable. I turned around, only to find a 40 years woman, not a single cell of fat on her body, incredible smile and transpiring that luxury that only 40-years divorced and rich women possess, instructing her 2 horny teen-ager daughters on which boy to lock with the view of their marmorean naked bodies. Not me, in any case. Needless to say, my observations were purely esthetical.

Crying

Talking to plants is said to help them grow beautiful. Probably it helps also women to become more beautiful. We should talk to women, let them know how special they are, how beautiful we find them. Even if they don't believe us, or don't listen to us, or even if they are not conscious at all. At least, this seems the message of Hable con ella, a touching film of Pedro Almodovár that I happened to watch yesterday. I must admit, the theme is controversial, loving a vegetative woman, helping her back to life, despites everything, it is something it can keep public debats going on forever. Almodovar has chosen the way of art, and through dance, poetry, music and corridas walks back and forth through life and death, desperation and love, meaning and vanity. I must admit I cried, abudantly, watching the movie. Maybe it was smile of Benigno, or the breast of Alicia, maybe it was dancing Café Müller, or the dove of Caetano Veloso, but I could not help it.



or I was just envyous of Marco, who was able to cry at every manifestation of beauty.

Dicen que por las noches
no más se le iba en puro llorar;
dicen que no comía,
no más se le iba en puro tomar.
Juran que el mismo cielo
se estremecía al oír su llanto,
cómo sufrió por ella,
y hasta en su muerte la fue llamando:
Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay cantaba,
ay, ay, ay, ay, ay gemía,
Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay cantaba,
de pasión mortal moría.
Que una paloma triste
muy de mañana le va a cantar
a la casita sola
con sus puertitas de par en par;
juran que esa paloma
no es otra cosa más que su alma,
que todavía espera
a que regrese la desdichada.
Cucurrucucú paloma, cucurrucucú no llores.
Las piedras jamás, paloma,
¿qué van a saber de amores?
Cucurrucucú, cucurrucucú,
cucurrucucú, cucurrucucú,
cucurrucucú, paloma, ya no le llores