Accidentally...

Mystic Rectangle

2009-05-16T18:16:00.001-07:00

A rare and sometimes misunderstood Mystic Rectangle pattern develops when two sets of oppositions are sextile to each other. The aspect pattern must have the following connections: two oppositions, two sextiles and two trines. The Mystic Rectangle will always contain the same polarity of elemental energies; masculine (Air and Fire) or feminine (Earth and Water). Generally, this configuration is considered to be a "mild" aspect pattern in that it generally does not generate a lot of discomfort, resistance, or require convoluted actions in order to gain productivity. The individual with a Mystic Rectangle does gain considerable benefit from the planetary configuration's balance and structure. There is a high degree of synchronization between the four planets when the Mystic Rectangle is triggered. Unfortunately, understanding and acknowledging the balance is not the rule - the individual must consciously react with awareness and mindful endeavors. Placing too much attention onto any one of the four placements will throw the energies out of balance and set the individual's well-intended efforts adrift.

The power of the Mystic Rectangle takes practice in order to gain the most benefit from it. The masculine reception of the Mystic Rectangle is expressed through an extrovert nature by the individual. The feminine reception of the configuration is expressed through an introvert nature. The problem arises through the two oppositions which can cause the individual to bounce out of control between four opposing influences. The sextiles and trines must be used to unify and support the polarities. Another danger for individuals with this pattern is to become too self-contained and over-powered by the influences. Once the individual has learned how to harness the energies of the configuration, the decisions and choices in life become much easier to initiate and participate in.

KEEP ON MOVING BABY

2008-06-20T15:39:00.000-07:00

What can I say? The only thing I remember about this is a little girl sitting on a Persian carpet in a total trance and experimenting a transition of phase while she was trasporting blood vessels and grey matter to be disgregated in a different place. Not sure where. But yes, do keep on moving baby!

Legend

2008-06-07T11:00:00.001-07:00

I met the wonderful and very drunk Sharon Shannon in a pub in Galway in 1996. I have to say I was very drunk myself, so I don't recall much of that conversation. I just remember being the only Italian (and only girl, apart from the wild Sharon) among Irish drunkens and being taken the piss out of virtually anything I said and having such a laugh. My thoughts and all my love go to those Irish who haven't ridden the Celtic Tigre and are still living on simple priciples, foremost of which: always buy a pint to the gunnypig! Yuk!

T.A.Z. for Consideration

2008-06-05T09:25:00.000-07:00

Picture time as being solid. Compact. Picture yourself holding a blade. Cut a dice of time, and shift it aside. Fill it in grey. Place yourself within it. Noise isn’t there, blabbers, chatters, voices in favour of, voices against: nothing is heard. Life whirls outside it, all is still inside. Time doesn’t flow. Losing identity is but a goal. Isolation appears as a means. Discard intruders, ignore by-comers.
In this deferral absence’s a trigger, a magnet for killers of solitude. All about density of daily stupidity comes to the fore. Sift through your motives and find what’s exceeding the purpose of savvy routine. The dice will bounce back in time, its matter will suffer a transition of phase returning to flow. But whatever outcome this crossing will have, a modified heart stands ahead.

The body is a prison

2008-05-31T14:48:00.000-07:00

Chiron in Aries in the 9th House oppose Uranus

2008-05-30T10:51:00.000-07:00

Aries is self-assertiveness: Chiron weakens everything it touches. Chiron acts in a weakening direction, developing knowledge through hurt. This knowledge will be used to help others to relieve from pain, although it won't help you to recuperate your sense of self purpose. A life spent healing others, while no one seems to be willing to heal your wounds. All this falls into the 9th house. Most of your wounds and of your knowledge of pain comes from a longing for higher knowledge that never seems to be fully accessed. Again, a life spent teaching others what you won't be able to achieve yourself. Chiron the healer tells you where you may be able to heal someone else's wounds including your own: heal self-esteem through higher education, infuse a sense of achievement, and, especially, do not focus on who you are not. Do not focus on yourself. Heal yourself through education.

CHIRON EDUCATES ACHILLES

Uranus the genius strikes again. This time it strikes what no one should touch. Uranus the unpredictable, the electric plug where you get your fast motion from and your brilliant ideas. Uranus the rebellious, the discoverer, the pioneer governs your 3rd House of dealings, writing and siblings. Pure electricity governs every single movement: fast thinking, quick judging. When Uranus opposes Chiron, the pupil challenges the master. You run in the opposite direction to your woundedness where you meet Uranus, who shows you the bigger picture. When the bigger picture is too difficult to handle, you run in the opposite direction where you meet your woundedness again and Chiron. Uranus shines a light on the wounds, and points to new material to work with. Understanding again becomes unbearable. Again you run in the opposite direction. Again you meet Uranus. All this is happening between your 3rd and your 9th Houses: you run away and bump into some hurt, so you hide away in higher learning and research and learn some more. That is not enough: you travel again, and find some more hurt. Back to your books, back to your research. A perennial hide-and-seek, and infinite running away from your unresolved issues, until your wounds are all uncovered. Until the pupil has taught the master that there is nowhere to go but yourself. Until the master has learnt how to shift the gaze from within to without. Dominate the pain with stillness. Face your challenges and develop strength and resilience through knowledge.

It ought to be somewhere else

2008-05-27T14:04:00.000-07:00

In another life, it ought to have been different. Different scenery, different faces, different wording. It feels like living in a parallel movie, with the guest star being somewhere else. Just like living in absence. This body is somewhere else compared to where it should be by now. As if it took a wrong turn, missed a crossroads, fell into the wrong pipe. How do you turn back now. One way or another there's no turning back. I really really wish I could be Somewhere Else:

O tambien esta, que en realidad es bastante hortera, pero bueno, tieno algo que se conforma:

Bueno, ya que estamos en ese mood superhortera de improbabil musica italiana, esta tampoco esta mal, que yo tambien quemaría mas o menos todo (sobre todo estos vestidos absurdos que le gustan un monton a la irene...):

HOME

2008-05-26T02:56:00.000-07:00

Memories

2008-05-17T13:04:00.000-07:00

I just found this old video of Madridteacher.com where I used to work last year. Never liked appearing on video, but I'm particularly fond of this one for personal reasons. Probably the strangest time of my life. I had just ended the most relevant relationship of my life, I was far from my natural environment, which is academia, and I was dealing with a job which I had no experience of. I was definetely depressed, but I actually managed to look cheerful on video, which I find surprising. How can it be that the way you come across is never really the way you feel inside? When I recorded this video I was devastated and yet it looks like I'm all happy. Weird. Seriously weird.

Cumbersome

2008-05-13T14:13:00.000-07:00

Just getting round to writing a piece for a conference I'm going to, while I'm working on different future plans. That makes me realise there actually is a future. I'd gotten used to the idea that there wasn't.
It has been a while now since I've got involved with astrology. I read my chart almost daily and that of my friends very often, and amazingly I find what I read comes true. It's possibly a trick that present circumstances are playing to me, although I could mention quite a few instances of small time forecasts that happened.
One thing I know for sure, and that's that I'd never been so cumbersome as I am in this phase, and yet, I read my chart and I see the future in the form of symbols moving around the plan day by day. That, in other words, is the future. What would the point be in producing predictions if I thought there was none, as I had recently started to theorise?
At the end of the day, astrology may just be one big waste of time. However, receiving and giving hope has never felt better.

Rios and Beyond

2008-05-04T09:55:00.000-07:00

I must have gone back now a thousand times to listen to this piece of music. Every time it inspires new thoughts depending on my mood and on what/who surrounds me. I'm now in the solitude of my home, and what I perceive is not what was yesterday, or when someone's around. In any case, this music deserves to be listened in one's own solitude. It springs from an intuition by Murcof (aka Fernando Corona) who's done a fantastic representation of what cosmic objects mean to him. It was then brought onto the open scene, presented to a stunned and mute audience, and re-elaborated through Truffaz' A-Thousand-and-One-Nights-perception of sound, something immaterial as only sound can be, or even beyond. Something so immense to even be immaterial.
There's a blood vessel pulsing faster when Truffaz enters at 2'.26". One line of thought that takes shape as he insists on repeating the same idea through to 4'.00.
Like a mantra dismantling any fear of the unknown, while instilling a perception of all the infinite possibilities of it all. All of which supported by Talvin Singh's linear structure, which intensifies to become central and foremost at 6'.30".
I wonder what's this got to do with jazz anyway, when from 8'.29" devastating strings call for abolition of boundaries in music. All that remains is a majestic celebration of sound.

Murcof, Truffaz, Singh @ Montreux

New Italian Epic

2008-04-28T06:54:00.000-07:00

Something is happening in Italian Literature. Something powerful, which is shaking at the roots any current clichés and labels applied to contemporary writers.
A new generation of Italian authors is producing novels inspired by a surprisingly new force that comes from within, and which focuses on facets of the Italian society that were overshadowed by a general disengagement from and mistrust in literature.
Gomorra by Roberto Saviano is among the most read 100 books of 2007, according to a survey of The New York Times. Professor Henry Jenkins of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston invited Wu Ming, author of Manituana and 54, to relate on what's happening here. After a short tour of different Universities in the USA and Canada, Wu Ming came up with a new definition, New Italian Epic, a stream that differs entirely from mainstream literature, and that contains elements of social critique intertwined with the structure of the epic.
Shortly after their American literary tour, Wu Ming produced an essay entitled New Italian Epic (which you can find at your right hand below my personal infos) that analyses in depth the extent of this literary turmoil. A powerful reaction to the suffocating intellectual (or anti-intellectual) climate imposed by a general lack of resistance to/ a generic acceptance of the dramatic events of Italian politics of the last 8 years, as if they were a natural evolution of democracy.
Starting from the shameful bloody police attack on the peaceful citizens' rally at the G8 in Genoa on 19 to 21 July 2001, which has not yet been vindicated by the state, and has left a scar that is difficult to mend, to 9/11 on an international level, and adding the disastrous years of the Berlusconi government, now unbelievably back in power thanks to his absolute dominion on information, the literary production that falls under the umbrella of New Italian Epic tries to react to a generalised atmosphere of a reborn fascist regime.

Time will say whether or not this new literary stream will trigger a reaction among readers. The fact is that many NIE are being received enthusiastically in Italy and abroad, and the feeling is strong that a generational turnover will shake at the roots the Italian consciences.

People have the power...

2008-04-17T05:08:00.000-07:00

...The power to dream / to rule / to wrestle the world from fools / it's decreed the people rule.
Yes. Unfortunately they rule. And we've seen quite clearly how poeple use their power to rule.
These elections have shown openly that 47% of Italians have remained affectionated to a backwards, fascist and populist image of power, that image perfectly represented by the most imaginific and boastful mafia godfather this country has ever produced.
The thing is that there's no excuse this time. No excuse for ignorance, no excuse for arrogance, no excuse for ignoring all that national and international press have discussed, analysed, dissected in every single detail without any censorship. It's just too easy to justify Italians saying that stupid mutherfucker owns all papers and tv channels in this country and that information is manipulated. Information IS NOT AT ALL manipulated in this coutry, everyone has the easiest possible access to the Internet, and THERE STILL ARE free tv channels and papers, that have done a good job throughout the past two years (since 2006) disseminating the findings of investigations on that unbelievably corrupted, unbearably populistic and backwards individual that is now our Prime Minister. Thank you People. Thank you for using that power.
It's healthy to remind fascist voters that they have the power to decide because anti-fascists died to guarantee freedom to vote within a free Republic. Was that a good idea to die for these voters? Not sure.

I truly believe that democracy results in a total failure when the people vote for monstrously irresponsible and authoritarian figures like Bush, Putin and Berlusconi. That's were democracy shows its darkest sides.
Yes, people have the power, but there's no redeeming anything when people like violence, war, corruption. When people enjoy being treated like mentally retarded who need a father-like figure to take care of their wellbeing.
We don't need any father-like figure, especially we don't need that nasty reproduction of the worst type of mafia godfather people have elected on April 13.
We need a reliable job market, we need real wages, we need nurseries for our children, we need schools that don't fall apart, we need money for scientific research, women need the freedom to decide if they want to have children AND a career. We need a democracy. We don't need Berlusconi.

But people have the power, and in Italy 60% of voters are above 60 years of age and live in a world that no longer exists. Half of young voters chose Berlusconi because they comfront a corrupted society on a daily basis to which they've eventually surrendered.
Bottom line: in five years time Italy will be a country deserted by its young intellectual force, without researchers, with a growing public debt. Poor.
I'm out of here. Italy only looks good in postcards, and maybe in five years time not even that.

After the blockage

2008-03-24T12:58:00.000-07:00

Looks like brain's back to normal after the recent Big-Sleep blockage it's suffered. Looking for new music inputs definetely keeps me up. One thing is, though, can anyone explain why do people use Youtube commenting space as a steam release device for letting out rage and pressure? Particularly, while investigating the industrial music scene up to most recent production, the feeling one gets is that comments don't really match what the music should be about. You trip into some seriously troubled teenagers whose level of aggressivity reminds of a space shuttle engine. We've all been through the teen-age, that's for sure, but no matter how rebellious, there was some sort of reluctance in getting into arguments with adults. Now you get these kids spitting all sort of bad language and making comments the making-sense-word count of which doesn't even exceed punctuation. Certainly a phenomen to keep an eye on. If worse comes to worst, I'll have kept my brain from snoozing back into lob-mode at least! Teachers: leave our kids alone!

Post-industrial meta-shit

2008-03-17T11:11:00.000-07:00

Thank god we're out of that boring waning-of-postmodernism phase now and have officially entered the post-industrial (or is that the same thing?*). I couldn't put up with that meta-shit anymore. After all, if one takes a close look at postmodernist production there's very little that deserves to be remembered. With the exception of Cortazar's Rayuela and Calvino's If on a winters' night a traveller , it seems to me that the whole debate on postmodernism has been one great oppurtunity for numberless wankers to produce an enormous amount of critical studies that have severely outnumbered the actual literary production of this age. But then again, Fripp had said it way before climax-point: argument, agreement, controversy, commentary - it's only talk. Elephant talk! and we all know now that Fripp was deadly right.
The good thing about post-industrial is that nobody talks about it anymore. So far 1973 Daniel Dell's seminal work on the post-industrial has only been used by sociologists, while the literary critic seems to have overlooked its existence to favour the term postmodernism. My only hope is that, in their infinite and gracious ignorance, literary critics will ignore Dell's book for another few years and keep thinking that postmodernism is still "The Word", so that writers like me will be let free to write their post-industrial meta-shit ignored by critics, which, at the very least, is a blessing.

BTW, I've just discovered my new crush, a post industrial band that call themselves congresso.post.industriale. Sheer chill. Check it out on myspace!

*for experts only: yes, I know, it is the same thing. However, I, in my own right to say whatever I like on this weblog, claim that not only the post-industrial hasn't finished yet, but there isn't any particular reason for it to end. Difficult to support with a strong argument, I know, though my perception is that we really live inside the post-industrial to tell what we're missing. And what we're missing is exactly the opposite of we have. And if what we have is postmodernism, and we don't like it, then its waning fades into our desire. In other words, the container fakes the content. The content is something/somewhere else.

Getting closer to the V-Day

2007-08-23T14:38:00.000-07:00

This is about the immense power of alternative sources of information. One man decides he has enough of seeing his country in the hands of fools. He starts a weblog and puts a youtube channel together. About 170,000 people so far join him in the turn of a few months. People get organised in his country and expatriates abroad. In a blink of an eye he's invited at the European Parliament to make his point, gives a speech that will be remember as one of the most entertaining speeches even heard. He entertains an audience that could do with some waking up and at the same time speaks the plain truth in simple terms: manipulation, distortion, lack of information, corruption, pollution, mafia, unemployment, desolation, lack of perspectives, lack of self-esteem, a wasted generation. And none would dare to say: elephant talk. This is the talk of the mouse that scares the elephant. And it does indeed scare the shit out of anyone interested in keeping their asses glued to their own personal chairs in the Italian Parliament. So much so that official media are forbidden to broadcast his face and not even a minute of the hours and hours of documentation he uploaded on youtube is seen on TV. Papers don't talk about him, and if they do it is by way of mention. He's mentioned, sometimes, as the terrorist who justifies the assassination of a statesman responsible for the labour law that originated the scariest job crisis ever seen in Italy. He's mentioned as a conspirator against the State. He's mentioned as a comedian who wants to replace men of law, philosophers, journalists, a self-nominated guru whose arrogance goes beyond belief. And yet people join him happily, suddenly hundreds of followers upload videos in his support on youtube, discuss on his weblog, insult each other, become extremely involved and, yes, scary. The mass is scary when it gets angry. It happened once, in the year of the Lord 1789 in France, and we're studying every single movement, every act, and every conquest of that frightening mass. It happened again and again; it got a word to define it, which anyone can check in any dictionary in every language of this small world. It’s called Revolution, namely the overthrow of a government by those who are governed. Revolutions are started by particularly hyperactive individuals who stop believing in mass control and start thinking on their own. Who start asking themselves: what do I need? Who’s going to give it to me? Where's my money going? Why am I working like a dog and never see the end of it, while those who I pay to guarantee me safety and wellbeing trash my money away? Who's responsible for all this? Responsibility: that's the key word. This man starts asking around: who do you blame for all this? He puts together a show, makes people laugh at the politicians, and then asks: who do you think you're laughing at? You're laughing at yourself, you moron. That's what he does.

Next step, he chooses a day. A very important date in the history of his country, the day the monarchs fled leaving Italy in chaos. People starving, the Germans at home, the Americans at the door. And many, many scared people in the middle. He decides he's going to reset history. That day will no longer be remembered uniquely as the day of shame. It is now turning into the day of revenge. The V-Day. He says: we want our country back. We don’t want mafia in this country. Anymore. He says: we want to see our money spent for the benefit of the citizens and not of the mafia. He says: we want a better life for everyone and we want it now.

Media ignores him while the number of people joining him gets bigger and bigger. Politicians sue him. He wins all the cases. He sends his book which describes the outrageous situations of tens of thousands of temporary workers to the President who thanks him kindly. People want jobs, people don't give a fuck about thank yous. People get angry, people don't give a fuck about pretty faces on TV. People turn TVs off and connect to the internet. The word goes round. The 8th of September gets closer and closer. Politicians start to worry. He obtains no permission to celebrate V-Day in Rome. So he asks for permission to the city hall of Bologna, and he gets it. Politicians get scared. Next thing: Italy plays France on September the 8th. Coincidence? No: panem et circenses, again. People are starving, give them gladiators – that’s what they want. It’s a very old habit in Rome. But people are angry, and apparently they don't give a fuck about football either this time. Is it a miracle? No: the game can be recorded, they'll watch it the next day.

Nothing works anymore when people are pissed off. This is a new era. People get pissed off over the internet now. Beppe Grillo puts together 170,000 (so far) people over the internet, and they'll soon be millions. The place doesn't matter, this is happening in Italy, in New York, all over Europe, in Japan. People want to go home and find a clean country. Services that work, decent schools, jobs that don't leave you starving at the end of the month, decent housing conditions, immigrants who are treated like human beings. People want to find a democracy and not a country that cleans its shit in German shootings. Streets suffocated by uncollected rubbish, lousy and dirty commuters' trains that stop for hours in the middle of nowhere for lack of personnel, unemployed young people with postgraduate degrees, starving researchers in crumbling universities disempowered by power struggles. People want a functioning Italy in a functioning Europe, and not a dysfunctional mafia-governed peninsula in the middle of the Mediterranean, good for holydays only, and not even.

The day is getting closer and closer when all these people from all the corners of Italy and of the world will rise and dedicate and enormous, regenerating, out breaking, mind-blowing, thought provoking Vaffanculo to every single person implicated in this, so that they'll rememeber this day for years to come. So that we can delete the day of shame from our history books and finally turn it into the day of rise and hope.

Two for the road

2007-08-04T16:29:00.000-07:00

I have no idea where this expression comes from, I’ve never been able to figure it out, so if any merciful soul bumps into this weblog who knows the origin of this saying, do please drop a line of explanation and I’ll be eternally grateful.

However, I do connect it with something. I picture two old people walking the walk of life together, but that’s the most poetic image I can come up with.
Given that I’m in the utmost unpoetic mood, I’ll leave that image to those who feel like dreaming.
I personally only feel like smoking at the moment, and hate it when I run out of cigarettes, and so I’ve got to get out of my bubble to face trading with real people at the corner shop. That’s what’s just happened, which suddenly reminded me that if only I’d left two for the road I wouldn’t be in such a fowl mood.

Whatever you feel you may need at any point that implies some road to run to go and get some, just leave two for the road and you’ll be fine.
I’ve just hidden two cigarettes in an unreachable pocket of my purse. Two for the road, “waiting for the shower to stop” (R. Fripp).

Verb-a-lize!

2007-08-04T03:12:00.000-07:00

It occurred to me that if only I managed to put it into words it would go away. In Sicily they say: evoca il fantasma - so if there's a ghost that hunts you, all you've got to do is give it a body, kick it in the ass, and it will go away. I've got to picture myself in one of those self help groups, standing and saying - my name is such and such and I've got this problem: then it'll simply disappear. It's a matter of hearing it spoken aloud, or looking at it written onto paper or a screen, black on white. Words are powerful especially when they're written, and since scripta manent, you can always go back and make sure you've actually said it. You've verbalized it.
I'm trying then. 3 2 1 - no wait a moment, what if it's not true? I haven't even tried hard enough for a few months have I, so why shoud this be a problem and not just laziness. Maybe I'm just stuck on something else, for example this whole story of downloading music videos is taking an awful amount of time, I barely have time to eat, not to mention... I'm not sure.
Sometimes a blockage is the fruit of nonesense, one just wastes one's time for the sake of doing it, and it really cannot be called a blockage. A blockage is when you try hard to do something and that thing is just not coming, so that's not me, I haven't tried at all. I'm staying carefully away from it, very likely because if I failed then I would have to admit that I have a blockage. So, how do you exactly define a blockage, is that when you've tried and you can't, or when you're not even trying for you're afraid you won't?
Is there a point in making a preventive action, just in case I've got a problem? Then if I don't, well, better off - but I may have it. Fact is, I did try once to sit at the table didn't I? And nothing happened, I just looked at the monitor for a good hour or so, and then I started yawning, got up for a fag and never went back. The lappy eventually turned off by itself, 'cause it was tired of waiting for me to return. Deserted in the bright Madrid afternoon light.
It musn't be so difficult to say it, damn, and once it's on the screen, I can just look at it, I can go way, and go back to it. Once it's written there's no going back.
Ok, 3 2 1 my name is such and such and I've got a problem. How do you describe this problem? There's a very precise definition out there, but I'm afraid if I verbalize that than I'll have to start some sort therapy. What if the Sicilians were right, and once the ghost has got a body, I can abuse it, I can kick it, I can turture it, I can pour all my frustration over it?
Alright, ready for the ride, I'm standing up, I'm putting my jumper on the chair behind me, cause it's slightly hot in this room isnt it? Will someone open the window please, I'm suffocating. Yes, no, I wasn't getting distracted again, I apologise, ok, my name is such and such, and I have the writer's blockage.

I said it! It's there isn't it? I did say it! Wow, it feels good! It feels like falling on the roallercoaster, my heart is pumping pure blood, and more, I can look at it, and yes, it's got a body. It's tiny, but it's just like the Sicilians say, and I can spit on it if I like.
And I can write it again and again: I've got the writer's blockage, I've got the writer's blockage, god it feels good! It's like it's raining words, or a river that's flooding, and I could write it over an over again.
Maybe I could set up a virtual self help group for writers in a crisis, actually, all of you out there who've got the writer's blockage (I said it again!) come on here and write it as many times as you like - my weblog is your weblog!
It does feel good. I'm thinking of all those chapters I begun, and my Protagonist-Narrator, the voice that knows it all, who's been sitting still for months, and it must be covered in dust by now, and it must be terribly bored.
Leennaah! I'm coming back sweety, I'll be there in a minute, hold on!
Yes, I've never loved Sicily so much.

Seeing past as a prologue

2007-08-02T18:42:00.001-07:00

Come to think of it, there's only one circumstance when I might even venture so far as being sympathetic with the idea of speed, and that's when I hear some mind blowing music like that duet, Rodrigo y Gabriela, the quintessence of speed applied to the very Zen art of playing guitar. Or when "The Rain Song" takes that creepy turn and leaves you wondering whether that's the same song you're listening just a couple of seconds earlier. When music is fast and orgasmically fulfilling, then who could ever disagree on the idea of speed?
There's another metaphysical occurrence when speed comes in handy. That's when you've got to rewind the tape and play it again; I mean the other tape (we all are hooked onto mp3 players these days). The one someone still likes to call Past. I guess everyone's got one of their own and no-one's boring as long as there's a story to tell. I myself play that tune quite often these days, and what's worst, I keep rewinding the tape in case there may be something I missed, a tiny sound, a subliminal message, a background voice, anything that might inspire the starting line of a prologue.
As I explained, this idea of starting a weblog is nothing but a by-product of having far too much time on my hands. On the other hand (the invisible hand where there’s no time), it looks as if this stuff’s actually growing into something, some sort of a blob really, quite disconnected, which may eventually lead to that prologue I’m trying to start. By the time I get there, I’ll probably have spoken about so much crap the prologue won’t eventually be worth reading, if anything here is, really. Another thing is, there’s no weblog without a youtube channel, so if you want to figure out how words flow, what you’ve got to do is get straight into my playlist and decide which song matches which post. Here’s a new game for those who’ve got just as much time to waste as I have. Having only written traditional novels so far, what I find absolutely amazing about keeping a weblog, is that you can actually pack any shit you like into here, meander around for hours and never get to the point, and it will still make some sort of sense somehow.
I was going to get around to writing the prologue, but I got distracted again by Rod&Gab, and that’s what the fusion weblog+youtube does to me. I wonder will I ever get back to traditional writing one day, or will I just get stuck on this stuff forever. The prologue next time, ok?, now I’ve got to be listening to these two dragons of speedy Gonzalez guitar!

Against Speed

2007-07-30T14:41:00.000-07:00

Someone was talking to me about their love of speed. Riding horses and bikes, roller coasters, fast cars. Possibly driven to excess by their movingly young age, they were describing speed as an unavoidable factor of our society, something that, if refused, would turn your speech into the parabola of a turtly self denying methuselah tethered by fear. That's not me. For a start, I’m not a methuselah yet, although: aren't we all heading down that way, really (the lucky ones at least). Neither am I self denying some damn good fun every so often. With regard to fear, ehm, well, we all have got issues; in my view even more so those fearless heroes who before teatime like to hang themselves on an extensible rubber band head down towards the vacuum, an apparently popular leisure activity called bungee jumping. In which case, yes, I do admit I'm slightly tethered by fear.
Speed. Wasn’t it that thing Marinetti used to celebrate as an opening curtain on the stage of the future? I remember a few poems from school, made of inaudible noises aimed at capturing the sound of the new world. But those were the 20s and thank god the 20s are over, with all respect to Gaudì and the art nouveau geniuses.
Or that other thing saluted in the mid 80s as a model of successful lifestyle, make money and do NOT take your time to eat properly, ‘cause time is money, but the stomach doesn’t know. So we all ended up devouring greasy fast-food to save time, when we all had plenty on our hands, and we all eventually spent it trying to get over the side effects of a bad digestion. Now rich people eat boiled prawns with avocado salad with a perfect chardonnay. Where have all the burgers gone?
Yes. Speed. It gives me the creep to even hear about it. I once used to ride horses and I must say I found it quite regenerating. I wasn’t afraid of falling over or anything, and that one day when the crazy horse I had my bum on decided it was time to get back home regardless of my enjoying nature, and just stamped on the rear gear and had me hanging on its hair wondering where it had decided to go to finally find myself outside the stable where he had started our trip. Now, that one day that horse wasn’t a great fan of speed himself. He just wanted to go back home and chew his grass enjoying the scenery. I didn’t blame him for that. My idea now is that speed is indirectly proportional to IQ. The higher the IQ, the slower the person. That must have been a seriously smart horse.

The Start of It All

2007-07-15T09:54:00.000-07:00

It's now been a good few years since I left home and decided to live abroad. It wasn't an easy thing to do, leaving a life behind me and starting a new one in Ireland. Actually, when I left I didn't even know I wouldn't have gotten back. I thought I was only going to study abroad for a year. I was very interested into Celtic archaeology and Irish folktales, and about to start my dissertation on medieval accounts of travel. But then it all turned into something unexpectedely weird, as if I had eradicated my roots overnight, picked up my tree and planted it somewhere else. Little did I know I would have dropped my native idiom in a matter of months, descarding all information that made me an Italian, and turned into a not better defined citizen of the world. It all happened step by step and totally unintentionally, I suppose. I realised I wasn't Italian anymore when one night I found myself munching half a ton of chips and knocking down about eight pints of Guinnes in a lousy pub surrounded by natives who were treating me just like one of them, and this isn't easy in a place like Galway, I swear. That was the beginning of it all. I now look back perplexedly, wondering how life would have tasted if only I hadn't gone on that study trip, or if I, for example, had finished my studies quicker, found a regular job, got into a regular routine, etc. I suppose there's a way for all of us, we don't really choose. Things just happen, or at least they happen to me. I stopped expecting things to just work out the way I want them to when I saw that unexpected events are actually far better than whatever we may plan... to be continued...