Tales of Vesuvius Under Vesuvius

28/03/2007

THE JEWISH STATE Enzo Faenza

That December evening that Don Vito Santuccio, the Laviano his house-container, told me with great peace of mind, but also with solemnity, that he, his calves, keeping them "Jewish state", my life had a turning point. Until then I had looked for a meaning, a meaning to life and believe I have succeeded. I had read Sartre, Camus, Schopenhauer, Buddha, Jesus Christ, Gandhi, Marx and Nietzsche. John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the "new frontier", Einstein and the "theory of relativity": everything had seemed doubtful but still possible, all the while of any proportion to logic. But that phrase of Don Vito, that night ... "Jewish state" ... provoked in me a sudden collapse, a black-out brain, a reset of knowledge and consciousness. What did it mean that definition so mysterious!? Indeed, until then, I happened to hear, and read them, of all colors: the police who arrived with sirens "ruthless" to "paté" of mind, the muffler "paralytic" to "trecriceti" and " polystyrene "in the blood, the Sibyl" Cuban "to the real possibility of" erections "assets, from sleeping in the" fatal "to the very unpleasant shock" anofilattico ". And still the old "Cave Canem" translated efficiently by the custodian of a school: "Be careful about the cano 'mozca to sacresa" and the sign of a greengrocer, perhaps also a painter, which proposed "figs dyed"! First, then, I looked into the eyes of Don Vito, a peasant in his sunburnt face, a path, a road that lead me to understand: he had innocently misrepresented, replaced the term "wild" with 'the consonant "Jewish" or behind and inside that his sentence was something more, a hope, a myth, a value "added"?! I was in front of a trivial linguistic error, a decent farmer, or to a complex philosophical concept? In practice, the calves of Don Vito simply lived free from chains or fences, or enjoyed a dimension "zooesistenziale" privileged because if anything the origin and Jewish culture?! I stood still a little 'time with Don Vito, in its container. He, before the fire, almost hard, I "counted out" of his life spent mostly digging, hoeing a hard ground and not very fertile, "skinny" was defined as the Manlio Rossi Doria. My story 'of his childhood and his desire to go to school but, this, or' the country, had arrived only a few years later. When he saw the sea for the first time in Salerno. When he saw for the first time the wife still Filumena girl, the party of the country. When he saw a tractor for the first time at the fair. But even this, in his life, had arrived late. "Don Viciè" he told me quietly, "you know what: what is the difference in the end bell or zappann sturiann, by the farmer or the teacher ... in life, for all of us, there is always someone or something important they get "aropp" too late ". The warmth of the fireplace reconciles memories and dreams. Soon Don Vito and I found ourselves with a leading Kippur to drive a big tractor to plow the boundless and fertile land, happily chasing a herd of calves that were running violently through grasslands. I awoke with a start when I dreamed that the cattle wore Kippur!? Don Vito was still asleep on the chair before the fire. His face was smiling, serene, sometimes lit by the dim light of the flames: a pity that he had arrived late in my life ...!

The STEP OF AIS

A FUTURE OF BRAIN FROM sprinkler ... Enzo Faenza

Italy, a country of saints, poets, navigators and sprinklers ... brain! I am not speaking of Silvio, the double-breasted, the stretched, the immortal, who tries to idratarci the meninges, every day, with his TV. I speak of a man who, more or less than once a month, recasts a container of formalin in which the brain is preserved for years to a fellow in his time as "criminal"! We are in the criminology museum in Rome and here is exposed the so-called "gray matter" of John Passannante, one of our most countryman of Savoia di Lucania, that November 17, 1878, attempt on the life of Naples Umberto I of Savoy with a knife! John was a cook, an autodidact who had read the writings of Mazzini and Garibaldi, and advocated "universal republic" in which the elderly would have been entitled to a pension and women to a maternity allowance. John was a simple person, one of those men who do not make history but who suffer! How many men have suffered and many southern simple. And so, after the naive attack, he was arrested by order of Savoy, who was imprisoned in a prison on the island of Elba, in a cell below the sea level. For his "crazy" gesture to family members, genetically related, were persecuted and imprisoned in an asylum. The villagers, meanwhile, in shame, even hastened to change the original name of the country from the current Sage Savoia di Lucania. When in 1910 the Creator, mercifully, cut off the plug, John continued to endure the History of the powerful, even in death. His skull, following the enlightened theories of Lombroso, was sawn to exhibit in our museum, its "special" criminal brain!? And this, after so many years, is still there and you can "enjoy" paying just 2 Euro. In truth eight years ago, the then Minister of Justice, Diliberto, following an urgent campaign for burial of the remains of John, promoted mainly by actor Luke Ulderico Fish, had signed an authorization for that purpose. It seems, however, that a local lobby "Savoyard" has done all these years, to "hold on" by Earth, Our Poor John! In these days, then the mayor, the "daisy Rosina" Ricciardi, had a real stroke of genius: why not continue to expose the brain Passannante in the castle in the country!? A really great idea that I even suggested a very ambitious project that certainly will be a turning point indeed the "turning point" for our abandoned south. If, in fact, our John was considered a heinous crime for an attempted murder, "the knife" and special and worthy of eternal exhibition, the brains of many of our contemporaries, "criminals" in fact, in the future will deserve a place in our museum? I have no doubt that the quantity and quality of these crimes to be committed, it is absolutely necessary to build a new, great, just a stately Museum criminological Savoia di Lucania "! Maximum 'hospitality' s' means, to open doors all: no de criminibus disputandum east! Pippo Baudo, why not! And Emilio Fede and Mino Reitano and Toto Riina and Bruno Vespa and Umberto Bossi and Castelli and Buttiglione and Victor Emmanuel I, II, III, IV and V and the "promising young "Bertolaso ??and Bassolino!? It could, among other things, modernizing, somehow, the outmoded institution. One could, for example, to accompany each station" brain "of those boxes that are used in church, those posed front of the pictures of saints or virgins, those in which introducing a dime lights a candle in our modern museum, instead of lighting the candle, you could start a clip of a few minutes, giving moments of our lives cool, contemporary "criminals"! goduria What would revise Condoleezza Rice, and his skull so sexy, with his unmistakable hand of '"Goose" go against our utmost to make him an intriguing and wink! And smiling down from Bush' presidential helicopter, with the little dog in her arms, both strictly cashmere coat, while many young marine, many former peasants die in Iraq. And those other samples of Putin and the Chechen terrorists carefree stroll among the graves of 186 children killed in the Beslan school siege. And our Calderoli, with his smile, unquestionably criminal, whipping slurpare Luxuria. And still our De Luca, Vincenzino yes, him, chasing assatanato Filipinos by merchants Salerno dribbling the ladies in fur coats (it is cunning he: the Senegalese, average height 1.90, makes them chase from their brigade!) You could create a place of "muses" divided by age, by country, by profession. Other than expanding the NATO base in Vicenza: our government, so-called "left" opposition might eventually prove to be involved in the making of a great, great work. To accommodate all of our brains "criminals", you should design an immense structure, provide it with infrastructure so complex as to fade even Renzo Piano. priority Assuming all the masons and laborers of southern Italy, for fifty years could cure the plague of unemployment and also infer a fatal blow to the Mafia and 'Ndrangheta subtracting these laborers so much!

One could, finally, finally resolve the issue of the South!

But the project could have adverse economic and social well internationally. Mayor Rosina, and Daisy, she might, in fact, hold the greatest, the most impressive public contest in human history: "Competition on qualifications and examinations to 1,000,000,000 Number of posts to permanent sprinkler brain." You like that, certainly, in his lifetime, will go down in history, that of the powerful! But even in death, that takes you away every human vanity, you can rest assured that I will manage to keep them moist brain every day: I'm already looking for a recommendation to overcome his Bible Contest! Levis sit tibi earth, John ...

05/05/2007

08/07/2007

THE DRIVER AND THE SAILOR Enzo Faenza

Nostalgia is pain for the return. Nostalgia is the pain of longing for the return. Nostalgia is the slight, silent pain that you carry in for any day, for life, street, train, in a bar while sipping a coffee. You can have a season of nostalgia, of a place, a person, a scent, a flavor, a caress, you can have nostalgia of it all together. Nostalgia is the most mysterious of human emotions. It 'the only gives you the ubiquity of the body from the soul, the wonderful image of the Indian "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" that while she's cleaning the asylum think the salmon that go up the river of his land ! But nostalgia is also a lifestyle choice: we can decide to bring it into being, to make it grow in our inner life or to destroy it immediately, before it has a life and can become, then, pain. Eduardo was a young teacher when a bad day war broke out, the second world war. Within days, a peaceful provincial chair of a school, he found himself on a booming military plane, a killing machine. It began for him an unexpected odyssey that led him in a foreign country. Here Eduardo, including a flight and another, and another of a bombing, Josephine met and fell in love with her and she fell in love with him. And he loved passionately, Josephine and Edward, because the great feelings always survive every human barbarity. Then the war ended. The young officer, perhaps the young girl who promised he would return in a few days, just enough time to embrace their loved ones, to make sure they were still there, in that remote village of southern Italy. But instead of time they spent as much ... it was enough not to forget that great love, but because it was necessary to house in the heart of another can. Edward married a 'Josephine married another woman and another man. Still more time passed, so much. yet, but the former young officer and the former foreign lady continued to bring you into that little pain, that sweet feeling that suddenly can change your life. One day, Eduardo, now old, widowed, while sipping a coffee, he decided to leave, to leave immediately and reach Josephine, to return, to return to love it! And found Josephine, widow of her as well, with a few wrinkles but still so beautiful and so sweet. It came to love and to love back.Peppe was a sailor. His life, meet the sea, the sea, made it a complicated man. The long months at sea, the enormous distances involved, the mutation had caused a kind of sense: for the time he stood, motionless, and one hundred miles were not one hundred meters. He was calm and quiet as the calm sea, and when he spoke, he did so only at a certain time: after midnight. And then he spoke, he told his many adventures at sea. Her bathroom in the bow of the ship while the sharks were distracted by the stern launch of dishes, many brawls at nightclubs of this or that port, the impossible love for Blanca, the beautiful Blanca, a former Mexican peasant hinterland, bitch Acapulco. It told of long hours watching the sea abandoning every thought, every nostalgia, its blue infinity. "Look to the sea is like looking into his soul," she said. I listened to that particular friend, in silence and in the night, by magic, her life was mingled with mine. Just as, at the mouth of a river to the sea. After several months of living together Peppe that day would be gone, our lives would be divided and who knows how. With his car stopped at the exit of Camaldoli and decided I whispered: "I imagine what you tell me: give me your phone number, let us exchange addresses, see you next week! Open the door and go away, now, immediately, without looking back, without suffering: you and I not see you ever again From this day walk, slowly, without turning around, In my life back, there is the pain of so many losses, on the subtle joy of being, each day, a "soul-the utopian." And if a day were to finish this season of "icentopassi", but remember with affection, mind you, without a glance!

04/09/2007

THE GREAT BRUCO Enzo Faenza

We were kids and in the evening, tired of going back and forth up and down the street evening stroll, we craning to the train station."Battipaglia Battipaglia station for Sicignano-Lagonegroo cambiaa you!" We knew from memory the litany of the stationmaster and even had fun with him to repeat it in chorus, tappandoci nose to nose to make it just right. On one of the many benches, timidly, we told our experiences, our emotions, our doubts of adolescents: the sly smile of Paola, the same age dirimpettaia pretty mind-boggling to skirt the catechist, the incomprehensible causes of hunger in the world to 'last goal of Gigi Riva. It was the season of "firsts", the time when we came across in certain life situations new to us and we had, between respectability and taboos, give us a "vision of life", do the first choices. The adults were absent were, perhaps rightly, Orthodox followers of Freud who believes that "men can not stay forever children, are going to face life hostile"! And no, we did that night, on that bench when suddenly materialized our "first time", that of politics. Suddenly we heard a clamor from the north indistinct, gradually getting stronger and closer: it was as if, miraculously, was approaching, the whole, the curve south of the stage!? At some point we began to distinguish even a music and songs!? We looked into my eyes and stunned and intrigued by the unique situation we all got together to see off the bench to Salerno, groped to understand. What was happening between the rails until a few moments earlier melancholy and silent, between those tracks that were still spectators, on the morning of April 9, 1969, one of the most difficult moments of our national history? A charge of violent forces "order" against the workers on strike for the closure of the local "tobacco" was rejected, then, by a thick stone-throwing of the latter and had started an instinctive popular uprising. The desperation of workers and citizens together, "disordered," that day, blatantly, the forces of a state that still, after forty years, plans for the south only illusions, and even forcing many young people to emigrate. But here is a hundred yards on our railroad, peep a strange monster, long, meandering, with many arms that flowed and waved on both sides of his body. The amazing animal was decked out from head to tail of many, big red flags waving in the wind but gently slapped. Advancing compelling, unstoppable, proud, joyous, cackling, to us. His eyes were big and shiny! It was the "big caterpillar"! It was the train of emigrants, one of the many trains "special" for our fellow citizens who were returning from Germany to vote for their countries in the South. They were mostly looking out the windows waving and singing in chorus: "People continue to be levied, red flag, red flag ..." A trumpet and plates, who knows which side of the train, accompanied their collective joy, their great joy. This once pervaded the air, the walls, every object and every person who touched the station and flew light, from the gaping mouths, from their faces wrinkled and sunburned, even our naive hearts of kids ...When the station chief, undaunted, more 'nasal' than ever, respectful of tradition, he announced: "For you Sicignano cambiaa", was greeted by a swarm of boos and Vaffa: for once in his life, one would should at least sing "Hello Beautiful"! But only "big caterpillar", a bit 'clumsily moved to depart, the whistles were turned again into song: "Red flag will triumph ... lallarallà-to-fifth wheel"!

30/12/2007

ANTONY AND ME

Words often have a vanity. Perhaps it is preferable to silence, perhaps it is fairer to leave your memories in the inner life ... I had a little over a year and Antonio, the boy who attended thecows on the farm where my family lived, I was holding and I gasped as my mother imboccava the pasta. As a mother she was distracted, I surreptitiously licked his chin, his face to eat the berries of pasta that you had left. Mom scolded him aghast: Antonio ashamed, lowered his gaze for a moment, but then he was ready to lick again. He spent some 'time, and Antonio, knowing that my mother, after 27 of the month, the salary of my father hid in the dresser in the bedroom on the first floor, resigned and hid in the attic to be able to "withdraw" as soon as possible. Perhaps I felt his presence and began to cry bitterly: then he, to prevent my crying would attract someone upstairs, came down from "suppigno" and rocked me until I stopped. Just, also that month, the salary was hidden in the laundry, Antonio stole it and ran away from the farm. They arrested a few days later while scorazzava for the country on a motorcycle blazing. At the prison in Salerno, where he was locked up, only my family went to visit him. Each week, until it came out! Antonio returned to work on the farm and he had to bring in a scooter in kindergarten in the city, some years later. It was he who, spelling, confided the torture of nuns: when we had to stay put in the corner with hands clasped over his head for minutes and minutes on end! If one then you did the "pee in the" forced him to run for all classes, as a 'plague, showing her wet panties. It was Antonio who asked not to bring me to school "mother" in the city, and let me stay in the country. He, in anger, accelerating as they could to Via XX Settembre, shouted to me and the wind could not be satisfied because it was not my father but he promised he would come to threaten Sister Guiderma. What would "binge of paccheri"! I know it was only because he had no time to do it: he was arrested again, stealing some shirts during a stage of the Tour of Italy. When he emerged from prison, Antonio never came back on the farm: the peasantry, in those years, had changed quickly, perhaps too much. In the barn there were no more nor Carolina nor his companions. Along the path there were no more than the two plants with those three, four strawberries so tasty: in the fields there were hundreds of thousands of strawberries without flavor. Antonio had found work in a garage in town. He had no car, because he had taken his license, but it remedied a few customers of the garage and taking advantage of the deserted streets of the early afternoon of Sunday, was to "find" in the country. He always wore a big, exaggerated guantiera of puffs, perhaps to "exorcise" the days of hunger. He was glad to return to the places of his youth hard but happy, he was glad to see a lot taller than him. Then Antonio was no longer ... usually for the incurable disease. When, at times, however, always a bit mischievous, he goes back into my thoughts, I brushed against a "suspect" ... I'm grown "strong and healthy" because his saliva with antibodies miraculous to me! Those of solidarity, sharing the poverty of those, the ones that make you "understand" what hunger ... even if you've never tried.

02/02/2008

Che vvuò ?

That evening, in that bar the Vomero, suddenly the situation became critical. Two or three idiots had realized that Mario, and therefore I, who was with him, we were not normal people: we were "crazy" ... and began to schernirci. I was sketching a reaction when Mario instinctively, with a quiet charisma, he said: "Now we must run!" We left the room and began to run together, one beside the other, to not know where and for how long. That night was the only time that Mario expressed an intention that "issued", from his body, a signal that could lead to changes, new to our lives. It was the only time he expressed a sentiment. Perhaps in a distant, unattainable, of his soul, was unsettled, inert, some 'of the magic dust that we, men of "normalcy," we call "love." And perhaps for the love that he, at that difficult time, wanted to protect me from the evil of a world that perhaps at one time had even met!? Mario was a tall, strong, with short hair and long beard. I had met him one morning, in the cold streets of the Polyclinic II, a short walk from the Psychiatric Clinic. He was sitting on a wall with the palm of one hand closed, he obsessively, repeating the gesture of "who really want? What really want? What really want? Her face was stone: complete absence of any facial expression. I was in front of him but it was as if I were the invisible. I tried to get me out of seeming somehow to provoke a reaction, but her ... nothing!? He continued in that "you really want, really want that, you really want! I resigned myself and with the curiosity of a child, feeling a little Pinocchio, disertai in fact all my efforts with the mythic reality and I sat down beside him. From that day, for many days, we lived together. But "what" we lived still do not know: just the organic flow of our lives or experience "human" unique and indescribable. The life of Mario, and in those days even my own, were absolutely silent, continuous. Only looks. Many even in a vacuum. Our lives were immersed in 'immutability: it was the immutability. It was the day and then came the night and then came the day and then the night was still. They were absolute indifference. Towards everything and everyone. A tree was equal to a palace, a palace was equal to a horse, a horse was equal to, if anything, a traffic policeman. And I was like him and he was like me. And I wonder who I was or what was for him and who knows who he was or what for me? The world was still there, of course: he was there, over the door or window, but it was useless, trivial, nothing helped. Certainly not good for us. There were still, of course, also the men ... by their actions, their joys, their sufferings, their feelings, but they had a real meaning or was it just a stupid invention of men themselves? And even love, this feeling so sang and praised, was not it just a ploy, diabolical or divine, for our stupid and repetitive play? And these men, after all, beings were free or slaves of fluctuating molecules, sometimes troubling, defined hormones? Sometimes, at night, Mario waved, shouting unintelligible phrases and moving the body as in imaginary embraces. Muttered desperately, in a grave voice, louder, the name of a woman: "Sisina, Sisina, Sisinaa!" And then laughing out loud, strong, strong, as to mock his testosterone or some "old love". Sometimes I laughed with him, strong, albeit not knowing why. When, after several months that we had left, I met Mario at the bar of the hospital, I ran towards him to hug him but he might not recognize me ... maybe ... He continued his rhythmic gesture: you really want, really want that, you really want!? Her face was stone.

Bellella

"Hey Bellella" said the Chiattone just entered the bar "damme nu donut gruoss cumme cumme nice to me and to you! Bellella was the order of one of the bars in Naples. She was about 16 years and were 16 years or least, that was committed in that bar. Lucia's mother, in fact, years before, had performed the same tasks in the same room. He had lovingly carried in her lap behind the counter handing customers now a curly, now a pastry , now a curly now a pastry until, one evening, bent legs, face pale, had urged the owner of the bar: "Don Ciro aiutateme, aiutateme! I'm ... parturenn purtateme or Loreto Mare! "There never was a husband for her and there would never be, for Bellella, a father. What it then when a father to adopt you are so very many people, all customers the bar!? "Lucia, Lucia, is Bellella lassann to walk!?" Lucy grows as your beautiful daughter, is nu bisciù! " "Bellella, takes nu croissant or 'uncle tene accheffà Mom!"

So Bellella was grown, "bellella" really behind that counter. But for a wry joke of nature, perhaps a distraction "pataterno" certainly caused by the good smell of coffee, or perhaps an excess of zeal in Darwin, Bellella had stopped at 1:50 of height: just enough to make barely see his head above the shelf of the bench! She, her "equal opportunity" the living, always there, behind that mobile, moving two hour meters on the left towards the fresh pastries, now two feet right into the dry one. Among a package of cookies and a candy Sperlari, exposed on the shelf in front, Bellella, then, could also see a piece of the world, outside the bar. But those few inches to her enough, even had his whole life in that magic rectangle, in fact, Umberto appeared every morning, a young smuggler. Between a hedgehog and a pastry, between a hedgehog and a pastry, Bellella stopped spying Umberto and his heart pounding, pounding, pounding! How beautiful it was, what was funny, Umberto: his love was secret, so secret that even he was aware of this great feeling of Bellella. Occasionally, however, for several days and long, Umberto disappeared from the rectangle!? His friends jokingly said they had gone for an extended period of leave, the host of a new modern hotel, in Secondigliano. It was in one of those sad days in the bar got a new bartender, Michael. He was young, strong, with tattooed biceps. He could not even make the coffee but "should" work: he was returning from a holiday not bad, for attempted murder. Bellella was constantly upon his eyes, felt the strong smell of his skin when he went to the right, towards the coffee machine! One afternoon that Don Ciro was late in returning to the gate of the bar was lowered for cleaning, Michele suddenly shifted to the left, Bellella pressed against the counter and took advantage of his body. When Don returned Cyrus did not notice anything. Bellella continued to give now a curly, now a pastry: on her sweet face, now and then, walking a "stealth" she hastened to dry tears. After some months, more or less nine, was born "nu 'piezz' and criatur" Umberto Bellella called him.

30/04/2008

The STEP OF AIS

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