…the courage to kiss your parents on the forehead, while they’re still alive.

…the courage to take them upon yourself; this might be the most enigmatic and terrifying mark of filiation; and the most shocking moment of parenthood.

It’s not about switching roles, as you might have often read or heard. It is, instead, about making sense of everything you’ve become – as a daughter or as a son of this very mother and of this very father. You are a fragile arithmetic mean of their mistakes, successes, sins and dreams. You must cope with them all,  or you become an orphan. Pick up your parental burden and walk.

PS: I had this in my phone for years. It’s both wrong and straight, absurd and reasonable, stupid and wise, it’s so… monty and so… python. I’m sure you know it, but well, perhaps you had good reasons not to play it  lately. So give a whistle everybody!

Accepting yourself is much more energy-consuming than lying yourself.

Being untruthful to yourself is like spending your winter holiday in some marvelous, exotic place, far away from your folks; being honest with yourself is like a menacing journey to hell: a terrible, unsafely familiar road swarming with terrible, unsafely familiar people.

There’s nothing more essential and less gratifying than being honest with yourself. Sometimes, seeing yourself the way you are is a violent shock. It’s like waking up from a most beautiful dream because of hitting your head against the bedside table. You just can’t cope with the failure of being hurt and awake instead of being sound asleep and contented.

Of course you know all these. Everybody knows these. I won’t blog about things you never heard of. I only blog about things you are all perfectly aware of. This is a redundant blog concerned with redundant matters. And the most redundant of them all is precisely  the today’s concern: how scary and energy-consuming could be, after all, to find the road back to yourself? And I don’t mean the easy way: you know, that of  simply considering yourself a bastard and a sinner and a lier and a mother-f***** .There’s nothing more horrifying than faking your guilt, taking upon yourself every possible general fault. No.  As stated, I do not mean this kind of opaque, Philistine “honesty”.

What I meant, instead, is the effort of  identifying and embracing your most painful and concrete limits and shortcomings, and then learn to feel dignifyingly comfortable with them, everytime they’d get you into public trouble. The well-grounded, persistent feeling of personal vulnerability as part of your daily routine – this ain’t like sunbathing in Majorca, but sure brings forth the unbelievable strength of a non-illusive warrior.

So take your pick: the fiery ice cold cave inside yourself or the sunny five-star hotel at the end of the world? War or peace? Lose or win? Dig or run? You or a stranger? Happy journey either way.

PS: One of my favourite Kate Bush songs fitting the post above: “Mrs. Bartolozzi” so lyrical, mysteriously sensual, thick and refiningly introspective.

Wallpapers, folder names, icons, fonts, skins, administrator picture, guest picture, mouse pads, display settings: shortcuts to your little soul.  To put it clearly, the looks of your laptop is the interface between your inner self and outside reality.

Sometimes you get to peek over one’s shoulder when one fumbles with one’s computer in airports, cafés, conference rooms etc. Everytime you do that  – I admit I do that – , you feel the pleasantly guilty thrill of crossing the boundaries of decency. It’s like entering someone’s bedroom early in the morning, when bedsheets are messy and the air is humid.

For example, the very moment when one, before delivering a public presentation, manages to connect one’s personal laptop to a projector and tries to get the Powerpoint or Keynote work, it is always a very special (and intense) moment. It is often the moment of truth. No one in the room will take the eyes off the projection screen, not until the presentation begins. Seeing one’s desktop on the big screen displaying one’s folders, one’s favourite chat program, one’s quick launch, one’s wallpaper is, by far, the most exciting moment of the lecture: the perfect captatio benevolentiae. From that point on, you could safely formulate a couple of fundamental statements about the speechmaker.

Does he have a family picture as a wallpaper? Well, what a boring person! Does he have a stunning exotic landscape to look at everytime the computer is turned on? Well, that’s one slow-witted guy with no real goals and expectations in life! Does he still have the default wallpaper, the one he found on the computer the very day he has put his fingers on the keyboard for the first time? Well, this is a tricky, pragmatic, well-grounded cynical guy with no particular interest in looks which means he’s either an IT specialist or a total computer dummy. Does he enjoy his puppies so much that he has them displayed  on the computer screen? Well, here we deal with a  pathetic “girl” or a hysterical “lady”! Does he change the wallpaper every other day, from a selfportrait to a landscape, and from still nature to a favourite actor? Here’s a lonesome, compulsive guy looking for some company!

Not to mention the huge difference between those whose chat program opens at start up, and those who prefer having it started only when they feel like chatting; or those whose desktops are full  of chaotically saved documents, pictures and dozens of useless shortcuts, compared with those who can’t go to sleep without making their desktop look marvelous again after a day of usage. Indeed, some like to take good care of their computer, while others expect the computer to take good care of them, I guess it works both ways anyways, the point of this little post is that a pathetic-looking desktop is an accurate mirror of a pathetic-looking soul. Show me one brave, unstrained desktop today, and I’ll know who I’ll be respecting tomorrow.

PS: The best performance I’ve seen lately, so brave and so frail at the same time: Lykke Li feat. El Perro del Mar.

Yesterday, after dinner, we were suddenly talking about care. What kind of care? Any kind of care. People don’t really care about other people. This is a commonplace, yes. But a tragic one. It’s “unnatural” to care about anyone except yourself. It’s unwise, it’s ridiculous, it’s “way off”.

To be looked after. This is the modern man’s worst nightmare and his innermost (secret) wish. To look after somebody. This is the most unlikely idea one could come up with; and, at the same time, a repressed innate need. And this is how the pet came into the scene. Looking after a pet is our ultimate emotional adventure. A pet is something one can safely care for. We are misanthropes, but we could just die for our cat.

I have read somewhere that people nowadays have no problem in revealing their most bizarre sexual  and aggressive impulses, but they have real trouble in expressing their agape feelings. I wish Freud was alive to see his psychoanalysis reversing itself: like a glove turned inside out. Today, craving is so much easier than caring! Lust is encouraged, trust is obstructed. There are too many pets in our flats, and just a few  very lonely people.

PS: I finally listened to the whole Coldplay’s Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends (2008). I never really liked this (way too)  popular band, but since I’ve heard Chris Martin worshipping Merz’s music, I thought  that everyone who share my musical taste must be given a chance. The album sounds just like the title: sophisticated, superfluous, easily overestimable. Too much U2 in arrangements and melodies,  but a nice starter (“Life in Technicolor”) reminding me of the latest Kent album; I still like the latest single (“Viva la Vida”), but all the others are just…OK. You just don’t want to replay them over again. “Lost” is not a bad song, but it has its “ups and downs”: too much Brit-sound in the bridge, too much U2 in the melody, yet a beautiful intro and quite fine lyrics. Overall, these guys are not brilliant. Of course, they are much better than most of the guys you get to hear on MTV nowadays, but somehow they fail too meet their own standards. After U2, no one really made a difference in the britmusic scene. And that’s a pity. I like Chris Martin more than I could ever like Bono, and I really wanted him to be the Brit profile of the 2000s. He just wasn’t to be.

PS2: My favourite little being could be seen in the above picture. Her name is Mara, my friends’ daughter. She takes good care of everybody out there.

It’s ten o’clock in the morning and there’s a translucent darkness outside the window. One could barely see the cars. The clouds are hanging low. I think it rains. 

This mad city has never been so flaccid. I think it fainted. This fragile, once all shaken and stirred boulevard suffered a blackout without warning. It sank below ground, within seconds. The dogs, the umbrellas and other feeble beings were the first to fall. I think they sank eight feet down each. It is uncertain weather they will come out near the surface ever again. 

The outdoor world in withdrawal. The void creeps in. Now it’s us, or nothing. 

PS: This song has never fallen out of my Top 5. Enjoy it:  Velvet Underground, “Oh, Sweet Nuthin’ “

We are unfortunate enough to meet dozens of people every day. Most of them have no particular name, no particular ability, no particular hobby, no particular purpose, no particular ambition, no particular appearance. However, most of them look sad. Seemingly, for no particular reason. If you ask them, you will soon find out that a most common reason for such sadness is born from the disappointment of not doing things they couldn’t have done anyway.

People may feel a little bit miserable for losing things, but they could simply break down for things they’ve never had: a manor house, a mistress, a boat, a pair of blue eyes, a pony. The nameless man walking down the street feels he is entitled to base his daily cravings and disappointments on everything that never came his way – he’s an expert in looking like missing the chance of his life because of an unfortunate error, while he has trouble in making sense of the chances he already got.

Dozens and dozens of joyless people wander up and down the hallways of institutions, banks, hotels, gyms, malls, airports, heading toward no goal, spreading boredom, confusion, and nonsense all around them. Go ahead and ask them something about themselves. You will see they know nothing. They hardly know their last name. Still, they look highly disappointed; the disappointment of the kings that had their crowns stolen.

PS: But Tom Petty says “It’s good to be king”.