We’re shaped, reshaped or misshaped by those we care about. We become “concave” or “convex”, we get a hollow here, a hill there, we shrink, we spread all over, we are square, and then we’re round.

Even the most unbendable human beings carry the traces of others’ footsteps; it doesn’t  matter what we’re made of – sand, stone, rubber, silk, clay, marble or mud – we all get sculptured, scratched, moulded, bloated, twisted, pressed. And not for one day or ten years, but forever. And it’s not even bad or sad or disturbing.

There is a genuine, desperate yet denied need to get on with people; to have it their way, to even compromise if togetherness is to be achieved this way.

Bizarrely enough, happiness is more about adjusting than influencing;  and therefore, it’s nothing “great”, or ferociously “selfish”, or “highly strategical” or “visionary” about it. In fact, it’s just an exhaustible state of being you while falling into beloved others. Then you shall rise from the fall and be alone and proud again. Then you can count your bend marks.

PS: OK, I’m not very subtle this time. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome American Breed.

PS2: My first little nephew was born a few hours ago. Stunning and healthy and everything!!! Strange, how genuine one’s joy is when something like this happens. It feels like he’s the very first baby boy on earth. Lovely.

I still don’t know what’s harder to find: a virtuous woman or an intelligent man.

Day after day, man struggles to resolve the conflict between the need to have a good dinner and the strong desire to remain indoors, rejoicing in do-nothingness. No one and nothing can take away from us these two incompatible elements, whatever form the dilemma may take: cooking or sleeping? eating outdoors or starving indoors? blowing the budget to cook or blowing the budget to eat fancy restaurants? The conflicting attitudes toward food and cooking make people intimidated of others’ ways of being hungry and getting fed. Food is like religion: there is a hell and a paradise of both; and people hold different notions of how to get (or get out of) there. Also, a gradual loss of faith in both cooking and praying has been attested. However the need to secure tasty food and an afterlife is here to stay, justifying the daily struggle for a better dinner and a better world.

I wouldn’t blog much about my religious views, as for the foods, I’ll put it straight: my belief is strong – homecooking makes your home THE place to be. I find it upsetting to actually have to LEAVE the house whenever I want to enjoy a meal. A week ago I’ve made Italian Focaccia for an Asian friend. This week I’ve done it again. The outcome is religiously splendid:

You need 6 cups of whole wheat flour, two pieces of dry yeast dissolved in a cup of warm water, parmesan (about one cup and a half), olive oil, fresh rosemary, about 150 g prosciutto crudo (cut into very small pieces), a small finely sliced red onion, one tablespoon of coarse salt, and finally, about two teaspoons of fresh ground pepper. Put 5 cups of whole wheat flour in a large bowl together with the dissolved yeast (and water), add the parmesan and the prosciutto, a bit of salt and a teaspoon of pepper. Mix everything together using a wooden spoon, then gather all your courage and use your hands. The dough should be sticky. Put everything on a floured surface (you still have a cup of flour left, remember?) and knead it until smooth (add some more warm water if necessary). Place the dough back in (now oiled!) bowl. Cover it with a towel or plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for about 2 hours (it should rise A LOT!)

Preheat the oven at 250 degrees. Place the dough in an oiled baking sheet, and dimple it with your fingers. Splash it with olive oil, sprinkle with more pepper, coarse salt, parmesan and onion. Bake it for 30 minutes, until it turns somewhat gold. Serve it warm (or cold), with a a dip of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, garlic, fresh rosemary and basil.

Add a Chianti to the whole thing and you’d assume you died and went to heaven.

PS: Mick Ronson, “I’d Give Anything to See You“. Simple and…straight. The kind of guitar riff that never really gets old-fashioned.

Time’s here to screw us, not to serve us. The more we get, the more we get used with not using it. There are piles of unused hours behind us, and piles of new, expecting ones ahead us.

As we age, we become more and more unskilled in reacting to (and dispose of) our spare hours; we even lose the ambition to actually do it. When clumsiness in managing time will reach a worrying degree, Death will be here to confirm the malpractice.

PS: There’s somewhat strange (hermeneutically speaking) to come up with Leonard Cohen‘s “Chelsea Hotel” covered by Rufus Wainwright, so early in the morning. But for a moment it just seemed right. By the way, have you seen the BBC documentary “Imagine: Rufus Waiwright”? It’s also on YouTube, divided into 6 or 7 parts. One of the best artists of the moment. And for sure the best dressed man of the century.

The permanent state of mind of an idiot is that of a dictator looking for a balcony.

The only chance one has to survive those exceptionally bad days when awful news keep pouring down like rain, is to keep cutting things in small pieces. Don’t think. Don’t stop. Just cut. Let the compulsion take over (spare your fingers, if possible). Eventually it will turn out to be a salad.

Of course, a non-reflective approach of recipes has always been a big enemy of good cooking. There cannot be any valuable correlation between compulsion and cooking. The moment you stop thinking, you stop being a cook.  Who cares about gastronomic information and pancake skills when you can’t understand and master the strategy behind a certain dish? I believe in “strategic cooking” and I tend to detest any other impulsive/compulsive reason one might have for spending time in the kitchen. BUT.

When it comes down to surviving apocalyptic days, even the noble prestige of a salad must subdue to the logic of “eschatology”. So cut, cut some more, and when you think you’ve cut enough, just try a little bit faster. It goes like this:

You can cut whatever vegetable you have in the fridge. Speaking about surviving exercises, organic vegetables will make a big difference. Start with the harder ones: two peppers (green and red), about 250 g of  green olives, about 300 g goat cheese cut in bite size chunks, half of a medium-sized broccoli cut into (rather) small pieces, not more than 70 g organic ham or spicy organic salami, a medium-sized, finely-sliced red onion, about 6-7 cornichons.

Cut 1 avocado (without smooshing it, please!) into small pieces, finely chopped leaves of a celery, and, at the very end, 3 or 4 medium tomatoes.

Spread some cold pressed unfiltered organic olive oil (very important for a full taste), some balsamic vinegar, some fresh rosemary (the dry one would be fine as well, I guess), freshly ground red pepper, and sea salt. If it suits your taste, you can also make your option for a spoon of Dijon mustard.

And don’t forget you’re in the middle of a surviving exercise, so clean the cooking place before heading to the table for dinner. While reading this, you may not know exactly why, but that’s only because you  never had to turn a bad day into good food. So you have to take my word for it: first clean the mess, then set the table.

So this is a surviving exercise that accidentally became a decent dinner, with a sweet finish. It could have been a lot worse.

PS: Another fine song from Regina Spektor‘s album Far (2009): “Blue Lips”, live. I do like it a lot. But it’s nothing to die for until the very last minute when the song becomes more abstract, yet more conclusive and credible. Once again, she’s too smart for making good pop.

One of the most serious challenges a writer encounters is that of creating a credibly stupid character. Somehow, it takes less talent and less wit to make a character act, talk and look smart.

Of course, I am referring to good literature, when every move one makes – from placing a comma to  displaying a dialog -  is inexplicably difficile, in fact as close to impossibility as one shall ever get. Therefore, under such terrible circumstances, when everything stands or falls with whether or not this comma or that word should really be there, plausibly depicting an idiot borders on geniality. A genius writer has to master hundreds of little nuances not telling you anything by themselves, but eventually showing you a genuine idiot, in full blossom.

Indeed, there is nothing naive, infirm or inadequate in the process of making of an idiot who moves, talks and acts like a real one.  It’s not like writing witty maxims or pathetic essays about life, death, love or sex, it is instead about digging right in the middle of the “crater”, where the most tragic human mystery lies like a sleeping monster waking up starved everytime you try to get close to him.

Besides, the more you explain stupidity, the less you’ll illustrate it. And on the other hand, the more you let it “talk” by itself, the less you’ll have it noticed by your readers (most of them don’t feel like giving extra-thoughts to anything involving idiots and idiocy; being afraid of ending up identifying themselves with someone’s stupid behaviour, they purposely fail to engage in such deep reflection over certain fictional scenes.)

It is in fact very hard to create and nurture a writer-readers alliance when attempting to depict idiots. However, since making good literature and hoping for a writer-readers alliance is, by all means, a heretic/perverted way of dealing with arts, I shall not discuss it further on. I am content with mentioning it, leaving the rest for your private reflection.

Now I’ll accompany you through the rest of my argumentation. We will leave good literature aside, noticing instead that something curious happens in mediocre literature: everyone acts, talks and looks kind of smart: from sparkling quick comments made by some main male character to  the dumb depth of some professional blonde, everything transpires epistemology. The mediocre fictional world is poisoned with wittiness, just like the Hollywood movies are poisoned with beauty. As expected, both are fakes.

The mediocre writer displays a world free of idiots. Building one, is beyond his mastery. Needing one, is beyond his reasoning and belief. But the smart guy of a mediocre novel makes the perfect idiot for a respectable novel.

And now can you see the resemblance with real life? If you want to earn a reputation as a reliable idiot, you really should be looking for a reliable audience.

PS: It’s raining a very special kind of raindrops: some are small, some are big, some are warm, some are cold. So can you see the resemblance with real life?

I haven’t done much today except for a 10 minute-meeting with international friends, 10-minute listening to Loudon Wainwright, 10-minute reading from Paul Valery’s essays and 50 terrible minutes spent in pain while stubbornly trying to get some yoga exercises done. Embarrassing.

The song of the day is Fleetwood Mac‘s “Beautiful Child”. I’ve always loved it deeply.