The star that gets close... the star that crashes into you.

Your erstwhile eliptical path,

Your new gravity, 

Your corrected destination.

Where are you going, rest of the world...
What if the keyboard of my life doesn't let me type the question mark.
What if where I come from and where I'm going are the same place.
What if I see better when I can't really see with my eyes.
What if it's all wrong and we must start again.
It's ok.

I will have existed even if you don't read me and don't listen to my songs.

pUnIsHmEnT

The thing I most feared from my mother, like a mortal spear wound, were the words MAI PIU'.

where did I see you befoe

Sometimes I get the feeling that some characters in my life are being played by the same actors, only in further disguise.

A year comes to a close and you let it go with a mix of disgust and fascination... quite like immediately after a difficult spell in the restroom.

Perhaps

It's not the song. It's the listener.

Lovely mists come wisping through
I'm not so sure if it will do
Reaching one light day at midnight
Might take me a dark day or two.

It's not the dream. It's the dreamer.

They're alive

Every person's dreams respond to their own hidden geometry. Every person's dreams automatically align themselves as they respond to the environment, they protect the older dreams, they fill the neck of the soul's bottle.
One comes true, and soon the others realign, a new one bubbles up to the neck, pushes to come true, obeying equations we can't fathom.
Dreams are living beings.

Cacho y Pedazo

Cacho y Pedazo estaban en la vereda.
Cerca del horizonte la luna agachada entre unos guayabos.
-Escuchame Pedazo.
-Decime, Cacho.
-A mí lo que me pasó a los cuarenta y dos es increible.
-Qué te pasó.
-Y bueno, resulta ser que...
Y entonces Cacho le contó a Pedazo que cuando era más chico diez años eran una eternidad... y cada vez esa tajada que eran diez años se ponía en perspectiva y se volvía más chica, más chica. Pero que al cumplir los cuarenta y dos, algo se dividió adentro de él, y mirando hacia atrás veía diez años como nada y mirando hacia adelante diez años pesaban como el recuerdo de que dentro de poco, dentro de cada vez menos, el sueño que es la vida se iba a acabar.
Pedazo quedó pensando un rato largo y dócil mientras la luna se... desenguayababa.
-Cacho, ¿de dónde venís que siempre decís cosas tan ciertas siendo tan otra persona?
-Soy otro boludo, Pedazo, eso nomás.
-En todo caso, somos dos pedazos de boludos, dijo Cacho.
-Si, un par de Cachos, dijo el otro, y se rieron un rato.

Chuck and Piece

Chuck's dilemma was suddenly clear: being forty-one is strange: on one hand ten years no longer seem like such a long time, but on the other, ten years into the future seem too close to that unnameable thing. As if...the galaxy were expanding ever faster... just imagine ahaha.

itch

Fly, my pretties...! Flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!

The Startip Stealers

Jonah's brain wraps around the plume of smoke from his marlie.  Feelings of unease course through his veins.

Why the hell is living in Italy so difficult? he ponders... why if I was born with a good luck star?

"Careful, see, Stella? You really need to be very careful with a new breed of thieves, they're the Startip Stealers. People think one is born with a good luck star that stays there forever... well, as Anne Bancroft's husband would write: not!!! Sometimes they leave. Sometimes they die. And sometimes, Stella, they get the startips cut off inadvertently.
Those unfortunate stars start bleeding their mojo stardust right out of their broken tips. And nobody knows what can happen to them."

Obsta

she's piqued,
she just can't deal,
it's simply over her head,
it's not fair, oh no, Christ no!
she knows no rest since long ago
(but no matter how dramatic
the issue is quite static...)
these are the things that happen to her
when she hopes... but shouldn't

carta

Querida sobrina,
Quería hablarte de esta mañana, que tan triste te noté... te acordás?
Te miré con dulzura.
Te sonreí antes de irme.
Tu novio te hablaba anoche de su hablar de vos a los demás, de su orgulloso hablar de vos. Vi sonrojarse tus mejillas. Estabas contenta.
"No, a la mujer se la deja encerrada en casa..." decía él con tu rubor de aplauso, "más si es hermosa y fascinante como la mía... y sí, la voy a mandar a rendir materias para equiparar su título..., y me decían 'pero naturalmente como no frecuentante', y yo, 'lógico! ni ahí de frecuentante', jajaaa!"
Yo no quise interrumpir tu felicidad. A veces el orgullo también es una forma de control, porque quién no se vuelve dependiente de aquel orgullo que alguna vez pretérita logró causar?
Ruborizate sin culpa. Cosechá lo que puedas, tu eterna excusa para no denunciar lo injusto. Pero solo para bien. Y que la ecuación final sea resolvible.
A la noche vuelvo y pongo en el horno las papitas.

cuba libre

-En mi familia tengo quien me dice oye pero tú haceh demasiado.
-Sí, poque tehtá desahuciando, ya te digo.
-Y tengo quien me dice oye que no haceh una mielda.
-Eh así, chica.
-Sí, pero son todoh el mihmo, muhé.
-No te sigo, chica.
-No te culpo, muhé. Vamoh a la playa.
-Vamoh.

friday

tomorrow evening we play live...
the season starts when we arrive
my wig and lenses top the jazz
my high heels looking for the gas

I sing in the car
I play on the stage
I smile at the stove while I
fall down the stairs

stride my stride, try to play my game
thought you could but you're not the same
tomorrow evening we play live
and on my screen yesterday says hi

He repeats it until it drives home.

Realidades de Ciertos Hijos

Existe el mundo. Y existen los mundos. Tenés dos, tu mundo es tu cuarto en el universo de tu casa. Tenés trece, tu mundo son las delicadas relaciones de la así llamada "escuela media"... donde realmente te forman... o no. Donde si sos nena te volvés silenciosamente mujer con una mirada asustada en un cubículo del baño, y sufrís las flechas de las malas y las envidiosas, que por lo general coinciden. Donde si sos nene, y no sos deportivamente ágil, te catalogan como gordo. Y si sos gordo, seas nene, o nena, es como llevar una pelota de plomo encadenada al pie.
Y existe el submundo de ser el de afuera y encima ser bastante especial.
Las demás minorías, en vez de acogerte, de unirse para defenderte, te acusan, separan, y maltratan mucho más que la mayoría.
Sentís desilusión más grande que tus años, sentís añoranza de como tendrían que ser las cosas sin ni siquiera poderla describir.
Situaciones pasajeras que en el instante son eternas. Caídas, humillaciones, contrastes, críticas, desprecio, injusticia, junto con el jamoncito del medio de la merienda... si tu mamá se acordó.
Y cuando te viene a buscar, ella, tu mamá, mira tus ojos, tu sonrisa, espera a ver qué tal sobreviviste... espera ansiosamente que no se haya roto lo irrompible.
Y como cada persona de fe, y como cada obsesivo compulsivo, el suspiro de alivio llega también hoy. Llega cada vez. De lo contrario, tendría sentido.

Relent a Little Less

Audrey?
Lily? What happened sister?
He hit me.
What? The sonofabitch? Again?
That's right.
Jesus Lily, what're you gonna to do about this?
I don't know, my friend. I suspect it's happening. Something is pushing inside me. It's beyond my powers to stop the fury I feel in and around me. I don't know what to expect and that scares me.
Ok. Listen carefully. Remember that song by Sting, the one you lovingly dismissed?  Beware, though, because your soul, my sweet darling, is manyfold.
Yeah, if Neapolitan sfogliatelle exist, I don't see why the human soul should be any less complicated.
See? You're already feeling better.
Indeed!
'at a girl. I'm coming over, metti su un caffé.
Click.

Wreck-it Raffaelly

Hello, fellow woman.
I am a ferocious being. I live within the woman who expresses my thoughts in this moment...
I exist.
My name is... well hers, my earthly host's, is Lily.
She just had a breakthrough, my host that is.
She just realized I'm not all that bad.
I may have floundered in the past, but I am strong now, and I know to keep my temper.
But I also know how to unleash it.
I wasn't even casted, just think of it.
She's realizing that sometimes, to keep herself sane, she needs to let me step in.
I'm her savior, sometimes.
I'm her personal fucking Wreck-it Wratharella.... sometimes.

lullabies

I

l

l

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Fabrizio's Advice

As you're unfashionably sliding down, too far from the edge to clamber back up, just push one problem at a time into the funnel's end and you'll be just fine.

From Moon to Fusaro

Once, when I was living in Buenos Aires, I got invited to a seemingly innocent luncheon, by an Italian friend of my father's who must have run out of people to invite right about the time we spoke on the telephone to exchange courteous smalltalk, resulting in my being his plus one.

The year was 2000 so I was about 24, and the place was an enormous conference room filled with tables, all adorned as for a formal party or wedding, white satin bows behind the chairs and all. I sat beside Stecca, my father's friend, and soon learned that nobody knew each other at any of the tables... not even people and their plus ones! We were all sort of suspended there, eating delicious food and wondering just why we were there on a metropolitan but sunny Sunday morning. There were formal attires of every kind and representative of every religion, there were businessmen, journalists, and spiritual leaders, families, even farmers dressed in elegant suits... we started listening to speeches which sounded like the typical peace and love speeches which open UN conferences, and clapped, and conversed with the perplexedly happy people in our tables. During a break, presumably for smokers to go out and smoke, I found myself speaking with a distinguished elderly man who simply said, ésto debe ser de Rosa Cruz o del reverendo Moon... I looked at him questioningly and later began to understand.

The master of ceremonies gently nudged us on, one course after the other, cups constantly refilled with bubbly champagne, and at some point we were handed small sheets of paper and small pencils, and were jovially instructed to discuss I no longer remember what aspect of peacemaking or conflict resolution in the world, with the other alcohol-drenched members of our tables, and to have one of us go up to the stage and present our guidelines... It was at that stage that I realized that this was a complex maneuver to identify possible key elements for their movement, which was, as the old mysterious man in the break had insinuated, nothing less than one of the Millenium World Peace Summits of Religious and Spiritual Leaders organized by Reverend Moon and his moonites, which was focusing that year on the themes of conflict transformation, forgiveness and reconciliation, poverty and the environment.

As it turned out, I was an instant leader at my table, and was the one to deliver a small speech containing the opinions of the 5 or 6 seated with Stecca and myself, and was at once flabbergasted and honored to be locked in on by the moonite scouts. Like predators, they tried to hold me down when I came offstage to thundering applause, and told me I had some serious talent. I never saw any of them again, but have remembered the incident many times. There are scouts and sharks everywhere, there are scouts and sharks and scouting sharks in your shoes and in the reflexion on your car window. 

And today, some 15 years later, I was reminded of that singular luncheon with religious leaders who took it all so seriously, those promising prospects for my future as a public speaker and diplomat. I had just finished reviewing my translation of a video speech by a fervent activist and political thinker, Diego Fusaro, and thought to myself:

I'm good at this. I'm really good. The moonites were no fools to identify me. 

Fear

what if death found you now, so out of place,
all your pods and spells dispersed...
I bet you still believe
that in the pool of your eyes,
perhaps in vain,
its echoes askew,
time would finally stop...
Oh, you fool!

the road not understood to be the one that needed to be taken

nice road

"At some point in my life, nostalgia became a tumor. What began as a slight tendency to understand the cruelty of our established vision of time as a one-way street just suddenly got out of hand. I don't know the exact order of events, but it goes something like this. The risk factors were no joke. Direct descendant of Neapolitan nobility and the deep Italian south, daughter of a couple that had fallen in love at the end of the post war decade, at the beginning of the Dolce Vita, both of them tied up in loving knots with the United Nations and the NATO, two very benign fatherly presences in my childhood and youth... altogether not common anymore. Touches of the United States of America imbuing a bold Italian spirit, and of course, everything bathed in nothing but nostalgia. Especially since I had been the fulcrum of their most important decision ever, the decision to leave Italy and set up in Asunción, Paraguay. So as soon as I was able to perceive this, and I was a pretty perceptive kid, I took it upon myself to understand what it was I had caused. One of the ways was enjoying, deserving, the pain of longing for something I could glimpse at in photos and mute videos. Then, when I was four, my beloved cousin got killed. But nobody had it in them to introduce me to the concept of death at such an early age, so they told me he had gone on a super long trip to India. Of course I perceived things to be deliberately unclear, in a way that allowed for wide interpretation, for easy adaptation into the reality of what had happened, and understood, at a deep level, that I needed to explore my quest alone, and give the impression I was not even wondering, so as to be left alone. A part of me had to go along with them because I also had to protect them from the elevated concepts that I could understand, and the other part of me was probing the endless possibilities. There had to be a solution. I had to be special if I understood the things I understood, but I needed to prove myself at every level, while at the same time not letting my family down. My parents were gentle and loving, so I tried thinking of a place where we meet again, after death, or even in life, which was my internal hope for my long-missed cousin. This resulted in the land of Kijara, which lies in another dimension, and is among us and above us, in a cloud above Switzerland. But that is a fun spinoff I'll get into at another time.

IT MUST BE SAID THAT (Insertion #1) Hey, I was born in 1976. That means I belong to the generation that gaped at E.T. on a movie screen. In my case, a whole cocktail of magic-inspiring movies during the whole of the Reagan administration's economic pseudoboom. Given my unique coordinates and the point we were at in the family history, aided by a (probably guilt-ridden or nostalgia-ridden) uncle and aunt that regularly sent us fabulous betamax tapes filled with US movies and tv shows, I was in the perfect place, with a technology-friendly, photographer musician 15-years-my-senior brother, a father who was ahead of his years as far as home video was concerned, a mother who was an unblossomed film-maker, a simultaneously Padre Pio and US democratic devotee and JFK fan grandmother, and a fully bilingual and functional American School environment, at a time when everything literally seemed at hand's reach, when the turn of the century and the millenium was close enough that we felt the fizz but still far enough that we had time to fantasize even more and feel a very real part of it - let alone that when 2000 came along it was quite another '99. My childhood was the time for world premieres of jewels such as Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, Ghost, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Cinema Paradiso, Once Upon a Time in America, The Untouchables, Die Hard, The Last Emperor, Gandhi, Platoon, Amadeus, Tootsie, The Terminator, M.A.S.H., The Deer Hunter, Africa Mia, The Princess Bride, Rain Man, Poltergeist, When Harry Met Sally, The Little Mermaid (generation number 1), Cinderella, Die Hard, countercurrents including everything from Wayne's World to whatever spurned Michael Moore and of course the welcoming of computers into our everyday lives, oh the little bastards the little destiny altering new members of our families. It was delicious. And ah, the musical theater, it just swept my parents and me off our fucking feet. I don't know why my brothers never bit on the bait, or if they did, for that matter; as for me, Grease and The Little Prince (with Gene Wilder and the still now unreachable, impossible Steven Warner), not to mention The Wizard of Oz, Gigi, My Fair Lady, Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, Cats, Blood Brothers, Fame, Miss Saigon and Madame Butterfly, Evita and The Inspector Calls... are you able to embrace the largeness of this, the sense of power it bestows???

"As the years went by, these seeds germinated and started flowering with great side-effects in my everyday life. Thanks to nostalgia and my awareness of the decadence of time, I needed to elevate my living to a high power of itself, let's say. I was sensitive to beauty, to passion, to anything mortal, to the course of things, to turning points, to music that takes you away, to good reading, to expressing my joys and sorrows and wonders. And the sense of pain that grew alongside all that. Then my grandparents started dying off... gently at first, long-distance, an hour or two more without seeing my dad emerge from his room with a stuffy nose...and then suddenly, twice almost, with Teresa, my beloved Grandmama.

"Then came exactly a decade of joy. And then came another of sorrow. Sorry, I... I can't go on. I need a little break", said the woman, with a weak gesture of her hand.
"Ok, we'll come back a little later, Ma'am", said the writer, with a quick nod to the nurse that was checking the woman's tubing. The woman looked out the window, smiling. But an instant later, as the nurse replaced the pillow behind her back, she caught a glimpse of a tear wiped wrong, glistening royally on a still beautiful, slowly dying, ivory cheekbone.

Here's to Now

One of the most intense problems I find when dealing with others, is that time is spent not being here, now. Look at me, for instance. Even if I forge my spirit into a wonderful synchronicity with whatever the present is, and which we never experience mentally and physically at once, it still oh Lord takes two to tango. I find myself intensely connected to the present for the first time in many years, even if I never had it and never will. I'm connected to the idea of the present, to the boat's (you know the boat I'm talking aboat, mite) prow slicing the water, so just let me dream my dream, I say... but if the other side is too busy somewhere else in the dimension of time, I just let them go and muse on the fact that I may be traveling alone - so I do indeed dream my dream, and they couldn't stop me if they wanted to.