Ramblings no one should be interested in...really

I mean, seriously, ask yourself why are you here.

sabato 14 agosto 2010

One last of everything

This is a note I wrote a while back on Facebook, to keep my friends in Sardegna updated. It was partially a rant, and this is why it belongs to this blog. Every moment being unique though, I have slightly re written the not to fit my present mood. I should add that this note was started an indefinite number of months ago, and my mood has shifted many times since then, yet that fits it nicely, because I might have gone through even more "last ones" than I realized, every moment being filled, potentially, with one of them.

This time, I will open with someone else´s words:

Narrator: Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well, yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.


The line, courtesy of the IMDB, is from the movie "The Sheltering Sky", which I actually have not even seen. I saw the line on a friend's profile on Facebook, and found later that Brandon Lee (R.I.P.) had quoted it from the book by Paul Bowles. I checked the trailer and it was so cheesy that it made my kidneys, liver and brain shut down in protest, but what can you expect from a tagline (delivered by the deep actorial voice that does ALL trailers in the U.S.) like "A woman´s dangerous erotic journey beneath...(highly dramatic pause, pans out to breathtaking African landscape)...The Sheltering Sky".

Still, the worth of the line stands...

...As I was saying, sometimes I like to take stock of a situation, upgrade the plotted course with fresher coordinates, new readings of the sun and the stars. I am in Berlin, right now, and there is a lot to think about, all the time. For example, the thought that some things hardly ever go as desired or planned (which is why I almost stopped planning), and that some times, when they do go as planned, it is probably because of luck, chance, fortune, and not intelligence or skill (I care not if Obi Wan disagrees, seriously).

I actually wonder if intellect and instinct are just two tools designed to minimize damages. Before anyone worries, I am 99% referring about my job in this obscure line.

Anyways, things look bright these days. Work is causing a lot of pressure, but it's not like I am friggin' deployed in Falluja, so I will do my time and try to do a good job. While I keep myself busy with that, I wonder from time to time what some people that I know are doing. While I am filling a spreadsheet (BTW I have become bloody Raffaello at that, they almost look like art!), during a set at the gym , during a bike ride, I do ask myself whether they are having fun, bumming around on the internet (chances are), travelling, reading, or if they are seeing each other.

I did and do wonder whether there are cycles in life, and for how long will they keep repeating themselves. Perhaps they will get longer and longer as one grows older. I wonder if there are stages in life which, like a good telefilm, like me staying in this town, reach a natural end, and fill us with the desire to move on.
The lesson is, I suppose, that this time will come again, and soon, and like it has happened before, a lot will be lost in the transition, and precious little will be taken to the next stage. Which is what I said before. A certain thing will only happen a certain number of times, and they are not that many. And you will get to the point when you will be able to count down, in your head, how many times you will see that sequence of shops on that tram line on your way home; how many times you will have a latte macchiato at that place, or how many times you will see that bridge or that tower or that ice cream vendor. The last time, for some months, that I will see my cat spread-eagled on the windowsill, roasting her tummy in the sun. The last time that two people, well into their senior years, will see each other. They will part ways, after a life of seeing each other occasionally, with meetings fewer, shorter and further between, and they will speak not a word of what they think about seeing each other again, just hoping that it will happen.

With all these change, I like to remind myself that my peace of mind and health of body are not a God given right, that the ones I love and love me back are not always going to be there, and that at some point someone will leave my stage, and I theirs. Sometimes, out of nowhere, four countries, six languages and three thousand miles will just jump in the way between you and those who were, until then, adventuring through life with you. We will see each other again, at the next intersection, perhaps a bit wearier, and perhaps will will have grown a bit distant from each other. Where once we needed not words to speak, but just a pause in the breathing, a gesture, a hint of a look, there will be words and complicated explanations, but it will still be all good.

I leave you with another quote, from a great movie I saw sometime ago in Sardinia. It was perhaps meant to be used in a different context, but I believe it somehow fits what I have rambled about so far.


Morgan Freeman, as Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris : He stayed with me through my last fight in San Berdoo. My manager was off getting drunk somewhere and it was just Frankie and me. I was taking a hellacious beating. Everybody's got a particular number of fights in 'em. Nobody tells you what that number is. Mine was 109. I just didn't want to admit it.
Fourth round, this... this cut opens up. Blood starts pouring into my eye. They should've stopped the fight, but, hell, I was a black man in San Berdoo - Blood was what I was there for. Round after round, I kept getting Frankie to patch me up. He's talking about throwing in the towel, but he ain't my manager, he can't throw in nothing. Round after round, he's arguing with me. And I’m almost laughing, cos, hell, it's getting more to him than to me. I go 15 rounds, lose by decision. Next morning, I lose the eye. In 23 years, he's never said a thing about it. Doesn't have to. I can see it in his face every time he looks at me. Somehow... Frankie thinks he should've stopped that fight. Should've saved my eye. Spends his life wishing he could take back that 109th fight. See, I wanted to go to 110. Thing is... if you want to get to the title... maybe he's not the one to take you there.

Million Dollar Baby