"From a true story" "THE OBSCENE LIFE" "My mother was a hippie, when she laughed, ll was like the world really made you laugh." "She was a personage in our town, they called her the Indian." "As a kid, India for me was pictured on the spice packets for roasts, a magic full of strange animals," "I thought she came from there." "Hippies said they were flower children," "I was my mother's son, so I was the flower grandchild." "It was just us, but that "us" was the most beautiful thing ever." "One morning she didn't want to get out of bed, or the next day either." "The doctor said my mother was depressed." "After months it was clear, that depression was weird." "The tests began and then came the bad news." "She wasn't well at all." "She wasn't well at all." "We should have made plans." " Build for a future." " Any at all." "But we didn't." "We'd wake up at dawn on Sundays to visit sanctuaries and ask for a miracle." "I'd look outside, the things of the world seemed so stupid." "Stupid truck, stupid horses, stupid tree." "Stupid truck, stupid horses, stupid tree." "Stupid truck, stupid horses, stupid tree, stupid truck, stupid horses, stupid tree." "We asked the saints for a miracle, what's a miracle to a saint ?" "Just one, only one." "None of us really believed in miracles, but we had to do something, especially on Sundays, when their newsstand was closed." "And we'd return home like little wizards, incapable of doing magic." "The clays came like blows lo a wall, punching holes in it." "Silence poured from every hole, silence sucked words away and thoughts burned in the holes of my thought." "There was nothing left to say, neither there, or elsewhere." "My father died suddenly of a stroke." "We were all waiting for my mother's death, but instead he died, my father." "It was winter when he died." "It wasn't what I wanted." "It was another life, but the days went on." "Somewhere there were days and weeks, but I still liked something," "I liked to read and write." "I'd have written poems and stories," "I'd have written lots of things." "But after death came to my house, all thought became tough." "I belonged to my house with all my being." "The house was about to ﬂy off, I anchored myself to its foundations." "There's a man on a road who meets another man... and he says: "Hi !"" "I don't like that one." "Maybe this one." "She looked like an astronaut." "All astronauts are beautiful and have purple hair." "Base to Moon I Base to Moon I" "A mom with astronautic hair was better than a dead mom." "I squeezed her hand." ""Mom"..." ""Mom", I'd say." "My mother never talked about death, but I knew she'd die of cancer, she'd become a corpse," "and I didn't want to know." "My mother's name was Gianna," "I didn't go to her funeral." "I thought a form of the Earth separated us, universal chemistry, protons and stuff that we dressed in stories." "It was the deposit of finished people, of things that had been." "Don't think, don't think, don't think, don't think, don't think." "Don't think." "I was totally alone." "I'd like to read the poem of a young student of mine, it's short..." "It's my favorite." ""The page fills with sharp points of love," "and only there does life respond to me..." "Do you like Umberto Saba, the poet'?" "Yes." "Very much." "I was a wounded bird, a hunted animal," "something awaiting death, who remembers every nerve, every heartbeat." "Before losing it." ""It's strange how all things abandon us, how what seems immense, crumbles, the empty whirl of emotions offers this, then that." "Out of tune, at the mercy of obscure emotions, dazing us for this." "It's manifest, done is the time I knew it all, flirting with what's real," "I survive..." "I was happy, too happy" "Things came to mind I'd never have expected." "One especially obsessed me:" "my aunt preparing something for me to eat." "I felt such pain thinking of my aunt who'd have fried calzones for nothing, because I'd have killed myself." "You have fun in a disco." "Jesus, stop my suffering, smother me in light, sounds, invisible bodies to let me forget." "Jesus, stop my suffering, smother me in light, colors, invisible bodies to let me forget." "Jesus, stop my suffering, smother me in light, sounds, invisible bodies to let me forget." "Jesus, stop my suffering." "I had everything I needed:" "hashish, alcohol, psychotropic drugs." "I was in an ideal condition." "Absolute silence, without history, hurled into the void." "I was in there." ""The heart burns"," "I thought and then nothing." "Thought extinguished." "It'll take weeks before we know..." "What '?" "If you'll be disfigured forever." "Where's the smoke you bought with my money '?" "My house." "Hindus?" "Fuck off I" "You must react, take your life in hand." "How 7" "Come to Mass every Sunday, in the early morning, and you'll see that you too have a strong will." "Shall we say a small prayer'?" "In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost." "May you be praised, my Lord." "May you be praised, my Lord." "May you be praised, my Lord." "What on earth happened '?" "What did you do '?" "Andrea, Franco Burrow read your poems, he liked them very much." "You'll go study in Milan, he's found you a place in a charitable educational institution." "Everything's alright." "She was kind and touched my bums delicately." "Life had that nurse's face." "Life was waiting for me, outside, somewhere, it was calling to me." "Shadows... dancing on the walls... bizarre, crazy" "jumble." "Shadows dancing on the walls, a bizarre, crazy jumble." "Whose breaths caressing me ?" "Whose breaths caressing me ?" "Whose breaths caressing me ?" "My favorite poet, George Trakl." "Shadows dancing..." "Bizarre, crazy jumble." "Bizarre, dancing, shadows, shadows dancing, bizarre, crazy jumble." "Whose breaths caressing me ?" "Whose breaths caressing me ?" "Whose breaths caressing me ?" "Shadows dancing on the walls, a bizarre, crazy jumble." "Swallows trace confused lines, flames flicker in the gardens." "Someone's looking in the door, slowly she bends towards the ardent forehead, towards the white stars." "Whose breaths caressing me ?" "Whose breaths caressing me ?" "Whose breaths caressing me ?" "I decided to kill myself, like Trakl." " Cocaine '?" " Not cocaine, hashish, pills..." "Amphetamines, heroin, brown '?" "Great I" "How much do you need '?" "17 grams." "Too much stuff, we don't have it." "What the fuck will you do with 17 grams '?" "It's for a party." " Got the money '?" " Yeah." "Okay, let's go." "Try it." "Tun" "Give us the money." "Tonight I will die." "Those pictures spun me away like a whirlpool." "A lacerating promise of small-change eternity, vertical," "equal to instants." "My heart pounded like crazy, all of me was there." "All night, all night long." "All night, all night, all night long." "The next morning I wasn't dead." "Try to keep your dignity, you too can be normal, nothings normal, but remember, never ask anything less than joy." "Hi." "I'm Sissy." "Because I love my work," "I'm happy with my work." "I have a SUV, not all the girls have a SUV like me, an apartment downtown, at 18." "It doesn't matter how I got it, not all the girls have a SUV like me," "an apartment downtown at 18." "It doesn't matter how I got it, at 18... they can't all say that." "Come in." "Are you scared '?" "Good you came, a kid like you should have fun." "Besides an old bird makes good broth." "Broth!" "The money..." "The money, kid." "Hummer!" "Why just stand there '?" "Strip, we're coming." " Did you put onion '?" " Yeah." "You'll have fun." "You're cute, you know '?" "Have you got a girl ?" "Like it '?" "C'mon!" "Don't forget this, don't leave it here." "Come back more often." "You'll never find prices like ours." "My painful flesh, a strange dizziness, and all that dope still waiting for me, for the second night, my initiation to death, the real one, maybe, the final one, waiting for me." "It was like I wasn't of myself." "So I kept going down, further and further, in every moment of the night, in the most impossible moment," "I'd have gone the distance." "Where was I ?" "Who was!" "?" "Me?" "It didn't matter anymore." "The excitement had stayed constant, paradoxical, the whole day, a sort of mechanical paranoia." "I had two possibilities:" "either I was dead and this was hell, a prolonging of the moment of death, its stow combustion, without the final depletion, or!" "was still alive, something of myself was me, going forward, without know what it was, who I was." "I looked at people coming and going, each in his own life," "I looked at the expressions on people's faces and I was there with them, hanging on to my story." "I looked at the store windows and watched their goods stretch out to me." "Explosions of yourself in fragments, in objects you possess, in objects you're possessed by." "We ourselves, things among things, in the market of gems, with coffee to drink and people to meet, in the places of loving and accidents, in the land where something ends and something begins." "Me, all the rest." "Everything depended on my heart, how long it could still hold out." "I thought it continued beating, telling me to keep going." "Still other people, still other backs, other sighs." "Again, in the darkness, so never to think again, no memory, only present, no future, nothing." "Like how I dance '?" "After you've fallen a thousand times, you understand you can't get up anymore, actually, you convince yourself you're fated to fall." "That's failure, after all it's nothing but a thought, a thought that's bigger than you." "Get on your knees." "Each of these bills will take you deeper into hell." "And there are lots." "Open your mouth." "Now you're my ashtray, stick your tongue out." "Stick it out further I" "Good, like that, stick your tongue out further." "Yes, like that, stick your tongue out further." "Tn that instant I lost the notion of life and death." "I felt my story, my life slipping away, with water, like dirt." "Get dressed." "Out of here, you worm." "In that moment everything was my death and death was the sense of having done everything." "Who is it '?" "Who is it '?" "I have sinned, I need confession." "You don't wake people at night, even priests sleep." "Come to the church in the morning and confess, let me sleep." "I've greatly sinned, I must confess I" "An "Ave Maria"... and three "Our Fathers"." "How you come out of the fire, how you go through the flames," "how, beyond the fire, there's another light," "how behind even] loss there's a rebirth, how the world continues to seem beautiful!" "and completely incomprehensible." "Stories come from a far away piece where we've an'!" "been, they tell of trials, mothers, fathers." "Beginnings and death and then a new beginning." "Years passed," "I enrolled in Philosophy, working days and studying nights." "I got my degree." "I started writing poems again and then novels, stories with a pen name." "My real name wasn't important anymore." "But there was a stow I had to tell, this one." "All stories come from a far away place, a piece where we've an'!" "been, all of us."