THE FIRST TEST

THE FIRST TEST

The first written test of the final state examination is the same essay for everyone.

And this equality links all candidates with a thread that unites them regardless of the path that led them to that fateful day.

The day of the essay for the so-called maturity.

Those who went to high school, those who chose a technical institute; those who attended Italian classes with predisposition and those who are more into math; those who never had any bad vote and those who were able to catch up.

All of them, all students indiscriminately, find themselves on the same morning sitting on their desks in the common expectation of taking the first written test.

The castle of thoughts regarding the hypothetical topics of the tracks have become “legendary” to the point that more or less all people find themselves reliving the emotions of the hours that mark a crucial moment, a phase that ends by symbolically opening the door to the future.

How did you experience your exam?

Did you suffer through the wait?

Do you still remember what the topic of your paper was?

What was your exam about? What kind of test did it consist of?

FLORENCE COFFEE

FLORENCE COFFEE

Florence coffee … what comes to mind?

Actually the correct wording is Florence by Mills coffee and Mills is Millie Bobby Brown

Why Florence then?

Florence is the name of Millie’s great-grandmother, a woman who left her with a lesson: beauty is about loving and expressing yourself.

In fact, the brand was originally born for a makeup line.

What about the coffee?

Well … the connection is with the morning routine: waking up with a burst of energy helps you get the most out of your day. Coffee, moisturizer and depuffing … What else do you need? ☕️

I’m going to make a bad impression but my morning mood is much more on the chords of Hopper‘s “coffe and contemplation.” 

Millie Bobby Brown morning routine is:

– waking up

– feed the dogs

– take the dogs out

– drinking coffee

– take supplements

– starting work

Undoubtedly Eleven also has the power of business: this is demonstrated by this line of products dedicated to a very specific target audience.

Morning routine equals time to devote to oneself, a repeated ritual, a habit rather than a practice.

What is your morning routine like?

I do not have a morning routine: there are always many things to do in the morning, however if I could hypothetically my morning routine would be:

– breakfast sitting and outside

– reading

ok, let’s exaggerate: dream morning routine

– walking on the beach

Do you want to dream too?

PACHINKO

PACHINKO

Pachinko パチンコ is the name of something that is perhaps less understandable to Westerners, but only because we have other manifestations of alienation and ludopathy.

Pachinko パチンコcould be synonymous with mockery.

Verbal Kint taught us that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist. And like that… he is gone. 

Even gambling in Japan “does not exist” because it is banned. And it disappears under the name “entertainment” definition by which Pachinko is classified.

Many of us have been through a Pachinko parlor running: along with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in the movie Lost in Translation. 

 

Pachinko is a hybrid game, we could say it is the representation of contamination: halfway between a pinball machine and a slot machine.

The trick is precisely the balls that from the game become the very object of winning but cannot be exchanged for money.

By playing Pachinko you can only get prizes of various kinds: chocoloate bars, pens, lighters, candy, T-shirts, cosmetics, bicycles, shopping vouchers, up to so-called “special” prizes i.e. silver or gold objects enclosed in plastic bags.

These special prizes can be exchanged at points outside but nearby Pachinko Parlours: the TUC Shops = Tokyo Union Circulation

I found precise regulations regarding the installation of these phantom vertical pinball machines, but the risk of addiction?

These Pachinko Parlors are places where people are subjected to extremely high noise levels and bright lights.

The players appear to be sitting helpless, completely estranged, as if without identity in the flow of these slow, mechanical movements that cancel out time.

I am very struck by the slogan of a company that runs Pachinko Parlors:

Joy in life

We resolve to bring joy to the lives of our staff, our customers, and society as a whole through our business.

I do not see joy.

 

 

I found a survey from which it mainly shows that the Pachinko Parlour is a place to go alone.

A ball weighs 5.4 gr. a one-dollar box contains two thousand balls, so the weight corresponds to kg. 10.8!

 

I was thinking … with ten kg. of coffee how many cups can we get?  🙂  😉

THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS

THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS

The Eight Mountains is both a literary and cinematic success.

Again I owe the reading to Monica and I hope that the movie will not disappoint me as it often happens when I watch movies based on books.

I heard a lot about The Eight Mountains with reference to male friendship or more precisely manly friendship.

Of course The Eight Mountains tells about mountains, as well as it tells about a Friendship of the kind we should all be privileged to experience in life.

However, the prevailing reflection that I retain after reading this book is another.

Beyond the powerful and unrelenting beauty of the mountain, I was impressed by its role within the story in the father-son relationship.

The mountain is typically silence; instead, I read it in this book as the only dialogue to patch up a deep generational and emotional incommunicability.

Sometimes we love totally, we love with a love written even in our DNA, yet we do not know how to show it.

This kind of love is blatantly obvious to those who can observe it as uninvolved spectators and yet it is hidden from the eyes of those with too close a perspective that paradoxically creates a distance.

Am I wrong?
Perhaps this view is entirely personal.

Have you read the book?
Written by Paolo Cognetti and published by Einaudi in 2016.
Strega Prize 2017.

Or have you seen the movie?
Directed by Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix Van groeningen in 2021.
Jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival 2022. 
David di Donatello for best film 2023. 

An old Nepalese man told me about the eight mountains …

The man picked up a stick with which he drew a circle in the ground. It came out perfect; you could tell he was used to drawing them. Then, within the circle, he drew a diameter, and then a second perpendicular to the first, and then a third and fourth along the bisectors, resulting in a wheel with eight spokes. I thought that, having to arrive at that figure, I would start from a cross, but it was typical for an Asian to start from the circle

– Have you ever seen a drawing like that? – he asked me.

– Yes, – I answered. – In the mandala.

– Right, – he said. – We say that at the center of the world is a very high mountain, Sumeru. Around Sumeru there are eight mountains and eight seas. This is the world for us.

In saying this he drew, out of the wheel, a small point for each ray, and then a small wave between each point. Eight mountains and eight seas. Finally he made a crown around the center of the wheel, which could be, I thought, the snowy summit of Sumeru. He pointed the stick at the center and concluded, -And let’s say: will the person who went around the eight mountains have learned more, or the person who made it to the top of Mount Sumeru?

In your opinion?

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