LET’S PRETEND THAT

LET’S PRETEND THAT

Summer: time for travel, craving for levity.

I propose a surreal quiz to laugh with each other.  Are you ready to imagine?

Let’s pretend that …

you are traveling with people who make you feel good, whether family or friends.

First question: where are you going?

You are chatting about the last movie you saw while you are driving, but you feel a little tired. You see a motorway café, you stop and say: “I need a coffee, I’ll be right back.”

Twenty minutes later you aren’t back yet, so whoever was with you comes in looking for you and what do they see?

You singing standing on the counter like the girls from Coyote Ugly

but this is Italy, there are no microphones in the motorway cafés and you are holding a Rustic sandwich with ham, tomato, mozzarella salad and mayonnaise.

Second question: what are you singing?

Since you have been discovered, you invite them to join you.

Assumption 1:
They catch up with you and start singing with you in the Top Gun style.


Assumption 2:
someone decides to bite the Rustic sandwich 

Assumption 3:
they look at you dumbfounded and after the first moment when they are like salt statues they react by asking what the heck you are doing

Let’s pretend that …

you have to give an explanation: what happened after the coffee?

AND THEN WE WILL BE SAVED

AND THEN WE WILL BE SAVED

With E poi saremo salvi – And then we will be saved again I thank Monica and again I talk about the Strega Prize

And then we will be saved is the debut novel by Alessandra Carati, published by Mondadori, winner of the Opera prima Viareggio Rèpaci prize and among the top seven finalist books for the Strega 2022 prize.

Andrea Vitali, celebrated writer from Bellano, proposed and presented the book.

The salvation told by Alessandra Carati is sought because of the war in Bosnia through an escape to Italy, but the characteristic of this novel is precisely its ability to show how being safe does not mean being saved.

And one finds oneself reflecting on roots, or perhaps better said uprooting, and how there is no place in the world where one can escape from pain.

A pain that manifests itself in different ways is that it is the only true “arbiter.”

Alessandra tells us Aida’s story in episodes, sort of like when we remember “that time.”

And in between times, life flows.

And in between times the family changes, while remaining a fixed point, at times distant, like the land of her origin.

The reflection this reading leaves me with concerns the impossibility of leaving behind pain, whatever kind it may be.

We cannot prevent pain from being part of us; we can only choose how to live with it.

Salvation, then, in this book, reconnects with another Strega Prize winner, Tutto chiede salvezza – Everything asks for salvation, the book by Daniele Mencarelli.

There are indeed many kinds of salvation at different levels.

I find these words of Pablo Neruda emblematic:
If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life.

However, I am also struck by these two basically similar interpretations:

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
Martin Luther King

The only tool that can save my life is imagination.
Alejandro Jodorowsky

Did you feel saved when?

BETWEEN THE FINGERS OF DREAMS

BETWEEN THE FINGERS OF DREAMS

Between the Fingers of Dreams is the gift I received from Anna Calisti thanks to Manual of Mari

The cover of the book shows a red rose and Rosa Rossa is the pseudonym of the author who literally put her heart into this book.

And with my heart I thank her.

Anna’s poems paint Love in all its forms, in all its facets, even the painful ones, each just like a rose petal: delicate, fragrant, colorful and velvety.

Some petals are personal dedications, other petals are reflections, and there is also some poetry in French because life led Anna to move with her family to Luxembourg.

Anna was born the same year as my mom, but before I discovered this I was already caring for her.

In this comment she told me about how her mother used to make coffee on the wood stove,  you can imagine me, reading with heart eyes, can’t you?!

Anna’s poem I prefer is in fact Memories: it conveyed to me the full force of her roots which I cherish.

The world in a square, life flowing, a journey through time.

Between the fingers of dreams a title that allows to thnik to dreams in a tangible way, in some way allows to be able to touch them.

We are approaching the magical season of Christmas: is there a dream that you wish you could touch?

Speaking of dreams, understood not as wishes but precisely as sleep-related psychic phenomenon, for me they always represent an intense desire to be able to find any messages they contain.

What do you think about this?

Do you think there is a definite reason behind what our R.E.M. phase shows us?

Can you understand your dreams?

MARTA’S BROLO

MARTA’S BROLO

I sincerely thank Beatrice Tognarelli and Mari’s Manual for the opportunity to read Marta’s Brolo

I admit that when I first read the title of this book, I wondered what a brolo was.

Do you know?

Around here, we don’t call it brolo, we just say vegetable garden, or in slang “vineyard” even though there isn’t any vine plant.

So: at the first step of Marta,s Brolo I learned something new.

But the most beautiful surprise was this wonderful dedication.

And I listened to the author’s heart and I sensed a deep love for roots, with reference to both the land and family, and this as you know is something that I cherish.

Are you fortunate enough to have a vegetable garden?

My father has always tended vegetable gardens: at our house we only had a strip of land, but he also helped elsewhere, allowing us to eat fresh, wholesome vegetables.

This, on the other hand, is the mini garden that my father-in-law gave us for the kitchen, although in the house unfortunately the plants suffer.

Speaking of cooking, I enjoyed the recipes that Marta’s Brolo encompasses.

So did the particular “introductions” to each chapter.

I was also pleased to find several references to coffee, including this one

The smell of coffee intoxicated the room, she poured it into the cup, and stood at the window to taste it, closed her eyes as the rustle of vegetation came to her, suave sound of the countryside.

What sound comes from your window as you drink coffee?

THREE MILLION EUROS

THREE MILLION EUROS

Three million euros is the amount awarded as compensation for the 17 years spent in prison by an innocent man, one would wonder if this is the price of a depredation.

This is what I had written in recounting the Ilaria Alpi affair. 

But now unfortunately a further question must be added: Is three million euros the cause of Hashi Omar Hassan’s death?

According to the thesis bouncing around the various news outlets, the reason for the killing is precisely related to the compensation money.

But the Order of Journalists together with Usigrai and Federazione Nazionale Stampa Italiana, in union with all the associations participating in the #NoiNonArchiviamo campaign, 

have signed a writ of incorporation as offended parties to continue to demand the truth about the death of Ilaria Alpi and Miran Hrovatin.

Let’s take a step back: with the previous story, I had stopped with the compensation for the wrongful imprisonment of Hashi Omar Hassan. To summarize what happened next we can refer directly to his appeal published

on the Facebook page of Chi l’ha visto

Hashi Omar Hassan therefore asked for help so that he could find his family in Sweden and Somalia.

In Somalia, however, he found death, a violent death, just as violent was the death of Ilaria and Miran.

A bomb under the seat of his car in Mogadishu blasted him and the silence that like a dusting will fall back on the truth, beginning to cover it again with the blanket of time.

Pin It on Pinterest