As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
Henry David Thoreau
Sketch by Small Circle Big Circle. Acrylic on cardboard
Unselfish work leads to silence, for when you work selflessly, you don’t need to ask for help. Indifferent to results, you are willing to work with the most inadequate means. You do not care to be much gifted and well equipped. Nor do you ask for recognition and assistance. You just do what needs to be done, leaving success and failure to the unknown. For everything is caused by innumerable factors, of which your personal endeavor is but one. Yet such is the magic of man’s mind and heart that the most improbable happens when human will and love pull together.
sometimes there’s a crazy one in the street. he lifts his feet carefully as he walks. he ponders the mystery of his own anus. while the American dollar collapses against the German mark he’s thinking of Bette Davis and her old movies.
it’s good to bring thought to bear on things arcane and forbidden. if only we were crazy enough to be willing to ignore our mechanical and static perceptions we’d know that a half-filled coffee cup holds more secrets than, say, the Grand Canyon.
sometimes there’s a crazy one walking in the street. he slips past walks with a black crow on his shoulder is not worried about alarm clocks or approval.
however, almost everybody else is sane, knows the answers to all the unanswerable questions. we can park our automobiles carve a turkey with style and can laugh at every feeble joke.
the crazy ones only laugh when there is no reason to laugh.
in our world the sane are too numerous, too submissive.
we are instructed to live lives of boredom. no matter what we are doing – screwing or eating or playing or talking or climbing mountains or taking baths or flying to India we are numbed, sadly sane.
when you see a crazy one walking in the street honor him but leave him alone. stand out of the way. there’s no luck like that luck nothing else so perfect in the world let him walk untouched remember that Christ also was insane.
Because you know and I know that a song can save your life. We know that we don’t say it much, but it’s true. When you are dark and despairing a song comes and makes you weep as you think yes yes yes. When you are joyous a song comes to top off the moment and make you think the top of your head will fly off from sheer fizzing happy. A song makes you sob with sadness for such pain and loss as throbs inside the bars of the song. A song roars that we will not be defeated by murder but we will stand together and rise again, brothers and sisters! A song makes your heart stagger that you found someone to love with such an ache and pang. A song comes—how amazing and sweet and glorious that is! And this is not even to get into how amazing and miraculous music itself is, the greatest of all arts. But this evening, haunted by a song that slid out of the radio and lit up your heart, we pray in thanks that there are such fraught wild holy moments as this one. And so: amen.
when you think about how often it all goes wrong again and again you begin to look at the walls and yearn to stay inside because the streets are the same old movie and the heroes all end up like old movie heroes: fat ass, fat face and the brain of a lizard.
it’s no wonder that a wise man will climb a 10,000 foot mountain and sit there waiting living off of berry bush leaves rather than bet it all on two dimpled knees that surely won’t last a lifetime and 2 times out of 3 won’t remain even for one long night.
mountains are hard to climb. thus the walls are your friends. learn your walls.
what they have given us out there in the streets is something that even children get tired of.
stay within your walls. they are the truest love.
build where few others build. it’s the last way left.
After a week of wind and rain, the sun was finally shining over Pisa. Teodolinda looked outside the kitchen window and saw the terrace of her apartment full of sunlight. For a moment she thought that everything on that terrace seemed to exist under a magnificent glow of glimmering light, under a soft, golden veil.
The kitchen had already been cleaned after the lunch she had served to her husband and her two kids, Bruna and Alberto. Teodolinda slowly walked towards the window, glanced outside, then looked back at the sink, the table, and the stove, making sure that everything was in perfect order. Looking again towards the terrace, a slight smile began to blossom on her stern and serious face.
This was the time of day that Teodolinda loved the most. It was a moment of absolute serenity, rest, intimacy, understanding, and utter simplicity. Perhaps, more than anything, this was a moment of affection, innocence, and playfulness.
Before opening the window, Teodolinda took off her apron and hung it in the closet next to the kitchen broom and mop. She went out onto the terrace and grabbed an old black sweater that was hanging on a rusty hook. Without worrying too much about her hair, she put on the sweater and covered her long skirt with an equally long black apron, this being much rougher and dirtier than the one she had just used in the kitchen.
Teodolinda took the wooden chair next to the window and opened a small gate made out of wood and metal mesh. She carefully placed the chair in a corner, under a ray of sun.
“Gallo! Nerina! Bianchina!” she happily called with the voice of a loving mother. As soon as she sat down, first three, then four, then five, and finally six chickens arrived. A white rooster with a majestic, deep red crest jumped onto her lap. She welcomed him like a mother welcomes her little, tired child in search of comfort and some cuddling. Teodolinda began to pet the rooster and softly converse with him.
In that moment her sixteen-year-old daughter Bruna walked by the kitchen window and saw her mother sitting in the sun, inside the chicken coop that had been built in a corner of the terrace. Teodolinda was surrounded by five chickens and had the white rooster right on her lap, her apron now covered with Gallo’s excretions. She was radiant, happily petting the rooster, whispering affectionate words, looking at his eyes as if she were about to reveal to him great and intimate secrets. Bruna looked at her mother and a wave of shame and repulsion ran through her entire body. Why couldn’t her mother be like all the other mothers, like her friends’ mothers, like those who didn’t even have to cook because they had a full-time maid in their home? Why did her mother speak to chickens?
Teodolinda closed her eyes and raised her face towards the sun. She felt the deep pleasure of the rays warming her skin and penetrating deep into her tired, old bones. For a moment she imagined herself not on the fifth-floor terrace of a building in Pisa but in the garden of her family’s house in Perugia where she had played as a little girl.
As soon as the sun went away, Teodolinda opened her eyes, gave one last kiss to Gallo, a last tender caress to the chickens, then took the chair and put it back next to the kitchen window. She took off the dirty apron and hung it once again on the rusty hook. She went back inside the kitchen, closed the window behind her, and inspected the kitchen to make sure that everything was in order. She then went into the living room where she sat to sew and repair the stockings and socks of her entire family, her face now serious and stern.
Carolina Flaminia Perrone
Teodolinda
Un attimo di sole
Pisa, febbraio 1923.
Dopo una settimana di vento e di pioggia a Pisa era finalmente tornato il sole. Teodolinda guardò fuori dalla finestra della cucina e il terrazzo sul quale si apriva era pieno di luce. Per un attimo pensò che tutto su quelle mattonelle di terracotta sembrava essere coperto da un velo d’oro.
La cucina era già stata rimessa a posto dopo il pranzo servito al marito e ai figli Bruna e Alberto. Teodolinda si avviò verso la finestra e ancora una volta, prima di uscire sul terrazzo, diede uno sguardo intorno, come per assicurarsi che tutto fosse in perfetto ordine. Guardando poi di nuovo il terrazzo, sul suo volto serio e severo apparve un accenno di sorriso.
Questo era il momento della giornata che amava di più. Era un momento di assoluta serenità, riposo, complicità e profonda semplicità. Forse, più di tutto, era per lei un momento di affetto, innocenza e gioco.
Prima di aprire la finestra, Teodolinda si tolse il grembiule da cucina e lo appese dentro l’armadio accanto alle scope e agli stracci. Uscì poi sul terrazzo e prese una vecchia maglia nera attaccata ad un gancio tutto arrugginito. Senza curarsi troppo di spettinarsi i capelli, se la infilò e coprì la gonna con un vecchio grembiule, anche quello nero e molto più grezzo e sporco di quello che aveva appena indossato. Teodolinda prese la sedia di legno che stava accanto alla finestra, aprì un cancellino in rete metallica e legno e mise la sedia in un angolo, dove batteva il sole.
“Gallo! Nerina! Giallina! Bianchina!” chiamò Teodolinda tutta contenta e con voce tenera da mamma innamorata.
Appena si sedette, arrivarono di corsa prima tre, poi quattro, cinque, infine sei galline. Un gallo, tutto bianco e con la cresta alta e purpurea le saltò in braccio e lei lo accolse così come si accolgono i bambini più piccoli quando sono troppo stanchi e si attaccano alla gonna della mamma cercando tenerezza e coccole. Teodolinda cominciò ad accarezzarlo e a parlargli sottovoce.
In quel momento la figlia sedicenne Bruna passò per la cucina e intravide la madre seduta al sole, dentro il pollaio costruito in un angolo del terrazzo, con cinque galline ai piedi e con il gallo bianco sulle ginocchia, il grembiule ora sporco degli escrementi di Gallo. Teodolinda, raggiante e felice, accarezzava il gallo, sussurrandogli parole affettuose, guardandolo negli occhi come se volesse rivelargli grandi ed intimi segreti. Bruna guardò la madre e sentì nel suo corpo un’ondata di vergogna e schifo. Perché non poteva essere come tutte le altre madri, come quelle delle sue amiche che neanche cucinavano perché avevano la cuoca a casa? Perché sua madre parlava con le galline?
Teodolinda chiuse gli occhi e sollevò il volto verso il sole. Sentì il profondo piacere dei suoi raggi che le scaldavano la pelle e che piano piano penetravano nelle sue ossa stanche. Per un momento riuscì a immaginare di non essere più sul terrazzo al quinto piano di una palazzina a Pisa, bensì nel giardino della casa di Perugia, dove aveva giocato da bambina.
Appena il sole se ne andò, Teodolinda aprì gli occhi, diede un ultimo bacio a Gallo, un’ultima carezza alle galline, poi prese la sedia e, uscendo, la rimise a posto fuori del pollaio, vicino alla finestra. Si tolse il grembiule sporco, lo riappese sul gancio arrugginito e rientrò a casa. Chiuse la finestra dietro di sé. Diede un’occhiata alla cucina come per assicurarsi che tutto fosse ancora in perfetto ordine e poi se ne andò in salotto dove avrebbe cucito e rammendato le calze e i calzini di tutta la famiglia. Il suo viso, ora, serio e severo.
your life is your life don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. be on the watch. there are ways out. there is light somewhere. it may not be much light but it beats the darkness. be on the watch. the gods will offer you chances. know them. take them. you can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. and the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. your life is your life. know it while you have it. you are marvelous the gods wait to delight in you.
small circle big circle 