this entry is about: trains & outfits & adulthood, mad love, home, fog in April
L'ermetica, notturna melodia strumentale di Black Milk dei Massive Attack mi cigola costantemente in testa, così forte e chiara che non sembra venire dal mio cervello: è un'acufene, è una zanzara rinchiusa nel mio cranio. Durante il giorno mi sorprendo a far stridere i denti a tempo. È una porta che si apre.
I used to think taking the train was so chic, so mature-lady-like. I've taken it quite a few times this year, and this feeling has begun to wear off. It's not so chic when you're trying to silently unwrap a sandwich in tinfoil, or when the man three seats behind you is listening to arabian couples arguing on Tiktok at full volume, or when you're demolished after a 3-hour journey on a cramped bus. Yes, it may not be so chic, but I still like it.
It's hot enough now to start wearing one of my favourite blazers again. It's beige, a beautiful very light beige, with short creased sleeves. A few days ago I was going to a competition and I was unsure of what to wear; then I noticed this blazer at the back of my wardrobe, sitting idle since last spring, and I thought: if I don't wear this beautiful baby now, when will I?? One of my favourite pairs of pants is back in season as well, some very thin light brown jeans that came with a small golden-and-brown belt, and they matched beautifully with the blazer, so I wore them too. Girls, they're right... they're right when they tell you to wear your favourite things today, because today is all you've got..... I'd gotten a haircut the day before; I put my hair up - tied it and fixed it to the back of my head with a claw clip as usual - I walked up to the mirror and I was so happy with how I looked. I put on some brown-orangeish eyeshadow and a golden highlight on the inner corner... I wore the old watch I got fixed this winter... I wore my necklaces... my new earrings from the Easter market... I was, let me say this, enamoured with myself. I've been taking part in a lot of academic competitions lately. I don't expect to win, I don't want to win; I mostly do it because I like putting myself out there, and most importantly I like having the possibility to put myself out there. I beam with pride whenever I think about how my foremothers weren't even allowed to study, and now me and my female friends and hordes of other girls I don't know are traveling across the country, stepping inside schools & universities and proving our worth. It seriously makes me giddy.
That day I'd gotten up half an hour later than usual, which isn't much but it felt exhilarating. It was such a beautiful morning, the sky was so clear: I don't think I've properly registered the fact that it's already April. Nice weather, friends, beautiful clothes, intellectual stimuli, what more could I wish for? Wonderful opportunities, wonderful company, and the kind of outfit that makes you lean back just to admire yourself properly. And that day, in a friend's friend's car, I stared at my ghostly, elongated, diaphanous reflection in the window: I looked at the hairs on my arm, at the way my hand rested on my backpack, at my slender fingers, et vidi quod esset bonum. I'm becoming an adult.
Mad woman, why are you celebrating?
I'm becoming an adult and I can revel all I want in my blazers and train rides and academic accomplishments, but I'll eventually have to face the most unwelcome parts of it - like the choice of leaving. I have to decide on that one very soon, and I feel like the walls are closing in on me. I'm still procrastinating on the choice of what to study at uni and which one to attend, because I am a coward, and I don't like to think about it, but sometimes I start walking in the garden like a zombie, like I'm already far from here.
I don't know what to do. I define myself in relation to nature, to this patch of earth in particular. Parting from them may be an obligation at this point, but even when I acknowledge this fact I become paralyzed. I don't know what to think. It really ends like this? I've given you my blood and my flesh, and now we have to part? And you will forget about me: sturdier plants than the ones I've grown will rise and reign, they will draw up from the soil the molecules that came from my body, and within a few generations the memory of my presence here will be gone. I will be the only fool who leaves. The worms will console the soil, the mycelium will console the roots, the wasps will keep patiently building their nests on the underside of my empty pots; I will leave and die alone. Everyone else will go on without me. It'd be appropriate to quote Housman's last poems, Housman's poems of exile: "enchantress", "heartless, witless nature": but I could never bring myself to call you that. I think I'm hardwired to love you now. I love you like all terrestrial animals are forced to love oxygen, like all infants are forced to love their mothers. I love you: a reflex, an irrational impulse. I love you like mice with toxoplasmosis love cats; I love you like that one gardener who spent the whole day pruning his Datura bushes and came back wide-eyed, dry-mouthed, to his bed and to a night of terrible visions; I love you ποτνια τερατων, mother of all things beautiful and dreadful. I love you: I can't do anything about it. I've become stupid and servile, I burn with zealotry and I can't rein myself in. I love you because I move in you, and you encompass all the truths I know. Under the rising, uncertain light of the dawn of my senses, I seek the warmth of your skin. Under the dimming, feeble light of the dusk of my senses, I seek your depths to burrow in. The butterfly drying her wings before her first flight, the earthworm crawling back in the soil after sunrise: I am whatever you make of me, whatever you make of me and nothing else. From you, the strength with which I draw breath. From you, all the sweetness and bitterness of this life. From you and to you, all my vigour and my languidity, all my lust and the vastity of my sated passionlessness. When the ocean of my desire drowses between its shores, murmurs, wells up, and rages against the cliffs, at your tug and release, I admire it all with wonder and deference. At the dawn of my senses I seek the warmth of your skin and at the dusk of my senses I seek your depths to burrow in. Be it life, be it death, but may both of them be from you and within you; outside of you there's only the void of the unconceived.
And it makes no sense for me to fear separation from you because it isn't possible. Even inland, corpses still decompose, the stars still revolve, fungi still seek out tree roots. My Ma is everywhere after all, in the entrails of the deepest-dwelling tube worm, in the thick, scorching clouds of Venus and in the icy winds of Neptune. I could try to run away, travel a hundred light years from here, and I would still die in her arms. It doesn't make sense for me to fear, no: it's just that I've always lived here, and here is her most familiar and beloved face, to me: I've grown up in the land and I am like the land now, we share damp, laborious winters and fiery, smiting summers. This is what I am, and all I've ever known. Last Saturday I was walking back home in the darkness. I slipped out of the main road, away from the sounds of cars and into the quietness of my street. I looked up and saw the three stars they call the belt of Orion. Then the night air became tangible, became a veil; I pressed the folds of it to my face and I said: Ma.
Leaving would be a leap of faith towards something possibly even better, but I don't think I have the heart to do it.
Yesterday I rrreally had to lock in on studying history, because I had a test the day afterwards, but I kept glancing out of the window. It was drizzling slightly, the fog was thick, and I was restless with desire to go outside and run. I usually work out before I study, but yesterday the situation was rrrreally drastic. Time went by, I kept studying, and I wondered if I was gonna be able to go running at all; I kept looking at the irresistibly beautiful fog wrapped around the leaves of the olive tree in the backyard. As soon I finished jotting down the last damned concept map I leaped out of my seat, ran out of the door e ho offerto il mio petto al vento. I was so ecstatic over getting to run in that weather, I don't even know why. I thought: we're halfway through April and the drought is inching closer, when will I get this opportunity again?? Non mi sono mai sentita così viva e spiritata nel muovermi da quando scorrazzavo bambina nel giardino e credevo di aizzare il vento con un mio gesto. Le colline si velavano il capo, la montagna si velava il petto, così che ardevo di desiderio. Ansimando fendevo la nebbia. Che miracolo! Una gazza solitaria sotto gli ulivi, nella nebbia. Che miracolo! Passeri dispersi sopra i campi, nella nebbia. Che miracolo! Cento altri uccelli nascosti gorgheggiavano, nella nebbia. Che miracolo! Non si vedeva niente oltre la mesta congrega del grano giovane, nella nebbia. Che miracolo! Il mio cuore pompava, ero l'unica a farmi strada nella nebbia. Che miracolo! And when I turned the corner and began running uphill, I saw a bird pitter-pattering ahead. Her long neck made me think of a common mourning dove, but it seemed a little off, a little longer than usual; she didn't bob up and down like a dove, she swayed flamboyantly side to side. And if she was a dove, why was she running on the ground? She noticed my arrival and turned sideways to flee in the field: then I recognized her by her profile and her jutting tail. A female pheasant!! I was so delighted that, as I watched her fly low over the wheat field, I couldn't help but shout in the loneliness of the foggy road: "Ooo, fagiano!!! Mammia mia!!" Yes, we actually say "mamma mia".
this entry is about: a hymn, snow, camaraderie, birthplaces - belonging - a foreboding of exile, life as a linear graph, Sae-ism and its summer
I recently happened to remember Pierre Louÿs. I used to like him, years ago. To procrastinate on buying kitchen tools, I reread some of the Songs of Bilitis. I was impressed by the Hymn to Astarte: O Astarte, irresistible, hear me, take me, possess me, O moon, and, thirteen times each year, draw from my entrails the libation of my blood. I marveled at how something which I simply enjoyed reading a few years ago had turned into something I could've written myself. You know that feeling when you've read something good and it settles inside your mouth, nestles under your tongue, and keeps chanting itself? I went to sleep with these words vibrating on the tip of my tongue. And thirteen times each year draw from my entrails the libation of my blood. "But my period isn't coming anytime soon", I thought. I'd lost track of time, because the next morning I awoke to find I'd bled through my underwear and had to change the beautiful light-toned outfit I'd chosen for the day.
I still haven't chosen which university to attend and what to study. I might genuinely be fucked. I mentally berated my sister for choosing literally 2 days before the deadline, but I might end up doing the same.
I've recently been the guest of a inland university because I got into the finals of a nationwide competition they were holding. They chose the worst possible days to host the finals: it snowed and hailed and poured and the wind blew so hard that the rain was falling horizontally, every tree was plied double, every umbrella flipped inside out. One day, trying to get to my hotel, I got on the wrong bus and I ended up in a place I didn't know in the middle of the storm, literal alaskan rivers running down the roads through blocks of ice, with the entirety of my luggage with me. Also there wasn't a single sidewalk on the road somehow. I wandered in a panic and hauled my suitcase over fences looking for a place to take shelter in. I saw a private garage that was open, and I just went in. Then I called a taxi and everything was good.
Apart from this misadventure, it was a really good experience. I was taken aback by how friendly everyone was. I guess it was because none of us knew each other, since we came from all over the country, so we were all kinda stranded at first and we were forced to cling onto each other. I'm not used to the immediate kindness and openness I encountered there, and it was a very welcome surprise. I don't wanna forget our wordless, frenzied stampede towards the bus stop in the evening, under the pouring rain and the black sky, against the wind. For a few days we ate the same cafeteria slop and drank Spritz from the same straw, and now we'll never see each other again. I'll try to remember them; I hope they'll try, too.
I already knew there is a slight chance I'll end up attending this university, so I looked at the place carefully. I've already spoken about being stubbornly rooted in my birthplace, and I know that this stubbornness and closemindedness hinders me and I have to get rid of it, but... it's hard, I don't even know what to say?? This was the hinterland. I certainly didn't get a good impression of it during the few days I was there, because of the hail and snow in MARCH, of course. Here near the coast, the seeds in my nursery have most likely survived the lower temperatures we've had lately (though we'll see about that), but if I lived there, they would've surely died. Not being able to set up a nursery in late March?.... When do you sow seeds, then? These are really stupid things to factor in the choice of a university, I know, but I guess I'm built like this: stupid, superstitious, and prejudiced. I think I would die, if I was forced away from the wide breath of the sea and put into the cramped space between a mountain peak and the other. The city was arroccata on top of the steep hill, crouched with her arms around her knees - it looked painful - and all around her were high walls: she wasn't even looking at me while I was walking under her, poor girl, she had her gaze fixed awkwardly to the sky as if she couldn't handle eye contact. And streets of sanpietrini are very uncomfortable to drag luggage through. I don't know why the space between mountains feels "cramped" to me; it simply is, and it is because I simply am from here. I grew up satiating myself with the sights and the air of my birthplace, and I suspect that it's too late for me to learn to digest the sights and air of another place, let alone survive off of it. I am superstitious, deterministic, and prejudiced like this. I really don't know what to say: there must be someone there who writes odes of devotion to the mountains, and the hail, and the shade-loving comfrey growing everywhere; someone who would raise an eyebrow if told to come live in my hills. She knows and loves the hinterland: she grew up in the hinterland: leave her there, leave her to her hinterland and me to my shores. Do not try, hard-headedly, to change us: it's pointless! You can't change us because you can't go back in time to change the milk that fed us at the dawn of our lives, the sights and the air of our homes.
I feel this to the core of my bones, but I hope this doesn't mean that my heart is forever closed to every other place and experience. I'm trying not to make it that way. When I was in the hinterland, I kept my eyes peeled: I looked at every tree and every peak and I tried to name every wild plant that I came across, and I marveled at the comfrey - which is rare in my hometown - growing beside every sidewalk. I tried to be open and receptive. Then, when I was at the train station, I began to breathe wider and hungrier, hoping to catch a particle of salsedine in my lungs; by the time I was on my way back home, my longing, sharp to the point of becoming apprehension, ran forwards like the racing train. Oh, here are the seabirds, with their sharp beaks and their soulless eyes, pecking stupidly in the sand. Oh, here is the terrible sea, seething with rage, foaming like a rabid dog - sour mood today - gnawing on the bones of thousands, mother of innumerable beasts and poisons. Everything is right with the world.
And now I'm back home where I can pretend that everything's gonna be in the right place forever, that the libation of my blood will forever keep being returned to the One from where it issues; I can sit in my garden well-contented and think that this bliss is gonna last forever, that I'm never leaving, that I never have to make a choice about leaving. But I do have to make a choice about leaving. Not a clue. Again, I might be fucked.
And tonight is the full moon. I would not be able to exist at all if I wasn't inside the web of life - "connection to nature is impossible to sever for a creature born from nature" - but to keep myself sane I also need to be constantly reminded and reassured of my relationships inside it, like a child. Here, I see my own blood flowing out of me from necessity, from an irresistible pull; I return it to the earth, to the one under whose power I am, and so I know myself to be a daughter. Here, I walk into the garden every day and see creatures that have sprung from my hand and are fed by my efforts; I feel them growing under my fingertips, and so I know myself to be a mother. Imagine if I was forced away from these tethers to reality. The assiolo sings in the darkness, but that doesn't mean she goes unheard: the moon and the night listen to her. I would be a madwoman talking to myself in a blind void.
I'm used to perceiving my life as progress. I view my life exactly like 1800s Catholics viewed history: constant linear progress from darkness, ignorance and barbarism, to enlightenment and salvation. Constant linear progress from the primeval delirium of childhood, as I've said, to the (relatively) fine young woman I am today; in every season of my life I lay a new brick, I walk a little further towards an even better self. Life has effectively been, for the most part, progress. But perfect straight lines hardly exist in nature, and life clearly doesn't adhere to such a simple formula; no, life couldn't possibly be drawn as such a ridiculously basic graph. I'm not saying I DEFINITELY foresee a decline in the near future, nor am I unwilling to cling tooth and nail to my sanity should the need arise - I'm just saying I have to accept the fact that my life, in its entirety, is not going to be always constant linear progress. I have to accept this, and when it eventually happens that I find myself in a worse situation than usual, I have to remember that it doesn't invalidate the rest of my life and the rest of my progress. Infinite growth is impossible and all that jazz. I'm just being realistic: there will eventually, in the course of my life, come a time that will put me on my ass and invalidate this view of mine. I have to prepare for it, so that I'm not left desperate by the impact.
Sae the tenth is a marvelous creature and she deserves that I redesign her dedicated analysis page, but I can't come up with a layout for it. If it was only up to me, I would theme it after the oleanders whose flowers I smelled on my way to the hospital, when I had to get surgery in the summer of 2024, at the same time in which volume 15 was being published. I was scared, and I distracted myself by smelling different oleander plants and comparing them. There are some that smell like powdered sugar, and there are some that smell like nothing at all. Spring-summer 2024 really was the peak of my love for Sae-ism and, in my perception, the series is still tightly intertwined with the experiences and feelings of that time. Sae-ism isn't just Sae-ism to me, a story as it is written, a synopsis you could find on Mangadex. Sae-ism wouldn't be just Sae-ism to you if you read it: nothing really is, no piece of art stays still, glued to the screen or the pages or the canvas where it is displayed. It jumps out, it mingles with your time and your place. I happened to be in love with Sae-ism when I was walking to the hospital that day, so, to me, Sae-ism is also about oleanders and surgery. Sae-ism is also about painful dripfeed insertions, numb legs, and being too proud to piss in a bedpan. Sae-ism is also about openly crying inside a Decathlon while your mother is in the changing room, and it is also about Betadine and not being able to bend down. Sae-ism is also about going abroad and being heartbroken. Sae-ism is about a bright yellow canoe, a pair of hiking boots, and a foldable tent; it is about carrying a vial of LSA through the woods, isopropyl alcohol, and pointing a fan to the tray so that the solvent will evaporate faster. Sae-ism is about hairy legs and the white baseball cap that I wore. Sae-ism is my father's filthy garage. Sae-ism is the fast-moving shadow of a car blending with the slow-moving shadow of a bus on a wall, in the night, in the street that leads away from the beach. The phenomenon is inevitably perturbed by the observer; things are never really just their plain selves, you always unwillingly paint them with the colors of your mind, your experience, your time. So if I end up making Sae the tenth's webpage oleander-themed, don't ask me why: Sae-ism is also about oleanders.
this entry is about: a universal language, my home & the gift of smirnio, my speech & a pilgrimage in the harbor, the Treadmill again (deliriants, wisdom, arrogance, our deficiencies, me and Aeschylus vs. normal people)
I always let equinoxes and solstices slip past without celebrating them, and I sorta feel guilty for that. I think: every creature feels the change that is taking place today, from the phytoplankton to the gazelles grazing in the plains... and I don't do anything to acknowledge it?? But what am I supposed to do? I've already sowed many seeds this spring. Life's purpose is to be carried out every day of the year, not with occasional grand gestures.
My god doesn’t want my worship
Says She much prefers my remembrance
My favas are flowering. I've bent their stems back to inhale the scent of their blooms, just like that of soap, deep into my nostrils. Because of them, a new kind of bee I'd never seen before comes to visit my garden nearly every day, the long-horned bee: those antennae are incredible. I see how they splay the fava flower open in order to get to the nectar inside, but I also often see them just sitting on the leaves, all together, without moving. I wonder what they're doing and if they're alright, if they're just resting or if they're sick. I've also seen the carpenter bee around my favas lately, she seems to not really understand how to get inside such small flowers. My favas are very short this year, they only reach up to my knees: last year, there was enough of them to be bent double or triple during storms. I can't remember if I sowed a different variety. The janitor at school told me about how her favas' flowers shriveled and fell off without producing seed pods: I'm watching mine carefully now. I watch my favas, not knowing if health or sickness is brewing inside them; I watch the long-horned bees, not being able to read their compound eyes as they sit in silence. Are they watching something, too? Listening to something? Right now, right now, I am looking but not understanding. Do they understand? Perhaps, spending so much time together, the things I can't understand about them are no mystery to each other: if I understood the bees' language, they could warn me about the diseases of my favas. If I understood the favas' language, they could explain to me the behaviors of the bees. The lack of a universal language saddens me, but it'd be enough if we could be each other's middlemen in this manner; but not even that is possible, so I'm cut off from their conversation. Many have said: unhappy humans! our fellow creatures' oracular utterances are babble to our ears; we are children in this world, too small to understand real speech. But perhaps the bees and the favas do not understand each other either. Perhaps they wish they could. So the bee would say: unhappy bees! if only we could understand the language of those who feed us. So the fava would say: unhappy favas! if only we could speak with those who come to visit us every day. Perhaps, as all creation is bound by the law of reciprocity, we all also share the longing for a universal language. And so our ignorance coupled with our thirst for knowledge would be even more proof that we belong in this world.
One time these days I came back home in the mid-afternoon; I was waiting for the bus in a stop surrounded by tall weeds, as is customary in our peripheral ass periferia. Smirnio was next to me. An interesting wild plant; she was used as a substitute for celery, in the past. I don't see her often, and even when I do, I can't take a moment to look at her properly. But this time she was right next to me, and I had some time to spare. I found out that she was blooming, with weird little white flowers that bees seemed to love: they spent some time with us too, rolling around on the wide umbels. When they gave me enough leeway, I bent down and I smelled the flowers too.
Their smell was very touching in a way that's difficult to explain. It was touching because I didn't know what smirnio flowers smelled like, previously. I have spent years wandering my hometown, lavishing smiles on every single crack on the sidewalk, every fencepost, every discarded car wheel, every brick in every abandoned house, every wild plant and every tree: I have loved everything, I have felt (Pascolianamente) a magic speech issuing from everything, and I have listened to much that it seems ordinary to me now, and I have loved so much that my love seems almost old and frail at times. The smell of smirnio's flowers was something I didn't know, something I hadn't discovered: something new, to love with a renewed love. A new secret revealed. Smirnio dried the tears that I'd shed thinking there was nothing more to discover about my home.
Last week I skipped school because we weren't going to have any lessons anyways. I rode the bus to the city to go buy some loose leaf tea and take a long, leisurely walk like I'd been THIRSTING for. During the trip I met a record number of foreigners, from Albania or from the Balkans or so. A young man and an old woman agreed in saying that they didn't think I was from here, because they've observed that people from here are generally ill-mannered and racist (it's true and it's well known, we are gente imbruttita di periferia) and because they could not tell by the way I talked. It's weird, because I think I talk in very strong local dialect. The way I talked confused them and they couldn't tell where I was from, like emperor Claudio in Seneca's Apokolokyntosis. They couldn't identify my weird grammelot of erre moscia and parole mangiate.
But I am from here, I swear. When I came into the city, I didn't know where to go first. I gravitated towards the harbor, as always, and I decided to walk it in its entirety, something I've been wanting to do for years. The last time it happened, I was with my mother: it was night, about 11 PM or something, and I remember following her through that strip of cement in the sea, a voyage that seemed infinite and imagistic under the sparse streetlights, a endless ride of wonder. At the very end of it, she took me on some sort of long, narrow platform high above the sea: I looked down and I was utterly horrified, horrified and amazed in hearing the waves crash and roar against the pillars which held us up, and seeing white glimmers of light scatter rapidly on the surface of the water. It was in that moment, more than anywhen else in my entire life, that I understood what "void" means, that I was utterly gripped by it.
"the inward, moonless waves of death."
I'd been wanting to find that platform again for years, but I never had the time to walk the entire length of the harbor. So, that morning last week, I took my chance. However, I couldn't remember exactly where that platform was. I decided to just entrust myself to the harbor and I figured that I'd reach it eventually. I love the harbor. I love the harbor so much, I can't explain, I can't find any words for the long, flat, wide, symphonic love I feel when I am in the harbor. I walked, I walked, I climbed and ducked, and at long last, I reached the final, thinnest strip of cement stretching over the sea. There was a small, dingy stairstep on the side. I climbed it, and I found myself on a long, narrow platform high above the sea. I looked down at the waves and I recognized them. This must be it, I mused. I remembered it differently: of course, in my younger age and in the night, it had looked much taller and much more sensational, but I still loved it nonetheless. That is a place, I think, where a small piece of my consciousness was forged.
Also last week, after a month of having a driver's license, I drove alone for the first time ever. I'm still very wary around driving and, especially, SCARED SHITLESS of driving alone. Usually, when I drive, my sister's in the car with me, and her company calms me down. But last Saturday, some fiolacci underage acquaintances of mine wanted me to buy them liquor, so I cursed and huffed and puffed and got in my car to go to the grocery store literally less than a km away. I was genuinely SHITTING MYSELF. I got into the store's parking lot unscathed. There was one of the fiolacci there, he gave me the money and I bought what they wanted with my ID, then we got out and he said "damn I have to get home now". "don't tell me I have to drive you there" "so you came with your car????? 😀😀😀😀😀" HO BESTEMMIATO LUI E DIO....... his house was close by and I couldn't refuse so in the end I actually did drive him home, and it went well, we laughed a lot.
I've recently thrifted a black crossbody bag from a good vintage brand, because I'd gotten tired of the backpack I've had for 3 years. All good so far, it's big and roomy, it's pretty and it looks very sturdy. What this bag has seen of me so far is me walking alone in the harbor in a spring morning, and me driving a friend home for the first time. I think I'm becoming an adult.
Back to what I was talking about last entry...
Because παθει μαθος. Because Angelica, who would trade her life for her chastity, is the ghost of herself is not a person. Because I wouldn't know the value of some things if I didn't have to spend years in their absence. Because I've lived life truly, I got smacked with Real Life so hard that I had to retreat from it for a (long) while, and I've felt all the weight of the horns on my head.
But that is the biggest cope ever, of course.
And in my dreams I read the phrase "Narkissos potente veleno e farmaco da rispettare", so I guess I'm planting daffodils this year, if I can find a variety that resembles our native one. The potente veleno e farmaco da rispettare I really wanted to grow, however, was of course datura. I love brugmansia more, but she's a perennial, so it would've been more feasible for me to grow datura, if only we didn't have turtles, dogs and cats roaming in our garden: I asked if I could grow it, but the ubiquitous answer, even from my own conscience, was "better if we don't". But it rends my heart, not being able to honor her like I want to. I could grow her in a container and prevent her from fruiting, ma non ho l'ardire di farlo, I wouldn't dare to keep her in shallow soil and to take the scissors to her seedpods. Non ho l'ardire di farlo, e non ho l'ardire di guardarla in faccia: mi si piegano le ginocchia al solo pensiero: non ho l'ardire di guardarla in faccia, come non ho l'ardire di scendere le scale e frugare tra le mie vecchie cose, capisci? La vita mi ha tolto tanto. I've never taken them of course, because I'm not that stupid, but I have a high regard for datura, brugmansia, belladonna, giusquiamo and deliriant plants in general. Again, I've never taken them; they're just sort of a symbol for me. Another one of my weird, very heartfelt personal symbols that are near incomprehensible to anyone else. The goat woman signifies the gloating woman; favas signify ancestry; and deliriants signify what I went through in the distant past. They signify what has been, how it felt, and how it left me. It's very hard, almost impossible to explain. They've been a very strong symbol for me, especially during a certain period of time (end of 2023/beginning of 2024) when I was beginning to unravel the threads of my past (that sounds so dorky ffs sorry) and to acknowledge some very sucky things that had happened as, in fact, very sucky. I was absolutely terrified of rediscovering and revaluing such things, and establishing connections between them and the unfavorable position which I held in life at that moment. Coincidentally, that time was also my druggie phase lol, and again I never did deliriants but I was in psychonaut spaces a lot of the time and I inevitably heard trip reports and such. So, despite never having experienced chemically-induced delirium myself, I ended up establishing a symbolic connection between these two things. Again, it's very hard to explain. The all-pervasive feeling of sharp dread, not being able to trust what you're seeing or remembering, the distrust in your surroundings, the terrifying vagueness of some things, the horror in unmasking some delusions only to enter others... I likened delirium to what I was going through, and to what I had gone through. I likened my whole life to delirium. I had gone mad from terror.
That was an important time in my life, a lot of things/ways of seeing things changed and have stuck with me since then, as is obnoxiously clear even now whenever I talk about my childhood. A symbol is a very complicated thing to explain rationally: it runs so deep into the subconscious that all of its meanings and implications are unclear even to those who use it. I kinda, at least partially, cracked the code while writing that long, crazy entry back in August, where I said that what I'd meant all along whenever I spoke of "delirium" was the void of consciousness and direction at the beginning of life. Not knowing right from wrong, etcetera, staggering blindly through life at the exact time when everyone can hurt you and when that hurt will cripple you forever. I guess that's at least a big part of what delirium is to me; I guess what Datura symbolizes for me is that - very simply put - Bad Things Happen and life can be very very very scary, incomprehensible, crushing, cold and uncaring. (Poor Datura certainly never laid a finger on me when I was a kid, and yet I still drag her into this.) There are many revelations to be had de rerum natura, about existence and the state of things, and sometimes the revelation is frightening. The fact is that the tree of knowledge isn't only the luscious, fleshy, sweet fig. Sometimes it's the borrachero, the one who drives mad, staring blindly in the darkness; and the fruit bursts in your hand, the thorns jab at your skin, the seeds explode to acrid clouds in your mouth; and your pupils are wide unto the world, but black like pits of tar; you stumble off unsure, and sometimes you don't make the journey back. Don't know if I've made the journey back. And I still madly love ma' Datura and her other sisters in delirium because there is none who better represents this blind, parched, dazed, bitter side of life; I love them because I believed myself to be under their power, and perhaps I'm under their power still.
Now that I grow stuff I wanna grow Datura, because for me she's one of the biggest symbols of the divine in all its uncaring majesty and crushing viciousness. I'm not able to yet, though. Disappointing but not surprising.
But, despite how involved I am in all these attempts at gouging a meaning out of past suffering (sticking it to Angelica, παθει μαθος, at least I value things more teehee), it's all just that pesky treadmill again: the Treadmill of Trying To Make Sense Of It All, the one I was talking about, the one that doesn't lead anywhere because there is no meaning. We people who have lost in at least some aspect of life toil and pour sweat in trying to come up with reasons as to why our deficiencies actually make us more whole, in trying to alchemically manufacture the legendary substance known as copium, if you will. In doing so we must overcompensate because, despite pretending the contrary, we are intimately, acutely aware that we are lacking some things that our pain stole from us and that we see intact in other people; hence the boasting about "παθει μαθος", "soffri e sii grande" or "it was the voice of ma' Datura". Normal people don't need to convince themselves or others of that, because they already have their self-evident wholeness and health. We assert that we have seen deeper layers of reality. We brag about the knowledge we have earned in comparison with others, but there is no absolutely true knowledge to be held about life: everyone has their own μαθος and their own way to navigate through life and interpret it, we only think our μαθος is holier because it was sanctified by παθος. But, if anything, we are more likely to have been made blind or nearsighted by it.
this entry is about: bees and wild plants, labor, the Treadmill, barefoot shoes, purity
The prugnoli in front of my house are beginning to lose their flowers; the slightest gust of wind makes them fall. The pavement is strewn with petals. But this is not a loss: they, the earliest of wakers, are ushering in spring for everyone else. When you're walking below them at this time of year, you hear a loud, pervasive VVVVRRRRRRRRRR almost like that of machinery, except that it's from the dozens of bees swarming over each tree. I've been watching them lately, over flowering Prunus trees, over thyme, over rosemary... were they gone all winter, or was I just not looking? I've even been seeing some bumblebees, beautiful, beautiful bumblebees, way too heavy for the spindly stalks of aromatic herbs they cling to. Can I say something silly? I love bees; I love bees; I can't believe I forgot how much I love bees; my life, your life is legitimized when a bee eats from a flower you planted.
The book about local ethnobotany I've recently read has put me back on this earth, because it has reminded me of the names of so many native plants. I can't believe I forgot them either. Now running is a way to train both my heart and my memory, as I try to name every plant I rush past. CAPSELLABURSAPASTORIS, I blurt out in my head all at once every time I pass her by. Senape, favagello, this might be crespigno, acetosella, pimpinella, here's lamium coming up again with her purple flowers, there's ortica! the real ortica!, parietaria in front of her; here's veronica, ever-present caglio, sulla, biancospino I've been preying on, wondering if I should harvest some of her flowers. Arum, agazzino, romice, ivy with her black eyes to the world. I rubbed the underside of a wild calendula flower, like I used to do with my own domestic calendula, and the resin smelled the exact same.
Sometime in February I heard of barefoot shoes. I was intrigued, not because I have any health problems, but because I really liked the idea of being able to feel the ground below me. For some time I tiptoed around the idea of buying a pair, because lately I'm very careful with my money, and I had no idea if I would actually use them that much or if I would even find them comfortable; then I found a pair on Vinted for less than 10 euros including shipping, so I decided to take the plunge. I should trust myself more with the ways I spend my money, because I'm actually really glad I bought them. They're a perfect fit (another thing I was really worried about it, since I bought them online), super comfortable and it's insane to be able to touch and feel the ground, to tell the difference between concrete and soil. To the dismay of my dog, I've been gravitating towards the latter more and more in our walks. I love feeling variation in the ground, the little mounds and holes left by the footfall of others; concrete hurts a bit to walk on now. In fact, that's the reason I don't wear them when I'm going to school, or when I'm going out, or in any situation where I'm required to be snappy and functional; but I always wear them when I'm taking a walk, just a walk to nowhere in particular for my own pleasure. It really does feel like an awakening of the senses. I seek earthen paths now: it amazes me to feel the skin of the earth, this unfathomably complex... entity?, right under my feet, so much life and so much death brewing below me.
The egg bursting free, the corpus luteum shrinking, the myometrium contracting mechanically, mechanically. I've been having slightly more painful periods lately; nowhere as bad as they were when I was younger, but now I look back with nostalgia to last year, when I had almost no pains at all. It's okay. I've been watching nature documentaries and thinking about labor, as in the set of foundational struggles that allow us to live. After a shower, I rub body cream into my legs, thinking these are the ones who have carried me up the mountain, these are the ones who run with me uphill, and they will have to do it again and again; I rub body cream into my arms thinking these are the ones who lift heavy for me, and they will do it again and again. I've come ashore many times after paddling for long, breathless and sore, but with my eyes full of wonderful sights; I've come ashore many times and seen the cormorano right in front of me, standing motionless with her wings spread to the warmth of the sun, after her mad dives and chases. The myometrium contracts mechanically, mechanically, and you can feel it. I lay, I get up, I wash - the cold turns my fingers red, the water seeps into my nails and cracks them - and the corbezzolo rejoices in my labor, because my blood drenches her roots. The pearl octopus brooding her eggs for years, eyes fixed inwards; the squirrel writhing in a tree hollow as she gives birth, still looking out for predators; the assiolo, of whom I've only ever known the sweet song at nightfall, must spend so much time laboring in the hunt. The nematode pushing against the soil, burrowing, hard-headed, the mighty nematode chasing after bacteria; all of life striving for betterment throughout the ages, collapsing and expanding, "mounting through all the spires of form." Studying Leopardi has given me an headache: he put words of desperation into Sappho's mouth when, it was known, she jumped to dissolve her mad love-thirst into the salvific ocean. The foundational struggles that allow us to live, as in not merely survive, but also prevail, triumph, and create anew; not merely perpetuate life but also improve it and add to it continuously. Men have called it meaningless suffering, have called it pointless struggle, have called it torture; but I am a woman and women labor, so I call it labor. I think it is labor.
I've been having dreams on my period. It's been a long while since I had any dreams at all, let alone ones I could remember. I was watching an assiolo on a tree stump in the darkness, when a bigger owl swept down, grabbed her with her claws and turned to look at me. We went on a school trip to Patagonia on foot, reaching it via a long thin strip of land on the ocean that was teeming with every kind of wildflower. I was on a full bus, people were going around, and the Riace bronzes were there too, just walking around along with everyone else.
And then another one of those nightmares, I really don't know what to do with them. (I hate the mind-body dualism, but) Our bodies can behave so ambivalently about sex: sometimes it's a simple, meaningless physiological need on par with eating and shitting, and sometimes it's the finest tool with which to elevate your soul or tear it down completely.
That nightmare was exactly what I feared, it was the exact same evil that I've been turning over in my head for months. It was so uncanny to have it actually happen. My fault, my fault - I don't remember having this kind of dreams before, and if I did, I must've thought that they meant nothing because the real-life events they were referring to also meant nothing. My fault, I've been unkind to myself. I've been unkind to the child I'm sure you all know. I've called her a whore, I've hated her - I hate her? Though it kinda seems cartoonish at times, in retrospect, the intensity with which I hated her. Not that it doesn't come back sometimes, like when she inconveniences me like this. The nightmares come when I least expect them, after I think they're finally over. It - and not just dream-life - is all a endless treadmill of trying to make sense of it all. I'm sure other people have lived this treadmill, I'm sure other people's lives consist of this treadmill, and from them I know that it will never be truly over. There is no sense, there is no reason, so every conclusion drawn is preposterous. Yet we try to survive by finding meaning. I've often thought that death would have been preferable. Would death have been preferable? Would I prefer death to defilement; I would be where they want/wanted me to be. perhaps I would be blank, abject, angelica/Angelica.
"Aita, aita!
La mia verginità ti raccomando
più che l'anima mia, più che la vita."
this entry is about: bird sounds, hard times, singing in cellars, birthdays, being a net positive, the lesson of the old boar, dreams and debts
I really wanna learn how to identify birds based on their songs, but I have no idea how to get about it. It's such a shame to hear them singing every day, to be able to tell the difference broadly - there's the one who's always the first to sing in the morning; there's the one who sounds so mournful; there's the one who only sings when the shadows start creeping over the earth, sounding like a ship's sonar in the ocean - but not being able to name my neighbors up in the sky. I know my dearest tortora, whose song is the soundtrack of my life - ho hoooo-ho.... ho hoooo-ho... - and the sonar-like song (keeee!!! keeeee!!!) is probably an assiolo's, but I would like to know all of my neighbors. Some days ago while walking I got to see the iridescent blue and green hues of a crow's feathers from below. And some days ago I saw two big birds flying together above the hills, circling each other and then separating; one went up on my neighbor's roof, and all the while they cried, KEEEAAAOOWW!! KEEEAAAOOOWW!!
When me and H went to the cliffside on Halloween night in 2024, we heard an animal's call from between the trees that really freaked us out. He recalls it sounding kind of like YEAAAWWW, but I think it was more like AAAAAAA, straight and simple. We still have no clue what animal it was. Some nights ago, I had to go sleep on the couch, and after seething about it for a while I crashed into brutish sleep. I awoke some time later, even though I had my earplugs on, because of a freaky ass cry coming from just outside the window. It sounded so close, whoever she was she must've been perching on the old olive tree just outside the living room. She went YEEOOWWW!!!! YEEEOOOWWW!!!! At first I rolled over and listened to it half-asleep, until I told myself "what the fuck cellula, what are you listening to??? What animal is this???" and I jolted awake to hear it more clearly. She kept on crying YEEEOOOOWW, YEEEEOOOOW and I think I fell back asleep before she stopped. I guess she was a night-bird?? But the day after, I looked up nocturnal bird cries and none of them sounded quite like that. YEEOOOWWWW. Maybe she was a fox? I don't know, but it was very cool.
It's honestly been some rough nights - and I don't know when they'll stop being such. That night, the fox, or the bird, or whoever, was awake with me and shrieked outside the window, and I fell asleep quickly with dry eyes; the night after, she wasn't there and I cried. It's been literal years since I've had even just two bad nights in a row, literal years, do you get it? I used to sleep badly, but in the last few years I've been sleeping very well. So this is like, a sort of throwback/"relapse" that feels really bad. On the positive side, it's entirely because of external circumstances so it's not because of me and it'll get fixed once I'm out of this situation; on the negative side, it's entirely because of external circumstances so I can't control it and I have to get out of this situation in order to fix it. It's because of external circumstances. I won't sit here explaining all of it because it's personal and complicated, family stuff. The crux of the matter is that I can no longer stand sharing space with my retarded sister who can't pick her own underwear off the floor or figure out when it's time to shower. And that's all I'm gonna say lol I typed out this sentence and then a whole ass paragraph-long rant came out but I deleted it, this is really not the place for these things. Anyways this is the way things are right now. Yes, it's honestly been some rough days and nights, and I don't know when they will end. I think my mother is disappointed in me being disappointed with my sister, I think my mother is done with me being done with my sister, I think my mother thinks I'm hysteric, and I feel so alone right now in this house. I've understood that I should leave. Goodbye to my garden; goodbye to my lavenders and my helichrysums, I'll leave you to those who don't care if you live or die, and once the cardboard melts under your stems there will be nothing to protect you against the sun and the weeds. Oh goodbye, I wouldn't do this if I didn't have to. I've understood that I should leave, but where to? And will it actually be better? But this is just another time in my life, however long or short, like any other time that came and went. I know I gotta focus on myself a little bit more than usual, look after myself, combat the natural drive towards anger with openhandedness and kindness, but also cut myself a little bit more slack than usual. This surely won't kill me. I don't know if it's just a legend - it probably is - but it touches my heart every time to remember the tale of Saint Francis writing the Canticle of Creatures in a musty cellar, nearly sightless, unable to even see the rats crawling all over him.
And my birthday just went past. This year I've felt somber around my birthday because it makes me think about how, even after 19 years of existence, I really haven't affected the world around me all that much. I really haven't made a lasting positive impact on many lives. I never did make that bird feeder I wanted to make. This year I've restocked the girl's bathroom in my school with pads only once. This autumn's carrots are small and deformed, and my radishes and my arugula weren't enough to feed all the cavolaia caterpillars that found themselves in my garden. I've had to confront a lingering sensation that my birth wasn't really a net positive event for the world, that perhaps I'm not worth the things (the creatures, really) that I eat every day, that I don't give as much as I take.
There's also another reason. I'm lucky enough, now, to be surrounded by people who ask me: are you doing anything for your birthday? what are you doing for your birthday? And it's mortifying to have to answer every time: no, I'm not doing anything, sorry. I explained that it's because many of my friends are also ex-friends with each other, and they either are very lukewarm with one another or they straight up hate each other, so I don't think putting them all in one place would result in a nice atmosphere. And this is of course partially true. But the main reason, which I struggled to even admit to myself, is that I'm not used to celebrating my birthday. I'm not used to celebrating my birthday. And when I faced this secret reason, this fact, it left me kinda... dull? I'm not used to celebrating my birthday; I don't usually do it. No, even far back, I don't remember anything of the sort. I'm not used to celebrating my birthday so I won't do it. I remember just one time, my 15th birthday, when I was opening up to life and I was aware of it; I had a dinner party, it was fun, and I thought "I finally broke the cycle of not celebrating my birthday!! I finally reclaimed this date as MY day and I'm gonna do it every year from now on!!" I never did it again. Not ever for any particular reason aside from the general, subconscious discomfort from not being used to it. I'm not used to it and facing this fact has left me dull, yes, and hollow with wind blowing through me. I'm surrounded by people who talk to you about their plans a month beforehand, who rent entire houses, who giggle as they make you try to guess what dress they're gonna be wearing, what nails they're gonna get done, what makeup they're gonna have. I'm happy for them, sure; all I can do is be happy for them and bumble off back into my corner because I'm not used to it, for myself, I've never been made to feel comfortable with sticking a bunch of people into a room and demand that they celebrate my existence. Why is that so? Why exactly don't I feel comfortable with such a common thing? It must be because I subconsciously don't think I deserve it; it must be because, again, I was never made to feel like I deserved it. It must be like this. So what now? Is it gonna stay this way forever? I'm 19. Some things never change, like in that fable about the boar.
When I was a kid I liked the book "Storie del bosco antico" by Mauro Corona. Years later I found out that he's a sort of lolcow who sits in the woods carving statues and misquotes Dante on live television but I didn't know back then. There was this one story whose ending always stuck with me: it was the origin story of the boar. A pig runs away from a farm because he doesn't want humans to have a say over his time of death. He goes to live in the woods, his body changes over time and he becomes more rugged and adapted. He starts a family: the race of boars is born, they're free and they only die when it's their time. But one day the patriarch hears a gunshot, and he sees two men carrying away a boar they'd just killed. Then he understood that it all had been useless: man still ruled over their deaths. Allora capì che era stato tutto inutile. Era sempre l'uomo a decidere della loro morte. I first read this story when I was small and now I am all grown up, hairy and fanged. Throughout life you become stronger, you think that you're the only one who has power over yourself, you think you've outgrown some things that used to burden you, but then you get humbled, you find out that they still lord over you, that they still stand above you deciding your life and death.
And on the day of my birthday I didn't want any gifts, I didn't want to be looked at, because my birth was not a net positive in this world. Being conscious was kind of uncomfortable, but it's spring, and for the first time in a couple months I got dressed to clear up some garden areas and sow valerianella. I lifted old mulch sheets from the ground and told myself I'd dig until I found an earthworm, and with just one swipe of my fingers I uncovered one, thrashing around covered in bits of dark soil. I laid down more cardboard, I pulled out some weeds that had gotten through the mulch and laid them to rest above it, I sprinkled seeds over the earth and pressed them together like I used to, and all the while birds kept me company with their songs. I worked slowly. I got back inside and I sat down in front of all my seed packets; it's spring, I forgot that it's the beginning of spring and I can sit down and dream my garden into being. I have a lot of celery seeds: I remember my grandmother's garden with her giant bushy celery: I want mine to be just as big, even bigger, I dream, I'll grow enough celery for the brodo of all the nonne of this town.
Did I ever tell you that noble ciclamino has chosen my garden as her dwelling? Yes, the wild kind, the kind that is endangered and protected locally: a couple of them live in a shady part of my garden, just in front of the laurel hedge. The cavolaia caterpillars are all grown up now, one of them decided to go into her chrysalis right outside our door, and she's the first thing I see when I go out; and there's another bird who sings only at nightfall, similar to the assiolo but not quite the same, and she drilled her monotonous, rhytmic call into my ears as I worked in the garden today: I heard it as one who doesn't hear anymore, I listened to her as if she was already far away from me. You see, this is the biggest reason why I'm afraid of leaving: how else would I repay my debt to the assiolo, to the cavolaie, to all the nonne of this town?
(I GOT COOL WATER BY DAVIDOFF FINALLY AFTER WANTING IT FOR 6 YEARS AAAAAH)
this entry is about: the coming of spring, the place where I was forged, the goat-woman again, I have a driver's license now, severing the head of the beast of perfectionism, the fruit fly's offering, collapse and Samson as a woman
I'm gonna be honest I think ovulation affects me
It's halfway through February, and I'd forgotten what happens halfway through February... I didn't see spring coming; I wasn't thinking about spring coming. I found a very nice road for running near my home, with almost no traffic, between villas and the kind of dogs that grew up in the country and have barely ever seen another human apart from their owners, so they bark like crazy when you pass by. Last week I was there and I saw a Prunus tree that was already flowering, and I told myself: so early?!?! the world is doomed... And it deadass took me some days to realize that we are halfway through February, and this is technically the right time. That tree on the road broke the news. Since then, I have been keeping an eye on the prugnoli near my home, who have always been the heralds of spring to me. Their buds are swelling now, and they're colored deep purple, but they're still closed for now. There is playfulness, there is complicity in this gioco di sguardi, where I turn towards them and they pretend that nothing's happening, only to bloom when I'm not looking. There is complicity, there is trust in this game, and I had forgotten that it even existed, can you believe it?, I forgot that I was gonna play it again. It's time to make plans for the garden, I guess. The daughters of cavolaia have almost completely destroyed my radishes, and they've moved on to my arugula: it's okay, I'm not greedy. It's halfway through February: elsewhere it is snowing, but here, the prugnoli are about to announce Spring's arrival: I can hear them breathing in before they shout it. A few days ago we were taking a test, the classroom windows were open, and I could smell the spring, I swear: I could smell the blue color of the sky, I could smell distant afternoons spent playing in the garden. I'd forgotten that spring has her own scent. I'd forgotten about it all. I live in a place where winter isn't the death of the world; fava seeds love to snuggle under the cold earth, and veronica, shy ranuncolo and ruchetta color the fields under the fog and the bleak sky. Here, the world doesn't die in winter, no: almost no snowfall chokes our soil, and the earth enjoys her affair with the rain; I live on thirsty land, who prefers the showers of November and the covering of clouds to the bare skies and the voyeuristic sun of May. The cold and the rainfall are not our end; the world doesn't die in winter. No, not in winter, here the world only dies in summer: burning from the unbounded passion of the Sun, withering for love, the ground cracking under the unbearable beauty of the season. This is my world, this is where I've always lived. This is where I was temprata. This is my temperament.
I finally got my shitty ass fucking DRIVER'S LICENSE!!!!!!!! Looking back, it's insane how badly I wanted the whole thing to be over - and now it's over, and I didn't even think much about it in the end. This week I did my first real drive as a CERTIFIED DRIVER, from the city to my home, in the night. These are the roads where I first started dreaming, I think, years ago when I was being driven through them; it's only natural that I should be the one driving now, it's a rite of passage. To see, right in front of me for the first time, the glow from the headlights reflected on the smooth concrete, a sight that has always made my imagination fly to lunar landscapes and sci-fi cities; it's a rite of passage, now, it's a honor to be the driver on these roads.
Now that I've gotten my license I'm actually thinking I shouldn't relax too much and become dependant on my car. I used to go biking to the grocery store and whatnot until one day I was seized by the sudden, intense fear of being run over; that fear settled in, and I haven't touched my bike since. Now that I'm technically used to being on the road again, maybe I should pick it back up. I shouldn't get my car every time I have to go to the grocery store that's 2 minutes away to get some fucking chickpeas and chia seeds. It's perfectly possible for me to bike to some of my most frequented places, but..... I gotta get used to biking on the road again, if I was ever used to it in the first place. I really don't wanna die yknow. The majority of drivers IS in fact completely shit-headed and nothing guarantees my safety on the road. At least in my own car I'm more protected. .........I have no idea if I will really get back into cycling, I'm probably too chickenshit to follow up with this resolution, I guess I'll see about it. But I'm certainly not giving up on public transport. Now that I have a license my use of public transport is a CHOICE ✨ and therefore really chic
I DID pass all of my trials this week!!!! And yes one of them was the driver's license exam lol. Lately, I feel like I've really been able to prove to myself how much I'm capable of. Speaking of resolutions that are maybe too good for me to actually stick to... I've always wanted to learn how to draw. Always always. It's really been like..... what, ten years of wanting to learn to draw?? but I've never even tried, because I've always been a huge perfectionist. It's something that at this point is deeply rooted in me and my experience of life: I've always been disgusted with even small, private, inconsequential failures. But I've started dealing with this thing - high time for me to do so - and I think that I would really be severing the head of this beast, if I tried to learn to draw and actually stuck with it despite the probable feelings of DISGUST and FAILURE that will arise. Learning to draw has always been The Dream, The Goal That's Definitely Out Of My Reach. What if I finally tried?... I've been doing many things, lately, that I was convinced were out of my reach, and I've been doing them beautifully. I'm sure drawing is just another one of them. I don't know if I will actually try it, mostly due to lack of time (I'm in my last year of highschool I shouldn't even be taking up this much stuff in the first place), but I have little doubt, now, that it's not actually out of my reach and that I can handle those feelings.
I'm thinking about the people who, like my grandfather, have spent their whole lives huddled between the mountain and the sea, and have no intention of changing this fact; the frayed old men and women who want to die here - and the cliffs stand blank above. If a fruit fly came up to me and said, "You are the dearest thing I've ever beheld with my eyes, you are the whole world to me: I offer you every last second of all the hours of my life", I'd probably have to stifle my laughter at first, but overall I would be honored.
"Any civilization that does not recognize the female is doomed to destruction": unironically yes, Wonder Woman, yes. (And yes I do actually think that the vast majority of the world's ills have misogyny as their root cause.) I often read theory regarding the perfect world - the theory, and I kinda get stuck in those tomes; so when I raise my head and see the world that we currently have and the world that we have built, I'm dazed, I'm confused. Years ago, I was into the whole "collapse" stuff: it made me desperate, back then, and my last bout of suicidality was almost entirely because of that. Now I honestly don't think much about it. When I do remember, however, I don't feel desperate anymore. Instead I feel sort of vindictive, sort of haughty, thinking that if the worst comes to pass at least I'll get to drag such a bulk of ignorance into the grave with me (again, fundamentally, stupidly optimistic); I recall the death of Samson. I should disregard these stories, I know, but I grew up with them and I can't help recalling them sometimes. Samson was a man, a particularly unpleasant man at that, but the way he died, I can tell you, is a woman's. I can see her in my mind's eye, in the temple, scorned by everyone, and they said, call for Samson, that she may make us sport. And they called for Samson out of the prison house; and she made them sport: and they set her between the pillars. And I don't see her cold, disgustingly stoic: I see her crying, just like crying was a heroic act in the Homeric poems, I see her face tragic and undone (tragico, disfatto) as she tosses her long hair back, and she doesn't think there's a god who assists her, no, so all she wants, all she says is: Let me die with the Philistines! Che io muoia insieme con i Filistei!, I remember that phrase. And she bowed herself with all her might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which she slew at her death were more, more, many, many more than they which she slew in her life.
Picking back up the goat-woman talk from last entry. I really do think she is the perfect symbol, holy shit. Do you see it too?? Consider the overall symbolism of the goat. Consider the scapegoat as opposed to this satyress. Consider the satyress as one who refused to keep being the scapegoat. Consider the fig branches with which the scapegoat was beaten, as opposed to the the sacred living fig. Consider that the goat-woman wasn't born from goat-people; she's the anomaly in this world, she's the black sheep.... uh, goat. Consider that running a razor through the goat-woman's hair is physically impossible. I love the goat-woman, I think she's the perfect symbol for me and women like me, can you see it?? But I'm probably no good at explaining; you should just read "Deviling" by Susan Griffin.
Last year or so, when you looked through my writings all you read was Mother, Mother, Mother, the great Mother through the fig mother, the ocean mother etc etc.; at the start I was very focused on the mother figure. Now it appears I've switched over to the daughter, the wide-eyed daughter, the last-standing daughter, the strong young goat-woman. Of course! It's self-respect! I am a daughter who's nothing like my mother!
this entry is about: our mothers (their revelations and their silences), parenting, evolution, trials, the goat-woman
Nah cause I still love the layout I did for the dreams page with my whole heart. If I took it and just shamelessly repurposed the page would it be too trashy?
Upcoming week FULL OF TRIALS....... important shit. if I pass at least one of them I'm gonna be really proud of myself.
I think the moon likes it when we are under her light, especially when we go outside just to gaze at her, hard. I think the sun delights in warming our skin and the waters in which we will bathe. Why shouldn't the big care about the small, I've always wondered? Like I delight in carrying the lives of bacteria in my gut, like I delight in being the home of the million face mites on my skin. Like I delight in the trillions of cells that make up my body, that move as I move. I think the ocean churns in sympathy for us; I think that even the trees share a reverent whisper when we pass by. In the waters of our wombs and in the damp flesh of their fruits, we carry the first memory, the memory of the first cell that awakened to life in the primordial sea.
My biology textbook from last year said something about reptiles that "with the amniotic egg [...] emancipated themselves from water". I think the choice of the word "emancipated" is funny. The fish who saw the first amphibian crawl onto land must've called her crazy, for wanting to forego the all-giving matrix of water and to walk on the harsh, dry earth. The amphibians who saw the first reptile leave their pond must've called her crazy, for wanting to completely renounce the water that had given them all their birth. And the first reptile must've felt so proud in saying, "with my body I will attain the same miracles that the whole wide sea has kept to only herself thus far". But why "emancipated from water", why does living in a habitat equal being a prisoner of it? It's perhaps the same thought process that makes some of us fret so much over leaving Earth, leaving flesh behind, when without them we would be deficient in ways we can't yet grasp. I don't think water imprisons; I don't think that reptiles emancipated themselves from water, but the discovery of earth must've been exhilarating anyways. I think that the first amphibian must've rejoiced in feeling something firm under her feet, in knowing that there are mothers other than water. There are mothers everywhere, the sea and the earth and the sun and everything on which we complex, fragile creatures depend; especially us humans, who stand on the shoulders of the first reptile and the first amphibian and the first fish and the first cell that awakened to life in the primordial sea, we who have so many and such illustrious foremothers.
"Space filled by the presence of mothers, and the place where everyone is a daughter." I've written before that joy : universe = wonder : observing creature, more or less. And I loved it when Jan Raymond told us to define ourselves and others as daughters first and foremost, to have the daughter figure as a fixed star inside of us, because daughterhood has a universality that motherhood lacks. I think that these are holy words. I am a daughter first and foremost. I am a daughter, and I wash my face with the water from this spring of wonder - the spring of relationship, of correspondence, of indebtedness, of gratitude - this water that leaves my eyes gleaming, and I hope that this gleam will never leave my eyes, I hope I never forget I am a daughter. I hope I never stop acknowledging that there are mothers everywhere, from the sun to gravity to the chamomile in this tincture that makes me unclench my muscles, now, and unbend my back. When nothing works, when I cramp and hunch down, I recall the first mammal who bore, who braved the pain and in solitude brought forth a new world; the first reptile who tore herself from water, the first amphibian who walked on hard, dry land, the first cell who endeavoured to wake to life in the night of the ages.
I count all my mothers, their deeds and their struggles that make me alive today. I am a daughter: that's my only certainty. When I get up and I haul the bucket of blood to my plants, I can only hope they are dreaming, in plant dreams, of their mother.
Often, when my mother and grandmother talk, I'm somewhat peeved because I can feel the extent to which their relationship eludes me and will forever elude me. As in, I'll never get the full picture, the real, living picture of their relationship, what they did to each other. I know vague, painful details: my mother being married at my age; screaming at her father, a suitor at her door; my grandmother calling her in tears after her divorce, for the purity of her soul in Jehovah's eyes. Just like I only know vague, painful details about my grandmother's life: the soldiers and her mother, how she was afraid, how she didn't recognize her father, the nights toiling in the hospital. And of my grandmother's mother, I only know that she was desperate, scared, and quick to violence: I can't even recall her name. I haven't gotten deeper than that, I don't know if I want to or if I'd even be able to.
I can never sit my mother down and ask her to tell me everything, everything from the day she gained consciousness to what she feels today as she calls her mother on the phone. Ask her what she hears through the speakers, if she really hears what she's saying or if she hears those conversations from years ago instead, those threats and those whines. Or perhaps posing these questions is not totally outside the real of possibility; I could ask her, but even if I asked her, she would not tell me everything. She would not tell me more than half of it. And if she did tell me everything, if she did tell me more than half of it, I wouldn't be able to comprehend it. I wouldn't grasp that material merely with intellect, merely with thought, because I wasn't actually there through the shunning, and the screaming, and the poverty, and every other horror I can't imagine. Trying to grasp it merely with intellect would be ridiculous, when she's actually lived it. I know, I know there are many things that remain in the seat of memory, that swirl around, dark and ominous, and that never coagulate into words. I know, because I could never speak the whole story of how it was between me and my mother and my grandmother when I was little, for example. There is nothing to say about the bedsheets, the classroom door in preschool, the tangled hair. I could never tell my daughter about it, not if she sat me down and asked to know everything. And if my daughter had a daughter, she wouldn't be able to tell her how it was between me and her, too: one of the major things that dissuades me from the idea of having children is that you inevitably hurt them. Inevitably: they're literally so vulnerable, so vulnerable, that the slightest thing can scar them forever - physically and emotionally. There will be things between me and my daughter that will forever stay confined within the walls of our minds, there will be things that we never speak out loud. I would love to believe that I'd never do anything wrong while parenting, but that's too good to be true: it takes, again, just the slightest thing, that slips past you without a thought and stabs her in the brain to stay there forever, festering, festering. And I know we live in a world where we have to wrong each other. And I know we live in a world where the mother has to wrong her daughter, and where they both have to hold dreadful silence about it.
There's a friend of mine whose family is very well-off. Her grandmother has a villa, her mother likes to buy and repair vintage gramophones as a hobby. Women of all classes face sex-based oppression, but it takes on different forms sometimes, and women don't warn each other about the different kinds of danger that they can face throughout their lives - like some women nowadays being so detached from our history that they see the "tradwife" role as desirable, for example. So whenever she gives me a ride home, and her mother advises her to get an older man "because they're more mature", I get a real itch to tell her she doesn't know what she's talking about. Likewise when this friend gushes about marrying young - she grew up on old romantic fiction, and that's poison for straight girls, I think. The distance between our worlds astounds me. Sometimes I find myself looking at them with a bitter sort of amusement - a nasty, rotten feeling, really, with some victimization burrowing in there too; but then I remember that, again, not a single one of us can escape pain and oppression. All that went on between her and her mother I will never know. All that went on between her mother and her grandmother I will never know. These things will never be spoken at all.
All that went on between my mother and my grandmother will never be known. All that went on between my grandmother and my great-grandmother will never be know. All that went on between me and my grandmother will never be known. All that went on between me and my mother will never be known. If I have a daughter - if I manage to raise her with a sense of hearing keen enough to notice it, and with enough brains to know that it's wrong - she will be haunted by this same silence, filling unbridgeable spaces between us; and if I raise her with keen eyes, she will see it stretching far behind us, this line of secretive ghosts and the silence that encases each of us. The secrets of my mother's pain I will never pry from her tongue. And it startles someone like me, who's used to singing on high, you know? The contrast is jarring to me. All around us are mothers, and the non-human ones speak in bright voices of gladness, chattering in riverbeds and circling each other in the night sky; but the mothers closer to us, who could speak the same words as us with the same tongue of flesh, all weep and veil themselves in mournful silence.
Though I sometimes fantasize about bridging the gaps between us in the bubble of my own small, personal life, as well as I can. Bridging the gaps between my understanding and theirs through experience, through binding myself to their same yokes and pulling. I imagine being left to work a land of the same acreage as the one my great-grandmother had, with the same tools she had. I imagine giving birth without medical help, going through a period without painkillers, in a fucking cave or something. I imagine tasting the same poisons they tasted, carrying the same weights they carried to become closer to them, to become as strong as them, to win over the evils that sapped their life-force; and after such a life, I'd steer into death like a conqueror. Things I'll never do, clearly: why such self-flagellation? Their pain is shut behind the closed curtains of their lives; it was theirs only, and now it can't be soothed in any way, certainly not with this bizarre sympathetic magic. The gaps are unbridgeable, the silence can't be broken. I imagine doing such things sometimes out of this desire to bridge the gaps; probably also out of a subconscious desire to prove my stupidly naif, optimistic worldview, where there's nothing so dreadful that it can't be overcome. All that these trials would do is give me an unending list of things so dreadful that they can't be overcome, but I digress. (me when i have to wash the dishes by hand) I've written before that I'd be afraid of having a daughter, in case she happened to be like I was when I was a child. But I was thinking - with this perspective, wouldn't this be my own trial, my own way to resolve the pain behind the still-open curtains of my life? I'm absolutely NOT saying I would have a daughter as a tool to get closure about my own shitty childhood, this is just something theoretical that's interesting to think about. If that situation arose - and it's obviously better if it didn't arise in the first place, and if it arised I'd surely have done something wrong - if the ghost that's been haunting me my whole life incarnated itself like this, wouldn't it be, Ma, something to tackle head-on, as my own trial? I'd do what those around me weren't strong enough to do; I'd achieve the impossible, guiding her right, guiding her back into the realm of the living; and Ma, I'd die content if the last thing I saw was my daughter healthy and happy. And after such a life, I'd steer into death like a conqueror.
Wrote some days ago: "Been feeling strong and horny like a satyr-woman lately." I've been feeling really intrigued by the "archetype" (?), or image, of the goat-woman lately. Not sure if it can be called an archetype, it's not that widespread. The satyress - which by the way doesn't exist, because satyrs were traditionally male only; and I'm greatly interested in stealing from men this image of vitality, of lust in all its meanings, of joie de vivre, of vigor. Other women have reclaimed for themselves the werewolf, or the she-bear: good for them, but sadly I'm not that physically imposing. The goat-woman is less threatening, herbivorous, not such a fighter; but her gait is unnerving still, her bent legs are unnerving, her fur is unnerving, her cloven hooves are unnerving. The goat-woman is not so aggressive, but still she cackles loud, she sings on high, she's unnervingly passionate all around. And the goat-woman can get so, so sublimely wistful when she's blowing in her flute. I think the goat-woman is the symbol of a full life. I don't usually focus my view on one specific aspect of the whole; I don't know exactly why the image of the goat-woman speaks to me so much. It must be because of her animality, her unbridled life-force, at times baneful and at times creative, which has always been mine too. When I wrote some entries ago that I've always had horns on my head, I meant it. Sometimes I feel like I've come back into possession of some characteristics that have always been mine, that had been choked out of me by whatever-the-fuck. Still writing, still pouring my soul out by writing badly. Extroverted, outgoing, too loud, prefers cracking a horrible joke to silence. Likes to be showy. Prideful, hot-tempered. Lusty. Finds meaning in dust particles floating around, in a stray beam of sunlight falling inside an empty room. "Am I becoming someone new or returning to myself?"
this entry is about: the new webpage, caterpillars and spiders, running, scrotes
Absolutely refused to update the site until I published the new reading log/general books page! Forgive me if it looks ugly. I was struck with sudden divine inspiration after watching this video, and I was gonna try to design a layout with the same vibes, no matter how shitty it would end up looking.
Today was an unusually sunny day, so much so that, as soon as I came home from school, I immediately got my dog and walked back out. It's been so long it seems to me, since we've had such a beautifully bright sun shining on our faces; a nice breeze, not a punitive cold wind, blew on my neck. I couldn't stop looking at the blue sky, and the moon hanging there was big, almost full. I wondered how long it has been since I experienced the divine in anything other than my bizarre, cervellotici writings.
This garden season hasn't been good, mostly due to my neglect, as I've already admitted. I've let the radishes grow far too much: I was wondering how the hell I would even use them, but today I crouched in front of them and saw a bunch of caterpillars, daughters of cavolaia (the white cabbage butterfly), munching on the leaves. I'm very familiar with them: I've given up on growing turnips because they would get eaten by 100000 pests, mostly these caterpillars. The daughters of cavolaia have a good life, because as long as there is just one dutiful daughter of woman who sows her cabbages and turnips, they can spend entire days crossing from leaf to leaf across an immesurable bounty. They don't sweat over anything, not even when the gardener's face is inches from them, staring. But everything in the world is right and good, because the daughters of cavolaia were created with a desire to raze our gardens, and the daughters of woman were created with enough goodness in their hearts to let them do it.
On the other hand... I really didn't mean it - today I was putting cardboard mulch under my fava plants, because they've gotten tall enough. I picked up a piece of carboard and I noticed a sort of silken sac on it. I had no idea what it was, and I didn't think I was going to destroy it, but when I tore apart the cardboard I accidentally teared the sac open, too, and there was a pale spider inside it. I immediately laid the piece of cardboard upside down on the ground, because I was ashamed and I didn't want her to see my face. I don't know much about insects, I don't know what kind of spider it was. Was she a hunter spider, and did I destroy her house for a day? Or did she keep her eggs in there? If I killed the daughters of spider, even accidentally, what can absolve me? I hope that I've done, am doing, and will do, enough good to offset the damage I've wrought upon that small world.
I used to not do cardio at all, because I thought it would make me lose weight and I want to gain it. But then I started considering the fact that one of my actual biggest fears is my heart malfunctioning, so. A while ago I started using the old ass stationary bike we have at home. All good, but of course a stationary bike is a little bit boring. Recently I got the idea of replacing it with running, but I was hesitant because I live in a very hilly area. I have a couple friends who run, but only in the warmer seasons, so I decided to say fuck it and go for it alone. This week I finally tried it out. The first day I went running was DISMAL. ARCTIC WINDS were blowing and I didn't have a hat on, so my ears actually unironically hurt like hell the whole time. My fit was ridiculous and I felt like a huge bumbling dumbass, especially since I stopped every two seconds to catch my breath. The very first thing I faced was the ungodly steep hill right outside my house. I'm gonna be completely honest, my running stamina is not good at all. (I tell myself: but that's why I'm working on it, right?) Also running in general makes you look embarassing, and I have yet to integrate the notion that "nobody cares". I'm gonna try to keep up with it... if it's really unbearable I'm just gonna go back to my stationary bike. What made me want to try running, though, was the fact that I'd be outdoors and I'd be able to see which wildflowers were growing. I'm content with just getting my heart rate up and seeing borage bloom on the edge of the fields.
Remember that guy who'd been trying to win me over for months? The thing finally ended, I hope, and if it didn't end this way I don't know how it will. Basically the whole thing, from September until about a week ago, was just a crescendo of him embarassing himself in worse and worse ways (and also getting creepier and creepier). In particular, before winter break, he had decided to lean onto the romantic approach, telling me my eyes were beautiful under the sun and that he wanted to take me out dining etc etc. He waited for me to pounce on his chode and when this didn't happen, he decided to completely change course and violently thrust his alleged sexual prowess in my face, embodying the alpha male wolf inside him. So in a single day he sent me a flurry of texts saying how he'd eat my pussy for 45 minutes (apparently he keeps a timer on him during sex) and joking about how he'd grab my tits in the improbable occasion that I'd show them to him. To this twenty-messages-long display of pure penile hubris I responded with just three words, "Madonna che schifo", which he treated as a joke and simply carried on. This made me even more disgusted and I proceeded to ghost him for the entirety of winter break. He kept talking to the wall for days, until he noticed that something was wrong and apologized. I told him point-blank to find another girl. And at THAT point I thought it was over, but he kept being creepy and following me around to tap me on the shoulders and wave hi at me with a ridiculous sadboy betrayed-anime-protagonist kind of smile, I literally can't make this shit up. I kept ignoring him and ghosting him, until one day at recess I walked out of my class to find him standing out there, with a cross-eyed friend of his that I had never seen before, saying "I FEEL IGNORED". (You ARE being ignored baby, and there's a reason!) It's always been clear that this guy is... unorthodox, but that final interaction was something so unspeakably weird that I don't think I can do it justice by describing it in the English language. The whole time, I kept meeting the gaze of the VERY cross-eyed guy behind him that stared at me continuously, or rather, stared at my right and left shoulder; he never spoke a single word. I think he was there for emotional support?... Anyways that interaction ended with me laughing in the main guy's face and leaving. Haven't heard from him since. I think it's really over with this, and if it's not, I'm gonna have to drop an atom bomb on his house because I don't know how else I can get the point across. What pisses me off, though, is that his friends know about me; but I embrace my new renown as the frigid bitch who refused a good fuck.
This makes me think back to all the people I dropped that now probably hate my guts, because they were cruel, because they were whiny, because they were insipid and self-aggrandizing, or because they were downright evil. There are some in which I hope to have made wounds, there are some who I hope are bleeding out in my absence, but, regarding most of them, I really don't wish for such animosity between us. It almost makes me feel sorry, but I'm sure that there's nothing to be done about it, and that life is also about leaving behind you a trail of those people.
this entry is about: the battle between longing and mindfulness, memories (the trail - the deer - the moon - the hills - the building - the books - the birds - sweet sixteen), donkeys, fishing, a scar, irrational hopes and fears, horns, crossword puzzles, destroying memories for the sake of a goddamn centro sociale
Can you fucking believe this? I'd been planning to go to the mountain all week long. This morning, Sunday morning, I got up early, I filled my backpack, I got dressed, I put my hiking shoes on for the first time in so long and I marveled at how comfortable they were. I was all ready to go, I went to take a piss for the last time before leaving the house, looking out the bathroom window, and in that precise moment, not a second sooner, it started raining. I waited fully dressed for half an hour but it only started pouring more. You can't make this shit up.
But oh and woe for my bonny hind
Beneath the Holland tree!
Towards the end of last summer, I went to see the lunar eclipse with a local environmental org. It was a wonderful night, we walked through the empty city streets and up the hills... We went back in the dark through country roads, where the hills laid down their great flanks. We walked past a big country house - most of the other people in that organization are old, and they tend to know each other; they whispered among themselves about the couple that lived there, and about the donkey that they had, Luna. They joked that her name was spot-on for the occasion. We stopped in front of her enclosure. And I thought to myself, oh, I love donkeys, they're so sweet, I haven't seen one in like six years, too bad this one is sleeping right now. I know nothing about the sleeping habits of donkeys, or if they respond to their names, but after some time standing there whispering among ourselves Luna, Luna, Luna, she walked out of the darkness with those big eyes gleaming bright white against our flashlights and she came to us. We cheered for her, she was the queen of the night! And she stood in front of us with those big, understanding eyes. None of us touched her that night, but she was so beautiful and calm. I really do love donkeys. I wish I could see them everyday. But these days I rarely get to walk roads where the hills lay down their great flanks.
I miss having the earth, the roots, the rocks beneath the soles of my hiking boots. I miss my city; the trail that opens off the side of the main road, I remember, she tears the civilized facade of the city open to let the wildness through; and she tears my thoughts open now, she rips through the drone of the homework and the competition and all other drivel, to let wild longing through. How long has it been since the last time I was surrounded only by trees? This is a desire that even the best of friends can't fulfill; I need to alone in the woods, on top of the cliffs. I need to go down the steep trail, reaching for tree trunks to support me, and I need to go back up under the scorching midday sun like I used to do: it was so hard that I would drop to the ground from exhaustion and get leaves and dirt all over my bare skin, but that was honestly fun, and I need to sweat over something beautiful, you know? I need to sweat over something beautiful, not these hunks of metal that I move up and down and up and down endlessly, and not this bike-looking thing, stubbornly rooted in this house, whose wheels spin and spin endlessly, going nowhere. And by the love of our great flowing ocean-woman I miss the fish in the sea, their wide eyes. I used to fish for fun: it was a rite of passage, to have my father teach me, as all the people who grew up in this place must've had. And I pestered my grandfather, will you teach me, will you teach me how to gut a fish? I fished for one summer, and I stopped after one time where I threw the fishing rod back and the tip of the hook got stuck in the skin above my fucking right tit, squirming worm and all. I guess that's karma. To the sea that holds them, to the mountain that watches over them - if I ever come again seeking to rip your children from your breast, it won't be for play, it won't. And by the love of our red, warm, coarse mother-tongue I miss the strength with which the sun burned when I was finally on top of the long stairway from the city to the sea. And I need to live in the present, I know, I can't count the days down to the time I'll be back on the seashore with bare breasts, but it's so hard not to!!..... Oh and woe for the sweet donkey I met under the red moon; now I can barely find time to go visit the frogs in the creek next to the grocery store. I know there is also meaning in what I currently do, I'm trying to be mindful of the here and now, but the start of the trail off the side of the road tears through my mind, and longing overpowers me.
So strong is the longing that I haven't been caring for my garden as much as I should've. It's sacrilege, probably. I'm sorry to my helichrysums: do you understand why I haven't been spending time crouched at your side, smelling your leaves? It's not because I don't love you anymore: I'm chasing the memory of you growing proudly out of the rocks, on the steep slopes of the mountain. And if I was there, oh, how I'd risk my balance to reach out with my arm and rub the tip of your branches.
I have a scar on my knee that marks me as the mountain's; I may carry these limbs wherever but they are always hers. I have a scar on my knee that saltwater got into; always slightly raised as if it was full of something, and I used to stare at it, wondering if perhaps it was a pouch of crab eggs, wondering when they were going to burst out of my skin. The reminder is painful when I look at it while sitting at home far from those places. But what can I do about it? And I know that my life is here and now and nothing more, I know that if I'm not present here I wouldn't be present there, but what can I do about this longing?
"Well, memories will burn you / Memories grow older as people can / They just get colder / Like sweet sixteen". Yes I miss the sea, the mountain, even the fields of young green wheat I used to trample upon, years ago when I started exploring these hills. I just wrote about wildness and longing - the news just came out that they're going to buy the abandoned building near my grandmother's house, the one that I loved so much, and turn it into a fucking centro sociale! But it's oh and woe for my bonny hind beneath the Holland tree! Nothing sacred is left, is there? I loved that place. I used to call it Coral Castle, because I was obsessed with Sweet Sixteen by Billy Idol at the time. The first time I listened to it, I thought that it was about a father whose daughter had run away (yes... and I was confused by the mentions of an "engagement ring"), therefore that it was about the deepest kind of pain a human being could experience: I heard it in the weird kind of moans that he lets out after a particularly defeated-sounding part, trying to express and to soothe, again, a kind of pain that can't be put into words. It used to be my favourite song. I even wrote on the walls of that building: "And I'd do anything for my sweet sixteen". Now those walls are getting brought down. I wonder if anyone's even gonna go to that centro sociale. Are they gonna repaint it, change the hue that I've always loved? That building has always been abandoned, since as far back as I remember, and even before my birth according to Google Maps; and in the wonder-filled, wide-eyed view I had of the world when I'd just started dipping into life, it would stay that way forever. I could write a lot about back then. But. I still have my writings from back then. I don't think I need to add anything, even though some of them are so cringe that I can't get myself to read more than one sentence. What was brewing inside me was... certainly something, and a lot of it is now foreign to me, a lot of it is alien to me in the same way that the ocean is alien to us even though we were formed there. Trudging up the hill towards the big abandoned house, and two deer started skipping past me. But oh and woe for my bonny hind... I remember being that wonder-filled, angst-filled, bewildered, resigned, peaceful, visionary, and even before that, nauseatingly lovesick, when I first started high school. Recently, my sister was ecstatic to find a physical copy of the italian translation of Gesta Danorum. It was laying on the table, and I passed by - I had other things to do, but I could not resist the call of familiarity: my fingers turned the pages with love, with sweetness, with bitterness, until I found those words:
Chi premerebbe le dita
su una spina, o darebbe caldi baci
al fango? Chi unirebbe a membra irsute,
ingiustamente, un corpo levigato?
Se la natura recalcitra
non si può cogliere il pieno diletto di Venere.
Non ha a che fare coi mostri, l'amore consueto alle donne.
Perhaps the biggest thing about that "sweet sixteen" period was that I was, again, wakening to life and I felt that there was a secret meaning, a secret speech, going on in the places that I loved. (Not like, in the literal schizo sense obviously, but I guess that normal people reading these entries DO see me as schizo and it's inevitable to be perceived like this if I keep on publishing my weird ass thoughts lol). It's hard to explain. But. I have my old writings from back then, and I spoke to a puzzled future historian-self, and I don't need to add anything more: "tutto è pieno e anche io sono piena di questa strana sensazione che non saprei spiegare ma sembra magia, non saprei, per capire ascoltati gli White Lies. Spero che la bici arrivi presto. Tra poco mieteranno tutto il grano e allora potrò di nuovo salire sulla collina e visitare la casa abbandonata che vidi ad aprile." She already said it all: the wheat was ripe and about to be cut, the abandoned house on top of the hill was waiting for me, the music was powerful and with my whole self I was hanging on to the voice of the world: if you tell me to jump then I'll die. The voice of the world was unclear, wordless, but unmistakable, and my wonder welled inside my chest whenever I heard it. It mostly came through my tender, unconditional love of whatever was in my hometown. The crooked utility poles like giants stumbling across the field. The writings on the wall next to the school. A grocery store receipt left on the ground. When I was walking back home at night, and strange sound rose from the water treatment plant, I clutched my heart and listened reverently. It was the music of the spheres to me - and I had the feeling that there was something hidden in there. A meaning, a message. It could be death, it could be life, I was listening carefully. A mystery in my hometown: the mystery of life, the mystery of my life and death. It was all very vague but all-pervasive. The biggest delegates of the mystery were the strange white birds who sometimes came to peck on the fields. I still don't know their names. They bobbed strangely while walking, they looked like little herons. They were rare and I only saw them from afar, I only saw a small snow-white body wobbling along on a distant field.
I see a rare-looking bird out the car window,
Flying like a sign, like (s)he's saying "I know"...
And perhaps it was because of their own mystery that I made them, in my mind, the delegates of the new mysterious world that was baring itself in front of me. Everytime I saw them - reverence. It was often just for a few seconds from a car window, but I stared avidly as if I was really going to learn something. Again, not schizo, I felt that all-pervasive feeling of mystery and meaning but I knew that it was just a feeling; but the white bird's presence was such an... indescribable event that it made me almost believe it all for real. I was listening in wait.
Now I'm in another era; I've given a new meaning to my life, and the white bird is just one among thousands of sisters; but anytime I see her, I remember, and I give her a special greeting in my heart. A few days ago I invited S over. We got lunch and, when we walked outside, for some reason the sun felt exhilarating on me. The bus had leather seats and seatbelts and it was all for us, we were alone. When we got off, in the field next to my house there were... those white birds, bobbing along, pecking around, flying above our heads; I'd never looked at them that closely. We stood and watched before coming in: they're so beautiful, she said, and I just nodded. Yes, now the birds are just some of my many sisters, but there are old correspondences I still honor, and their appearance will always be a miracle to me. She wanted to play on my PS5: I gave her the controller and put on Ghost of Yotei. "Is that me? Am I Japanese?"
She'd been waiting to get invited over. She'd asked me, with some offense in her voice, if she was the only one of my friends that hadn't gotten to see my house. Really, I've only recently gained the... courage to start inviting people over. You know how I always talk about the house, and my fear of the house? When I say that I fear this house, it's not just metaphorical. It trascends everything else (fear of the child, of childhood and whatnot) and becomes a fear of the house as in, like, the building. I'm irrationally terrified that anyone who sees the inside of this house, these rooms, etc. will also automatically know what went on inside it. I feel like what happened in this house is embedded, implicit in its walls, its furniture, everything, and when you see those things you see it all. It's hard to explain because it's entirely irrational and I know it, but the fear is just there, and it stays: I'm sure some people will understand these fears that come from, like, not-great events in the distant past. I only recently started inviting friends over, and I still don't let them into my room to see the bedsheets, the desk. Some days ago an electrician came and had to go inside my room, and it was so hard to look him in the eyes once he came out; but I did, and I didn't falter, and even though I know this is all entirely irrational, I still felt like I could say about myself: I think that on my head are horns, sturdy horns.
I've always had horns on my head, but only recently have I learned how to defend myself with them. (I've always been a rough, bestial, enspirited woman, but only recently have I learned how to defend myself through it.) The horns still signal the scapegoat, but now I can't be persecuted without consequences; I take pride in my horns because they mean I can be mighty. I have a scar on my knee that marks me as the mountain's; these legs must be strong enough to skip over stones, this heart must carry me without faltering and my breath must be steady. I train with my lover in mind; my lover is stone and doesn't speak. Now I sweat with dignity, and with dignity I lay down to rest. I don't seek the signs of illness in myself anymore. I've even learned how to withstand cold showers! Besides, the cold has never done me anything wrong; for my entire life my enemy has been fire, desire, shame branded onto the nerves.
I've learned something, though, from a ripoff of the Settimana Enigmistica. I keep like 5 different puzzle magazines in my backpack, because with this year's new legislation if you're caught on your phone at school Valditara personally comes to spank you, so anytime I'm bored I pull one of them out. My mother buys them for me when she comes across one; I mostly do crosswords, but recently she bought a magazine that only has the kind of puzzle where you have to find certain words hidden in a jumble of letters. I used to dislike them, but now I find them pretty fun, I've figured out the right technique. You do have a set of words you have to find, but you shouldn't look too hard for them, you should soften your focus and just let your eyes glide all over the page. You should stop looking for the words, in fact forget you're looking for them, put aside any strategy. Just look at what you have in front of you with no pretenses, no purpose, and play with every possible combination: you won't be disappointed with what you find. You have to remember that it's a game. When you're overwhelmed by frustration, unfocus your gaze and let it glide over the full picture.
this entry is about: snow, daughterhood again and old myths, youth again (blood, hips, knees) and the vision in a sunrise, nightmares, time, impatience, trust, italian folk and the omnipotence of the mother
Back to what I spoke of last entry, about self-respecting women and their mothers - we honor the mother so much, we acknowledge her hand in our creation so much, that we are perplexed to see her scorning some parts of us that she herself has created from her blood and bone. My mother, it's clear (always has been clear), thinks some part of me undignified. When I speak of wanting to lift more, she is disgusted, it's clear, and she says: what do you even wanna lift for? What do you need to be strong for? But mother, I want to be strong so that I can be your Kleobis and your Biton, so that I can have the honor of carrying you in your old age. Would you scorn this? You could have a daughter who plants trees, leaves a mark on the world.
Maybe a big part of the problem is my sensibility: there are disagreements between me and my mother, that may be objectively slight; my mother may perceive some cracks in between us in her mind, and in my own I magnify them into giant abysses, because I still fret for her approval. Whether they are cracks or abysses in her mind, I don't know; our relationship lies on the unsaid.
I've been reading Momolina Marconi- I've been TRYING to read Momolina Marconi, because her writing style is very... very... uh.... academic..... But I'm still trying to power through it. I liked reading about ανασυρμα. I knew about Baubo, but not about the women of Lycia against the waves, the woman of the Congo against the lion, the women of Lapland against the bear!... I love it. Baubo, I knew her, and I know no Goddess more powerful than her, Baubo, Βαυβω, I know of no other who will help us now - the one who conquered Demeter's unbreachable sadness, the one who ripped a smile out of the tear-streaked face of the mourning mother...
Back to what I spoke of last entry, about our allotted time - I'm young: blood rushes easily, I can feel it thumping in my hips sometimes. Perhaps one day I'll miss my libido. I don't know know what youth is; I don't know how long youth lasts; I don't know what I can do with mine or what I'll actually be able to do with mine; but perhaps one day I'll miss youth. I think - I fervently hope - life won't end with the end of youth, but perhaps I'll still miss it. I think of all that could happen in my old age, from a health standpoint... I'll probably miss my knees. My youth overall has been a mixed bag, I've only awakened to life relatively recently, but, even though I still lament having lost precious years of my life to... circumstances, I'm glad to be myself right now. I say it gingerly, timidly, almost too good to be true: I'm glad to be myself right now. There are many other girls like me whose youths are lost in things like chasing after men's approval or chasing after the image of a "perfect", unhealthy body, and many of them never exit this chase. I often think of what we could be. I often think of what young women could be, if we weren't preyed upon, drugged, deluded, trapped in these chases and in these houses of mirrors. I think that being a young woman would be beautiful - could be beautiful, and I hope that I'm living at least a part of that potential beauty right now. Are we not meant to be proud, hard-headed, spear-headed? Are we not, in this time when blood rushes easily? It leaps in our wrists, it thumps in our hips, it overflows and spills into the world; there is much work to be done, and much pleasure to be had. I understood one time what the holy Maiden was (which has always been hard for me to grasp - I don't even share that belief about trinity anymore, it doesn't quite speak to me) when I was on my canoe, and I saw that the horizon lying low on the sea was incredibly, blindingly, ecstatically white, like if that summer morning's sun had evaporated and blended seamlessly with the rest of the sky. And the mountain was bathed in that light.
From the darkness of the room the child comes, just out of my half-lidded gaze. As I start to drift into sleep, she comes at the foot of my bed. I've been having some nightmares, on and off lately, the kind of nightmares that crush you into something small and terrified; the kind of nightmares that you can only imagine being hurled at you from the void/the divine, but it hurts too much, so I imagine that the child stands at the foot of my bed: she waits for me to fall asleep so that she can enter my body and become me again in my dreams. I've become wary, I know that she's there now, but I don't get up: what am I gonna do, not sleep? I know I can't keep her away, and I'm not ashamed anymore of what she might do or say while I dream: I've decided to simply not concern myself with shame, when she comes to visit. I see you, I tell her. I know what you want to do: why again? What do you hope to achieve with that? You know I fear her and I hate her - oh by now you know I do - but she grins now, out of the corner of my eye, a simple childlike grin like a million others. Nothing, she says. It just feels good. She says this, simply, clearly, and she grins that innocent grin: you know I hate her, I've always hated her, but now my heart warms up and in the darkness of the room I think I'm starting to believe her, I'm starting to believe her with my whole chest (and it's a relief I didn't think I deserved).
I feared that January would be dark and bleak, and she brought snow. Not directly to my doorstep, but in towns near me, it has snowed. It's been about ten years since I've seen even just a little bit of snow. It just doesn't happen around here, near the coast; and indeed it didn't in my hometown, but if I look inland, the fields are white and they finally start to match the peaks of the highest mountains, who must've been waiting years for the lands at their feet to join them. It's been so long: I barely remember ever seeing something like this. The fields are white... It's beautiful, though I wonder how people survive in climates where this happens every year. I've never felt this COLD before.
I miss being in nature. It's absurd to think about and to admit, I wanted to go to the mountain at least once during winter break, but it ended up being way more about slacking off than anything else to be honest, and now my mornings are no longer free. And neither are my afternoons. And the world is never free from this cold. Before winter break I'd taken up the habit of sitting outside, first thing in the morning, under the still-dark sky and the still-glowing moon, and just pay attention. But after these snowfalls, these rainstorms, these gelate, it's gotten so cold that every evening I tell myself I'm definitely gonna do it tomorrow, and every morning I face the window and my whole body & mind say... no. I guess I'm gonna wait until it gets just a little bit warmer. I don't think it'll snow again.
As a sort of resolution for this school year I've decided to not be too hard on myself if I can't manage to do everything on my to-do list, everyday, perfectly, in the exact way I want to. I've decided so because if I'm not more patient with the amount of things I have to do or want to do + the amount of time I have, I'm gonna go kinda insane I think. If one afternoon I have to skip a study session because I have to do cardio, it's okay. If one evening I want to write and I skip a meditation session, it's okay. There are many things I have/want to do and it's okay if I don't get the time to do them all in a single day every single day. I often chase delusions like "fuck!!! I didn't manage to do everything today but I'll definitely make tomorrow The Perfect Day where I will read 10000 pages + strength straining + cardio + 2 hour study session + 30 min meditation session + long walk + write + code" The Perfect Day doesn't exist. There's only so much time in a day. And it isn't a problem, because my life probably won't end with this day. And I've come to a time in my life where I feel that I'm reliable. I trust myself and I want to cultivate this trust. I trust myself to do my best and to choose the best possible things in both the small and great paths of life.
At the bus stop, kids were picking up straight ice from the roofs of parked cars and they were throwing the chunks at each other. 🎵 It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas 🎵
Today it wasn't cold, though. It was a Sunday morning, the light coming in from the window was beautiful, the road was still wet from the night's rainfall, and the sunlight felt so good on my skin - but I had things to do. I was taken away to my tasks, to my chores; along the road I saw the pines and the brooms and the brown-and-blonde brush beneath them, and I clutched my heart. I was taken to my city, but I couldn't be with her: I had my mind on the hiking trail that opens up just beside the road, and the woods and the glimmer of sea you can glimpse from there, but I couldn't be with her. I am from here, though, and the people here speak my same dialect, they eat the same fish and drink the same wine, they hike the same trails and swim in the same sea: they'll understand if I grab one of them randomly on the street and say, me devi portà a [REDACTED] o muoio. ("Allu mari mi portati"...)
There are a few songs that have, like, an almost religious significance to me. Very few songs in fact, and most of them are italian folk for some reason. Allu Mari, of course, because... Mary Daly already said it. And then, Il Testamento Dell'Avvelenato, which is the italian adaptation of Lord Randal basically, but in some versions his mother has conspired against him too. Like this version that I love the most out of them all. Some other versions sound somber in a way that's excessive - that tone matches with the story which is being told, sure, but the problem is that it matches too well and it all ends up being predictable, almost boring. But this version is not like that: it's not defeated, limp and moping, and you can tell from the very beginning, with that loud, solemn bagpipe that seems to spread over the surrounding air and float over the hills and command you to listen and respect. The whole song is so majestic and whimsical, playful, danceable at the same time. The ending: the crescendo until the final, supreme exclamation of "Mi devo confessare, mama la mia mama", and then the sudden drop into the most beautiful part of all, probably: M'aveeeeete avveleeeenaaaaaaaatoooo, maaaaaaaama la mia maaaaaaama; m'avete avveeelenaaaaaato eeeee 'l mio core sta maaaaaale... All but the bagpipe stop in front of the most sorrowful crying out of the dying man, the revelation of the most painful sort of betrayal that exists; and in comparison to the curses and hellfire that the man sends out in other versions, this cry mostly sounds pathetic, tearful, disbelieving, still bending down, even after betrayal and murder, to the omnipotence of the mother figure. Who gave him life and now gives him death. Not a single surge towards revenge, and no figurative speech, not a metaphor or a hint of irony (Lord Randal, "I leave her hell and fire"), one could even read no recrimination; the whole sentence is so simple and literal, just a description of how things are: m'avete avvelenato e 'l mio core sta male. Such innocence in the face of tragedy brings tears to my eyes almost every time. And after this world-shattering, life-destroying, heart-destroying cry, the music picks up again, in the same solemn but danceable tone, to show that the world goes on, uncaring, powerful despite the dying man's faintness, beautiful despite his hideous death, thriving despite his heartbreak.
this entry is about: meaningless coincidences, pasta al forno and the time of our youths & lives, January, piety, motherhood, daughterhood, closure or lack thereof
On the morning of the 1st, a sequence of dreams that I was having ended with the janitor, the blessed old woman whom I often talk to about gardening, sitting down next to me in bed, putting a hand on my back and speaking softly to me. She began by saying: get up now, to begin the new year in the spirit of responsibility. Then she said other things that I don't remember, other advice, other "here's what you're gonna do"'s, and I jolted awake at the end of it. I really did get up, I saw that it was only 9 AM, and I'd gotten little sleep, so I went back to bed. Sorry, old woman. But I DID technically get up for a little while... I wish I could remember what she said.
Last year, I'd gotten my period on New Year's Eve, and I lifted my head in wonder. The timing has obviously shifted a bit since then, and I did not expect, this afternoon, to start bleeding. I said oh, it's too early - one week early, it must be spotting, a lot of spotting but spotting nonetheless. But it kept going, so I guess I've got my period now, on the 1st of January. What a coincidence - trying to not show my giddiness here - I wonder why. Maybe it's because I needed to write: it's been a long time. Maybe it's because of all the excesses of New Year's Eve. We had dinner at a friend's country house, by the fireplace (and then for the countdown to midnight we went to the city square, but we ended up going back to her house because they were playing motherfucking Gianni Morandi.) It's been a long time since I ate this much: crostini con paté di olive pasta al forno rustici arrosticini freschi di griglia pollo and spumante, and wine, and Baileys, which left me sober as a fucking nun for some reason, but I still had a lot of fun.
I follow this woman on social media who's very concerned with the passage of time and with the shortness of life. It's gonna pass you by, she says, and shakes her head endlessly. Reading about her worry is sobering. She's so right: why doesn't it haunt us every step of our life? The year has turned and I'm alive, and I'm young, but I won't be alive forever and I won't even be young for such a long time. I'm very good at handling food, TOO good at handling food, I can never gain weight: even though I always complain about this, on New Year's I was very happy that I could gorge myself on Baileys and pasta al forno without seeing the consequences on the scale. But let's be real, it won't be this way forever. People usually lose their fast metabolism as they age. One day, if I eat pasta al forno and Baileys on New Year's Eve, I will have to suffer the consequences and pay my penance on the treadmill. My days of drinking Baileys and eating pasta al forno carelessly are numbered. Not only that, but my days of drinking Baileys and eating pasta al forno AT ALL are numbered, because when I'm dead I will never taste Baileys or pasta al forno again for eternity. It's stupid but it's true, do you ever think about how you will never experience things ever again, when you're dead?? I have a certain, limited, allotted time to taste delicious things, and once it's over, throughout the span of all eternity as countless galaxies merge and dissolve I will never get the chance to do it ever again. I have orgasms and it's great. I have an allotted time to have orgasms and once that time is over, once I'm dead, I will never experience them ever again, not even after all the stars in this universe have fizzled out. I'm on my period: I light incense and candles for this day. One day I'll enter menopause (I wonder how I'll deal with hot flashes...) and once it sets in I'll have to say goodbye to periods, forever, and eventually say goodbye to all of myself, forever. One of the things I miss the most about summer is being naked or half-naked all the time. Now, in the shower, after a shower, I like to take time to look at myself. This body that I love, it won't last for a long time; old age will ravage it, probably, and even after that, it will disappear into the earth. I have an allotted time to be with it, and an even shorter time to be with it as it currently is. The face that stares back at me when I look in the mirror, I know it well, but before long it will change: I have an allotted time to see it at all, and an even shorter allotted time to see it as it currently is. Once the time allotted to me is over, I will never again feel pleasure, joy, pride, even pain or grief, in all of eternity. It's all so stupid, yes, it's so obvious, but don't we hide it from ourselves a lot of the time, too? And it's one thing to say: I'll die, and it's another thing to expand on it and say: I'll never have an orgasm again, I'll never look at myself again, I'll never drink Baileys or eat pasta al forno again... Isn't it important to be aware? I'm very grateful for the time I have to drink Baileys and eat pasta al forno. I'm still full from all that pasta al forno, it was so fucking gooooooooood holy shit. Creamy.........
Winter break is being super good, and I'm trying not to think about it but I'm kinda afraid of when it'll be over. I've never really trusted January; I've always found Giano Bifronte to be really creepy. I can't stop referencing an old italian Burger King commercial that aired years ago after winter break, it went: "Feste finite. Freddo. Triste." ("Holidays over. Cold. Sad.") and that's LITERALLY HOW IT IS, holidays are over, there's nothing to look up to, it's cold and you can't do anything... I hope it won't be so bad. The saying, "L'Epifania che tutte le feste porta via"... doesn't it sound so sad??
Where will piety lead me? Piety towards the closer mother, not the greater one. I grew up reading about and studying pietas, and eventually it stuck with me; not Aeneas' or any man's pietas, but the concept of it, "piety" as in the sense of duty and devotion towards bigger things, towards divinity and towards the parents. I love the word "piety", I use it a lot now, and when I use it I mean its old meaning, I mean pietas. Where will piety towards my mother lead me? The closer mother, not the greater one. The greater one is a metaphor, yes, I'll admit, she's a construct: she exists in order for that piety to exist, and that piety serves as the framework for a proper life. But the closer one is right here, right in front of my eyes, and I came from her: she doesn't exist for piety, but her existence demands piety nonetheless. And I'm not saying I disacknowledge this, no, nor that she doesn't deserve piety: I do, and she does, she certainly does. My mother loves me, she confides in me, she asks me for advice, she takes pride in my achievements, she smiles upon me, she cares for me. And I love my mother. In fact, maybe the problem is that I love my mother too much. I have a deep respect for my mother, isn't that clear by now?... The greater one and the closer one: one reflected in the other. I have a deep devotion and, again, piety for the mother, for my own mother, and maybe the problem is that I expect such great, all-encompassing piety from her as well. It's normal for it not to be there, it's normal for my mother to not think as I think and feel as I feel; it's just disappointing sometimes. It's normal. Every self-respecting woman, every feminist or feminist-leaning woman feels disappointed with her mother sometimes, with her old-mindedness: I think we all have felt this, I think we all know. We love our mothers and we are perplexed as to why she doesn't see the spark in herself that we see in her, and as to why she doesn't see the spark in ourselves that we see in her.
And I'm always looking up to my mother, trying to satisfy her in every possible way: but with the way that I am, and with the way that she is, and in all the ways in which we are so different from each other, it'd be possible only if I renounced my self. Of course she doesn't demand this of me, of course I don't want this either - of course this want of mine is irrational, of course this fear of mine is irrational: I think it's common among those who grew up as I did. I fear that my mother's fed up with all my eccentricities, me and my unshaven legs, me and my weightlifting, me and my colorful eyeshadow, me and my tacky nail polish, me and my reusable cotton rounds, me and my washable menstrual underwear, me and my refusal of her Jehovah, me and my reluctance to yield to wooing, me and my hikes, me and my nighttime trips in the wilderness. And... maybe she IS a little bit fed up but it shouldn't infringe on a mother's unconditional love, right? The problem is that I don't believe in unconditional love. I don't believe in unconditional love from anyone. It isn't a bad thing - it's an unrealistic desire to have, it's too high of a demand. And I wonder if and when my mother stopped loving me, started loving me again, somewhere during the course of my life. She can't have loved me when I was really young. That's the other problem: the fact that I remember, and my mother remembers too, probably, even though I wish she didn't; the fact that my mother was there and remembers being there, and that perhaps she doesn't have any regrets regarding how she handled things. That's the other problem: that's the biggest problem. I can't imagine my mother loving me when I was a child: even apart from the basic fact that I was impossible to love, if she loved me she would have guided me, she would have helped me, like a mother's supposed to.
The fact is that my mother wasn't ready. My mother, my poor mother, it isn't all her fault. Soon I will be 19, the same age she first got married. Me and my sister are not from that marriage, she had us when she was older, but still: I don't think she ever had the chance to learn how to deal with being a mother. Not in her mother's house, not in her low-level schools, not in her Kingdom Hall, not in her early marriage. I don't think she ever had the chance to learn how to deal with me, specifically: the child that I was. I cannot speak of it all. The entirety of it will forever lie in silence, to the rest of the world as well as between me and her. They should have warned me that I was about to be born to her, they should have warned her that she was about to birth me: she couldn't possibly have been ready to handle something like me. And the fact is that she hardly did. My poor mother, she wasn't ready, but I was a child: I wasn't ready either, I didn't know what to do either. The fact is that I wasn't ready, and she wasn't ready, and I couldn't possibly have done anything about it, and she didn't do anything either. I've already wrote that I was born as a mass of everything that was alien to my mother. She wasn't ready. She didn't know what to do. I must've frightened her for years, with my mere existence, with what I did and what happened to me unknowingly: my mother dropped me like a bunch of hot coals, my mother avoided my gaze, because she was terrified of me. Mother, I'm sorry to have been such a leech on you, I'm sorry I must demand this much of you for my survival, but I think I am allowed to say this: a mother's indifference is hatred; a mother's neglect is death. And I am afraid, exactly as I was back then, of being under her gaze. Back then, I was afraid. I didn't know anything, except that I was afraid of being under her gaze. Mater, iudice te, vereor. That I was afraid in general, that if I had just a little bit more awareness I would have clung to her and cried for help, for guidance; and she would've turned her eyes from me. How could this be my daughter? I bet she thought: how could this be my daughter? How could this thing have been created from my flesh and blood?
And, again, the problem is that she remembers and that she probably doesn't think she did anything wrong. My mother loves me, now. My mother confides in me. Years ago, when my sister started going to therapy, nearly every night she took me by her side, and she lamented: why do you think she ended up this way? Do you think I've done anything wrong while raising her? Do you think I've been a bad mother? Do you think it's my fault? I don't know if these were rhetorical questions: I don't know if she ever really had these doubts. (She should have them, she really should have them.) I had some recrimination to do, sure. But I love my mother. If honesty was going to hurt her, then I'd bite my tongue. And everytime she asked this, I answered: no, mom, you never did anything wrong, you're the best mother we could've asked for. I said it again, and again, and again, every time she asked. I'd say: it's not your fault, NOTHING is your fault; and by doing that, I put the blame on us. I put the blame on us, as children, for anything that was ever wrong with us. Looking back, I regret debasing myself like this. But if she asked again... I love my mother. If honesty is going to hurt her, then I'll bite my tongue. Me and my mother don't argue - that's another problem, probably: we have never settle things, we always gloss over them, and that's how you DON'T get closure on anything. But, I can deal with not talking about it, my mother can't deal with talking about it - so it's okay, I'll bear this weight for her.
I've said before, when I wrote our Genesis, that I could not write the rest of our holy book even if I wanted to: it's still true, I cannot speak of it all, it goes too deep and it's too painful. But I've woven - blindly, unthinkingly, frantically: I think it shows - this tapestry and it's not such a bad way to find some relief, some closure, if every other avenue is closed. It goes to show that the child has grown up, at least somewhat.
Oh, you know me - I can't help but feel like this is a good omen. I hope that this year my blood runs copious, flaming, red...