Winter Sensation
riccardomustodario
una sensazione freddo abbia mai avuto deve andare a firmare e per la prima
volta, a quest'ora.
Potenza della cultura del Premio Nobel - il mondo veramente sta impazzendo,
premiano tutti e mai me.
Riccardomustodario
WINTER SENSATIONS
English translation by Charl Bellanova
WINTER SENSATIONS
In those days it was really cold. But not like today, even if the
thermometer is signing minus six degrees Celsius.
Last week, the day before Epiphany, I was sensing in the air an antique
sensation, well known, pleasant and mysterious: the freezing cold of when I
was a little boy. A moment fallen into oblivion, buried under my memories
and rebounded all of a sudden in its recollection, unique and peculiar.
This winter is cold, since November I am suffering for it, but I can cope;
when I was a child, though, even if it was freezing more often than in
present times, the cold was different, less synthetic, you would have fought
the arctic temperature with more yarn; the surrounding environment would
colour itself in the smell of that season: winter. Or I sense that because a
few years later the countryside around my house disappeared, altering the
natural values, and, before we could take notice of it, we were saying
farewell to the flavours of the atmosphere too, for a good post-modern
goodbye?
Iąll see you on the other side arctic polar bear, your iceberg is quickly
melting.- No! Itąs cold! Farewell penguins of the other hemisphere, idem as
above. And what will be of the killer-whale that is waiting for its
favourite meal? Where the penguins will go, all wearing a tuxedo, to the
theatre? Life is a precious thing and very serious, and so is nature.
Speculation in the building industry has conditioned our habits, has made us
more contemporary; where the cow and the mare were, now there is a shopping
centre, multiple floors and, obviously, automatic stairs. This are stores
incredibly huge, because everything must be close to the hand and to the
basket. From clothes to corsetry, from underwear to stationery, to
kitchenware or whatever you might ever need, with the ground floor dedicated
exclusively to foodstuffs.
łIn Town You Grow˛ was the motto of those factories that were looking for
workforce in the years of the łboom˛. In the meanwhile the countryside went
deserted of its natural sons, the ancient peasants, tired of working the
land and finally happy of breathing metallurgic air in the factory. Who
can I tell? Iąm taking iron pills, because the latest analyses show my body
is lacking ironŠ
The cold of metals, in wintertime, transmits again an icy sensation, and
fingers and toes grow numb; then I look at my long trousers and think about
the time when it was customary to go to school in shorts, and to the very
pale skinned the winter drew fleshy calves with red veins, vivid for the
tingling activated by the low temperature. In northern Italy children
dressed in long trousers and laughed in the cold, playing with puppets and
snowballs. We were aware of this thanks to television. However, after
primary schools, we would have worn proper trousers too. Was it forbidden to
play the doctor in winter..? I canąt remember!
In the building further down the road, beyond the boundary-walls of
civilization, close to the Wood, where you exchange even your skin if you
play the blues, lived terrible kids; or so you would have heard at school. I
wonąt tell what they used to say , the students of the college by the Wood,
when I was there for secondary school. No doubt, we of Viale Colli Aminei
were the good guys, the upper class in the Capodimonte area The posh.
Society changes. If you read newspapers, itąs clear that perversion is
moving forward on every front; even the supporters of football teams are
becoming organized in gangs, up for fighting, every day more audacious.
This is the present situation, with mums in search of easy money, ready to
accuse the poor priest, the victim of the indecent mind of children more and
more curious in imitating their parents, who are engaged in relationships
every season more complicated, in the name of the perfection of the gay
couple, which should really inspire you and be your goal. I donąt want to
think about it.
Family has become a weird thing difficult to diagnose where we will find
it in one hundred years time. Even in twenty years, actually. There will be
children anymore? Or will they be born adults already?
The Befana comes at night with broken shoesŠ[1] <#_ftn1> How beautiful
Christmas was very long period, which began a couple of Saturdays before
the 25th of December with the setting up of the Crib, and ended the 7th of
January, when all the shepherds went back into their boxes, up on the
shelves. Of this period of time , three or four weeks long, the Epiphany
was for children the topic moment. Everybody liked the Crib, especially
us, children, enchanted in front of such a show. As some friends in Via
Epomeo, area then famous for the rubbish burner, said, my borough seemed
still with homes taken from the Crib, with such masterpiecesŠ there were two
very important, one of which, - or both? - had mobile shepherds.
By the way, one of the places cut into the tuff of the hill beneath, was
called Upon the Crib and so at Christmas Donna Nannina appeared on her
little cart pulled by her donkey in front of the fishmonger, who, for the
occasion, had put outside the shop blue half-barrels full, brimful of large
eels, those that you catch by the tail and slip away by the head and the
other way round and we would laugh a lot, telling this as a joke in the
classroom. In the same way, all the grocery stores in the alley would
dress themselves properly for the celebration, overflowing with food
supplies; so much that ten years later, the Crib began to be called łThe
Manger˛. I didnąt like The Manger. I found it vulgar and I thought that such
name was due to the imagination of those elders who used to play cards and
drink wine in the tavern that was right there; while those in the bar close
by playing cards too, used to sip coffee. For my mum the people in the bar
were more trustworthy then those in the tavern, so for me was easy pointing
my finger to everything I didnąt like in the direction of the tavern and the
opposite for the bar, in fact the difference between good and evil was clear
to me very early on. That is, I learnt quite soon to stay away from alcohol
and drugs.
Naplesą city centre, reached following the road that crossed the bridge, in
the nights lit up by the stalls, was a spectacle of toys for us youngsters
from the far off hills. The stalls were full of toys and we had to choose
which one we wanted for the Epiphany, well specifying it in the letter to be
put on the bedside table before the goodnight kiss and sweet dreams to the
parents, coupled with the sign of the holy cross; no prayers though, because
we were too young for the First Communion, so we were free from Hail Mary
and Our Father.
I remember a rainy evening, when I chose the electric train together with my
parents, and my brotherąs requests, for sure, were aiming at guns and rifles
for the destruction of armies in the dust of my speedy train. We were in the
middle of the boom of the historical colossal, like Cleopatra or The Desert
of the Tartars or the Ten Commandments. Or even western films, not
łspaghetti˛ yet. Nonetheless they could just stay stuck to the starting
line; with their horses good for the fence, for attacks to the diligence,
they could nothing to my Rapid Trans Express.
Likewise another episode comes to mind. I was close to serve in the army,
one evening my mum asked me to go shopping with her to buy the talking doll
my sister, who is seven years younger than me, was longing for. Well, then I
wasnąt so close to soldierŠrightŠ, anyway, that year the toy she asked for
was sold out in a day and was extremely hard to get one. You can imagine our
joy when we secured one last item.
What a time! The confidence in the earnings was everywhere; the same street
vendors, on the following Sunday, offered tickets, very easily at double
price or more, for the match at the stadium; I felt angry for paying so much
to watch the game in a stadium always full to the limit, and if you spoke to
them, they, good skilled corner men, asked for a permanent position to get
off the streets. Of course they got the best income changing activity at
every opportunity. The winter was cold though, and the boom was going to
finish one day, but how could they know? Perhaps they were more clever than
I could guess, they were right and now I believe them, despite the nostalgia
for those white mountains covered in snow that were the frame for the
Vesuvioąs candid plume, on the northern side overlooking the gulf. Watching
the election time programs, there were many asserting that working on the
streets meant suffering the freezing weather, while working under a roof was
sign of affluence, witnessed by the black and white TV, that found
everywhere those people animated by economic good will, maybe being kept in
twilight on the screen or something, in any case ready to get out at the
smallest chance. Until the ł Vuoą cumprŕ˛[2] <#_ftn2> , who, at the
beginning, really looked like they had come down from the Crib, like Magi,
and we would ask: where did they leave the camels?
Nowadays, stadiums are emptier and emptier and what about the toys?
Something happened ŠI know, but I will tell you tomorrow, for today, talking
about football, we are out of the European Cups, then I say I would watch
again łNatale in casa Cupiello˛[3] <#_ftn3> .
Goodbye! Christmas said farewell and new yearąs eve came about- Good
heavens! The peaceful gunfight of a spaghetti western would start.
Fireworks, for a couple of hours, would light the sky with a soundtrack made
of whistles like rockets fired from bottles, lines of fire spurted in the
dark, blows and proper rumbles, which moved even the buildings, and then
Catherine-wheels and grenades and the day after it was impossible to find a
square inch of roadąs floor clear from the signs of the previous night. And
we, youngsters of Italy, went out early in the morning looking for
unexploded bangers. A friend of mine had his hand mangled, becoming one of
the many idiots crowding the emergency room, which in that day of happy new
year listed a war bulletin. I wish you aŠ
Then, in those years of quiet walking, pets filled up the houses, barking
with terror for the sudden rising in the decibel level. The neighbourhood
got older and the air charged with shooting powder began to waste the common
sense and the celebration slowly closed the curtains. But while the crackers
diminished, the flights of toilets went better. Having such object broken at
home became pure luck for toilet paper with cartoons.
We, children of that time, believed the Befana would come in using the
window, and we would leave oneąs frame slightly open, so the dear grandma
would fill the socks up with every delicacy and would place gifts at will,
coming in the house easily and, always on her broom, flying to the other
window, left slightly open by the kids next door. We, little toddlers from
the kindergarten, in those days were watching all the elderly women,
wondering if that one was the Befana who would bring us presents. The more
she was bent, the more she would look like her in our eyes; like Donna
Nannina, identical I had imagined her the first time I noticed her. Her
donkey was better than a broom, it washed the floor when urinated, a little
endless yellowish river flowed to the public toilets close to the
town-walls, where it came after crossing the streetcar track, which by now
werenąt passing anymore, but the rails were still there, in some points all
covered with tar. More than two hundred yards, a liquid trail that moved
from one place to the other as it knew where to go, like an homing pigeon.
The toilets were drawn near the Parkąs wall where there was a tree at the
entrance with a massive gate and many people waiting by the big bus stop.
And they used to say that the streets had been revamped, like those in
concrete with strong fumes of chlorine. Public services that are completely
disappeared from the city, the last specimen left can be seen in Posillipo.
In the little square in front of that narrow street, lively, grey, dark from
the colour of the pavement of ancient basalt, which, when the traffic
increased, every year was hit by hammer and chisel, to keep adherence, to
preserve the stability of cars that could slip on the shining paving: in
February came carnival time. Now, that is the light that most shines in my
memory, more than the luminaries at ChristmasŠperhaps. During the Carnival
we would start a big fire, everybody was up for it, street urchins and not.
We would throw into the pyre our old furniture, you can imagine what an
enormous pile of wood was put up together in those years of great ferments
of innovation and who knows how many treasures have been burnt, to be
replaced with formica, the symbol of post-modernity.
When the pyre was lighted up, that was an emotional moment for the children
and the more the day proceeded into the night, the more the wood would burn
and flames would rise higher, until we started to fear that the fire would
reach the wires of the public luminaries that were there to light the
street. Only one wire held a glass bonnet, under which a bulb would
illuminate with a colour now out of fashion, because of the limited
visibility compared to the modern iodine lamps. That colour was good like
only romantic thoughts can depict, so you donąt regret it, because life goes
on. Between a building on the side of the fire in local yellow and another
that was in the corner, with a Pompeian red façade, oscillated high the
light of the lamp in windy nights.
The narrow street to town that goes along the side of the hill wasnąt
visible anymore because of the imposing flame coming from the big pile of
any thing, threatening the near woods and the amount of dry boughs, perfect
to burn, that were found within one hundred yards. And on the top there she
was, the old smiling witch, that later became plume for a Christmas tree.
She looked like the Befana of Epiphany. With all the toys that were already
broken the fire went up and my dad assured me that it was just a story with
an happy end, a fable: the Befana would be back next year, because not even
the fire or the snow or the wind can stop her, when the time has come to
bring toys to the children.
Then little lights would rise up into the sky. At the end of my primary
schools I discovered, reading a short extract from the anthology textbook,
they were called Monachine[4] <#_ftn4> , or maybe it was the first year of
secondary, and it was nice to find out with my classroom friends. Everybody
thought at the same time of the Cippo di SantąAntuono[5] <#_ftn5> , of
those sparks in the air which have a magic flavour, motions of lights moved
by the ashes, by the fire which is beneath and rises lightly, to demonstrate
that ashes and sparks are in the air and glitter and the fire doesnąt want
to go off, doesnąt want to die.
And we would go back home hot for the fire and joyous and there was the
blood pudding. My mum wasnąt able to cook, my dad was in charge, but how he
made the blood pudding and the pastiera[6] <#_ftn6> and chocolate he has no
equal and for me that was fine, I love delicacies.- What a corpulent time of
poultry on the dining table and not. In fact, at the vigil you would eat hen
soup. At Christmasą mass with the cow and the donkey in the stable of Baby
Jesus. Back home we would have lunch with eel, which I never tasted, I
didnąt like it, and last the pork blood pudding: a speciality , rather
unique than rare.
And then March came and Easter, so itąs always holidayŠ is it all a game?
Being a child sometimes is a good business!
The exact day for Carnival has always been a mystery, the date would change
every year, we couldnąt understand why. One day a little friend of mine was
sure it was Carnival - there was the Cippo di SantąAntuono! - why then
somebody declared, one of the rascals, those who my mum didnąt want me to
associate with because, being a bit older, would hang themselves to the
tram, that the fire was planned for next week and to him it seemed that also
the preceding year it had been earlierŠ In fact we learnt that the Patti
Lateranensi[7] <#_ftn7> were good, because the 11th of February was school
holiday and the street urchins in the alley, joyful, were already preparing
the collection of the wood to burn.
And us? We hesitated building underground houses and the years of the
furniture with sliding doors came and we used to go in Maria Cristinaąs
Cave, which, up on the top, had a hole and on that hole the brats would
dance fearless and under the opening in the ceiling, which seen from the
floor opened to the sky, there was a little hill, illuminated by the sun at
midday. Thinking of it now it would seem an altar with a ring that from the
dark of the cave opened to the outside sky. What a wonderful place!
Maria Cristina was a prostitute, who had a stony bed into the cave and there
she would receive her German customers during the WWII withdrawal, and if
any of us younger kids asked what they were fabling about, the older friends
would take us in an avenue where on a plaque were written the names of
Italians slaughtered there. Some of us would cry recognizing their uncles. I
became a bit fascist in these occasions, reckoning that at the end you
always die, itąs better to say hello for the right cause; but no, because to
die is actually always wrong; democratically and technologically we can be
kept alive for ever. After that we would go to a place where a plane had
precipitated.
How beautiful was the WoodŠ we would play football and I was a champion.
Once we entered Maria Cristinaąs cave with torches and made all the tour
around, it was amazing, uncountable bats attached to the walls were waiting
for the dark hour, Maria Cristinaąs bed, the little stairsŠ I made a graphic
script of it some years ago, I put it on various design newsgroups that I
used to follow at the time and that now I canąt find anymore because the old
PC is definitely broken. I have got the floppy disks though, but my new Mac
4 doesnąt read them In the good old days this things didnąt happen, my mum
would say, this computers that change all the time are worse than fashion,
without even bringing us on the moonŠ On the top of the little stairs there
was Maria Cristinaąs stony bed, and we, in group, many of us torch in hand,
kept close our shoulders. The place didnąt arouse any fear just because
there were so many of us marching in that dust: there was so much of it on
the bottom of that cave that proceeding was just a question of feeling that
place as your own because pertaining to the woods, our private space of
natural children.
We were in the woods all the time, grown up wild since kindergarten in the
Primo Campo, where we used to play football restlessly and where every
afternoon I was with my older brothers.
Maybe I was five years old, because the following year getting to primary
school, some rascal revealed that the Befana is nobody else than our
parents.
While playing between the furniture once, it happened to me to get into the
cupboard in the dining room, which had two couples of shutter doors, and the
game was to enter from one passage and come out from the other, with some
suspense in between, a dark, trembling moment, when we were immersed into
the piece of furniture, being careful not to make plates and glasses and
provisions fall down. The doors were closed with the keys, and as I was
going to open them, my older brother placed himself in front of it to keep
me from entering and looking around.
It was very cold that day, the windows were open, like only in my house you
could see, when temperature was low; it must have been our mumąs nostalgia;
she went to work at the factory and coming back home couldnąt stand being
shut in seven ventilated rooms we would get used to it in the evening in
any case. Anyway, in that furniture, packed in the enormous aluminium pot
for twenty five covers, nobody will take it out of my mind, there were the
gifts I was going to receive the next morning, the day of the year when
waking up before the usual was obligatory, having fallen asleep with the
presents in mind.
Considerations of winter coldness: today we are minus six degrees Celsius,
what shall we say about the planet going towards overheating since at least
a decade? My impression is that we are used to transgenic food, we have
manipulated ourselves genetically through the food, armoured against the
cold itąs out of the question we donąt feel anymore the sensations as we
did a few years ago. And the same genes manifest themselves in the whole
nature, propagating in the air and my flowers are blossoming at my balcony,
by this time, in summer as in winter and everything is fine, until the
edge.. which one?
The Befana comes at night with her broken shoesŠ, to make happy all the
children all over the world and at least today, that she is out of fashion,
knocked out by father Christmas success, she doesnąt suffer from the cold
any longer.
THE END
Written 11.1.2007 and published on IAS
October 2007 Translated and published on newsgroup
it,cultura.linguistica,inglese and ITechnodemocratic
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[1] <#_ftnref1> In pre-Santa Claus times the role of Father Christmas was
taken by an old witch (la Befana) who was said, in a nursery rhyme, to wear
broken shoes and fly upon a broom, getting into the houses the night of the
Epiphany by the chimney, to drop presents for the kids. The tradition is
still alive, although Father Christmas has become the main gift-giver.
[2] <#_ftnref2> Immigrant street vendors often from Northern Africa or
Senegal whose poor Italian is joked at in their name which is referred, in a
scornful way, to their approaching sentence which could be translated:
˛wanna buy?˛
[3] <#_ftnref3> Christmas at Cupielloąs 1931 drama in three acts by Eduardo
de Filippo centred on the preparation of the Crib in a Neapolitan household
troubled by jealousy.
[4] <#_ftnref4> Little nuns.
[5] <#_ftnref5> It is a kind of fertility rite in which big piles of wooden
objects are put on fire.
[6] <#_ftnref6> Neapolitan tart.
[7] <#_ftnref7> Treatise between the Church and the State that has
established the independence of the Vatican, signed by Mussolini and
cardinal Pietro Gasparri the 11th of February 1929.
rimuda
wrote:
>
> Riccardomustodario
> WINTER SENSATIONS
Sorry, any comment?
Do it is in a proper English written?
bye
riccardomustodario
siuxi plum
>il più grande scrittore che una sensazione di freddo abbia mai avuto
> premiano tutti e mai me.
> Riccardomustodario
> WINTER SENSATIONS
Scusa se mi sono permessa
di spostare un po' le tue parole,
ma mi piaceva.
baci&fiori
si
Riccardomustodario
ho capito!
appartieni al sottogruppo Pecoraro Scanio: perifrastica passiva.
per la serie: solo gli attivi creano ed i gay ridono mentre i froci PGLNCL
Stoccolma Premio Nobel / mi prenoto per l'assegno che accompagna la Corona
d'alloro ed andate a quel paese voi gelosi ed incapaci: spioni!
--
I numeri sono fenomeni da circo e tali restano quando non sono centrati i
tempi.
Ho lavorato tantissimo per uscire da una terza dimensione
che assicurasse la risoluzione alla conoscenza solita, grazie alla
luminovita', così come si legge in Strittinger, la novità è garantita dalla
Luce, dal Movimento e dal Suono che costituiscono le tre sfere de " La
Ragione del Pentimento " opera letteraria insigne, la quale sto limando per
presentare al digitale letterario in rete, per essere letto fino a
Stoccolma
e sensibilizzarli, questo anno ancora di più dello scorso autunno, in
occasione del Premio Nobel. - Se poi i luminari di Svezia, ignorano anche
questo tocco di classe, cavoli loro, l'umanità prosegue anche senza i
prescelti, premiati da professori noiosi e scontati, i quali producono un
vuoto culturale notevole con danno economico esagerato, causa la relativa
perdita di clientela in libreria. - Non è la mia, ricerca di novità
affannosa, bensì un modo consueto di stile, onde trovare un'alternativa ad
una misera esistenza di qualche secolo cui siamo relegati, se tutto va
bene,
allungandola. - Le tre sfere delLa Ragione del Pentimento permettono alla
Terra di non essere dipendente dal Sole, qualora la nostra stella un giorno
fatalmente si spegni non farci trovare alla sprovvista è il minimo degno
del
più grande essere umano mai esistito, pensai prima di lanciarmi in tale
opera, sicuro di dettare a tempi grazie al fashion design di successo che
sono, anche perchè la chicca dell'Universo che si espande non è
direttamente
proporzionale alla medesima del Sole che si auto rigenera, infatti è da "
Sensazioni d'Inverno " che siamo alla raffreddamento dell'anno, ma il
sole è
potente uguale, sono sono nuvole ... al miele.
Riccardomustodario
siuxi plum
>
> ho capito!
Che bisogno c'è di capire quando si può essere oltre? : )
> appartieni al sottogruppo Pecoraro Scanio: perifrastica passiva.
> per la serie: solo gli attivi creano ed i gay ridono mentre i froci PGLNCL
Grazie per questa scatola colorata! la userò per le scarpe.
nuvole&miele
si.
Riccardomustodario
> On 30 Ott, 15:20, Riccardomustodario <rim...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
>
>> ho capito!
>
> Che bisogno c'è di capire quando si può essere oltre? : )
tu puoi andare dove vuoi, ma io ho responsabilità fino a salvare gli
animali come te, spiritualmente parlando sono creazionista, non
alchimista, mangio carne vera, non alchimista.
http://www.estense.com/?module=displaystory&story_id=27546&format=html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZa7IxWhLss
Pattumanza
--
L'Isola EUgenetica Domitia, a dieci ,venti miglia dalla costa, dove
depurare
liquami ed incenerire solidi pattumati.
