ARDENT QUESTIONS

“No matter what you hold dearest, your heart will have to suffer for it sooner or later, maybe even break. Do you want to feel safe? Do you want a quiet life, like everyone else? Do you want your heart to remain whole? Then don’t give it to anybody! Not even a dog, or a cat, or a goldfish. Protect it, wrap it in a thousand pastimes and quiet pleasures. Avoid all involvement, lock it with a thousand locks, fill it with preservatives and hide it in the freezer. Then you can be sure that it will not break. It will become infrangible, impenetrable. Do you know what this is called, Giulio?”
Giulio shook his head. He wanted to hear the rest.

“Hell. And it’s here already: a place where the heart is completely frozen. It is safe, but cold. Out there it’s full of these people. You read it on their faces that their heart is cold: out of fear, out of comfort, out of laziness. But you’re not like this, Giulio. You’re hungry, and only those are hungry can create, only those who are searching can create.
This is why I like this way you have about you: you provoke, you capture, you call out on the bullshit. These are the actions of a man who is searching, who asks what makes it worth risking his life.”

—From “Cose che Nessuno Sa,” pp. 306-7 

“How many questions were still unanswered! And every time destiny presents you with one is the moment to let the mother-of-pearl flow within, that it may transform life itself into the answer to one of the many things nobody knows. It is the moment to close your shell and let the heart suggest, quietly as if telling a secret that it holds in its innermost room, that there is no satisfying answer, because the only answer is a greater love for life and its incompleteness.”

—From “Cose che Nessuno Sa,” p. 328.

I am reading a very beautiful book right now, and wanted to share with you some passages that I’ve translated.

“The girl smoked her cigarette methodically, leaning on the windowsill, wearing only a torn t-shirt. Behind her, Giulio remained laying on the sticky couch in the silence, answering a text message. He had turned away from the girl to hide the solitude that accompanied the ecstasy. Every time it seemed he was about to touch the sky, but every time, inexorably, he fell from vertiginous heights, shattering his soul in a thousand pieces of glass. Love did not offer the consolation it promised. No embrace, no kiss, no caress, no intercourse could heal the wound. Bandages, that was all. Each patching over the previous, a mountain on top of a cut that had not been cleaned.
Le shelving around the walls was filled with novels, movies, music. People read love stories, they watch romantic comedies, they listen to sentimental songs. And they think that love can fill the void of their loneliness. But no one can fill what is bottomless. He had a soul like a well and never stopped throwing in rocks to fill it, but it was never enough: they vanished in the nothingness and he did not have the courage to lean over and peak in. He did not want to drink his poisonous water; he just wanted to fill the hole.”
From “Cose che Nessuno Sa”, pp. 68-9

[Background: Giulio is an orphan who lives in a home, and Filippo is a volunteer at the home. His nickname there is Franky.]

“You can give because you have received,” said Giulio.
“You can do it to,” Filippo responded.
“I only know how to take, to steal.”
“It’s not true… But next time you take my car I’ll slap you so hard those cheeks of yours will get some color.”
“I have nothing to give.”
“And this conversation? Is it not something you’re giving? You’re giving me your anger, your pain.”
“Nice thing to give…”
“The nicest, because I know what it costs you. What counts in life is how you live with the pain, what you do with it. And whether you can keep a part of your soul intact while you fight.”
“Why should you even care about me? You’ve done your good deed today, God loves you, now you can go home.”
“Do you have to be suspicious of everything?”
Giulio remained silent and stared at Filippo’s hands. They were relaxed: one held a cigarette, and the other sustained his cheek.
“You don’t get screwed over as much,” he answered.
“Giulio, have you ever fallen in love?”
The boy remained silent and for a moment Margherita’s black hair and green eyes danced before him.
“When it happens,” Filippo continued, “you’ll stop being suspicious.”
“Why?”
“You won’t even know why, but you will trust someone more than you trust yourself. You will consciously choose to risk being screwed over, to risk losing.”
Giulio thought about Margherita: he would have wanted to give her his whole heart, put it in her hands and ask her to take it with her wherever she happened to go. It would have been safer with her… but then he backed away.
“You’re wrong if you think that joy in life comes most of all from relationships with others. Happiness lies in solitude. Do you trust someone enough to decide that you’ll run the risk?” Giulio asked.
“My girlfriend. My parents. My brothers. God.”
“God doesn’t exist.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Everything goes wrong, it’s hell down here. If he exists, he’s a sadist…”
“Or weak,” said Filippo.
“Yeah, weak. What kind of god is a weak god?”
“A god who leaves you free.”
“I would prefer a strong god, if it just can’t be avoided.”
I don’t know why certain things happen, we need to accept the mysteries of God. But it’s certain that man is free and that he chooses good or evil according to his decisions.”
“Bullshit to console yourself when things go wrong. Why would he make me be born is I was just going to be abandoned?”
“Why, do you think that Christ suffered less?”
Giulio thought back to the fresco in the church near the park. At least Christ had a mother.
“He has nothing to do with me…”
“Neither do I. And yet others have learned to love you in place of your parents. This is God’s only rule: that everything that happens, pleasant or painful, should generate a greater love. But it’s up to us to choose it.”
[…]
“You know Franky, you’re weird… You have balls, but you say weird stuff.”
“And you’re brave, Giulio. You have the courage to listen.”
—“Cose che Nessuno Sa”, pp. 171-3

“I must kneel to fight”
—Ben Harper 

Hey you, out there in the cold
Getting lonely, getting old 
Can you feel me?
Hey you, standing in the aisles
With itchy feet and fading smiles 
Can you feel me?
Hey you, dont help them to bury the light
Don’t give in without a fight.

Hey you, out there on your own
Sitting naked by the phone 
Would you touch me?
Hey you, with you ear against the wall
Waiting for someone to call out 
Would you touch me?
Hey you, would you help me to carry the stone?
Open your heart, I’m coming home.

—Pink Floyd, not whole song

Looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us
To a glimpse of how green it was on the other side
Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again
Dragged by the force of some inner tide

At a higher altitude with flag unfurled
We reached the dizzy heights of that dreamed of world

Encumbered forever by desire and ambition
There’s a hunger still unsatisfied
Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon
Though down this road we’ve been so many times

—Pink Floyd, not whole song

The sweet smell of a great sorrow lies over the land
Plumes of smoke rise and merge into the leaden sky:
A man lies and dreams of green fields and rivers,
But awakes to a morning with no reason for waking

He’s haunted by the memory of a lost paradise
In his youth or a dream, he can’t be precise
He’s chained forever to a world that’s departed
It’s not enough, it’s not enough

His blood has frozen & curdled with fright
His knees have trembled & given way in the night
His hand has weakened at the moment of truth
His step has faltered

One world, one soul
Time pass, the river rolls

It’s not enough it’s not enough
His hand has faltered

And he talks to the river of lost love and dedication
And silent replies that swirl invitation
Flow dark and troubled to an oily sea
A grim intimation of what is to be

There’s an unceasing wind that blows through this night
And there’s dust in my eyes, that blinds my sight
And silence that speaks so much louder that words,
Of promises broken 

—Pink Floyd

‎”You must have been told that this is what being human entailed. You must have been told that this is what the cutting of your umbilical cord entailed. The darkest day of humans awaits you know. The solitary place of humans awakes you now. The unstoppable flood-wave awaits you now. The unavoidable battle awaits you now. The unequal struggle awaits you now. The duel from which there is no escape awaits you now. But you should not go to the underworld with your heart knotted in anger.”

Blood poisons blood, sullies blood, dirties blood.
Light shines through blood.
Translucent red, and hues are never flat
And even in my poisoned blood there are

Oases.

The light, white light, blinds the eye as it
Examines my own filth
The whiteness vibrates, unsullied, through the rot

Whiteness, come. Make your home
Among my bloody murderers

It is not that sometimes you shine and others you do not
Blood is blood and hue is hue
And things are what they are

Show me the secret
Of how you shine 
(Which is the secret of who you are) 
For I can’t help but wonder
How is it possible that things are what they are
That hues are never flat
And that sometimes they shine with

Your crystalline limpidity?