Family portrait n.2- Dad

family portrait n.1- Martino

post-teendom project

A. E. Housman- To an Athlete Dying Young

Post-teendom project

Leonard Cohen- dress rehersal rag

Post-teendom project

The body.

Post-teendom project

(se devi vivere nel vicolo cieco del quarto di secolo almeno arredalo)

“Can I write a requiem for you when you’re dead?”

https://www.youtube.com/embed/iRybFTKAhOc

Almost Famous (2000) dir. Cameron Crowe

The Favourite Activity for Summer has finally been found, and it’s the movies. The reason why I have to look for a thing such as the favourite activity for a season is because summer isn’t simply a season, it’s hell. A very hot, sweaty and sticky version of hell. A version of hell in which people actually expect from you fun, carelessness, cocktails at the beach and trips with friends you will remember. They expect them so much it actually becomes coercive, it becomes part of your own expectations before you even realize, and disappointment comes after, inevitably. I have to find shelter from the mights and oughts and musts of others, because I am not strong enough to leave them be. So maybe the movies are the right thing to do, and not because I really enjoy movies as I should. Don’t get me wrong, I like cinema, but as G. once put it, “for every ten minutes you spend alive and alert you need at least one minute to drift to a state of alienation”. So yeah, mundanely speaking, I get distracted too easily to enjoy movies. But it is probably this particular state that I seek, also in discos, in masses, in the light dizziness you get from the second beer. It’s not being with people, and yet it is not being alone. I like people. I like F., above all, especially when he annoys me. I like S., her lanky limbs and the super-wise things she says, making you feel very little. I like M. because she wears red lipstick and is truly overprotective and bakes brownies for no reason. I could talk to them for hours, except that sometimes I don’t know how. It all comes out as pointless blabbering, and suddenly I’m helplessly wishing I could just make them hear that particular Song and make them understand. But even then, I don’t really like being alone. I imagine all these perfect scenarios where I’m doing really cool thing but I always muck them up. I end up lying on the sofa and I’ve done absolutely nothing except eating too much or drinking two beers, or both. 

I suppose it’s bound to be like this, in the end, passively watching a really good movie that I mix with my thoughts, feeling the presence of others with no interaction required. I want to do it forever. I might really learn something about cinema, who knows.

“Your pain tolerance is actually creepy” well thank you?

To an Athlete Dying Young The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high. Today, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town. Smart lad, to slip betimes away From fields where glory does not stay, And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose. Eyes the shady night has shut Cannot see the record cut, And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears. Now you will not swell the rout Of lads that wore their honours out, Runners whom renown outran And the name died before the man. So set, before its echoes fade, The fleet foot on the sill of shade, And hold to the low lintel up The still-defended challenge-cup. And round that early-laurelled head Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, And find unwithered on its curls The garland briefer than a girl’s.

A. E. HOUSMAN

He lets it slip quickly, so I have barely time to notice what he's doing. We're in the car and I'm blabbering as usual, eager to catch every proof of approval in his words. "Have you ever thought about getting a second degree" I ask, as you ask about the weather. His answer starts normally "who has the time? I have to work until you and your brothers graduate. It'll take at least seven more years" and then "who knows how she will be at the time? She may have ten years. Maybe more, but maybe even less." I manage to scramble a few words of reassurance before going blank. NO. WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME. I spend all the energy I have not to think about her funeral. It's the energy I would sometimes need to have sex before going to sleep, or to say the right words to people around me. But it can't go there, because it must serve other purposes. I need it to hold it together while I'm studying, to avoid crumbling every time the word "metastasis", or even "illness", is used. I need it to believe it will all go well, even when I've chosen the poem I will read. The words of WH Auden play loud and louder at the back of my head. "For nothing now can ever come to any good". Then I think, it doesn't matter what he's doing to me, because look at what life has done to him. He comes to me in tiny pieces, knowing there's not much I can do to fix it, because anything is better than nothing at all. He picks up a cigarette and asks me if I smoke. I say yes, sometimes. It's meaningful. It's a big taboo being broken, which I always believed would be a good thing, but now I am not sure. I enjoy the huge contradictory nature of the moment. We sit together at lunch, hypocritically discussing the advantages of going on holiday in the same place every year. She says it's less tiring. He says, we're not waisting time in ugly beaches. I smile, but I know he's lying. I know why we always come here. It's because they sell strawberry juice at the supermarket and pastries at the beach. It's how people are always dressed old-fashioned and there are at least five cars from the seventies in every town. How the places aren't tamed, they are left as they are, for the few that are ready to like them. This place tastes of potential, and now we come here to have the potential back. We don't want things that are, we want things that could be. My parents could feel immortal. I could be a writer, a lawyer, a teacher. Michele hadn't yet understood that his little eccentricities could be viewed as quirks. He had yet to develop the music taste my father has passed on to us, a melange between the records of a seventy year old man and those of a teenage girl in the early 2000s. Martino could still change and give the right importance to other people's opinion. Everything was open. We are at dinner, and I ask them who they proposed to whom and how. They laugh and say they don't remember. My mother says "we were always a bit married". My brothers look surprised, but  I know what they mean. They mean being a little bit too happy at his cousin's christening. The way every kiss tastes like home. Your friends thinking you are not romantic when you speak of him as inevitable. I know what they mean, but I lack their consistency, I always did and it has made me feel miserable every once in a while. Now I think, what if we really can't afford consistency?

“not all men”, you’re right. ex-hogwarts professor and actual ray of sunshine remus lupin would never do this to me, unless james and sirius put him up to it

Today I shaved. I had been growing my hair for five months. I want to believe it was for feminist reasons, but it wasn’t. It started out of laziness, maybe for the first two months, then I realized it made me feel special. I HAVE BODY HAIR! LOOK AT ME! YOU CAN’T PUT ME IN YOUR BOXES! Well, probably you could anyway.

Today I shaved. Probably because I have a boyfriend, and he doesn’t like hair, despite all his efforts. Partly because I didn’t feel good about my body.               Why didn’t I? Usually my appreciation of my looks is strictly connected to how thin I am. Well, I have not been thin in years, since the strange day when I stopped counting calories. I have also stopped wishing my body would shrink.

Despite all of that, I stepped on the scale this morning. I was thinner. Not thin, by any means, but thinner, without any particular reason. Thinner than I was in three years. This should have made me radiant. But all I thought was “Since you already got to this point, you could make that little effort and be pretty”. 

Being closer to my frivolous goals meant just more responsibility. And I take that responsibility. The responsibility to shave. To think about carbs. To jog. To put nail polish on your toes in winter. To be ashamed of the way you walk. To choose your clothes according to your body tipe.

To live all your life in a cage, or trying to escape from it.

Post-teendom project

(se devi vivere nel vicolo cieco del quarto di secolo almeno arredalo)

Post-teendom project

(se devi vivere nel vicolo cieco del quarto di secolo almeno arredalo)

Post-teendom project

(se devi vivere nel vicolo cieco del quarto di secolo almeno arredalo)