Only one hundred steps away...

I recently re-watched a beautiful movie called "I Cento Passi" (One Hundred Steps). It reached international acclaim a few years back together with more popular movies about organized crime, a denunciation of Mafia and its effects on the lives of many people who coexist with it. "I cento passi" (one hundred steps) was the distance between the Impastatos' house and the house of Tano Badalamenti, an important Mafia boss, in the small Sicilian town of Cinisi. The movie is the story of Peppino Impastato, a young left-wing activist that in the late seventies (when almost nobody dared to speak about Mafia, and several politicians maintained that Mafia did not even exist) repeatedly denounced Badalamenti crimes and the whole Mafia system using a small local radio station, with the arm of irony. In 1978 Peppino (30 years old) was killed by an explosion. The police archived the case as an accident or a suicide, but his friends never accepted this thesis. Note: This is a true story. More than wenty years after Peppino's death, the case has been re-opened. Tano Badalamenti, meanwhile, has been convicted in USA for drug traffic. I thought again about it this morning, whilst stuck in a traffic-jam caused by an abandoned vehicle on the side of a narrow city road. The car hadn't properly been abandoned by its owners. The car had previously been stolen and, under the owner's refusal to pay money to get it back, the robbers burnt it and left it on the side of the road, a so called unpaid "cavallo di ritorno" (return horse). You see I often wonder what you think about this. As a southern Italian, even if from a rather privileged background, I am aware and accustomed to all these idiosyncrasies. Weird. Weired that one can live so close to injustice, those physical hundred steps that suddenly become conceptual, ideological, moral and back and be accustomed to it.


"I Cento Passi" - Modena City Ramblers

Happy

I know you are already hearing the legendary song by the Rolling Stones resounding in your ears right now as I mentioned "Happy" (that's of course, if in the Beatles/Rolling Stones diatribe you were not a Beatles fan!) Rock on! The young lady in the picture, on the contrary, is my wonderful dog, Happy. She is the 'daughter my father never had', the life of this house and the cause of a heck of a lot of laughter. Jeez, I mean we are not stereotypically "pet-people", but ever since we have had her as a family pet we have experienced so much...well...happiness! Doh! Happy is also how I feel right now. Do you ever fear that changes are going to kill you,that if life takes a different turn from what you had expected you'll die of remorse and heartache? Well,not necessarily. Sometimes it's true: what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Happier. So here it is to change and life unexpected twists!

Take a Chance

Today it is "Remembrance Sunday"in the UK. It is meant to be a day to remember those who lost their lives, suffered, sacrificed in war times. To me it has a very different, individualistic meaning. Remembrance Sunday five years ago was the day when I had been given a chance to get rid of a bondage, metaphorically speaking, that has shaped my life ever since. Today I live in a bondage-free world. Too bad it's taken me five years to get to this stage and put my life back on track.
Do you ever wish that, at a cross road you had taken the other direction? Today, in as much as I am conscious and grateful for the situations that have occurred in so far and filed my life, transforming into the person I am becoming, I wish I had taken that chance, I wish I had chosen to go my way instead of compromising my ideals for a more agreeable, ""conformist"" path...choices,ah?

A View of a New Old Life

This tiny rugged window overlooking the breathtaking Neapolitan gulf, inspirer of many poets, singers, painters, inspired me to change the title of my blog. "A Room With A View", like the title of the homonymous novel by E.M.Foster. A reniewing view onto an old life lived in a fresh way. My life back where it all began 24 years ago, Napoli, the land of my ancestors. Back where it all begun spiritually, artistically, in terms of taste, passions, vocations...to start where I left off - hopefully better this time. So enjoy the view!

What Where You Up to in 1983?

The last song that soundtracks "Mio Fratello e' Figlio Unico" it's a song my sister and I often sing hysterically in the car or hum as we are getting ready to go out. It's a what now seems to be an 'old song', first recorded in 1983. I still find it quite bizarre, to say the least, that I listen, like and even know by heart songs that were conceived when I was! I am such an 80's kid! Think about it though: 1983 was such a good year. The Eurythmics recorded "Sweet Dreams (are made of this)", "All Night Long" (Lionel Richie) came out together with "Uptown Girl" by Billy Joel, "New Year's Day" by the legendary U2 and "Every breath you take" by Police! In 1983 Swatch introduced their first watches, the Vatican finally retracted their ban on Galileo Galilei, Nintendo game console was about to begin to change generations of kids, the first democratic elections are held in Argentina after 7 years of military totalitarianism, my mom and dad were busy handling a screaming little baby girl and there I was! But what about you? What were you up to in 1983? - sorry it doesn't rhyme!