A Year...

The changability of life is an issue that will possibly never cease to intrigue me. Life that moves,changes,evolves somehow. As most people, I have a little "End of the Year" ritual - I assess the year that has just gone by and ponder upon valuable or less significant changes I would like to see in the coming year. In other words, I think...way too much. Nevertheless, I have always found this sort of meditation on life really handy in giving me better direction, more precise goals, aim better and, one would hope, make things better each year. Sometimes I manage,sometimes I fail, sometimes I learn from it all. This year has been incredibly difficult on so many levels, but I stand here with a smile on my face, a tranquil and serene smile, because I now know for a fact that what doesn't break us, makes us stronger indeed. A year ago I made a set of good intentions and resolutions for 2007. I randomly stumbled upon them again this morning to discover, to much of my surprise, that, with the exception of improving my French, all of them did come true!! May be not in the way I had thought those things would take place, but eventually they all happened and I am much better off as a result! But this is certainly not meant to be a paternalistic, condiscending message of victory, but an attempt to keep on trying to improve. If I could give a title to this year like one gives a title to a book, it would probably be "The Year of the Second Chances" - rarely does it happen at my young age to be given an opportunity to be transferred back to their life when they were half the age they are now and facing people and circumstances with a newly acquired sense of maturity, stability, experience and self confidence. I feel truly blessed for this. I truly do not want to mess it all up this time around. So here it is to second chances and the experiences which have made us the people we are!

A Movable Feast

Only Hemingway, in his linguistic confidence and exquisite intentness with words, could have coined such a sublime, perfectly describing title for his book, A Movable Feast. "A Movable Feast" it's an expression which encompasses a great deal of significance; narrating the author's Parisian years through the bohemian 1920's, one is transported into life through Hemingway's eyes - the cafes, the places, the people, even the smells which intertwine, encounter, cross, enrich and mark his life. In the opening chapter, it is described the scene of a man, sitting outside a Parisian cafes on a cold autumn day... I can't remember exactly how the story goes, but I have this picture vivid in my head of a middle aged man, sat by a small wrought iron table, longish going grey haired, wearing a long beige rain-coat, a gray woollen scarf, intellectual looking tortoise-shell specs, black hat on the spare chair, writing onto his Moleskine notebook whilst smoking a cigar, his coffee cooling down on the table...As he writes, people stop by, meet up with him, are noticed or ignored, stories are being born. As I sat on the train on Wednesday, a man kindly gave up his seat for me. Instead, he had to go and sit opposite another man, pretty much his age. They started to converse under the most banal circumstances to then end up discussing roughly everything under the sun - politics, philosophy, society, economics, justice, love, stereotypes, life. A feast that can be movable. How can lives so diverse from each other, so varied, so different, be shared, reinterpreted, discussed, expanded upon, in strange contexts. All this is the alchemy of our common humaity where, on the journey of our lives takes us to all sort of places, even without ever moving.

Captive Markets

Like hot chocolate in a small mountain cabin after a long day skiing, like a bottle of fresh water during a walk through the desert, like shops opened all day on Sundays before Christmas. We have all been in certain situations where, by choice or obligation, we have become victims of the so-called "Captive Markets". By definition, capitive markets have a much more specific meaning. A web sites offers this comprehensive definition: *A captive market is a group of consumers who have limited choice in terms of the products they can select/purchase (no choice)! This type of market was common during the production era when there was a limited supply of goods (and great demand). It occurs when the market is monopolistic, thus there is only one supplier in the marketplace. This is more likely to occur with digital products (Microsoft is a good example of this). It can occur when a marketer has achieved significant lock-in for its installed based. Thus the switching costs for the consumer to try a competing product become prohibitive.* In' my book', a captive market is when the "producers" know exactly that you will need their product, hence they will make it available to you at prohibiting conditions: if you can afford it, good for you; if you can't, on the contrary, too bad. In "developing" countries, this form of dispotism is, renownly and shamefully, common practice. Liverpool John Lennon Airport has got their own take on the matter. Given that only 'economy flights' land and take off from there, one assumes that they are saving on their travelling costs...big misunderstanding! The mere price of the shuttle from Manchester to Liverpool has gone from £5 to £10 in a mere 6 month! That's like a 100% increase, 100%!! And how do you explain that one set of scales indicates one is 2.5 kg overweight and the other check in set of scales indicates 3 kg less than the first?! (every kg overweight is charged at a price, of course!). Then there is the cue for the compulsory security check - 25 minutes long. Long enough to miss a flight. But, at the accessible price of £2 per passenger you can soar through the cue and get priority. What kind of message are we preaching? Money as a tool for priviledge even in a context, security, where everyone should be the same? It's £2, I know, but it is the principles that concerns me. And makes me cross.

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!