Yes, yes, my dear friend, do think it over: a minute ago, before this happened to you, you were someone else. And not just that, but you were also a hundred others, a hundred thousand others. There’s nothing you can do about it, and believe me, it’s nothing to be surprised about. Instead, contemplate whether you can be so sure of still being what you assume you are today when tomorrow rolls around.
Here’s the truth, my dear friend: it’s all obsessions. Today you’re obsessed about this and tomorrow it’ll be that.
I’ll tell you how and why later.
6 ~ Actually, I’ll Tell You Now
Have you ever seen a house being built? I’ve seen plenty here in Richieri, and thought: “Wow, see what Man is capable of! Defacing a mountain, extracting its stone, squaring the stones off, setting them one atop another, and voilà, what used to be part of the mountain has become a house.”
“I,” says the mountain, “am a mountain and do not move.”
Don’t you, my dear? Look at those carts being pulled by oxen there. They’re full of you, your stones. They’re hauling you away in carts, my dear! You think you’re staying put? Half of you is already two miles away, down on the plain. Where? But don’t you see? In those houses there—a yellow one, red, white; two, three, four stories tall.
And your beech trees, your walnut trees, your fir trees?
There they are, in my house. See how nicely we’ve finished them? Who would even recognize them now in these chairs, these cabinets, these bookshelves?
You, dear mountain, are so much bigger than a man, what with your beeches, walnuts, and firs. But despite being a tiny little creature, man possesses something you don’t have.
Always standing up—that is, erect on just two legs—was exhausting, and lying on the ground like other animals was uncomfortable and unhealthy, especially given the lack of fur on his skin. His skin! It had become more delicate. Then he saw the tree and thought he could make something from it to sit more comfortably. Then he felt like the bare wood wasn’t comfortable either and he padded it—he skinned some of his domesticated animals, sheared others, and covered the wood with leather, stuffing wool in between.
Content, he stretched out on it: “Oh, now that’s really nice!”
The goldfinch sings in its little cage hanging between the window curtains. Perhaps it senses spring is approaching? Alas, perhaps the old walnut bough used to make my chair senses it as well, as it creaks in time to the goldfinch’s song.
Maybe with that song and that creaking, they understand each other, the captive bird and what’s left of the walnut tree in the chair.
7 ~ What’s the House Got to Do With It?
You might think this discussion of the house has nothing to do with the matter at hand, because now you see it as it is—one among several houses that make up the town. You see your furniture surrounding you, the things you wanted to make you comfortable, given your taste and your means. Animated by all your memories, they emanate a sweet, familiar comfort that envelops you. They’re no longer mere things, but practically intimate parts of yourself, allowing you to touch and feel what seems like the secure reality of your existence.
Whether made of beech, walnut, or fir, your furniture, like the memories of your family life, is imbued with that distinctive atmosphere that lingers in every house, giving our lives a sort of smell that we notice most when it’s gone, that is, as soon as we enter another house and notice a different smell. I see you’re irritated that I’ve reminded you of the beech, walnut, and fir trees from the mountain.
It’s as if you’ve already begun to partially immerse yourself in my madness, because whenever I tell you something, you take offense and ask: “Why? What’s that got to do with it?”
8 ~ Out in the Open
No, come on, don’t worry! I’m not going to break your furniture, shatter your peace, or destroy your love of home.
Air! Air! Let’s leave the house, leave the town. I’m not saying you can put a lot of faith in me, but c’mon, no need to be afraid. Follow me to where the road with those houses opens up to the countryside.
Yes, this is a road. Are your really worried that I might say it isn’t? Road, road. Gravel road. Watch out for the sharp rocks. And those are streetlights. Come on, you’re safe.
Oh, those distant sky-blue mountains! I say “sky-blue,” and you also say “sky-blue,” right? Agreed. And this close one here, with a copse of chestnut trees—chestnuts, right? See, see how we understand each other! From the Fagaceae family of tall forest trees. Castanea sativa. What a vast plain down there. (“Green,” right? You and I both say it’s “green”—let’s agree, we understand each other so marvelously.) And in those meadows there, look, look! Red poppies ablaze in the sun!
“Oh, what’s that? Little red baby bonnets?”
Of course, I must be blind! You’re right, little red woolen bonnets. They looked like poppies to me. And this tie of yours is red, too…
It’s so delightful out here in the cool, open spaces, all blue and green, in the clear, sunlit air! Are you taking off your shabby gray felt hat? All sweaty already? God bless you, but you are a chunky fellow, you know. If you could only see the little black-and-white checks on the seat of your trousers…
C’mon, pull your jacket down! It exposes too much.
The country! Nothing but peace, right? You feel your stress melting away. Good, but could you tell me where it is? The peace, I mean. No, don’t worry, don’t worry! Do you really think peace is located here? Let’s get this straight, for goodness’ sake! Let’s not spoil our perfect agreement. All I see here—if you don’t mind me saying so—is what I feel inside at the moment. And that’s an immense foolishness on your face—and on mine, too, undoubtedly—that makes us look like a couple of complete morons. But we attribute this peace to the earth, and to plants, which seem to live solely for the sake of living and could only go on living in such a brainless state as this.
Well, let’s say that what we call peace resides within us. Doesn’t it seem that way to you? And do you know where it comes from? From the very simple fact that we’ve just left the town. Yes, I mean we’ve left the man-made world: houses, streets, churches, squares. Not just because it’s man-made though, but because we don’t live there for the sake of living anymore, just like these plants, not even knowing they’re alive. Instead we live for something that doesn’t exist until we put it there—something that gives meaning and value to our lives. And out here, we at least partially succeed in losing that meaning or value, or at least recognizing its troubling uselessness. And that’s what causes your lethargy, your melancholy. I get it, I get it. A letting go of your nervous tension. A desperate need to let yourself go. Feel yourself relaxing, letting go.
9 ~ Clouds and Wind
Oh, to be unaware of being, like a rock or a plant! Not even remembering your own name! Stretched out here on the grass, hands clasped behind your head, gazing up at the blue sky, the dazzlingly white clouds gliding by, bursting with sunlight, listening to the wind whipping up there in the chestnut grove like the roar of the sea.
Clouds and wind.
What did you say? Alas, alas. Clouds? Wind? Doesn’t it already seem to you like everything, simply perceiving and recognizing that those luminous things gliding along that boundless blue emptiness are clouds? Is there any chance at all that the cloud even knows it exists? Nor do the tree and the rock know a thing about the cloud, or even about themselves, for that matter—they’re all alone.
When you perceive and recognize the cloud, my dear friends, you can also contemplate the story of water (why not?), which becomes a cloud only to turn into water again. Nice, huh? Any second-rate physics teacher could explain all that to you. But to explain to you the reason why?
10 ~ The Little Birdie
Listen, listen! Up in the chestnut grove, the sound of hatchets. Down in the quarry, the sound of pickaxes.
Mutilating the mountain and felling trees to build houses. There, in the old town, more ho
uses. Drudgery, stress, hard work of all sorts—why? Just to put up a chimney, my friends, and to make a little smoke rise up out of that chimney. Smoke that immediately disperses into the emptiness of space.
And every thought, every human memory is just like that smoke.
We’re in the country here. Lethargy has melted the tension from our limbs. It’s natural that illusions and disappointments, joys and sorrows, hopes and desires, all seem hollow and fleeting to us in the face of the emotion emanating from things that are enduring, transcendent, impassive. You just need to take a look at the mountains there, beyond the valley, way, way off in the distance, hazy on the horizon, faint in the sunset, enveloped in pinkish mists.
Now, lying there, you throw your battered old felt hat into the air, and turning practically tragic, you exclaim: “Oh, men with their ambitions!”
Exactly. For example, all those cheers of victory when man, just like your battered old hat, began to fly, like a little birdie! Meanwhile, look here at how a real bird flies. Did you see it? The most genuine, delicate ease, accompanied by a spontaneous chirp of joy. Now consider the awkward, rumbling device and the consternation, the anxiety, the mortal anguish of a man who wants to fly like a bird! Here we have a flutter and a chirp; there we have a noisy, stinky engine with death a heartbeat away. The engine fails, the engine stalls—goodbye little birdie!
“Mankind,” you remark, stretched out there on the grass, “should forget about flying! Why do you want to fly? And once you’ve flown, then what?”
Bravo! You’re saying that here, now, because you’re out in the country, lying on the grass. Get up, go back into town, and once you get there, you’ll immediately understand why man wants to fly.
Here, my dear friends, you’ve seen the genuine bird that really flies, and you’ve lost the meaning and value of artificial wings and mechanical flight. But it’ll quickly come back to you there, where everything is artificial and mechanical, reduction and construction—a separate world within a world, a manufactured, planned, contrived world. A world of artifice, deformity, adjustment, fiction, of conceit. A world that only has meaning and value for the people who constructed it.
Come, come, let me give you a hand to stand up. You’re fat, you know. Hold on, there’s some grass stuck to your back…
There, that’s better, now we can go.
11 ~ Getting Back to Town
Now take a look at these trees lined up along the sidewalks of our street—Corso di Porta Vecchia. How lost they look, poor city trees, all clipped and combed!
Trees probably don’t think and animals probably don’t reason. But, my God, if trees did think and could talk, who knows what these poor things would say about us planting them in the middle of town to provide us shade. Seeing themselves reflected in these store windows, they seem to be asking what they’re doing here, surrounded by all these busy people in the middle of the noisy hustle and bustle of city life. Planted so many years ago, they’ve remained stunted, pitiful, desolate. They don’t look like they have ears. But who knows, maybe trees require silence to grow.
Have you ever been to the little square outside the city walls, the Piazzetta Olivella? At the old “White Trinitarian” monastery? Such a deserted, dreamlike atmosphere in that little square, and what a weird silence when the blue, blue morning shows it face, smiling like a baby over the black, mossy roof tiles of that ancient cloister.
And yet, every year, in its stupid maternal naivete, the earth there tries to take advantage of that silence. Maybe it thinks the town has moved away, that people have abandoned that little square, so it tries to reassert itself, very slowly, very quietly pushing numerous blades of grass up through the pavement. Nothing is fresher or more delicate than those timid, slender shoots of grass that quickly turn the entire little square green. But alas, it won’t last more than a month. Grass isn’t allowed to sprout up there in town. Four or five street cleaners come every year, hunker down with their tools, and uproot all the grass.
Last year I saw two birds there, and when they heard those tools scraping against the coarse gray squares of pavement, they took off flying from the hedge to the monastery eaves, then back to the hedge, shaking their little heads and looking askance, almost as if distraught, wondering what those men were doing there.
“Don’t you see, little birds?” I said to them. “Don’t you see what they’re doing? They’re giving this old pavement a good shave.”
Horrified, the two birds fled the scene.
Lucky for them they’ve got wings and can fly away! So many other creatures can’t and are taken and imprisoned and domesticated in town, and out in the country, too. It’s so sad the way they’re forced to comply with man’s bizarre needs. What do they make of it all? They pull the cart, they pull the plow.
But then maybe creatures, plants, and everything else have their own meaning and value that man can’t comprehend, being locked into the ones he assigns to everything else, and which nature often chooses not to recognize or simply ignores.
There should be a bit more mutual understanding between man and nature. Too often nature gets its kicks by wreaking havoc on our ingenious constructions. Hurricanes, earthquakes—but man doesn’t give up. The stubborn little beast rebuilds and rebuilds. He sees everything as fair game for building because he is imbued with that certain mysterious something that compels him to build, to transform as he sees fit, the raw material that nature unwittingly—and perhaps patiently, at least when it wants to be—provides. If he could only be satisfied with using things that, until proven otherwise, can’t perceive the torment inflicted by our modifying and building! No, sir. Man even uses himself as raw material and builds himself just like a house. Yes, sir, he does.
How can you know yourself if you don’t create yourself in some way? And how could I know you if I didn’t create you my way? Or you me, if you didn’t create me your way? Giving something form is the only way we can know it. But what kind of knowledge can it be? Can this form possibly be the thing itself? Yes, as much for me as for you, but not the same way for me as for you—although it’s true I wouldn’t recognize myself in the form you give me, it’s equally true you wouldn’t recognize yourself in the one I give you. The same thing isn’t identical for everyone, and it can even constantly change for each of us. In fact, it does constantly change.
And yet, this is the only reality there is, this fleeting form we manage to give to ourselves, to others, to things. For you, my reality is in the form you give me, but it’s your reality, not mine. For me, your reality is in the form I give you, but it’s my reality, not yours. And I personally have no other reality other than the form I manage to give myself. And how do I do that? Exactly. By creating myself.
Oh, you think all we build is houses? I’m constantly building myself and building you, and you’re doing the same. And this construction will continue until the raw material of our feelings and emotions crumbles away, and as long as the cement of our willpower endures. And why do you think they emphasize willpower and emotional control so much? If the former wavers just a bit or the latter shifts one iota or changes in the slightest, then it’s adios to our reality! We immediately realize it was nothing more than our illusion.
Willpower, then. Emotional control. Stay strong. Stay strong to avoid leaping into the void and running into unwelcome surprises.
But what nice buildings come out of it all!
12 ~ That Dear Gengè
“No, no, my dear, don’t say a word! Do you really think I don’t know what you like and what you don’t? I’m quite familiar with your tastes and how you think.”
How many times had my wife, Dida, said something like that to me? And like an imbecile I’d never really paid attention.
No wonder she knew her Gengè better than I did! She made him herself! And he definitely wasn’t a puppet. If anything, the puppet was me. Was this domination? Substitution? Of course not!
Someone has to exist before he can be dominated. Same goes for substitu
tion—he has to exist to start with, or else you can’t grab him by the shoulders, pull him out of the way, and stick someone else in his place.
My wife Dida had never dominated or replaced me. Quite the opposite, if I had rebelled and asserted my own will, becoming my own me, robbing her of her Gengè—that would’ve seemed like a domination and substitution to her.
Because her Gengè existed, while I didn’t exist for her at all—I’d never existed.
To her, my reality was embodied in her Gengè, the one she’d shaped and molded, who had thoughts and emotions and tastes that weren’t mine. And I couldn’t modify them in the least without running the risk of suddenly becoming someone she wouldn’t recognize, a stranger she’d no longer be able to understand or to love.
Unfortunately, I’d never figured out how to give my life some form, some shape. I’d never really put my mind to the task of creating myself in my own personal, particular way. Perhaps it was because I’d never faced obstacles that sparked my desire to somehow resist and assert myself in front of others. Or perhaps it was because of my tendency to change my mind and think and feel the exact opposite of what I’d just thought and felt a little earlier—that is, an inclination to dismantle and disintegrate all my mental and emotional constructs with diligent and often opposing reflections. Or finally, it may have been because of my highly yielding nature, prone to surrendering to others’ wisdom and judgement, not so much from weakness as from indifference and an anticipatory resignation to the sorrows, regrets, and disappointments that might come my way.
And they did come my way! I didn’t know myself at all, I didn’t have any sort of personal reality, and I was in a constant state of almost fluid, malleable formation. Everyone else knew me, in their own way, according to the reality they’d assigned to me. That is, everyone saw me as a Moscarda who wasn’t me, since I really wasn’t anyone to myself. There were as many Moscardas as there were people who saw and knew me, and all those Moscardas were more real than I was, given that I didn’t (I repeat) possess any reality of my own.
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