Lost in the House of Dawn

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07H44DYF7

Ehi, Mr Shadow

Would you please tell me

How has gone away

the age  of Aquarius?

That story full of love,

Hope and romance!

And why  now

cannons balls

Keep on flying?

Please, tell me

 where the best minds

Of your generation

Are resting now?

Talk me again

Of peace,

Speak again of brotherhood!

Aren’t you

used to live your

Own life anymore?

Or you’ve really got lost

In The House of Dawn?

Memorie di scuola - Volume Secondo

Io credo che ogni generazione subisca le influenze del suo tempo e dell’ambiente in cui cresce e matura le sue esperienze. Queste influenze, a metà con i caratteri biologici iscritti nel nostro DNA, determinano gli eventi della nostra vita; o ciò che noi chiamiamo destino.

Io  appartengo a una generazione che ha vissuto su un piano strettamente spirituale, filosofico e culturale, la grande stagione della rivoluzione del 1968,  mentre sul piano materiale ha subito, sempre negli anni sessanta, l’influenza del boom economico.

Ma al contrario di ciò che è successo in altri paesi europei e negli Stati Uniti, in Italia il ’68 non è durato soltanto  una stagione. 

In Francia, ad esempio, il  movimento ‘ 68 si spense, ironia della sorte, l'anno seguente, in coincidenza con la caduta politica di De Gaulle; in Gran Bretagna le classi politiche dirigenti, con i Lords in testa, memori di quanto successo ai nobili  nel 1798 e nel 1848, preferirono cedere alcuni privilegi e fare delle concessioni, al fine di perpetuare le loro rendite parassitarie; e così accadde anche in altri paesi europei di più antico lignaggio. 

L’ Italia, che aveva compiuto da poco i suoi 100 anni di unità politica, reagì diversamente e le cose presero un’altra piega. Non saprei dire il perché e questa, in fondo, non è neppure la sede adatta per fare un’analisi di quei motivi.

Posso e debbo dire però che il movimento rivoluzionario italiano del '68 si trascinò per almeno un altro decennio.

In questo lasso di tempo non tutti quelli che avevano conosciuto il ’68 proseguirono a fare i rivoluzionari. Anzi, una buona parte dei giovani rampanti ribelli, finita la frenesia che elettrizzava l’aria in quel magico anno, finirono per cedere alle sirene del boom economico e del consumismo che ne era derivato.

Gli altri, quelli che la ribellione ce l’avevano nel sangue, proseguirono ancora per qualche anno, senza mollare di un solo centimetro nei confronti del potere formalista e borghese al quale avevano dichiarato guerra . Ma una parte di loro si accorse presto che si trattava di una battaglia persa in partenza e, a un certo punto, abbandonarono il campo cercando di dimenticare la delusione della cocente sconfitta,  chi alla ricerca di una carriera alternativa, chi nei tortuosi sentieri della droga, chi fuggendo lontano.

Soltanto gli irriducibili restarono sul campo e imbracciando le armi vere combatterono  la loro rivoluzione fatta di illusioni e di teorie astratte, elaborate da filosofi sognatori,  frutto di pensieri malati, fondate sul nulla. Tanto ciò è vero che il loro assunto di base, la dittatura del proletariato, mancò proprio di quello che doveva essere l’autore principale e l’interprete della vittoriosa e gloriosa rivoluzione: il proletariato.

In  nome di queste teorie astruse, questi intellettuali malati di megalomania e di protagonismo storico (compagni che sbagliano, li chiamò troppo benevolmente qualcuno),  disseminarono il terrore per tutta l’Italia, proclamando in deliranti comunicati l’avvento di improbabili vittorie e chiamando alla rivolta un popolo inesistente e comunque indisponibile a seguirli in quella strada insanguinata di autentica violenza intrisa di vani sogni e deliquio.

E finirono per divenire gli zimbelli di quei capitalisti e imperialisti tanto odiati, come avvenne nella triste vicenda di Aldo Moro, ucciso dalle Brigate Rosse che conclusero la loro ingloriosa carriera dando  compimento a un disegno criminale,  che proprio i servizi segreti deviati italoamericani,  avevano ordito in odio al presidente della Democrazia Cristiana, reo soltanto di essere un politico intelligente e coraggioso, che aveva compreso che l’Italia poteva salvarsi spezzando l’accerchiamento in cui i  sovietici e gli americani avevano intrappolato la sua amata patria.

Ma per rendere onore all’altra America, quella dei poeti della beat generation e dei figli dei fiori, vorrei  evidenziare come le   radici della grande rivoluzione del 1968 affondino anche in quel grande paese e in quegli intellettuali,  poeti e sognatori che, anziché perseguire la violenza, propugnarono una rivoluzione pacifica che alla violenza del potere di Washington oppose il profumo e la bellezza dei fiori di San Francisco.

Siamo debitori di  quei  pensatori americani che con le loro immaginifiche visioni hanno inneggiato a un mondo di pace e fratellanza, a una società che ripudiasse la guerra, a un consorzio umano universale che congiungesse la saggezza  millenaria  dell’oriente con l’organizzazione tecnologica dell’occidente, in un progetto di condivisione delle risorse umane e delle ricchezze della terra che ripudiasse ogni egoismo, ogni prevaricazione nazionalitaria e populista, oggi, purtroppo tornate di moda. 

E in questo mio inno di grazie non posso e non voglio tralasciare neanche gli intellettuali europei come Jean Paul Sartre, Herbert Marcuse, Bertrand Russell, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley e tanti altri che qui mi scuso di dimenticare.

continua...

Leggi il  testo integrale del primo volume di "Memorie di scuola" di Ignazio Salvatore Basile,  acquistando on line(c/o Mondadori store, Feltrinelli, IBS, Libreria Universitaria, Amazon ecc.) oppure in libreria il volume edito da Youcanprint ISBN 9788827845486. Il romanzo è disponibile anche in formato e-book nel sito della casa tramite il link sottostante.

https://www.youcanprint.it/biografia-e-autobiografia-generale/memorie-di-scuola-9788827845486.html

Memoirs of London - 16

16.

There were, all around Leicester Square so many public places, each one with its own peculiarities. For example the "Cafe Paris" behind his seeming normality, kept a secret known only to a small circle. It was frequented by old and rich women in search of gigolò or any handsome young man in order to forget for a few hours, their loneliness and their time, perhaps ran  too quickly; or "The worm", a meeting place for gays and lesbians; the "Cokney Pride", where was played  the  traditional London’s music. 

Just in front of my pitch used to gather  a group of tramps.  They sat very often in a circle on the benches, right in the middle of the square.   The benches were set all around  a circular flowerbed in  care to Mary, a girl with no age, brown skin and black hair, stained teeth partially broken on the front. As  a young woman she had been a maid at Buckingham Palace and had been sacked for his drinking  or stealing; or perhaps because of an unwanted pregnancy; her friends called her "Queen Mary" or simply "Queen". With her I had more frequent contact, for  she was fond of ice cream.  I presented one cone to her, from time to time. Afterwards I knew many of them. Each one with his own story.

Miss Rambling, an elderly paralyzed lady who juggled with her wheelchair in London traffic, better than a gymkhana champion, was the only to be  strictly abstemious.

 The others guys and girls, including Mary, were all heavy drinkers. They drank alcohol in place and more than any other liquid drink, including water and milk. However, not everyone had reached the terminal stage of alcoholism.

Max, for example, was sloping slowly but inexorably on the verge of addiction. It was increasingly difficult for him to "hook" in  the Cafè Paris, from which he portrayed his only source of income.

As a young man, as shown by some of his youthful photos he proudly showed, he resembled Clark Gable and of his original beauty only remained in his face a distant halo, distinguished by black mustache, still well-groomed and thin, on a  vaguely sensual lip. But when he was in  group with the tramps, with a bristly beard on his reddish cheeks and crumpled clothes, he looked more like the shadow of himself than that of the American celluloid myth he had looked like in his youth.

 Max had played at the races, one by one, all the properties inherited from his family. He often talked to me about horse racing and sometimes, in the transportation of his story, he said with rage that he would succeed on  redeeming at least one country house in Wales, where he would finally retire for a quiet and sweet old age.

The others, for the most part, were however much more battered and unkempt. Hair without care, black face, of that black that only the road can give; always dirty and torn clothes; beltless trousers  and laceless shoes, signs of their frequent go to and  from places of forced hospitalization, if not from the Royal English Prisons.

They always had the inevitable bottle of liquor or wine in their hands or pockets, or, in the lean periods, a concoction they called "sloppy drink", or more simply "slop" of which I could never understand exactly which ingredients it was made of.

"A Stuff" - Joe,  an ex-boxer,  once told me,  - "that when you drink it, it kills you kindly".

16. to be continued...

Memoirs of London - 14

14.

- "I was talking about the liberation movement represented by rock music, which has, to some extent, captured the legacy of hippies ....
- But open your eyes, please !!! Do not you realize that hippie ideology has also been transformed into a commercial ideology? Here we sing love, peace, freedom! But life, loss, is not made of songs. As a matter of fact they are kicking us in the  ass! Starting with the great fruitful business of Rock Discography and Musicians in the head! Let alone for the liberation movement! "

- "Maybe Rock music is actually just a stage, a dream that enlivens life! But along with an idea, a great revolutionary idea we still do not know about the exact design! "

- "The only real revolution is that made  of action, not of dreams. Every idea to be credible must have an affirmation! It must contain the seed of application and we are due  to accomplished with it! Do you understand !? "

- "Who tells you that the ideas of the rock movement will not find a tomorrow’s application? Great ideas, you know it, can walk for centuries and then pluck suddenly like the underground veins of oil ...".

- "Just wait and hope for yourself. I got bored of waiting, thinking and even dreaming. We are doing the game of the masters, do not you understand? They give you music, they give you alcohol, they even tolerate smoking as long as you  do not break the bullocks on them. And if it is not enough for you to forget, there are other palliatives ... "

-" What are you referring to? To the heroine, by chance? "
- "Yes, even heroin! To heroin and churches! "
- "To the Churches ?! To which Churches! "

- "To every and each fucking church! To all the churches of eternal oblivion, of all the religions of this dirty world, from the west to the east. But in the end, to think about it, even a opium canopy is a church of oblivion. And if the heroine is not at your hands, you can take a plane and go to the East: then if your corpse will float in the Ganges, the West will have lost a scumbag and the East an ill-dreamer and so it is! "

Now his beard, dripping and scrubbing on dry cheeks, seemed to tremble. But I was not very impressed and went on exposing   my thoughts.

- "But do you see? There is a lot more and different from opium, in the East! Even there is like everywhere: everyone finds only the answers he’s looking for. Maybe the junkie finds them in the opium, perhaps he does!  But someone else could find them on a less materialistic and merciless dimension; on assuming an alternative way of life to ours; a model that is more like human; on discovering values ​​that are not just profit, career, or family! What do you think they've been looking for in the East John Lennon, Santana, George Harrison, and the other leaders of the Movement? “

While exposing  my thesis, Tommy had skillfully rolled  himself  a cigarette.

 He had pulled out of the pocket of his tweed jacket a tin can of rectangular shape containing an aromatic dry tobacco.  He had taken  a pinch with the thumb and  the index of his right hand and carefully distributed it on a cigarette paper he had previously spread on the base of the palm of the left hand.

 After a quick slip on the rubber strip, he had cleverly rolled it up just managing with the first three fingers of both his hands. Afterward he had passed over his right index  to verify the complete adhesion of the paper and slipped it in the left corner of his thin lips. Then he removed the lid, stuck on the base of the box, locked it in and passed it to me, with his right hand in search of his lighter.

I refused his invitation, lighting his cigarette with my Swedish matches. He leaned against the wall with his shoulders, his left knee leaning against the plant he had pointed at the wall too.

During our conversation, some tourists stopped to look at the mirrors Tommy had on exposition, slightly inclined to the wall.

Some Italians exchanged intentions, recognizing the familiar idiom; many asked abruptly "How much?" Pointing with their finger some mirrors of interest; others, perhaps more confident using the English language, stated "how much does it cost?", always pointing the mirrors with  the same gesture, or with the eyes.

Only the rare Englishmen and those who know something more than the simple grammar also added a "please" to their question. But Tommy, that day more than ever, seemed to be less interested in business, and he served only those who were really ready to buy,  putting the money in his hand. And he snatched them quickly, delivering the chosen mirror with a cold thank you.

- "Look, Eastern religions and philosophies are not so different from ours! A plethora of ideas that have the main purpose of repressing and conditioning people and above all to perpetuate the power in the hands of those who have it: priests and popes involved! No, I know what it takes to. For the conquest of the power we need  to change things in a different way. How did Lenin, Mao and Fidel Castro? "

- "There are so many ways of taking power, other than the revolution that is brutal and that seems to me a way to overcome! For example, one can take power by transforming it through the transformation of the future generations…without any violence anyway!

Tommaso's eyes showed to me  he did not understand.

"I'll try to explain better my idea on how to change the world!"-I continued to say -"If we could inculcate more serious, more equitable ideas on those who’ll be  on charge of power, as a result, we would necessarily be educated all the people that way. And I believe that these injections of novelty and trust would  come from the East. "

-"I think this way of yours is a pious illusion! Then is such a tortuous idea that it will not be able to give documented practical results "-he said sadly, shaking his head.

Then ended, in a more firm tone--"The more I think and the more I convince myself that the only viable path is that of the revolution."

I realized at that moment that he was just trying to convince himself and not me. I was convinced of the opposite, although several years later, returning with thought to that of our reasoning, I would have noticed that his analysis was more acute and rational than mine, idealistic and utopian, at the highest levels.

-"But how can’t you see that you might be fighting  for a rotting corpse? I insist on you that it is necessary to intervene on the basis rather than aiming at the summit! ".

-"Bull  philosopher’ shit! If you intervene on the basis, than on the summit, it is clear that the times of intervention multiply to a disproportionate time and I believe only in this life and in what men can do through it. Moreover, the revolution has as its ultimate purpose to reeducate the people! But to do that, you must seize power! Do you understand it ? "

No, I did not understand it, even if I sensed that behind that speech, that his undoubtedly nervous attitude was maturing a decision whose  I had confirmed only several years later.

I was surprised to think of how different Thomas had seemed to me when I first met him.

 I had immediately taken as a  model. With his  detached way of treating the material things of life; the rejection of the values in which I did not believe too and from which I had moved away leaving Italy for other shores. And with him, in his group, with his friends  I had learned to let myself go, driven by the long and gentle waves of smoke, on whose clouds I had found myself suspended almost without realizing what I was doing, but pleasantly, without asking myself a reason why. And now I felt a strange restlessness as if suddenly I was awakened by a shattered dream and I was so much identified in him and I had believed so deeply in his London world that now his crisis could not be also mine. I felt the need to move away, to  walk lonely and think. I greeted him affectionately, as always and perhaps more. I never saw him again, because he left for Italy and I for other roads. I knew of him through the  newspapers: his wrong choices; his bad masters; his industrious repentance, whose sincerity I never doubted.

And his death, under the tires of a car, as an accidental shot, inexplicably and suddenly started from the time rifle fate.

14. to be continued...

Every one has got a flag

And  I remind

those songs

talking of peace

talking of love.

Today I remind them

listening to the radio.

I hear from the news

 that after decades

ball cannons keep flying

and men searching  command

and people keep dying.

But now I don't blame God anymore

for the man's thirst of power

for his greedness of money.

Every one has got a flag of glory

to cover the shame of death

and  make his deads

a right.

2013 Ignazio Salvatore Basile for the deads of Syria and of all the wars

10 Ways to Care for Your Garden in a Hot, Dry Summer

During the summer it’s not unusual for the temperature to reach above 100 degrees in many parts of the country, even in the shade, which is a cause of concern for anyone who is trying to nurture a garden. Trying to combat an untimely death to plants and flowers that you have lovingly cultivated and nurtured can be like fighting an uphill battle in the never-ending heat waves that plague summer months. However your plants don’t have to disappear once the summertime hits and, armed with a few helpful tips and tricks, your garden can thrive despite record-breaking temperatures and the relentless rays of the sun.

1. Choosing plants that thrive in your normal weather pattern and the area of the country you live in is the first step to having a healthy garden.
2. You can’t always forecast when the summer will be unseasonably hot and dry, however keeping up with the weather forecasts from your weather stations will help in making decisions to keep your garden growing during a dry spell.
3. One water-saving method is to use mulch.  How much mulch you need will depend on the size of your garden, but mulch is known to help retain the moisture from rain or from your own watering system.
4. Never water during the heat of the day.  The sun has a way of evaporating the water faster than the plants can receive nourishment from the water. Try to water early in the morning or later at night when the sun isn’t out to ensure your plants get the most water possible.
5. Use a watering spike – this is simply a sprinkler nozzle on a large plastic reticulation sprinkler extension with a connector to the hose
6. In times of heat shock, a seaweed extract based liquid fertilizer treatment often reduces heat stress and it may help protect the plant in future. You can read more about that here.
7. Using a water wand will aid in watering plants without force.  Spraying too hard may harm the plants during drought.
8. Conserving water should be a way of life, and knowing to use our supply correctly will also aid in keeping plants healthy.  For instance, use the wand on the hose to water the roots.  The roots actually give the growth above it a drink from its supply.
9. A soaker hose laid around the plant on the ground will also soak the plants and use less water
10. Understanding that there is no life form that can live without water, we must plan our gardens knowing we have a good water supply close by.  Some plants we can over water, while others need more TLC where a drink of water is concerned.

Hopefully, despite the long, hot summer days, by using these tips you have success when harvest time comes. By carefully paying attention the temperatures and providing your plants with plenty of water and love, your garden should survive the hottest part of the year.
 P.S. This post was  proposed to me for publication by Sheryl Owen ,  I'm therefore publishing it by her invitation and under her permission. See also the link below fore more information:


 http://www.changeofaddress.org/blog/2012/10-ways-to-care-for-your-garden-in-a-hot-dry-summer/