The Dreamer

 

https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0CQDFK2JW

This romance, although conceived and partially dreamed in English, was originally written in Italian language with the title “The Essence of life” in the early eighties of the past century; at the beginning of this new century I made a translation into English language. Hereafter it was published with four different titles: “And then four crows will fly away”; “The thin line between dream and reality”, “Just a story of islands” and “The real story of Patrick Winningoes”. Now eventually it’s published under title of “The Dreamer: a novel of love and madness”. Therefore the present is the fifth edition. This is the synopsis. A noble and rich man, with a double, confused personality, is planning for an unlikely love as well as for an impossible new mondial order. In his reasearch he comes accross two young people searching for a job. He’s ready to employ them with a well paid job but before hiring their services, he asks them to listen to a story: the real story of Patrick Winningoes. But the employer turns out to be a master of trickery and illusionism who has a mysterious plan where he tries to involve the two friends. At the end of this story they will find out that the reality is often misrepresented. And things are so different from how they sometimes appear. The story is set between London and Dublin in the late seventies of the 20th Century.

Recuerdos de un Italiano en Londres-15

 

https://www.amazon.fr/Solo-como-una-piedra-Recuerdos-ebook/dp/B09Z6C5LKC/

Una vez, por ejemplo, hubo una cola larga y ordenada de clientes que esperaban ser atendidos en la máquina de helados, hasta el borde exterior de la acera.

De repente, Bob dijo que tenía que ir y hacer una llamada telefónica. Y al decir esto, mostró a los clientes una moneda de diez peniques, manteniéndola en alto entre el pulgar y el índice de la mano izquierda y silbando, con el labio superior ligeramente curvado sobre los dientes, en una serie de disparos de glotis: “Me vuelvo en un minuto! “.

Después de que desapareció en la tienda intenté hacer mi mejor esfuerzo para servir a los clientes. Cuando regresó, viendo tanta gente todavía haciendo cola, me preguntó amablemente, para dejar de lado, trazando un semicírculo con su antebrazo izquierdo y tomó una docena de conos, él fue capaz de llenarlos todos girando hábilmente la mano debajo del grifo de helado, al mismo tiempo que manejaba la palanca con la mano derecha, y mientras yo luchaba para tener los  helados en ambas manos y distribuirlos, los clientes, lo miraban con admiración. Y parecía que estos clientes tendrían la magnitud, porque había más y más detrás de ellos, y el show de Bob se repitió hasta que la máquina pudo seguir refrigerando.

Pero cuando se mantuvo alejado por más tiempo, solía preguntarme, con un gesto significativo del índice frotado en su pulgar, si tenía billetes, a los que llamaba en su jerga graciosa “wonga”.

Fue en ese momento de mi primer noviciado en Londres cuando comencé a amar a los ingleses.

The real story of Patrick Winningoes-6

 

https://www.amazon.it/real-story-Patrick-Winningoes-Salvatore-ebook/dp/B0B244SFNQ/

At that question,  Mr Winningoes had set with extreme naturalness, George had brought a hand to his mouth, showing in his eyes an horrified gaze. Then he stood up, with the hand still on his mouth and ran out the room. I heard his long footsteps, through up the staircases.

-«I am sorry! I am very sorry indeed»– said the man in a resigned and sincere tone –“I have tried to gradually introduce you to the difficult matter, in order not to upset you, but it’s quietly  evident that I have not succeeded it.- "Shall we go to see how your friend is?” – he concluded standing up.

 

- « May be it’s better if I go first to talk to him on my own! We need to stay alone for a while» I told Mr Winningoes.

-« As you like» – he said quietly, sitting again.

 

I followed George upstairs, thinking at Mr Winningoes’ story. I had also accused an emotional hit to that sorrowful question, although, to say the very truth, I had expected that point of landing in Mr Winningoes’ discourse.

 

I saw George coming out from the bath. He stared at me without saying nothing. I knew he needed to be on his own, so I went to our room and lay down at the bed without approaching him.

 I closed my eyes, trying to dominate all these emotions.  I recalled into my mind the last accounts had led me to  that house, with that strange man who seemed to fright .George so heavily

 

 

It was Friday, the 9th of November 1979, right the day we were going to meet that strange Mr Winningoes, as we had soon to discover, when I had followed my friend on the wide tree-lined roads. On the sidewalks, the leaves, fallen during the night, had formed a thick and soft carpet, on which George seemed to walk with special pleasure.

It was a colorless day, of those that are counted so numerous in London, especially in the winter time. One of those days on which the diurnal light maintains the same slim intensity, from mornings to evenings, and the night comes up suddenly unexpected, when the pale and smothered reverberation of the sun, behind a thick blanket of clouds, has concluded its fatiguing daily cycle.

It blew a fresh and light breeze. But the wind, from time to time, became impetuous, and by means of violent gusts seemed to push us, like for joking or as if it wanted to encourage us to go straight ahead. And courage was exactly what we really needed, as our search of a job was becoming a serious and weary problem.

- «I don't recognize the London's gone times anymore» -George had told me, not later than the former evening, coming out from one of the many jobs agencies we had uselessly visited.
I followed him on his march, absorbed in the noise that our own footsteps produced on the leaves. The rhombus of an auto dissuaded suddenly my attention.

 

-« Where are we going to?» -I asked him.

-« We will try to go this way along»- he answered turning slightly back his head to me. « This way through we will rejoin the Maida Vale. There are plenty of job’s agencies up there .»

George knew a lot better than I that zone, being living there for the former years. He had taken that one-room flat wherein we were living together, with a girl, now got back to Italy, as he had fleetingly told me, not without a shade darkening sadly his eyes;  and after he  did not speak more about it.

 

Instead, in that same day that he told me of his passion for the esoteric philosophies. Actually ‘till then, I had reputed them exclusive knowledge of the eastern cultures, while George, rightly in the period we met, was studying at one (whose study he had to introduce me, later on), that he granted to the Huichols, a direct descending people of the ancient pre-Colombian populations that in the present state, according to what at that time he told me, were still living in the north western mountains of Mexico.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The real story of Patrick Winningoes-1

 

https://www.amazon.it/real-story-Patrick-Winningoes-Salvatore-ebook/dp/B0B244SFNQ

 

«I will soon be back, make yourselves at home, please» - the man said going out. We looked at each other, George and I. It had only been from the morning that we didn’t have a chance to stay alone, however I swear that it seemed to me as it was an eternity.

He spoke for the first . -«That’s a real story of madness! »– he burst out taking a seat in one of the four wood armchairs that were around a circular table in the center of the small room–«This man must be crazy ! Let's put him off as soon as is back and let's escape from here, until we are in time»–he added while I was taking a seat in front of him.

-«Just a moment, George, may be it will seem strange to you, but I don't feel afraid of this man! He inspires a sort of trust on me, despite his strangeness.»

-«But do you realize what are you talking about? Have you gone out of sense too? This man must have some extraordinary powers: hasn't he hypnotized us just slightly before? Have you also heard him talk of super-races and brain's experiments  or have I dreamed of it?»–George attacked me nervously.

-«Be quiet, please, George» - I told him in a calm voice. –«First of all, I don't believe he has hypnotized us, just before. Secondly, if he is really so powerful as you say, what could be his reaction, when we try to immobilize him? Make a point on it:  when we arrived here, we were both sleepy. Therefore if he  wanted to use us as guinea-pigs, two punctures were enough for him to knock us down!  On the other hand I have not still seen nor cats that resemble to mice, neither men with a square brain! Who can be sure that the old man is not inventing everything? It would not surprise me if this story derived from the imagination of some fantastical writer. I want to go to the end of all these circumstances. Don’t  you also want to know what kind of job's proposal Mr Winningoes is going to make us?»

George gazed for a long time in to my eyes, thoughtfully. Then, without answering, he relaxed on the back of the chair, releasing the muscles and breathing deeply.

He stood with half open  eyes crossing at once the feet and the hands softly on the womb,  with the right hand covering the palm of the left one. He seemed to me almost slept, while only the breath animated his body.

Won by all those unexpected and subsequent emotions, I also imitated him doing my best on sitting comfort on the wood ancient chair.

to be continued...

La Terza via -11

 

Dopo pranzo mi portò nel laboratorio dove confezionava i suoi articoli di pelletteria. Ne aveva parecchi; tutti pezzi unici; avevano un non so di che di robusto, di antico e di artistico allo stesso tempo; pur nella loro estrema essenzialità. Si mise a riempire dei borsoni.

«Domani devo esporre alla Festa de Noantri! Mi fai compagnia? Così mi aiuti anche a portare la merce. Sabato sarò da solo!»

«Simona non viene con te?»

«Magari la domenica. Il sabato lei lavora, soprattutto in questo periodo.»

«Pensi che a Simona faccia piacere?»

«Se sa che mi aiuti alla festa, figurati! Lei è molto protettiva; si sentirebbe sicuramente più tranquilla!» disse con entusiasmo, immaginando dalla mia domanda che io volessi accettare la sua proposta. In effetti l’idea non mi dispiaceva. Fra i miei progetti mai realizzati c’era stato , un tempo, quello di vendere per strada degli oggetti confezionati da me. Come faceva Michele, senza impegno, giusto per campare la giornata. Magari io avevo pensato a dei braccialetti, degli anellini o delle collanine in metallo. Però era l’artigianato in generale che mi piaceva. Mia nonna materna raccontava sempre, con orgoglio e vanto,  di avere ritrovato in un ripostiglio, i giocattoli in legno che mi ero costruito da me, un’estate che avevo trascorso a casa sua.

https://www.hoepli.it/libro/la-terza-via-un-uomo-un-viaggio-tre-strade/9788833812366.html?

 

La Terza via - 5

 

A Londra era tutto un proliferare di sette new wave di ispirazione per lo più orientale: buddhiste, indiane, cinesi, persiane; e i giovani si perdevano appresso a questi venditori di illusioni e di sogni, mascherati da spiritualità antiche e profonde. E non ho mai capito se fossero i giovani più smaliziati o quelli più fragili confondere la ricerca dello spirito con le sostanze che alteravano la percezione della realtà ordinaria; probabilmente la questione era correlata alle letture più in voga in quel momento: Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg e i poeti della Beat Generation, Baudelaire, Herman Hesse e chissà quanti altri ancora. Tra questi c’era sicuramente anche il sudamericano Carlos Castaneda, trapiantato negli USA per studiare Antropologia e finito poi  in Messico ad applicare sul campo i suoi studi sul popolo degli Huicholes, uno dei tanti ceppi originari del territorio attorno all’altipiano della Sonora che assumevano il peyote, il fungo contenente la mescalina, che a quanto pare li metteva in contatto con un mondo fantastico. Eppure l’antropologo peruviano (lì mi pare fosse  nato Castaneda) spiegava bene di non amare queste droghe. Ma non c’è niente da fare: ognuno sceglie ciò che più gli aggrada in ogni lettura, soprattutto se condotta senza un’adeguata guida.

Così, leggendo quella trilogia che mi era capitata tra le mani (ma la serie completa, come scoprii più avanti negli anni, conta molti più volumi), sognavo di diventare l’allievo di uno sciamano yaqui (nei libri non viene mai menzionata l’esatta etnìa dello sciamano che funge da maestro per lo scrittore, forse per evitare il turismo superficiale di viaggiatori interessati soltanto allo sballo facile, laddove la ricerca dell’autore, sembrava invece avere tutti i crismi di una vera e propria ricerca antropologica e di uno studio sul campo), di ingerire il peyote e di fumare; di padroneggiare la bilocazione riuscendo  a librarmi in volo, come un autentico volatile; e tutte le altre fantasticherie che andavo leggendo; e che sembravano credibili e vere; e magari lo erano veramente, chissà! Quando si è giovane è più facile credere e sognare l’inverosimile; e perfino l’impossibile.

https://www.hoepli.it/libro/la-terza-via-un-uomo-un-viaggio-tre-strade/9788833812366.html

 

Memoirs of London - 4

4.

At that time I felt like a stone in a river. I rolled by as the water flowed down. And if the river was dry, I stood still, waiting for the rain to come.

To be raised in a large family, had taught me, at least, to survive trying to be invisible and escape or fight at the right time.

I became a close friend to Erminio and  all his friends became also my friends.

Franco had a wonderful girlfriend, half Italian and half French. They had a nice flat in West Hampstead (or it might have  been in Finchley Road), where we often were invited for diner. We had clever conversation, while dining.

But mostly we  spent the evenings smoking and listening to music. My thought flew in the air following the guitars’ sounds of blues songs or twisting happily around rock’s riffs of skilful fingers. Then I soared over the world and I thought there were spaces for my soul to be discovered or detected, somewhere in the world .

Then I would abandon myself to the currents of the wind like a wingshed bird, hoping to applaud in a timeless land where my soul could dine for ever.

There must be such a land somewhere ! I dreamed of that, evening by evening, day by day, night after night! I didn’t dream of money  or richness assumed that I had enough to live through. I was spirit more than flesh in those days. I had a vacuum to fill up but I didn’t know how.

There were a lot of people, coming and going in that place, at any time. Though Franco and his girlfriend could be considered a conventional, may be even a bourgeois couple, they were very opened mind and always ready to add a dish at their table or to open a bed in the guest’s room for anyone who might enter in their house.

Once Marco came with a girl. A nice one, named Susanna or Simona, I can’t remember now. She was supposed to be his girlfriend, for they said were going to get married. Nevertheless, after diner, she wanted to make a dance for us; a sensual dance, so sensual it was that afterwards she took off even the last of her clothes, looking wonderful as her mother had made her. I enjoyed that very much but I knew she was Marco’s girlfriend and anyway I thought since then that making sex was a matter of  love and affection, not just a carnal contingency. There was also a friend of Franco’s  (named such as Rocco, or some similar name) watching that sort of Salome’s dance. He didn’t see the thing like I did and so made some rude advances with Marco’s girlfriend, assuming she was looking or provoking for something. He totally  misunderstood that strange behavior. He never showed up again in the house, after that. 

Another friend  of   Franco’s came one day, along with his girlfriend, from the wonderful Liguria land. This was a better one; a man of  good spirit, a searching soul, like I was. I'll name him later on in the story.We sympathized immediately.

He  handled some books of Carlos Castaneda to me. They were three books.

I fell in love with those three books. They spoke of the initiation of a young Western intellectual by an Indian wizard, somewhere in the Sierra Madre’s mountains of Mexico.

Though they are called Huichol, they called themselves “The people walking with the Gods” because so they feel through the ingestion  of a green mushroom, called  peyote, which contains a lot of mescaline, a powerful hallucinogen.

We spent a lot of time, talking about these books and planning to go to Mexico together. He also talked to me about a book he knew very well:  Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception. But he told me he never wanted to take LSD, because it was a chemical substance, and as a such,  he didn’t trust it. He wanted to go to the desert land of central Mexico, where those mushrooms grew. May be it’s thanks  to him if I never wanted to tried LSD or other chemical stuff that in those times were in vogue among young people. May be he was the river that moved the stone that I was in a certain direction, instead of another. But he never reached Mexico. He died in a strange way, somewhere in Italy, though I knew it when I came my back from my trip to  America.

4. to be continued...