London for ever - 34

 I try to totally concentrate on the discussion.

I say that I no longer I’m expecting  anything good from Italian politicians, after just over a century of mismanagement, since  political unity, which has not followed any social unity. Touching obviously dear themes to Giampiero.

“Italy is a bad mosaic of peoples with too many problems to be treated with the same medicine” – he replies to me – “ Only  the worker’s movement can succeed uniting  these different people, giving them a strong  identity to  join together like the fingers of a hand!! "- he concludes closing his right hand in a tight fist.

I tell him that I do not  longer believe in the workers' movement;  neither I  longer believe in the model of state organization inherited by the French Revolution, with tired rites of indirect representative democracy ...

- "You're wrong to take the French Revolution as a point of reference. The real, unique revolution from which the talk is, is the revolution ......... "

-" Revolution? On Saturday night all the serious speeches are banned, "- Michelle says cheerfully -" “Look at what Marcus gave me! "- she says  showing  us a black ball she holds between her  index and the thumb. "" Do you want to roll it? "She turns to me.

- "No, I think I’ll do it" - offers Giampiero promptly. - By the way, who was that guy? "He continues with indifferent air, while already manages  with some cigarette’s  papers  beneath the table in order to arm a joint for the Michelle’s smoke.

- "He's a good customer of mines," replies Michelle, with a strange  air. "He comes from Rotterdam, but he is living from  many years here in London. I met him at Camden Lock where he handles an "stall" of second hand clothing with some of his English members. He’s a bit crazy or at least an original one: he's always stoned as hell, morning to night, because, he says, he believes in smoking, as a flag of peace and brotherhood among young people! "

- "Bullshit," said Giampiero in a caustic tone, "I've met smokers who were total assholes, and I'm not even okay with all the big business that's made of smoke ..."

- "Well, as long as it remains illegal, trade is lucrative; Especially for big dealers who do not even pay taxes on it; It would be enough to legalize it. It almost seems that politicians are afraid of the spread of smoke ...... "- I say to dampen the tone of the discussion between the two.

- "But they do not seem to have the same approach to heroine," Giampiero says, remembering perhaps the lost friends on that street. - " Do you know Michelle what Pino writes from Italy? When the social tension grows, in Italy smoke disappears from the streets and only heroin is found, do you know? But nobody seems to get  to point out that with the heroine they just want to destroy us? Do you light it up? "He asks me in a more relaxed tone, asking me to light the  joint up.

- "It's up to Michelle, really," I say, passing by, after burning its  tip with the lighter.

Martine in the meantime asks Michelle if she understands the topic of the discussion and, after explaining it, says that many rock motion representatives have been mysteriously torn from heroin and thrown down the names of Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.

she also adds that she is concerned about the apparently very close relationship between rock movement, music, artists, fans and drugs, all the drugs, from the lightest to the heaviest and most dangerous ones.

Meanwhile the "joint" goes turning around. The dense buzz in the room is interrupted by laughs and laughter, while a thick smoke hood comes from the floor below to the ceiling, becoming more and more condensed.

While the concert had resumed its rhythm, with some skillful voice variation of the solo voice, I  suddenly realized that my throat is dry and my mouth mingled to the point that almost I cannot speak, while at the same time I notice that our beers were still intact on the table in front of us.

I drink directly from the bottle a long haul of Carlsberg Special Brew. I feel that cool liquid in my mouth, coming down my throat, I mentally follow its way  to the stomach and from there spreading with heat; I think of small rivers when they enter the streams and lakes; from  the great rivers that are slow but inesorable in the seas and seas all connected to the oceans, as a single large stream of energy, wrapped in impenetrable cosmic synergies;  even the conductors of our blood, from the smallest vessels to the largest arteries, converge into a single center; and if our bodies have been pulsating in the air for millennia, interacting through immaterial life-force contacts, sometimes conflicting and opposed but always guided in one direction; if our brain contains our present together with the past, and who knows, perhaps even in the future, then where is the center of the universe? The pulsating heart of humanity? The center of Everything Buddha was looking for in the tortuous paths of the mind?

Was this what my brothers were looking for, fleeing the materialties of the West, on the uncertain paths of the East? But why look for it with the deception of acids, with the illusion of opium? Why with the heroine? And if the East, for millennia has absorbed the devastating blow of opium, the most inexperienced and weak civilization of the West, will survive the shots of its most hallucinating and deadly essences?

Take me away, friends, but guide me, do not miss me, love me, as a father loves his prodding son, because I want a dream of sweet awakening, a hope that leads to truth, a journey that has its return to the origin of life .

34...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...