The Dreamer

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CQDFK2JW

Chapter 2

In order to relax I recalled the preceding events, starting from the moment I had firstly met my friend George.

I had known him early in the summer 1979, in a little snack bar of the centre, in the beginning of my London stay. A snack-cafe not so far from Piccadilly Circus, where they made a slightly drinkable coffee. I used to go there, because it was the only place where the coffee was served in the small, classical, Italian cups, and even if it was served with no cream, was still better than that watered black soap that almost all barmen sell off for coffee in England.

The bar was housed in a large rectangular room. On the right of the entry there was the counter with the coffee-machine, while both on the left and the opposite wall, in front of the entry-door, there was a wood bench, lined in plastics of brown color, and, straight above, lined in the identical way, a same long but narrower shelf, plenty of sugar-bowls and ashtrays.

The left wall, for the whole length of the bench, beginning from the shelf and finishing to the originally white-painted ceiling, was made of a thick transparent glass that, giving brightness to the place, allowed the visitors to enjoy a wide outside sight where, just in front, it was well visible the entrance of a theatre with an ample and luxurious atrium.

It was there that George seemed to stare up his look, over the round glasses (like John Lennon’s, I had thought). His olive complexion, the chestnut hair and the black moustaches didn't make him certainly look like a probable Queen’s subject, but I questioned him, this not less, in English. Also because, after all we were in London. What other idiom was I supposed to speak?

He burst into laughter, hearing my question. Not immediately, but after turning his head to look at me, with a funny expression on his face, while with my hands I repeated my request for fire, rubbing, at the same time, my right forefinger on the palm of the left hand.

Lighting his own cigarette, as I stood close and steady, much more interdict than angry, because of his crazy laughing, he told me in a strongly stressed, though smooth, Italian language:

- «Sorry for laughing, but Italian people do make notice of them, when they speak English. You come from Rome, don’t you?» -, he suddenly added, smiling with satisfaction to my sad, affirmative answer.

The place, beside the two of us and a girl sitting on the other side of the bench, was empty. The barkeeper, behind the counter, was preparing a great copy of sandwiches, with cheese and tomatoes, lettuce and meats and a few others with all four ingredients together, according to the best English taste.

- «And you, where do you come from?» - I asked him in some annoyed tone for that reference to the Italian’s accent and particularly to that of the Romans, whose noble descendants I am still proud to belong.

-« I am not Italian» - he answered to me with peaceful voice «but I have lived quite a lot of years in Italy. So I know your customs quite well, and also your accent» -, concluded laughing again tastefully.

This time his laughing, however, didn't upset me at all. Those few words had been enough to make my anger fade away; or maybe I was just only glad to talk to someone without squeezing my brain to translate my thoughts from Italian into English language.

to be continued...

 

 

 

 

The Dreamer

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CQDFK2JW

First Part

Chapter 1

 

«I will soon be back, make yourselves at home, please» said the man 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 on our own.

«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, maybe it will seem strange to you, but I don't feel afraid of this man! He inspires a sort of trust in me, despite his strangeness».

«But do you realize what you are 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. If he wanted therefore to use us as guinea-pigs, two punctures were enough for him to knock us down!  I have not seen yet neither cats resembling mice, nor 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 for us?»

George gazed for a long time into 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 comfortably on the wood ancient chair.

 

 

London for ever - 30

And he really came right away; The time to browse distractedly some magazines under the reddened and careful eyes of the owner of the shop, a middle-aged Pakistani, with big, fleshy cheeks.

- "Hello!" Giampiero motioned to me as he came in sight, just  outside  the underground exit barrier. Even Michelle, who I already knew, greeted me with her hand in the air. They then presented me to Martine, a not very tall but nice girl who was wearing jeans on an embroidered white blouse, white-green "Adidas" shoes, and a blue ribbon at the front that caught her short-cut brown hair. She made a smile on his teeth a little irregularly, just pronouncing  "hello!" ,  with a hand holding his coat on his shoulders and the fingers of the other hand slipped into the pocket of his jeans with the only thumb outside. Soon after I asked Giampiero for news of Tommy that I had not seen for a while.

- "No, it's a long time  I do not see Tommaso; The last time he came to see us with his  girlfriend, but he was really down! "

-" Oh yeah! Major decisions are being made; Maybe he goes down to Italy, "I said in a lazy, humorous tone.

- "It’s no such a great a decision!  I've already made the same  decision!" – he said in a great tone of self importance. - "Didn’t you know the news?" He continued, stopping the march, astonished by my own surprise. - "I have recently contacted Italian executives of our firm; They seem to be looking to open a representative office right in Genoa, in my city, and they are looking for people who are expert and trustworthy to speak English well to widen the network of contacts and then .......... "

- "Hey! Really high points, then. You may also become a 'Big Boss'! - I told him, knocking his shoulders.

- "But, I do not even know if I may  like it. I need to change air, this is it! It's a life I'm here in London and I think my trip is over. And did not you ever have the idea of ​​having a son? "

"What has  to do a son with your moving from London?" I interjected, resuming the path she had interrupted another time. - "You can also do the baby here if you want."

- "No! It would not be the same. In this city there is too much chaos. It is not the ideal environment: with all this racism that there is still, violence, smog, do you understand? And I need another situation; Even Michelle would enjoy  changing  to Italy....... "

He turned instinctively backwards and saw Michelle and Martine talking, very close, arm in arm.

- "What are these secrets?" Giampiero asked.

"Nothing that matters to you," Michelle said with her air, at the same time naughty and naive.

Meanwhile, we had come near the pub that stood on the corner of two streets; In front of the right side, the extreme border of a small square delimited a large parking lot for motorcycles where there were now a large number of parked vehicles; Motorcycles of all cylinders, brands and colors, with a prevalence of midrange Triumph and Honda red and blue.

30. to be continued...

London for ever - 28

It was Giampiero who answered at the phone. He was a Ligurian friend I met at Tommaso's home, come to London in the same period of his. With Tommaso he shared the long-standing Italian militancy in the non-parliamentary left-wing groups; the same troubled ideological path: from the confused revolutionary militancy among the Maoists and  Marxist-Leninists to the softer Italian groups of  left ideology, such as the Continuous Struggle, Serving the People and Workers Autonomy.  And after that the gradual but inexorable disillusionment. And even without waiting for the 1977’s  second call, he had withdrawn from his mind all his past, reached London, and set up, licking his wounds  and trying to reconstructing himself and his life. Differently from  Tommaso, Giampiero's ancient political and revolutionary anger had dissolved into London's fog. Nevertheless, though  for the rest of his generation London had been  a bridge to the Oriental philosophy, he had continued on  cultivating  his youthful socialist readings in Italian and in English language; and I did not really despise to spend with him long night-time dissertations at his home,  after dinner, when between his flavoured smoking  pipes and my proletarian selfmade  cigarettes, sunk in a large and comfortable armchair, with disarming but at the same time eye-catching social vision, he still prophesied the  advent of  the power of the proletariat as a unique and inevitable solution to the conflicts of the  counteracting social classes of the capitalist society,  already long-standing in the edge of a fall. And it was so much the strength and security of his arguments that I never  doubted  that Giampiero would hesitate, at the time of the announced socialist victory, to renounce to his good and wealthy position in  a multinational transport company, with the smile of the one who feels, nonetheless, victorious. But what of his bohemian and revolutionary past seemed to survive in him more authentic and strong, was his girlfriend Michelle.

28. 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...

Memoirs of London - 13

CHAPTER II

TOMMY

13.

Tommy belonged to the old guard of the Italians in London.

He worked illegally and at the same time he perceived the weekly unemployment allowance which officially was due  for being fired from the factory where he had previously worked.

But  according to his personal opinion it  was instead a form of reimbursement of the taxes paid in those years.

 Afterwards, he sentenced, in a society like the English, where a pair of gloves for fox hunting cost a hundred pounds (that he was more or less how much he earned for a selling mirrors for a month in the street ( inclusive of  Saturdays and Sundays) is not surely up  to the proletarians like him make economy.

Moreover  he had to defend himself in some way from the inflation invented by bankers and masters to exploit the working class.

 And since the escalators in London were only in the subway, he defended himself by perceiving that little government aid that, coupled with the variable payroll of the mirrors, allowed him to live quietly.

Tommy (as they called him in London, but his real name was Tommaso) was a bourgeois guy, of those who, in the eyes of the majority, could  never justify their anxiety or their dissatisfaction in the society.

High, long-limbed, and with regular facial features (I admired him and a little envied him for the ease with which he attracted the women’s gaze) Tommy  was endowed with a willing and determined character that, combined with his affectionate and altruistic charisma, instinctively wore you to love him,  well despite some of his contradictions which himself  was unable to explain and  which he did not even realize.

 But the latter thing was a common trait of  the generational movement which I also belonged to.

He had left Rome in the early seventies, when the dream of a more liberal society had already been broken on the barriers of respectability  and bourgeois hypocrisy. So, disappointed by the betrayal of that working class in whose union he, activist of the student movement, had blindly believed; still overwhelmed by that youthful rage that in the ideal years of '68 had released the highest vital energy; shocked, unbelieving, that the bloody boom was just the outbreak of an air bubble rather than the first crunch of the fatal collapse of a weary system, to be cut off at all costs; with the desire to forget and to find the more than ever living animosities of emancipation; driven by the fascinating cultural appeal of the new frontier of the movement, which in the shadow of the Big Ben sought refuge and regeneration in those years where the instances and the search for a new identity of a restless and shaky West seemed to find, if not an answer,  at least a reverberation of hope and ransom in the crises and illusions of Oriental myths, of which the capital of the former British Empire for its past colonial and vocation constituted the ideal and secure outpost; uncertain, helplessly and  confused, he was  passively dragged into London by one of those energetic currents, as mysterious and inexplicable as invisible and uncontrollable that impetuously are capable of dragging the fate of whole peoples and nations.

- "Ciao," I said, getting  behind him from a narrow alley.
- "You bloody scared me," it was his lusty response.

- "Excuse me Tommy! You were so overwhelmed that I could not resist the idea of ​​a joke. How are you?

- "Well, well .... And you? Did you find a job at last?

-"Yes I did! A company for which I have worked in the past has promised me to summon me ..... maybe next week ....! Do you know those machines that turn milk into cream, hang on by souvenir shops along the streets ...? "

- "Ah, yes, I seem to have noticed them, sometimes. Tourists seem to be crazy for them, don’t they?

-" surely they do! But also British seem to like them a lot.
- "Then it is even better! How much  do they pay you? "
- "I  work a 10%, ‘you know?"
- "And how it comes weekly?"
-"I do not know! It depends on the position! There at Oxford Street there would be a lot, but I will not be sure of that! Given my past experience, however, I could also have a good pitch! Ihope well...
- "I have spoken to my boss anyway! I was waiting for you to call me at home ... "
- "Yes, I called you, but you didn’t seem to be there..."
-"Didn’t I?! When did you call? "

He always spoke in a calm, almost indifferent tone, as if his words were the story of other people, not his owns. That day I felt in his voice an unusual emotional thrill.

- "I called a few days ago. Then I knew about the ice creams would take me back and I did not try again…’ you know? I just came to say hello to you! “

He  smiled slightly, seeming to regain his indifferent air as usual.

- "What did your boss say by the way?" I went on.
- "He said the place is available for you"

- "well I'm glad hearing it; thank you. Anyway,  I try in the ice cream now; Later, if they do not give me good wages, I might be asking them .... "

- "As you like! Do not worry, the work here is easy. And then maybe you'll take my place. Here is good enough ... "

- "How are you leaving?"
- "I’m going back to Italy"
- "Do you go on holiday?"

- "No, not on vacation. I'm meditating a more challenging step, a more important choice. Here in London I just broke. Think that yesterday the police broke into the house while there was no one and when I came back I found all my stuff out of the door ... "

-"Do not tell me! Another certainty of London that crumbles .. "

I was genuinely sorry for that news, not just for my friend, but for the fact in itself. I paid five pounds of rent for my furnished room on Caledonian Court Road, but I had always been fascinated by these free-lance communities that in  London were called  squatting houses, because, according to my way of thinking at that time, it was more appropriate to occupy unlived  houses that let them empty and lifeless.

At that time, I only considered the sociological and cultural aspect of the squatting phenomenon without worrying about the economic aspect, especially from the point of view of the owners of the houses .
Anyway, so things were going to happen, even if the situation was  to change seriously very soon.
- "Bloody Hell," Thomas continued, "only last year they would not be allowed to do such a thing! Crushing a squatting! "
- "I heard that they were about to issue a new Squatting Act .... do they have already done it?"
-"No I do not think so. I would have known if they did. The Conservatives are still on  the opposition but  they are getting stronger ... "

Again I noticed in her wards  that unusual emotion.

- "Where are you living  now?"
- "I have sheltered in the house of friends, in Fulham; They are organized; There is always someone at home and if they all leave, especially in the evening, they leave the lights on. And even the houses on the side are occupied by squatters: families of unemployed workers, poor devils. There they will not dare to break through …"
- "So you're okay, right?"
- "Yeah, maybe it was all there!"

He stared heavily in my eyes as if he were considering the importance or the opportunity to continue talking. I supported her gaze, then I offered one of my cigarettes. He continued after breathing smoke into the sky.

- "But tell me what am  I still doing  here? I'm bursting, ‘you know? I do not even remember what I  came here for and what's worse, sometimes,  I do not even remember who I am! My life, my thoughts, my actions are so different since I live here! Who is the real Thomas, do I ask to myself? It was only yesterday that I fought, albeit naively, to change society and  today I’m living  in a cloud of illusions, in a space which  I don’t even know the course? "

His unusual tone lit up my congenial polemic force and as I could, I tried to face him, also because, although he did not know the course, as he said, I felt I had to continue my journey; moving forward and without turning back.

- "Movement always follows a course, in my opinion! We need  to wait! We are in a moment of stasis; Soon clouds will light up! ...

- "No! Enough it’s  enough!" He  interrupted me abruptly, "I want to go back to earth, I have to tie myself to my past, to my true story! And, by the way,  what movement are you talking about?"

13. to be continued...

Memoirs of London - 12

 Other street traders I knew in London were "the mirrors sellers". Except for a few apart in  some isolated places, the mirrors sellers were mostly located in a narrow net of roads around the famous Carnaby Street, the real commercial hub of London’s tourist and rolling on since the epic of the Beatles.

 A little already decayed, but still a great attraction in the second half of the seventies. All the range of the consumer’s  symbols and the new western mythology, which also might be found in the T-shirts sold as souvenirs in the many stores that occupied the short road, the kingdom of cheap and quick tourist shopping , alltogether with the symbols of London, were reproduced on mirrors of different formed and sold on the street in front of those stores, which also constituted their store and warehouse.

From  Marylin Monroe to Humphrey Bogart; from Gin Beef Heart to Coca Cola; from the stylized liberty models to Union Jack, passing through the Irish beers Scottish whiskey, rock bands and even the Royal Family, everything was reproduced on those colored mirrors, gently framed and sold from a minimum of 99 pence to a maximum of £ 20 depending on their size and from  the buyer's tourist wallet and luggage.

The mirrors sellers of this area were almost all Italians or Spanish people.

Young people who had come  up to London in order to study English  language and know the city.  Or may be escaped from the economic and political climate of reflux and, in any case, all invoked by the great fascination that London's capital of Rock Music still exercised on the young people of that poorer Europe and they sought, together with greater freedom, a job that allowed them to   live in a decent way, relying only on their strength and without weighing on the family. Among the Italians stood the young freak looking , distinguished by the seemingly cluttered appearance .

I called them the minor brothers of the sixty-nine revolutioners. But among the mirrors sellers  of Carnaby Street there was an authentic and remarkable representative of the former young’s revolution whose name was Tommy.

12. to be continued...

Bob Dylan Nobel Prize

"For creating new poetic expressions within the great tradition of American song"

With this motivation the Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature 2016 to singer-songwriter Bob Dylan.

I am an admirer of the American singer-songwriter for a long time. I have worked  since the early seventies in the translation of his songs.

I considered his lyrics highly poetic, dreamlike and visionary as befits a great poet.

 I ‘m talking not only of Blowing in the Wind, The times are changing and Mr Tambourine Man.

 I’m  talking about much of its poetic production.

But I must confess that as a young man did not consider him a great musician, but a minstrel (in the best and highest of the possible meanings).

Today perhaps my judgment on its stylistic musician figure should be revised.

Nevertheless I prefer to continue to consider as a great poet.

 For decades I wanted  to see in our school anthologies lyrics  by Bob Dylan, Fabrizio De Andrè, Francesco De Gregory, Leo Ferre and many others; I say this has to be done without taking away  Leopardi ,  Carducci , Pascoli and D'Annunzio (Leopardi in particular is my favorite poet).

 I’m  only saying  that the anthologies of where our boys study should be updated  allowing the entry of these new poets.

Perhaps with the Nobel literature to Bob Dylan, something is going to  change.

Finally.

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

And then four crows will fly away - Fifth Part

He was coming to inform me that my father had died and I had been named his only heir. He also told me that if I did not want to go immediately back to the country, he had brought for me to be signed some letters of attorney to allow his fellows to look after the most urgent matters of administration. I signed those proxies without not even reading them. On the economic plan I would have been now stronger than ever. My studies would get a great advantage from this new decisive financial impulse. But why didn't I feel any pain? Yet I had loved him, in the cheerful days of the infancy; and he had loved me. Thinking about the years of my infancy and the coasts of beloved and distant Cornwall, I finished to consume my poor meal, then I returned downstairs. I immediately noticed that something strange had happened during my brief absence. In the test-tube the brain of the cat had dried, acquiring a grey and pale color. I extracted it with the pliers: it seemed a dry sponge without neither weight nor smell. What devil had it happened? It was a gust of wind which answered to me. In that underground where I secretly developed my experiments, I had not left but a small window, that I wanted surfaced to the level of the ground. It had slightly disclosed , quiet enough to allow the passage of a provident ray of sun which, intruding the optic circuit of the microscope, had poured in with all its mighty energy, dehydrating completely the object of my experiments. But my light, initial disappointment had soon to be transformed in high exultation, when I closer observed the test-tube that had served like furnace to that unforeseen experiment. On its fund rested some drops of a dense and glimmering liquid! I had a lightning, an intuition that afterwards had to be exactly revealed. Admirably exact, my friends! I had found the way to extract from the muscle that contains our life, from the brain that contains all the knowledge of a human being its own essence. An extract, a summary, that is the same, but free from the physical brain’s encumbrance, from the grey mash that contains it. Free from the flesh as a soul is free from his body as an idea from his thinker as a thought from his action! As you certainly know all our mental energy springs by a simple chemical reaction that is continuously produced in our brain. Such reaction, that the physicians define with the name of “synapse”, is originated by the reaction between the liquid secretion in the brain and the cells on it introduced. In practice this liquid, that has equal molecular structure in every man, works as a tracing detector of the cerebral fabric, whose composition is, instead, what countersigns a man from another. The intimate reasons for such different composition of the cerebral fabric, have seen for a long time divided the humanity. Manhood has however been until now incapable to intend the true reason for the difference of the beings of its species. A human being, from the scientific point of view, it is only a product of a casual connection of the basically chemical mixtures that are contained in the cells. And all its activity is coordinated by the cerebral cells. To succeed on getting a distillate of those cells, meant therefore to dispose of a substance of inestimable value. You can of course imagine, what such emotion I felt when I injected those drops that were deposed on the fund of the test-tube, to a guinea-pig. The result was amazing, great and more meaningful than I had been able to foresee myself. 

...to be continued...

The Life of great hero Giuseppe Garibaldi

14th Part) With France (from 1870 to February 1871)


Two days after the defeat of Sedan during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 which signs the fall of Napoleon III, Paris protests and the Third Republic was proclaimed. Garibaldi following events closely. At the proclamation of the Republic, it sends a message to the Government of National Defence that remains unanswered "What's left of me is at your disposal, have." Fringe conservative Catholic and sees him as a revolutionary opponent of 1849 and 1867. Finally, some support of the Popular Committees and government figures, Garibaldi, although weakened by arthritis, sailed to Marseilles, where the reception was enthusiastic. He reiterated his support for Republican France: "I come to give France the rest of me. France is a country that I love, "" I was too unhappy when I thought the Republicans fought without me. "

After joining Tours, serving as its capital, and Léon Gambetta, Minister of War and defender of the resistance against the Prussians, it is offered by a small one commandment, no French officer agreeing not be under his command. Because of the fear of starting Garibaldi, Gambetta gave him the command of all the corps area Vosges, Paris to Strasbourg and a brigade of mobile guards as he is accustomed, are poorly armed and ill-equipped to deal with a particularly cold winter.

Garibaldi up his staff to Dole (October 14), and on 11 November, he organized the army into four brigades under the commandment of his two son, Ricciotti and Menotti, Delpech will be replaced by Cristiano Lobbia and Polish Jozef Bossak-Hauke. Bordone is meanwhile Chief of Staff and the son of Garibaldi, Stefano Canzio, chief of headquarters before becoming commander of the 5th Brigade.

November 19, Ricciotti inflicts defeat to the Prussians General Werder Châtillon-sur-Saône, but the theater remains Dijon. On 26 November, the city has been occupied since October 31 can not be reversed to the Prussians. They are repulsed at a cons-offensive on December 1st. It was not until 21 January 1871 for Garibaldi moved to Dijon, evacuated by the Prussians December 17, the latter being informed of the arrival from the north of the French regular troops led by General Bourbaki.

21, 22 and 23 January 1871, Dijon is attacked by the Prussians 4000: Garibaldi emerges victorious while Ricciotti grabs a flag of the 61st regiment Pomeranian. An armistice enter into force 28 January 1871 terminating the participation of Garibaldi.

Military operations by Garibaldi heavily criticized by the military authorities. In 1903, Foch publishes principles of war. He points out that Garibaldi, when he could use a single brigade, stopped his 000 men from 20 to 30 deal with the Prussian brigade of 4,000 men instead of to the aid of the army of the East Bourbaki, as he had ordered. Foch then makes the pride of Garibaldi responsible for the disaster of the Army of the East.

In February 1871, Garibaldi was elected on the lists of the Republican Union without being a candidate, the French National Assembly as a member of the Côte-d'Or, Paris, Algiers and Nice. In Paris, he came in fourth place behind Louis Blanc and Victor Hugo Gambetta. Because of his Italian nationality invalidating the election against libel and the new monarchist majority in the House who are accused of not having fought, he accepts his terms to appear before the National Assembly from which he went to defend the cause of the men he commanded. Right violently opposed to any intervention, as Garibaldi retired.

Garibaldi was re-elected in Algerian suppletive elections, that the Assembly invalids, in March, because he does not have French nationality.

Victor Hugo démissionnede its own mandate as a sign of support.
On March Garibaldi dissolves the volunteers and returns to Caprera.

... to be continued...