This is the hand

This is the hand, my only friend, the hand. Oh, I love Jim Morrison and his lyrics, but I don’t sacralize him so much to be unable to joke with some verses of the most discussed song by The Doors. Because, at the end of the fair (which in italian means “alla fine della fiera”), the hand is the end of the arm, therefore the extreme part, a border line of a body that suffers of borderline personality disorder. This will be the light-shining-motiv of this blog: a kind of masturbation in the borderland of mental illness.

Fog in the forest

In a forest with no shadows,
next to a house without windows,
sits an old woman without eyes,
caressing with a hand without nails,
a child without hair.

[italian version]

Into the deep surface

Over a forest made of one-dimensional trees,

next to the crackling of the exterminated plains of metal,

rising, from the horizon, rectangular clusters of liquid, boiling light,

silhouetting against a sky of beating, pale meat,

source and outfall of the rivers of digital blood,

through the human mountains that surround everything.

[italian version]

The liquid library

Millions of letters
of hl of ink
slipped from the pages of electronic plastic,
gurgling down the drain cathode
through the soft tangles
of the boned cans
at easy opening
for for the masses geriatricly inept
at the lapidary chewing.

And juices of squeezed eyeballs
with little umbrellas of false eyelashes
at the tables a few steps from nothing
in planned holidays on the videorecorder,
of the happiness ordered by phone
with the sacred right of withdrawal,
that maybe I’m not happy
to eat every night
steaks of cloned models
and vegetables genetically logorrheic
that keep me awake
all the holy nights
of this life added with carbon dioxide.

[italian version]

What about the evening

What about the evening,
when the columns of the temples were sleeping into the mountains,
and the mountains were crawling under the sea,
and the seas and oceans, iridescent spheres,
were wandering in the vastity of the space
and the space was just a word that did not produce sound?
What about we talked, then, in the evening?

[italian version]

Nuclear

Nuclear fire,
through a rusty needle,
injected into veins of burnished steel
to the cemented heart
supported by dies of hot, compressed blood,
made of pulsing light,
until a bar of graphite rods it,
interrupting, in a flash of splinters,
the mutant fusion
of the emotional cores.

Stopped the instincts,
broken the chain of rational fractures,
only remain radioactive storage bins,
abandoned to acid rain,
releasing edible isotopes
that seep under the glossy surface
of the unstable words,
feeding the basins with he liquid energy
of the transgenic consciences
cultivated with inox wheat.
Do not drink!
Do not drink this iridescent water!
It could illuminate the darkest corners
of the underground perturbations
in your mind.

[italian version]

The Evil

I’ve always been here.
On my skin is written all the history of the world,
my breath is made of laments,
my hands went through billions of eyes,
but my heart has never shed one single tear,
never.
I am a monster.
I nourish myself with iniquities.
Taking advantage of the neighbour is my job,
deceive the naive my art.
Everything I represent is false,
hugely distorted by the thousands of masks I wear.
I have many names, but nobody knows what I pronounce when I stick my teeth into a new victim,
nobody will ever know.
I’ll take it with me
in the coffin,
well hidden from sunlight,
banished forever from the face of the Earth.

That name is cursed,
decomposed by guilt,
infected by remorse,
graven in the bowels of my soul.
I nourish myself also of that.
Of the anguish that you feel when you see a life slip away in silence,
without a whimper, but with eyes screaming with terror,
wide open on the brink of insanity,
looking for a glimmer of understanding.
Can you never forgive me?

Yes, I will forgive you, even if you kill me … especially if you are killing me.

[italian version]

The uncle from America

We live in expectation of being happy
As if were to arrive the uncle of America, to donate us an immense fortune.
We align ourselves to the queue of those waiting their turn,
Ordered,
Complaining every now and then for the burocracy.
Meanwhile time passes,
Inexorable,
Careless of the practices that must be dispatched.
Tic tac tic tac
For those who keep the pace
tic tac tic tac
Today is the day of the pomegranate .
But one day,
Any,
Any at random,
You realize that who is before you
Was once behind you,
And then you realize that the circle is closed,
That slow down the hands of the clock,
That your turn has come a thousand times already
And you’ve ignored it,
You’ve preferred to let another pass.
What a kindness!
How many brotherhood in that gesture!
What a lot of fucking fear!

Enjoy all you can!
Burn your candle at both ends!
It’s not too late!
Carpe diem!

Instead you doing?
You’re sitting on a bench
With the glance hanging from the recumbent head
Like a drop that does not fall,
Which has horror of emptiness,
That shrinks instead of hovering in the air,
Instead of tapering to perfection,
To be merely a drop of water that falls.
Remove your hands from those armrests,
Loosens grip from your inhibitions,
Breathe the polluted air of cities:
It cannot kill you,
Because you are already dead since a life
and did you even noticed!

Remember when you were a child and you cried because you did not know what would become of your teddy bear when you’d be dead?
Yes, I remember very well, I see in your eyes that teddybear:
It’s laughing at you with his smile stitched by barbed wire.

Now what are you doing?
You cry?
Oh for Christ’s sake!
And stop once for all!
Umpf, okay, come on, come here, Yes, I know, I was bad,
We clean these tears once and for all,
Here is your teddy bear, it’s better, right?
Oh yes, much better, come on, nothing happened.
It’s just that sometimes I’ve got to vent too:
This row is endless,
Not even remember how long I’m here.
Indeed, now that I think well,
I realize I’m doing this queue from an eternity that seems infinite.

[italian version]

The dream

Wake up at seven. I Go to the bathroom. I dress and I’m ready to face the day. A pale sun tries to peep between the morning haze, probably in the afternoon will be hot. I walk towards the bar, greeting the old woman who, like every morning, is collecting the leaves in the driveway (I suspect that she put the in plase during the night). “Cappuccino and two brioches.” I sit at a table watching the customers, more or less ever the same faces: a family with two children, two old men who play poker against the machine, the distinguished gentleman who reads the newspaper. I insert myself in the row of employees that, with coordinated, brisk step, cross the road. It’s very dangerous, a distraction could be fatal, because they do not stop theirself  (the employes, not the machines).

Spending badge on the wall of the gate and I’m registered, cataloged, monitored.

I walk the long corridors. Doors where they enter unknown unknown persons. The row quickly escapes and I leave behind myself a group that is waiting for the elevator. A laughter makes me look back, but I keep walking. I take the underpass, I meet a person that I knew at the English course, a quick gesture with the head in greeting, not even remember his name. Arrival finally at the lift that will take me to the eighth floor, where is my office. Another corridor, I greet a colleague and another one in the next room, where others colleagues and coworkers reciprocate greetings. I arrived, at last.

Turn on the computer and that the work begin! Routine, a few data must be inserted, some documents to read. “We would be bringing this copy …”. No problem. Lunch, another row, swiping the badge to pay, I sit at the table with colleagues, a couple of jokes. “This year I think I go to Mexico, last year in Egypt mosquitoes devoured me!” I eat and watch the great hall, listening to the buzz suddenly broken by the clatter of dishes that fall. Back to the computer. I will find a friend, drink a coffee and soon come the five p.m. “Now you can turn off the computer.”

Arriving home, I warm up a cup of tea. Drink it. I put the cup in the sink and I fill it with water to the brim. I put sneakers and I do a jog to the park. Back home, I make a shower and I prepare to exit. Tonight we celebrate a birthday and we eat Brazilian. A pleasant evening with friends, good food, prices a bit salty, but you can not have it all. I also saw two celebrities, they are making the good life. It’s late and we must go home, tomorrow we face another day of work. I get home. I turn on the TV and the news says that a plane crashed: one hundred thirty-four dead. A yawn opens my mouth. I go to bed and fall asleep almost immediately. My last thought goes to celebrities.

Wake up at seven … I’m not going anywhere. I remain silent, in the silence of the room, broken only by the mechanic breathing of the iron lung.

[italian version]

Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Begun in 1932, this brilliant scientific study wanted to see how syphilis progressed in the case was not treated. The lucky subjects of the experiment were 399 African American farmers that not only were not treated when, in 1943, was discovered a cure, ie penicillin, but were not even aware of the nature of the disease from which they suffered. But the nice thing is that the study continued until 1972 when a local newspaper denounced a nazi and clear violation of human rights, and it claimed a millionaire damages for victims and their families.

The assumption of the ideological and racist Tuskegee Syphilis Study, shining  example of immoral science, was the belief of researchers from the U.S. Public Health Service that blacks react differently to venereal diseases differently from whites. So, they decided: we go to an isolated village in Alabama (Macon County) and test our hypotheses. Just like the Nazis did with Jews.

In 1997, President Clinton apologized for this act of racism, with these words:

“The United States government did something That was wrong – Deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It Was an outrage To Our commitment to integrity and equality for All Our Citizens … Clearly racist. “

[italian version]

Internet is stupid

The telephone system is very intelligent. At all times knows who is calling whom, where and when moving data or voice. The Internet is stupid, but he knows one thing: this bunch of bits needs to move from one end of the Net. Stupidity is stubborn. If a router (the device that distributes network traffic) is broken, the data packets are deviated on an alternative route and the network is working anyway. Thanks to his stupidity Internet accepts new devices and people, then spreads quickly.

If you optimize a network for one type of application, it will be the worse for others.

The value grows on its edges.

If the Internet was an intelligent network, its designers had envisaged the creation of good search engines in his structure. On the contrary, intelligent web designers have created a network rather stupid. Intentionally. The search services can be built and delivered by any of thousands of extreme nodes of the network, offering, to a wide range of users, to spark tremendous innovations.

This excerpt of the article (I cannot remember the author) on the stupidity of the internet, created by intelligent design so that it can be developed and improved by anyone, makes me to reflect about religion and God and religion. They are the inventions that have had more success in the history of humanity, because affordable to everyone (some would say in everyone). This is easily intelligible (from the perspective of the atheist) because, instead of a single intelligent design, it is a projection of individual fears. Man is born as a snail and only when he acquires consciousness of his being “soft”, he builds for himself a nice, protective shell.

Objection: but the man is so fundamentally stupid, that got to do the intelligent designers? And in fact have nothing to do. The God’s creation is an instinctive thing that can be compared to the curl at the sight of danger. What I wonder, however, is whether the stupidity of man can be a proof of a superior intelligence. The man may have been created intentionally stupid, especially “soft” (malleable would be more appropriate). On the reasons of this tenderness we could discuss. A believer sees us certainly a purpose to “spiritual journey”, to improve themselves, to reach maturity, losing the skin to access to the Nirvana, as an unbreakable core. Instead, I see in this self-construction a “domestication”, and certainly not by a metaphysical entity.

[italian version]