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had incomparable beauty, and it nurtured brutality. It sheltered the
miserable humanity. For years I tried in vain to keep my pace
alongside this fast moving culture, it changed me, and I failed. If
success is shown in numbers, then I was one of the most successful.
If clothes were a measure of character, then I was one of the most
highly regarded. I was good, one of the best, and I hated it. As a
young man, my hatred was fuelled by incomprehension, just as his
actions were made in the hope of my prosperity. Yet somehow my
internal momentum drove me from this culture, from this world my
father was pushingme towards. It droveme to the sea, it droveme home.
Chi di gatta nasce, sorci piglia
. What is bred in the bone will not go
out of the flesh.
In these times, I would find myself drifting aimlessly through the
swarming city, somehow removed from the constant throng of noise
and activity. I would go to the river
Tiber
. The great canal of
Roma
.
Here I found peace. There is great serenity in silence, yet it only
resonates with the call from within, rising up until the threshold of
repression has been breached; like a scream, rising, fighting to escape
through the lips. Too long attenuated, it will not be silenced. My
mind would wander to the depths of the river, the deep, my thoughts
settling beneath the chattering and the noise of the world above.
Il
silenzio e il sentimento. L’emozione e la paura
. This brief clarity, allowing
me to see through the haggard inconstant splashes of beauty, so
worshipped here. The angels cast in stone, watching me from above.
He never told me why he made the decision he did. In his incisive
letters to me between my annual return, he would speak in proverbi.
He could not read, he could not write, he only listened and
understood. My sisters would write for him.
Chi ha più giudizio più
n’adoperi
. To whom much is entrusted, much is required. These were
his last words to me. They weighed heavily on my heart.
His life a mystery to me. Yet he was my beginning. In the eyes of
the public I stride in unrivalled conviction, yet beneath this shrouded
veil, I am nothing; my inner being gaping wide, like the great void.
In my readings I have stumbled upon writings of such truth that my
insides leapt in frenzy, uncontrolled like a spasm of the muscle, this
sense of resonance and understanding. ‘
That is perhaps what we seek
throughout life, that and nothing more, the greatest possible sorrow so as to
become fully ourselves before dying.
’
Mio padre
, he sleeps now. He is distant upon the horizon, drifting
Il Silenzio E
Il Sentimento,
L’emozione
E La Paura
(Silence And
Sentiment,
Emotion
And Fear)
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