I met Icarus

I do not know why I tell this story, there is nothing special in it, nothing that could ever interest you who’s reading. But suddenly I remembered this story and I felt a deep melancholy inside of me, remembering those days, thus I decided to tell it, for the first time. I am an old man and the event I am going to tell, happened when I was a young boy. Even if I am so old now, I can clearly remember this story.

It was the 19th September 1899, and I was walking alone across  the moor. It was a fantastic late summer day, the wind caressing the grass and the sun gently kissing my entire world. Suddenly I bump into a young man who was fumbling with a sort of trolley to which he was trying to add two large metal wings. I was just a boy and I was so curious that I couldn’t help asking him what he was doing. He wasn’t annoyed by my curiousity and smiling he answered me: “I want to fly to the moon, I want to touch the stars, I want to live among them. I am not satisfied with this world, I hate it . It’s so greedy, I want to touch the stars, I want to feel how it feels to be light and happy”.

I smiled and, to be honest, I thought that he was a sort of lunatic, a mad escaped from an asylum. But what made me so curious was that he felt so confident in what he was doing, he really thought he could fly to the stars. After some moments of embarassing silence he spoke again: “Boy, you’re thinking that I’m kind of mad, I know, and I’d think the same if I was in your shoes. But, listen to me, boy, yesterday night, exaclty the 18th September 1899, I had a dream… I saw the brightest star ever!!! And, guess what? I could fly to it with my winged trolley I had started building many years before. Can you imagine? When I woke up I thought: work hard on your winged cart, because you’ll fly to the brightest star!”

It is useless to add that he convinced me and I followed him in his mad mission. I was with him during the time he spent working at his wooden winged trolley. After six months the winged trolley was ready. He decided to go to the cliffs that overlook the English Channel. He wanted to leave from there for his flight.

I don’t know why I didn’t try to persuade him that his flight was just a dream, that he couldn’t fly with a winged trolley. Maybe I really thought he could make it, he could realise his dream. All that i rember is that I saw him run with his rickety cart and… then yes, I saw him fly through the immensity and I could see him reach his brightest star…

You know that it was impossible to fly with that rickety cart, but I prefer remember him my way…among the stars, that’s why I went away when he started falling. That’s what I did, I went away  before I could see him disappear into the English Channel…

Francesco Di Bernardo

The Picture

I am looking at a picture of her, it is the one I love the most. It was taken on the train, on a bright winter morning and she smiles. I love see her smiling, maybe because she does it rarely, thus her smile is as precious as all is rare is. When I see, or I should say when I saw, but I’ll say when I see her smiling I cannot contain the flood of joy which overwhelms my life.

While I am looking at this picture, in my mind are passing all the words that I should have told her…. It’s like a film… In my mind are passing, as on the screen of a cinema, all the images of the moments I spent with her, and the words I should have told her compose the soundtrack. Yes, because I must confess, those words are  as sweet as a melody, the sweetest things my mind could have ever thought, the most sincere, the most passionate, ardent, words I have been able to create as I am just an human being using its poor language made of words to express a feeling so strong, so pure, so… divine. Nevertheless, this film has not an happy-ending, I painfully swallowed those words, and now they are just echoes, sad ghosts in the landfill of the time.

I am now wondering what I could do with this picture of her… should I burn it? Should I tear it apart? Destroying a picture could be either a political act, as when one burns the picture of a hated dictator, or a personal liberating act: freeing yourself from something which haunts you or from who has made you suffer. But she didn’t make me suffer, I mean, I sufferd as never in my life and I’m still suffering as I was in the hell, but maybe it wasn’t her fault, so I cannot get the rid of the picture of her.

I am on a plane, going away from her but I know that I will not be able to forget her… Thinking that she is somewhere… without me… devastes me. I cannot do anything.

Wise men say: you must forget her, she’s not so special… But, and in this  maybe I’ve done the worst thing, I’ve always been wary of wise men, since they can only express judges when they’re not envelopped in the spider web of the feelings.

If only she had known how much I loved her, I must use the present tense, I love her. I’ve never felt something so powerful for a woman, I would have liked to share my life with her, to walk along the streets of the world together with her, to “face” the world together with her, and take her to the life… Live together, I don’t mean just in the same house, do not think that, when I say live together, I mean: share our existence of human beings.

She could not love me, I know. It seems a stupid Shakespeare was having fun, writing this tragedy, the tragedy of an impossible love. She could not love me, this is the reason I’ve never talked to her, I could not talk… but I am regretful… I am regretful for a life that I feel could have been a paradise and, I cannot understand why, has turned into hell. All wasted… And all I can do is crying desperately inside of me for all this wasted life, for this love aborted.

Sir, you do not know me. The Fate wanted you to be sitted beside me on this plane and I started telling this story… I don’t know why, maybe I trust you or maybe I need to tell this secret story to someone, because the act of narrating is what makes a story real, even if, as in this case, painfully real.

You haven’t answered my question, though. What should I do with this picture?

You cannot answer, you don’t know what to say… However, I can feel that what you think is that for all my entire life, even if time could ease to forget, I’ll have to share my life with two  deep, secret and hidden sorrows: the picture of her and the the love which has never  had the possibility to live.

I can feel your compassion, Sir. Sympathy is something rare in these greedy times. I’m thankful for this…

The plane has landed, Sir… I wish you luck and I wish that you could once meet someone like the woman I met, but I wish you also a different ending for your story, not an ending like this I am writing now…

Francesco Di Bernardo

Entropy (1)

A warm sun cradle the city into torpor … The row of Victorian houses is surrounded by an orange mantle … : overthere the sea, the English Channel …  then … France, but my eyes cannot reach it, maybe seagulls can…

It is a pictorial beauty … Yet something is missing …

Despite all my efforts … I can not reach that beauty …

Entropy is the measure of maximum dispersion of energy in a system. The scattered energy becomes waste, forever … and ends up in the landfill of the time …

Imagine a system: life, love, I do not know, anything could be a system … Imagine lavishing energy for that system … every day, without pause, without sparing … Lavishing the best in you … then imagine watching the wretched vision of the dispersion of particles that end up in the landfill of the time …

Entropy is a measure of beauty that is wasted, the best of life that is lost forever, without understanding the reason why … Entropy is a measure of chaos, of emptiness, of remorse and regret …

Francesco Di Bernardo

Under my sky: a chemical joy

Under this stupid sky

the same sad parade

with all those sad clowns

marching in those streets

made of emptiness.

Under this stupid sky

this life

made of waste

of dreams and lives

never been.

Under this sky

walking on this land

which is indeed

a landfill of emotions…

Under this sky

the same old land…

and the same chemical joy

This stupid wind

still blows.

This stupid rain

still falls.

The pendulum waves..

Everything’s in the right place

but I won’t be among those sad clowns.

I won’t sing anymore

those chemical feelings

and my stupid words,

a drivel indeed,

lost in the emptiness.

Francesco Di Bernardo

The road is alive tonight

A new night is rising…

Another  night,

with the moon, the stars and all the rest;

Yet you are locked in your room.

We are both locked in our rooms.

Around here is a wasteland of our dreams…

Though this night there’s a road that’s alive.

Go along it, tonight,

it will lead us wherever we want …

and … we will celebrate, we’ll get drunk …

Where are you? Locked in your world?

And I’m in those slums

where my essence gets lost.

I need to run away from here.

I need a revolution.

I’m waiting for it…

I’m waiting .. for you…

We will do it together …

But … where are you?

We, abandoned souls

in the forgotten suburbs of our

selfish and greedy world,

lose our essence…

We need to escape…

I want to take you away from here

I want you to take me away from here

I know a place…

There are hills, trees

and a deep blue sky…

we’ll look at the stars…

We’ll escape, tonight

We’ll go along the long

wild road

that leads to life…

Francesco Di Bernardo

Landfill of Dreams

A man and a woman on a dock, staring at the stormy sea. Swollen waves are crashing against the rocks. Light and insistent rain falls down on them…

We do not know where they come from. We do not know anything about their lives. We do not know their past. We do not know what caused them to be on this dock, in this autumn, stormy, day.

We do not know where they met each other for the first time, we do not know their feelings.

All that i can guess is that both of them are fleeing from something. How can i guess it? They stare at the sea in the way who is remembering something lost in a stormy horizon does.

Who are they? What are they thinking about? We do not know anything. It is impossible to read through the mist of their foggy thoughts.

Two fugitives, thrown by history on a pier on a stormy day.

They are close but they do not touch each other. I can feel their heartbeat but i cannot read their thoughts. If only the warmth of their hands could be combined. If only the sea could break the barriers of their lives.

But those are just the wishes of a romantic, lonesome, dreamer.

I cannot divert my attention from this scene… a man and a woman on a pier on a stormy day.

I can feel their desire to embrace each other: love that gains its freedom…

But those are just wishes of a lonesome man, too fascinated by romanticism.

Now i see the man coming closer to the woman, he whispers something. I can’t hear but i am sure it is something sweet. The woman smiles. Now the man talks, talks, talks… i can feel the excitement running in his veins. The woman is shocked, surpreised, dazed, confused… she looks at the sea. He caresses her face, then he looks at the sea…

I wish they could kiss each other. But those are wishes of a romantic, lonesome, dreamer. Life is not so simple.

No… i mistaken… they come closer… i can hear their hearts… Love defeats gravity… they are flying across the stars of a kiss…

 

 

 

No, it doesn’t work. I knew it… life is not like my dreams…

Every damn times i try to write a story, i end up writing romance… I wanted to write a realistic story… but again my damn romanticism…

I am wrong again… i cannot write…

I look out of the window of my room, stare at the rain… i’m sad and lonesome…

I take the sheet on which i wrote that stupid story and throw it away…

Another story wasted in the landfill of dreams…

 

Francesco Di Bernardo

The mist – part II: The dusk

WHERE I MET YOU

Where I met you
the moon cradles between her breasts
my rediscovered dreams.
Where I met you
is the perfumed silence of
the aroma of life.
Where I met you
each night sings,
the streets pulsating with love.

Where I met you
Is a place rediscovered
Where I met you in those streets
of spun gold, your shadow ploughed slowly
the spirits of old lovers.
Where I met you
A stream of water seemed to
caress your skin,
… gently without haste.

Where I met you
is a place suddenly
found after a long journey.
Where I met you
is a place that appears
only on the map in
my dream world.
Where I met you …
I carry you with me.

Where I met you
is a place inside me
where joyfully I turn
as a curious traveller
searching… for the place
where I met you.
That place drunk on new dreams
where I met you.
I would go back there with you …
To trace the footsteps along
those roads that lead to the
place where I met you.

A LITTLE SONNET

You are the radiant spring,
I am a lethargic creature
who smiles at the dawning of a new sun,
woken by the rays of your light.

You are like a pure brook from which I drink,
from which I can not bear to be deprived,
because you are the new horizon
of these new born eyes.

There is a flower called “Beauty”
in the place where you grew up.
A sad place, infinitely reflecting
the life that I see in your eyes.

GOOD NIGHT

Good night…
a boat leaves a foaming shore.
Good night..
when dreams have no horizons
Flowing through the night…slowly
Scorched between the greedy teeming hoards
without respect
Flowing through the night.

When all around is pointless vanity,
the mania of power.
When all around there is no respect…
close your eyes…..
like a silence between the inhuman cries.
Close your eyes and…
good night.

IN THE MORNING

‘Tis an ode,  this music of  the  night
that resonates, desperate
to be composed.

There are dreams at night.
Then in the morning,
not even a glimmer…
The silence follows the notes…

A force runs through the night:
daring to dream.
Then, only the unthinkable in the morning..

In the morning we sweat worries.
The morning  is a dust of dreams.
And the stars, at night almost tangible,
become chimerical
in the morning.

THE GODDESS OF THE NIGHT

The Goddess of the Night
with her lunar wake
brings silver to
the cold streets
damp with tears.
The Goddess of the Night …
… Sweet dreams …
fragments of life more real …

The Goddess of the Night
has swollen lips
to be kissed,..
has fire against the cold,
has hands to caress.
The Goddess of the night
makes us fearless …
The Goddess of the Night
sweeps away
the gray world
and gives dreams
to those who tire of nightmares.

The Goddess of the Night
gifts dreams
and then vanishes …
… Leaving a fecund flavour
of life.
The Goddess of the Night …
leaves a thrill
that breathes hope.

WILL YOU FEEL?

Will you feel
the wind
when I feel it
on my face,
floating in the emptiness?

Will you feel
a melody
when i play it for you
from places
afar?

You will feel
echoes that do not disturb you
while
I fall to to pieces.

You will feel
whispers:
my kisses ignored
that will be forgotten
in places never known.

WE WILL FLY

I will fly.
you will fly with me …
over fields.
Without the shadows of the armed.
Without borders.

We will fly away
from ancient tears and
sad prisons.
We will fly away
from all that
seems  important …
From all the hours that
seem to matter…
Others then,  will truly count.

We crossed
the same damned land
without sky.
We cried in the same
fortresses without air …
We yelled
against the hated cage.
We have dreamed
of the same nights.

We will fly, finally,
from our nightmares
into the infinite night
sweet revolt.
Away … we will fly free.

DISAPPEAR AGAIN

I saw
a face
in the wind …
The silence of the night,
then that sweet ghost …
will disappear with the dawn …

Only an echo …

How many worlds are gone!

Only an echo …
resounding
from the early solar darts …

Like a breath …
Like snow …
… There and then on …

slowly
I see a dream
perish …

at the doors of time
tapping….a sigh
They are not expected to
open …
Then gone …

Disappeared again …

2002/2003

Francesco Di Bernardo

Thanks to my editor Carolina Bode

The mist – part I: Voices from the brink

NIGHT OF TEARS

Night of rain,
night of lonely souls
wandering across
empty space.
Night of screaming voices,
night of distances,
Night of remembrance
dark and withdrawn.
In this nightmare night:
rain.
Rain … it is said
washes and purifys.
But the rain will not erase
the emptiness and pain
or sadness from this soul,
on this night
of tears.

MY RESTLESS CITY

Sweet, sweet dear.
Come
through the storm …
Welcome
to my rainy city.

Darling.
Here are the roads
you were looking for,
here is the fire that you craved …

Do not be surprised,
There are no masks in my city.
Here is the night that you longed for:
no pretences or acts: darkness.

Do not be shy now!
Here are the demons,
in my city of winter!

No sparkles or sequins:
Here is my night party.
Here is the music you were expecting!

Come,
throw off your mask!
This is the City of Saints
at the Gates of Hell!

Do you fly away, now,
to your beautiful landscapes,
to your place
of holograms?

Here is the whipping wind,
this is my restless city!

WINTER NIGHT

Silence …
Winter Night
travailed by the wind,
beaten.
Silence and stillness, on this
winter’s night …
A distant train whistle
and I am thoughtful:
in your silence wrapped.
Winter Night,
you look dumb and dormant
though you are
still alive.
You make yourself heard
through your silence,
you make yourself see
by the light
of the stars
that shine for you,
for who you live…
Night in winter,
so pleasingly
romantic and decadent.

TO NATURE

Oh!, nature: you prostitute!
you bequeathed me unhappy days
when I was a child
and deprived me
of my peer’s games

Oh! you confined my soul
to a heap of
putrid ordure.
Oh! I screamed my pain
but you were deaf,
preferring to follow your
bitter plans!
Never joy without pain, you gifted me!

Tears and anxiety:
were your awful daughters,
chosen as wives for me!
Prostitute. You laughed at me:
hear the cry of your child!

2/10/2001

Dreams of love
disappeared in a flash …
Suddenly a storm …
The pain clamoured …
and then the voice was broken,
lost in an empty existence,
a vain hope.
A story that repeats itself …
An expectation deceived,
a desire,
nourished with hope,
delayed…
and then discharged wretchedly
in the few lines of a book,
in which the usual story is told.
A bitter taste of a passion
aborted.
A pain that aches.

THE ANGUISH

Silence
filled
with bitter loneliness.
On the horizon
a gray sky
tearing in pain.
The hands of a clock,
embedded in empty walls,
pulse …
Yet  time stands
still in it’s bitter existence.
Nature in pain laments,
perishing even in the spring.
Anguish:
it seems to dominate
my life.

THE GUITAR

Look at the guitar
lying on the ground.
How many notes it had played for her:
in the silence of the night,
at dusk,
in the glow of the day.
But now it is still, silent.
Not a string vibrates for her,
not a note utters the guitar,
anymore.
The player is injured,
left alone to his fate.
No note will sound more!

It is there still: motionless, neglected guitar
pervading the mind of the troubled
player.

2000/2001

Francesco Di Bernardo

Thanks to my editor Carolina Bode

The portrait of emptiness

The office is cloaked in gloom, the only light source is the PC monitor. Mike has his legs stretched out on the desktop. He massages his tired eyes. The clock says 22:30. In a few hours the office will be alive with workers again.
He is the PR manager of an important company. Like a spider, he weaves webs and networks through his life.
The doors of opportunity open easily for Mike, with his easy smile, and his urbane demeanour; from the doors of power, to the legs of the young women who populate the company, and whose dresses often litter the floor of his office.  These are the symbols of his power.   And he exercises his power ruthlessly and efficiently.
Once appointed as manager of the office, the changes he made were felt profoundly. He bullied the old employees to force them to resign, then replaced them with people of his faith, all young and beautiful women, selected on the basis of aesthetic criteria and the willingness to engage in work and in worshipping their leader.

Outwardly flawless, perfect; Mike’s life is a sham. Nobody  sees him during his moments of weakness. His hands massage tired eyes; no one should be seen in this act. He gives himself the luxury of doing it only when the office is empty. No one can look through the cracks of the door to his life and see the mortal being.
Mike is a magician in relationships. His diary is his cauldron; always brewing a heady concoction of names, dates and meetings that somehow never fulfil their promise to quench his thirst.

Mike suddenly thinks of his wife. Though they have been married for five years, they are as strangers to each other.
Mike turns on the desklamp, and smells his hands which only half an hour before traversed the gentle landscape of his secretary’s body, a willing acolyte in his quest to feel alive.

At home he is welcomed by silence. His wife is already in bed. The phone rings, for a brief moment hopeful in the expectation that it might be a friend, with an invitation to dinner on Saturday night, or the desire for a chat.

As quickly as it came, the hope dies, in the realisation that he has no friends, his best friend is his job.

He lies near his wife who is pretending to sleep. They never speak. The rare times they are both at home, they are like two ghosts: invisible to each other, silent, indifferent.
Mike is tempted to encircle the soft hips of the wife, but withdraws his hand before he even reaches the warm, still, flesh . He is not attracted by her anymore. Once loved her, now he is merely polite. They have nothing to say, Mike’s life begins and ends within the walls of his office.

The next morning Mike wakes up in a  house built on silences and absences. His wife has already left but she had prepared the coffee for him.
Before leaving for work Mike notices a parcel wrapped in brown paper and old-fashioned string lying on the table in the living room. He opens it, breathing heavily as he unravels the string and tears the paper: it is a small exquisitely executed portrait of his wife, a nude. He suddenly remembers that when they were younger he used to say, laughing, that he should commission a poor starving artist  to immortalise her beauty.
Quickly he puts it in his briefcase and goes to work.

The office is now empty, Mike is finally alone, and he can absorb the portrait. Initially he is indifferent to the image of his naked wife, but after a while he begins to see her beauty. She disarms him with her beauty. Her body has been traced with the colours of love, and appears alive and warm, and wonderful. He imagines the passage of slow kisses and caresses on that body. A body that has loved, IS loved, and  lives. A supple body, a body admired. He understands that the artist must have loved that body. Suddenly the fire of jealousy flares in him. Mike has rediscovered the beauty of his wife. Her beauty once forgotten and discarded by him, is suddenly a rediscovered Atlantis.
He feels his love for her again. The painting has shaken him from his torpor of indifference. He leaves the office and rushes home. He realises  that his life contains nothing but empty and meaningless ephemera. Through his wife he wants to regain his own life. He experiences the thrill of redemption in his love for her.
He arrives home, this time jarred by the emptiness and silence.

On the kitchen table he sees a letter, it is from his wife. “I am leaving you to be with Alex, the artist who painted the portrait. I don’t know when I shall come back here, though I don’t think you will be too sad, you have your work:, your little world. I desire a little world of my own.”

Mike crumples the letter in his fist, he cannot open it again, or the words from the page will escape and become reality. The house is wrapped in gloom, the clock says 22:30. Mike takes off his glasses and slowly starts massaging his tired and wet eyes.

Thanks to my editor: Carolina Bode

Francesco Di Bernardo

The importance of being loafer (part I)

I look at the world from the perspective of a bistro table in Paris. It is a beautiful sunny day. From this perspective, the world has a shocking beauty. I have a book lying on the table, and with a nonchalant air I eavesdrop on the people chatting at the table next to me. They talk of Tolstoy.
I try to listen carefully because the conversation interests me greatly. Then I am distracted by the vision of a Goddess with long, smooth brown hair sitting at a table, her head bent to the  paper on which she is sketching a portrait in pencil.
I smile: in the world there is so much beauty that it seems a sin to waste it.
This is the essence of “loafing”: it provides a  space for our freedom in devoting ourselves to the discovery of beauty. Loafing enables us to develop a sense of our own identity in this world, harmonizing with the concept that this moment of our life is unique and unrepeatable.
The acolytes of productivity yield to the urge to burn every single moment of their lives in the act of working….
creating products, most of which will be useless, and even harmful to the environment.
The “hyperproductivism” and the accumulation of “stuff” is a disease of which workaholism is an evil symptom.
Workaholics waste  their lives in their obsessive committment to the  accumulation of wealth and things that they can not ever fully have the time to enjoy.
Workaholism is thesymptom of an escape from life, and of an existence that can only be lived in order to perpetuate this “endless accumulation”.

An exhausting desire for power, avoidance of relationships with others and with nature, workaholism is hubristic, generating a  desire for respectable immortality through the medium of work.

Workaholism is a symptom of a thanatic culture that worships suffering and duty, in denial of the human instinct for  joy and empathy… instead driving the individual to value fierce competitiveness, and lack of human understanding.

Loafers reject materialism, and are deaf to accusations of failure, because they are conscious of  life and taking the time to savour the beauty that surrounds them.
To be a loafer is to listen in order to synergise the elements of creativity and nature into UNDERSTANDING.

from the Moleskine notebook
Paris, april 2009

Francesco Di Bernardo

thanks to Carolina Bode for her assistance