Hi Readers

thanks for joining tonight!
It was a really nice evening.

Women readers: you missed the first TAB session when men where more than women :)

have a great time and see you in two weeks

Davide

“Now you could say to me: “I know you were coming”” Orpheus said while coming in through the half-open door of Don Pasqua.
“I knew” replied the priest without turning and keeping on to pound some herbs. “But I wouldn’t have said that not to give myself airs, and then ...”
“Then?”
“Not to take out from you the conviction of paying me a visit freely.”
“So do you still believe in freedom?” asked Orpheus closing the door behind his shoulders and picking up one of the cats which came close to him.
“Of course, knick-knack. Otherwise how could I believe in happiness: if it was us to make it, to be able to make it, what would it matter to us?”
“So do you believe in happiness as well?”
“With your consent. But take a seat. And forgive me, I keep on to pound my lettuce.”
“Mr. Lonati is feeling better” Orpheus said while sitting down. “In few days he will be able to stand up”.
“I’m pleased of that. But I was sure of that. Please, say hello to them when you see them. Happiness, we were talking about: why? Don’t you believe in it?”
“Happiness?” Orpheus said with annoyance, worrying that the conversation was going to be academic and boring. “A word like many others.”
“A word … yes, you are not wrong. Happiness passes through the words, you are right, it stays inside them, it’s them making it. But it’s us who own the words, isn’t it? Then?”
“Then, I don’t understand”
“I try to explain to you. Words: did you never think about them? We are using them hurriedly, because we need them: like the cutlery, the fork and the spoon; but we are not going inside them. By spending them, we are not getting – how can I say? – we are not getting the intention, better: the hope with which we pronounce them. You see, little bush: words include a kind of … friendship for us, or, if you prefer, they hold their desire to help us; and in the most uncomfortable cases, they contain a small conspiracy against the adversity of their own meaning. But all of them express the same tension to the positive, to the human happiness indeed. Didn’t you understand anything, did you?”
“I didn’t”
“I’ll explain myself with some example” Don Pasqua said while putting his herbs to cook into an infusion. “Choose a word, randomly, the one you prefer”
Orpheus shook his head, in a sluggish gesture of giving up.
“So” the priest kept on, looking around. “Door. Is it ok “Door”? a short time ago you pushed that door, to come in and see me. Well: why do you cross a door? Behind these doors you are always going to look for some good thing, otherwise you shouldn’t cross them. Maybe it’s a small good thing: coming back to take the hat you forgot; or maybe a great good thing, I don’t know: seeing again your mother after a long trip … (you see I chosen the thing more uninterested). You could say that this is related to the thing, but what has the word got to do with the thing? Eh no! the word has got a lot to do with it! The Thing is deaf, passive, it stays what it is. The word instead is able to absorb the feeling of optimism you have toward the door, your –how can I say?- your hope into the doors. In those syllables “door” it is included the will of the man, the sense that the man gives to that thing: that is always the sense of a better life in front of him, even if who talks is a pessimist. In every word, think about that, there is a piece of the heaven, lost and suddenly at the same time reconquered.”
“If I understand …“ Orpheus replied.
“If.. Stop, my cherub. You said “If”. This word, before you go on to make your sentence, already means: if things are going this way, then I’ll have to do that way to … why? To get the happiness, always. If I fall in this ravine, I break my head … then I’ll try not to fall. If …I find the right words, I persuade you about my theory of words: and we’ll enjoy that together. All the words defend us from the evil, all of them. The most disagreeable ones as well. Sick. Take the word “Sick”. What does it mean, beyond the dictionary, in the boost of good future we give it? It means someone who aims to be good again. And “Old”? a person who was young: memories, quiet… a man who expects protection and consolation from youths. And “enemy”? A degenerate friend that we’ll bend with the force to peace and to the definitive friendship.”
He was talking with short verbal runnings and illogical pauses, always stirring, bent like he was talking to his leaves. “Every word, even unfavourable, wears, inside the love for life of the one who pronounces it, its own antidote. Let them work, believe in them and they’ll drive you back to the happy end.”
Orpheus was nodding with ironic patience: “Wonderful. I thought you were a herbalist, not a philologist.”
“Words cure, like the herbs. You seem convinced. What do you think about?”
“I think you are mad”
“Mad? You said “mad”… what’s “mad”?”
“A man who has recomposed the world in his own truth” Orpheus agreed smiling “and enjoy it … madly”
“you make fun of me, my hedgehog! But there’s no escape: the good is destined to have a definitive prevalence over the evil.”
“Why?”
“Because the good it’s us that we want it; the evil no, we suffer it. All the life is mobilized, in every moment, against the evil. And the words, if you followed me, are the lights of this battle, of this universal wish.”
“Wish… but you are satisfied with wishes?”
“Oh big head! To me it’s enough knowing I wish something to be sure I’ll get it, it’s mine and it is destined to me. Which other could be the sense of my wish?”
“Old philosophy of hopeless. And the word “death”, Reverend, which “antidote” or “Happy End” does it wear in your dictionary?”
Don Pasqua stopped the wooden spoon with which he was stirring in the cauldron and, after a rascally look to Orpheus, he overlooked the cloud of smoke that was going out from the stove. He smelt for a long time the fragrance that was invading the room.
“how good is this, smell. “Death”, were you saying? The death is a grammatical mistake, a misunderstood word, always incorrectly defined in the dictionaries. These leaves, you see, are dying as leaves; at least, this is what they seem: a swill. Do you know what I’m making with them? An infusion. I free them from their uselessness. Who was caring about them when they were blades of grass in a meadow? Melted in this bottle, unrecognisable, invisible, they cure the rheumatism of Giacomino, the sacristan. It’s the same for everything, you know my bunch? This is the bugbear that men call “Death”.”
“I know this kind of things, Reverend. “if the seeds does not rot in the ground the ear will not be born”. “Vita mutatur, non tollitur…” but please, follow me: if I am a bee or a bumble-bee and I love a tuft of flowers the way I’ve always sucked it between the grass, and someday this tuft gets pulled out to make an infusion, an infusion that will cure Giacomino… I don’t suffer rheumatism, I’m just a poor bee that does not find anymore its flower to suck. This is the death, Don Pasqua: the death is always someone else’s death.”
The priest turned off the stove with decision. He turned his profile of foetus and he became the other one, the face of a sacred toy; he got near to Orpheus and, staring at him tenaciously, laid his hands on Orpheus’s head.
“is it long time that it happened to you?” he whispered “I know, holy heart, I felt the same. Everything stays like unanswered. It’s the trial, the time of darkness.”
“and then?” Orpheus asked.
“Then, outside of the time, they work for us, still for us: they give back everything to us.”
“Everything, but them”.
“It’s the way it seems, I know. Now I should talk you about the catechism, but I don’t. and I’ve been forbidden
giglio6973Oct 5, 2007 @ 02:16