👉 Italiano
2020: last Rift in Chiaroscuro (I part)
In this article, I do not intend to advise anyone to travel, nor I want to convince people to stay at home. Simply and generally, I will tell my experiences and share my thoughts, without the presumption of wanting to influence those of other people. I firmly believe that everyone can decide for themselves, through their own evaluation parameters. In addition, during my travels, I always respected all local restrictions and rules, on which I constantly tried to inquire beforehand.
I am going to step on the keyboard like a mad pianist would torture his keys. I'll probably also end up contradicting myself. Humanly.
Please don't ask me for consistency this time. I'll try, but I don't guarantee it.
ACT I
Me, me again. With a double meaning: yes, I am always myself, fortunately; no, I haven't become a better person. Me, me again.
It is the week before Christmas. A question has been buzzing in my head for days: travel again or, for once, stay still? I think it would help to know, in the meantime, if I will have the chance to do it or not. Better to say, I know that until Friday I will be quite free to move around Italy, but for the following week I don't know anything. I could already run into a red light starting from the first weekend.
While thinking about it, I realize that I am already on the train. It's a slow train, taken at the last moment, with no need for reservations. It cuts Italy in two, from the Tyrrhenian to the Adriatic, with the sweetness of a grandmother separating a cake for her grandchildren. It immerses first to one side, with precision and kindness, it forces a little when it meets the mountains and finishes the stroke of its rotating blade on the foam of the Adriatic Sea. But I will not stop there, I will continue along the coast to Rimini.
The days in December are short, but I still manage to get there in time to enjoy a couple of hours of light. Of light, not of sun. But it doesn't matter. I will spend the night quite close to the sea and, for reasons of proximity, the shore is the first place I go to have a look. Those of Rimini are rather famous beaches for Italians, they are practically a symbol of summer, as my compatriots (and not only) interpret it. I'm going to see how this beach looks in the winter, without sun, as dusk approaches.
The tide is probably very low at the moment, because the beach is huge, almost endless. It's not just the lack of umbrellas or other summer facilities that creates space. The sea has done its part, leaving seafood on the sand and calling someone to pick them up. Few people, in any case, as few are those who walk by observing a calm but detached body of water. My wife and I also stay only for a few minutes.
But more than the sea, it is the deserted bathing facilities that strike me. I don't want to give the impression that I am talking about abandoned places or ruins from antiquity. I know very well that next summer they will come alive with shouts and confusion again, when the hearts of the teenagers will beat crazily again. However, I feel it as an unwanted silence, almost commanded, as if it were the offshoot of those imposed by last spring, which still echo inside me.
"Let's get away from here, let's go to town."
In the center of Rimini, fortunately it is evening. The darkness, which covers the clouds, will be my great friend these days. I also immediately understand another thing: cities do not renounce Christmas, there is still a desire for lights and to somehow warm up a winter that in Italy is not very cold in terms of outside temperatures. But that freezes you from inside. Rimini is a city with a strong Roman imprint, with a series of testimonies of that antiquity.
But for me this evening is above all the city of Fellini and the movies in which he expressed his connection with these lands. I find them in the streets colored with people, before the law requires them to go back home. I recognize them in the smiles of the customers in the downtown cafes, before the law requires them to be closed. And on the walls of the Borgo San Giuliano I even meet his characters. His characters become my characters: in a game of emotional transfer, they also project my teenage memories, my villages. Those days which looked all the same, but all precious.
I still don't know what I'll be able to do in a couple of days, but I go to sleep satisfied.
In the morning I follow a beautiful intention with a colossal planning error. I'm going to Ravenna. The city is enjoyable, but it is above all known for the many Byzantine mosaics. Places of worship are open during this period, while museums are closed by law. I am completely wrong in the classification, considering that places like the Basilica of San Vitale belong to the first category. And therefore I cannot admire the mosaics that I had so desired to see again, hoping to appreciate them more than I had done as a child. Yes, I can always go around a city that still presents itself in its Christmas guise. But it is daytime and the clouds leave me no respite. I walk wearily through the streets of the center, enter some church, stop to drink a cappuccino in a very welcoming cafe. Somehow I carry on with the day until, while taking a picture of my wife, I happen to overhear a conversation between two young women.
They talk about the COVID-19 vaccine. At first I feel heartened, noting that people are taking an interest in a hot and important topic for the next few months. But then from their conversation I guess that they have prepared a nice cauldron of news: they have not understood that there is more than one vaccine coming, they mix their different characteristics, they reverse the distribution order, they raise doubts generated by their own contradictions. I'm not an expert either, but at least I try to inform myself (as far as possible). This thought should calm me down, but I don't get this effect. I get a little anxious and I think that already the next day I could find everything closed and therefore having to go home.
This is where I come up with a move of class that I didn't think I had in my repertoire. I take my smartphone, do a brief search, raise my head and propose to my wife "Shall we go to San Marino?"
ACT II
I fled abroad. It sounds incredible, but I fled overseas. And it wasn't even necessary because I immediately discover that, yes, there will be closures, but I will still have a few days of freedom. But now I'm here already. More than Italy, I think I have left behind a succession of rumors, contradicting news, 180° changes, even some twists. Reading the newspapers lately is very similar to following the football transfer market news in the summer. With the difference that the sports ones trigger at most some witty discussion at the bar or under the beach umbrella. Those of the last period, on the other hand, heavily determine our present and future.
I don't want to feel like a helpless background actor in a movie, I prefer to go back to being a spectator.
I'm on Monte Titano, at over 700 meters above sea level. I feel distant, especially mentally. I take a tour of the city of San Marino. Here too there are colorful Christmas lights, but maybe it's dinner time and people have already returned home. There is hardly anyone on the streets, I am lulled into the illusion that their chromatic predisposition has been reserved for me exclusively.
But it is a different way of being depopulated: here it's not by law, here there is a greater possibility of opening and movement. For example, bars, pubs and restaurants can be open until midnight. And that's how, after a few months, I find myself drinking a draft beer after dinner. It's not something I do often, but I still missed it.
Me, me again. Sitting at that pub table. With a dark draft beer, just the way I like it. Me, me again. Sipping it slowly. I feel like its liquid is propagating along my cells, like if I have been subjected to an injection of freedom.
But then I don't know what happens. I am not dead, nor in a state of unconsciousness, but for a moment it seems like I could observe myself from the outside. And I see a guy who happily drinks a beer. “That's not me. No, it can't be me!" No, reader friend, I'm serious. You too, please try to estrange yourself, try for a moment to cancel the context that this cursed year has imposed on us. I almost fled abroad, guilty only of being alive. I taste a beer in the evening, as if I got it in a somehow shady way. No, this is not fair. It can't be true, it doesn't have to be. A kind of desperation rises in me. Beer tastes even stronger: my taste buds say it's excellent, but my whole soul perceives it as inappropriate. It is the inversion of the sense of adequacy: no, I can't give up, I can't, I don't have to feel happiness for a moment like this. It would mean that I have lost, that I have accepted a concession from someone. Without having done anything wrong. I should have perhaps had another one to take away the hustle and bustle of my thoughts.
The next day I wake up with a pleasant surprise: after a couple of days, I finally can see the sun again. The sky is completely cloudless. But it is an appearance. It takes me little to notice. The clouds are there, many, dense. Although not very threatening. But luckily for me they are low, they do not reach the elevation of the city of San Marino. I try to look downstream: below me there is an expanse of cotton candy that rotates like a ring around the mountain. It displays a limited world, under which there is the unknown. And it would be better to not return to it. I really escaped, from the clouds and bad thoughts. I feel sheltered, almost unreachable. I turn my head upwards and discover a landscape to explore, a path to follow from tower to tower, along overhangs and slopes.
I was wrong. On the street I hear the conversations of the San Marino people. Until the day before it seemed that the Christmas measures to contain the pandemic would be very limited. But I am surprised to find that even here the situation can change at any moment. It seems that they will adopt measures very similar to the Italian ones for the holidays. I can't know the reason for this sudden change, but I like to hear what the locals think, may this be right or wrong. There are those who argue that San Marino should remain open as much as possible, because the small state will not receive support funds like Italy and other European countries. There are also those who say that the measures derive from strong pressure from Italy itself, due to the many agreements with the country that surrounds them. It doesn't matter what the explanation is, nor what the best decision would be. What matters is that I understand that I can never completely escape.
I'm nothing more than a trinket, hooked to the umbilical cord of a society recently lacking in opportunities.
Where will I go now? To Rimini? Or will I return to Rome? What is certain is that by law I only have twenty-four hours to move to a different Italian region. After that, the only medium-haul trip allowed will be the one homeward. We enter a cafe, waiting for the bus back to Rimini and we take some time to study the next move.
INTERLUDE
Reader, wherever you are, try to raise your head. Try to look around you, changing context. Try to listen to what you see, to dance to the rhythms of your soul. It's better to untie from these lines: your story is the one that matters most. But please be aware that you will be welcome, whenever you want to dive into my broken words.
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