👉 Italiano Italy Flag

The Balance of one Line among many

In Cluj it is a pleasantly cool early August evening. But inside still no one has noticed. For several hours, everyone's faces have converged towards a single space, letting minds forget the world out there. One person, two, ten, one hundred. Stray Idler, with them, gets up almost devoutly, as if at the end of a sort of cathartic ritual. He applauds, they applaud. They seem to never stop, looking in the eyes of the artists a few meters away. Those of the interpreters seem on the verge of shedding a few tears. After a long time, they get their audience in front again, their well-deserved tributes. We missed them, of course, but they missed us too. Maybe even more.

In Cluj it is a pleasantly cool early August evening. Now yes, we realize that, definitively out of the bubble.

Just a few days earlier, my wife and I were on a minibus, which is a fairly common type of public transport in Eastern Europe. There are all types: cheaper, newer, with more or less rapid routes, with some more or less comfort. Well, I based my decision on the schedule. Our minibus is not the newest, but we start from the terminus and therefore we are lucky enough to be able to choose the seats. My wife and I sit directly behind the driver. For the rest, a girl and a lady in her fifties get on it. We are about to leave, when even the sixty-year-old man out there decides to join the group. If I had been distracted and hadn't noticed his entry into the minibus, he would have taken care of making himself evident. About every thirty seconds.

Coughing. Without mask. Theoretically mandatory.

But the cacophony produced would certainly not have brightened our trip. Therefore, in the following stops, other artists with silver hair have seen fit to join him in a fantastic guttural counterpoint, which has accompanied us almost to our destination. Inside, a game of airflows, almost all free to mate or quarrel. Outside, from the window, the splendid breading of a prosperous and careless summer. Which reaches us only through its light, also given the poor ventilation of the vehicle.

We have arrived. I get down. I walk away a few meters. I finally take off the mask. At least I wore it, yes. And I take a deep breath. I am stunned for a couple of seconds. I breathe again, this time without forcing the inhale. I open my eyes. When did I close them!? I'm ready.

That's when I realized I had finally drawn a line.

With a hesitant hand, a little crooked, subject to further oscillations. But I drew it. Or rather, only at that moment I formalized that I have already done so. Actually I think the process was more conscious than it seemed to me. I mean, I am still young enough, I have no major pathologies, I have a healthy lifestyle, without excesses. I try to keep a decent physical shape. But above all, I'm vaccinated. All this leads me to think that I have greatly reduced the risks to my health. Therefore, I know how far I want to push myself, what I will be able to accept and where I will prefer to step away.

But all of this is quite obvious. And more than obvious, it's personal. After all, each hand draws its line at the point in space where it is most at ease.

So this epiphany isn't worth much, don't you think? Because, in reality, I think the realization was another. I just had to put all the pieces together.

A couple of months earlier, in Croatia, I was offered a boat tour. The person who tried to convince me even talked to me in Italian, showing off his best sales techniques. Among the highlights, there would have been the possibility of unlimited drinking, buffet, and dancing on the boat for several hours of the day. I declined the invitation. Scared? Well, she certainly didn't stimulate me to go, as she might have hoped. But it is also true that dancing parties did not attract me even when I was twenty. So for me it was certainly not a reluctantly granted renunciation. But, evidently, with many others the technique had worked, otherwise the seller would not have played such a risky card.

Approaching temporally, I return to Transylvania. Just during my first visit to a church, I noticed that some worshippers approached one after the other to kiss a statue without any hesitation. Act that I would not have completed even ten years ago. This in an area with a low incidence of infections, it must be said, but also a poor vaccination rate.

Where do I want to get with it? Wherever I got, I did it late. Yes, exactly. My major awareness lies in a very simple point.

I drew a line. Good. Most everyone else has done it before me.

That man in the minibus certainly did. Did he get vaccinated? I will never know. In any case, he made a decision: he will behave on public transport as he always has done. So the worshippers in that church. Likewise, some tourists in Croatia will dance on the boats away from any indiscreet tracing. Others will remain cautiously ashore.

At this point in the pandemic, in August 2021, it seems clear to me that the positions have consolidated. There are very few elements that can change people's behavior. Vaccination was the last of these. The change is often used as an accusation by someone, but in reality it is a simple observation: many vaccinated people have begun to dare, to reclaim segments of life stored in the cellar. Like the many grandmothers who have returned to look after their grandchildren. Or the numerous friends who have started to gather for dinner again. Well, that's also why many have chosen to get vaccinated. Certainly not so that nothing would change.

But after this, what else can there be? The warnings? The mandates? The latter may work, for example the obligation to wear a mask in some places. Except that many will only respect the rule if checked and repeatedly asked to do so. They will not embrace it with conviction, they will not make it their own.

We are a set of lines, in a multidimensional space. It is simply naive to hope that all lines run parallel. Which are not even so straight, otherwise they would not be drawn by human hands...

Did you feel any line gushing out of the palm of your hand?

In Cluj it is a beautiful, warm day in early August. Stray Idler notices a billboard advertising a show at the opera. He and his wife, or rather their soul lines, decide they want to go. They don't buy a ticket online, they go directly to the theater box office because they want to ask for something first. The Covid19 rules? Not anymore, now it is no longer their first thought. Only the show evening will they discover that their temperature will be checked, that they will have to (not surprisingly) wear a mask, but also that the theater, at least as far as they have noticed around them, is working at full capacity.

But Stray Idler had a different concern: the dress code. Being there as a tourist and traveling light, he had practically nothing decent to wear. He asks if sneakers, jeans and t-shirts could be a problem, because he knows he won't be able to dress better than that. The answer is no. Well, he can get in, but...

“But I knew I'd be the only scarecrow in here. At least you are presentable." Stray tells his wife, noting that most of the other spectators have pulled their good suit out of the closet. For some of them, it is more correct to say that they believe they have.
"Okay, come on. It doesn't matter. You don't have to chat with anyone anyway."
"Fortunately!"
"Only..." his wife smiles "If they ask you where you come from, then what will you make the Italians look like!?"
“Hmmm, true. Well, in that case I'll say I'm French..."