Η Σκιά του Παζολίνι

 

We all drift silently in a world of shadows.
The right night, a place I know. The station hunkers in the heart of this city.
Without a history.
We are all without a history, because we are overwhelmed by it. By the lack of reason, in a civil society that is breaking up, forgetting everything.
The Romans were builders of roads. I, who am a foreigner, travel them. I seek a familiarity that I will not find, I already know that, but it is enough for me to seek it: It is an uncodified move, a journey with eyes wide open. Rome is a body whose strong legs and dirty feet are known to me, hands quick to steal money from your pockets, hired sex, soft, dark hair, muscles that slither, breath that stinks of cigarette smoke and cheap liquor.
Roads. The houses like people: They have a worn, dusty nobility, in this Rome, that yields to time unsparingly. And time, silently, crumbles bricks, molds pavement, brushes bodies with the same gentle, profound caress that I would like to have or experience.
Roads. A troublesome object that I do not see on the asphalt, and the car jerks. A tire absorbs the jolt, smashing what lies beneath it and continuing on its way: maybe a small life has ended, perhaps only a shattered object. At the end of life, the two are equivalent.
Roads. Where I ran as a child there was dirt and grass. I splashed about up to my knees, happy. That time is gone.
Roads. The Romans were builders of roads, but that time is gone as well.
Piazza dei Cinquecento, legs spread, lies there waiting. The fools, those who can’t see, think they can rape her, possess her. But in this dark, nocturnal cavity they are lost, devoured, chewed up and spit out as small white bones. I, on the other hand, know. I know the secret, and will not get lost.
The station is a door: From there you go or return.
The station is a lady covered in rags, with garbage for jewels. She laughs, deceptively indulgent and defenceless, hiding the gnashing of her teeth behind the trains’ clatter. She whispers promises she will not keep, but she is always a mystery because men believe in lies and let themselves be lulled by them. Rome knows all secrets, protects all sins. It is a museum of sorrow and shame, where the executioner laughs at the victim whose head he is preparing to lop off, with no remorse whatsoever and with unbounded craving.
The little garden is a place of bones. It is a city of secrets, catacombs, buried memories replaced by artfully constructed recollections. But here, in the little bone garden, it is impossible to lie. There are places where the city reveals itself. It can do so because nobody really looks, no one sees anything except what he wants to see.
But I know.
I am aware of the fraud. I revealed the secret. Still, I am not a danger, since no one will believe me. Rome ca do this: display the truth, make it her whore, and sell it to the highest bidder.
Ghosts crouch in the little bone garden.

We all drift along, silent, alone.
it’s like a breath I am lacking, that I continue to look for, driving around aimlessly, with eyes that see in the dark, matching profiles and desires. Desire fulfilled is a simulated death. And like every death, it examines the meaning of life retrospectively, transforming it into myth. Desire is the articulation of a solitude form which I will not emerge, except at the instant of an embrace. A moment, a caress, a body that responds like an object, in the unreasoning workings of sensation.
I have a powerful, expensive car. I pull up, knowing I’ve been spotted.
In Piazza dei Cinquecento, I drive around the heart, mine, that of the city.
At the drink stand, there’s a fat, sweaty man. He is an actor made for the part, as if in the entire city, in all the stands of Rome, there were only variations of that same role, in male or female versions. Performing spectres, full of life that I cannot think of as sentient, with open shirts, oil stains on their undershirts, hands gripping the glass, squeezing the life out of it before handing it to the customer. And the customer, a young man with heavy cigarette breath, his curls straightened to look more gorgeous and his beard pointlessly shaved to make him appear older, takes the glass without bothering to be polite. Rome is not polite. Rather, she is a slut, astute and well aware of her urges, who when caught with her hands in the till absolves herself by displaying her illustrious medals: Nero’s crown, the Colosseum’s stones, grass, cats, the Pope, political figures. They have all lied. All of them. Including the cats.
I have an expensive car, that is known here, which does not necessarily make me one of the family. I am the rich uncle: My eccentric manias are tolerated as long as I bring money. My gaze is not heavy. It skims, in order to procure what I need: targets with curly hair. Shoes with a wedge, to appear taller. Sweaters tight across the chest, in colours like small suns in the night. I wonder what life drifts through those heads. But it doesn’t matter to me. It really doesn’t matter to me. The thoughts are mine. The body I look for elsewhere.