For My Eldest Brother

Rome at dawn. Click for attribution and to enlarge

A man-to-man thing, after an earlier post on how different women and men can be (see the original in Italian.)

ψ

Rome, April 2004. 6 o’clock of a cold but bright morning.

I am looking at the Roman rooftops, sitting in my terrace. It’s almost dawn and I’m cold.

You know, I had two sisters and 8 female first cousins and I met him when we were 3-4. He therefore became my eldest brother.

My Eldest Brother

I have heard him on the telephone the night before after many years of silence.

So now on my terrace on the first shred of paper I found I’m quickly jotting down the words I have in my head for fear of forgetting them.

Words thrown spontaneously – and a bit savage too perhaps.

1950s-1960s remote, antediluvian stuff?

What can I say, we lived in immediate post-war Italy. Judge for yourself.

My 'brother' at 13. We had the same colours, green eyes and blonde hair, but he was blonder. They took us for real brothers

For My Eldest Brother

My friend, companion of happy adventures
during the prime of life,
at 6 in a Roman morning,
a cold breeze running over the rooftops
of a pagan city,
you, companion and brother,
I here come to celebrate
as in an ancient rite,
a pencil splashing words
rapidly on a page,
words alive, unlaboured.

You taught me to enjoy this life,
its primordial side and strength;
I, more fearful,
brought up in a world of women,
was taught by you manly ways,
the male attributes, or nuts,
that you always had,
and have: do not forget!

Oh fuck, male attributes,
may the Lord be thanked!
In a world full of empty
jaded and phony people,
you always were an example,
my friend and brother,
of strength and courage
much more than my father.
You – and my mother’s brothers
so dear and much much loved.

And my father,
who meant a great deal,
from him I took other things.
But you were so much to me.
One more year is a lot
when one is so young,
It helps to establish a primacy
that I always have recognized you.

And here, on this small terrace
of the city of Rome,
in front of the ancient temples
of our primogenial culture,
I honour you,
my eldest brother;
I celebrate you, that primacy still recognizing
not solely because of age.

At this point red wine I would drink
(but it is early in the morning…)
the full-bodied red Tuscan wine
of our wonderful winter evenings
in our countryside – do you recall? -
when, roasted meat over embers
the Dionysian pleasures
of meat and wine you delivered
and of the women
taken by the hair
and gently, strongly,
tenderly loved.

The breeze is now warmer.
Words begin to fail.

I only hope,
dear friend, my strong companion
and eldest brother,
to have conveyed to you
these memories, these emotions
during abrupt awakening
after a phone call.

[Translation by Geraldine]

[This sweet, generous Celtic woman
is not responsible for the 'bad words'
that are mine since how
could she understand them
plus Google translator
doesn't provide help on that]

 

My friend at 22 with his dad Michele. They had a very strong bond. While G's mum was Tuscan his dad was from the South, which meant a lot to both of us

Note. I had talked to him the night before on the phone, as I’ve said. We hadn’t seen or talked to each other since years.

That is probably why I woke with a start at 5:30 am with my head so full of that joy – the years of infancy and adolescence, any reader knows them: we spent them together in the Arezzo’s countryside every single summer of the 1950s-1960s .

Joys (and sorrows) but all lived with exuberance and almost violent intensity.

Arezzo and its country. There's a third friend and we were like the 3 Musketeers. Shot with my little cellular Nokia E63. Click to zoom in

He had a house across from mine but when we first saw each other over the wall (I was alone, he with his grandma, a gentle lady as of from an old-time painting, we had 3-4 years) we did not like each other at all. He looked prissy and too well-groomed to my taste.

Then one day his mother took him to our house for an official visit (the two mums were close friends). Disturbed we were a bit so we began to throw pebbles at a can placed at 10 yards from where we were on a stone table, just to kill moodiness. He was a year older.

The throwing-pebbles-at-a-can thing triggered ALL. We have never left each other since then (apart from a few intervals.) Thing being our brains knew how to fly together, and we laughed and laughed and we laughed out loud. His mind, odd and humorous, was rich with ideas.

In the picture below I am 18. From then on we had the first break. A long one.

Man of Roma at 18 (1966.) Our friendship was about to go on a hiatus. Pauline O'Connor, my piano teacher, had just arrived. Magister will also, but in 1972

Now that we are old (or almost) we feel even closer and there won’t be intervals any more.

It’s this desire we have to stay close at the end of a marvellous adventure we did begin together, in the company also of the loved ones from his side and from my side – who make our life more human (and who console us of its miseries.)

Related posts.
Read 2 of our first adventures with the ‘other sex’:

Sex and the city (of Rome). Season II.1

Merry Christmas! Great German Music With the Humour of Mr Bean. Enjoy

The British comedian, actor and writer Rowan Atkinson. Click for credits and to enlarge. GNU Free Documentation License

I once wrote that good food will not be missing in our discussions, together with good music and plenty of delicious wine.

Ok, wine, I have in my hand, a good Primitivo di Puglia.
Good pasta, I’ve just had, Spaghetti al pomodoro con pecorino.

And music?

Watch and listen to THIS.

[Felt like paying a little tribute to the German culture and to the British humour - delightful but irreverent sketch, Paul notes below in his comment. Pretty nice contrast the Germans and the British, I'd add, so many little neuroses dividing this petty though adorable Europe...

... too much wine ...]

Ψ

**Merry Christmas to ALL of you, dear readers!**

Sex and the Search for a Method

I am preparing a post on method.

Why?

1) Because I am a passionate dilettante philosopher who is not content with just blogging. I need a method in my blogging.
2) I had promised a method post, so it is very Roman-like to keep my promise (well, ancient Roman-like, contemporary Romans having lost many of the old virtues.)

Truth being the method governing my posts keeps bugging me since I started this blog, and, needing to process my ideas a bit I propose this posting sequence to my readers:

I) a post as a preparation for the method post (ugh!). It’s the present post. I need it for clearing up my mind before the real thing.

II) A post on SEX, as a break. It might help not to lose ALL my readers because of my philosophical manias.

III) The real thing, i.e. the method post.

IV) A second post on SEX, to beg for additional pardon, thus ending this sequence in full glory.

Ψ

What do you think? Will you pardon me? Will SEX help?

Rhetorical questions not expecting answers let’s put some preparatory ideas together and that the trip begin!

Game of Ideas with Hidden Links

1) We will touch upon questions from numerous points of view, as if for each topic there were like a forum of different positions in the writer’s mind.

2) A thought in progress where who is writing is gradually clarifying his ideas. Such ideas might contradict one another because the writer is constantly reaching new (and sometimes opposite) perspectives, which could baffle the reader but also help her/him understand how complex things can be.

3) A game of ideas then, with anecdotes and facts only apparently deprived of connections. Such connections (mental links) will sometimes be explicit (said) or implicit (unsaid,) which should bring the reader to make her/his own connections, namely towards creative non-passive reading / thinking (which of course may imply total disagreement with the writer.)

Ψ

Well, at least Magister was very successful in this game. But Magister is Magister.

Writing vs Thinking

Writing, thinking, clarifying,
striving to sort out thoughts
in ways so “clear and ordinate”
and comprehensible.

This, many years ago, Magister counselled
for the good education of the mind.
Beloved Magister,
writer, philosopher, educator…

Ψ

Writing in fact is a stern discipline linked to the activity of thinking. Writing teaches us how to think in ways so clear and ordinate. It obliges us to. Reason and word (word = discourse, written or oral) are actually only one word in Greek: logos. Awkward prose or clumsy oral-written reports often reflect muddled thoughts.

As for myself the problem is more complicated:

• writing in a foreign language makes the task challenging and

• we have this fatal attraction for digressions, for the free wanderings of the mind and all its unrestrained associations, ie for chaos (something Magister definitely wouldn’t condone.)

We like both sides of the moon – the dark indistinct and the crystal-clear. We appreciate discipline, clear argumentations, polished sentences, but we also dig lush jungles of words – in literature & thought we having impressive examples of both.

• We get nourishment and peace from the perfect equilibrium of Western Classical Music: Mozart, Boccherini, Clementi, Haydn and young Beethoven. Or Italian Opera: Verdi, Bellini, Donizetti etc. wrongly called romantic, since Italian Opera is classical in its nature (and even Puccini is like that.) Interesting how Italians never totally absorbed Romanticism, their classical heritage and almost inborn sense of taste (and grace) being too tenacious (read here.)

• We also get a lot of pleasure from insane Western Romantic music (older Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler, Scriabin etc.), maybe because of the Celtic and German blood in us  possibly engendering (a myth, ok) some excess.

Thus said, will our so-called philosophy be muddled? Will readers think we are crazy? We really have no idea, dear readers. We really have no idea at all.

Note. We just gave you an example of digression + bizarre association. The concepts of writing and thinking were linked with music, two totally different spheres of the human experience, but the connection appears evident to me.

We do this a lot. We associate a lot, but we understand it can confuse the reader. See an example of these free associations in the post Relax & Creativity.

Weakness or Strength?

My friend the Jurist told me yesterday: “Why the hell are you worried about this roving of the mind? This is only a blog, it can be crazy.”

True, but the thing is I am a bit ambitious (to a certain extent, or I will fail). I am actually attempting a research. A research from a man-in-the-street-of-Rome point of view, though nonetheless a research. Thence this roving tendency could turn into a weakness (or a strength?)

Are we capable of carrying out such research? Who the hell knows, but we take the chance.

A Philosopher in Every Man

Magister used to say that every person is a natural born philosopher, that is, everyone, during the entire course of his/her life, keeps building a constantly evolving grid of concepts & connections among them. This world vision or Weltanschaung (read here) enables us to comprehend the surrounding world (from Latin comprehendere, cum + prehendere = put together, grasp, or insert into a grid). Comprehension of the surrounding environment – it implies also better interaction with it, the two things going together.

Ok, if this is true of every man (that he is a natural born philosopher,) and, if I am a man, which I certainly am, I should somehow hope to be able to transmit my Roman feel in a sort of organized way. Is that true?

In principle yes, ALL though depending on the degree of discipline, education and availability of time I dispose of.

A Helping Hand

1. What’s the difference – one might ask – between a philosopher on one hand and a peasant or a man of the street on the other hand? No difference, only level of training, skill, specialization may differ. The philosopher is a pro. Which doesn’t mean the non-pros must shut up. I will not.

1. We should all learn to think (and write) more effectively because it can help us greatly to make our days and guide us in the fundamental choices of our life. The more efficiently we think, the happier we live, classical measure though being vital here: if we think too much and act too little, we can get neurotic.

This blog intends to give a helping hand to those who think self-improvement is important (and possible.)

Reason? Not All

Ideas are now taking shape a bit as regards my future method post. The next writing will though as promised be devoted to SEX, SEX, SEX NOTHING BUT SEX (though in the Roman way.) In the meanwhile, some additional patience pls.

I can dominate my chaotic mind with control, writing, striving for some order. But chaos is still there; non rational things, disorder, even entropy, are still there – in our minds, in the Universe, who the hell knows: I need to delve into what the guys at the Third Culture are doing, or I’ll say a bunch of stupidities.

What I do know is we cannot live in disorder. We need to discipline ourselves most of the time.

But not all the time.

We also need excess, spring breaks, fun, Carnivals, Saturnalia – a Roman festival (see picture below) where rules were broken, reversed: masters became for example slaves and slaves masters.

The Romans were big gurus in the art of living. They ruled the world with humour on their faces and tongues (sometimes crass tongues, to say the truth) and not with mystical seriousness. They faced the most dreadful tragedies with utmost courage but preferred comedies.

Reason and order are not all. They can lead to horrors if taken too seriously, a great lesson from the non ideological Romans, that the people from colder climes do not seem to have quite understood. Taking things too seriously can call disaster. All the promised perfect paradises, all the Utopias – they brought despair most of the time.

Let us then have fun also! Carnivals are made for that! Look at Rio in Brasil, look at our Spanish cousins! – an economic success although Madrid has movida every night!

Good g-o-d-s, how can I finish this never ending blabbering?

Maybe with Coelho‘s beautiful words, from his novel Zahir:

Let us have some respect
for our life on this planet..

Italian version