A PLACE FOR SIDEWAYS TRAINS OF THOUGHT
Last year I stood on a corner at a crossroads in Hanoi where a stream of motorcycles, scooters and mopeds was going east to west and another south to north and both flows were heading for each other. A crash seemed inevitable, unless one stream suddenly gave way. But as if it were a baffling... Continue Reading →
Every time I board an Alitalia plane to fly to Rome, where I live, I wonder who thought it would be a good idea to name the in-flight magazine after Ulysses, a person who took all of ten years to make it home.
Many years ago I spent several weeks in the Sahara desert. One part of the trip was a journey from Tamanrasset to the oasis of Djanet. About seven hundred kilometres as I recall. There was no road then, just pistes and only four or five places along the route where one could get water. One... Continue Reading →
This is the third time this has happened to me. I open the Rome bus app (Roma Bus), click on the tab to check the route of a bus (it was the 32 this time) and a screen appears with a map of a large part of North-West Africa. Are there secret bus routes running... Continue Reading →
In the age when the world was as yet new when early humans lacked experience, without the shrewdness of the present day, beneath a lofty mountain, with a peak that seemed to touch the sky, a people, whose name I do not know, lived on the valley floor who... Continue Reading →
In the 1990’s, when the grandfather of the current Kim was North Korea’s Great Leader, I spent a week in Pyongyang working as an interpreter for the Italian delegation at a huge conference which was attended by most of the world’s nations. I have decided to note down what I remember now, before the place... Continue Reading →
I recently came across these two short films by the French director Chris Marker (1921-2012) from Bestiaire (1990). The first one is a cat sleeping on a piano. And the second a series of owls, mostly swivelling their heads rather amazingly. Looking at the cat, I realised for the first time that sleeping can be... Continue Reading →
When I look at of the books in my library, the only thing I can remember in most cases is whether I have read them or not. Books in the second-largest category trigger one single anecdote or image and nothing else. One image which has been in my head for decades now comes from a book by Alberto... Continue Reading →
(Listen to the poem here) The train for Kandy leaves Colombo Fort just as the morning heat begins to swell. Inside the observation car the rusty fans begin to turn and tilt. We watch the platform where we stood for one, two quarters of an hour slide off our moving stage. And now we're ready... Continue Reading →