Saturday Morning Epiphany

I was reading an essay written by François Serrano -the husband of my housemate's boss, who is studying Sociology at Birkbeck University of London- on Marx. And I realised that I am intimately a Marxist. Next step: reading the Capital. I believe that the economical/sociological analysis Marx undertook was incredibly lucid and true. The drift towards the meaningless of action, due to the specialisation and division of labour to an extent where anyone is replaceable, is something I'm experimenting right now.

I lost the sense of what I'm doing. I miss the 360° classes I took in my degree course in Verona. I miss the well-rounded overview on the issues. I miss the comprehensive attempt to explain things, the analysis from different perspectives. I miss the stimulating environment of my classes, the bubbling and lively conversations with my classmates before a glass of spritz. I find my daily routine meaningless, energy- and time-consuming, but lacking a purpose. I feel like I'm dragging myself ahead towards the completion of the Master without gaining much. Without feeling engaged. Without being passionate about anything.

The world of news is like this. A quick glance at the world, then write it, edit it, spread it and move on. It's like a factory processing of facts and opinions, that is getting more and more self-referential to my eyes. I miss the research, the in-depth investigation, the speculation, the discussion. I miss the passion, the passion above all. And reading the book on Italy makes me all the more sensitive to this lack. The passion oozes from the pages and smells like intrigue. My country pulses with emotion. It has a lot of flaws, but one of them is definitely not the lack of warmth.

I was discussing this with Marianne and Yass. The feeling we've got from being here in London is that the Big Smoke is like a whore. People come and go, they spend some time here, they make money and then leave. London is a disposable city. You exploit it and then you move on. There is nothing stable, everything is superficial, minimal. Relationships seem cold. "Italians are so emotional," said an American friend of mine once. Which is true. And we should be proud of that. London is a city with no ties, no links between the rushing splinters that are its dwellers. London is the realm of individualism and self-reliance, home to self-help literature and exaggerated Darwinism. It's no wonder that Marx has long lived in London. He must have seen the transformation of the individual in the character of the worker to a mechanism in the machine, before putting forward the concept of alienation.

Why are we doing what we do? I've always been ambitious, maybe too much for my real capacities. I've been dreaming instead of facing reality. Reality being that we just have one life to live and sometimes what gives us pleasure and happiness is not what we accomplish with our jobs, it's not in how we change the world. But how we influence the world around us. The microcosm we live in. That's why when I asked my talented teacher of history of arts why she was still living in such a provincial small town such as Pordenone she simply replied: "Because I like it." She had accomplished something on a small scale and was happy with it. She made us love the subject, and that was enough. She enjoyed knowledge and art for knowledge's and art's sake. She was a hedonist and a good teacher.

At the end of the day, the joy of living doesn't come from a mark at university, from the bylines you get, from the reports that are aired. Joy comes from the people you meet and talk to, from the relationships you establish. Aristotle said man is a social animal. And I believe so too. What distinguishes man from animal is language. Man, this communicating beast that needs relations to function and to make sense out of life (an ascetic would definitely disagree though). That's why I'm realising that and that bound me to my family, my home country, my home town, those ties that I've considered chains for so longwere not handcuffs after all, but roots. As in a tree roots provide nourishment and anchorage, so my roots give me life and emotional stability. And as much as I would like to climb up the trunk, the branches, the leaves to reach the light, I will always need the earth and the water from underneath to get the life blood running.