OldCharlie's: Old CharliePost 5As we go on through this bl...

OldCharlie's: Old Charlie


Post 5


As we go on through this bl...: Old Charlie Post 5 As we go on through this blog exercise I grow more and more conscious of the huge quantity of intangibl...

Old Charlie

Post 5

As we go on through this blog exercise I grow more and more conscious of the huge quantity of intangible treasures hidden behind the banality of our everyday life. The main reason of this hiding is due, in my opinion, to the fact that we get accustomed to the good and we hardly notice it any more. Thus we are used to our mother’s love and attention, and we fully realize the gift only when we lose it, when she dies. 

In this way you prepare yourself to be losers forever!  Why not to learn how to timely recognize the hidden good around? What about attaining the ability of those super-scout reconnaissance pilots who can spot targets anywhere on a large, apparently desert land under the wings of their aircraft?

Lo! Don’t look for a cathedral, in the desert. A simple blade of grass is all we need to find out. Let’s stop repeating the praise of that Albanian nun who did extraordinary things for the poor in Calcutta— let me remember with you an old friend of mine, Mr. Nelsen, a cobbler, a self-content man who all his life did nothing more brilliant than cobbling hundreds, perhaps thousands of worn shoes! But he did it asking for a really modest reward, and he smiled to everybody so he had a huge crowd of happy clients … another friend of mine was a priest, and in one of his Sunday sermons I remember having heard him say that the Lord is not expecting great things from us: just doing well the ordinary things that we are supposed to do— and if our job is to peel potatoes, and we peel them well, He is happy with us not less than with those who do grand things and their life is celebrated by the media.

Now it is September, and Hildegard came here in Zoagli with me because our son Andrew— well maybe you did read on my frequently mentioned book Fun for the Crippled in Paris that this son of ours is the one who didn’t marry and lives with us as an unrepentant bachelor … when he stays with us— but often he is in Rome with his job of software expert, and sometimes, as now, he loves to have some days off here in our cottage on the seaside near Zoagli, some forty kilometers from Genua. It’s a lovely place on the Riviera, in view of Portofino - just in front of us, it seems painted in watercolors as it emerges from the waves of the bay - and everybody says it’s one of the most picturesque spot in the world.

So we came here to stay a few days with our son. And I come always willingly too, of course; what’s the use of me remaining alone in Torino? No use! I can carry here my laptop computer and waste my time on it precisely as I could do in downtown Torino. (I suspect this is the widespread opinion held by my closest relatives, who tolerate this writing mania of mine with a deep sincere feeling of compassion).

Well, dear readers-and-friends, not everybody shares everybody’s tastes, and though the view of Portofino is probably a pleasure for all, the company of the people we find here is not necessarily a source of happiness for all, and particularly for me. La signora Ripalta Grosso Lanza, for example, though greeted with joy by Hildegard, is not at all an attraction for me, and when I learn that she is in this place while we are here, all the delight caused by watercolor Portofino’s view disappears.

Alas, in her immense benevolence and kindheartedness Hildegard feels obliged to invite the Grosso Lanza lady to share some afternoon hours with us, with the pretext of the tea party, so I am condemned to some exercise of desperate, pointless endurance of her conversation – as she calls a sort of asphyxiating monologue, a list of recently visited Seychelles and Caribbean locations, along with a punctilious catalogue of her most recent reading … ahah, dear friends!  She believes to amaze us citing as instance of her recent literary “discoveries” … the Buddenbrooks!!

Yes! And perceiving my odd grimace of surprise, she felt necessary to help my ignorance adding, in a low tone, “You know, that book by Thomas Mann”. Oh boys!

She could never suspect that we had read her recent “discovery” long time ago, along with Der Kleine Herr Friedemann and even that we saw the Buddenbrooks in an Italian TV sequel-film in 1971, with Nando Gazzolo, Valentina Cortese, Paolo Stoppa… who else?

Oh boys! Oh girls! She drives me mad, the conceited ass.

She loves to tell again and again how she enjoyed Dominicana island for its sea landscapes and old churches, and yet she knows nothing about Rafael LeonidasTrujillo Molina… his Rectitud Libertad Trabajo Program, for which he was granted by our Honourable President of that time his Gran Cordone al merito della Repubblica Italiana on July 31,1954— ahah, dear friends ... Sometime later the man lost the favor of his American tutors, was suddenly labeled a felon and was shot on his chauffeur-driven car by a rifle-toting hired killer (who turned out to be Charles Calthrop in Frederic Forsyth’s best-selling novel The Day of the Jackal, impersonated by Edward Fox in Fred Zinnemann’s film). Our pedantic bluestocking knows nothing about all that. She even never heard that Santo Domingo, the capital of the republic sharing the island with Haiti, was called for many years Ciudad Trujillo, to honor the dictator. She just talks and talks and talks … You can imagine my sigh of relief at the news that she leaves.

JJJ

Today is October 1 and this afternoon I brought Hildegard to the Auchan shopping center in Venaria, a small town few kilometers north of Torino. As usually, she went alone inside the large building and I waited outside in my old Punto car (why on earth should I plod along inside there, limping with my stick?  It is so good to stay sitting in the immense car parking): there I can listen through my shrill-and-woofer loudspeakers to the symphonies broadcasted 24 hours a day by program FD5 of our city FM-radio, and switch to the car-CD with the music of Charles Trenet or Edith Piaf when the symphonies transmitted by the radio turn out less catchy, you know, Alban Berg and Stockhausen are a bit too difficult for my primitive tastes.

I love to stay in that huge parking place: there is room for innumerable cars, rows of trees cast a pleasant shadow in warm days, and a giant green meadow with wild flowers offers on its borders fantastic possibilities to halt and rest … I like the place.

While sitting in my car there on the border of the spacious meadow, I saw in my rearview mirror a white minibus-van, you know, one of those vehicles that have six or eight sitting places inside. It came pretty close to the back of my car, and pulled up there.

Having nothing much to do, just listening to the music, I kept observing the scene in the rear-vision mirror … so I saw the driver jump down, opening a slide door on one side and drawing out a sort of double rail on which he let roll down a wheelchair. Yes, a wheelchair, main focus of my attentions, in these last months of mine! Meanwhile a group of people had emerged from the van and circled around— when I turned again at the rear mirror, few seconds later, a big man was sitting on the wheelchair and a sort of procession started to unwind. First the wheeled invalid, pushed by a youth, then a lady walking arm-in-arm with two boys, and finally a young man having a little girl at his arm. Proceeding toward the shopping premises they passed near my drop window and I noticed clearly that the young boys and the girl showed neatly their Down syndrome traits and the accompanying lady— Chapeau! Give praise where praise is due.

As soon as they were gone I got out of my Punto, reached my stick on the rear seat and waddled to the van driver who was doing something under his engine bonnet.

< Excuse me – I said – I believe to know that lady who is helping in your group. Is she perhaps a Mrs. Grosso Lanza?>

                                                              

<Sure she is. Comes every other day, she is a part-time teacher, something like that. She particularly cares for mongoloid children; she can listen to them for hours, even though it’s hard to understand what they say. She says it is important that they feel somebody is listening>

So, that’s it: I suddenly felt I am a brute, my friends. Unable to recognize the good hidden around us, and that’s the answer to my question at the very opening of this post: Why not to find out how to timely recognize the hidden good around? 

Hmm! The problem probably is how to learn to be humble enough to accept reality, i.e. that other people are worth of consideration, even though at first sight we do not appreciate; much more, we ought to pick up from everybody, there is no lesser-level human, everybody has something to teach us, including the children and the so-called uninformed. It’s our stupid pride that makes us blind and deaf. And now I see that lady is right in saying that everybody needs to feel that somebody is listening.

Carletto Scara

Old Charlie's post 4

The stupid (called “differently clever” by the politically correct) are around us in great numbers – they are the majority of human kind: in fact, as remarked so clearly by Jerome Klapka Jerome, in his Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, everybody who doesn’t share our personal judgment or opinion is inherently cretinous. Thus, apart from a minimal minority of close friends of ours, the whole world is inhabited by morons.

That is not, per se, a bad thing: most of fools are gullible, and this might be a benefit for the real intelligent, who can take advantage of credulity and naiveté. Just think of the millions believers in the most popular utopian faiths and persuasions, and the business built on their money contributions. Apart from that, morons are ever-green sources of amusement for the real clever who have time to rejoice observing them.

The case is different when stupidity is associated with arrogance and presumption. When the fools are bamboozled by maîtres-à-penser into the use of violence to foster ideals of a better future for the world, we are on the verge of impending disaster, dear friends.

Such craze erupts cyclically here and there in the world; some places endure typically long infectious seasons (think how long it took for some pseudo paradise to get rid of, in certain countries in Eastern Europe, in the twentieth century – one whole generation has been robbed of any chance of freedom, huh?) and even my country experienced for some decade the joy of being shepherded by arrogant fools convinced of doing their best for the Good of the Country and of the World at large.

Let me introduce you to TestadiPera, who used to be the corporal in charge of the platoon I belonged to, in my teens. You know, seventy three years ago the young boys of Germany were enlisted in the Hitler Jugend (that was the name of Nazi Youth— they were trained to flawlessly march carrying a toy copy of the Mauser model ’89 rifle, to  shout “Sieg Heil” at present’ arms and to perform a peculiar parade gait, called Goose-step: it consisted in launching the stretched left leg up to the height of your stomach, then thunderously hitting the ground with the left foot and then repeating immediately the exercise with the right leg.

We were the Mediterranean allied of the Nazi, and we were compulsorily recruited in the Opera Balilla (our southern version of Nazi youth) we were trained to march carrying a toy copy of the Mannlicher-Carcano model ’91 carbine— called musket by us (thus we were labeled musketeers); we had to shout “A noi” at present’ arms and we had to perform the Goose-step too, though we called it “Passo Romano” in sign of deference to our glorious Ancestors the Roman legionnaires who conquered the entire World — almost (and sure never practiced such a laughable gait!)

However those ancient subjugators unwittingly played the model role for our dilettanti contemporary leaders who loved to play with antique symbols and hot-air blablabla, believing to reincarnate those marvelous epitomes.

Corporal TestadiPera was the instructor of our platoon, he was around four years older than us, was much bigger and heavier than the most massive of us and he admirably impersonated the imbecility of our children-soldiers organization: he had taught us how to stride in closed ranks, how to salute, how to synchronously obey his marching commands. He had a peculiar way of barking, when issuing his orders, and enjoyed a lot kicking the glutei of the unfortunate musketeer at closest range. He used his boots as a seal for all directives issued by him, and I, being the smallest musketeer in town, panicked all the time I felt his presence coming near. In fact he loved very much to boot the huge posterior of plump Bernardo, while my meager buttocks were not so desirable to be kicked.

However, when the date of the famous big parade to be performed in a central boulevard of our city came near (attended by the top brass of our fascist youth organization, as well as by the German Nazi ambassador coming expressly from his Rome office to supervise the training level of the Italian Youth) we the musketeers were kept under harsh pressure and TestadiPera increased his ferocious booting,   staring at us with bedeviling eyes and promising ruthless chastisement for any less than perfect performance— he made my blood run cold and I was so terrorized that I was unable to eat anything of my meals at home, I simply vomited all days! In fact my muscles were just about paralyzed, I was poorly able to execute the prescribed exercises … and that made him more and more aggressive.

I have blurred memories about the details of our preparation for the Great Event. I only recollect one occasion, when we had been ordered to march three by three, and I, who was the smallest musketeer in town, came lonely last. Immediately TestadiPera booted me on the back, screaming:

<I said three by three!>

<But we are twenty-two! It’s an even number, sir. And not divisible by three. I cannot help, being a singular marcher following my twenty-one mates going on three by three>

<You talk too much. You are not supposed to object, just to obey. I said three by three!> and sealed his words with— you know.

Eventually the effulgent day came, and TestadiPera was extremely stressed:

<I will strangle with my own hands any of you who make a mistake> he bellowed gazing ominously on my direction.

And this was not the last baffling news of the day: on a corner of our school backyard we saw a huge heap of shoes, all new, all with the same ochre-yellow colour, each shoe of each pair laced together. Official explanation: all of you boys wear different types of shoes, different colours and pattern; you look like a ragtime-army! But we won't appear as an operetta battalion at the Great Parade. (Second explanation, untold: someone in the shoe trade had made a lucrative deal with some Party's big boss). The snag was that we never tried to march with those shoes. Had they been given us one week before—

The second-rank-commander whistled and then ordered: <Go and take your pair!>

All my young colleagues sprang up and pushed each other on the pile to be plundered. Being the smallest of all them (I was the youngest as well: my mother had taught me the essentials of the primary school when I was too small for regular admission and then I entered directly among schoolmates who were older, stronger and more resilient to stress— mom had thought this would be advantageous, later; and that later I would have appreciated her farsightedness. However the present shortcomings were palpable enough) being the smallest of them I waited quietly until the last pillager made his choice, and then I took the one pair left, a pair of jumbo shoes, so large that I thought TestadiPera with his gargantuan feet could appropriately wear them.


I reluctantly went to seek him out while he was declaring, in a circle of his peers:

<We shall inject shit and arsenic in the veins of these soft lings, effeminate brats of the spineless bourgeoisie. We shall—

I interrupted him, squeaking:

<Sorry sir, but it's a matter of urgency. Look at these enormous shoes, please. How could I make one single step with them?>

        <Again! - he snarled, aware of the attention of his admiring compeers around - How many times did I repeat that you are expected to obey, not to object? You bloody little bastard>.

I went back to my platoon in total distress. Bernardo and another boy named Vincenzo tried to comfort me. That young fellow was surely from a well-off family, his black shirt was made from expensive silk and his manners were quite urbane:

<Try to fasten the laces as tightly as you can> he suggested perceptively.

 So I tried my best to fasten the laces as tightly as I could.

And now we were marching, really, and this was the moment long waited for and everything seemed so un-real to me, perhaps because of my fasting and vomiting and consequent languid exhaustion. I saw confusedly behind the heads of my taller comrades the authorities' platform coming nearer and nearer in a somehow waving way, as we marched oscillating from the left to the right foot, it seemed a dream, so waving, as if I were on a rocking boat undulating on top of sea waves, or strangely floating on the long grass of a large field blown by cogent wind in long waves, a dream, yes, and not so bad a dream as I had feared, after all, until that point— only less than fifty meters more, and then there will be no reason to worry any longer— 
At that moment the musketeer who marched behind me pinched the heel of my left shoe with the point of his one, and for a few steps I went on like a lame duck, admittedly in a less than bellicose attitude. Fortunately, being somehow concealed deep in the core of the marching battalion, I was not conspicuously visible from the authorities' scaffolding. I heard the chuckles of comrades around but I managed to keep shoe and foot under control, jumping lamely among the columns and files while the battalion inexorably marched on ... and then somebody in command shouted "Passo Romano!" exactly when we were in front of the authorities' stand, and all boys jolted launching martially their legs in the Goose-Step fashion... what an impressive view, indeed! As soon as I lifted - with all energy left in me - my stretched left leg, the yellow shoe went up, high towards the blue terse sky and after a perfect parable it landed amid the marching warriors, spreading momentarily confusion among the men-at-arms. It's a dream, of course it's just a dream - I was instantly telling myself in my delirium - now I will wake up in my bed, sure, of course. What a fantastic dream, Charlie.     So without delay I kicked up also my second shoe, which performed a high flight up up over the heads of the surrounding musketeers and then fell ruinously somewhere yards away, right in the middle of the marching battalion: the boys started to disband and disorderly disperse under the unexpected bombardment from above—

Are you, dear readers, feeling the tension inherent to these circumstances, are you longing to see how the story evolves through the catastrophic end of the parade, the awful scene where my fellow musketeers play the role of mute choir while no music is being played, no fat lady sings … read my book Fun for the crippled in Paris and other stories, and in the third chapter you will find relief to your tension.

Carletto Scara

Old Charlie's post3

Today I would like to talk about an affliction that is not always judged a proper disease, but in fact it is one of the most dreadful conditions one might find oneself in.

In these days I happen to read on newspapers erudite articles written by psychologists who try to explain to the lay reader why that man— or young mother, or boy— yesterday committed suicide and they have arguments galore for pointing out the responsibilities of the heartless society, the ineptitude of the school system … you know the refrain: somebody is guilty. 

In the days of sixty-five years ago when I was a teenaged boy and felt desperate and alone, nobody was discussing this matter on scientific articles and all the help I got ranged only from the suggestion “drink a fresh egg every morning” to the counsel "concentrate on your schoolbooks without wasting time in shedding tears on yourself”. Indeed few, if any, believed me to be somehow ill. The general opinion was: Carlo is smug as a bug in the rug, with his pretense to endure anguish. A Molière character with his imaginary pain.

The point is - and was - that most people have little experience on this type of difficulties: I reached the conclusion that only a person who had some kind of personal exposure to this condition can help. It is like a wild beast, which swells inside you and can grow from some sort of childish timidity into that implacable cancer of the spirit that is fear of living. I remember I was trying (unsuccessfully) to make clear my plight saying that I would prefer to be ill with pneumonia (or you die or you get healed) rather than being devastated by this endless inconceivable nervous breakdown that caused me to throw up everything from my stomach as soon as any faint emotion stroke me.

In fact in the chapter “First love” as well as in “The great parade” of my self-printed book[1] you are allured to laugh about my vomiting predisposition: any kind of emotion, both fearful - (examinations with professors Cesare Castiglia and Gianni Jarre at the Polytechnic Engineering University) - as well as desirable (the first trip to Sweden, the arrival of Hildegard) … any novelty had the effect to make my esophagus work as a high-pressure pump, and sincerely I felt thoroughly unhappy about this.

But I was fortunate to get acquainted with a wise senior friend, who taught me the most important thing to overcome this devilish torment: I passed through all this, he told me, I know that this misery is no joke and it seems capable to destroy you. But I can guarantee that it is not a definitive, ultimate status. The trick is to know that it is only a transient condition. When you know it, gradually your nervous system will get used to emotions, gradually you are going to forget all this gloomy discomfort. I am sure in the future you will do great things, sure, beyond your wildest dreams. And since I knew how successful he had been in his life, I believed him. And eventually I found out by myself that he was right, his words healed me.

So now, dear readers, after my past posts, where I tried to humorously encourage the Parkinson afflicted and other friends trapped in various types of hardship, here I will inspire my closest mates, those who are scared by their own shadows, those who panic when any novelty is announced. Look, dear friends: you are not alone in your tribulations. I am an expert, believe me.

JJJ

Once upon a time … I was lying on the sofa and was stunned by emotion and empty stomach. The doorbell rang; my mother went over and returned at once with Doctor Verna. He was a tall distinguished man, formerly a medical officer in the Navy and I had always admired him because of his gentlemanly manners.

My mother said, hastily:

<Look what a state this boy is in. Till now he was sick on the eve of each examination, always the same story that you know. In these days no exam is in sight, but from yesterday to this morning he vomited even his soul. I don’t like to play the role of the apprehensive mom, but this new crisis worries me. And even he— it was he who asked me to call for you, doctor>.

I was trying to call the doctor’s attention to my eyes, to let him understand that I wanted to speak alone with him, but he was a gentleman of sterling character and never could imagine that I might want to involve him in any sort of subterfuge. He felt silently my pulse, time was running fast and I was in despair. No, it can’t finish in this way. At this moment Hildegard is waiting for me at the Dahlia. I imagined the girl walking in the hotel’s hall; somebody is observing her, perhaps addressing words to her … who can wake me up from this nightmare?

Doctor Verna dropped my wrist. He stretched out his lower lip, puzzled. Then he said:

<Let’s check the abdomen>

Oh boundless joy! After these words my mother went out of the room, as I had hoped. I grabbed the doctor’s arm and pulled him close to me, with all the vigor I could find in myself.

< I must talk confidentially with you> I whispered. He looked straight in my eyes. His eyes were serious and loyal, and for many years in the future I would have rejoiced, feeling friendly watched by those eyes. But that day I did not know this, yet.

I said:

<I made a date with an Austrian girl here in Torino, unknown to my parents. We are now corresponding long since, and my parents know it. But my mother doesn’t like the whole story, although I showed some letters from which anybody could see that she is a wise person, and even religious. Now, just thinking to go and meet her secretly, I throw up like an erupting volcano and cannot control it … I am here immobilized and she is waiting for me at the Dahlia hotel, you know, that place at the corner on Piazza Statuto— >

Doctor Verna smiled to me. Yes, for a fraction of a second he flattened his wrinkles of stern Navy officer, turning them into something that might be a smile.

<Do you want me to go and talk to that young woman? What’s her name?>

<Hildegard Andexlinger> I replied.

Oh! Thanks!  Heartfelt thanks. I felt relieved, now that I was left alone on the sofa in the empty room. I imagined doctor Verna parking his Lancia Aprilia in front of the Dahlia hotel, I tried to guess what he would say to Hildegard and all seemed to turn round, a sweet dizziness in which one feels to sink and you look forward to the coming of anybody who shake you saying that it was only a bad dream but now it’s over, yes, it’s going to its end, even though I can’t yet understand how.

Much time passed. The sunlight strip on the floor had grown longer and now lapped on the carpet edge.

At last the doctor came back. He entered the room followed by my mother and without even sitting down, without any preamble he said, in his shrill voice:

<She is a remarkable person. Nice, clever, agreeable.  We spoke a bit about Austria, soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, about music in general and other things. At first she was worrying about your health, dear young man. But I explained that you are sound, only emotional and too sensitive. Miss Hildegard, too, is sensitive; but strong. She made a 900 kilometers journey, changing train twice, to come here and greet this … hmm, forgive my brutal frankness, this stupid lad who throws up at every bend on the road of life— meanwhile the doctor came close to my bolster and put friendly his hand on my shoulder— of course I reassured her: the young man is absolutely healthy, only a bit too … shy.  Time will put things to right; he will grow up and stop vomiting. And that Fräulein is a treasure not to be missed>.

My mother, standing there, had opened her eyes wide after these surprising words. Then her face turned terrified by the awful revelation.

<You made that woman to come secretly in Torino — she said in a harsh voice, not even remembering that doctor Verna was still with us — and where is she now?>

<In the Dahlia hotel> I replied without a milligram of saliva in my mouth.

<Precisely where they go your dirty companions for their rendezvous with their girlfriends of loose morale.  YOU told me that, you! To make me appreciate that you are not like the others!>

<It seemed to me a place easy to find, near the railway station … >       I wheezed. I would have started vomiting again, if only I had enough energy left.

<Any hotel can be used well or badly> the doctor joined in the conversation.

My mother suddenly realized that the doctor was still among us, and addressing him in a quasi-weeping voice said:

<Tell me, doctor, if I am wrong. This stupidone, as you yourself called him, fell in love with a never seen girl, about whom we know nothing. They began to write to each other to improve their performance with foreign languages … nonsense. She might be a grand good girl, as you say after seeing her for a few minutes, but who knows? Keep in mind that when our daughter catches a train for going to the seaside near here, on the Riviera, in a holiday hostel managed by nuns, we let her be escorted by some senior wise lady … while that one makes all alone such a long journey with all the material and moral dangers that can be met nowadays … tell me, doctor, do you understand my anguish? Can you say that I am wrong?>

The aristocratic face of the physician looked deeply carved by the trade-winds he encountered in his foregone career.

< I think that between persons who love each other, between mother and son, the point is not to be wrong or right, to win or to lose. Mothers’ anxiety is a logic and frequent manifestation of love and you — now he had turned to me — must never forget it. And to you … I allow to myself to remind that this young lady travelled one day and one night to come till here, and if one decides to let her leave without even meet our nice stupidone, this can be done. But it does not seem the best decision, to me>.

After that the wonderful man left, without adding one word.

Then I spent a long, very long time alone, stunned on that sofa; nausea and vertigo let me perceive only confusedly, at intervals, the low subdued muttering of mother and sister in the near room. I felt the klic-klic-klic of the telephone disc, perhaps they are informing daddy in his office … time was passing and I was so knocked out that probably I fell asleep, for a while.

The doorbell rang again; I heard the voice of my mother saying, without any kind inflection, <Come in> and immediately I saw her, Hildegard, yes, she wore on her head a lovely small bell-shaped hat of the type 1923-let’s-dance-the-Charleston as I had seen in some film.  She seemed very high to me, since I was lying so low on that sofa, and came fast in my direction, saying:

<How are you feeling, Carlo! Are you all right, now?>

<I am all right, now that you are here> I squeaked. What a stupid sentence I uttered, I told myself. In the previous days I had thought many things nice and brilliant, too, and now it came up only such a banality… <Take that chair, will you? Sit here close to me>

My mother was sulky with our guest: she was unable to conceal her grudge, however asked, with evident strain:

<Do you want a coffee?>

<No no, please don’t take any trouble for me> Hildegard replied

<Take that coffee, I implore you — I muttered — at least we will have some minutes more to stay together>

<Well then, I will take it, thanks> Hildegard said kindly to my mother.

And so we remained alone only for few moments, the time required by a small coffee-pot … she bent on me and I saw her great blue eyes quite near, I grabbed her arms that seemed so firm to me, while I felt so weak and even flabby.

<You believe— I panted — that we will have a little daughter, fair, with blue eyes? Like you?>

<I don’t know>.

She smiled to me and all my life I would remember that sweet chubby face under the Charleston hat. It seemed too much, to hope that she would love me for so many years in the future. I pulled her closer and closer, so she reached my stinking mouth with her lips and chastely kissed me.

<I ‘m sorry, to be seen by you in this state - I said through my arid fauces - in normal days I am not so miserable … I am totally unhappy, ganz unglücklich>

<Unglücklich? Warum? Why are you saying that? We are lucky, Carlo. We had the fortune to meet in our letters, we understand each other and we love each other. We are lucky>

<Give me a little kiss again, before my mother arrives with the coffee>

Precisely in that moment my mother came back, and I understood that I had to wait still many months more, and face many examinations at the Polytechnic, accompanied by the punctual vomiting charade, before having a second kiss by Hildegard.


By the way, right at that time, newspapers were full of alarming comments about the carbon dioxide growing emissions, with consequent polar ice pack melting, which caused the oceans' level to increase - threatening the lower coastal regions all over the world. Awful, huh? Yet I am not sure: possibly the sea level was just influenced by the huge deluge of throw-up produced by me in the eve of my examinations.


Carletto Scara

---

[1] Fun for the crippled in Paris, and other stories - 

Old Charlie's post2

It’s high time to come back to my BlogSpot for a second post, taking advantage from some friends’ remarks: the first point is— why to address ourselves only to Parkinson affected people?

We are part of a multifarious universe of differently afflicted individuals; indeed everybody on earth is moving toward her or his very personal death and behind this only too obvious acknowledgment what the duce remains to be said to encourage our poor fellows? Can we devise a message that can help anybody to live a somewhat better life in the meanwhile? Are we perhaps pursuing what Henri Bergson[1] called momentary anesthesia of the heart, through some sophisticated form of wit?

Well, in fact— based on my personal experience, I had started with the idea to make easier specially the burden of my Parkinson afflicted colleagues, keeping them in high spirits - as far as possible - by means of humorous anecdotes revolving on our peculiar propensity to fall with our face on the ground and make a fuss everywhere through the irrepressible tremor of our hands.

This is why I posted my first blog piece here but sure it’s right to say that not only the Parkinson sick is in need of solace and comfort.

Thus this blog of mine ought to become something of universal purport. The inspiration comes from a club of handicapped youth, not far from my home. They are still too young to be victim of Parkinsonism: it is some other variety of illness that constrains them to move on a wheelchair. At times I am joining someone of their group to have a drink in the bar of their association— and sometimes we joke about the way “normally walking people” call us “differently able” types. We have our own kind of fun. Lately I have been called, by some of these young wheeled friends, not an old person and neither a decrepit fellow but … a differently young man!  I am fond of these new friends who enjoy frolic and would probably welcome pages written by a jester story teller like me. Thus I feel confirmed in my calling vocation, directed to each and every soul waiting for it, independently from the type of her or his ailment. 

 

Let me commence in a rather dull way, since stupidity is where I succeed best. (You know, to avoid calling someone stolid, you can say differently clever)  So: in which corner of our psyche do we humans find most of fun? What is that in our innermost drives us to laugh? Is it true that when you chuckle you are inclined to laugh off, i.e. disregard, brush aside and shrug off concerns, woes, worries and anxiety – at least for a while? Hmm!

Until recently I believed Arthur Koestler to be outstanding for his “Darkness at Noon”, then after discovering in the Encyclopaedia Britannica an article of his about humor[2] …

If you manage to read it, you’ll enjoy the whole of it, starting from the very explanation of how and why fun is rooted in the story of the marquis of the court of Louis XV who unexpectedly returned from a journey and, on entering his wife's boudoir, found her in the arms of a bishop (here is the tension that waits to be relieved). After a moment's hesitation, the marquis walked calmly to the window, leaned out, and began going through the motions of blessing the people in the street  (here you begin to suspect where the relief of tension is coming from).

It’s like a click of the Geiger counter indicating the presence of radioactivity!  To produce the comic effect you must compel the reader to perceive the situation in two self-consistent but incompatible frames of reference at the same time; his mind has to operate simultaneously on two different wavelengths … When a comedian tells a story, he deliberately sets out to create a certain tension in his listeners, which mounts as the narrative progresses. But it never reaches its expected climax. The punch line acts as a verbal guillotine that cuts across the logical development of the story; it debunks the audience's dramatic expectations. The tension that is felt becomes suddenly redundant and is exploded in laughter. Simple, huh?

Here we have, as Koestler notes, an odd mechanism of reflex quite unrelated to the struggle for survival: no comparison with motor reflexes, such as the contraction of the pupil of the eye in dazzling light, that are simple responses to simple stimuli whose value to survival is obvious. Laughter is a reflex but unique in that it has no apparent biological purpose.

One might call it a luxury reflex. Its only function seems to be to provide relief from tension, and it plays a subtle role with aggressiveness. On the other hand, psychologist William MacDougall believed that “laughter has been evolved in the human race as an antidote to sympathy, a protective reaction shielding us from the depressive influence of the shortcomings of our fellow men”.

Be it as it may, here I’m going to give you a taste of humorous anecdotes of mine, i.e. a brief history of tension-and-relief on occasion of our last year’s trip in France.

Let me be sincere with you, friends. I don’t feel to be an unlucky fellow. So no strong tension is building up— in the early stages of the process.

First of all, Hildegard’s health and spirits are as good as ever, and that is the most important bliss. In the second place, I am not yet - and perhaps won’t be for a while - completely crippled. I can walk some ten meters with the help of a stick and only seldom indeed I fall ruinously with my face on the ground and need the help of at least a pair of robust people to regain my vertical standing.


And then I can still drive my glorious Punto car and that’s the most delightful gift of all. Forget any airplane trip, with the handbags to be agonizingly dragged around! My car is quite the thing needed to reach many a place in continental Europe.

I can easily drive up to 1,000 kilometres a day, just crawling out of the car for a few moments when I need to visit restrooms, restaurants and fuel stations. That’s marvel­lous, undeniably. And so I am going to report here my last trip to Paris on last July, to make clear how humor is driven by tension-and-relief.

The opportunity was given by an engagement of my daughter Carla, the physician, who was expected to lecture at a conference of geriatric doctors up there in those days. My daughter’s son, Fabio (who just finished his primary school this summer) was eager to join his mother in Paris as a prize for his promotion, so Hildegard & I proposed to be ourselves in the Ville Lumière on the same days, to keep the boy happy during the hours in which his mother would be busy with her geriatric audience. And so we did. When the young couple arrived in the Novotel at the Défense after a night sleeping on the TGV train from Torino, we, the old couple, were already there waiting for their arrival after a 930-km drive on the previous day. (Torino - called Turin in English - where we live, is the capital city of Piedmont, Italy’s north-western region bordering on France and Switzerland just beyond the Alps).

I had enjoyed every moment of that trip, first through the alpine mountains and then through the lovely French countryside. I was a bit less pleased with the time we spent in Paris, because we had to go around in the Metro and the stairs down and up the underground system are not the most desirable exer­cise for a half crippled old lad. However, I had also some long moments of rest on a wooden bench near the Tour Eiffel, where I sat immobile a couple of hours waiting for the return of Hildegard and the boy from the top of it, and then my glutei were thoroughly flattened and hardened for the remaining hours of the day. We had some abrupt cloudburst showers in those days, and found refuge in various cafés and bistros, as well as navigating on the Seine on the very same Bateaux Mouche we had appreciated many decades ago when we were young— Paris is never disappointing, always the same charming enchantment.

In the late afternoon of the third day our dear guests took the train to return to Torino, thus Hildegard and I had a last chance to have a good time in the evening, alone by our­selves, as we had some 55 years ago, and on many an occasion later. We both remembered a good place for oysters close to Place de la Bastille, but we were unsure whether the huitres were still served there: and surely the walk from Châtelet along rue de Rivoli and St. Antoine seemed incredibly longer than we remembered it to be. I trudged grasping Hildegard’s arm and every now and then had to stop leaning against a wall for a long while.

So we arrived very late at that posh restaurant, and seeing the huge crowd queuing up at the inner barrier where the service staff allotted the seating places, Hildegard proposed to take a taxi at once and go back to our hotel at the Défence. But I wasn’t sure that we would ever return to Paris, and addressing myself very privately to an old wise-looking senior waiter,  I confessed to being René-la-canne (a renowned French racket­eer just discharged in those days from prison with his con­spicuous orthopaedic stick and sun-glasses, as he appeared on the evening paper of that day) and said that I had wanted for years to taste again their excellent oysters and putting in his hand a wad of Euro bills, I suggested we could bypass both the cloak-room and the staff barrier— so he guided us through a “personnel only” door and we arrived in the dining room, in­credibly full of properly dressed people and baroque mirrors. 


Our dripping umbrellas and wet rain jackets were looked at disapprovingly by our neighbors at the near table, and I felt a scornful glance darted by the lady sitting on the long wall-seat near me, when I awkwardly, unwittingly pushed my umbrella right in her soft flesh, while trying to settle myself down at the table with my stick and umbrella. Hildegard felt a bit embar­rassed by all this, and by the fact that I ordered an enormous quantity (two dozens) of the largest oysters – while she was content with a simple onion soup.

But this was only the beginning of her apprehensions: the wine was an excellent Chablis that pleasantly warmed up my brain neurons (what’s left of them) and while I was eagerly confirming my “Carpe Diem” philosophy to my wife, a most intense tremor moved my hand out of its trajectory and I over­turned the glass and the divine wine was poured on the pre­cious Flanders table cloth and, what is worse, abundantly sprinkled the naked right leg of the prim lady near me. We were in July but the unrequired refreshment did not seem to be welcomed by her – and in fact she started to shriek like a goose plucked alive.

I felt ashamed and confused and overwhelmed and in the total irrationality of the moment I bent down to wipe her right calf with my left hand— what a horrible moment, dear friends!

The whole hall was filled by the lady’s screams, I re­member confusedly a squad of waiters guided by the maître, all equipped with towels of various sizes to dry up the table cloth, while a super-maître was humbly apologizing to the neurotic husband of the neurotic lady and gazing at me with terrible eyes - oh boys, you can imagine how much I wanted to disap­pear. The adrenaline level in my blood could hardly be higher, no relief for my inside tension was possibly in sight.  

In point of fact, I have a sort of black-out in my memory (probably the benevolent Gods grant us, for such painful mo­ments, some sort of trance). I only remember being accompanied with Hildegard at the back door on a narrow dark alley by a by-no-means-loqua­cious man who strongly recommended that we should  keep away from the main entrance and tète-de-taxi, so we walked as unnoticed as possible to the Metro station down at Place de la Bastille.

Hildegard, who had not been in a trance during those dramatic minutes, told me, when finally we sat in the Metro carriage, that apparently the furious husband was a functionary at the police headquarters in Quai des Orfèvres and probably the idea of impersonating René-la-canne was not quite the best choice. We even noticed too late that there is direct Metro line from Défence to Bastille, so we could have been spared that terrible, long and time-consuming walk on rue de Rivoli!

The following day was a bright, lovely day. On our way home I pulled up to have lunch at Beaune, the picturesque capital city of Bourgogne, where I was lucky stumbling against my own stick right while going into the restaurant (so I could never be sus­pected of falling on the ground because I had drunk too much!) and there I enjoyed a fantastic dozen of escargots à la bour­guignonne duly accompanied by a bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape and in the relaxing atmosphere of the cosy place I asked Hildegard which had been her best moment in those three-and-a-half days in France.

She said: <The moment that I felt I was your moll, Carlo>

<Moll?>

<Yes!! At the age of seventy eight I eventually was be­ing looked at as “the moll of the gangster” – quite an exciting experience> … and a text-book example of tension relief.






Carletto Scara

---

[1] Actually Bergson was meaning the absence of sympathy with the victim of a joke

[2]

Britannica style: "humour."Ecyclopædia Britannica from Encyclopædia Britannica 2006 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD .[Accessed April 2, 2012].