24 East - Tales from Southeast Asia

TALES FROM SOUTHEAST ASIA

carlo convertini

24 east: tales from southeast asia

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24 east: tales from southeast asia

24 EAST tales from southeast asia

written by

carlo convertini

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24 east: tales from southeast asia

dedicated to mat and alice

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IN ORDER TO TRAVEL PAST THE FOLLOWING PAGES I NEED YOU TO IMAGINE NOT AN EPIC NOVEL BUT A MUSIC ALBUM INSTEAD. IN FACT, EACH ONE OF THE STORIES YOU’RE ABOUT TO MEET IS JUST LIKE A SONG WITH ITS OWN RHYTHM AND DURATION. OFTEN THE SONGS OF AN ALBUM ARE SELF-CONTAINED AND MADE TO STAND ON THEIR FEET. IN THE SAME WAY THE STORIES IN THIS BOOK HAVE BEEN WRITTEN WITH A DIFFERENT MOOD, SCENARIO AND INTENTION IN ORDER TO WA L K B Y T H E M S E LV E S A N D HOPEFULLY FIND A PLACE IN THE READER’S MIND. ENJOY LISTENING.

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introduction

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seven hours, fifteenth floor, six days

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the first lecture stomach diversity consider the dog work in progress single season life time to get bored help me with this pork a day in the life Spirituality Public consciousness All we’ve left behind i need a new girlfriend spaghetti or noodles? jazz red wine apple pie fasting and early mornings the first picture taxi drivers - Act I blindfolded singapore’s voice the luggage that night in India the distance a dawn called Sibu

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the lonely traveler outdoor bathroom a choral goodbye departures walking Kolkata you’re a glass of water 24 hrs as a buddhist monk indispensable indiana Jones my ass taxi drivers - Act II about the city this is gonna hurt curiosity music scar five men on a boat taxi drivers - Act III the woman who knew conrad’s viscera the stranger footprint to the next harbor

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24 east: tales from southeast asia

INTRODUCTION It’s pitch dark and there’s no one around but a whispering voice: "you’re going nowhere...you’re all the mistakes you could have possibly done...you have to make a move!

You’re almost thirty and what have you managed to achieve? Nothing much but pieces and leftovers".

Imagine you’re driving when suddenly you find yourself lost. You’ve got no map and you can’t call anybody since your mobile isn’t working. What do you do? Wait for somebody to rescue you? Keep moving in search for a sign? What if you end in a closed road?

You try to go back? Where exactly is back?

I had no answer to any of those questions, so I did what I felt was the only thing worth doing: I turned off the engine and walked away. In other words I got out of my life, I made choices I never thought I could make, swimming with doubts and solitude, pushed by those pieces and leftovers and by a question that, at least for myself, needed to be answered: is there another way of living?

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Of all the questions I’ve made to myself that one was the most uncomfortable, maybe because was the right one, it was like a wind blowing in a different direction until you finally realize you need to let your boat follow it.

All I had when I was about to leave my life behind at the security gates was a 23 kilos luggage with a label this is all you’ve got on it, clueless about what I was doing or where exactly I was going. And in that precise moment a thought grasped into my mind: “the fortune teller predicted it! Hence whatever happens will be alright”.

That thought is related to a story too long to fit this introduction, but what matters is that a few months before my departure a stranger you wouldn’t give any credit whatsoever to an anonymous bar in the eastern side of that marvelous city called Istanbul predicted what eventually happened to me - “in November” he said, “something will happen to change your life”.

Well, he was right because that following November I partly found an answer to the question.

Of course I don’t believe in those kind of things. Of course it was a coincidence. However that day at the airport with a one-way ticket Rome-Kuala Lumpur, 12

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that thought gave me the strength to walk away from my past and everyone I loved and make a step towards something that by all means was unpredictable.

This book is all about what followed that step.

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seven hours, sixteenth floor, sixth day It’s 10am in Kuala Lumpur and 3am back in Italy, and those seven hours still matter to me - it’s like living in two places simultaneously, with my body that keeps following the Italian rhythms and my head trying to focus on the present, hanging from the few references I managed to put together until now.

You need to start somewhere, so I begin from the fifteenth floor of the Darby Park Hotel on a Saturday, a Saturday that doesn’t stop the jackhammers. The area around the hotel in fact is a collection of construction sites not too far from the Malaysian twin towers, huge steel and concrete towers, symbolic of a country that since the mid Eighties has seen a rapid development and in order to compete with the other Southeast 15

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Asian tigers rightly thought about building a 451 meters tall icon.

Six days have passed since I arrived and I can still feel some confusion, maybe because I had no time to look at the surroundings. I’ve been focusing on two things only: job and house-hunting. Well, mostly the first one since it’s a brand new job and there’s a lot to do - I guess it’s a good strategy if I don’t want to get fired.

Among other weird questions, many of the people I’ve met act quite surprised to see me: “how did you end up in this urban-jungle?”. Well, there’s always an easy answer but it doesn’t say much - who knows how did I end up here after all, what routes, choices and deviations took me by the hand in a day like this?

Whatever the answer I know that I was ready, ready to say yes to a challenge like this.

Back to the present. For the records I had a thermic shock due to the average temperature which is above 30°C, and to the fact I’m coming straight from the european Winter. It feels like I’m walking through something solid, this humidity stands on your shoulders fighting back each move, and the weather isn’t something you can ignore...like I proved a few days ago when I had the splendid idea to walk back to the campus where I work regardless of the massive 16

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tropical storm that was about to happen. I did indeed buy an umbrella but when I reached the college they asked: “did you just get a shower?”.

It’s all about Malaysia’s location, so close to the Equator, in the middle of the Chinese Southern Sea and divided in two - the Peninsula and Borneo protected and surrounded by Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia, with a tropical climate that you can describe as follows: humid and provided with a long endless monotone season above thirty, interrupted by thunderstorms that usually begin at around 6pm (which is the moment I finish working and I have to go back home).

Ladies and gentlemen the adventure has begun, now it’s all about collecting information, meeting people, learn by doing and re-invent myself or, in few words, build the foundations.

I spent the last few years getting rid of things inside and outside, consequently when I had to pack my things I didn’t really had much. The airline stated my life weights 23 kilos compressed in a luggage you can hug - hence I like to say “my life is all you can hug”.

Now it’s time to prove, first of all to myself, that there are other worlds out there, that the only way to evolve is not to take yourself for granted. In doing so I’ll try 17

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to find the right words to describe this journey in its raw beauty.

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the first lecture My very first lecture took place in the BB3 classroom, a not so good looking 4x10 meters, but that didn’t surprise me considering the conditions of the rest of the college, built out of an existing townhouse, with couple of blocks added around it.

The classroom name hence was BB3, on the ground floor I arrived straight from whatever happened to be before, perfectly on time. Nine o’clock in the morning, I turn on the neon lights, the air-conditioning, the projector. I connected the VGA cable to my laptop and since I had no handbook all I could do was to wait for students to show up - whoever they were.

The subject was, I have to admit it, quite boring something like Building Technology and Construction a gigantic collection of notions about how a building works, from the foundations to the roof. It goes 19

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without saying that to keep the morale high you have to teach in a clever way, I mean, to talk about floor sections, formulas and plaster walls means to lose half of the class in the first ten minutes and the rest of it within an hour.

Generally speaking the very first class of any module is about getting them to understand what is all about, an introduction, but of course I had to explain myself too.

I stared at them and thought “what a soup”. There was a French boy, a Turkish girl, a group of five ChineseMalaysian, one Indian-Malaysian, one Indonesian and one Iranian boy. I wanted to make them talk hence I asked about the best restaurant in the neighborhood and where I could find a backpack for my travels classic questions. Obviously I also asked about their personal details, trying to repeat their names and eventually declaring: “I’ll never be able to memorize them” (which was a lie).

The first lecture was not a full one - I had to teach for four hours and I couldn’t get through the second - but I’ve been honest. Standing in front of them I said: “This subject potentially is quite boring but you’ll have fun with me”. I thought that was a good line to begin with.

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That same afternoon I had to teach again hence there was no time to realize what was going on, I figured that was all natural for me - the me-teacher, the projector, the me-talking-for-hours-in-a-foreignlanguage. Naturally weird.

When the class was over I repeated there was no room for lateness and I have to say nobody made me silly questions - questions like these that eventually came into the picture: A) how old are you?

B) are you married?

C) are you on Facebook?

D) can you teach us Italian words?

PS. When questioned how they should call me I couldn’t come up with anything better than Mr.Carlo.

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stomach diversity More than the color of your skin, more than religion and language; is the stomach who really makes a difference.

In a city that by definition is a melting pot of many cultures quite soon I had to deal with its cuisine-sideeffects, which translates in a wide diversity of food from all over the world - from Iran to Japan, Australia to Peru - each corner of the city presents a colored variety of smells and tastes. There are plenty of layers of choice: if before it was like choosing in between different version of the same car, now the choice has to be made in between different brands, each with several unknown models. Every single day I have to face this diversity and in order to survive I had to embrace a simple formula that I use when I have to order food: “whatever is not spicy-oily-fried-jelly is 23

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fine with me”. And here the stomach, way more than the brain, comes into the picture.

My theory, so to speak, is that we all grow up educating ourselves by eating, an education which is quite difficult to eradicate or ignore since every stomach has it’s own limits, designed one meal at a time. God knows if I’ve met people who can eat stones for breakfast and soufflé of glass for lunch without the need of a digester, but if you have a weak stomach like myself you really have to be careful with your attitude, and the fact I’m Italian amplifies the whole subject enormously.

I was having lunch the other day with a few friends an Indian, a Vietnamese, a guy from New Zealand and an American - and while we were having a lovely conversation, united around the same table, there was something inside of us that made us deeply different.

My Indian friend, for instance, declared he rarely had a not-spicy meal, the American said he missed having milk with all meals, the Vietnamese said from time to time he used to have a bit of dog meat, while the guy from New Zealand could have eaten cat food with no problem. Above the table-level we were talking the same language, you know, we could easily communicate and understand each other, but below 24

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that level there was such a great diversity to make us equally bizarre and incomprehensible.

I came to the conclusion that if there was a Stomach World Championship, the Italian one might be one of the most delicate and wouldn’t get through the first turn. You see, the Italian cuisine is like a language everyone can easily speak and understand: you need no translation or interpretation.

Once somebody asked me how would I define the Italian food and I thought for a moment and then replied: “you can easily recognize an Italian dish because what you see in your plate is exactly what will end up in your stomach, nothing weird will happen in the transaction”.

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consider the dog A house. A place to go back when the night is closing on you and all you’ve got is nothing more left but air filled with water. A remote place that little by little gets closer, a place that before becoming a physical place is a corner in your mind, a vision, a picture wrongly taken.

It took me loads of time, kilometers I’d say, wasted hours, discussions and bitterness along the gums.

House hunting is always a tiring lottery where your expectations weight like dust: every new door opens destroy ing what you pictured reading the advertisement. Gigantic rooms become burials, mezzanines turn into two pieces of wood hanging from the wall and balcony turns into a birdcage.

Sixth, twentieth, fortieth floors that when you get there and look down you see the city spread, crawling, 27

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fading at the horizon and ask: how would it be to live in this house?

You find yourself discussing with arrogant Chinese men about a dive surprisingly inhabited, pushed like sardine in elevators going up and down, in rooms where even the light seems too scared to get in.

In time I’ve learned to care about the place I live in and not to underestimate the few hours you spend in the pits, a fortress where you can close your eyes or cry, conscious those walls will let everything pass.

Getting in and out of wrong houses I managed to find it, a spacious two level apartment with a nice kitchen, garden, swimming pool - that in a tropical climate is a basic amenity - and an husky (female) owned by my roommates, a New Zealand-Indonesian couple that all of a sudden crossed my life with an hairy endowment.

Instead of being surrounded by skyscrapers the building has palm and banana trees that make the mornings quite glorious, giving you the impression the roaring city is far far away.

I can’t remember how many houses I had to move in and out during the last ten years and I’m clueless about the future, but I know that each one of them 28

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had a face, a smell and a precise cost - houses made of people too, people I’ve shared everything or nothing, but always shared.

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work in progress Here it comes, one of those famous Monday mornings you’d like to avoid - and you know what I’m talking about. Monday mornings designed to upset you, with no way out or warning, and when they get you there’s only one thing you can do: a freezing shower, a double espresso and pretend you’re still living in the weekend.

Sitting at my desk surrounded by tonnes of paper, scale models from my students, a yellow mug of instant coffee and a little glass dog*, a gift from a Chinese colleague, I begin a new working week like anybody else.

Eight weeks have passed since I entered the world of education and without noticing crossed that thin line that separates students from teachers. But I honestly feel more like I’m in between those roles.

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The headquarters of the college I work for are in Singapore and in the last twenty years they’ve put together a wide network of colleges all over Asia, with lecturers and students from all over the world, glued together thanks to the English language.

You open the door to half of the world, with colleagues from Poland, Sweden, Lithuania, China, Philippines, Japan, Scotland, South Korea, etc. etc. and students from Turkey, Iran, Sudan, Kazakhstan, India, Maldives, Indonesia etc. etc.

And what did I learn from this until now? Perhaps teaching is like doing a little daily show in a theater 32

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for a small group of demanding people, you’re like some sort of actor, but the public here is way more important than you are: questions, takes notes, records.

You need to keep it interested and interact, listen, cuddle and instruct it. You can’t just jump on stage and play the best way you can, you really need to pass something on the other side - actually that’s the thing that matters the most.

One day I came back from a class and found on my desk a little box containing business card with my name on it, and below my name I saw this: Interior Design Lecturer. God, that left me puzzled: this is the first time ever someone designed a business cards for me and that’s a weird feeling, something doesn’t belong to me. I’m pretty sure I’d feel way more at ease if below my name that would have written: Work in progress, as usual. * the Chinese calendar links to each year a different animal and, as for me, I’ve born during the dog’s year which, of course, generates all sorts of peculiarities and characteristics, exactly like it happens with the zodiac.

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single season life One season, luckily the hottest one. Twelve months of sun per year erases the ups and downs, the pauses and the line separating the inside from the outside. Living in a place with only one season gives you more space since interior and exterior are the same thing. Summertime, moreover, brings you close to your own skin, makes you feel free to move for miles without worrying about the weather, weightless.

Malaysia is filled with water and luxuriant compelling nature but despite that the thought of having one endless season might be monotone. Winter invites you to protect yourself, to change your habits because all over you things are transforming and evolving but here, a tree will always wear the same clothes and will never feel cold. So how can the weather affect my habits? How will my body react? Perhaps I’ll have less 35

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things to worry about: whatever I want to do I can take for granted thirty degrees.

Traveling then tastes completely different too: I am my own luggage and the necessity of a shelter isn’t really that important anymore. The borders are humid, easy to cross and get lost in a confusing and ever present green.

Besides the absence of a natural rhythm there’s another side effect. This is de facto an air-conditioned life: whether you are in a taxi, metro, office, there’s always an annoying freezing wind with you, creating a micro-climate, a portable season that you deal with whenever you’re not outdoors.

In a single season life you need no tie and most of the time you walk barefoot and even when the sun seems to be that real you can touch it you have to expect a massive storm, a tropical one.

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time to get bored When I’m done with a class, if I take a moment to myself and stop thinking I’m living in Southeast Asia, in the middle of the jungle for an international college based in Singapore, doing a self-taught job in a foreign language, all I see in front of me is a bunch of kids spending their lives in between the last Iphone app, a comment or a picture on Facebook and, with the time left from the first two activities, watch TV. It is indeed a painful scenario and I ask myself how am I supposed to inspire their minds when all the time they’ve got to think is blown away from what I’ve called the Facebook attitude.

Provokingly I use this expression to define the incapacity of developing a personal opinion, reducing our thought to an “I like it” / “I don’t like it”. All of my students are aware of my pretty low opinion about Facebook, that I don’t watch TV and that I do not own an Iphone - you should see their faces when I tell 37

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them things like that, once one of them asked: “What do you do then?”.

One day I decided to tell them why I’ve been more lucky than them and what my luck is about - I grew up in a world where you can get bored.

I told them what does it means to grow up without Facebook and cellphones, in a moment where PCs were a rare luxury and video-games were on a cassette tape and it took you ages to load the game and start playing. During my time (this made me feel old) answers were to be found asking people around you or consulting books made of paper, not in Google’s white page. During my time you spent loads of time outside, in the streets, living in the real world and not through an electronic surrogate. During my times you got bored and the more you got bored the more you found yourself dealing with your - quite often useless thoughts, but you had the chance to think with your own head calmly at a human-pace.

I got carried away by the subject and while all of my students were staring at me like I was some sort of creature from another world (which in part was true), I shouted at them “you’ve got no space to think! Can’t you see that all of these things are made to steal your time for thinking? You’re constantly distracted by 38

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something, you can’t focus, everything’s entertainment from dawn to sleep!”.

The classroom, for once, was filled with silence and before leaving I lowered my voice and asked them to do myself and themselves a big favor: “close the Facebook’s app, turn off the TV and literally hide the phone somewhere and for one or even two hours do whatever is left or even do NOTHING. Get bored, give yourself a moment of peace, look around you, look at the world and the people you live with using your own eyes and not through a God damn display”.

I do know this is a lost cause - but since repetita iuvant maybe realise one day one of them will listen to me, recognize my voice and read a book, or go watch an exhibition, or pay for a movie that wasn’t written for a sponge.

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help me with this pork I’m trying to put together a list of adjectives to define the environment I live in and all it comes to my mind are words like: mix, soup, crossings, overlapping, puzzle. Perspectives, cultures and languages overlap day by day forming the urban textile I have to move in.

This young country was officially born in the 1963 based on the agreements between the three main races already living on this territory - Malaysian, ChineseMalaysian, Indian-Malaysian - with quite a lot of contradictions that on one hand constitute a great diversity and on the other hand generate contrasts since every race has an heritage that from time to time might cause misunderstandings.

I live in this soup and that’s fine with me because, regardless of the culture we’re talking about, diversity is, today more than ever, one of the most important 41

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values we all have and, no matter what it takes we have to protect it, even when I’ve been treated as a walking note or like a silly tourist who gets lost, incapable of pronouncing the street’s names.

My perception of the world around me, the soup I live in, is quickly evolving and defining itself while the time goes by. You start off with little details like explaining to the taxi drivers the route to reach your place “turn left and then keep going straight until you get to the Embassy of Chile where you’ll see a white wall, but mind that’s a closed road hence you have to turn and go back where you came from”. It doesn’t really matter that those streets are the only one I truly know within the whole city because this is the mental process I have to go through in order to familiarize with the environment.

When I used to live in Milan I learned that you could try to fight with a city, you can try to avoid things you don’t like about it, you can try to picture it differently, but in the long run that will be quite useless: the sooner you learn to understand and accept it the better you will live it. And like any other city Kuala Lumpur has its own rules: how to get a taxi, or how to cross the road, the places you can or cannot eat, the pace of the city, how to interpret someone you ask directions as a start. Then you need to add to that a series of tiles 42

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related to the local cultures and religions - things you shouldn’t do or say etc. etc.

For instance I went to the grocery store the other day - an activity I notoriously dislike - and the cashier, a Malaysian woman hence Muslim, ask me a favor. She asked if I could help her to scan the barcodes of the pork I just bought since she couldn’t even touch the packaging.

What fascinates me the most about this city is mostly all of these layers of culture, a strong smell, a continuous exchange of small and big rites and traditions, perhaps bizarre, but always unique and respectable. I couldn’t care less about judging those traditions, on the contrary, I want to observe and learn from it to enrich myself as a human being.

By the way it would have been too simple to present myself with my Italian-European-burden and act like whatever is around me is weird and a medley of beliefs I dislike - but it would have been like I’m using my own culture as a shield I can hide behind, when it should be an exchanging value, an harbor to unknown worlds. There are no cultures that are better than others, or right or wrong religions, and there is not a superior race...if we start playing this game we end up killing each other. Whenever you find yourself in front 43

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of a culture that is not yours you have to deal with differences, at that point you as an individual human being have to make a choice if what matters the most is what divides us or unites us.

I smiled at the cashier and tried several times to make the scanner work and finally be able to purchase my beloved pork, but it didn’t occurr to me to think that situation was weird or unusual, I just thought I’m not good as a cashier.

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a day in the life The very first sound is the alarm ringing. 6.53 in the morning. Hiding in between the bedsheets wont help. I have to force myself to do the first step out of the bed. Half naked I walk towards the bathroom. I take a piss staring out the window to check the weather. I see no sun.

Wash your face several times.

Post-it on the mirror saying “Think therefore I am”. I cannot think about anything. Shower. What day am I in? Go downstairs in the kitchen. There you are Bialetti! Second sound of the day: singing mocha. A full mug of Balinese coffee, orange juice, cereals.

Clothes selection. I’ve got class the whole day. Sober shirt, trousers, sneakers. Put together the handbag.

Where’s the charger? Wear the shoes, it is time to leave. First good morning of the day to the security guard. You’re in the streets now. My eyes are still 45

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halfway opened. I can’t think of anything. First attempt: failure. Second: failure. Third: a taxi slows down and stops.

“Selamat pagi, Jalan Damai, Repples College, I’ll show you the route”.

Take a seat. “Turn left”. Air conditioned equals to closed windows, I can’t stand the music on the radio as usual. Directions to the taxi driver “keep right, turn here, HERE, now keep straight”. Pay the driver and get out quickly. Third good morning of the day to the college security guard. Clock-in. A series of good mornings to various colleagues and students I meet on the way to my desk with a forced smile on my face.

Do I have time for another coffee? Turn on the PC. Check official mail. Talk to few colleagues about the weather.

Coffee begins to do its job.

I can put together a couple of reasonable thoughts.

Collect cables and handbag, move to the next block.

Turn on the lights and air conditioning in the classroom. A series of good mornings to the students that are miraculously already sit in. Turn on the projector, the laptop and clean the white board. Check personal mail. Open daily files and wait for everybody 46

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to be in the class. Scold the late ones and record who’s in or out. Let’s start. Many thoughts drain from my mind, focus on the lecture. The projector helps. Talk for three hours, keep the attention levels high, ask questions, make them laugh, tell them stories, jokes, more jokes! Walk in between them, make them feel the pressure. Keep talking, explain, make questions.

Breathe now.

I have a feeling I’m talking too much, I can’t stand myself talking. Take a break.

Eyes fully opened now. Check the mail again, reply.

Run to the bathroom, take a piss, wash your face, ignore the mirror. Dry go back to the classroom, where are the students? Scold them again. Finish the lecture. Explain the assignments and wait for a variety of silly questions. Alright it’s time to go back to my desk. Check the official mail. I’m hungry. Who’s in for lunch? A call makes me waste ten minutes. So? Who’s in? Two colleagues reply. Walk of five minutes towards the nearest hotel. What do you want to eat? Chinese?

Thai? Malay? Subway? Mcd? Vietnamese? Vegetarian?

Indian? Italian? The same as usual?

Rice with veggies I know nothing about with some chicken.

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Pay at the counter. Sit down with your colleagues and eat whilst having small chats. You have to go to another class in the afternoon. Back to the college. It’s hot, do not sweat! Move to another block, get into the classroom. There’s a student nearly sleeping on the bench. WHAT-THE-HELL-ARE-YOU-DOING??

Wait for the rest of the class. It’s a practical class. Give them instructions. Keep them busy with all sorts of exercises. Make questions and jokes. Breathe now.

Give yourself a break.

Run to the bathroom, take a piss and wash your face. I can see myself in the mirror now.

Back to the classroom. Make them laugh. Keep them busy and call them nicknames. Assignments explanation. The afternoon is almost gone when you’re done. Back to your desk sit down, relax. Reply to emails-skype-sms-ringing phone.

Earplugs in your ears = do not break my balls!

What time is it? What do I have to do tonight? I check the calendar. No plans so far. It’s 6,15pm let’s go home. A series of byes and have a nice evening on the way out. Clock-out. Walk to the supermarket. Buy food for the fridge. Walk back home with the 48

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groceries listening to an audiobook. When was the last time I did my groceries?

Lucid thought: I hate doing my groceries.

I’ve got my head filled with words. The security guard opens the gates for me. Fill the fridge, get naked and ready for the swimming pool. Swim, exercise. Back to your room take a shower. Wear the worst t-shirt you have, flip-flops and shorts. Back to the kitchen. Do not be lazy now and cook something tasty. Sliced meat with arugola and fresh tomatoes (parmesan is a luxury). Eat. Lucid thought: a lonely meal might be depressing.

Back to my room. Turn on the air conditioning, check the emails and the phone wherever it is. Choose a good good movie. How do I feel? I fall asleep halfway though, the alarm is set. There’s a new message but it’s too late. I turn off the phone. This day is over.

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spirituality Contrasts. Italy is a Monotheist country, at least on paper, meaning that majority of people take religion for granted and the way I see it this might result into an absence of religion, because it is something that is supposed to be there by default but nobody really cares to check. Here on the contrary, religion is perceived in a different way, is one of the main clusters that defines a culture, has its own weight in the everyday life because it’s a Polytheist country and we might not only have a different stomach but also a different God to talk to.

Religion is somehow a way to put a label on people, so I’d rather focus on something else, regardless of our beliefs, features or gods. What I’m looking for is a common ground and it appears to me that we all share something called spirituality. Spirituality is something we can relate to, its personal and universal no matter what culture, external manifestations or words we belong to.

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So the question to me is: how we define this thing called spirituality? Have I ever asked myself that?

Maybe it shouldn’t be something related to the everyday routine, the visible you, the one we show to the world at any given moment. It should be something inside of us, or at least somewhere difficult to get to, a silent place let’s say, where you can get only if you’ve left the scattered glasses of your life behind, a solitary place, down there at the end of the road.

It should be a place that in a way is a walk done barefoot to free your mind and light your heart and its own messiness. I don’t really know if I ever walked that road, leaving the materiality of the self, those so called problems, misunderstandings, obstacles, lost words and hours, days gone without meditating on who we are or what matters to us. Maybe spirituality shouldn’t be like most of the things and relationships we end up with: a give/take game. Maybe it’s just a walk we need to do towards ourselves, it’s the hope for a silence or something that this multitasked, complicated world simply cannot handle.

It feels like spirituality should translate into something authentic, sharp, visible only under certain circumstances and only with your own eyes, even if they’re closed. If something is authentic then it is also 52

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spiritual, it might be recognizable in a person, a story, even a physical place that belongs to us undoubtedly.

It is a matter of recognizing the authenticity of something, an assonance in between our inner music and something out there. So precious and rare, if we are ever so lucky to recognize it, we should immediately walk towards that authenticity and embrace it, hide it and protect it from the dust.

Where is that authenticity? Isn’t that true it could be in nearly anything and anywhere? In the sincere beauty of nature? And what about countless people?

People maybe difficult to recognize at first sight, somebody who has no need to wear a mask or talk bollocks all the time.

In the end spirituality and authenticity are synonyms and you can’t really explain it, institutionalize it or sell it to anybody. They were born in an inner place maybe all of us carry a bit of it our whole life but not everybody can recognize that, others are aware of it and decide to ignore it, but it wont be a priest or a clever story in a book to make me find it because it’s a personal walk. Who knows maybe through silence, experience or waiting we can get there. Or maybe it is so intimate that you cannot share it but only protect it.

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public consciousness A consideration came to me this morning while I was staring out the window in the taxi on my way to the work: if public transportation is the consciousness of a city Kuala Lumpur would need an analyst for sure - and it is not the only city. So, let’s talk about this consciousness, let’s analyze more or less the present status of this city in Southeast Asia.

Bus: I never took one, by principle. A Malaysian bus pops out of the traffic as one of the most polluting objects I’ve ever seen, one step away from dismantling, they move anticipated by an incredibly loud sound and a black smoke behind, this is it: the future! Generally speaking a bus stops where a group of people are standing and someone, let’s call him the howler, gets off screaming to everybody like fishermen in a market.

I’ve seen buses refueling in a gas station with the passengers on board, I’ve seen them blocking the 55

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traffic because they were in a tiny road where they’re not supposed to go.

Bicycle: it’s a valid option if you bear in mind there are no lanes for bicycles and roads are a thin asphalt layer on a living swamp. Without mentioning the ferocious traffic you have to deal with at any given moment.

Anyways it’s a good option if you know the secondary roads and you’re prone to embrace a two-states-life: grubby sweating or soaked.

Motorcycle: most of the things said for the bicycle can be applied here - the ratio cars/motorbikes is 60/40%.

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They’re a good way to move around, well...you know you have to deal with 140 km/h freeways and tropical thunderstorms.

Cars: in terms of traffic Kuala Lumpur is slightly better than other Asian capitals (see Bangkok or Tokyo) but it’s a good good competitor due to the high urbanization and the very bad signage, without mentioning the road network which have been constructed randomly. To drive in a city seldom means to have a relationship with a piece of steel that, even when incredibly sexy and pricy, is a four wheels cage.

Your legs: why not? It’s always an option, I mean, I walk as much as I can but, even in this case, I have to explain. Crossing roads is always a game in between you and the motor-bikers and the sidewalks that at times are swallowed by the vegetation or the concrete - in other words you need to improvise. Now, you might want to pay attention to the wires that hold the light posts, the draining system along the road, the open air holes in the sidewalks and the roots of the trees eradicating tiles and stones like butter - then you have the countless construction sites and other small little obstacles ready to get you and make the walking an exciting adventure. I wouldn’t suggest to run on these sidewalks.

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Trains: trains work, really, they are the most reassuring transportation you can rely on. Rates are good and you have four lines moving up and down, in and out of the central nucleus. There’s also a futuristic monorail that reminds me of a nouvelle vague movie. So let’s say trust trains! But not too much though: every line of train is managed by a different company hence if you need to change route in a specific station you need to get out the company A and in the company B, which is paradoxic: a disconnected public transportation that should keep the city connected.

Taxi: I should write a surviving book about them, they’re such an inspiration. Generally speaking taxi drivers have no clue about the roads and since they can’t afford a navigator they tend to get lost quite a lot.

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all the things we’ve left behind With black & white settings on my camera I'm walking in a flea market inside one of the countless and depressing malls of Kuala Lumpur. I'd like to think that, randomly and superficially, it's here that all the things we've left behind gather at some point: a saxophone makes the best of itself next to a fire extinguisher and a Chinese abacus seats next to stack of faded postcards. You name it, it’s here.

Objects don't vanish when we decide to get rid of them, somehow we all work together to build a parallel world made of unwanted, obsolete, consumed things that still have their own lives after us, passing from hand to hand, trying to come back in the game.

In a display window, right next to an amplifier who’s definitely older than I am, I’ve found an Olivetti 59

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Lettera 32 in pretty good conditions and I have to force myself not to buy any typewriter or musical instruments I don't know how to play and focus on the shooting. I love shooting old stuff, mute objects carrying the signs of a distant era, find them lost, abandoned, lonely and silent, with some sort of aura around them of a glorious time. Objects like those still have something to say.

I wonder how the flea market of the future will be provided they will still be here -Â crowded with an infinite jumble of electronic toys, no old books or analog watches, hundreds of microchip surrogates without a meaning, objects designed to be thrown away and already covered with dust.

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Lost in my thoughts I pause in front of couple of rotary-dial phones and I reckon a fascinating story: the first rotary-dial phone was designed by Henry Dreyfuss for Western Electric in the mid Forties, it was called the Model 500. Five years (!!!) passed before the phone saw its first update: five additional colors.

If I compare it with the times I live in I'm sure at that time people knew what a phone, or a fridge, or a car was: they had the time to use and enjoy it, objects were the result of a real need. We waste days or weeks in order to make the best choice possible and end up buying things we will use for such a short time before a new need to buy something will whisper in our ears. How 61

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many of the things I owe now would be good enough to be shown in a flea market? Or to tell a story?

I went back home with my collection of black and white pictures and I had an idea for one of the classes I'm teaching in which the final project consists of designing a chair: the first lecture will be at the flea market. I want them to see all of these things together and feel the weight of it, the weight of the objects - I want them to understand how real are the choices we make and how important is to share a story through an object.

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13

i need a new girlfriend R8 was her name, we met in a shop in the city center of Hiroshima, she had black skin, lovely proportions and despite early misunderstandings due to our languages I managed to have her.

This happened more than three years ago and we’ve been together ever since, she’s been away only for few months due to a lenses disease (or I should say eyes disease), forced to travel throughout Europe in search for a cure. I have to say when she came back she wasn’t the same anymore, but she was always trying her best, stoically resisting to our tempestuous relationship, always frontline, always on the road. She’s been my lover for three years, my memories, my gaze on the world.

We’ve gone through the toughest times, some drama here and there, and more than once I’ve thought 63

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“alright, I’ve lost her”, but she’s Japanese, she’s relentless, even more than my craziness. It was after the latest trip that I decided we were on a dead-end.

It’s me who has changed? Or it’s just the way its supposed to be? You know, it isn’t that simple to make a decision like this, you can get attached to a piece of metal with a display where many kilometers are involved...thousands, literally thousands of shots filled with reality, moments of my life that simply wont come back if it wasn’t for those pictures.

Question is: how can you choose someone else? I’m wasting hours searching, collecting information in a jungle filled with beautiful girls with short and exotic names and sparkling bodies - all I need is one good girl. How can you choose your next girlfriend? A stable relationship free from skirmishes. Of course there will be misunderstandings in the beginning, I have to start learning a new language from scratch, exploring limits and potentials, but I only have one chance to make it right.

It’s not about money, it’s about specific needs, a list of features you want in your next girlfriend, say a viewfinder, manual focus, touchscreen, interchangeable lenses - and I’m just realizing I can make up this list because of what I’ve learned thanks to my R8. Maybe what I’m saying is that you can learn way more from 64

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imperfections than qualities, you can learn what you DON’T want. Alright, I’m making a mess here, mixing girls and cameras. I’d rather stop here or I’ll ask the next girl I meet “Hi, may I ask you something?

Do you have a manual focus? Can I try it?”.

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spaghetti vs noodles During a freehand drawing class I was telling my students stories from my university years and how I had to find tricks to save money and still make the scale models for the projects I was working on. Once, I said, I’ve used spaghetti to emulate the handrails of a staircase and it worked pretty well. Out of the blue, one of the students made a question I had no explanations for: “What came first, noodles or spaghetti?”

The majority of my students were Asian, hence they began whispering “Noodles...noodles...noodles...”, so I got curious and paused the class to solve the problem and search for the origins of one of the most popular food in the world. It didn’t take me too long to find an answer - spaghetti loses miserably.

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In October 12th, 2005, the National Geographic reports finding in China of the oldest noodle in the world, back to 4000 years ago. To make things worse came the rather suspect introduction in Italy of spaghetti at the end of the XIII Century by the Venetian explorer Marco Polo who just came back from his last expedition in the Far East. At this point it doesn’t really make a difference to know that in the arab Sicily of the XII Century, after a long analysis of the land by Abu Abdullah Mohammed al Edrisi - Idrisi for the friends - he reports the finding in the small town of Trabia of a “dough turned into long strings”.

Well, long story short, I had to officially admit noodles won with great joy of all of my students, but then a national pride kicked in and I had to highlight the magnificent things we-Italians did with that string: we gave it all sorts of forms, we gave it all sorts of fellows like tomatoes or pesto, we made it a movie star too! I think about Alberto Sordi or Totò while they duet with the pasta and I wonder with a spark of melancholy where’s that joy for life, that sense of reality today.

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jazz red wine apple pie When it comes down to live music Malaysia isn’t exactly the best place to be since the majority of artists prefer to play in Singapore which has a solid cultural scene and a public ready to invest more money.

Hence after few months of investigation and frustration I realized that the only way to satisfy my thirst for live music was to embrace jazz and, luckily, ten minutes away from my house there’s a jazz club, a proper one. The feeling you have from the outside is of a first-class restaurant, the interiors are nice indeed but to be really picky food isn’t great and the tiramisu tastes like...something else. Beside that they have a wooden oven, a winery room and a decent stage with a black curtain embracing the whole space. Since I found it I go there a couple of times per month 69

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because you need to understand music and the only way to do so is to get close to the instruments.

To be honest I’ve never been a jazz enthusiast and I never had the patience to learn how to play an instrument neither, but in time I developed my own vision of what jazz means to me: jazz is only live and it’s a matter of form.

As a designer I do care about form and musical instruments, specifically the classical ones, as they have the most sensual and balanced form I can imagine, I’d say musical instruments are the human answer to natural forms. Say there’s a contest in between nature and men: nature might come up with a magnolia, humans, well, a saxophone. I could spend hours staring and listening to a double bass because it reminds me of a man slowly dancing with a beautiful woman surrounded by soft lights and air filled with melancholy.

Sitting few steps away from a piano with a glass of red wine and some apple pie everything suddenly seems to make sense and performs as black and white keys, a black and white that played in the right way can generate an infinite variety of colors.

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Most of the times jazz is purely instrumental and that is the best part of it because it leaves you a bit of space, it’s like an invitation to join in the harmony and music and it feels so real and unfiltered that it speaks directly to your heart.

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fasting and early mornings Each religion has its own rites, moments where a worshipper has to deal with the very nature of its own faith. For Muslims this moment happens during the ninth month of the Islamic calendar that generally is around the month of August, the Ramadan month.

I may need to remind you Muslims follow the lunar calendar and not the solar one (which is 11-12 days shorter), and that the fasting month of the Ramadan lasts for 29-30 days. Malaysia, in its multicultural environment has a Muslim majority hence I couldn’t miss the chance to observe and ask my Muslim friends what is this period about.

A Muslim worshipper has to fast from dawn to sunrise in atonement and follow the five daily prayers, so to wake before dawn and only after the last daily preyer is it allowed to eat and break the fast - that happens at around 7.30pm.

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The city itself seems to act differently, it isn’t that difficult to stumble upon bizarre scenes like people sitting at a restaurant’s table with the food in front of them in waiting for the 7.30pm. Fasting is just one of the things a Muslim has to go endure, it is also forbidden to drink alcohol, to smoke and have sexual activities - the only Muslim allowed to break the rules are pregnant women or in case you’re ill.

An entire month that ends with the appearance of the new moon which marks the beginning of a great festival called Hari Raya - around the 30th or 31st of August - when all Muslims gather at the mosque to prayer and with relatives at home. With the new moon in the sky and one long month of fasting they’re rather entitled to go back to their regular lives.

Speaking of fasting I found an interesting thought about it in a book that I’d like to share: “Fasting is healing”, she said, “but it is necessary to establish for how long it has to last, how much water you can drink and with what; for instance with honey or lemon. Never with fruit juices. Fasting forces the body to burn whatever isn’t necessary, surplus, malignant things, old reserves and never useful things.

Fasting doesn’t burn energies from the body, on the 74

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opposite, it makes the body save the energy necessary to digest food�.

From the book Ultimo giro di giostra written by Tiziano Terzani.

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the first picture Memories about my very first camera is inextricably linked to the Tate Modern of London, or to be more precise to the Tate's rest rooms: I went to pee and I left the camera on top of the toilet dispenser. It took me about five minutes to realize that something was missing.

Shooting for me has to do with many other things aside of photography. It's a vital necessity and I'm realizing more and more that when I'm traveling for most of time I'm completely absorbed in observing, assessing, waiting, chasing the right moment. It’s a full time job. But as I said photography is much more take the lenses of a camera, for example. The zoom teaches you that when you can't focus on a detail you need to move, you have to enlarge your point of view, you step back and do it all over again. When you can't focus you need to look at the full picture to weigh the 77

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importance of all the elements - it's like dancing back and forth.

What interests me most is the metaphor behind the point of view. Most cameras I've owned were silent and unnoticeable, that means that whenever you're not supposed to take a picture it's rather easy to be unnoticed, hoping to frame your subject and invariably shooting the ceiling (I should put together a collection named "ceilings"). Now that she has arrived, with all of her presence and noises: things are changing.

When I had to buy a new camera one of the key factors that made me buy a DSLR was the noise caused by the mirror "moving out of the way" to let the light hit the sensor: I figured I can't die without experiencing that. That sound is music to my ears, it reminds me photography is tangible and in doing so you're taking a stance towards the world around you and what a stance!

In Shanghai I was shooting a man sitting on a deck chair in the middle of the road and since he didn't understand why - me neither - he started arguing with me and it was only thanks to a woman passing by that we didn't come to blows; in Kolkata for most of the time people were giving me a look which was saying 78

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"what in the hell is so interesting here??"; in Hong Kong I found myself drinking with a local couple since I was shooting while they were having McD and Italian wine; in Phnom Penh I've been invited over for lunch because I was shooting an old man intent on picking his nose on the Mekong river.

I took my first photo ever when I was 13 or 14, it was in Ireland. The day we landed they took us to the Cliffs of Moher: a spectacular 120 meters cliffs overlooking the ocean. Arrived on site I immediately left the rest of the group behind and run towards the edge to take a picture. The closer I got the harder the wind was blowing me away, so I decided to lay down and literally crawl the last few meters: the view was breathtaking and with great precautions I leant my camera (with film) over the edge pointing downwards I shot.

The pictures from that trip got lost but I still remember what I had to go through when I came back...strangely shooting from the edge of a 120 meters cliff was considered illegal, dangerous and absolutely forbidden: Irish!

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taxi drivers act i I came to the conclusion I have no choice. Since I refused to buy a car and give my contribution to the daily madness that turned this city into a circus made of first/second gears, traffic lights in the desert, wild honking, questionable signs and pollution, I have to deal with them: the taxi drivers.

But who are they? And moreover who is the taxi driver in Malaysia? I’ve heard of them before, in a nasty way of course, they say they’re the worst in the world, they say they always try to rip you off and never use the meter. And if you’re a tourist you’re pretty much done.

You see them around, nearly everywhere, generally red and white colored, groups, fleets, moving like ants among the other cars, like blood cells in the urban arteries, keepers of all sins, secrets, joy and sorrow of 81

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the people, of the mums with kids, business men, single strangers with grocery bags.

In every corner they wait, confab and conspire, sleep and then go! Somebody is waiting, maybe is late, on the roadside. In every corner they stay...and yet when you’re desperately looking for them, stretching your arm, fingers, neck, they’re busy, or lazy, or have no clue where you want to go or just don’t like you: you’ve got the wrong face.

I came to the conclusion that, whether I like it or not, to a taxi driver I have to commit my movings, the need to be on the road, the necessity of exploring, my joys and sorrows, my returns too late or too early, my lateness and even my earliness that, miraculously, happens sometimes.

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19

blindfolded You’re awake and reversed in a bright white bed.

You can’t recognize the furniture, no idea whatsoever.

You’re a stranger among strangers.

A wet piece of bread.

There are bridges to build to establish a connection.

Parts of yourself, your culture, a familiar shadow.

Then it happens to travel, and it’s like somebody is trying to pull away the bends.

Light filters and it hurts your eyes.

A different light from an outer world.

You feel like you belong to it, but you don’t know what it is.

Slowly you gain sight but what you see is different.

Unknown, weird, incomprehensible, surprising perhaps, fascinating.

Blindfolded we live all our life.

Then it happens to travel, and it’s like somebody is trying to pull away the bends.

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singapore’s voice My second week in Southeast Asia I’ve been sent to Singapore - five-hours by bus - to do something they’ve called training, and I will never forget the room with no windows I was staying, gently provided by my college. “Do you want a room with a window?” - they explained at the reception - “You need to pay extra”.

The first day was pouring rain because, as many said, we were in the middle of the rainy season* but despite that I still wanted to walk from the National Library where I spent some more time due to the breeze and the good coffee - to the bay.

Since it didn’t seem to stop raining I collected my broken umbrella and walked towards the city center.

To reach Marina Bay and avoid as much as possible the rain I accidentally ended up in the underground shopping routes where there’s no day nor night and all 85

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that matters is that you pull out your credit card at some point. I couldn’t last for more than ten minutes better the rain than this aseptic environment.

Marina Bay, known worldwide due to the Formula 1 night race, proposes a fascinating scenario. It’s like a vast open theater where the center is the symbol of Singapore (called Merlion), a weird animal in between a lion and a fish spitting water into the bay, an ivory 86

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totem surrounded by skyscrapers and hotels, bridges and a surreal silence magnified by the rain and the absence of people. I walked the perimeter with what was left of my umbrella until I sat watching the boats with few tourists slowly sailing the bay which looked even more rarefied with the drops of water.

For historical reasons, the strategic location and the limited space, Singapore represents an interesting experiment about the future of the cities, but despite the beauty of it, the fascinating, reassuring peace you perceive when you walk among the skyscrapers, that feeling just doesn’t get through. It’s hard to explain how I felt but like any other city even Singapore has a voice, a voice talking to its inhabitants - Singapore seems to be whispering that any imperfection must be erased by a rich, protected and sterile lifestyle.

Everything's so anonymous and artificial I was kept questioning: where am I? This could be anywhere and nowhere. *I’ve never managed to understand what really is a rainy season. Does it starts in March or November? I can’t say what I know is that, regardless of the month you’re in, if a thunderstorm suddenly bursts there’s always somebody who’s gonna say: you see? Rainy season starts early this year.

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21

the luggage Carry all you need within you, be your own luggage, your own house, your own refugee, your own bookshelf. Carry within you the energy to jump into any given day with your eyes wide open and quickly move, collect, learn, observe what’s going on and search for it: search for a bit of luck into the fog, a spark of beauty in the night’s folds, fifteen minutes of happiness in a week or a sigh of relief early in the morning.

Hold an extraordinary richness under your skin, control the thirst, the curiosity of seeing with your own eyes, loving life for what it has to give you back, for its own way of wounding you in the beginning and leaves you in waiting for such a long time.

Feel life unfolding in each empty step before you finally take the right one, before you stumble upon the right path, a path that belongs to you, before you shake hands with somebody you’ve always known, before you keep quiet your desire, before you enjoy 89

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something without expecting anything, consciously burning what you have to, consciously being at least for once where you should be, with the right person, the right words and at peace with yourself.

Yes then to life is what you feel in your chest, no matter the cause of that feeling, or how long it lasts, what matters is to have the capacity to do so, to save room for something authentic, that has a value that you can’t share with anybody.

The world is a rather small place compared to the distances we have to walk with all of our expectations, mistakes, desires, promises, apologies, lies and hours, days, years spent walking to remind ourselves that we’re like traveling luggages.

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22

that night in india A river filled with people and vivid colors in any direction. Women, men and children tie in a slow wave, a pilgrimage made of short steps, sweat, humanity, vows and preyer.

Someone mentioned Batu Caves might have been a particular situation to be in, hence with couple of friends and a backpack we joined the river late at night to avoid, as much as possible, the heat.

Thaipusam is a Hindu religious festival of great importance, it’s like the new year’s celebration, the end of a fasting and thanksgiving period and Batu Caves is the most sacred place outside of India, fifteen kilometers north of Kuala Lumpur. You need to reach the last train stop, take a bus and walk for twenty minutes in between highways until you finally reach a 91

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40m tall rocky hill that hosts a little temple for the god Murunga.

The night creates an atmosphere you can easily drown in and that night I met something majestic and frightening: I met a crowd made of thousands of people moved by their faith. The moment we reached it within few meters the stream swallowed us, and it was like walking into another world, a world I’ve never been before called India.

Once you’re in the stream there’s no way back so all you can do is to follow it, follow the route to the 92

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temple until you reach the twohundred - seventytwo steps carved into the rock. A huge golden statue of the god stands at the beginning of the stairs you’re stepping up with tonnes of other people that push you from the back. Halfway to the top I decided to turn around and take a shot, and there and then I saw it: this majestic river regenerating itself and moving towards me.

Heat and sweat bring you to the naked interior rock that also hosts few monkeys and thousands of pairs of shoes left outside the temple. It’s a mess and wherever you look you see people getting ready, vowing with any sort of rite: some of spit fire, others drink milk and color their body - I can’t understand much of it and I feel like an intruder, but I also feel absorbed by the multitude, by the smiles around me so I try to ask few questions, slowly move among the crowd taking pictures while everything happens in cycles, in this place, from thousands of years following the Tamil calendar.

Thaipusam commemorates a mythical episode during which the goddess Parvati gives Muruga, her husband, a spear so that he can defeat the demon of evil Soorapadman. Devotees prepare for the celebration of this ceremony through a specific body cleansing, fasting and abstinence. Before my eyes alternate 93

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bizarre acts of devotion, bordering masochism, piercing the skin, tongue or cheeks played with sharp blades, hooks and needles.

The dawn slowly kicks in so we decide we’re done with the heat and leave.

That night will stay with me, those dark women’s eyes, those spirited eyes of men with their back pierced by hooks, those wide sincere eyes of tattooed children. A stream of eyes in a warm night where the sky was officially Malaysian but the ground I walked was Indian for sure.

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the distance So what’s this all about? The meaning of the word distance puzzles me since distance can be measured in many different ways...

It can be measured in clouds fading in the perspective, night lights getting thinner - you can measure it by counting the pages left to the end of the book or in coffees you need to have in order to make it. The distance is the number of phone calls, the ones you've done and the ones you have to do; the distance is an absence that matters, is a humid and solitary pain.

The distance is a standby-state, an indefinite number of awakenings; the scenes of a movie resembling your real life and the heavy rain; is about all the trains, the crowded stations, boats and tickets before the final destination; the distance are all the people in line before you. 95

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We are the distance when we limit our potential because we're stuck, too focused on our present-life.

The distance is always there - whatever is made of it’s a space to fill, and to fill is a beautiful expression: it reminds me of an empty glass awaiting to be overwhelmed, drop by drop.

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a dawn called sibu There are things you have to do by yourself, it has to be a volunteer solitude and everything gets amplified when you’re on an island.

Malaysia is a rather generous country in terms of public holidays, as much as its skin’s colors, and thanks to one of these holidays I managed to escape with a few friends to an island called Sibu, located in the south-west, and found a silence I haven’t experienced for a while.

I woke up and collected few things from the floor and silently left the room to run after my first Asian dawn, a rite I’m accustomed to for many years now and that is associated with nature, the cycling wheel and a pure beauty - I’ve always thought there’s no better birth than from the sea, out of a thin line cutting in two your sight, sleep and perspective on the world.

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An unexpected freshness was waiting out the door, the palm leaves where covered by humidity and within couple of minutes I was on the shore surrounded by the night’s leftovers. A moon’s slice welcomed me to a show we underestimate: it’s quick, free and happens every given morning. Few other experiences can wash away life’s frenzy, the anxiety with which we deal with it and the fear of being left behind like the dawn does.

I think I opened my eyes only when I sat on the humid sand, moving from the air-conditioned sleep to the Chinese sea’s strokes.

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The first thing I noticed was that time seemed to move slower. The show begun with reflections on the clouds, then a few colors depicted the sky with a soft pink and a dark turquoise - like when you can’t see the train but you can hear it approaching, feel the vibrations, in the same way I started feeling the presence of the sun, a never changing wild animal, eyes staring at us from a mesmerizing distance, changing the way things evolve, touching our skin to the point they give us color, to the point they light a black and white picture.

Suddenly a dot of intense light shows up where the sky and the sea, still in black and white, meet. The contrast increases, the clouds assume any sort of shape you can imagine: I recognize a dog on the right and a flying carpet up there, everything moves and is changing now.

The sun frees himself from sea’s harms and makes its entrance into the infinite sky, he’s back home now, a home we share, a home that without him tells a completely different story. A ball of fire comes out of the water tracing a line of burning light that reaches the bottom of my eyes, that line is like an hand inviting me to join the show.

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I’ve been watching the dawn in many different places and times, with a variety of moods: there’s you, insignificant and small, and there’s the most spectacular manifestation of nature: it helps. It helps not to take yourself for granted, to deflate the volume of your life, recognize that after all, that cycle never stops and is keeps including me.

Dawn is a word you can use only in a singular form, because there is only one dawn and the sun will always find the will to immerse himself into the sea. Every morning then, wet and breathless, the sun will always find the strength to color our skin: mine, yours, whatever the color.

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25

the lonely traveler “It is rather healthy to spend some time alone.

You need to learn how to be alone and not be defined by another person.”

Oscar Wilde Spending a few days on a lake in Myanmar, cut off f rom the world and any possibility of communication, living confined on stilt-houses forced me into complete isolation. But mine wasn’t a real loneliness because there’s no loneliness if you’re leaving.

Loneliness - the negative idea of it - is something you feel when you stop, when you quit running after something or when your life is tasteless, hence being on the road alone never bothered me and in doing it I’ve learned things about me I would never had the chance to discover otherwise.

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I begun appreciating all the little opportunities that flourish when you run away from your little world and immerse yourself in a vaster world, and in doing it without anybody around, any observer ready to point out what you used to be back in your everyday life.

The lonely traveler appears in every place for the first time and yet he has the opportunity to become whoever he feels like because he’s surrounded by strangers’ eyes that see him for the first time ever. And the world is filled with people that watch and wait, details you might have to pay attention to, quiet voices in tiny streets, and it is only when you’re traveling in your company that paying attention to those details 102

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becomes easier to the point you stop worrying and thinking and feeling the weight of your life, you can almost ignore it altogether.

But to embrace the road you still need some sort of companions and everybody has these. After loads of miles I begun to recognize them like people you know you’ve seen before somewhere, and since I realized that I carry those companions with me wherever I go: first of all a good good book, because books speak only if you want to, then something I can write on, because traveling alone makes you think a lot but you can’t hold everything, you have to let thoughts go away from your head, and finally there’s the music - and you really need to make an effort choosing the good stuff.

There’s nothing more I need, really.

Music, notebooks and a good book fit easily in a backpack together with few other things and, of course, the camera: the additional memory. Then there’s you and the journey itself that, when you’re alone, is always on the verge of changing, on the verge of being.

It is traveling alone that you might find space when you thought you had none, space for breathing when you’ve been running for too long, and roads, new roads in every single direction you’re looking at.

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26

outdoor bathroom Stifled by the noisy urban rhythms as soon as I get the chance I jumped on a flight to Bali, a pretty big island located in central Indonesia. Bali recalls a number of different ideas: surfers, candid beaches, meditation, alternative lives and uncontrolled tourism to which was exactly the thing I wanted to avoid. I wanted to be off the grid.

Lucky enough I did find what I was looking for in an area in the center of the island called Ubud. To get there from the main airport of Denpasar down south, you need to hire somebody to drive you up the hills and along the tiny local streets. Ubud is the cultural center of the island, in fact once you get there you’ll notice many craftsmen and artists (both local and westerners).

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I found my own little Ubud hosted for few days on the ground floor of an Italian couple living in a typical two-stories Balinese house on top of a hill.

I loved staying at their house, sleeping on the cold floor, after months of tremendous heat, and with an open air bathroom I always dreamed of.

Despite the fact Bali has tons of attractions worth visiting, the day I arrived, I decided that I wouldn’t go anywhere but the rice terraces that surround Ubud, it was love at first sight: all I wanted to do was to spend 106

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my days talking with the local artists and watching the rice’ harvesters working until the sunset.

Bali is a unique place but most of all has a unique atmosphere you wont miss noticing and that’s because of its religion Hindu-Buddhist which is different from the rest of the country (Indonesia is 90% Muslim).

That translates in a completely different set of temples and traditions you wont find anywhere else embedded in Balinese’s life, like when you walk in the streets and you can easily stumble upon (you’re supposed to pay attention) little daily offerings to the gods and spirits called Banten, they’re everywhere, they offer all sorts of 107

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things in carefully folded leaves containing some food, money, little objects and even cigarettes - the idea of a smoker-ghost is quite interesting. But after a brief visit to a temple I couldn’t wait to go back to my rice fields following these people half way sunk in the mud to collect the rice.

Those days spent in Ubud, a simple life without a mattress, in contact with rurality and the reflections of the sunset at a slow pace, one grain at a time, was an unforgivable panacea, it squeezed the citizen in me, it made me appreciate the sense of belonging and, for a moment, grasp the possibility of a balanced life.

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27

a choral goodbye Hanoi said goodbye in a choral way while I was in the taxi to the airport - 6am - with the sun slowly rising on the other side of the lake and in every single square, street, sidewalk I was passing by tonnes of people were coming out with the sleep still on their shoulders.

A woman waking up early to do jogging before she goes to work is not something astonishing, but when you see an entire city, first thing in the morning, literally filling whatever is considered “outdoor” to exercise is really something unique but most of all tells the story of a city, a culture that for many reasons close and far away in time, is extremely fascinating to me.

Hanoi lives in the streets, that’s why the first thing I did when I arrived in the old district was to rent a four gear motorbike: you’ve not really experienced Hanoi if you don’t try riding in the craziness of the jam, or 109

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crossing a junction where everybody seem to have a personal lane - yes, you might say it’s crazy if you’re not a local, but it’s only when you’re in the middle of it that you can see some sort of law in the chaos.

Hanoi is the calidity wrapping you at all times, the open houses with kids on the floor watching cartoons, the crowd in wait to see the mummified Ho Chi Min, is the narrow and long houses that look like corridors, is the red bridge on the lake that hosts a centenary turtle who’s dying due to the pollution. Hanoi is in its theme-districts: helmets, carpentering, animals, funeral flowers, bamboo in all shapes. Hanoi is a train passing by few steps away from your laundry 110

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interrupting for few minutes the everlasting madness.

Hanoi is the rusty and decadent bridge on the Red River, is a nocturne tango in a nameless square while the Communists speakers diffuse a melancholic music and whoever - like myself - joins open air dance classes.

Hanoi is the capital of a Communist state where the national sport is honking, where McDonald, Facebook and the Chinese are not welcomed, where you live a simple life under the shadow of the red flag with one star, where the victory gesture has a more than real meaning (at least for them), where the food is simply 111

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delicious, the fridge is a luxury and the chickens walk on the roofs.

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28

departures Some are painful and carry a sense of loss, others are liberating and the only possible choice.

Sometimes they're unexpected while others you can see them happening from a long, long distance.

To depart means to open up to something, to take a decision and embrace risk.

Perhaps a departure is the moment the plane lines up to take off and you quickly move from a terrible stillness to a brutal acceleration. Or perhaps it's the moment we feel we need to get out of here and from that moment onwards it's a countdown to the unavoidable.

A departure perhaps takes shape when the luggage is opened on the floor, with your underwear scattered in between your clothes and the book you're reading ready to follow you everywhere. Or maybe it is the luggage itself, a luggage that has its own trip and 113

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leaves even before you do and magically appears upside down.

Departures have to do with a look. The look of you leaving turning your head backwards, and the look of whoever is watching you disappearing behind the security check or behind a slamming door. It's the moment you hold your breathe realizing you're leaving everything behind, maybe a comfortable life or a nightmare still burning your skin.

Th e d e p a r t u re h a p p e n s a n d b u r n s a l m o s t unconsciously, immediately absorbed by the clash of the road, by the movement towards its alter ego: the arrival. Strangely to depart doesn’t always mean to arrive, sometimes you leave to an elsewhere wrapped in mystery.

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29

walking kolkata As soon as I got off the plane I jumped into the in-discussed symbol of Kolkata: the Ambassador. The majestic and bombproof yellow taxi, a time machine that sometimes makes you feel like you’ve just stepped into the Fifties. They are the moving reference point for the city, because everything moves here. The restless city is pushing you all over the place, overfilled in the sidewalks, the air, the smells, the food, the rivers and bridges - hence you’ve got one choice only, join the stream and get carried by it.

Kolkata is an open air circus where nothing is unreal; you’re witnessing day by day, street by street, the fair of humanity. The ring of life is represented vividly and and at times the horrifying layers of human dignity and whether you're prepared or not you have to deal with it. You'll need to listen and try to answer the question I've seen in the eyes of the people; what are you? How do you feel about this?

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I like to think that there are no places not worth visiting, you never know how you will be react exposed to a certain situation, I’ve humbly embraced the strong sights I’ve seen in Kolkata, walking for hours in the heat of the sun, with my feet covered with dust and my white skin screaming for attention.

Quite often when I am back from a trip somewhere people ask “was it beautiful?”, like you can only witness beauty in this world, or like the only good reason to travel is to see beautiful things. Well, my answer to that is that Kolkata is not beautiful in a 116

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conventional sense - it is not the place you want to be if you’re looking for a relaxing environment, shopping and museums.

While I walked amongst trash, beggars and sickeningly smells, little by little I begun to see reality exactly as it is, without judgement nor fear, in my mind I begun to see the other side of the coin: if on one side you have cities like Singapore, sterile clean and ordered, still and monotonous, on the other side you have Kolkata, the counterpart of that reality. It gives us balance and contrast on ourselves, they give us 117

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the chance to think about what is good and bad, what is too much or too little.

I would be a liar stating my heart was broken before that poverty, before people who live with nothing but my reaction was a calm acceptance: when I’ve met these people I’ve seen no affliction in their eyes, on the opposite, their’re well aware of their situation and exhibit an extraordinary dignity. That overwhelming, vital, noisy and intense circle somehow closed and generate itself in a way that, as a passer by, as an external observer I couldn’t fully understand.

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Kolkata taught me there are places that push you to do a journey within a journey: a journey within yourself, into your culture, your life and your path. There are places that challenge what we take for granted on a regular basis, push us to appreciate values as dignity, education and respect. Kolkata reminded me, way more than other place, that my skin has a color, a color that is speaking on behalf of me without the need for words. It showed me the world as a blanket that is too short.

I came back to Kuala Lumpur like I’ve been on another planet. The following days I felt physical and mental tiredness, I needed to elaborate on that walk, I needed to have some silence in my mind after all the questions Kolkata posed me. While I was talking to couple of students asking me “how do we get out of here?” or when I walked for an entire neighborhood with three kids hanging from my legs or when I bought an orange juice: “I don’t get it, how much is it” - to a drinks peddler.

“It’s 27 rupie” - said a woman behind me.

“Oh, thanks ma’m, here’s 30...what he is talking about now?”

“He says you need to pay 10 rupie more in case you want to keep the bottle” “The bottle? No, I don’t need it...”

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“Well then, give it back to him” “Back? But I have to drink it here and now then!”

“Yes, that’s right!”

I pounded the orange juice in couple of minutes in the middle of the colored traffic jam. A sixty year old man is staring at me with a worried expression on his face while the woman leaves smiling. I finish the juice and give it back to him, smile at the peddler and leave thinking to myself: “thank God it wasn’t a bottle of whiskey”.

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30

you’re a glass of water Out there: spaces, women and men we’ve never seen before, with stories we’ve never heard of and truths no one will ever talk about. They will not knock at your door or appear on a website. The only way to really understand them is to get out of your house, hit the road and leave everything related to you behind.

The misconception is that if you leave the place you were born you have to give up pieces of yourself behind - hence this step is lived with a sense of loss.

That’s a dangerous thought. Looks like you belong to a specific kind of neighborhood, street, mentality, culture and that defines you, that’s who you are for the rest of you life. Really? Oh! if only it was that simple...

Say you belong to a bigger place suspended in a vast cold void you know very little about. You’re not just part of it but profoundly tightened to it, you’re made of the same substance and have a destiny to share. You 121

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might have a place you were born and raised, a place you call home, but what if that place is just a starting point - like the label on a map that says “you are here” - that’s your hometown and you know it all too well.

Being aware of your birthplace generates a fundamental question: should I stay or should I go?

Not surprisingly I thought about this a lot and came to the conclusion that staying or leaving has a lot to do with the rain and a glass of water. If you stay you keep the water you already have, safe under your roof, hoping nothing is gonna take it away from you. If you leave you need to get rid of some of the water because it’s easy to move around and plus you have to expose yourself to the randomness of the weather. Some days will be raining and you’ll gain new fresh water, some days will be so hot you’ll miss the roof in despair.

There is no right or wrong answer to this question, you are the glass and you have to deal with the water.

When you look closer you realize that some people like the rain and others don’t - and that makes all the difference in the world.

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31

24hrs as a buddhist monk Moved by compassion the Buddhist nun paused her meditation to grab a plastic chair and hand it to me saying "try with this one". Embarrassed, I've tried to apologize explaining that I can't focus on my mind if I'm struggling with my whole body. Of course she knew it since in the first twenty minutes of meditation I've changed my posture ten times, miserably failing one of the simplest tasks ever: count to ten breathing in and out: breathe in, breathe out - one - breathe in, breathe out - two - and so on. Trying to calm down my own mind was a lucid nightmare, it was like trying to trap the clouds or a wild animal out of control.

The guided meditation session was just one of the physical trials I had to go through during my day as a Buddhist monk in a temple in the woods nearby Seoul, 123

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at the feet of bare mountains, made even more mysterious by a late spring.

Together with my traveling companions, after a brief tour of the temple and an introduction to Buddhism, we did a two hour hike in the woods, purple-red dressed like apprentices. Soon after we ate vegetarian meals offered to the temple by the whole Buddhist community and shared with homeless people or whoever wants to come up here and have an healthy meal (eat-it-all is mandatory of course).

One by one we all had to wash dishes in the kitchen and when my turn came and I found myself in a big kitchen paired with a monk who, unfortunately, didn't speak English, so we found a way to communicate that sounded like this: I was soaping and he was rinsing. Once I've finished I curtsy respectfully to the monk who - smiling - pointed a stack of dishes behind me...I rolled up my sleeves and went back to the washbasin, I thought it was part of the training like in karate kid.

Dinner was on the table at 4,30 pm and after a brief hiking session we re-joined the nun in an empty classroom for our first meditation class followed by the evening chanting with all the monks who live there. Properly trained we bowed and sung doing our 124

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best to look decent, showing the first signs of weakness.

8pm to bed since we had to wake up at 4am sharp for the morning chanting (with more bowing), followed by the second meditation session and finally by the breakfast (which suspiciously looked a lot like the previous meals). Needless to say my plastic chair meditation (a worldwide premiere) was even worse than the previous one: I've spent an hour fighting with an abnormal quantity of useless thoughts - How big is this room? Why did they choose these materials?

When was the last time I woke up at four? Did I miss the sunrise yet? How in the hell she's able not to move at all??!? - instead of focusing on the current task question & answer: (breathe in) Who am I? (breathe out) I don't know.

Alright, trust me, get up at an ungodly hour followed by hiking, bowing and meditation without even the shadow of a coffee's drop in my veins might be demanding.

As a conclusion of this personal journey we had to do one of the most important practices in Buddhism, the well known 108 bows. Basically you have to prostrate every time the monk evokes something like "I prostrate for each time I've been disrespectful towards 125

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the only Earth we all share" and so on. In order to give you a more precise idea of why it was so painful I’d like to share an accurate description of it: “the bow opens standing with your hands in hapchang position, then you gently kneel on the meditation mat, place you hands in front of you on the mat, with the palm of your hands down, also place your left foot on top of your right one. Meanwhile turn your palms up and bend down until your forehead touches the mat and lower your gluteus too in order to be as close as possible to the floor”. *

Every single bow - up-down-up again - happens within 5 seconds and I’ve done it at 5 am in a complete agonistic trance.

With my whole body in pain I'm pretty sure I understood how strictly connected in Buddhism the body and mind are, and before we left we had the chance to spend some time with the nun, drinking tea and rice based sweets, talking about ourselves and about the monk's life. We discussed for an hour and I loved how she replied when, answering to my friend's question "how do we understand others?", she said "understand others? you better try to understand yourself! it's almost impossible to do that!" and talking about relationships I realized we were on the same page when she said "the best way to learn a language is to find yourself a girlfriend who speaks it!".

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When we went back to our lives and clothes, in the cold outside the temple, I realized how many things we had done and it was only nine o'clock in the morning. I felt in pieces, absolutely unfit for the monk's life, but I promised to myself to stay closer to me, to try to calm down the wild animal within me and to live more at floor-level. * from “The Sacred Art of Bowing� by Andi Young.

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32

indispensable Traveling to me always means traveling light, hence every single object I carry needs to fit a limited list called “Indispensable”. Hence the obvious question is: what’s the most useful item? The one that fulfills the greatest quantity of functions to keep in your luggage? Well, to me the answer is quite straightforward: a scarf! In order to prove you that I made another list of all the ways and meanings a scarf can be used - I’ll be glad if you can participate suggesting other functions: 1. keep your neck warm in air-con-rooms to prevent a cold or neck-pain (say on a bloody plane); 2. fold it to form a pillow; 3. fold it around your hand and punch somebody, or break glass in case of necessity, or clean something; 4. tie it around a wound; 5. stop an hemorrhage in case you’re bleeding 6. cover your face or your hair 129

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7. cover your mouth in case of smoky situations or if 8. you’re robbing a bank; 8. wrapped around an object to hide or protect; 9. you can wrap it around your chest and keep something in it; 10. a catapult to throw objects; 11. as an extension of your arm to grab, pull something; 12. tie to things - say if your car is broke someone can pull you; 13. a skirt; 14. if big enough could be a toga; 15. cover a draught; 16. play ‘stretch the rope’; 17. a tablecloth; 18. a bag; 19. a towel and a beach-towel (indeed); 20. a football: fold it around something heavy and rounded; 21. swimwear for him and for her (I assume so); 22. if you’re dressing like a superhero you can use it as a cloak; 23. as a sponge; 24. you can use it as a flag; 25. in case of a emergency you can wave it to focus attention; 26. I’m not suggesting this, but you can always see what happens shaking it in front of a bull; 130

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27. tie it around your head imitating Rambo (I’ve actually done this); 28. give it to somebody saying ‘I’m giving you the most useful item ever made’; 29. to hang something; 30. tie somebody’s ankles while he/she’s sleeping and then wait for him/her to wake up (hilarious); 31. diaper; 32. you can fix it on the wall as a decoration; 33. a curtain; 34. a bed sheet; 35. the biggest napkin in the world; 36. play ‘catch the flag’; 37. a tie; 38. a rope to escape from a window; 39. folded several times could be used as a spacer; 40. a parachute for a low-height-jump; * 41. sexual games;

* number 40 clearly shows a luck of imagination.

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33

indiana jones my ass (talking to myself ) “Easy man, easy! it’s alright now, just keep going straight and it’ll be alright...just focus on the runaway and don’t m....F£)=é顡∞∞∞M.!!!! “”éé**°°!!”

When it comes down to swearing we all do it in our mother tongue, isn’t it? But to be honest with you I had to put some English words too. There was just a moment down there, in that murky water that I like to call for obvious reasons Nescafé water, and I went there together with my precious camera. Once I got out of it and recognized what was happening I’ve heard somebody laughing not too far from me: “Are you alright my friend? You missed it, didn’t you? Ahahaha” - American accent, he’s enjoying himself, but I can’t think about anything else but my dripping camera...and he goes on - “I’m sorry but do you mind if I take a picture of you?” - clicks and disappears. In 133

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that moment I had the lucid thought of asking him to send me the picture of my angry-incredulous expression but he’s gone already and there’s no time to exchange business cards anyways.

Alright, let’s contextualize here. I’m pretty sure we all end up sooner or later in situations like this, situations during which you hear a tiny voice within you saying “how in the hell did you manage to get yourself into this?”, well, I’ve heard that voice many times.

My days in Siem Reap, Cambodia, were great and nothing wrong happened considering the city was 134

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flooded due to the fact it was the rainy season and a week before my arrival they had to rescue 200 tourists with the helicopter because they were stuck in Angkor.

All I had to do was to wade across the NescafĂŠ water to reach a temple in the deep jungle, half naked and with no idea of what was swimming in that water to put it nicely.

I was with couple of friends and, on the route to the temple, I’ve lost the rest of the group immediately after we begun to wade the pond. Everything was fine to the point I felt the urge to shoot some pictures in a Indiana-Jones-situation, so I took out my camera and 135

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kept walking. Twenty meters later I reached the immersed runaway at the entrance of the temple so I confidently stepped in it.

Due to the dirtiness of the water I couldn’t see much so I had to move carefully - all I have to do now is keep going straight in order not to miss the runaway...and I miss it, my right foot is five centimeters away from the edge and it goes down, and unfortunately I am attached to that right foot so I follow him with the rest of me. I perfectly knew that was about to happen, I felt it the moment I was falling.

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Here it comes the drama. My camera is gone and I think about all the moments we had together, the kilometers of shots we collected. She’s my memory and I thank her while I walk the last few meters before I reach the entrance where my friends question where was I. But they immediately understand what was going on and burst into laughter: they cannot see the despair in me, I have to save her! So I took off my t-shirt and decompose the camera and place every single piece on the limestone to let it dry. Many tourists came and laughed at the half naked man with sad eyes.

Like a cave man I found myself a rod in order to have a safer walk back and in fact nothing dramatic happens. I waited one long long hour before I finally decide it’s time for the truth: will my camera turn on again? Will she come back to me? will I have memories again? I press the button and a very weird noise comes out of it, then the lenses make a move, stretching and finally opening. The display turns on, She works! She works!!

Things I have learned thanks to this experience: 1. You never know when you’ll end up in underwear hence always wear good ones.

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2. If water is involved, for God’s sake, hide away any sort of electronic toy.

3. This is a classic case where it is not the destination that counts but the journey itself.

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34

taxi drivers act ii You know these nights, where all you really want to do is to go back home, and in order to do so you need to rely on them, to their skilled sharp hands, often irritating hands too.

Can’t remember where, but in a night like that I was somewhere in the outskirts of the city and I was looking for a taxi to go back home - at that time I was hosted by a dear friend of mine from the Philippines.

So all I had to do was to wave at the traffic at two o’clock in the morning.

I stretched my arm and I noticed something was wrong: 1) I found the taxi at the first round; 2) the passenger seat was occupied by somebody. But the taxi stopped - I thought - surely it’s a relative or something! who cares! So I get using the rudeness strategy, the only way of dealing with those guys and 139

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deter them from ripping you off. It worked and we agreed on the fare but then I saw her: a smiling woman was staring at me, in her opinion, provocatively. The taxi driver assured me she was a friend and we left directed at home: I was in a taxi with a prostitute.

The run was quick and they/she knew it so she didn’t waste time and quickly asked if I knew that place in the city centre filled with Westerners and prostitutes...I knew where she wanted to go and I said “yes, I’ve heard of it and I am not the right guy”. But she didn’t believe me so she changed strategy: “Do you like me?”.

“Yeah...but just take me home for tonight: alone”.

At that point the taxi driver got in charge of the situation and came up with a brilliant idea: loud disco music to turn me on! I’m in a taxi with a prostitute and a taxi-deejay-driver in the middle of the night: jeez, I need a picture of this.

I tried to calm them but she was really into it and kept going on and on: “Hmm, really? Italian ah? And do you like girls in Malaysia?”.

“Well, of course I like them...mostly if I don’t have to pay them”.

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“...and what about later?”.

“I’ll be sleeping”. “...tomorrow then!”

“Work”.

“Come visit me!”.

“Hell yeah, I’ll find you in the yellow pages!”.

The situation, I admit was quite funny, the only downside was my headache caused by the loud music.

But I got home and paid what we agreed, I got off and told the woman - I’ll see you soon! She said goodnight while the taxi driver was shaking his head. After all they took me home to a fair price trying to sell me some sort of extra service.

A taxi then is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’ll get.

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about the city He didn't really care about the scenario but mostly about the wind passing by and when he felt like, all of a sudden, he would just stop, sit down and watch her breathing, listening to the sound of the people passing by, the way she wiggled and barked. Every city - he used to say - has its own beat, its own way to come and go, and the only way to catch it is to sit down and listen, it might take some time and a bit of luck, but if you stay still long enough something it’s gonna happen and for a moment you can see her face.

A city is a matter of faces - but you need to know where to look for them.

Markets were the answer. A market is a matter of hands and if you want to see the real people, the citizens, you need to find out where markets are happening, the hanging flesh, the half-dead fishes, the birds in the cages, the pyramid-shaped fruit, the slow pace of elderly, the morning glory and the swarming 143

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of plastic bags...and then hands again...that pull, grab, count, scratch, collect and arrange.

Like the palm of an open hand, to see the future of a city, before he even got there, he loved to get lost in a concert made of notes, lines, words and maps, crossing, unrecognizable names, labels, lists and itineraries. Taking notes was his way to walk the city in his head.Â

He knew that was pointless because every single time he got there, once the real walk was happening everything was different and every single note proved to be wrong. But being wrong was great, that feeling made every single step meaningful, every street, every 144

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building and scenario...the reality - he used to say was way more tasty than my imagination!

The size of a city...that's a very complicated task.

Indeed you could have a look at the map but only when you're there that you begin to understand, because only then it becomes personal, because of all the roads you've walked only one is Tokyo or Melbourne or Kolkata and only your legs can tell you about it.

Landing after landing cities began to fascinate him the dust, the waits in between strangers, the sound of trams or ferries, the smell, the billboards and the porches, the way a woman can leave a trace in the air, 145

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the depressed faces and the closing doors, the jams and the loudness, the position of sun you can't never figure out and the night with its vortex and taxis. At the end of the day all of those multitudes end up in lines waiting to pay a ticket. He used to think that when a city is pregnant it can really be a warm place where things happen, when real conversations happen and where one day or another you could have found a door, a staircase, a roof where you can close your eyes, finally safe. You escape from and yet you return to a city - it is a beehive where everyone's connected to everybody else even though they really struggle to notice it.

Meanwhile, he loved to sit down in a spot without a name staring to all of those solitudes passing by.Â

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this is gonna hurt Sitting on this bench I can see far away the Habour Bridge - I’ll go there later - as for now I just want to enjoy the view of the bay in front of me.

Cities talk to you but you need to find the right spots to take a break and watch things happening, maybe a sound, a face, a gesture or cars passing by or coming back. This is a Monday in Sydney, lunchtime.

I’m hungry and the wind blows like a woman gently passing next to you, but I can’t ignore the noises made by those guys behind me playing football on the grass of the Darling Harbour - from here it feels like there’s more space, the sky is a bit bigger due to the reflections on the water.

Nope, I can’t concentrate longer due to the noises, hence I collect my things and decide to ask these guys to join them, there’s also a woman playing football and 147

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she asks “where do you come from, stranger?” - “I’m Italian, I’m just arrived from Melbourne”. Then another guy adds: “...and the very first thing you do is to play football”. “Why not!” I reply.

Winter has just begun in Australia hence I have to take off two of the three layers I have on me and with excitement I join these guys aware of the fact that most likely they’re pretty good.

We play for half an hour and despite that I’m completely out of shape and can’t remember the last time I played, I feel good and I’m amazed by how good the woman is. I’m kind of disappointed when they stop due to the fact they have to go back to work.

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We greet each other and I assure them I’ll be here tomorrow for another game.

I laid on the grass barefoot enjoying the sun and the heat and of course recovering my breathe, thinking how that was a small example of how Australians are people who enjoy themselves and this, more than anything else makes Australia a unique place to live.

Shortly after my friends left to go back to their offices another group of call me, they were playing rugby right next to us. My belly is empty and I’m sweating already...rugby then...that’s really a bad idea, I’ve never played rugby anyways...

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“This is gonna hurt� I whispered before collecting my shoes and join them...

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curiosity How does a rhinoceros make love? What's the smell of a sunflowers field? How does it feel to walk barefoot in a mosque? How sparkling is the Tour Eiffel? Where was the genius of Salvador DalĂŹ born?

How many steps you can count under the tropical sun? What's the shape of a volcano? How's life in Myanmar? And the desert, how spaceful is its night?

How spiritual is to stand on the Potala Palace in Lhasa? How might it be to ride a horse in Mongolia? how do you get there? And what about this mysterious Bhutan and that Buddhist temple hanging from the rocks? How many stories are enclosed in the continent where man and the coffee were born: Africa?

Maybe Curiosity is nothing else but the Art of asking Questions.

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music scar On the 25th July I flew to Taipei (Taiwan) but this time it wasn’t just another exploration trip to an unknown country. What I was doing in reality was to fulfill a duty. I had to meet someone: I had to meet a part of myself I haven’t seen in a long time.

I was nineteen years old when I went to my first Radiohead concert with my beloved sister in the magical Verona’s Arena. That night, beside the emotion caused by the event itself, left me a reminder for the rest of my life: a scar on my left arm. In the attempt to reach the best seat possible together with thousands of other people I scratched my arm against an uncovered wire. I was bleeding when the music began but in that moment who could care less about it?

Music and blood: I can’t even describe how I felt that night, but I understood something back then, I realized why we like or dislike some music - maybe 153

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there’s a frequency inside of all of us, a precise vibration. We like a specific band or musician because they play that frequency. So all of a sudden, for whatever reason, something, someone out there is so mysteriously close to us. You listen to some music and you go “I love it! I love how it makes me feel, it’s like it was written for me!”. It is truly something magical.

That night I understood that you don’t go to a concert because of the band, you want to be there for yourself.

Imagine the intense feeling of your frequency played in a stadium that sounds exactly like you do, doesn’t that makes you feel part of something? Something bigger than you are?

Eleven years have passed since that night. I was a kid back then with a future made of confusion, but I wasn’t confused about music. In the past eleven years a storm has passed over my head, pushing and pulling me in any direction, changing my perspective and shaping every single opinion I have, but if my excitement is still as pure today while I'm jumping and closing my eyes with thousands of strangers, hand in hand with the music, well, I think I should recognize the value of it all. No, not the value of Radiohead.

What I’m talking about is the value of a life with a soundtrack - a good one - which despite the odds, the mistakes, the turns and the blood, has saved 154

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something, something you have to reach, you have to chase, even in a hot night on the other side of the world.

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five men on a boat Five men on a boat flying away from the rocks, the dust, the black sand and the sulfur’s smell.

Through my five dollars sunglasses I can’t stop staring at the smoking crater, paying attention not to bang into something with all of this shaking. Five men sharing a silence balanced only by the noise coming from the back of the boat, crashing against the waves while we’re crossing the strait in between the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra to return to the mainland.

The captain fears nothing and pauses the engines only when we’re are literally flying suspended in between the sea and the sky - I can’t remember his name, he’s not a talker but he’s a great smoker. Ba-ri, our guide on the island, never thought about wearing a mask while he’s going up and down the volcano Krakatoa 157

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breathing sulfur. The third man is a young boy: he smiles, sleeps and from time to time the captain sends him on the boat’s nose to pull the anchor. There are still two men in the count, me and my American friend: a necessary ballast. Five men on a seven-meters fishing boat, pushed by a double Yamaha Enduro 40 engine: a representation running due to the tragic and fascinating story of an infamous volcano in the middle of the sea.

Once upon a time an happy band of three volcanoes lived in the middle of the sea - picture a big mountain with three tops. One of them, with some sort of personality problem, one day decided to show off and burped in a biblical way. It was the 1883 when he did 158

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it and it was so loud that they noticed him even in Australia (some 20000km east). His erupting personality, among other things, caused a tsunami that killed more than 35,000 people and when the show was finally finished very little was left of the band: in his rage the bigmouth volcano destroyed himself and the volcano next to him, half of the third one was chopped off (you can still see today a perfect section of it). But what seemed to be a dramatic but closed story was in reality only the first act.

In fact, all of a sudden, in 1925 Krakatoa emerged from the waters spitting fire and smoke and, ever since, little by little, he came out of the water growing exactly in the same position he used to hold. Fast 159

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forward to 2012 and what you have is a 400 meters mountain that’s keep growing.

The volcano-island is officially active today and with the rest of the crew we camped one night at his feet, a sleepless night at least for me - but what an astonishing dawn we saw at 5am! And what an astonishing tiring hike in the sand we had to do.

When we reached the top we were welcomed by the sulfur’s smell (at least in the morning is a bit less intense) and the amazing panorama around us. I can’t even describe what I saw, it was like standing on the shoulders of a giant - a powerful, silent and dangerous giant in waiting for its own destiny, surrounded by the sea and the leftovers of its fury, and if I’m here writing this story it is a clear sign that luckily while we were there its destiny wasn’t around.

Ten days after we left the volcano-island crossing the strait and jumping on the waves I received a message from my guide who, quite excited, urged me to go back since the volcano was erupting and I had to see the night lightened by the lava.

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taxi drivers act iii Kuala Lumpur is filled with places you can only define with the expression in the middle of nowhere, and I’ve found myself in those places a few times, like the other night.

I was crossing the city from side to side at the slow pace of a taxi driven by a middle-age IndianMalaysian man. We have a small talk while he stares at me through the mirror, asking my personal details. I try to see his face too while he lowers the radio and shares his bitterness - he calls me Carlos like many others do.

“Dear Carlos, it’s a tough life over here, really difficult...this city is too expensive and it’s too hard to live here...there’s too much disparity today, but once it was better. You see, driving a taxi isn’t what I want to 161

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do, I use to be a good engineer....but now...well, I just want to leave”.

“Leave to...where?” I ask trying to hold the conversation.

“I don’t know, just away from here...maybe I can go to Italy! You come here and I move there! OK?”.

Fair enough, I can see some sort of cultural balance in that. Then I try to ease the situation confessing I’ve left Italy for similar reasons, but he reacts weirdly at my words, like he is hurt.

“What do you mean? This is not possible! Italy is a beautiful place! Everyone loves Italy!”.

“Yeah, it is beautiful indeed, but sometime beauty isn’t enough, most of all if you have to live with it...in a way it’s like with women...”.

Waiting for the traffic lights the car is still and while he’s listening and starting through the windscreen the taxi driver nods, but I don’t think he’s convinced someone’s calling, he answers. A long call in IndianEnglish-Bahasa (the local language) begins so I take the chance to get closer to the window and get closer to the city.

The meter makes a beep each 10 cents and the night is hotter than usual. I feel the weight of the week and 162

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my head is filled with useless thoughts so I decide to hold on Ramesh’s words. How could I run away from Italy? I never did it, really, how could I do something like that? How can you run away from yourself? Your culture, a lifetime attitude - at the most you can be physically far from it but it’s like a tattoo: it’ll always stay with you.

Sure I could have made another choice, the choice to stay and keep doing what I was doing, but when I looked in front of me I saw the fog and I understood I had to give myself a chance, put myself into my hands.

So I flushed the toilet and it was not a simple one, it never is, and by now I can say it worked. Like Ramesh I had no clue of where I was going but guess what, I ended up somewhere, always with the risk of being left in the middle of nowhere.

“Pull over Ramesh, do you see these trash cans? Right there”. I wished good luck to Ramesh who turned to me and smiled while collecting the money. I told him that his country isn’t that bad as he said, to me it’s interesting.

The passenger gets off the taxi who’s doing a U-turn swallowed by the darkness of the night. All that’s left is a silence made of low lights and emptiness. The gates close behind the passenger while he’s walking back to his life, the 163

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taxi driver is gone now, maybe he’s really thinking about Italy, of how he is gonna put together the money he needs, but for now all he has is a steering wheel and the will to change.

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the woman who knew I read somewhere that the morning in Hong Kong must be seen from one of the famous doubledecker trams still operating on the island. They move east to west since 1904 and it’s hard to believe the city would be the same without them. So I forced my friends to wake up at 6 in order to be there on time. I was looking for the city awakening, emerging from the night before, I'm not sure but probably that was a Sunday morning.

The hotel was on the mainland so we had to cross the river to get there, skip breakfast, take the very first train south and once we reached the empty streets my friends asked: so what now? I smiled, looked in the direction of the red tram approaching and dragging itself with all of that noise and said: we’re getting on the tram and ride until it stops, I want to see where it ends.

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We reached the end of it and all agreed that was the real Hong Kong. There were no tourists and little English, a beautiful market was happening and with some difficulties we had freshly made egg-tart.

My friends enjoyed the ride so they proposed to go all the way to the other end. One of them felt asleep but I moved quickly to sit on the back seats of the deck.

From that seat the perspective on the city was great and the slow-rigid-pace of the tram felt like you're not just looking outside of the window, you're actually filming.

Going back the empty roads little by little became more vibrant I noticed that another tram was 166

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following us, it was green and I noticed a woman sitting in the front seat of the deck: she was my counterpart. I stared at her and waited metaphorically speaking since I wasn’t indeed driving the tram. She noticed me with the camera at one stop and I didn’t miss the chance to take a picture, a series of pictures, while she got closer to me at the next stop.

She noticed I was there but she didn’t smile or move to another seat - she just posed for me. For two endless minutes she's been my partner in crime, for two minutes during which two strangers found themselves playing opposite parts of a movie.

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conrad’s viscera I couldn’t have lived in Malaysia without seeing what’s going on on the other side of the country, the Borneo, the jungle of the jungles, a vast and mysterious place with the richest species biodiversity on the planet. When I chose the National Park of Mulu as my first - and only - expedition I couldn’t guess I was about to meet something else besides the powerful tropical jungle.

The Mulu National Park is a special area due to a number of millenary caves scattered within its territory - including enormous caves, vast cave networks, rock pinnacles, cliffs and gorges - and when you’re moving around it almost feels like you’re exploring the jungle’s viscera, silently entering in a sacred place shaped by a gigantic quantity of water.

And it is in one of these caves that I’ve met the darkness and I immediately thought about Conrad 169

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who by the way had really been in this area - I thought I had a sense of what he described in his books, the complete absence of light, the dreadful fear you feel when you’re waving your hand in front of your face and you can’t see a thing perfectly knowing your eyes are wide opened.

Equipped with an helmet and the right shoes I joined an expedition in one of the caves and at one point our guide suggested we take a break, we stay silent and turn off our flashlights. It was there that I have seen the darkness, and what is it then? The darkness means I’ve felt my eyes being worthless, worthless because there was nothing I could have seen. The contrast in between the outside noisy thick overwhelming jungle 170

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and the silence of a cave populated by bats, snakes and stalactites was immense: in the jungle you’ve got thousands of eyes watching you while in the caves there’s no use for your eyes.

Those few days in the jungle I felt a tension running around me the whole time, the tension of a place exploding with life and hostile in a primitive sense - I felt like I was out of place, at the mercy of a higher presence, way stronger and more unpredictable than any human being. Dense, slimy, everywhere the jungle makes you feel surrounded with no way out.

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Mulu is the biggest caves’ network on the planet, including the second biggest cave in the world that I uselessly tried to picture, called Deer Cave, which is so big a small Cessna could fly inside of it for a couple of hundreds meters. The roof is literally covered with millions of bats waiting to go out for dinner - which usually happens around seven o’clock every day - a swarm of mammals comes out of the mouth of the cave in a spectacular way.

Borneo is home for these and many others creations of nature, and I strongly believe this place is the main attraction not only of Malaysia but of the Southeast Asia.

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43

the stranger I always knew I’ve been at ease in the everchanging role of the stranger: he who’s always coming from a mystic and distant place called elsewhere; he who’s always passing by, running away, out of place and out-rooted. The stranger is like a flower in a vase, you can carry it around, keep it in the sun or hide it in the shade.

If being a stranger was a job it would be filled with alibi! As a stranger it’s easier to live with the fact no one understands you, of being the other one, identified with a luggage, with the fact you should go home at some point, of being always at a certain distance from something or not being able to speak the language, of not having friends, being the one missing, of walking alone with yourself in the wind.

If you live in your own context/place it is a bit more difficult to recognize yourself in a role while as a stranger you are guaranteed of, at least, one position, 173

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one exclusive point of view, you will have a small part in the scene, you wont be left out, lost in the outskirts with dirty shoes because at any given moment you are entitled to raise and say: wait a minute! I am a stranger!

But of course there are downsides too, first of all because you are by definition a minority, a minority who might become unicity, you’re alone, uno, single, with an identity that decides on behalf of you, with an accent that leaves no room for doubts and raises in tonnes of misunderstandings - that is at a superficial level we might be this or that but the moment we speak out we’re done! Exposed!

Exposed to the curse all the strangers: the stereotypes.

So when you least expect it, the fair of silliness begins, the racisms, the gestures, the MODI DI DIRE, the “you’ve lost that game...”, the “is it true that girls from...” and on and on and on up to the point you’ve been identified with the stereotypes that is really like a ghost you’ve never met in person, but he stays there with you, disturbing, slipping into all the conversations, a little fly in your ears. Yes, it is true that from time to time that curse might give you a hand, and being the other is a positive thing - because, you see, that ghost is a representation of a long wire that goes back straight into our roots and has to do a lot 174

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with something called belonging, with all the steps done by somebody before us, with the place you were born and the blood, with having traditions and poetry in your shoes.

It takes time to learn how to be a stranger, in understanding a tenth of the information around you and yet still surviving, in living with the weight of the distance on your shoulders and the smell of absence in your heart. It takes art to be your own island in unknown waters. It takes art to reach out for reference points even though you’re lost, because the stranger will always be a flower in a vase, an uncomfortable vase at times, a fragile one but at the end of the day a stranger knows that vase has to become home for your short roots.

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footprint Guns, germs and steel by Jared Diamond is one of my favorite books. The initial part of the book he describes the dawn of Man, the way he managed to move and conquer more and more territories; from our mother land Africa he spread like a virus all over the globe. According to the book the apemen firstly moved towards Southeast Asia one million years ago as you will appreciate in the following illustration.

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This made me think that technically the evolution of Man is nothing else but a long walk and that, unquestionably, the need to explore is inherited in every single human being. It also reminded me of my everlasting love for maps.

At this point I naturally found myself questioning: what about myself? How big is the area I’ve covered during my journey in Southeast Asia? There’s any sort of relation with what those apemen did? How big is my footprint?

If some of those questions are nonsense, others give me the chance to play with numbers and maps, and more precisely to figure out and draw the size of my personal footprint. So I did and as you can appreciate in the following illustration, I measured the land I’ve covered using x and y axes, where x is Kolkata-Tokyo and y is Seoul-Melbourne. As it turns out the overall area is some 44,000 sq. mt.

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It might seem quite a big area to you but I’d like to suggest you look at it in a different way. When I look at this map what I see in reality is this: 179

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In this map you’ll see a vast dark area, much much bigger than the orange one. That area represents all the unseen places I’d like to go, all the places I’d like to go.

I look at this map and I think: the road I still have to walk is long and I do not have a million years...

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to the next harbor It’s pitch-dark and the time to leave has come.

Calm is the water and there is no reason to rush.

For twenty four months I’ve been living in this harbor moving back and forth like a spring.

All I had was a ship and my thirsty eyes, and we took every single chance to go and see, and we’ve seen.

Thick jungles, ancient temples, volcanoes, mysterious eyes, majestic caves, snakes of people, a zillion cultures, religions and hands.

The journey was rich, the experience pure, but now the wind has changed, and it’s time to sail away to the next harbor.

It’s pitch-dark now but soon the sun will rise, and I’ll be able to see the horizon once again.

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Shall I point East or West? For how long will I be sailing?

Will I get lost in the attempt to find a piece of land?

Like waves questions come and go endlessly.

At the moment I have no answers to share, but if I close my eyes I can feel the breeze, sniff the air, and that is fine with me.

I called the ship Lightness because everything has been left behind.

A ship made of memories and lessons learned, nothing more, nothing less.

The wind has changed and it’s time for a new voyage.

I can’t see what’s next, I can just sail away, and wonder what will happen.

Sometimes you need to be far away from everything, to the point you see no land.

And only there and then your thoughts will take a rest, so you’ll be finally be able to understand, if you should sail East or West.

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