Imaginary lives

If I write what I feel it is because by doing so "I reduce the fever of feeling" wrote Pessoa. What I feel and imagine. As children the second aspect prevails. We invent stories of which we are the protagonists, we fabricate realities, we construct conversations with real and imagined people. Words with which to deal with the most "dangerous types of the area", those with a knife in their pocket and a determined look capable of making them escape. The girl to whom we can entrust our love that resonates like AOM in an eternal yes. And then questions that we managed to skip, failures to avoid and holidays without homework. By pitying ourselves, and feeling ourselves pityed, we felt like we were loved. We had everything we needed and luxury cars made just to attract attention. Then along came a girl with whom we could spend our years forever, even if she wasn't perfect, we imagined that everything would be fine, that love could change people, save them and even redeem them.

We were so immersed in imagination that at a certain point we began to believe in the imaginations of others. We believed when they told us "you are special", when they told us "I love you", when they told us "I love you", we believed when they told us there were jobs", that we would be there until pension, that the «Great Factory would never have closed».

We built faiths and hopes and so we fed on crusts that we called sweets, sadness and pain that we called inner well-being, desolation and loneliness became courage. We are old and we imagine ourselves young. We are alone and fantasize about being important to someone. We are at war and we believe in peace. With first the layoff and then the dismissal, we ended up not only losing our jobs, but being fired from life. We have become a shadow of ourselves. Always in trouble, in disorder, offside, in debt of oxygen, of friendships, far from any safe haven, lost even to ourselves. Loneliness has made us lose faith in the world, but we must not waste our pain. However absurd and complex it seems to you, Mirafiori is perfect. And even if you think you are revolutionary, when you fall it waits for you: when you ask to be buried standing because you have been on your knees all your life, like a mother it keeps you upright and with your head held high you can walk.

Fabrizio Floris
NP-May-2024