Trick

- Bravo, - mormorai e mi venne in mente che viviamo per tutta la vita come se il nostro continuo misurare e misurarci rimandasse a una verità inconfutabile: poi in vecchiaia ci rendiamo conto che si tratta solo di convenzioni, tutte sostituibili in ogni momento con altre convenzioni, e l'essenziale è affidarsi a quelle che ci sembrano di volta in volta più rassicuranti.

Sexual pleasure, uncoupled once and for all from reproduction, which was its original purpose, continuously leaked fluids all over the planet, in every season. And there was no controlling it, whatever had to happen would happen no matter what; it was the careening force of bodies that ruthlessly wiped out wives, husbands, children, affections, economies.

He stared at the first one, seeming to drink it up with his eyes, an antiquated metaphor that I’ve always loved: People and things dissolve, turn to liquid, and the eyes become mouth and throat, changing the irreducible world into a potion.

I have enormous affection that grows rather than diminishes with time, for the I that I painfully cose from the many, my I. How we love—all of us—our chatty little imp. The toil begins when we toss him into the world so that he’s loved as much as we love him. An impossible thing. Disappointment follows the toil.

...and just to evade confrontation, he opens a window on the fourth floor, ready to jump. The abyss, more and more often, is the way to save ourselves from ourselves.

….and it occurred to me that we live our whole lives as if the ceaseless measuring of the things and ourselves related to some indisputable truth; then, in old age, we realize that it’s only a matter of conventions, each of them interchangeable at any moment with others, and that the key thing is to trust the ones that seem to us, time after time, most reassuring.

A long time ago, when I was twenty, I thought I'd play a part in defeating the worst citizens of Naples and, with my harsh and hopeful little works, uphold the best. It wasn't the case: the worst don't give a fuck about art, they want power, always more power, and so they keep spreading wealth and terror, thinning down the number of people who won't join them.