Since I have moved to New York I always have to do this before writing a text: change the writing language of the messages, otherwise it takes so long to try to convince my cell not to suggest English words while I am trying to write to someone in Italy.

It has become a sort of rite of passage now: before starting to write, switch to the right language. Switch to another dimension of yourself and look at the world with a different attitude. English-Italian and viceversa requires a corageous leap into a diverse universe. I am not saying it’s like changing your personality according to the language you are speaking. My English and my Italian version peacefully coexist and are happy to share the same spaces.

Another thing I was thinking about today was my impulse for writing. Sometimes I feel I should set the language first and then start to write. I really do love jot my thoughts down, record an impression or a feeling in the moment I am feeling it. I believe it’s the best way for being aware of yourself at any time, even if what you are experiencing can make you sad, mad, or bad. As long as you are aware of it, I think, every second you are living is worth living. You are not waisting your time in tears or in lazy hours in the park or in coarse laugh if you know you are into that mood at a certain time of your day.

But the point is: sometimes my Italian pen starts transferring my thoughts on paper, but then its English companion wakes up all of a sudden and I cannot even realize that I am actually writing in another language. And maybe, I am not even writing the same thing I started from…

I don’t think I suffer from any mental disease. Maybe I am just growing up, which means, sometimes, be the witness of a duel whose conendants are what you are and what you think you are. And I don’t think I will never be able to convince one of them to resign, though.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO3Z26zAPMM[/youtube]

Sara’ stato lo zucchero nel caffe’. Sara’ stata la pioggia cosi’ sottile e gentile che nemmeno si sente picchiettare sull’ombrello. Sara’ stato il pane caldo con la crosta che si sgretolava tra i denti. Sara’ stato che anche se non ci sono le lettere accentate su questa tastiera, l’apostrofo sembra funzionare benissimo.

“Io sto bene come uno quando sogna
non lo so se mi conviene
ma sto bene, che vergogna.

Io sto bene
proprio ora, proprio qui 
non e’ mica colpa mia
se mi capita cosi’ ” 

Proprio ora e proprio qui. Non sono mai stata tanto sicura di dove trovarmi come ora. E’ assolutamente illogico, ma non per questo stupido. E’ illogico perche’ non si puo’ formulare a parole e frasi compiute una sensazione cosi’ diretta e sincera come quella di essere assolutamente consapevole di dove si trovano i tuoi piedi in questo istante.

E’ la pura percezione del suolo sotto le suole, dei capelli sopra le spalle, delle dita che digitano carattere dopo carattere, del braccio che si appoggia sulla scrivania.

Yesterday a good point about social networks came out during our class: why does Facebook allow only to like things and posts? Why can my tumb only be up? Any other option?

Someone said that the Like button doesn’t mean that you actually like something, it’s more like “it’s popular, therfore I share it”. You can only show your public preferences, not your natural aversions, and actually you end up pushing the Like button even when you don’t mean it.

Many people have realized that Facebook – like many other social network-doesn’t give you the chance of being negative and express your plain aversion to something. But something is starting to change…even if the only thing you can do is still giving it a thumbs up.

I want to dislike the Dislike button.

Beautiful sounds of words. Meaning? Who wants it? It goes with the sound.

The thing that fascinates me about embers is that you never know if it’s the end of a fire or the still surviving part of it. Its inner core or its last breath.

It depends on your point of view. The point of you. Nice pun.

Anyway, my embers are the unexhausted hub of an ancient bonfire. It’s time to turn them into life, and September will help me in doing this. It’s a rite of passage that turns debris into bricks.

I am starting to work on my dissertation. It will be about electronic literature. I am adventuring in a completely unknown land, even for me. This is what attracts me most, especially because I feel free to move everywhere and explore everything about it without fearing of doing or saying something wrong. First of all, because we are talking about something which is still in progress, it has no fixed form yet. Secondly, because we are talking about literature, that is words, interpretations, thoughts, sensations, sounds. Malleable matter that changes its shape while you touch it and warm it with your hands.

In bocca al lupo, Beniamina!

PS:  “shout and celebrate before the shade conceals the window: blue bloods, balls and bonnets, beards, coast, collars, chips and cheese…while there is time and you are able, because when blue has left the edges of its objects as if the world were bleached of it, when there’s nothing left but language…watered twilight, sour sea…don’t find yourself clergy’d out of choir and chorus…sing and say…despite the belly ache and loneliness, drunkennes and helpless rage, despite dumps, mopes, Mondays, sheets like dirty plates, tomorrow falling toward you like a tower, lie in wait for that miraculous moment when in your mouth teeth turn into dragons: shape pebbles into syllables and make stones sound; thus cautioned and encouraged, commanded, warned, persist…even though the mattress where you mourn’s been tipped and those corners where the nickels roll slide open like a slot to swallow them, clocks slow, and there’s been perhaps a pouring rain, or factory smoke, an aging wind and winter air, and everything is gray” (W. Gass, On Being Blue, Nonpareil Book, Jaffrey, NH, 1991)

Oddly enough, I realize for the first time that actually university is made of people, not only of libraries, classrooms and exams. Of course, students and teachers work together and cooperate to pursue their academic aims, but here I can see that there is something more: there is the passion and the affection for what you are doing, and there is a strong will of “exporting” it further from the class’ borders. The Commons is like a web in which every thread is linked with and sustains the others. It is not just a flux of information, it’s information that becomes knowledge thanks to the interaction between people, even if what we actually can see are just words on a screen.

I have been here at the Grad Center (and in New York) for 3 weeks now, but I am already deeply convinced that what I have found here is something unique. I would like to write my dissertation about electronic literaure and so much has been written about it, and so much there is still to write, that it is almost impossible to give this literary phenomenon a clear shape. This happens because, I think, it’s something always changing and always growing, as its main engine is made of people, their thoughts, their experiences, their words.

That’s why I am thinking about how to practically do it: it can’t be the usual volume of a thousand pages. It should be something alive, something people can play and interact with, something that can stimulate their curiosity and their minds and can encourage them to comment and actively participate. And when something is learned in friendly and joyful way, it really becomes part of one’s deep knowledge and interest.

Ficcare il naso, impicciarsi e sporcarsi, a tratti cadere anche nel fango. Bisogna infangarsi le mani per apprezzare il sapone e l’acqua corrente.

Non è semplice muoversi tra la giungla di informazioni (parola che oggi risuona di continuo) e idee di cui pullula la testa. Aprire gli occhi, non solo per prestare attenzione ma anche per lasciare spazio alla meraviglia, farla entrare, sorprendersi, sospirare. Ricordare come un adulto e riesplorare il mondo come un bambino.

“Inciampa piuttosto che tacere. Parla piuttosto che aspettare”

I am travelling inside my soul, I have crossed the ocean to see if on the other side of the world something was really waiting for me. Or maybe, I was waiting for myself.

These first days in New York are pulling me inside a vortex of faces, sights, hands, smells. I feel like a child discovering the world with her five senses for the first time. Hopefully the sixth one is trying to come up and show during my  “second childhood”.

A black squirrel crunching nuts in Stuyvesant Town. Never seen one in my life.

I am in the New World!