5cense

415 The traumatic language of dead dads + a Roaman wolf revisited

eternal city under redeconstruction

Rome—16-19 Feb 2015

Dear Inurnet ..

.. in Rome .. home from roaming .. a semi-random travel path .. since xmas 2015 .. NYC > Bali > Lombok > Bali > West Timor > Bali > Penang > Bali > Hong Kong > NYC > Rome > Delhi > Kathmandu > Himalayas > Kathmandu > Abu Dhabi > Paris > + now Rome .. our roaming nomadic trajectory stabilized sumwhat .. grnding ourselves for 2 weeks comunque in the eternal city ..

near this x-section

.. 24 beds in the past 50 days .. now sleeping @ a friend's (x-student of our better-½ actually) in the San Saba hood near the white pyramid (cleaned + descaffolded since last we saw) .. can hear church bells as we write who knows witch .... here we sleep for the next 5 days comunque .... plenty long to unpack (reunited w/ other stash stashed con altro amico) + regroup .. maybe even re-inhabit our old role of casalingo .. last night cooked up some pasta w/ what we cd find + today see if we can find ingredients for home-cooked meal ..

.. on the plane from Paris > Rome (delayed cuz 2 ppl on the passenger manifest had the same name) read Big Ray by Michael Kimball .. not that it has anything to do w/ where we @ .. the only book we found intresting @ Shakespeare + co in Paris .... + Kimball on our mind since we saw him recently in Baltimore ..

Big Ray in the Roman shell we currently inhabit

.. Big Ray = about his fat dead dad .... an engrossing read .. read it in 1 sitting (interrupted only by getting up from the waiting lounge to get on plane) .... not an easy thing to write about dead dads .. most ppl sound whiney ± becomes boo hoo sob story like them trying to garner sympathy .... Kimball manages to make it just about the language .. to remain objective about himself .. assuming it (the protagonist) = him .. (@ 1 pt in the book we find out his name = Daniel Toad Carrier) .. + the book gets filed under fiction .... either way plenty believable (the language) that u think Kimball himself had real fat dad that croaked in such a sad way as comes written in Big Ray ..

.. @ sum pt every 1 has a dead dad (unless u die 1° .. in which case your dad belongs to the club of dads who outlive their sons ± daughters .. a club even sadder than the dead dads club) .... we ourself joined the dead dads club @ age 15 .... + we also belong to the dead brothers club which feels sadder still than the dead dads club .. + this means our mom belongs to the club of moms who outlived their sons which really sucks .. but all = relative as Kimball says ..

«My father's life was an ordinary one in so many ways. I wonder if I am making him into something more than he was because he was my father.»

.. this = sorta the tone Kimball talks in [our grammatically incorrect variation of it anyway] which sumhow makes it ok to talk about such things .... if yur a writer what else can u write about it? .... Kimball talks about how fat his dad had become before he died .. which makes us think either his dad ≠ fat (in real life) ± plenty time has passed since dying that it = ok to talk about .. in the name of art .... our own dad ≠ fat (xcept for his bourbon gut) .. eating seemed @ odds w/ his drinking .. the 2 mutually xclusive .... our mom = fat (not quite as fat as Kimball's dad we give him that) but we cant talk about our mom's fatness cuz she still living + might 1 day read this ..

.. actually this ≠ how Kimball writes .. this = how we write .... this = how Kimball writes:

.. not just economized +elegant but sum of the language = pretty fucking funny .. like the yo momma so fat + dead dad jokes .... we wont bother to rehash them here u got to buy the book if u want a good sad laugh ..

.. reading this article where linguists studied the language of 1-star restaurant reviews got us to thinking (+ laughing) more about the language habits of trauma .. like (according to linguists) speaking in 1st person plural (like we do) = a sign of trauma .. evidently we want u to share our pain w/ u Inurnet .... also funny how we all describe good expensive food in sexual terms + use druggy metaphors when talking about good cheap food .. + how we use bigger words to describe more expensive food ..

.. ended up (after meandering) in Testaccio to do our marketing .. peccorino romano + buffalo mozz + prosciutto + lemon-ricotta raviolis + .. last but not least puntarelle (tail end of the season) .... near the newish Testaccio market (finished while we lived here on the other side of the river) lives this new street art by Roa:

Roa in Testaccio

 

also a billboard allured us along the way

 

leftover fragments (Parrocchia San Saba .. the 1st time ever we happened upon it open)

.. thawt us before about punk as universal language of trauma .. a way to commiserate .... «ever feel like u been cheated?» aksed Rotten before exiting stage left .. yeah .... even if u 1 lucky punk + everything goes your way u still feel cheated .. life = like that .. every1 got sumthing to bitch about whether a dead dad or a stuffy queen .. + the Romans kings of tragic mellowdrama little knowing how good they have it ..

tree + the old Aurelian wall

 

the next day the sun comes out

 

also where the putanas hang

.. of all our Roman runs we closest to the Appia Antica route .. tho weekdays they let cars traffic it .. + the sideroad over the catacombs not open either .. so mostly we just ran along the old Aurelian wall + down around terme de caracalla ..

new faces of Romulus + Remus ..

 

across from the cemetery where Keats lays

 

Janus Arch

.. recently we said Huck Finn = the original prototypical punk .. he paved his own way in the absence of an inherited moral compass .. whether by society or his father .... he had an abusive father no doubt about that .. doesnt get much worse .... perhaps why he so streetwise punk .. a DIY response to trauma .. a punk of the lying prankster variety .... thinking us about Huck Finn cuz we back now on our own Raft Manifest .. putting pen to paper tho we dont have clear outline .. no compass handed to us by our father .. perhaps the best way to write just lay sentence after sentence not knowing where you end up .. (in reality we do have an outline we spent last year cobbling together .. but now that we have it we dont need or follow it ..)

.. Huck Finn such the American story .. but thinking about Huck now in Italy realizing he has a lot in common w/ Pinocchio (Collodi's version which we psychoanalyze here)(not to mention Oliver Twist which we have yet to read) .. a motherless only son that runs away .. tho Geppetto not really an abusive drunk his other father Cilegio (Geppetto's boyfriend who gives him the log to make Pinocchio) definitely = a raging alcoholic .... + Geppetto gets arrested for child abuse when he catches the screaming Pinocchio .... Huck + Pinocchio also share a yearning for semi-homoerotic affection (Huck likes it when Jim pets him + calls him dear + Pinocchio gives affectionate kisses to Mangiafuoco + others) ..

.. also the rascals Pinocchio + Huck both = pathological liars .. we all know what happens to Pinocchio when he lies (a stigmatized erection-er-reaction) but Huck justifies lying as not evil but a necessary good .... anyway .. we thinking about such things in formulating our Raft Manifest .... why become us attracted to these particular stories? .. a cathartic response to/for our own trauma? .. + as such we can relate .. need release?

embedded columns



 414 <()> 416 > Nomadic Rome-antics riding Paul Revere's wolf to No Place on Earth in particular flushed awkwordness


5cense

[  (ɔ)om.Posted 2015  derek white  |  calamari press   ]