Emmanuel - Part I: The Wind Inside

Teen mode on. I hate your therapy, I hate being forced to let you read my personal stuff. I hate women's magazine bullshit, I hate fucking writers and directors who make their money off teenage mindjobs and all that crap. Shit, rommel.   Teen mode off. To please the analyst, who has prescribed me the writing of a daily diary as a therapy, I am about to reduce my life to saccharine junk, gravure swill, pathetic bedside book for sentimental girls, ideal subject for screenwriters of mediocre b movies . Well, come on Emmanuel, it's your turn. ... It's seven in the evening on a Wednesday in June. Lying on the bed with the convalescent Pan rolled up around me, I listen to my music and contemplate the handful of flies I find in my hand. This summer parenthesis is like a swamp of quicksand; I scan the opposite bank with water up to my ankles, but I don't know how to move: I'm afraid of sinking with every step. I studied like crazy to please her, I recovered...

- Honey, we only have twenty minutes at our disposal, after which I will be forced to leave you here to arrive on time for the appointment. So, if you have something to tell me, do it now. She hesitates. I continue to look at the clock in secret. I wait patiently for ten minutes for her to decide to speak, but she prevaricates. Timing is not one of the merits I recognize in Antonia. She has the gift of always choosing the least opportune moment to talk to me about serious matters, for those that seem so to her. I am convinced that almost all of her problems arise from her lack of synthetic aptitude, from her tendency to reserve excessive attention to details, from the imbalance between the much time she gives to thought and the little she devotes to action. This attitude will not only hinder her in any kind of career, including the university one that she unrealistically embarked on, but risks compromising her own perception of reality. I already know that my life n...

I had promised to describe my experiment to you in the most concise manner, but, as you teach me, conciseness is the enemy of precision. You will therefore excuse me if from time to time I cannot help but go into detail: you know, the devil is in the details. I will proceed to the account. If you do not mind, I will use the present tense, in my opinion the most suitable to give evidence to the descriptions. It's a bad June evening. June is one of the most beautiful months, but not this one: it sucks. There is a dark thunderstorm in the air and the wind is rising as we leave the gate of villa Kellermann together. The girl runs to her grey Uno, I make my way to my black Carrera, parked in the side street. I emphasise the Carrera: only laymen call it the Porsche Carrera and consider it a feminine noun. I anticipate a banal objection: I know that automobile is a feminine noun, but originally it was not. I quote Marinetti: vehement God of a steel race, a roaring automobile is mo...

Emmanuel opens the bag and releases the goldfishes, then folds the nylon bag in which he carried them and puts it in his pocket, observing the bewildered flickering of the fishes and holding Saucepan by the collar as he throws himself at them. I am sitting on the bank of the stream and looking at the scene. - Are you sure you did the right thing? I fear they will die before they adjust to the new environment. - Maybe, but at least they'll die free. He comes and sits next to me. - Yesterday Teresa was about to kill a guinea pig: in her country they have the barbaric custom of eating them. I asked her if she was stupid or what. - Why, we don't do the same thing with rabbits? - I know, it's contradictory. But I don't eat rabbits. Anyway you know Teresa, right? He mumbled a little, but eventually gave me the pig. - What did you do with it? - I freed him too. - You sentenced him to death: it will have ended up in the mouth of the first passing dog. He c...