diaries, uninterrupted #1

Photo by Jan Kahánek on Unsplash, rendered black & white by me

Wednesday, February 19th, 2025. She hung up on me, suddenly, while I was in the middle of one of my rare arguments, as I don’t like to argue, not because I don’t think I’d be effective, although there might be a little of that component too, but because I don’t believe in making others change their minds, I don’t believe in persuasion, and I think it’s true what Frank Zappa once said, I forget where I read or heard it, that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you, that you don’t change people’s minds, that they change them themselves, if and when they’re ready and want to, at their own pace, certainly not because you have convinced them to, and I believe this is one of those evident, straightforward things about us humans that we often overlook, as we don’t like simple stuff, we are atavistically attracted to complexity, because everything in our existence has to be a battle against something, and complexity ignites a battle against ourselves, the kind of battle we like the most, and so anyway, she hung up on me, and I went on speaking another minute or two, until I realized that my words were being uttered into a closed line, to no one on the other end, and I interrupted what I was saying abruptly, like that, mid-sentence or mid-word, without thinking, and placed my phone on the table, and I thought how funny it is when we immediately stop talking the moment we realize no one’s listening, as if the voice were only an instrument to communicate with others and not something we can use ourselves in isolation, just for the sake of hearing it or reinforcing a thought that until then had been only in a gaseous state and now it’s in a solid state or some other different state, metaphorically solid, of course, as words cannot be touched, meaning that, to make itself ready to leave the body and mouth, the thought underwent a process of physical transformation, a metamorphosis, a mutation, and so she hung up on me, I was saying, and I don't even remember what we were arguing about, but it must have been something important, or maybe not that important but something she wanted to be right about, something she needed to be right about, many people I know are like that, a category unto themselves, the category of those who have a visceral necessity, not a desire but a necessity, to be right, to win arguments, to demolish their interlocutor’s point of view, and no matter the subject, that's almost irrelevant, in fact it could be the most trivial subject, like whether one should have the toilet paper hanging from the front or from behind the roll, for example, and in so doing they employ the most Machiavellian strategies, like in those stupid Hollywood films where the good guys, in order to catch one villain, kill thousands of others that were so unlucky to be walking by as the chase sweeps past, and damage roads, ruin stores, smash other cars, destroy buildings, all because the end justifies the means, what a preposterous idea, sure, you might argue, it’s preposterous until it involves your children, and you’d have a point, but what I’m trying to say is that she hung up on me because, unlike most times, when I usually cave, more to end the argument quickly than anything else, this time I kept arguing, I couldn’t give it to her, not this time, and then I put my coat on, slammed the door behind me, and went for a walk to clear my head, and as I walked, my thoughts drifted back to the first time I met her, that warm spring afternoon on the terrace of a cafe, I couldn’t remember which one, but it was near Arco della Pace, in via Mario Pagano perhaps, I was at a table by myself reading a book, a novel by Modiano, In the Café of Lost Youth, I think it was, and she sat beside me as if she already knew me and I thought she had clearly mistaken me for someone else, and so I turned toward her, my book open in front of me, and said -- I remember these words very specifically, as they’ve been the subject of so many laughs over the years -- What good wind brings you here?

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Monday, February 17th, 2025. At the cafe I usually go sit with a book, have a coffee or tea, sometimes a piece of cake, and do some reading, today there was almost no one, plenty of free tables to sit at, and the waiter, as soon as he saw me, said see, today’s all empty for you, and he said that because last time around it was packed and he couldn’t find me a table and I reluctantly had to have an espresso at the counter and leave right away, and I said no, thank you, today I have no time to sit and will just have an espresso at the counter, and he said how weird’s the universe, when you don’t have time to stay, there’s plenty of tables available, I know, I said, and I thought I’m going to make an experiment and got close to him and said you know what the secret is to being early to an appointment when you’re driving there, at which point another waiter, sensing that I was about to reveal the darkest secret to his colleague, came close to pay attention to what I was going to say, and the guy who I was talking to said, no, what’s the secret, and I waited a little as if I was going to let him in on the fourth secret of Fatima or something the entire world has been longing to know and he was going to be the only recipient on behalf of the human race, so I left him there, hanging for a few more seconds, his colleague getting closer, without looking at me explicitly like the guy I was talking to did, but approaching the point we were at as if it were the epicenter of a long anticipated earthquake, not a destructive earthquake but a revelatory earthquake, I finally said that the secret to being early to an appointment when you’re driving is to catch all green lights on your way there, and the guy started hysterically laughing, and his colleague started laughing as well, and the young lady behind the counter, the one who operates the espresso machine, a pretty brunette with blue eyes and lots of ink on her arms, started laughing too, and while they were all laughing I never stopped holding eye contact with the guy I told that thing to, wearing a smile on my face, as in, I know this is a subtle one but I’m glad you got it, it means you’re fast, man, you’re so fast a joke like this one is like peanuts to you, and after some thirty or forty seconds the laughter faded and everyone regained their composure and I had my espresso at the counter and left, amid a warm goodbye see you soon from everyone, and right outside the cafe, walking back home, I thought about how fragile we humans are, how miserable and attention-seeking, and that the only thing that might save us is finally learning to talk with animals, as they’ll have so much to teach, so much to reveal, but it’ll never happen, not in my lifetime or those waiters’ lifetimes or my kids’ or grandkids’ lifetimes, and we will slowly disappear into the magma of our illusory superiority.

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“diaries, uninterrupted” is a new series released with no particular cadence, whenever I feel like it. These are imaginary journal entries — generally one to three per issue — written in a stream of consciousness style, meant to be read in one gulp of air, without pause.

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