Diary of a sharpshooter who must kill the President of Chile without feet, paper or pencil

Diary waiting for a she who doesn't turn up, without feet, paper or pencil

Diary to the debts to be paid strolling, without feet, paper or pencil

Diary to nod off in the dark without feet, paper or pencil

In a faraway place…the story of the feet vendor

In a faraway place…far from the town of who knows where

In a faraway place…faraway in our head, in a valley framed by high valleys, so so high, in a place which hasn't been written or thought about yet, there is a town.We'll find it in the story.

They communicated with each other hissing, everything was always clean and tidy, while they did one thing they did another, while they worked they tidied, while they dirtied themselves they washed themselves, while they harrowed they sowed, while they sang they thought, while they gathered cherries they ate them, even the animals had adapted this way of life.

For instance the hens laid eggs directly into the frying pan, the cows squirted their milk directly into bottles, the chickens plucked themselves when they realised their time was nigh, time to finish in the stew pot and the rabbits took off their skin as if it was a pyjama.

No one debated at the courts, the accused were found guilty or not guilty with the toss of a coin.

They ate grapes and waited for their tummies to make wine.

So that thieves could rob houses the doors would be left wide open and the booty left on kitchen tables so that no doors had to be mended or untidy rooms be cleared up.

Even the priest hissed the mass: in five minutes it was all over.

They slept with their hats on to avoid taking them off in the evening and having to put them back on again in the morning and when it rained they washed themselves, naked, in the streets.

By the time evening fell, she was still asking but remained standing straight and dry mouthed; when the cock sang and the hens settled, everyone went to bed without even giving her a glance, a look…and the priest went to bed, his housekeeper, the child, the mechanic…. and all the inhabitants too…

Gigi and Pipi

Gigi was also a little devil of an old man, his face burnt by the sun, sculptured like an old dried-up shoe sole. In the midst of a skein of wrinkles, underneath two bushes of salt and peppery eyebrows shone two tiny tiny eyes, quick as mercury transfixed on something non-existent and he was a wee bit taller than his dry walking stick which resembled a celery stalk….

But now let's dress him..we'll hold him down to the floor with a pair of old shiny walking boots just like him tied up with yellow laces, his socks are scarlet, his breeches a lovely dark blue, shirt the same red as the socks and a cap the same yellow as the laces…

….his moustache once ginger now with white beard tufts scattered here and there, coarse and bristly like the spines on a prickly pear.

He was always muttering to himself, giving orders, offering advice, listing the things to be done as if he had already done them a long time before. He tied pieces of string together, old shoelaces picked up off the floor, thinking maybe one day they could come in useful and sometimes, rarely, they really did.
Small pieces of string which he tied to his trouser belt or his buttonholes. He always held a piece of that string in his fingers, like a priest his rosary, and now and then without looking he'd make complicated knots. He carried a soft and greasy, dirty leather bag on his shoulders it could just hold a crust of cheese or the contents of a house. Every now and then he'd put a hand in the bag and delving deep down always extracted something useful: glasses, pincers, string, wire, cotton, a book, a carefully folded news cutting, a runged ladder, a pencil butt, scissors, a ruler, mysterious boxes all sizes….no-one had ever seen or reached the bottom of that bag.

Pipi was a bet between a dog and a monkey, a cat and a fleeing mouse coloured starling, a small bell tied around his neck and a tail long half a cigar, his bright red tongue dangling and trembling, shaking himself, running, swaying, jumping continuously, he spent more time on three paws than four.

Because he lifted his leg and peed, sprayed, blessed, marked, now a stone, a wall, a flower, the tobacconist's leg, anything that got in the way of his frenetic running, chasing, sniffing, there was no name more appropriate than Pipi.

When the weather was fine, Gigi and Pipi would take magnificent walks in the mountains, leaving early without knowing or caring where they would go or when they would return.

Gigi put a little bit of cacio cheese, an apple, diluted wine, a piece of bread and a good piece of white lard, firm as Carrara marble, into his rucksack and then away….

One day going across the fields, the woods and streams, across the bridges, the woods, the streams, the rocks, the woods, the blankets of snow and blankets of snow, the fields and woods, the fields and woods….

Pipi peed, ran back and forth, barking at flies and stones, sniffing everything he could sniff, disappearing behind a bush and popping up in the stream, he throws himself down a steep slope and reappears on the top of a rock, in short he doesn't stay still for a moment even when Gigi sits on a stone to take a breather nibbling some bread and taking gulps of diluted wine.

Gigi, now that it's time to continue the walk, calls Pipi Pipi but there's not even a shadow of Pipi in sight.

And he begins worrying. So Gigi too lets himself slip between the gap in the rocks, and swearing comes out into a field, the beginning of a new pathway, followed by steps chiselled out of rock, he goes through a pasture, streams, woods, blankets of snow calling, whistling…Pipiiiiii

Eventually he finds himself in a town where there is a church, a vintner, a tobacconist, a blacksmith, a haberdashery, a school, a toy shop, a grocer, a town hall, a greengrocer, a butcher and lots of houses all in rows but not too many. There wasn't a soul in the streets and all you could hear were flies flying, but he did see Pipi roving up and down the empty streets, pissing all over the place onto a variety of new scents which he only had to choose from.

Gigi went looking for people, but there was absolutely no one about not even in the street. He decides to knock on a door….come in! came a voice from inside, the door creaks and in the I-can- see-you-I-cannot-see-you a harsh suspicious voice speaks if you are thirsty drink, if you are tired sit, if you are hungry eat some bread and cacio cheese. Get on with it yourself because I cannot move. Gigi was quite hungry and thirsty too. Perhaps half a glass of homemade wine I could do with I've walked so far to keep up with that son of a dog Pipi, on my own I surely wouldn't have found him, hidden so deep into the valley. On the sideboard there's some wine said the voice, but pour it out yourself because I can't move. What happened, did you hurt yourself? Are you unwell? Can I help you? No, the voice replied, it's a long story while you gulp down the wine I will tell you. And Sora Rosa tells the tale.
It's a pretty town our town, there's the church, the vintner, the tobacconist and so on…

one beautiful day an old English spinster asked for water and somewhere to rest. I don't know why she came to these parts, and Gigi you know how difficult it is to find this valley…accidentally…now we work hard and no one had time to lose with this nosy old bitch. We went to bed as usual deadbeat and next morning we all discovered that someone had stolen our feet.

I am darn sure that she played this trick on us, that dried-up English woman.

Gigi had downed the glass of wine and poured himself another drop. Everyone but everyone without feet, hens, chickens, old folk, young folk, females, males, continues Miss Rosa then there was silence.

Gigi had drunk a huge quantity of cool wine and he could already see the bottom of the flask.

He pondered a while and in his fashion made a dozen knots with his piece of string then said I can help you, but do you have the money? Yes, yes, money yes, but no feet, Rosa replies, 'cos I know a shopkeeper who sells feet of all kinds and sizes, men, women, donkey, child, hen, horse and….

Let me take everyone's size, do some sums, you give me the money on trust and I will leave my nose as guarantee. But it will take time winter is approaching, there'll be lot of snow on the mountains and I won't be back before springtime. I will have to cross fields, rivers, woods, streams, coverlets of snow and more….

In the early morning Gigi and Pipi leave with no one able to accompany them or send them on their way because nobody has feet. Gigi and Pipi travelled through rivers, fields, bridges, mountains, streams, woods, coverlets of snow and fields and bridges and mountains…

He arrived at his town rested on Saturday and Sunday waiting for market day. He went to the market square first thing in the morning, in the market there was the cheese stall, the fruit stall, the butcher stall, the fish stall, the salt stall, the pepper stall, the oil stall, the soap stall, the toy stall, the hair stall, the hat stall, the tie stall, the lace stall, the banana skin stall, the apple core stall, the monkey bums stall and the canary quill stall and ….

Gigi asked for the feet dealer's shop. Someone knew where it was, someone knew and wouldn't tell, someone was too lazy or too spiteful to say or perhaps gave him too vague and approximate directions….

He passed in front of the cheese stall gorgonzola mozzarella provolone…carry on until sleep descends….if you miss your sleep.. he continues over to the vegetable stall, the butcher stall, the kitchenware stall and so one enumerating goods and products - normally it takes me a week to cover the whole market…

and he asks and asks all over first choosing intelligent faces or wrinkled ones, whom one presumes knows more, but they couldn't remember for the life of them where the feet vendor's shop was, and then he found a gentleman who told him go straight on until the first right, ignore and then go a hundred metres to the left, no fifty maybe thirty, then take the third on the right, no the first on the left, the church square whose name I can't remember and then ask, ok?!
He asks and is given the same directions, he asks again and receives totally different ones from the first set, he asks again only to receive directions that don't resemble the first at all and then he is given directions which correspond neither to the first or the second…

At long last he finally arrives at the feet vendor's shop, a little by chance and a little because he followed the directions given to him backwards.
It was a tiny, tiny little shop and the salesman was a fat, round, little bald man you could play bowls using his belly as the wood and his head as the jack and the shop was full of feet, bursting with feet, over flowing with feet, writhing with feet coming through the door, the window, peeping out of the drawers, trunks, cupboards, feet were hung like salame in bags from the ceiling, some feet nervously pacing up and down while some others tried to run down the street but they were all joined together with lots and lots of pieces of strong twine.
There were rhinoceros feet, elephant feet, penguin feet, sailor feet, hen feet, starling feet, cat feet, dog feet, and crocodile feet.....

but they didn't have fish feet there because fish don't have feet.
Gigi gave him the money but not before some haggling and the salesman gave him a great big sack full of feet advising him to tie the neck of the sack up well otherwise they would escape. The summer was over, the autumn too, the winter also and springtime had returned: Gigi was ready to leave.
He prepared his rucksack with cheese, wine, bread and fruit, put on his walking shoes, the yellow laces, the red socks, the blue trousers, the red shirt, the yellow cap….
They made their way, Pipi constantly running ahead, peeing everywhere, they went over rivers, mountains, fields, woods and streams, coverlets of snow and easily found the way to the town of Pedalò. Upon arrival they began the distribution of feet - total chaos.
Gigi made a mix-up of everything because he couldn't see very well, he gave a pair of huge calloused feet to a newborn, two left feet to the blacksmith, a big foot and a tiny foot to the chemist who had thrown them all higgledy-piggledy into the sack making odd pairs. He gave hens' feet to the cat, to the mouse he gave those of a duck. Someone even became lame because Gigi hadn't done his arithmetic or the grocer hadn't paid enough for two feet. In the end everything turned out for the best with a pound of good sense. They had a big party, everyone drank up all there was to drink and even more but that's another story I'll tell you sometime.
And the old lady? The old lady regretted the trick she had played on the town of who knows where.
She was bored and anyway all those feet filled up half the house and were constantly agitated. So she crossed the mountains, the rivers, the fields and woods, cities and towns and blankets of snow and took trains, planes and taxis, underground and pathways and walked and walked until she arrived. She was stupefied by the activity that reigned in the town of who knows where.
Just as she had done a long time before she asked what had happened and was told the whole story being forgiven among tears, groans, sighs and smiles. The old lady wanted to return the feet she had unscrewed that famous night but was told that they were no longer of any use because the inhabitants of who knows where had had them glued on by the carpenter to avoid further mishaps.
The old English lady was given a barrel of water and twelve chairs. She drank and rested. For a whole year afterwards she had to drink a glass of water every fifty-two minutes and change chairs. Then they all said bye-bye and sent her on her way.
Entering the wood she sat down for a rest. The sack of feet was heavy and was always in movement because feet never stay still for one moment. And so she decided to free the feet and emptied the sack.

Philip don't be surprised if you find a pair of feet walking in the woods; they have been around for some years now looking for their owner but they will never find him because they don't have a head, are never thirsty never sleepy and will never have go to school.
This is a long story and I'm bored with telling it. You can't hear me because you've fallen asleep and now you're old enough to tell me the story of the effort that lasted so long and never ends….

All of a sudden the imperious need to fight against time overwhelmed me, that's to say to capture time.
While letting myself go I live one day after another.
Time slips between my fingers, I lose my time, I lose myself.
The world of normal life has unexpectedly stopped, fallen asleep, hypnotised, locked in some horrendous armistice: time has cancelled the link with abolished exterior matters.
Another world has taken its place assassins have been freed from the reason of human matters, from human ambitions, from human desires.
They are transfigured….stripped of their sex…men forget to be born female…they conform to the images of demons and suddenly the demon world reveals itself.

FISTER SMAYER

After lusting at the sight of Pauline's firm and gorgeous breasts which even veiled by marble shows off her best at Lucca, so shamelessly and so often infuriating Napoleon to the point of making war against Russia in the hopes of locking her away in some Siberian barn to placate her passionate spirits.
On the right you'll find a theatre infront of a fin de siècle hotel, all things having grown old together doormen, limping waiters, hunchback porters, furniture, enormous peeling mouldy neglected rooms which on odd occasions I've even slept in .
It's a narrow cobbled street which leads you to the crooked San Martino, from Pauline's tits to the ascetic San Martino designed vertically like a crazy diagram, from Napoleon's profane Piazza Grande you find yourself right in the middle of the archbishopric's feud steering clear of busy seminarists and nuns, in couples or platoons, the shops proffering lace, chalices, thuribles, patens, communal Hosts, fashionable vestments, in short everything imaginable for religious functions right down via…there's this Smayer's shop; it's impossible to put a foot down on the floor without tripping over something, a succession of pans crashing down, nails, bells, table legs, tools, burnt-out lampbulbs, knives, coffee spoons.
Fister Smayer, yet, an antique dealer – let me explain myself better – Fister Smayer stands for antique dealing like Fabriano stands for the rag and bone man who collects cardboard along the road. From the big dealers' bulk purchases, interested only in some important pieces, follows a never ending quantity of other traders, thereafter a copious number lies at the bottom of the hierarchic ladder and just before we hit rock bottom just before suffocating in the furniture dust –there we find Fister Smayer.
Hebrew by right, he spoke Lucca patois with a smattering of North-European inflection.
I would pop into his shop-laboratory-kitchen-bedroom nearly everyday, before or after something which cannot correctly be described as a meal, where a strong smell of stagnant urine reigned.
“That's how you age copper” he told me, and so he aged everything with his pee at the same time satisfying his physical needs. Everyday I would leave one or three thousand lire in exchange for something unthinkable, mysterious and useless which only he was capable of finding and I enjoyed taking it away in my pocket after hard bartering, perhaps whipping a tool from under his eyes or he might let me have it for nothing. My friend Fister Smayer “this time it's mine, I've made it, look at this Van Gogh” and he would show me a small plaque which he had obviously painted badly making not the slightest effort to imitate the style; I would pull a face and Fister Smayer would gently put it away.
I left my first girlfriend in Fister Smayers at Lucca..
A wolf kills an ass, two wolves bury a dead animal.
In the following painting the deadly wolf reads mass beside the murderer's grave. From that primitive wolf standing rigid on his back legs, before the altar with the large white Host between his claws, mouth wide open ready to receive the communion I detect something burlesque and sacrilegious.

He must have been Jewish, Fister Smayer, from what part of the world he came from before descending upon Lucca I never knew and it never bothered me but given that the world is round he certainly tumbled from the north in a southerly direction…Poland, Germany, Vienna…legs wide apart helpless he slid every more rapidly over the globe and he comes to a stop on San Martino's bell tower, his balls impaled ….and it's exactly from San Martino's up a small alley that continues through to Piazza Napoleone, close to Pauline Bonaparte's thighs and the boobs, where he finds his lair, three by two metres, it reminds me of a Dutch spice shop, the door is so low that to go in you have to bend your head right down when making your helloes and avoid bumping your head on the door lintel; everything can be found in this little shop.
The difficulty lies in moving without tripping and succumbing to the foul smell A patina of sydol, pee, cigar, food leftovers, the dog and there he stands sublime, absorbing the whole stench into his being….
A portrait of Fister would be too easy to make. They are all more or less the same these expat Jews, the same mannerisms, greeting you with something resembling a smile at the same time languid and slavering. Fister and his mysterious literally world gave me great pleasure.
I would go and seek him out everyday, between one and two, during the school lunch-break. Normally he would be napping over a trestle or curled up on the only carpet adorning the floor. I'd knock on the shop window until the tired tortoise would rise to open the door; upon entering tripping over the Tuscan copper pots was not a risk but obligatory. “Look Sandro” – he'd say – “for aging metal there's nothing better than pee”. Suddenly those watery eyes would light up and with a cunning smile he'd stare at me and say “I've found a Van Gogh”. He'd show me a canvas filthy with colour duly varnished and made dusty and everyday the Van Gogh was different and equally absurd. It was part of the ritual that I should spit on it, clean away the dust with my finger, no, we're not quite there yet, the visit concluded with the purchase of a bent nail, a piece of wood, whatever offered me the chance to leave him a couple of thousand lire without being offensive and I'd pinch a gouge and some ancient tool from the counter.

Day-in day-out a visit to the old sleepy Jew (Dutch?) who invented Van Goghs.
Bungling to avoid drowning within oneself or drowning amid the shit.

TS – DRY LEMON

The drinking sessions began in the afteroon like the rhythmic waves on a dry beach-towel would go on until two in the morning…I can remember the parties at home when I was sixteen, among the last revellers you'd find yourself embracing a certain Mary spurned until then but now beheld in the ultimate belief that real and mutual love had finally materialised. At two in the morning I am out on the street, with a well-built man, you could say gentleman, out of his element, dressed and shod in style, his profession hard to identify, reluctant to being noticed thinking how and where we can conclude or multiply the rounds.
I can't remember – plausible – how the chat began. I remember that he took off his jacket, rolled up his shirtsleeves with great care under the Brera street lamps and he showed me his lacerated arm – a real geographical map, an aborigine tattoo, the most beautiful Fontana painting that I'd ever seen – and he told me about it.
One night, I had finally decided to close life's chapter – nothing particular had happened to set me off. I said to myself: that's enough, I calmly tidied my things, I drank my last drink for the last time, I stripped, carefully folding my clothes, I took and tested the belt from my bathrobe, stood on a chair to tie the noose around a beam, thus naked with the noose ready for use and checking the knot's strength I noticed the lemon.
A dry lemon abandoned on the beam: they remain intact and become a beautiful antique gold colour as dry as stones. So there I was, standing starkers on the chair a noose around my neck, the dried lemon in one hand and began thinking about how and why that fucking lemon had ended up on the beam. And thus morning came - already time to get dressed and take a coffee. The meaning of the word exist, Mister AT, is to stay outside, everything on the outside exists, all on the inside does not. My ideas, my images, my dreams do not exist, even I do not exist except by escaping from myself towards others.

VESPA AND VALCHIRIA

Leghorn, Milan, Florence, Leghorn, Florence, Milan 1970 something. Florence, Levi, Saba, Pitti Palace, plates to be washed. Hunger, misery, good paintings and passion, finally the mother decides to receive them at Ardenza.
The intention was not of making the relationship official with the family, so much as an illusory attempt to recuperate some money to permit survival or at least reap something from the house which could be sold as quickly as possible. In fact we had sold everything that was sellable, including the pawnbroker's receipts.
Madame welcomed her coolly and the son with muted affection. The lunch and the table were magnificently prepared. After a long meal sinking into uncomfortable armchairs with disrespectful and anarchic springs which left lengthy do-you-remembers on your backside. Frank, Gino, Mary, Francesca, Christine, every event in the five years since we had last seen each other. The leaden boredom with which the family's legal problems were told in the smallest of detail, the inheritance was always much less than expected….but she was counting on the survivors who could have, in turn, left money or houses or at least things… then the gift arrived not spontaneously but solicited. “Even if I have to break a chair into two however little remains of so much shall be divided anyway between you and your sister” or “ Choose what you want but not that no, that…that no oh and I've promised these to…”. She disappeared into one of the rooms closing the door behind her, a concert of keys could be heard counterpointed by the carcasses of drawers and keyholes being opened and shut during the silences…the jingle jangle of keys resumes.
The door opened after what seemed hours to us – we were stressed out, nervous, strangers to the surroundings, to the chattering, to the wretchedness of locked doors, to the heavy diffidence during the wait I observed the sea from the window heaving with the sirocco wind. Okay, she re-emerged with a packet that she placed in front of me I opened it immediately. There lay two 19th century gentlemen's silver rings, ornate and set with two opaque stones. They were obviously not part of the family history, I could envisage them on the fingers of some huge, plump cattle trader's hand. Worth little and valued the instant I put my eyes them, later confirmed by a Florentine pawnbroker. After dinner between a follow-on of the after lunch money-inheritance-spitefulness which continued relentlessly involving relations unknown to me. At bedtime it was decided that I should sleep in the rooms upstairs and she in the first floor apartment, despite the knowledge that we had been living together for over a year now. However before going to bed I asked permission to ride my “Vespa” along the sea-front while the table was being cleared and the separate beds prepared.
We stopped soon afterwards, on a winding path lined with arbutus and juniper, a ready-made nuptial bed, welcoming and already tested. It had been cold on the Vespa, the sea breaking on the shore, the moon, the earlier tensions, the passion, the intensity of coition, she feels ill and faints. In vain I try to revive her…”it's serious; she's dead” I say to myself - the idea of getting back on the Vespa, driving to the high cliff tops and throwing myself at full speed into the void makes my head burst. I started the motor turning the headlamp on her face for a last time vision, saying my last goodbyes when she stirred stretching out into the dry undergrowth - we left for Florence.
Register no. 283573 28376 without glasses without memory
Register no. 3 or 5
Artists have traditionally enjoyed certain privileges even if they took no advantage of them or used them to the contrary; they maintain a romantic halo of irreverence which strengthens the client in his temporary subordinate condition and his particular superiority.

INSTALLATION WITH A DEAD MAN

He had dashed to my home dishevelled, feverish, trembling, moaning, stroking my head holding me, even crying, perhaps. He lies dressed on the bed and smoking, I'll keep the rope – he says – and puts it away in a pocket like the ones on pinafores which go across the belly. The strong nylon rope was beautiful; he kept kilometres of the stuff in his studio carefully coiled and with great care cut off the right length, the necessary for what he should have done.
It had happened unexpected, while working, the peremptory idea came to him, determined, precise, decided, as strong as a wooden wedge right in the middle of a frantic day apparently quite normal.
An idea and nothing more.
That's enough, I'm pissed off. The hook is the last thing I see from bed before falling asleep and the first thing upon awakening, in that position it's inevitable. A pleasing hook set in the wall, once holding high brass or crystal chandeliers loaded with light bulbs. Robust hook, robust rope all that was missing was the hanged man who should have been me.
I decided to make the last ritual telephone call, like those who have no intention of going through with it. But the person lived quite far away so I was guaranteed he could not reach me in time.
I'm here being cosseted and I rue the installation with the dead man.
Don't push your nose into my paintings if you don't want to poison yourself with the reek of the colours. Paintings don't give life to an object but to a forgery, a copy of a copy which becomes itself.

THE SWEDISH BALCONY

She turned up in Milan – turned up, shot, thrown catapulted to Milan – unexpectedly in her manner - with some luggage..
It's a long story, nights spent drinking and screwing, shedding the booze-ups over New York's sidewalks.
Umberto Eco gave a conference at the Italian Institute for Culture of New York: we met there, or rather she met me just as I was speaking to Vignelli, Marco Eco, or rather they were speaking and I was listening, this blonde slips a note into my pocket and at the time I barely noticed.
Marion and I had been having problems for some time: at the height of the crisis I find the note. I 'phone, and make an appointment on 49th Street, just for a beer because I had to see Holly Salomon the same evening.
I leave her, deluded, in the hands of a Florentine artist friend who had come to see me from San Francisco.
The morning afterwards, beside himself, he tells me how she navigated him from bar to bar through half Manhattan until dawn. The following night it happens to me and so begins a story of bars, walkways, screwing and madness.
She invites me to dinner along with Marion and her husband, who later catches us together in a bar one night and threatens to beat me up; I suggest that it would be better if he offered us a drink instead.
She receives us readily, with Marion and her husband, a really delightful quartet….the next morning I have to leave early, I have an important job in Leghorn, I beg her to let me sleep, I say I can't drink like an idiot in Milan as I did in New York: she loses it like a spoilt little kid and so I have her hair cut at my hairdressers. She looks good but still hurts, every now and then she weeps thinking of her kids and her husband who screws a Cuban creole who I had also screwed for revenge and out of boredom. She leaves, and I go to bed half-assured. At one, at two in the morning a bloke calls me on the house phone bringing her back; she'd been drinking just a little…
I beg her to sleep – next morning I have to go to Leghorn. More playing-up.
She says she's coming too. Refusal, I throw a load of clothes into her suitcase, call a taxi, which costs Lit. 50'000 just for waiting and insist she return to New York to the kids and to the husband who screws the Cuban.
At four in the morning she slips out of the door, dashes upstairs to the last floor and with thighs over the iron parapet threatens “I'm going to throw myself” - “or Leghorn or die”, “Leghorn never, go throw yourself”.
I phone Paula at five, at half past five they come down together. At six I shower. At quarter past seven I take the first taxi to the station. Now she's in Argentina with husband and kids.
I draw and paint on paper and canvas. My hand describes the same invisible net of movements and transforms movement into matter; the mark reproduces the image. Other times, as if the nerves leading from the eye now connect with a new area, immediately adjacent, of the brain. Surely an archive of other experiences and so a source of new information.

SANTO SPIRITO

Looking at the façade on the right you will find a glazier in his long and narrow workshop- There's more glass than space, a true miracle when you escape unharmed without cutting yourself. The magical artisan moves and cuts the invisible that floats on fullness, perhaps the idea came from there, I'd visited some days beforehand. I'm working well I let the basket slowly descend from the window and from underneath, at the sound of my voice, the delicatessen man sends up a bottle of Chianti. Everything is fine, load of crap, the rows have begun, I don't have a cent, I hate Florence I miss Milan, where real bedlam has broken out among gallery owners and friends, betrayed by my flight.
I had bought an old razor from Fister Smayer. He stops in the small square every morning at around ten. The razor fascinates me and I'm frightened of it, I don't know what happened, the wine, the quarrels, the fact remains that I have very evident symmetrical scars on my forearms. I'd lied to her about it, saying that I had hurt myself at the glaziers, sometime I must ask her if she ever believed me. In bed during the night I told her the truth and sobbing, she slapped me across the face.
In a jar on that very same table there are painting brushes, 50 painting brushes or perhaps a hundred, all appear practically destroyed. They are hairless, squashed, exploded, bald, even stiff with dry colour, positively comical. They don't have the tangibility of the tubes' colours nor throat of the man who speaks, as if they had all been found in some tomb on the borders of the Nile. He speaks alone with a raised voice, sometimes the voice accelerates and fades away.
It isn't known if its for the painting that he shouts when it takes shape. But we know it takes shape continuously day and night whether the man is sleeping or awake.

Translated by Jane Rusconi, July 2002

Copyright 1999-2005 Sandromartini.org