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Hitting the keys, if it wasn't clear, I like it and it gives me peace.
I mainly do it here, but you're not my only audience: I'm monogamous only when it comes to relationships.
Sometimes I feel like writing to people I don't know but I appreciate them, telling them what I like about their work, and thanking them for the consistent commitment with which they present their art.
Other times I simply say "hi, I'm a fan of yours" and then proceed to talk about my own stuff, as I think I do almost everywhere.
The first time was difficult, having to admit to being a starry-eyed thirteen-year-old girl wasn’t easy. But after the initial exchanges, I understood that human connections can truly travel through the ether and spread from a keyboard to a computer screen.
Yesterday I watched this documentary, shot in Milan in '76 in strict black and white.
Filomena and Antonio.
She's twenty-two, I don't remember his age. But it's around there, give or take.
As soon as they open their mouths, I realize that I'm not the immature one; it's our generation that's made up of "bimbiminkia" (a playful pejorative term for naive youth). Everyone: myself first, certainly, but you too. Yes, you. Don't be offended: for once, it's not your responsibility (you can still think very well that you're not one, your choice).
Antonio works as a factory worker, operates a lathe (or as some might improperly say "under the lathe"). One day he gets injured, his arm gets caught in the machine. Nothing too severe, no permanent physical damage, he stays home as needed and returns to work. However, the psychological damage is palpable, and he discovers he's afraid of the machine. He can't work anymore and quits his job. At home, there's no celebration with a bottle of wine (it's the working class from the outskirts of Milan during the years of lead, Antonio's parents probably have never opened a bottle of champagne in their lives).
It's tough for a boy his age to be unemployed: he's grown up, he needs to bring home the bacon, mom and dad can't support him forever (I told you, for once the responsibility isn’t yours).
Antonio is struggling with unemployment; if he were a "bimbominkia" he would have the internet to fill his days and feel a bit less marginalized by a society from which he is, in effect, becoming marginalized. But it's '76, there are shootings in the streets, and "bimbiminkia" don't exist yet.
He doesn't have the internet, but he needs to find a way to emancipate himself; he wants to take control and find himself. He isn't a factory worker; he's not a student. And he needs to see something in himself when he looks in the mirror that identifies him as a sentient, living being. It's '76, he's not a student, not a factory worker, social class is what it is, so he tries. He wants to kick the world and pull himself out of the blackness of existential indecision. And so, he punches through.
His girlfriend, Filomena, has a completely different story, symbolizing a little Italy divided in two, between north and south, between the desire for progress and prehistoric rituals.
Filomena. Woman. A woman who wants her own life, to decide on this life of hers, and to organize a future.
But the women in her town stay home, the husband takes care of work. It's '76, and to define Filomena's condition as "southerner" is much more explanatory than offensive.
But Filomena has little, if any, "southerner" about her, and at 17, she runs away from home. She takes the train, and her dreams set sail for Milan.
Now, it would be easy and predictable to identify Milan as the meat grinder that devours innocence and that, inevitably, you might have realized is about to arrive. But Milan, for Filomena, in those seventeen years, is only the Milan of hope and opportunity.
After a week in the city, she lives in a boarding house, paying her way by working as a secretary at a studio in Vincenzo Monti (or Monte Napoleone, I don't recall. And mainly, it doesn't matter: the fundamental concept here is that we are all "bimbiminkia," and she's a 17-year-old who exposes our inadequacies).
But running away was a mistake: a normal mother and father would do what hers do — inform the police. Mugshots, the boarding house owner who buys the Corriere della Sera, the report to the police, and Filomena returns to "Terronia" (a derogatory term for Southern Italy).
Where, unfortunately, she finds her abnormal parents there again (to call them "southerners" would be too easy and simplistic)
She wanted to make a life for herself, and they were already calling her a whore. It is pointless to hope that when Filomena demonstrates she can make a life for herself (at seventeen), the stigma could change.
Whore. Whore. Whore. Proper women don't do that, Whore! No one will want you anymore, WHORE. YOU HAVE DISHONORED THE FAMILY, WHORE. (thank you "mom," thank you "dad"... Don't worry, Filomena: the Via Crucis has just started, the crown is on your head, but you haven’t felt the weight of the cross yet, and Golgotha is not even on the horizon, there's so much yet to see).
One day, dad brings home a friend, blind, old. They all have dinner together, mom, dad, whore, and the blind man. When the evening ends, mom asks the whore what she thinks of the guest who just left: "do you want to marry him, whore?"
Of course not, he's disabled, quite old, and Filomena isn’t even eighteen yet.
Okay, tomorrow we’ll try someone else, but don't get your hopes up, whore, you've been dishonored, no one will want you, don't expect better.
One month. A daily invite, a human case each evening. Sooner or later, Filomena will give in.
But Filomena doesn't have the internet, doesn't know what "bimbiminkia" are, and has guts that would make any "man" treading the obscene stage of her house envious.
One day, she receives a letter from Germany. Her cousin told her story to a colleague, and the colleague couldn't care less about the bullshits from rural Italy and offers to marry her.
And so, Filomena, just turned eighteen, leaves as a bride for Germany, where she ends up working in a factory. Completely ignorant of German. Every day commits errors that the language barrier doesn’t allow her to understand, and she sees her husband only on Saturdays and Sundays. But he drinks, a lot. And Filomena's guts explode in a final act of desperate courage.
At 19, she’s back in Milan. Trampled by her father, her mother, and life itself, she too punches through.
Antonio and Filomena, on their third attempt at rehabilitation.
The first is tragic-comic; the medical method is so absurdly inadequate that the rehabilitation lasts a week. The second involves agriculture, fields, nature. A paradise. Then you go back home, to Milan. You find the same situations you left, and you start spending your days dealing. Every six bags, a free dose.
One day, a bastard shipment leaves from Amsterdam. Half heroin, the other half strychnine (STRYCHNINE, if you don’t know what it is, go look it up on Wikipedia).
Filomena and Antonio know it, but Filomena ends up in the hospital anyway, done in by strychnine. A small amount, the dealer gave her a measly dose, wanted to cheat her properly. It saved her life. Something the doctors don't do: "what strychnine??? You're just a junkie who shot up too much..." (thanks to their goodness: at least they didn’t call her a whore).
Six hours on a gurney in a waiting room. Purple, leg muscles stiff, throat catching due to neck stiffness, and the doctors making fun.
Then, thankfully, the six hours pass.
Not that they examine her after six hours; after six hours, thanks to the bastard dealer, the strychnine somewhat loosens its grip, and Filomena manages to get off the gurney with her painful legs and gets back home. She’s still not 22 years old.
Now Filomena is trying for the third time. She refuses the agricultural commune, which could be only the first step AND, in Goddamn temper (if God existed, he would justify swearing in this case), she refuses to consider the idea that her malaise is due to having a bad relationship with those who called her a whore to sell her to Germany. She wants what Antonio wants: "working on us is not enough, it's the country's social conditions that have to change."
Yesterday I spent two hours searching online for news about the documentary, and everywhere, probably rightly so, Filomena and Antonio have no last name.
I can't write to either of them to send a tearful hug full of respect, I can only hope they've made it, that they've connected with the world of "bimbiminkia," that they have an internet connection, and that they randomly stumble upon this page.
And if the miracle should ever happen, and if they ever have the patience to read this far: Hi Antonio, Hi Filomena, I hope you've found the love and respect that every human being deserves and should demand.
I send you a lot, a lot, a lot, and even more "a lot," a "lot" for every time Filomena was called a "whore" and a lot for every bag you sold in the desperate quest for the 3.4 daily fixes.
Returning to us "bimbiminkia" from debaser, and the review on the work: another time, for today seems more than enough.
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