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Impossible to make a mistake.
From the train window, the irrational chaos of the urban agglomeration unfolds in reddish-gray-orange, like a Montmartre of dockworkers and fishmongers. For me, Genoa, though I am no longer a tourist, remains a "foresto," is that salty baroque jumble of climbs and cobblestones, the land of Luzzati and his scribbles, of fried cod and 19th-century confectioneries with their mirrors and lights.
Right behind the Truogoli of Santa Brigida, in that colorful and ramshackle slice of town that is part Africa and part South America, I took a little room on the top floor and from up high, I feel like Paolo Conte, with his vague distances, with his mocambi, with his verdimilonghe.
Little pieces of the world, like confetti in the head, boxers all fans and silences, men as big as trees. Faded postcards with cursive writing on the back.
The city onion peels, if you have eyes to see: 14th-century buildings, striped like so many marble lucardine, with arches adapted as windows, somewhat faded 17th-century stuccoes and frescoes, pointed bell towers with late 19th-century clocks embedded haphazardly, immobile seagulls, like stone, just waiting for someone incautious enough to let the focaccia be carried away from their hands, fleeting writings or peeled and re-stuck student collective stickers, lacquered stalls with books that surrender to being bought without any resistance, fountains, and corners.
Ah, cursed perfection, useless squaring of the circle, predictable symmetry. Ah, blessed imperfection, unclassifiable asymmetry, almost indecipherable: it's the words, juxtaposed in this way, that represent things with their onion layers.
Your uncle is waiting for you, reach him
when he looks at you, decipher him:
it's all cinema, cinema, cinema
(July 24, 2022, between Via di Prè and Piazza Sant'Elena, Genoa.)
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