Raymond Carver
Cattedrale

Something had to be written. A book like Cathedral (1983) couldn't remain without a comment, without a little page revealing to the whole world the emptiness of Raymond Carver's stories. Pieces of life in pieces, without a beginning and without an end, with a seemingly senseless sense like my days, our days.

I entered the room, took the PC, turned it on, and placed it on the desk. It worked like a charm, it was amazing, I had bought it in installments at a specialized store, with zero interest because it's always better to have money in your pocket rather than not. I saved a Word file on the desktop and began to ponder over the 12 stories. How could I manage to captivate my reader? What keys could I use to crack open the safe of their curiosity? Carver is a boundary writer, you either love him or hate him. There was little to cling to: no murderers, no plot twists, zero breathtaking endings, linear structures with elementary prose. Flashbacks? What are those? Maybe it was enough to try to explain my feelings, to try to convey my relaxed unease as I went through the events of certain stories: a blind man visiting a couple after years, a family moving into a residence, a husband left alone with two kids to keep in check, an earplug that offers no peace, and so on... Sometimes perhaps arose a voyeuristic need to know how it ended. And almost never did it end, damn it.

Yet I couldn't find inspiration; my fingers were nailed to the keyboard, the birds outside reminded me that Spring had arrived even if the temperatures still seemed wintry. Dad, can we go out on the Vespa later? Okay, but not now. Come, Peggy, come, but what are you doing, don't disturb daddy who's working. A smile escaped me. In front of the computer, I seemed like a serious and tireless worker, I remembered my father working to bring home a quiet loaf to satisfy all our appetites. A nice memory, a beautiful memory. Now I was the one supporting a family because life went on on its own, a little too fast for my tastes, but there was little I could do or change. Everyone lives at their own speed, Carver's characters seemed like travelers admiring the landscape from the window of a slow train. Men and women guilty of too much humanity, the kind you find crowded in a metro at rush hour, the kind that pushes in the supermarket to grab the detergent offer. The people who smell of folks.

Musicanidi, your mother is here, come out of that room, come on, it's almost time to eat, wash your hands, have the boys wash theirs. Hi grandma, Peggy leave grandma alone, don't jump on her. What chaos, I'll try in the afternoon, I thought, maybe tomorrow, maybe never. But will I remember what to say? Will I not lose the bittersweet taste of those pages? But who cares, I'll write some nonsense. People swallow and eat everything they find. There's hunger around.

AT THE TABLE...COMING….