Vincent van Gogh
Campo di Grano con Volo di Corvi

The things you notice in the morning always seem to steer your day one way or another, and sometimes - in the coincidence of bizarre astral conjunctions - you are quite lucky.

A disgusting, yellowish, clotted, phlegmy spit crusted the pole of the STOP sign near my bank. Sure, it's not really "my bank"; it's just the place that makes me a special mammal, a man worthy of being called such, and who can call other men "brothers." It doesn't matter how many coins one has in the account, the important thing is to own an account: an account not to be totally invisible, an account to count for something.

That unmistakable road sign and that mood of phlegm in advanced decomposition seemed to highlight it struck me like the lunar breath and the dilated pupils that I have always thought characterized the Sibyls. I approached the ATM to check my balance, but as I approached, I glimpsed my face reflected in a shop window nearby and couldn't help but think I was aging; it wasn't so much the quality of the image that appeared on the glass, almost weightless and as if produced by a rear projection, but the act itself that bewildered me. Once, I would have gone straight and withdrawn just enough to give myself a little pleasure, while now I rummaged through the murky depths of my money like a poor man's Scrooge McDuck enjoying triple somersaults in his gold coins, not to mention that anyone who takes "few, damned, and soon" as a philosophy or necessity knows exactly how much money they have in the bank; they know it to the cent.

I left, mentally greeting my twin of the moment, and thought it would be a good idea to beach myself at an outdoor bar, maintaining the right moisture of my body thanks to the relief of a light beer. The greatest quality of summer consists of the fact that there is a very intense, colorful, dense animal life, and so, between sips, while I was literally enthralled by the single combat between two hideous specimens of pigeons disputing a piece of olive focaccia, I will only casually observe that at the tables next to mine was a little group of university students who, with a gaze laced with bovine astonishment, were delighting in the knowledge of a clearly older friend who was initiating them into the hidden secrets of an exam that seemed to me to concern psychology.

The fact is that all this talk of exams had reminded me of the blood test that, due to unavoidable work urgencies, I had to endure a few days earlier. I have no shame in confessing that when it comes to needles, I'm a bit of a sissy, and while this protects me from possible heroin-addict tendencies, it also exposes me to the ridicule of the nurse on duty; there's a real risk that I'll faint, that my egocentrism will drop to the miserable level of leopard skin, and it's precisely for this reason that that time I thanked the Gods for having found a professional with a hard, indifferent, atone glance. A voice coming from the supreme heights of practice that without judging me too cruelly said: "Are you afraid of needles? Then lie down. If you faint, you'll already be lying down."

I got up from the table and went through the streets of the center where at that hour of the afternoon the few people present, mainly couples, amused themselves with the wares displayed in the shop windows. I have a very personal theory about the distance two people looking at a window must keep between them to configure as a "happy couple": if it’s too much it means they no longer love each other, if it’s too little it means they don't love each other yet; the right distance is intermediate, no more than a meter and no less than thirty centimeters. True happiness needs both the vital space to breathe and the gravitational space not to fall apart.

That day it seemed to me that there was little happiness in the air and so, driven by the inclination of the porphyry, I retraced my steps going to wrap my claws around the neck of a half-liter jug containing the superlative white wine from my trusted cathedral: the Bar Italia. Almost immediately, the chatter of Seba enveloped my wandering mind: a magnificent chronic alcoholic who, despite (or perhaps because of) a perfectly engrafted liver transplant, had started drinking like crazy again and if it annoys me a lot that a healthy organ is wasted on an individual now in irreversible decline, one has to recognize Seba's good taste in having followed through with a sibylline phrase of his from a few years ago on the occasion of the death of another famous alcoholic in the city: "I'm next."

I went out in the late afternoon, sat on a bench, and lit a cigarette.
I thought about my reflection twin in the glass, the university students, the nurse who had drawn my blood, the couples in the city center, Seba. What difference is there between them and Van Gogh? The most important is that Van Gogh went all the way with his neuroses, believed above all else in his personal vision of the world, granted every shred of flesh to his suffering. "Wheat Field with Crows": there is the entire fear, horror, loneliness of a man who KNOWS that his life is about to end and wants others to know how HE is living it. Every second is good to live or die: we never think about it, but it's the only thing that has some importance.

Sitting on that bench, I also thought about the spit I saw hours earlier and wished I could know the author of such wonder: as Van Gogh had transfigured reality with his master brushstroke. I returned to the sign to see that masterpiece once again, but it was no longer there: something or someone had erased it from existence.