InsideMyHead

London is sleeping like me. Is it the weather? Is it the heat? What is this stillness in the air? ‘Writing or not writing?’ asks herself the author. My holiday is over. I am frozen between the slow life I’ve left behind and the fast rhythm awaiting for me at each corner. I am resisting, I’m not ready yet for the life I’ve left behind. My old life seems so remote at the moment. I want to protract the feeling of my holidays ad infinitum and keep it in my circulatory system; I want to hold on to the slow pace, the smell of fresh air and flowers. I’m not ready for choking, for the intoxicating pollution and the irritating allergies. I am not ready for work. I am not ready for anything. I want to climb inside a cocoon and spend winter there when it arrives, and make no mistakes, it will be here sooner than you think with the dark days and the grey sky, with the relentless rain and the slippery streets. Who wants to go out? Nobody does, we don’t. We pretend we are alive; we sta...

Sono tornata nella villa in stile Liberty Siciliano, ma il gatto nero non mi aspetta più fuori dalla porta sdraiato sul gradino di pietra o sotto l’edera fiorita. La facciata rosa antico che si sgretolava per via delle macchie di funghi neri che la divoravano; la corona di gerani a semicerchio intorno la casa che serviva a tenere lontani gli insetti, e gli altri animali che popolavano la fitta vegetazione del giardino selvatico di casa nostra non ci sono più. La signora della villa accanto, nonché zia dei miei cugini, ci portava per merenda il suo dolce preferito: zuppa inglese con pinoli raccolti nella sua pineta. Che prelibatezza! Le due zie facevano a gara a chi faceva i dolci più buoni. Le due sorelle erano in lite da anni per motivi a noi sconosciuti. Nei pomeriggi di chiacchiere degli adulti, avevamo sentito la parola ‘beni’, si trattava quindi di   soldi e non di sfide culinarie, come pensavamo noi. Le due sorelle non venivano mai assieme a trovarci, annunciava...

After Brexit I feel like I’ve just split up with my partner, but it’s not one of those civilized, amicable divorces − if there is such a thing − but one of the ‘rat varieties’, meaning: your ex has just left you without telling you. In fact he has moved out and you are left with the mortgage and the bills. Even worse, you don’t actually know where he is − dead, gone with the wind, circumnavigating the globe or even space travelling. Who knows and who cares. What really matters is that you are left on your own in an empty flat and have no idea what to do and where to go. Your love story has ended tragically, but you don’t know if you are staying or leaving. Your ex has left you, and he couldn’t even be bothered to tell you. You are now sitting in the comfy armchair and are so numb that your brain is like a frozen cod. Do you still have a home and for how long? Did he hate you? You lived with him all this years and you never had an inkling that you were not his type. Unfortunately i...

WE ARE OUT. How sad. Are you serious people, is this what you want, a country without courgettes and a clown as a Prime Minister? Shame on you! This was my outburst the other day, when I woke up, turned on my ipad and looked up the results of the referendum on the e-guardian.   The night before I had stayed up till midnight and my initial worries had subsided, comforted by the reassuring voices of the journalists who, even before the counting started, where declaring the IN votes as the winners. When at 6:30 in the morning I found out about the results, it was such a shock. Unbelievable. I spent the rest of the day in a surreal world − starting with the wrong Front-page headings on the daily newspaper (I wished I kept it as a memento), while I felt as if everything had collapsed around me, and all of a sudden I had turned into a ghost, or was I merely a guest, an unwelcome one? Or is it the same thing? Ghosts are, after all, unwelcome guests in old, rickety dwellings, and...