Diary from L’Aquila – Day 0 – Preface
10.30pm, on the train to L’Aquila. Even if it is the 8th of August, it is surprisingly empty. I am actually afraid this is the calm before the storm and that after Genova it will be as full as a pack of sardines. I reserved my seat but my back hurt already, and I wish I did not have to carry my bag on my lap.
Anyway, I think I should inform my two readers (I even know the names – Mox and Francesco they are – so that noboby will think I show off) that I go to L’Aquila with a broken heart. The worst part of this is that it’s nobody’s fault: I spent months being mad at someone because I did not understand anything about him. I cannot be resposible for someone else’s choices, or better non-choices. I cannot help being sad about it, but that’s my problem.
Now, with all these troubles and overthinking that completely absorb my one and only neuron, I am on my way to a place where the big problem is to have a roof on your head. To get the money to eat. To find a pump to take a shower. To try to contain the damages of the government, a government representing that State which is supposed to help you in a situation like this. On the contrary, the government is skipping from doing nothing to create other trouble. The only present real outlook in L’Aquila is to be assigned a little flat in a new house. What about a job? What about a place to hang out at night? What about shops to buy things you need, and when you can afford it things you like? That is, banally, your everyday life, your simple real life. What about it?
Nonetheless, people don’t want to leave, after all it’s their city and they care about it. And they are doing anything they can to keep it being their city. Everyone keep saying they are strong, kind, admirable. It’s true, but also banal. After all those who are fighting are just people between their 20s and their 60s, nothing more than that. Us and our parents. The point is that when you have everything you spend your time looking for troubles inside you. In L’Aquila people were forced by the events to look around, to put themselves in the open and see each other as one big group of human beings rather that as a couple or a family. They were forced to look at what really matters, and to love it.
It is easy to let a city die: all you have to do is turn it into a dormitory. To build a house is cheaper and more profitable than to make an industry operative again.
And on television everyone knows already that with the arrival of the “casette”, the “little houses”, everything is going to be alright.
It is not. And keep reminding it is probably the best thing everyone can do right now.
And then maybe get to the point that we can even protest a little bit. Who knows.
