Nobel prize for literature awarded to Han Kang

Han Kang, a female Korean writer, was just awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. This is what I wrote down after reading some of her works a couple of years ago.

Convalescence, Human acts, The vegetarian - Han Kang

The most beautiful woman in town - Charles Bukowski

I used to read Bukowski - translated into Italian - when I was a college student. Bukowski depicted a world of decadence, problems, poverty, alcohol addiction and free sex that could make my neat and standardized life in the province, at university, in the family, with ordinary people, among conventional ideas, a little less standardized. It was a comparison term, a paradoxical mix of a threat to avoid and a goal to achieve. I found it so fascinating.

Convalescence, Human acts, The vegetarian - Han Kang

I’m writing from the depth of the contemporary Asian literature tunnel that I’ve entered a while ago and which I want to keep exploring a little longer. This section of the cave opens up on the work of Han Kang, a very skilled South Korean female writer.

A man (Un uomo) - Oriana Fallaci

At the time of publishing this book was categorized as a novel. Well, it’s not: it is the real story of Aleksandros (Alekos) Panagulis, the Greek poet, revolutionary and politician who opposed the military junta that ruled the Hellenic country from 1967 to 1974.

They just have different rules - Thailand (with some photos)

Everything...no rules! Actually they only seem to have guide books

One arrives to Thailand and soon starts to spot the differences. How hot…in December! It was snowing back home. Everything is so cheap, you can eat with a dollar…with that money I can't even get a coffee where I come from. And finally the most surprising of them all: everything that is forbidden where we come from is allowed here, or at least tolerated. In the worst case scenario you can buy it with a bribe.
You can purchase pirated DVDs and software in broad daylight. Fake driving licenses, university degrees and membership cards of various type. Imitation jeans, shirts and bags. You can display the sign of an illegal business and nobody says anything about it. You can spot four people without helmets and a dog riding a motorbike, and the police is fine with that. Twenty kids in the back of a pick up truck, instead of hiding, are all laughing and singing. After 2am bars cannot sell alcoholic drinks but if your beer is poured in a paper cup or a coffee mug then it's alright. Nightclubs are competing for who pays the biggest bribe to the police, so that they can stay open until late and the competitors are forced to close early. And then sex, orgies, viagra, cialis, kamagra, women…young, old, fantastic, horrible, shameless or chaste women. Yeah, here you can even find chaste hookers. And then homosexuals, bisexuals, transexuals. Even asexual ones.
Hey, I can do anything I want here - the newcomer inspired by promises of freedom and impunity will be thinking - this is great! Hooray! And his holiday soon turns into a sequence of troubles.

Internet in Burma, accessibility and navigation freedom

Teahouse in Mandalay with free internet access

The first time I came to Burma, at the end of 2002, using the internet was basically impossible all over the country. The best thing one could hope for was sending an email, not from one's own account but from the private address of the owners of a couple of shops in Rangoon, and only from there. 

At the beginning of 2013 the situation is very different. The new laws regarding press freedom and censorship have affected the web as well. Now in the big cities it is possible to find a wifi hotspot in pretty much every hotel and cafe. At Mandalay and Pagan I happened to go to some teahouses (places that, as far as the level of sophistication is concerned, can be compared to the Italian "osterie" of the '50s) that offer free wifi access. Some friends who came here a couple of years back told me that the connections were terribly slow. Now even that barrier has been torn down, at least in part and in some places. 

However, the nicest aspect of the matter is the navigation freedom.

Reporters, girls and Facebook - Rangoon, Burma

Another photo by my friend IZ

It's almost dinner time, We've been in Burma for few days and we haven't got tired of exploring and be surprised, even if only by a heap of trash on a riverbank. This is true for food as well. So far we've tested the probability to get food poisoning by always trying a different place and for tonight's dinner we've already narrowed down our choices to a couple of burmese-indian restaurants. We had a late lunch though, and we also ate some cookies at tea time: we still haven't got enough appetite to fully enjoy our meal. We stop for a beer at a fancy (for Burmese standards) pub: Japanese name, menu in English, international cuisine, rich local customers and some expats. 

We've almost finished our beers and we're about to leave when my friend IZ and a Burmese guy sitting in front of us - both equipped with professional cameras - look at, observe, understand each other and then start a conversation. For a while they only talk about photography. I listen to them in reverent silence. Then they switch to general topics, I get hold of the rope dangling from their hot-air ballon, I let myself be lifted up and soon catch up with them. The Burmese guy is a photo reporter who works for a local English language paper.

Durian: the real forbidden fruit, i.e. the measure of freedom - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

A durian, split open with a machete, one of the flesh-beans still intact and a pulp-less seed

What does durian, a tropical fruit, have to do with freedom? Maybe nothing, maybe a lot.
Durian. I tried it for the first time many years ago, when I had just arrived to S.E. Asia. It might have been in Singapore: at Bugis Junction in fact, where I was staying, as soon as the picking season was under way the area filled up with street-stalls selling it. Even though I didn't find it disgusting, like the majority of the other westerners, I was not particularly impressed, but I wouldn't be able to tell why. I was not even stricken by its supposed, terrible stench. And to think that in Singapore, due to their bad smell, durians are forbidden at hotels, subway stations and other public places, even with illustrated prohibition signs. Then again, in Singapore it is even forbidden to import chewing gums, imagine eating stinking fruits indoor. In Asia I have eaten much worse smelling food than durians. Some varieties of chou doufu (stinking tofu) in China and Taiwan forced me to hold my nose when I was still fifty meters away from the source-restaurant. An intensity similar to the one that 20 years ago, in a small Appennino Lucano's town, was rising from a cliff where the carcass of a cow was rotting, and entered through the broken window, saturating the room, keeping my brother and me awake all night, looking for dead rats under the bed and checking our retches, while we couldn't stop laughing incredulously. Durians vaguely smell of kitchen gas, but it's not an unbearable odor.

Free time by-product

A few years ago, when I suddenly found myself with an increased dose of free time at hand, I instinctively started to use the increment to do the things I liked the most. As soon as my enthusiasm started to dwindle though, I realized that I was unconsciously undertaking another project as well.

There are no longer any doubts: I was born with lots of shortcomings. As the years went on they grew up with me, becoming heavier and ever more cumbersome. As if that weren't enough then, others were added to the list of the congenital ones. For a very long time I didn't take care of them: when I was a teenager I was too busy trying to fit in with the world that surrounded me and later I found myself entangled in a skein of activities that, even though I had chosen to do them myself, felt as if they had been somehow forced upon me.
When I gave most of that up and had more free time to rely on I almost unintentionally started to identify those aspects of my personality that I didn't like or were giving me problems, especially in relation to other people, and I tried to tackle them, to come up with a way to fix them, or at least to smooth them down. I don't wanna boast about having so far been very successful, but at least I can say that I've started to try. 

Started to try...it sounds like a tiny, almost insignificant goal. And maybe it is...but only after you've achieved it.

Photo "Montmartre" by John Althouse Cohen (CC)

The jungle and the cage

A few months back I wrote a post called Stay out of the cage. Did you read it? Congratulations! You're one of the four people who did. You didn't? Well, I'm not surprised, of course. In case you were interested it's not too late to join the small group. You just need to click here. I kept it short and I wrote it as if I was writing a poem, or maybe a nursery rhyme. It's not my stuff really, but it was fun. Now I'd like to dig the subject a little deeper, in a more prosaic form.

What is the cage? Let's see. I think it's a cultural, traditional, material, custom and viewpoint framework we normally are brought up in. By the time we are adults its elements are embedded in our mind and, as if we had been administered increasing doses of them, we have become addicted.

Security vs uncertainty

Photo by star5112 (CC)

A few years ago a friend of mine told me that he had just quit his permanent job at some office and started to work as a freelance. "Freelance?" I answered "You had just started in that field, how are you going to find new customers?"

It turned out that he already had two customers and they probably were the same ones that he was dealing with at the office. As an independent professional he was earning pretty much the same money, working half the time. My friend's revelation helped me to get a clearer understanding of some of the decisions that I had made myself a few years back. The calculations that he had done could have actually been done by anyone else who does the same job. Why then he's the only one I know of who got to that conclusion? Now I know the answer well, as it is in fact the same reason why I also left my job as a permanent employee more that ten years ago: he didn't care about the dose of uncertainty that the new situation would have injected into his life.

I'll leave out on purpose the other - more or less important - factors that might have made my friend feel at ease even without having a stable job and I'll focus on my point of view on the matter instead.

I don't want to be misunderstood: security is a very comfortable mattress on which I would like to lie until the last of my days. Even though it's a privilege for the sake of which I would commit (with my imagination!) the most heinous crimes, what has so far made me opt for a life which is lacking almost any of it is what you have to give up in order to have it in exchange. Piercing day after day with a skewer of repetitiveness, monotony, strict timetables, slowly roast them over a charcoal of minor depressions, of non exciting jobs, of loss of enthusiasm, to finally eat after a few decades the tasteless yet balanced meal of a planned life and hitch-proof old age, is something that rather than fuel me with security gives me vertigo. Actually there is some sort of certainty that I get from it all: the one of aimlessness and depression bouts.

It's not about instigating people to do any stupid thing one can think of as we only live one life. I've done many silly things but none of them was too bad. It seems to me that the concept actually makes sense: if I had three or four lives to live, investing one on a security fund might look like a good idea, however, having been educated to rely on the scientific method and as I still haven't come across any sound proof of a second or a third life, I prefer to handle the first one that I happen to live with great care. Maybe, come to think about it, the opposite approach has more to do with irrationality. And with some kind of phobia.

Of course this is not a criticism to those who made or are about to make different decisions. I got lots of examples of people who prefer to live an extremely secure life that I still hold in high regard. This is the way I am though, and I have learned by swallowing bitter pills and going through painful crises that it's better for me to follow my instinct. This is especially true as I know that fortunately mother nature provided me with a dose of rationality and common sense big enough to smooth the sharpest corners and to plane the most irregular surfaces of my impulsive side. Over the years my instinct has proven to be trustworthy. Obviously there are ups and downs, but if I think of what was crossing my mind, stretching my nerves and kicking my soul about(*) on some sleepless night only a few years ago, the issues that I am faced with now make me smile.

After all we're just talking about living: the only occupation for which everybody is born with the necessary prerequisites.

(*) I know, I said that I am a supporter of the scientific method and then I've mentioned the soul. Actually I have never been too good at living a life without contradictions...

Semi-nomad - Bangkok, Thailand

Tibetan nomad, by falsalama (CC)

After renting it for two years I've left my apartment and got back to the semi-nomadic kind of life that I had embarked on ten years ago. I left the few home appliances that I possess at a friend's place, I packed my books, records and some objects I am fond of and shipped them to Italy, I sorted a few cloths, underwear and accessories that would fill two backpacks - a large one and a small one - I got rid of the remainder and went back to my old, rather random sequence of rooms in hotels, guest houses, places of friends', acquaintances' or almost unknown hosts and accommodation provided by some client - when I have a training course to teach, of course. I keep the clothes that I use for work in a separate bag, which I store in a private checkroom in between job contracts.
Once again I'm released, unsteady element, perpetually migrating bird, creeper without grip, pre-agricultural humanoid, uncoupled wagon, drifting lifeboat.
After having handed back the key and received my deposit I felt like when, two times in the past - actually two and a half (*) - I resigned from a permanent job, holding in my hand not a contract with another company but a ticket for a long trip instead. As if I had finally exhaled after having held my breath for a while, my chest finally relaxed and my heart floating into it, delicate and light, in complete freedom. Without knowing what to think when people were telling me that I had to be crazy and I was not feeling a thing about it.
Of course the fact that I don't have a family counts a lot. If I had it I wouldn't be able to perform this kind of stage tricks, or pricks. But the world is full of other singles like me, choked by the concern of being left without a job, without stability, without prospects, frightened by the specter of precariousness, without even a wife or kids as a pretext. On the other hand it looks like I am after all this, rather unconsciously, without plans or strategies, not so much out of fun as of necessity. I haven't had a long term job for a long time, I often don't have a job at all, and the one I manage to make a living with might slip out of my hands at any time.
I don't know what the prospect of a pension is. On top of that now I don't even have an address.
Anyway the ones I've listed are my only symptoms, other than that I'm feeling good. What ailment do I suffer from?

(*) The half time refers to when I was in Singapore and was offered the extension of a contract that I had expressly asked to be a fixed-term one. I politely thanked and declined.

The answer

Heart of Satan, by Stuck in Customs (CC)

Sometimes the leaden cloud of doubts reappears in the sky of the mind. And it starts to pour down a heavy rain of questions. Questions that you have already answered in the past, so many times, not only with words or thoughts but with frustration, suffering and mild states of depression as well.

For a moment, though, you're at a loss, and you can't remember what that answer was. Stability, jobs, fixed salaries, professions, insurances, pensions schemes, health coverage. Why give all this up? What for? You could answer with words but it would only be the performance of a parrot, a meaningless rigmarole. You can't formulate the answer, you need to feel it.

Then you wander through the city, in those alleys and corners where restlessness meets the night, you have a beer too many, you watch the unlikely unfolding in front of you. You wake up too early or too late and you don't have to care. You read a book, and it might as well just be a paragraph, a dialog, a sentence, a thought...and all of a sudden it comes back to you. Now you know exactly what the answer is.

Stay out of the cage!

Photo "Caged!" by VinothChandar (CC), from flickr



Don't give up! Remember?

You got out of the cage with nobody's help.

The outside world is a jungle, with predators and raptors,

insect viral bites that slow-fry your bowels.

The cage is safe, an aseptic bell jar,

screened from uncertainty, danger and darkness.

Its calls are tempting, like a fluorescent juice,

like sleep that wraps you up after your teeth have clattered.

But there's a veil of curare on the rim of the glass,

and torpor is only a disguise for frostbite.

Don't give up, stay outside!

The jungle is risk and gambling with life,

but your skin becomes leather and your soul will condense:

your heart crams itself, gulps down and globs, 

nerves and capillaries reach out and grope,

making contact with the tips of the roots of the world,

sucking its lifeblood and carrying it up.

Don't give up, don't go!

When you got out you were rickety, grazed, worn-out,

but you did hold out,

you'll be a jaguar soon!

The gate

What is it exactly that you regret? The thing about me that you envy so much? We both are looking for the same kind of future. You do it from the inside, as an incentive to move on. I've already gone out and I'm seeking it here. There's no style, courage, madness separating us, only a gate lies between you an me. And you know that you can open it whenever you want. 

Photo "The opened gate" by Steven Mitchell, from Art.com