JLI - a Journey, Longing for Ithaca: North America, Oct.08

Once upon a time, there was this good boy who was always organizing everything well in advance, all the details, a real virgo, everything well organized before hitting the road. Then he realized that one of life's favorite hobbies is to re-mix the cards, no matter how well you plan your schedule. So the good boy started to feel less ashamed not to behave like a good boy all the time, abdicated from virgo and signed up as rat, and passed the ball to life: "if you believe you are so good and funny, then show me how you play". So this time he left with just a return ticket and 3 weeks in North America with no reservations, no arrangements, nothing more than a guideline and the wish to stay on the road (in the real sense: fly as less as possible, drive as much as possible). He arrived on a Monday afternoon in Houston, Texas and discovered that Air France (no comment.. otherwise someone could say that Italians have a prejudice against those French people and it is no true, it's just them, they never get it right) lost his baggage. Life was laughing at him again: "even if you don't make plans, I know how to bother your no-plans plan.."

Then the day after he got his bags and was on the road, from Houston to Austin, from Austin to Dallas, from Dallas to Kansas City, from Kansas City to St. Louis, and then crossing Missouri north up to Chicago, Illinois.

Six days, six cities, hundreds of miles under big, clear skies. The first night he slept in a cheap motel and imagined to be a beatnik. The second night he slept in a better hotel with a secret desire in his mind. The third night he couldn't sleep. The forth night he thought of how easy would be to get lost - how easy it is to get lost when you think that nobody would care, that probably nobody cares about you even if you want to believe that no, there is someone who cares. Then the fifth night he elaborated the satellite theory and had a better sleep.

Then while on the road he also noticed one funny thing: when you drive, the more you drive the more the sky becomes dark. So he thought: if I stop and put the reverse gear and drive backward, will the sky start to brighten up?

But when you have a no-plans plan, and therefore you don't plan to die, you don't drive backward on a North American highway. You drive forward, and the sky becomes darker, and you never know what would happen if you could use the reverse gear. Like in life.

Then the sky becomes so dark that you see a last hint of light on your back and enter into the night. He entered into the night and had dinner in a place in the middle of nowhere, with the parking place full of trucks. The floor of the restaurant was sticky and made a funny sound when he walked on it, a sound like: "swchtwucht, swchtwucht".

Then he got out of the dark and he was in New York City.

God had blessed him with a marvelous present: an apartment all for him for 5 nights, a very nice apartment and free of charge, so he could do what he always does when he travels: pretending he is not a tourist or a business man but a local instead. So on Sunday (only one week from when he left, and already so many things and so many cities and so many thoughts) he walks from Battery Park to Tribeca and then Soho, where he meets another rat, this one a big rat:

And then he realizes that the more you walk the more the sky becomes dark. He thought about starting to walk backward but was too shy, so he lost the chance to see if in that way the sky would have started to brighten up. The sky got darker, the shops started to close and there was not much people left in Soho.

So he turned east towards Little Italy where if you pay there is a guy dressed like one of the Soprano's with a big fat cigar in his mouth that sits at your table (if you are outdoor, if you are indoor he doesn't have the big fat cigar but still looks pretty much like a mafia guy) and you can take a picture with him. He walked faster and soon he was in Chinatown. This is him in front of the Shanghai Cafè, who knows why:

, and this is what he saw when he sat inside the Shanghai Cafè and thought: "the dumplings look good here but I'd rather prefer to be in Shanghai", who knows why...