Drawing (is) my life

Hello my friends! You on holiday? I am! Not at the seaside anymore, but not at work either, so I feel RELAXED. Yippee!! 

Some of you texted me and commented that my thoughts are always flowing and delicate, and when I write in English they sound even deeper. Thank you! But some others are waiting for posts in Italian. Come on, stop being lazy and study English. You all know that this language makes me feel calmer, and surely you don't want me to get angry and aggressive.

Ok, let's stop joking now. 

Today I'll introduce you to one of my super great passions: DRAWING.

Let me tell you how it all started:

I’ve been watching Japanese cartoons (Anime) since I was two, and I read my first Japanese comic (Manga) when I was six. I was in love with the big eyes of these beautiful characters, with their hair in the air. They looked so dreamy. Like me in this picture. 

When I was eight or nine I found out that using my pencil to copy those beautiful faces or create new ones gave me a sensation of lightness. Every day, as soon as I finished my homework, I fulfilled the last pages of my exercise and note books with charming young ladies and shiny fairies. But a few years later I stopped, too busy with my school exams. It was sort of a trauma, like forcing myself to abandon my true love. I tried to draw Japanese characters again in my mid-twenties. I still had my style, but my trauma wasn’t totally over, so I stopped again, afraid of eventually losing my ability.

The recent lockdown due to COVID-19 changed me into a prisoner of my small flat and I needed freedom: no gardens or big balconies where I could run, no dogs to take out. But I had old photocopies in my library, and pencils... so I smiled. I reversed a photocopy, took one of my mangas, looked at its cover and started to let my pencils flow on the paper. 

My very first drawing during the quarantine was completed in a few minutes, and it wasn't perfect. It was just a quick approach to overpass my trauma. And it worked. 

It shows Mokuren and Shion (the protagonists of Please Save My Earth, by Saki Hiwatari), two alien scientists from a dead planet, living on the Moon and studying our world. They are bound to love each other forever, even if no one understands the purity of their love, so they will face lots of difficulties to stay together.

My second picture was much better and while drawing it I felt happy and free, like when I was a child. 

This is Mokuren, who is not only an alien scientist, but also a Kiche-Sarjarian, a psychic whose powers are plant empathy and plant growth through singing. I’ve considered her to be my alter ego for several years.

Recently I drew again, but the picture I sketched (taken from Last Quarter by Ai Yazawa) was a bit sad or scary. “Angry”, added my favourite librarian. “You might need to shout”, supposed another wise friend. 

I think they’re both right. My art expresses my feelings and emotions, it’s quite normal, but I had never realised it before then.

Two days ago I decided to draw My Cheshire Cat the way I remember him. It was the Saturday night before the lockdown: I was trying to put my sleeping kids into my car. “Shall I help you?”, the Cat was just behind me. He was smoking a cigarette, grinning as usual and looking a bit like Clint Eastwood. “No, thanks”, I answered. But, puff, he had already vanished. And the wind was howling. 

I’ll keep on drawing in order to feel safe, to express my emotions and to tell you the stories of my life.

Hope you will enjoy.

See ya real soon, my friends! ;-)

And the best is yet to come

It was a peaceful afternoon of a very hot August. I was on holiday, admiring the sea from my terrace and thinking, as usual, about my recently lost “true love”. I was the best at complaining about my exes. I was still feeling sad for the geeky guy I had been seeing five months ago, and even if it was I who had interrupted our relationship (I always put an end to love stories I consider wrong and difficult ’cause I hate dramas), I wasn't able to get him out of my head. He couldn't be my Mr. Right: he was charming, learned and witty, but not so self-assured (as the Beatles said in Help), sloppy, idle, apathetic, cynical and definitely cold. It was obviously his problem, not mine. So why was I going on overthinking everything about our past and super short relationship? Something didn't add up...

The Cheshire Cat was sitting at my right side, grinning as usual.

- "Hi! Such a long time. How have you been? Did you enjoy the quarantine? I was afraid you would reappear no more", I started.

- "Are you certain it is his problem?", asked my Cat.

- "Quite certain, indeed,” I answered firmly.

- "Once you wrote on your blog that you and I share the same soul, that I am a sort of mirror where you can better understand yourself."

- "I did. And...?"

- "Was that man your Cheshire Cat?"

I was astonished. I was talking to an empty white plastic chair. A crazy woman conversing pleasantly with imaginary friends, like John Nash did (and he was a genius after all). And my transparent friend seemed much wiser than me.

- "Look at the sea", the Cheshire Cat reappeared, "it has a perfect blue compared to the brilliant green of the trees". And he vanished again.

I was shocked by his words.

And suddenly I had an intuition. After all these months I decided to re-read my ex’s emails. He said he was in love with me since I was intelligent, funny, determined, sexy, with beautiful big eyes and because I trusted him. I had forgotten all these positive adjectives related to me; whereas in my emails I wrote that I was in love with him because he had my same character and I could deeply understand him: no positive adjectives for him, but only similiraties with me. Quite narcissistic. 

A few days before I was on the phone with my best friend Flo, telling her that I fall in love almost every time, but that I am unable to take the further step, since I realised I had never really loved anyone in my life. I knew it sounded harsh, but it was true in my opinion (not in Flo’s). I remember how Yvaine explained her idea of love in Stardust, but it is something I have never felt deep down in my heart:

You know when I said I knew little about love? That wasn't true. I know a lot about love. I've seen it, centuries and centuries of it, and it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. All those wars. Pain, lies, hate... It made me want to turn away and never look down again. But when I see the way that mankind loves... You could search to the furthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful. So yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know that it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable and strangely easy to mistake for loathing, and... What I'm trying to say, Tristan is... I think I love you. Is this love, Tristan? I never imagined I'd know it for myself. My heart... It feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it's trying to escape because it doesn't belong to me any more. It belongs to you. And if you wanted it, I'd wish for nothing in exchange - no gifts. No goods. No demonstrations of devotion. Nothing but knowing you loved me too. Just your heart, in exchange for mine.

So my Cheshire Cat was right: the geeky guy was the mirror which showed me my real personality. I called him a cynical cold man, but I was worse. I was too jealous, being focused only on myself. I wanted to be fully, totally, unconditonally loved by the man who happened to be my partner, but I didn't give back love to them. I gave them material things like rich and beautiful presents, or even higher things, such as honesty and respect, but never true love. And I'm sure they could feel it, even if they didn't realise it. 

I had to thank my geeky guy instead of feeling heartbroken for having lost our magic moments forever. He had just taught me a very important lesson, he had taught me the way to reverse my love life. 

I was Ebenezer Scrooge (the miser of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens), and my personal Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come was showing me how I could become in my future. But I did not want to end up like this.

Changing my character wouldn't be an easy path to follow, but I was finally ready to give it a try. And the best is yet to come.

Should I help the geeky guy to look inside himself as well?

No, maybe he wasn't so cold, maybe this was just my wrong idea about him. And more important, people must work on themeselves, not on others.

So thank you Geeky Guy for opening my heart to love; thank you My Cheshire Cat for coming back with your precious advice, at last; thank you Florence for always trusting and listening to me; and thank you all my readers for supporting me. I won't say I love you all because I'm not able to love yet 😄

Au revoir, mes amis! 😀

My Cheshire Cat

I read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking Glass during the summer of 1986, when I was only ten. These two novels really struck my imagination, and, in a way, affected my entire life; I was genuinely impressed by the strange dreamlike situations this little girl had to face.
I liked Alice’s character because she always tried to look normal, serious, rational, that is “adult”, in such a crazy world. Her determination made me smile.

And I was fascinated by a lot of other characters in these two books: surely by the Mad Hatter, and the March Hare, by the funny Dormouse, the pompous Caterpillar, the stressed-out, even neurotic White Rabbit, by the twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the fragile Humpty Dumpty.

But my favourite has always been the Cheshire Cat. Since I was a very young girl I used to stare at the crescent moon and imagined it was his grin.

“I didn’t know that Cheshire cats always grinned; in fact, I didn’t know that cats could grin.” “They all can,” said the Duchess; “and most of ’em do.” (Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, 
ch. 6)
I loved this character because he was the only one to teach Alice his precious lessons about how that mad land worked.

A few years ago I saw the Cheshire Cat here in my town. I gazed at him with a puzzled face: was I dreaming? He was standing there at the corner of a square, glaring at me not very friendly, and mumbling inarticulate phrases I couldn’t understand. I came closer,  smiling in my most polite way, and tried to start a conversation. All he said was nonsense, that’s why I laughed a lot. 

He didn't really look like a cat, but like a pale-faced man in his thirties, with crazy green eyes, which reminded me no doubt of the Cheshire Cat's shining green eyes.
“The Cat only grinned when it saw Alice. It looked good-natured, she thought: still it had very long claws and a great many teeth, so she felt that it ought to be treated with respect.” (Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, ch. 6) Indeed, every time this man saw me from a distance, he grinned with all his many teeth.

Now please, don’t think I fell in love with this guy or even felt attracted to him. I'm not talking about a silly love story, no time for stuff like this. I am talking about something higher. And I was curious.

Every now and then I bumped into him. He appeared, gave me a quick moment of funny craziness and suddenly disappeared, and then he reappeared again whenever he liked. Once he told me we shared the same soul, and I wondered if I was him or if he was me. That made no difference. And this was definitely an “alician” self-talk: maybe this Cheshire Puss was a sort of mirror where I could better understand myself; or maybe he escaped from Wonderland in order to rescue me. 

I was always full of joy when I had the chance to talk and laugh with him. 

But then the coronavirus arrived and the quarantine started. I couldn’t be Alice anymore, I couldn’t indulge myself in Wonderland. I had to enter the adult world and keep calm for my kids’ serenity and for my job. So the Cat vanished. Or I vanished, I don’t know, it depends on the point of view. Sometimes, very often, I miss him, and silent tears roll down my cheeks. I try to chat with other people, men, women, friends, colleagues, but no one gives me the same childish emotions he gave me. I don’t know if I hope or fear to see him again. I think I’m afraid to find out that everything has changed.

I don’t even know his name. I like to call him “my Cheshire Cat”. 

I’m pretty sure that when I happen to look into the right mirror, I’ll finally see him again, because I’ll finally find myself. And this time my adventure in Wonderland will never end.

Le mie bambine (più un unico maschio)

Voglio sempre bene a tutti i miei alunni, nessuno escluso. Ma a voi è toccato un compito speciale: siete stati la prima classe che ho portato dalla prima alla quinta. Me lo ricordo ancora quando sono arrivata da voi, in quel fine novembre del 2015. Eravate così piccoli. Poi piano piano ho imparato a conoscervi, ed è stato un attimo affezionarsi ad ognuno di voi. Siete stati così seri e maturi fin da subito, eppure vi ho visti crescere comunque; vi ho visti maturare nonostante foste già dal primo anno dei piccoli adulti. E in questo vostro percorso di crescita mi avete presa per mano, insegnandomi tantissimo, facendomi sentire a casa ogni volta che entravo nella vostra aula, con i vostri sorrisi, con i vostri modi gentili, con i vostri occhioni spalancati, troppo timidi per intervenire durante le mie spiegazioni anche quando vi chiedevo di farlo. Vedervi era per me fonte di grande conforto e gioia, anche e soprattutto quando mi sentivo stanca per i vari impegni o triste per i fatti miei. Ed è stato terribile e dolorosissimo quando la pandemia e la quarantena forzata ci hanno divisi. Appena ho capito che non sarei più tornata a vedervi in classe, ho avvertito un colpo al cuore tremendo. Ed avevo sperato tantissimo in questa pizzata post-maturità, e vi ringrazio per averla organizzata. La maturità... esame in cui ognuno di voi mi ha resa ancora più orgogliosa; esame che, paradossalmente, proprio grazie alla pandemia, ho potuto fare insieme a voi. Ed “orgogliosa” non calza abbastanza: sono ORGOGLIOSISSIMA che siate stati proprio voi la prima classe che ho accompagnato per cinque anni. Mi mancheranno le nostre conversazioni su Dorian Gray, in cui affermavate quasi all’unisono, che non fosse realmente colpevole delle sue malefatte in quanto era stato traviato da Lord Henry Wotton (ma dico io, si può sostenere un’assurdità del genere?). Mi mancherà condividere con voi commenti femministi ad oltranza (fatti anche quando nemmeno li pensavo). Mi mancherà ridere con voi, e a turno prendervi bonariamente in giro. Mi mancherà farvi i complimenti sui vostri bellissimi occhi prima di ogni interrogazione. Mi mancherà chiamarvi “nini” (perché già, una di voi stasera mi ha fatto notare che “nessun altro vi chiamerà mai più nini”). Mi mancherete ragazze (più un unico maschio) perché per cinque anni siete state le mie bambine (più un unico bambino), e adesso che siamo giunti al termine di questa avventura, adesso che è giusto prendiate le vostre strade, sappiate che sarete sempre nel mio cuore, sarete sempre le mie “nini”.

Just like happiness

I feel much calmer when I use the English language, when speaking, writing, reading, so I’ve decided to write this post in English because I surely need much more serenity in my life. I always feel enthusiastic for a lot of things, but in the same way I too often get depressed and after a few hours I feel happy again. I know that this may sound like the description of a borderline person with a multiple personality disorder, but I don’t care, this is me, and people usually like me just the way I am; so I don’t think I should worry for my mental illness. And I remember this funny joke I saw on the web: “my doctor asked if anyone in my family was suffering of mental illness; I said, no, we all seem to enjoy it.” So here you have my point of view.

This long introduction was needed to explain why I’m writing in English today; I just want to calm down my super enthusiastic and super pessimistic ways of seeing the world around me and of facing normal events that simply occur every now and then in my life.

I want to regain my composure and self-control, if I ever had one.

I started talking to plants a few months ago. This also relaxes me. I speak English to them as well, because I don’t want other people to understand my conversation with them, and luckily here in Italy lots of people don’t easily understand English or other foreign languages. Again, I know I might sound crazy. But Stefano Mancuso, probably the most famous plant neurobiologist ever, wouldn’t agree with you. Indeed he states that plants are intelligent, clever and they can socialise. So why not talking to them? And if it were useless and pointless, after all, who or what do I hurt with my acting so weird?

I usually tell plants about my happiness: about the librarian I met two weeks ago, who makes me feel comfortable with her smile and with her great knowledge of books (and I love so many kinds of books!); about the student who always agrees with whatever I say, who is always so kind and polite, who has unbelievably read every book we talk about, who definitely makes me feel more confident and happy to share ideas with her; and I tell plants about my dreams; about my kids; about my tiring, but wonderful job; and about that geeky guy who usually makes me laugh with his odd puns (does he really exist??).

So you see? I feel enthusiastic again, but quite calm, and without the slightest form of depression. So thank you, English language, you’ve worked again.

And thank you Stefano Mancuso for being a plant-lover and for all the books you write, especially the one I bought yesterday that is adorable!!

Au revoir, mes amis, or better say: goodbye, my friends! ;-)