TELL ME A STORY

TELL ME A STORY

Oct 19, 2024 | STORIES

Raccontami una storia – Tell me a story is an initiative by Maria Guidi, La tana di Aloiz  and Sandra Giannetto. 

Raccontami una storia is a game that consists of writing a story following certain directions and a theme.

The theme of the second edition: ‘drawing inspiration from a painting!’

I suggest you follow the organisers to discover interviews with the three winners.

Then, if you feel like it, you can read my story: 

Even this morning, I am watching the sun rise beyond the skeleton of the building opposite: since the soft orangey pink has begun to contrast with the grey illuminating the sky and hope, I don’t want to miss the colours because they are proof that it is not over yet.

I thought I would never see them again, I thought my punishment for not having exploded yet was to become a useless part of a single inexorable leaden gloom.

I regret that I was unable to count the days accurately, that I succumbed to confusion, that I did not even take care of my memory.

Had I done so, I might now know how much time had passed.

But I didn’t want to think any more, I just wanted it all to end. Each new day was just another skipped meal, another interminable darkness strewn with anguish, another series of exhausting yet unsuccessful efforts in search of an impossible solution.

Instead, the light has begun to mark time again and I now believe it, it is not just a dream, nor a coincidence, nor even my illusion: the sun still exists.

One enemy lurks, however: fear.

I have not been hit, I have not been crushed, I have not been asphyxiated, and I have even managed to hide from the incursions of the human jackals, but I still cannot free myself from the grip that presses on my brain and paralyses me.

I tell myself it makes no sense.

Then I relive everything.

The gigantic ball igniting the sky and suddenly bouncing upwards, and immediately the shockwave.

A macabre, accelerated domino that shatters everything.

Without my eyes having time to see, the heat was already on me.

Pain is not food.

But I must eat more of it if I am to find real nourishment.

And then Frances is at the end of her tether, and I want to do everything I can, just as she did from the moment she dragged me by weight into the cistern until she taught me how to climb down the shaft to the warehouse.

She held the rope and sang U2 to give me courage

You’r in the mud
In the maze of her imagination
You love this town
Even if that doesn’t ring true…

The first time I wanted it to stop but I didn’t dare shout it out for fear that some of the marauding Huns would hear me. Yet if it hadn’t been for those sung words ‘sky falls, you feel like … it’s a beautiful day …’ I wouldn’t have been able to find enough strength to climb back up.

The more things I could carry, the longer I could rest in hiding again.

And to think that on the various occasions when I had more or less tried, I had never managed to climb up a rope: my hands burned within minutes and the non-existent muscles in my arms didn’t even pretend to contract.

Survival.

A huge challenge to overcome in order to stay alive, even when staying alive seems like the worst of ideas.

Adrenaline, instinct, terror, mixing in a closed circle of pulsations bouncing between heart and brain at uncontrollable speed.

Survival.

Force that becomes flesh split between two heads: hope and despair. Like a Cerberus whose paws rest on the breath with all their agonising weight.

Survival.

Thinking that there can never be anything worse until existence turns into waiting.

Waiting for respite, waiting for food, waiting for mercy. Waiting for a miracle, for help, for a new day.

Like today.

The painting is Light and Colour (Goethe’s Theory) by William Turner.

THE LAST RIDE

THE LAST RIDE

Jun 15, 2024 | AWARD, STORIES

The Last Ride is the title of my story for the Bisarca 2024 competition organised by Il Perdilibri. 

I have already told you about the Bisarca  competition in past editions: but I quote directly: what do you win? The satisfaction of participation and eventual victory.

I would therefore like to take this opportunity to thank Il Perdilibri for hosting The Last Ride.

Habit is regarded as addiction, but asking questions is also a habit.

Eleonora, however, is not in the habit of doubting her schedule, starting with the alarm clock: for which there are three repetitions before getting up, every day, regardless of tiredness, weather, hunger, or stress level.

After that everything is calculated, including the delay, a luxury offered to her by an anonymous traveller.

A group sub-habit is created among the usual commuters: a kind of unwritten code according to which, occasional invaders aside, seats are occupied according to a kind of hierarchy acquired over time.

Eleonora remembers the day when the man with whom she shares the seat beckoned to her: ‘as of today the seat is free’ were the only words other than good morning and good day, which they exchanged over a period of what may be a thousand days now.

Eleonora arrives at six forty-three minutes, sure to find the seat reserved by her travelling companion, who, as always, rests his briefcase on the window side until she reaches him.

All she knows about him is that he travels daily to Milan, that he perpetually listens to something on his earphones, that he prefers classic, good-quality clothes in shades of grey, and that he uses a perfume with Vetiver as the base note.

Every morning they exchange a single good morning each, Eleonora sits down, takes the book out of her bag and starts reading. In these thousand days she will have read a hundred books, all in strict silence until she arrives at Porta Garibaldi, when her travelling companion wishes her a good day before gettinf off, leaving her for her ritual minutes during which she waits for the crowd to thin out.

If you want, you can find the rest here. 

But first tell me: what would be the last ride for you?

There are many examples: books, movies, on a personal level though, does your first instinct lead you to think of last in a positive or negative way?

TOMISLAV TAKAČ

TOMISLAV TAKAČ

Oct 21, 2023 | BOOKS, BOOKS

Tomislav Takač is a writer whom I admire especially for how he shows belief in his dream.

About himself he says: My name is Tomislav Takač and I am a 32-year-old laborer and a beginning writer in Subotica. I started writing 4 years ago and since then I have been writing short stories and have written and published the novel Strigorovu Šuma.

He has been updating me on his progress for a long time, and in the beginning we tried to overcome linguistic obstacles because despite the great help of translators it is not always easy and straightforward to understand a written text without losing its distinctiveness.

However, Tomislav began to translate and write in English as well, so I was able to truly understand the nature of his book Strigorov’s Forest. 

Originally started as Strigorova Šuma, the book has since been translated and Tomislav has also produced a kind of animated trailer.

Knowing me, you must have guessed that I really liked it immediately, from the first notes of the “soundtrack” … you recognized it too, didn’t you?

Rock aside, I became immediately attached to Erena’s character, I could say that she brought me into Tomislav’s world: a Fantasy world composed of fantastical figures but traversed by fully realistic action protagonists.

The secret of the silver door is the first story Tomislav pointed out to me.

Here instead you can find the first chapter of Yelena, First Blood.

Among the other stories I particularly liked Jack which I also found moving.

Not only Fantasy then, not only Action, not only Science Fiction, but the sum of many different facets that come together transporting the reader on an incredible journey.

And Tomislav concretized this path in every possible way, even working with an artist to turn his story into comics as well.

Coffee is often mentioned.

Regarding the cafes, Tomislav sent me videos showing Sarajevo.

I thank him because it gave me great pleasure: so far my knowledge of Sarajevo was limited to reading Margaret Mazzantini’s Venuto al mondo, for which I thank both Monica and Elisa. 

Do you know better than I do?

Tomislav was kind enough to send me this video that shows an interesting coffee route in Sarajevo and describes us Bosnian coffee and their Java

I got hooked on this tradition of “fortune-telling,” you know we had already mentioned the reading of the coffee grounds, but in this case the story being told and the star at the bottom of the cup are really enchanting.

I also found fantastic the coincidence that the particular street shown in the video of this Bosnian café was a street dedicated to shoe making. 

And this is a small view of Subotica, Serbia, Tomislav’s hometown.

THE BOOKBINDER OF LOST STORIES

THE BOOKBINDER OF LOST STORIES

May 13, 2023 | BOOKS

The Bookbinder of Lost Stories is the book I read, again thanks to Monica.

 

Speaking of friendship, Sas Bellas Mariposas  and Mamaglia are skilled fan of the author: Cristina Caboni, so maybe they would like to tell us something about her.

In the meantime I would like to chat more about how I especially liked the parts that describe the binding process in the early 19th century.

Nowadays how long does it take to create a book?
There are several 24-hour delivery options on the web.

And each time we find ourselves with the usual question: have we gained or lost?

Recently with my husband we have been looking for someone who was still in a profession related to the traditions of the past, but here in the area unfortunately we do not have old style jobs anymore.

It is very sad to be aware that the precious chain of passing on knowledge and teaching patience and time needed to acquire skills has been interrupted.

By interrupting the oral tradition, we will deprive ourselves of the privilege of being able to know stories because there will be no one left to tell them.

So I would very much like to take up the concept of “binding” lost stories to unite them and to keep them living with us.

I spent a lot of time listening to one of my grandmothers telling about her childhood in a peasant family, talking to me about a seemingly distant era, about an essential lifestyle, about objects that we will never use.

My other grandmother, had less life to live but equally her tales remain indelible to me, as well as the memory her rice-fields worker  knees.

My great-grandfather, on the other hand, was a carter, and his traveling for work gave him the opportunity to meet and to marry my great-grandmother: German, in spite of the saying “wife and oxen in your own country …” jokes aside, theirs was a rather unconventional marriage considering historical period and social conditions.

But tell me please! I would love to “listen to you.”

If you have a craft to tell, if you want a story not to be lost, if you wish to pass on a tale, a thought, a concept, a proverb, an experience or even just a comment, I will be grateful and add it to the lost stories to be bound.

DIAVAL, STRIA, PANGIALD E OSS DI MORT – DEVIL, WITCH, YELLOW BREAD AND DEAD’S BONES COOKIES

DIAVAL, STRIA, PANGIALD E OSS DI MORT – DEVIL, WITCH, YELLOW BREAD AND DEAD’S BONES COOKIES

Oct 28, 2021 | ITALY

These are days of heavy thoughts and perhaps for this reason even more I feel an instinctive call towards traditions, as if I could find a kind of refuge.

So I re-launch the invitation to share ideas or recipes that refer to Halloween rather than Samhain.

After having definitely appreciated the pumpkin pie, I wanted to try to recover the recipes of Lomellina.

But apparently we are more predisposed to the oral tradition without then bothering to transfer in writing …

In fact, it is a feat to find sources other than the same phrase bounced more or less at random without confirmation.

Annalisa Alberici wrote very well about this in the book Cucina del Pavese della Lomellina and Oltrepo

on page 13 there is an important question:
Does Pavese cuisine exist?

The answer is long and complex, but in short:
I must admit: over the centuries the cuisine of Pavia was never written. Or it was by chance.

Apparently Pavia cuisine is just like the beautiful silence… and as soon as I read this sentence I could not help but smile, thinking back to the memory of the sentence my grandmother used to repeat to me. 

In reality, however, I also found another book that talks about Milan with reference to the Visconti‘s period, which therefore it can be considered extended to Vigevano

and it also mentions Pavia:

At the table, the sadness of the day of the dead, with its traditional visits to the cemetery, yields to the traditional dishes that require the biella (pot) with supa coi sisar (chickpea soup) enriched with pork rinds, and pangiald or bread of the dead. Now pangiald can be bought in bakeries or pastry shops, but it was once baked in the home oven.

It is true that my family is contaminated, but we have never eaten chickpeas… so the pangiald remains right.

All Saints’ Day, bread … this phrase comes to mind:
The two best and holiest smells are those of warm bread and rain-soaked earth.
Ardengo Soffici

Here it rains less and less, but the earth is still wet: by fog.

So, rather than for the kitchen, it is on the scary side that Lomellina has nothing to envy, our atmospheres lend themselves a lot!

In fact, unlike the recipes, there is no shortage of legends.

Al diaval: the devil, for example, would have unleashed all his fury on the church of Santa Maria in Lomello to prevent the second marriage between Queen Teodolinda, a Catholic, and Agilulfo instead of Arian.

Among the various versions handed down, the official website of the municipality has published the most suggestive.

About the stria: witch, as you can imagine, there are many stories and it seems there are also direct testimonies … but you know, this part is the “soul” of these stories … forgive the pun.

Among all I would opt for the one that gave the name to The Branch of the Witches which is actually a wonderful branch of the Ticino river

 

It is said that The Branch of the Witches was named after the misfortune of a woman suffering from strange symptoms who on a full moon night, in order to purify herself in the waters with the help of her friends, finds herself having to face the devil and ends up transformed into a giant seaweed that drags all the other women to the bottom as well.

And the algae, which are the characteristic of that stretch of river, are said to resemble the hair of witches.

Here is the picture I prefer.

And you tell me a story?

In return, I do not limit myself to pangiald: I could not fail to present the classic “treat” as well.

These are the most similar to the oss di mort (Dead’s Bones) version that I remember eating: rather large, oval in shape, and vaguely similar to the panforte.

But if we abounded with chocolate for the Keep Calm variant, would it be serious?

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