Letter from Warsaw

I'm in an internet cafe in Warsaw Central Station. Beside me, on the right, there is a man in his 35's who is visiting porn sites. He hoped that no one would have noticed, but he downloaded a video and forgot to remove the audio and when the sound started he seemed to be in a brothel of Warsaw in the late nineteenth century. I don't know what they were like, but for sure, something like that. You know, here the moans don't do "Yeah, my God!" but "Taaaaak, moj bozeeee!". Funny! On my left there is a girl in her 25's. She is crying now. She is trying to write an email but every time she writes something, she deletes it. I don't know what language it is, Slavic I think, but not Polish for sure. Behind me there is a sofa with two Japanese boys playing soccer World Cup at playstation. The current game is Italy against England. The jerks are making us lose two by one. Below me is a fake granite floor (I don't mean granite, but I think it's fake), a receipt thrown by someone and various computer cables.
Let's see the receipt: "Ksazarna Tania. Ulica Chmielna 34 - Lodz" It is from a bookshop in Lodz, a 30 zloti book, about fifteen thousand lire (sorry, I still think in lire ... about 7.5 euros). The date is today, so here they clean the floor, even if in fake granite. Above me is the smoke detector and a useless fan because it is still hot.
In front of me ... there is you.
Dino Baggio scored for Italy. Go tell the Japanese guys that he is not at the World Cup!

We won't be seeing each other for another two months at least. In total I will have been away from home about five months, one hundred and fifty days. And of all the things that I have done, that I have seen, that I have experienced, I will not know what to tell you. But what I really want to convey to you is the meaning, the "moral of the story". The individual episodes focus on the details, and I don't want this. Because I won't remember all the things I did first. I will not remember all the people I have known and the experiences I have lived. But each of them has changed me, even if I won't remember them. A statue does not remember every single hit received from the chisel, but it has that shape thanks to every single hit. And I don't want to talk to you about the individual hits, but about the statue.
I found it very difficult to talk to you about my life here. You know, a few years ago I was in the Spanish Pyrenees, in Ordeza. From here you take a mule track that winds around the mountain for 23 kilometers, all on foot (I remember them all), among waterfalls, trees and animals. Very exhausting, I no longer felt my legs. Finally we come to a restaurant, Agües Tortes, where there is a small village of maybe 100 or 200 people. An elderly woman carried a basket on her head and my father wanted to take a photo of her. The woman proudly replied that she did not want to be photographed: she had never left her village in her life and did not want to leave it even in photos, overthere she had always lived and yet there she wanted to remain, alive, dead or in photos.
I was shocked. I was 16 and had already visited half of Europe, and that woman in her eighties had never seen anything but her village. I felt bad that I couldn't speak Spanish. I would have enjoyed telling her about the things she has never seen and will never see. I wanted to talk to her about the sea, which you don't even imagine how big it is. But also traffic, skyscrapers, Macdonalds, football stadiums, the Sistine chapel. But I was young and naive. Even speaking in Spanish, with what words could I have made her understand what the sea is?
I would have said to her: "It is an immense expanse of water, deep, with the water moving and forming sometimes giant waves, with huge fish, with the water that tastes of salt, with people who go by boat, in ships, ships as big as countries, and you sail for days, and in the summer there are thousands of people who put themselves in rows and rows of umbrellas to sunbathe"
And what would she understand? She would have thought of a lake whose water makes strange movements and boats. Also, people who don't understand why they waste time in the sun. He would have understood nothing of what I wanted to communicate to her, and I challenge anyone of you to be able to explain why people get tanned and spend the hours in the sun. We should explain so many of those things that we understand immediately how desperate it is. And if you can't even make her understand what the sea is ...

Well, you do not seem exagerated, and do not feel offended by what I am about to say, but it is the same difficulty that I encounter when I write to you or talk about what is happening to me here. Maybe it's not the first time you've heard it, but I've read this sentence somewhere: "The world is like a book. If you never go away from home, it's as if you always read the same page"
And that's right, believe me. Only when you read the rest of the book will you understand how important your page is and if it is important. Reading the previous page and the next page then you will understand much more than yours. What you thought was important becomes a trifle. What you have never noticed will catch your eye. Those passages that you could not understand will be clear to you. And once you start reading, nobody can stop you anymore. And read this book. It's beautiful. And to do it you will not have eternity. You will only have your life. And, my God, how many more years do you think you will still live on this fucking planet? Seventy? Eighty? Whatever they are. And of these, for how many more years will you still be young to be able to enjoy them properly? How many more years before you will have a family to care about, a child to raise? How many more years before being worn by the routine of your job? For how many more years you can still you lie on a lawn without the tie creasing? For how many years you will have the energy to travel the world? For how many more years will you be young? Seven? Eight? For sure no more than ten. You will never be 23 again. You will have 54. No more 24, but 62. You are holding a match, which is your youth. Do not stand by and watch the flame that consumes it. An unlit match no longer ignites. Yet, with the same match, you could potentially set the world on fire. Bring it closer to the world, and don't be afraid to burn yourself. You will feel a pleasant warmth and never a burning, never.

And when I implore you to travel and find out in the world where you live, I mean to tell you to live a few months in another place, to live it, not to go to a holiday village or with a bus "only last fifty places with air conditioning, mini bar with film screening that large piece of the ubalda with a visit to Prague Budapest Bratislava Vienna Salzburg in three days and two nights buffet breakfast included. Guide in Italian on site."
This (villages and tours) does not mean traveling. It means moving your ass. You have to live a reality, not its postcard. Talking to people, eating with people, entering their homes, their thoughts, reliving their lives in their stories. Understand what they think, observe what they do, live what they live. And, through the cities, understand what happened there in the past, how people lived, what left history.
Only then will you breathe coal from a mine in Belarus like Piotr, or kill 40 Taliban like David, or bathe in Greenland as I don't remember who, or attack the post office in Gdansk on September 1, 1939 like the Germans, or you will feel die in Auschwitz with over a million people, or you will feel discriminated against as homosexuals as Simon, or you will feel an enemy arrow in your chest like the Krakow player, or you will feel the tracks of Russian tanks as in Prague in 1968, or you will have sweat like an elder who worked in a German factory underground, 167 meters underground. They had put an aircraft industry in a former mine to prevent it from being bombed, and today that man who worked on it still bears the scars, in body and soul. You will talk to those who have known the Dalai Lama, and with a descendant of the Incas, you will make love to a Lithuanian, and a Polish woman will embrace you shouting never to leave her. You will have the same brazenness as my professor who used the word "marketing" in Poland in 1988 and risked being killed on the spot: it was a forbidden word. You will talk until dawn with a Texan who loves Russia, you will fall asleep outdoors on a lawn and the morning sun will wake up, and you will feel the dew on your face. You will eat goulash from a Hungarian family, and they will ask you how the hell to use Modena vinegar as a gift. "Okay in the goulash?".
You will be a hacker like James, and you will listen to the abstruse theories of Pierre, a French mathematician sure of having a formula that can change the world. You will learn to speak another language and console the daughter of a distorted father. Alina will fall in love with your smile, and you will discover that in Northern Europe the sun never sets in summer, you will envy a Frenchman who has won the lottery and with that money he travels the world on a motorbike. You will be amazed at how much an Australian observes our stars, different from his own. And now he knows them better than you do. And again, and again ... You will feel part of the world, in the strictest sense you can give to the phrase. You will feel like tree and grass, Indian and Jewish, nature and man, history and earth. You will feel free as you have never felt. Just you and the world. So just you. And don't come and tell me you would like but you don't have the money or the time. You know first that it is a lie. You are not starving. And to see the world it takes very little. The desire to do it. What's more, you can work in the places where you go. And if you don't want to work, one million is enough to travel Eastern Europe, including trips. And these 500 euros will not be wasted.
They will be the best investment of your life. An investment in yourself. How else will you spend this money? Maybe when you decide to buy a new car at the age of 35, you will have alloy wheels put in, it is only 500 euros more. Or maybe the wedding dress is not more beautiful with that Belgian lace? It's only 500 euros more! And there they are, your meetings, your travels, your discoveries, your dreams. Embalmed forever in a metal circle and some braided thread. Maybe at 70 you will finally think that you have the money and the time to travel. And you will do it in air-conditioned hotels with international cuisine. And before giving you a blowjob your wife will ask you if she has to remove her dentures or not. And you will have your head already schematized in order to be still shaped by the reality that will surround you. This is why I now know that in Italy I will live shortly. What the heck, I will be yes and no one percent of the globe and I have already spent more than 20 years there! By now I feel almost foreign.
Also because in the end each of us is a foreigner somewhere, indeed practically everywhere. Yes everywhere. So be careful when you talk about foreigners. You are the first 99 percent. If you ignored it, it is because your world is not the world, but it is only Italy, or even less. And those who travel can be recognized immediately. He has eyes that shine, the desire to know and discover, a continuous whirlwind, a well of experiences, the renunciation of communicating with those who do not travel because of the difficulty encountered, a more balanced vision of things, the absence of prejudices . Because in life you don't have to be afraid of violence. But of ignorance. It is humanity's worst plague and all evils ensue. Those who have traveled are always tolerant, never superb and always humble, always curious and never wise, always with the ear willing to listen. And in order not to be ignorant, just read. I advise you to read the most beautiful book: the place where you are lucky enough to live, this planet.

I know, I didn't succeed. I don't know if I could tell you what I wanted and I don't know what you think of me now. Maybe you think it's a little out. Never mind, the important thing is that you still love me. For what it might matter, I love you. The pornomaniac is no longer on my right. Now there is a boy playing Wolfenstein. The girl is still on the left. While I was writing to you I talked a little bit. It's called Zhanna. He is from Brno, Czech Republic. She quarreled with her boyfriend, who is Romanian but studies in Prague. A few days ago they called her from Prague: he tried to commit suicide because she left him. Now he's fine but she feels guilty, and doesn't know what to write to him. Poor thing, you could tell she wanted to let off steam
The two Japanese behind are gone, in the end Italy won not only with England, but also the World Cup on penalties. Undoubtedly it is just a game! You are still in front of me ... but what are you still doing there? Get up, open the door, walk and don't stop, never ... We will meet, around, somewhere, in the world ...;)

Francesco