Past-icide

1. Bologna in the winter sun, with the light scent of roast chestnuts, fills me with a subtle joy of reviving the nicer moments of the past. I had a rewarding hot chocolate in the caffe where I used to have breakfast in my first year before I discovered it was a fascist meeting spot; I sat in the sun in Piazza Santo Stefano and read Adorno; I had lunch in the osteria dell'Orsa; I had a posh marrocchino at Terzi; biked quickly down via Zamboni without watching out the cars; passed hours looking for inspiring books in the great bookshops; checked the fancy foodshops in the old market allies and obviously bought nothing of their expansive food, but had aperitivo at Tamburini.

A stroll in my old almamater to admire all that is human, local, temporary and yet strangely eternal.

2. Went to see The Special Relationship. Martin Sheen's Blair is a lost, yet cunning, youth in search for a mentor; Denis Quaid's Clinton is the worn-out, over-smiling infantile leader of the Free World. Both wanted glory and influence; in a sense, according to the movie, both just wanted to be loved, squashed between interests, wives, lovers, and annoying belligerent far-away countries. But somehow I felt these 'good guys' are too good. This is not politics, this is idealized liberalism. Were the filmmakers too keen to believe their characters' compelling speeches? Was there another story, more complicated, of pressures, power relations, impressive counselors and complex networks of the Political? It is nicer to believe that it all depended on Tony's smile, until the 'bad boy Bush' came along and ended the party. How much the 'special relationship' a real friendship and how much a myth? Since the movie is a clear contribution to the myth, while claiming there was a franc friendship, the answer to this question remains unclear.