There's a special state of mind when you may start not feeling hope anymore. Which is not like losing hope, don't mistake. I am not saying that you become pessimistic, or you think that all the things you have fought for will never happen. Nobody said this. I am just saying that you learn to go on without thinking of hope. And you find this state of mind, after all, more appropriate to your present life.
After you saw people spending words of unity just to gather other people and graze them where they please always keeping the head of the parade.
After you saw dictators being overthrown with the bullshit of freedom while Europe is facing a dramatic economical crisis and the only important thing in these countries has always been their natural resources, but then above all, you saw people believing these bullshits without wondering, moreover, coating the end of the regimes with the label of revolution, not mentioning about what is what is coming then.
After exactly 3 years have passed since you left all behind to chase something that first disappeared, then left the place for something new, but struggling and pushing all this time was still not enough to come across something that broke once and never found the pieces back.
After you thought that the light that has to inspire all your choices and artistic talent had to be only the honesty and the freedom of imagination, that is the chance to bring over something new, something never seen before, but then your work is sent back because too unusual, too unfamiliar, too strange.
After you lost your faith in the chief world systems, in religion, in democracy, in all those things that should give you some relief when you are lost. Even lost faith in love and friendship, because these are things you can't really believe, but just dream of.
After you are alive by chance and your skin keeps the memory of all those times when you nearly found the end.
After you left behind all the people you really cared of and you start forgetting even their own name and seasons and places just pass by leading you nowhere.
After you realized that all your friends around have the same face, without hope and without fear.
There is one who just crossed the sea 9 months ago, just in time to lose a fake revolution happening in his country, then he fought unluckily for legitimacy to exist in a foreign country, then travelled across Europe to find a solution, to get a paper from this Europe which is allegedly helping so much his country to get rid of the evil, and then came back to Naples and now you can just see him wandering in the streets of the city with this unique look in the eyes.
There is another one who is still in Athens. After almost 3 years in Istanbul as african refugee seeking for asylum, he got bored and tired and crossed the border, came into Europe, yes, and now is looking for fake papers to jump on a flight and come to Rome and continue his trip to nowhere. The control police already found him in the airport of Athens:
<<Hey, this passport is false>>.
<<Ehm, true, sorry, I just wanted to go to Italy>>.
<<Ok, dear, just make a new one, a better one and try again>>.. Hey, Greeks have other troubles now, they just want to be sure that once in Rome the Italians will not think that Greeks can't recognize a false passport from a true one, at least at first sight.
And the list could be far long. Indeed, who said that hope helps to move forward? It's not always true. Comes a time when you are not even sure of what will happen in your next step or what you'll find behind the next corner. In such a situation you can't dare to have a hope, because your imagination is nothing in comparison to the complexity of reality. But you are now also fearless, because there's nothing more to fear than to stand at your place, refusing to see how it ends.
So, this is the state of mind in which I recognize myself, my life, those past summer months. By the way, after 8 years this summer was the first one I spent entirely in Italy, does it mean something? But I could make the world come and visit me, from Turkey, France, Spain, Germany, Finland, China, Holland, Russia.
Hopeless and fearless, you don't choose it, you become it one day.
Momo, my seagul neighbor..
