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Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Can Lupus Patients Use Henna Hair Color
Ale Senso designs for my new novel
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The street artist Ale Senso ( http://www.crazysen.it/ ) has produced five wonderful drawings that accompany my new novel coming out in Sunset Falck days. Here's a taste.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Alternative For A Dresser
My monthly column on Fenera
Starting from this issue Fenera ospita una mia rubrica mensile dal titolo: Le opinioni di un clown.
In questo numero, Bestiario Americano, un taccuino di un mio viaggio in America Latina.
C'è un uomo che spacca teste di vacca. Le tira fuori dal cassone di un camion, scuoioate e sanguinanti, e già ce ne sono cinque o sei in strada, tutte con un taglio netto sulla fronte. Si serve di un'ascia picchiandola con forza e precisione, poi con le mani forza il taglio orizzontale e ne estrae il cervello tutto intero, il pezzo più prelibato, - mas rico - mi dice Antonio.
- Il resto lo butta via? - chiedo alla guida locale che ci ha accompagnati al mercato popolare di Toluca, one of his town, because you are not trusted to go to one of Mexico City, there has never been and do not want surprises. It 'been a few times in this and in fact had a couple of times to call his mother to be the way.
- My wife does not even know it exists - continue Antonio. - We go to Wal-Mart - says, revealing a certain pride.
To get from Wal-Mart, the largest American-style supermarket, you must present a valid passport as a club, and then walking between the rows of huge refrigerators where they keep all the products you buy there, closely packed in family packs. The refrigerator is a machine that dispenses ice and then check in large iceberg by big glass of coca-cola.
the market of Toluca there are refrigerators and there is not ice. Red meat is resting on white ceramic tile counter, the yellow lemon chicken hanging from above. Lower down there are neat rows of crow's feet, comb of a rooster, a mound of tripe camping on a counter that says specialized in cow's entrails with a beautiful hand-painted wooden sign. The two owners smiling at me, showing me their product and saying something I do not understand.
- No Inti - I can say and I'll go elsewhere, a bit 'embarrassed.
I do not inti entrails, brains, cow tails dangling like festoons, paws of pork, pig's snout tendons that are fused to prepare a gelatinous substance called "queso de Puerco, cheese pork.
A whole cow's head with his head split is placed on a counter where a man is preparing tacos. It seems only decorative, at least that's what I think.
- No - Antonio corrects me. - This is considered a delicacy.
I look at him in amazement, then I laugh, thinking that I want to tease. He continues: - order a taco and then rub it over your head where you want. We put a little 'is blood, a piece of tendon or we can put an eye, which is the most delicious.
We leave the market, the man who cracks heads is still there. Now I know why did not they throw away.
- You do not throw anything away - I said Antonio entering.
But he does the shopping at the supermarket where you can see the innards of the world and where they give you a nice colorful card.
From Toluca we head to Teotihuacan, which means the city of the Aztec gods, a famous archaeological site not far from Mexico city.
A stray dog \u200b\u200bsleeping blond hair just past the chain that bounds the area not accessible to visitors of the temple of the plumed serpent. There is a nice shaded area and he was lying right there, regardless of the ban. Here
native Mexicans around 400 BC have built two great pyramids: one dedicated to the sun, the other to the moon.
I got on both with no small effort, partly because of the over two thousand meters of altitude in the area. On top of the pyramid of the moon I have admired all over the surrounding countryside, as he could only make their saliva when the high priest to celebrate the rite: the long road that leads to the temple of the feathered serpent, the pyramid of the sun on the left lower platforms where human sacrifices were consumed to the gods.
Their gods are still carved portraits and those of two thousand years old stones: symbolic representations of the world that they fear and respect, e i due sentimenti trovavano un punto d'incontro nell'adorazione e nel sacrificio: il sole, la luna, l'acqua, gli animali come il serpente, gli uccelli, il cane, come quello biondo che oggi dorme all'ombra del tempio.
Quest'ultimo, o più probabilmente uno che gli somiglia molto, dorme appena fuori dal palazzo del congresso nella piazza principale di Mexico city. L'interno è tutto affrescato con enormi dipinti murali dell'epoca rivoluzionaria. Ritraggono i conquistatori spagnoli mentre uccidono e umiliano i nativi in nome del dio dei cattolici. Molti tra gli spagnoli hanno facce da scemo del villaggio, altri sono ritratti in espressioni cattive, mentre frustano e torturano oppure mentre contano con avidità money aside. Just behind a priest casts a dog from the courtyard of a church.
The symbols of the revolution triumphed on the conquerors and later release the murals in Mexico, where a bearded Marx, curiously similar to the canonical representations of the god of the Catholics, overlooks and dominates the scene.
When I left the palace, I look around in search of dog hair blond. He stands aside to watch two kids chasing a ball on the sidewalk. At first glance, nothing strange, just that the ball is contested by the two contained in a plastic bag, so you do not ruin. Imagine if you get caught by the dog.
Meet the mutt a few days later in Peru.
barking, he threw himself under our car in the desert area around Nazca. The driver does not do anything to dodge it with the people here compassatezza incomprehensible to us, and here he is committed to reappear from the back window at all afraid to follow us. After a few hundred meters desist from the enterprise and turns suddenly to the right in a field of crosses rickety, let we see the actual cemetery, like Mary, our local guide, defines this place far from any town visible where the bodies are buried those who do not have the money to pay for a grave in the cemetery officials. We're headed to the archaeological site of Chauchilla, a vast desert all covered with air-bone brandelli di tessuto e cocci rossi. Sono i resti delle migliaia di tombe del periodo pre-incaico e incaico, buttati lì a seccare al sole dai tombaroli che le hanno depredate degli ori e dei tessuti di valore mentre si sono sbarazzati di ciò che restava di quell'umanità che aveva creduto proprio nella sacralità del corpo e in una vita dopo la morte. Giriamo un po' spaesati tra la dozzina di tombe che sono state salvate, dove i corpi mummificati dell'antica popolazione di Nazca giacciono ancora nella posizione fetale che avrebbe dovuto prepararli alla rinascita. Alcuni di loro hanno lunghissimi capelli intrecciati in code che serpeggiano attorno ai loro corpi. Mi dicono che i capelli e le unghie continuano a crescere anche dopo la morte, forse l'unico modo umano always longed for the life after death. The Nazca were just believe with all their might to be the bearers of a message addressed to the high, to what we have all over your head, so they dug into the stone of the desert, the famous "lines" by sending their scores to the sky again unchanged today and precise. There were hills around there, they could not fly as no man at that time - we are among the one thousand and fourteen hundred years after Christ - and yet were able to make huge hieroglyphs only distinguishable from the sky: the spider, the whale the monkey, the dog, the condor, the hummingbird, a sort of astrological calendar of the time, says our guide features the deliciously Indians. What we know, I'm thinking, the message of their knowledge and values \u200b\u200bsent to heaven, a place where more and installed the base of each deity, or simply a possible landing zone for someone who was expected, as they imagine other signs, this time geometry - the trapeze, the triangle - which seem to give a direction, indicate where they fall.
America had not yet been "discovered" by our civilization, but in those parts of the Nazca meticulously organized travel in time, as Mary calls them, in their graves designed as vessels to transport their bodies to the future, and send signals to the sky and their inhabitants, whoever they were and still are today.
Meeting the dog with one leg raised on a cross in the cemetery today, where life and death are worth so little that you can piss above. He occupied a place in the cosmogony Nazca, now occupies one in a photograph that shot lying in the midst of the wilderness of wooden crosses and plastic flowers.
In Arequipa, Peru's second city, comedy to climb the Andean highlands: 2600 meters, and already the breath becomes short and heavy legs. Then up along the road that winds along the herds of vicuña, llama and alpaca, up to the pass at 4910 meters. When I get off the car seems to be an astronaut in alien atmosphere. I walk in small steps as if you were pulled back from a spring and hold their noses up at the sky in search of oxygen.
I had breakfast with mate coca, as suggested by the guides and I still chew the leaves in the illusion of being able to quickly get used even to this displacement, in addition to the change of hemisphere of the earth, and then in season, all ' Peruvian winter than during the day in his hot deserts to thirty degrees centigrade and the night freezing the streams which descend from the mountains, crossing six parallel east and then to six time zones and add to daylight saving time Italian.
Then down at breakneck speed and the gorge of the Colca, over a hundred miles of mountains carved by the Rio Colca to form quello che viene ritenuto il canyon più profondo al mondo. Sulle due sponde le popolazioni pre-inca e inca hanno disegnato con precisione i terrazzamenti in pietra che vengono tuttora coltivati a patata, mais e cereali andini. Gradatamente, le pareti si fanno più scoscese come per proteggere il Rio nella sua corsa all’oceano, e sono i cactus dalle molte braccia rivolte al cielo a schierarsi in un presentat-arm al suo passaggio. Poi anche loro, come un esercito in resa, devono lasciare il posto al vento che diventa il padrone di quelle gole, dove il condor allarga i suoi tre metri di apertura librandosi placidamente sugli invisibili sentieri dell’aria. Scendiamo al Mirador del condor e ci mischiamo alla folla di turisti che l’attendono, cercando di sfuggire all’assalto delle variopinte venditrici di pochos, sombreros e collanine. Qualcuno giura di averne visto l’ala spuntare dietro una guglia, altri hanno visto la sua testa bianca dentro il nero di un anfratto. Mentre li ascolto alzo la testa e lui, leggero come l’aria su cui scivola, è lì a osservare la folla che lo indica a braccia alzate, puntando i cannocchiali e i teleobiettivi, come un esercito di cactus aggrappati alla montagna. 
In questo numero, Bestiario Americano, un taccuino di un mio viaggio in America Latina.
Bestiario americano
C'è un uomo che spacca teste di vacca. Le tira fuori dal cassone di un camion, scuoioate e sanguinanti, e già ce ne sono cinque o sei in strada, tutte con un taglio netto sulla fronte. Si serve di un'ascia picchiandola con forza e precisione, poi con le mani forza il taglio orizzontale e ne estrae il cervello tutto intero, il pezzo più prelibato, - mas rico - mi dice Antonio.
- Il resto lo butta via? - chiedo alla guida locale che ci ha accompagnati al mercato popolare di Toluca, one of his town, because you are not trusted to go to one of Mexico City, there has never been and do not want surprises. It 'been a few times in this and in fact had a couple of times to call his mother to be the way.
- My wife does not even know it exists - continue Antonio. - We go to Wal-Mart - says, revealing a certain pride.
To get from Wal-Mart, the largest American-style supermarket, you must present a valid passport as a club, and then walking between the rows of huge refrigerators where they keep all the products you buy there, closely packed in family packs. The refrigerator is a machine that dispenses ice and then check in large iceberg by big glass of coca-cola.
the market of Toluca there are refrigerators and there is not ice. Red meat is resting on white ceramic tile counter, the yellow lemon chicken hanging from above. Lower down there are neat rows of crow's feet, comb of a rooster, a mound of tripe camping on a counter that says specialized in cow's entrails with a beautiful hand-painted wooden sign. The two owners smiling at me, showing me their product and saying something I do not understand.
- No Inti - I can say and I'll go elsewhere, a bit 'embarrassed.
I do not inti entrails, brains, cow tails dangling like festoons, paws of pork, pig's snout tendons that are fused to prepare a gelatinous substance called "queso de Puerco, cheese pork.
A whole cow's head with his head split is placed on a counter where a man is preparing tacos. It seems only decorative, at least that's what I think.
- No - Antonio corrects me. - This is considered a delicacy.
I look at him in amazement, then I laugh, thinking that I want to tease. He continues: - order a taco and then rub it over your head where you want. We put a little 'is blood, a piece of tendon or we can put an eye, which is the most delicious.
We leave the market, the man who cracks heads is still there. Now I know why did not they throw away.
- You do not throw anything away - I said Antonio entering.
But he does the shopping at the supermarket where you can see the innards of the world and where they give you a nice colorful card.
From Toluca we head to Teotihuacan, which means the city of the Aztec gods, a famous archaeological site not far from Mexico city.
A stray dog \u200b\u200bsleeping blond hair just past the chain that bounds the area not accessible to visitors of the temple of the plumed serpent. There is a nice shaded area and he was lying right there, regardless of the ban. Here
native Mexicans around 400 BC have built two great pyramids: one dedicated to the sun, the other to the moon.
I got on both with no small effort, partly because of the over two thousand meters of altitude in the area. On top of the pyramid of the moon I have admired all over the surrounding countryside, as he could only make their saliva when the high priest to celebrate the rite: the long road that leads to the temple of the feathered serpent, the pyramid of the sun on the left lower platforms where human sacrifices were consumed to the gods.
Their gods are still carved portraits and those of two thousand years old stones: symbolic representations of the world that they fear and respect, e i due sentimenti trovavano un punto d'incontro nell'adorazione e nel sacrificio: il sole, la luna, l'acqua, gli animali come il serpente, gli uccelli, il cane, come quello biondo che oggi dorme all'ombra del tempio.
Quest'ultimo, o più probabilmente uno che gli somiglia molto, dorme appena fuori dal palazzo del congresso nella piazza principale di Mexico city. L'interno è tutto affrescato con enormi dipinti murali dell'epoca rivoluzionaria. Ritraggono i conquistatori spagnoli mentre uccidono e umiliano i nativi in nome del dio dei cattolici. Molti tra gli spagnoli hanno facce da scemo del villaggio, altri sono ritratti in espressioni cattive, mentre frustano e torturano oppure mentre contano con avidità money aside. Just behind a priest casts a dog from the courtyard of a church.
The symbols of the revolution triumphed on the conquerors and later release the murals in Mexico, where a bearded Marx, curiously similar to the canonical representations of the god of the Catholics, overlooks and dominates the scene.
When I left the palace, I look around in search of dog hair blond. He stands aside to watch two kids chasing a ball on the sidewalk. At first glance, nothing strange, just that the ball is contested by the two contained in a plastic bag, so you do not ruin. Imagine if you get caught by the dog.
Meet the mutt a few days later in Peru.
barking, he threw himself under our car in the desert area around Nazca. The driver does not do anything to dodge it with the people here compassatezza incomprehensible to us, and here he is committed to reappear from the back window at all afraid to follow us. After a few hundred meters desist from the enterprise and turns suddenly to the right in a field of crosses rickety, let we see the actual cemetery, like Mary, our local guide, defines this place far from any town visible where the bodies are buried those who do not have the money to pay for a grave in the cemetery officials. We're headed to the archaeological site of Chauchilla, a vast desert all covered with air-bone brandelli di tessuto e cocci rossi. Sono i resti delle migliaia di tombe del periodo pre-incaico e incaico, buttati lì a seccare al sole dai tombaroli che le hanno depredate degli ori e dei tessuti di valore mentre si sono sbarazzati di ciò che restava di quell'umanità che aveva creduto proprio nella sacralità del corpo e in una vita dopo la morte. Giriamo un po' spaesati tra la dozzina di tombe che sono state salvate, dove i corpi mummificati dell'antica popolazione di Nazca giacciono ancora nella posizione fetale che avrebbe dovuto prepararli alla rinascita. Alcuni di loro hanno lunghissimi capelli intrecciati in code che serpeggiano attorno ai loro corpi. Mi dicono che i capelli e le unghie continuano a crescere anche dopo la morte, forse l'unico modo umano always longed for the life after death. The Nazca were just believe with all their might to be the bearers of a message addressed to the high, to what we have all over your head, so they dug into the stone of the desert, the famous "lines" by sending their scores to the sky again unchanged today and precise. There were hills around there, they could not fly as no man at that time - we are among the one thousand and fourteen hundred years after Christ - and yet were able to make huge hieroglyphs only distinguishable from the sky: the spider, the whale the monkey, the dog, the condor, the hummingbird, a sort of astrological calendar of the time, says our guide features the deliciously Indians. What we know, I'm thinking, the message of their knowledge and values \u200b\u200bsent to heaven, a place where more and installed the base of each deity, or simply a possible landing zone for someone who was expected, as they imagine other signs, this time geometry - the trapeze, the triangle - which seem to give a direction, indicate where they fall.
America had not yet been "discovered" by our civilization, but in those parts of the Nazca meticulously organized travel in time, as Mary calls them, in their graves designed as vessels to transport their bodies to the future, and send signals to the sky and their inhabitants, whoever they were and still are today.
Meeting the dog with one leg raised on a cross in the cemetery today, where life and death are worth so little that you can piss above. He occupied a place in the cosmogony Nazca, now occupies one in a photograph that shot lying in the midst of the wilderness of wooden crosses and plastic flowers.
In Arequipa, Peru's second city, comedy to climb the Andean highlands: 2600 meters, and already the breath becomes short and heavy legs. Then up along the road that winds along the herds of vicuña, llama and alpaca, up to the pass at 4910 meters. When I get off the car seems to be an astronaut in alien atmosphere. I walk in small steps as if you were pulled back from a spring and hold their noses up at the sky in search of oxygen.
I had breakfast with mate coca, as suggested by the guides and I still chew the leaves in the illusion of being able to quickly get used even to this displacement, in addition to the change of hemisphere of the earth, and then in season, all ' Peruvian winter than during the day in his hot deserts to thirty degrees centigrade and the night freezing the streams which descend from the mountains, crossing six parallel east and then to six time zones and add to daylight saving time Italian.
Then down at breakneck speed and the gorge of the Colca, over a hundred miles of mountains carved by the Rio Colca to form quello che viene ritenuto il canyon più profondo al mondo. Sulle due sponde le popolazioni pre-inca e inca hanno disegnato con precisione i terrazzamenti in pietra che vengono tuttora coltivati a patata, mais e cereali andini. Gradatamente, le pareti si fanno più scoscese come per proteggere il Rio nella sua corsa all’oceano, e sono i cactus dalle molte braccia rivolte al cielo a schierarsi in un presentat-arm al suo passaggio. Poi anche loro, come un esercito in resa, devono lasciare il posto al vento che diventa il padrone di quelle gole, dove il condor allarga i suoi tre metri di apertura librandosi placidamente sugli invisibili sentieri dell’aria. Scendiamo al Mirador del condor e ci mischiamo alla folla di turisti che l’attendono, cercando di sfuggire all’assalto delle variopinte venditrici di pochos, sombreros e collanine. Qualcuno giura di averne visto l’ala spuntare dietro una guglia, altri hanno visto la sua testa bianca dentro il nero di un anfratto. Mentre li ascolto alzo la testa e lui, leggero come l’aria su cui scivola, è lì a osservare la folla che lo indica a braccia alzate, puntando i cannocchiali e i teleobiettivi, come un esercito di cactus aggrappati alla montagna.
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