My uncle was a hippie...
03 October 2011, 08:24 PM
My uncle was a hippie, my great aunt had a spider, my great uncle has a ten years valid visa for the United States... where was I mistaken?
I’m going to have dinner with my great aunt and my great uncle. There are also my parents, my uncle and my aunt. I come alone.
I’m lounging around the living room while my great uncle - the cook - is preparing soy spaghetti and, for the second course, tuna (the real one, not the canned one) with vegetables. I’m fiddling with Finnish knives, a Japanese katana, a horsewhip with a long sharp blade inside it, some unidentified wood objects, a jewel box from Sri Lanka, an Italian gold coin from the first World War with the quotation “meglio vivere un giorno da leone che cento da pecora” [1] an Australian boomerang. During this time my uncle at the table is keeping the attention of all by saying dumb sentences, who knows where he takes them from. Dinner passes fast, I eat a bit and listen a lot. Sometimes it is better let the speech just go. After the dinner two old photos come out. I find out that my uncle - now a 110 kg truck driver - was a hippie, with long hair and leather waistcoat with fringes, wore on a flat chest; at his side there was my great aunt, hair like a flower child, beautiful, on the background her red spider. I ask to my uncle when he stopped to being a hippie, my father replies for him telling that he stopped when my grandpa saw him with that hair. I continue lounging around and I find my great aunt and my great uncle passports, abandoned near a window: I pass the time looking at the stamps from all around the world and on a page I find a ten years visa for United States, valid until 2014. My great uncle takes his notebook and starts to show photos to my father and my uncle. I stay by myself, on the coach, but I listen to his stories; from there I don’t miss a pic showing a party on a freighter, the photo shows the main course: a whole stuffed pork roasting on an oil drum cut in the middle, filled with burning embers coming from broken pallets; all is cooked for six hours by a Philippine with the only company of a box of beer (btw he gets a 5.000$ monthly wage). By this time thoughts are filling my mind. All these things, all these stories, everything from all around the world. All ended stories. My great aunt now has a cancer, the second of her life. My great uncle get away with unspecified number of heart bypass. My uncle is probably the one in the worse shape, he is working all the day on a truck and he is always hard on his family. He is not a hippie anymore. And then I’m thinking about me. Not my dreams - they are always beautiful - but at me now. Thinking about all those stories I can’t miss to ask myself: have I already been mistaken in my life?
(this post is inspired from a my midnight mail to my best friend Raffaele)
Note 1: it is better to live one day as a lion than one hundred days as a sheep
I’m lounging around the living room while my great uncle - the cook - is preparing soy spaghetti and, for the second course, tuna (the real one, not the canned one) with vegetables. I’m fiddling with Finnish knives, a Japanese katana, a horsewhip with a long sharp blade inside it, some unidentified wood objects, a jewel box from Sri Lanka, an Italian gold coin from the first World War with the quotation “meglio vivere un giorno da leone che cento da pecora” [1] an Australian boomerang. During this time my uncle at the table is keeping the attention of all by saying dumb sentences, who knows where he takes them from. Dinner passes fast, I eat a bit and listen a lot. Sometimes it is better let the speech just go. After the dinner two old photos come out. I find out that my uncle - now a 110 kg truck driver - was a hippie, with long hair and leather waistcoat with fringes, wore on a flat chest; at his side there was my great aunt, hair like a flower child, beautiful, on the background her red spider. I ask to my uncle when he stopped to being a hippie, my father replies for him telling that he stopped when my grandpa saw him with that hair. I continue lounging around and I find my great aunt and my great uncle passports, abandoned near a window: I pass the time looking at the stamps from all around the world and on a page I find a ten years visa for United States, valid until 2014. My great uncle takes his notebook and starts to show photos to my father and my uncle. I stay by myself, on the coach, but I listen to his stories; from there I don’t miss a pic showing a party on a freighter, the photo shows the main course: a whole stuffed pork roasting on an oil drum cut in the middle, filled with burning embers coming from broken pallets; all is cooked for six hours by a Philippine with the only company of a box of beer (btw he gets a 5.000$ monthly wage). By this time thoughts are filling my mind. All these things, all these stories, everything from all around the world. All ended stories. My great aunt now has a cancer, the second of her life. My great uncle get away with unspecified number of heart bypass. My uncle is probably the one in the worse shape, he is working all the day on a truck and he is always hard on his family. He is not a hippie anymore. And then I’m thinking about me. Not my dreams - they are always beautiful - but at me now. Thinking about all those stories I can’t miss to ask myself: have I already been mistaken in my life?
(this post is inspired from a my midnight mail to my best friend Raffaele)
Note 1: it is better to live one day as a lion than one hundred days as a sheep
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