Vittorio Volpi

This pandemic is changing our lives. And it’s a choice we wouldn’t want. First, because they didn’t ask us for anything, and with the mean of terror and sanctions, they have cornered us. But with this, they have revealed what “power” really is. The most major threat is the seizure of our bodies:
1) being confined in the house
2) not being able to move freely (we need a self-certification to by apples)
3) maintaining social distance
4) looking suspiciously at our neighbours, the people we meet, as if they were possible enemies
5) the use of extravagant, if not harmful, hygiene rules, such as the use of masks.
Later on, there will probably be a mandatory vaccine.
The control becomes capillary in small villages like mine. Drones have started to be used to check if someone is out of the house (violating one of the basic rules of the use of drones, namely the prohibition to fly over people).
They probably use the location of mobile phones to control our movements.
So I think something important is changing in our democracies (if it still makes sense to use this word).
Another point: 6) they are depriving us of human contact.
And this is detrimental to both physical and mental health.
I took this picture a few days ago, on March 11th.
Taking away our contact with other people and nature is the most serious point. And it will have significant damage to our health and mental balance.
Dogs have more rights than we do: you can go out and let the dog walk, but you are a person (and therefore you can rationally understand and cooperate 🙂 you cannot go out.

In a recent post of mine, I said that on the streets you could walk naked because there are no cars, there are no passers-by. Usually, on Sunday morning this road was very busy: cars, cyclists, people taking a walk, families enjoying the day off. This morning the road in front of my house looked like this. As a precautionary measure imposed by the government and the Lombardy Region, I could not go out. In essence, they recommended us to stay at home, to use masks. I’ would have piled up a bundle of fines!

This morning at 7 a.m., leaving for my usual tour, I read a notice that even the children’s playground was closed. I don’t know if the situation is *really* serious or if it’s getting worse under any pretext. The only defensive weapon I have is to ignore the news, don’t scare by myself, don’t feel like I’m under house arrest, don’t feel like I’m in a pressure cooker.

Spring is going on, nature is getting more and more beautiful, my eyes shine for admiration.
The scaremongering about the new pandemic and the indecent media campaign only makes me suspect that something else is working, that the flu and the government alone would not be able to bring a nation to its knees. And the more negative the news is, the more pessimists seem happy because they agree with each other. Now, I think only virologists know life, death and miracles of this virus. But for us, it’s something very hazy and ultimately unclear. In order to trigger an active reaction from us, we need a springboard: to believe it, to believe what we are told, to believe that it is all true because otherwise schools, churches, shops, factories would not be closed. It’s like with UFOs and extraterrestrials: someone believes it, someone else doesn’t. Those who believe accumulate evidence of their existence; those who don’t even believe this “evidence”. The slogan of those who believe is “I want to believe”. And I think it is this “will to believe” that has called them to existence. They represent an alternative to the picture in which they live, an escape route, a secret weapon of survival: “take me!”

The coverage of the news is itself alarming, rather than its content. And suspicious as I am, (as far as I know, and I can check the virus could be actually in the masks) I think they are covering up some unclear manoeuvres, that will change the situation of Italy and the Italians. I too have created a slogan for myself: if I am to be a sheep, I want to be black.

🙂 the streets are so empty that you could walk around naked 🙂

Lombardy and Veneto, the two regions most affected by the flu, are in an emergency situation, almost a health curfew. Schools, libraries, cinemas and museums are closed, as are restaurants, concert-hall, no lectures (this is the third week and will last at least until April 3). Masses are celebrated behind closed doors, at funerals (and this is the most pitiful thing) only the closest family members can attend. In the supermarket supplies are scarce; it is compulsory to sanitize your hands before entering and use plastic gloves for shopping. This has been ordered by a government decree. Newspapers and news reports talk about nothing else and feed phobias and psychosis. Few cars on the streets, so much so that you could play football, few people on the streets, you don’t enter the shops more than three at a time, but there is no need to warn: people are locked indoors. Government order.
Even today I did not give up my daily exit was 6:45. Nature gives a damn about the flu, she doesn’t die, she doesn’t kill anyone. On the contrary, these very days, with rain and sun, everything is in turmoil: leaves, buds, flowers. Perfumes and fine air. It’s a pleasure to be outside. I think it’s also healthy, that the oxygen in the air can burn all the viruses in this world. Nature is on our side, not against us: that’s why I think this virus is something unnatural, created in some laboratory. And in the meantime, someone takes advantage of it, sells you masks, gives you alarmist information, makes media terrorism. That’s probably the real virus.

An oak tree, a vineyard, an olive grove, the white flowers of the shepherd’s purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris), and then the peat bog, the lake, the island in the middle, Mount Guglielmo and on the right the monastery of St. Peter in Lamosa (= by the Swamp) … the clean air of a windy day, the sun that everything colours with light: this is my landscape. Naked I breathe this landscape, I want it to mould me; it seems motionless, but it is always changing. Many people use a car (myself), a hoe, a bulldozer and rule the territory… and clothes to signify belonging, conventions and fidelity. I don’t even want to touch what I see, I don’t even want to understand it. I only know that as nature makes grass grow (and grass cannot not grow), so will it do with me: it will make me grow new thoughts, put aside old categories, with which I/we tried to understand the world – one-way. There is nothing to understand. Leave it, open up, undress: nature is not hostile, it is not an enemy. It is inside us, much more than we believe or know.

Spring is coming fast, it already looks like mid-March, but it is still February. This morning the surprise of a goat-willow (Salix caprea) full of gems! Irresistible a stop for a photograph, as if I needed to anchor this moment of nature with me: as to say “I saw you, I noticed you, and I’m happy”. As to say that I feel in tune with you, in the same time&place, that we live and grow together, to the rhythm of the seasons…

Pozza del Prefond (Monte Guglielmo – 45.779406, 10.119625)

Grey sky, a cold breeze, yet a nice hike, like ten days ago. Nature is not a sofa. The body knows nature that way, even in the grey, in the ice, even in the cold that runs through your body: it doesn’t want to challenge you, to force you to put on your clothes (as in Aesop’s fable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_North_Wind_and_the_Sun): it wants you to know it, live.

You can’t see it, but at 9 there was an icy wind blowing over the pond. But I liked it: I was enjoying the brown of the reeds, against the blue of the water, the green on the fence guiding the gaze to me, the light and the shadow on my naked body. A few seconds in nature: my real presence allowed me to perceive the mild warmth of the sun and the whip of the wind: that also was nature. Not being so stupid to catch a cold, but enough to understand – through my body first – that nature is a whole: beautiful colours and landscape and unpleasant temperature and wind. So: every season has its reasons to perceive how nature really is. Our body knows it.