taken from Fund Magazine
'Background From travelers'. Young, in fact, a university student and social worker in a dorm Bologna. What happens to a certain point? What happens to you and takes you to the capital and then in this book? Because the Termini Station, the largest whale? And why not another city?
In reality everything happens for no apparent reason. I chose to move to Rome because I was attracted by the city. And I decided to get to know the city from its social basements. Since its extreme periphery, which then was also the its center. The central train station. The ingredients were anthropological curiosity, the need to return a story of a reality unknown to most and on which I was able to look out thanks to the work of social worker. And then that bit of madness that you only have at that age.
Chapter 'The first night'. "Here, if some mica 'sleep." Then your backpack, your be transparent to the gaze of travelers passing through a station. Perhaps in the city itself. How does a homeless man the concept of space as an urban area or city? And even then, or rather, as the wire leads to "a journey in search of private pages of people stranded on underground Rome ... "? The ticket is for a one-way journey to hell, or even return?
I'm not a sociologist or an anthropologist to tell how a homeless person living the city. But perhaps I can say that the homeless do not exist. Does not exist as human category. And this is the sense of seeking the "private pages of people on the road has collapsed." All I did was meet and return with stories of the frescoes. Inevitably, fast, almost sketches, born of fleeting encounters, but who want to return just a narrative, subjectivity, and then to the characters, which brings subjectivity. And that makes us discover un lato come l’inferno sia in mezzo a noi. Sulle stesse strade che calpestiamo ogni giorno. E allo stesso tempo che quell’inferno é costellato di tante isole di paradiso. Ovvero l’umanità nascosta e negata da ogni nostro concittadino finito in mezzo alla strada nell’indifferenza generale.
Capitolo ‘La solitudine’ ovvero “l’estrema solitudine” degli emarginati. Quanto pesa? Quanto fa vivere o uccidere?
La solitudine pesa su tutta la città. Di nuovo, la strada diventa uno specchio fedele dei mali della società. Dove pero’ tutto è esasperato. Siamo tutti sempre più soli. E la strada è spesso il risultato di quella loneliness, which in times of distress did scorched earth around people and let them fall. The family, friends, sons, or fathers. And if already in the normal solidarity is often a luxury that few can afford it, the road becomes even worse. And it is the extreme loneliness - of true friends, affection, home - which exacerbates the discomfort, and prevents to find the strength to retell and start from scratch, always in the grip of insecurity.
Chapter 'A cold shower'. "Mine is only a play," you write. So forgive the term, and raw bums are born, you become, it remains or returns to be?
Barboni you become. No one is born into the street in Italy. And they can become any of us. I met young people from tough neighborhoods, the disabled, pensioners, former manager of major Italian companies, graduates, illiterates. Our lives are increasingly precarious. And it can happen to anyone. Especially where the social and family ties are weaker and where there are no parachutes of solidarity. Mine was a "reading" to the extent that it was a journey through the social strata of a city to tell the backstory. But without thinking about immerse myself in a condition that is not mine. Only to reach a place and to tell the tale.
Nel capitolo ‘Milano-Parigi prima classe’ scrivi: “mi metto a rovistare tra i cartoni vuoti”. Come sono le azioni, i gesti degli esclusi dalle luci della città? Com’è il loro tempo? Come si muovono le lancette del loro metaforico od immaginario orologio che poi è di siffatta piena realtà?
E’ tutto molto essenziale. Si mangia, si dorme, e si parla. E’ tutto anche molto noioso da un lato. Non c’è niente di entusiasmante sulla strada. Le condizioni sono molto difficili. A volte di sopravvivenza. C’è anche molta violenza, a volte davvero per delle futilità. E molta instabilità, specie tra chi beve e fa uso di droghe legali o illegali. Tuttavia that violence, these difficulties make the road a "teacher of life" as he called Gigi, the Roman Empire.
Chapter 'In vino veritas'. "Sitting on the edge of a binary watch the world go by." Italian, migrant, homeless, outcast, different, foreign, crazy. What type of account and relationship with the beings of everyday life?
No, "I watch the world go 'I mean the anonymous crowds that pass through an area deprived of his social life as a big train station. Thousands of people invisible to each other. I refer to the common people. Commuters. For me I was living on the street homeless were those who knew and acknowledged. They had a name. Were islands where to stay for two words in the middle of that anonymous stream of people represented by commuters and the many citizens of transit. Once you change perspective, the problem no longer arises in the standard or normal. Enter a personal logic, narrative, so everyone has a name, before an identity. The identities used to define. The names to know. And then to tell.
The chapter 'Retreat Aventine' speaks of the "Survival Guide" distributed by the Community of Sant'Egidio? Could you talk about?
It 's a book that at the time of the Community Sant'Egidio distributed in canteens. There is over a list of all the tables, with addresses and opening hours, shower points, places where distributed clothes, of legal advice, the local health authorities, hospitals, social workers, mental health centers, groups against 'Alcohol, therapeutic communities. So a kind of social handbook. very useful.
Some chapters still, 'How exiles thoughts' and 'The Barrel'. The life of the outcast passes between poetry, madness, violence, drugs, alcohol or what not else ... What else?
difficult to answer. It 's like everyone's life. You said: madness and poetry, tears coltelli. Con la differenza che rispetto alla noia cotonata di certe vite borghesi, sulla strada è tutto più violento, più ruvido, più esasperato, nel bene e nel male.
‘Veglia di Natale’, ‘Un’abbuffata’, ’I botti’, ‘L’anno che verrà’. Questi sono capitoli dedicati alle feste. Momenti delicati. Come, in questo stare randagio, si vivono le ricorrenze ufficiali ed a carattere familiare?
Si vivono male. Si sta male. Perché è come se il proprio vivere fosse sanzionato da un imperativo collettivo di festeggiare. Mi spiego? Tutto fuori ti ricorda che è Natale, sei sommerso di retorica sul Natale, di pubblicità, of decorations, Christmas but you do not have anyone to celebrate with. And every smile you refer to the passing of your loneliness. No, Christmas and the feast days are not good times for those who are on the road.
Chapter 'The black sheep'. Who is and who is not? To you the word
The point is not who is not what those who do not make the index. We're all good to accuse, to issue rulings and judgments. and instead we should start the meeting. by listening. of what 'that is next door, who is in our neighborhoods, our streets. and from there 're-imagining new forms of social solidarity, social bonds that act as parachutes to those who fall. because solidarity can not 'be a luxury that only few can afford. and it could really happen to us all.
At the end, but perhaps he had to go to the top: the same way? And especially since this book? To perhaps understand who is "normal" from another reality, not the other dimension? You can never fully understand this and accept this status and to improve that is not in the car?
Not only would do it again. Do it again every day. In an attempt to tell stories. And through the stories paint frescoes of the story and define cross. Not only I had no problems - Except for a warhead in the nose that I could even avoid - but I was also accepted and somehow protected under the wing of four old sea dogs of the first rail station Termini. Why this book? Listen again to the city. From a different perspective. But that 'speaks of the city itself, through its extreme periphery. So extreme that is at its center. It is not so much to understand. How to listen. And tissue relations. Which are not only helping relationships. But opportunities for a renewed social ties in our neighborhoods increasingly precarious and aseptic
Toscano, traveler and writer. Gabriele Del Grande was born in Lucca in 1982, graduated in Oriental Studies in Bologna. He writes for The Unit 
