SCRITTURA CREATIVA elaborazione progettuale Prof.ssa F. Mauro

1. SCRITTURA CREATIVAelaborazione progettuale Prof.ssa F. Mauro

2. A.S.2011/2012 • Theme:“And time goes by……. “I see trees of green, red roses too,(………)I see skies of blue and clouds of white, the bright blessed day, the dark sacred night (……) I see friends shakin’ hands, saying: “How do you do!" They’ re really sayin’ ”I love you. And I think to myself “What a wonderful world”. …..Just the words of an old song or the future I want for me?” I Premio VBs: Belluomo Alessia Poesia: “Ravenous Beasts” I Premio IIICc: Di Senna Natalia Prosa: “A pocket full of colours” II Premio VFs: Domizio Ciro Poesia: “ Building certainties” II Premio VCs: Arena Alessandro Prosa: “The pilgrimage of a young prophet”

3. Ravenous beasts Ravenous beasts Corrupting the glorious nature, Reckless we proceed Blind we pursue fleeting joys And banish all our friends, Eager to gain pleasure as if we will not end Leave this blindness!See the truth! In the lush fields under the stars Admire the infinite beauty of the world Seek for love in the clouds, Seize the wings of freedom And merge your soul with the Universe

4. A pocket full of colours When I was just a little girl I heard them say “Don’t let it slip away, this sunrise, this sun, this moment.” I didn’t realize at all what they said until my heart felt empty for the first time. Do you know what it’s like…to feel empty? The sky is not the sky anymore; the world, what is the world? It’s just a place somewhere. Your name, what’s that? It’s just a mixture of letters. I had a lot of colours in my pocket ,I got them in every place I’ve been: happiness, loneliness, fear, safety, family. I was so proud of them, because they kept me alive. But then the sun faded away and I lost them. It happened when I left something unsaid, when I looked myself in the eyes and I didn’t see him. I lost the battle, but then I am, screaming at the top of my lungs, like no one’s hearing. Does this make me “alive”? I don’t want to be alive. A lot of people think that breathing is enough: well, it’s not for me. A bird can be happy of flying continuously, the sun can be okay with shining over everything everyday, but me…do I just want to breathe? That’s why I feel empty, I see missing chances, wasting lights, broken mirrors. I don’t want to be alive: I want to live. I dream of Paris in the rain and London in the sun, when Naples will be calm. Second chances, eternal smiles, free hugs. Then I see nature –pure perfection- and I say to myself: “This is real. This is possible. How can you just ignore it? I see a wonderful world out there”. Sometimes I just feel like McCandless: I wish I had his courage and straight to leave this all behind. “Dear Santa, I want that for Christmas, this year” I write every year. But he’s not going to satisfy my desire. • Have you ever felt empty? I have. And it sucks. But there’s a sort of irony in life: you feel empty, you’ve lost your colours but that’s the moment you feel you’re living the most, because every part of your soul says “I want my colours back!”. That’s the future I want for me: red roses, blue skies , green trees. I want my colours back. • -Don’t let it go. • -What? • - This life. • Let me tell you something. • I’ve lost myself hundreds of times, and I’m going to lose my mind again and again. But that won’t stop me from getting my colours back, everytime. Search for your colours. They might not be the shinest ones, but they’re yours. Look for your colours: in your mother’s wet eyes, when she’s crying because she doesn’t know how to carry on, in the drunk man sat at the corner with a battle of whiskey in his hands, ready to get drunk all over again. Find a colour for the beautiful smell of a new book. Create a new colour, made of yellow and green for the amazing sensation that you feel when you’re about to leave for un unknown place. Paint it black, when you’re alone and you don’t have anyone. When you fall in love, get your hands dirty of passionate red, ready to paint your heart. Take the sea’s blue for the moment in which you realize you can do it, when you see your true potential. • Losing you colour is beautiful, because everytime you search for them you find yourself too. I’ve learned how to let it go, my skin is full of scars. Time goes by. I’m healing, still hurting. Dreaming of a wonderful world, where no colour could be lost, it gives me hope. Breathe, even when you can’t, when the air is nothing but dirty and unsafe. Breathe. It makes you alive, and sooner or later you’ll learn to live too.

5. Building certainties I don't see trees of green, I don't see red roses too and skies of blue are really a dream for me. Life is full of uncertainties, not always sounds sweet melodies. Many people think I'm pessimistic, but they don't know how I'm realistic. I don't want to sleep today, Can I try to run away? No, this is not a solution for me, my future is the greatest uncertainty of this short life and I have to build it, to build it in this time.

6. The pilgrimage of a young prophet • The clock-alarm rang three times in the room, hitting the wall and his head. Hunter sat on one side of the bed. He was quiet dazed and confused. “I’ll hardly forget what happen’d last time”. Pieces of broken memoirs came slowly out from the fog of time. The moon was shining high in the sky, enlighting the earth and his eyes. Lying under a tree, Hunter was watching the ocean of stars beside his head. The frame of thoughts soon became dust, flowing between the fingers, flying throughout the wild breeze. He watch’d the lighthouse in the deep sky, wondering what there was on the dark side. She sudden tinged of a bloody red, when the sun raise over his shoulder. The chough of the crow echoed all around. Shiver on his back, presage of death. And the clock three times rang again. Hunter woke up then, nay face he saw in the mirror reflex. He wore his clothes, and his hat. “Goodbye dear mother”-He said, like the ancient mariners. “Watch yourself, honey, don’t be late”. And he felt strange that day, something wrong was going to happen. A carpet of fog was covering the city. He could not see the deep blue sky, the long skyscrapers covered it now. The moment slackly ticked away, Hunter lonely wandered in an off-hand way, waiting for someone or something to show him the path. He ran for hundred of miles, he made it to the desert, his foot treaded on the hot sand of his soul. No voice around, the roaring monster cars were far away. A dead tree was all he saw, shaking his arms blowed by the wind. Hunter was lost in his own dry wilderness. Again he wandered ‘round aimlessly. “I hope I’ll find the way”. Was time passing? Or hath is blocked now? The sun was burning hot. Hunter arrived to the ocean, he was desperate and wanted to leave. The crazy diamond shone on the sea, drops of stars floated on the water and showed him the right way. “So good to see you, I’ve missed you so much. Thus glad it’s over, so happy you showed me the way”. Then a wave suddenly came, hit Hunter’s jaw, delivering him long wings, destroying the roots on his feet. He walked on that blue floor and high he flew on the horizon. He watch’d the depth of universe and his white holes. He saw the whole world like no one has never done and decided to come back and share the key to the lock of the chains he saw everywhere. The sea was as calm as a millpond, he spotted his face over the reflex shore. Then passed the desert back again and found the tree he has already seen. Red flowers were growing on his arms, singing armonies of joy and love. He ran awry from that place out of time and arrived to the jungle where serpents of smoke crawled between the clouds. Hunter went in a noisy crowd, where empty people were walking watching their feet. In the center of a square he started to shout: “I’ve travelled in myself for a long time and found that life is just a ride! I found that life is but a dream, I’ve walked in my own confused and insecure delusions”. Sweat was dripping from his head, he was afraid and excited. “Free yourself from that chains, which tie you all at preconcepts. The world will be saved just when you’ll realize you’ll just need ourselves. No money, no jobs, no effords. Let our inner universes clash together and we’ll explore space together, both inner and outer, for ever, in peace”. No one heard him, people were still walking around, watching the ground. And the crow sang again his dark melody, presage of death. Then Hunter was stripped and stabbed by faceless man coming from nowhere. Time has gone by since then, Hunter’s voice was kill’d again and again. But sometimes is seen a strange spot in the sky, a human being who was given fly and he shows the right path to people who still watch the sun and the moon.

7. A.S.2010-2011 • Theme: To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that’s all.(O.Wilde) I Premio VBs: Tortora Anna MariaPoesia:“A bird’s life is a wonderful thing” II Premio VBs: Laino Daniele Prosa: Rush of Love II Premio VDs: Romanetti Claudia prosa e poesia: A life to be lived

8. “What do you think we exist for?”, a bird asked with great fervor. “Maybe”, another bird answered, ”to improve and encourage human souls”, their sensibility can appreciate the enchanting singing of the air’s fowls”. So we don’t simply exist, I suppose; our existence is aimed at a precise purpose: doing for other something beautiful and, sometimes, even useful. Even if so useless I usually feel, And I realize for nothing I live! Everyday on different window-sills I perch, And I never find a “living” person in my research. Some people in fact watch me indifferently, And take a break from their task, just momently; Then they resume their activity, And never watch me again, with great antipathy. By my singing others seem to be bored: They drive me out, completely annoyed; Then others the window rapidly close: “Shut up, shut up!", they repeat, they impose!” “But how is that possible?!", the other bird exclaimed, “A bird’s singing charms everybody!", he said. “Our singing is a so great pleasure, people often It forget, It’s so stupid not to live and avoid enjoying that. If life offers people so many pleasures, Why don’t they accept all these favours?” “Maybe because”, the other bird answered, ”they forget they are living, when they behave this way, they are just existing; to be a miserable human, what a bad thing! So indifferent to life, sentiment and everything!” “So, what are you telling me, my friend?, You prefer to be a bird rather than a man, in the end?” “Yes, of course”, the other said, ”that’s better to be a bird: free, happy and satisfied in its own singing heard!” “A bird’s life is a wonderful thing”

9. Rush of Love I remember few things about my childhood. It’s like old memories are melted in the fog, such as usually happens to a lot of people. But there’s a fact I have in my mind clearly, that is when I learned to read. In brief time, I read everything: newspapers, mom’s, recipe books, even instruction of dad’s tools or directions in the back of toothpaste box. Often I did not know that the meaning of the words I read, because I was only a child. For example, a day I found on the subtitles of news on TV that about a thousand of people “Had lost their life” during on earthquake. I didn’t know that expression, so I asked my father: I wanted to know how so many people could “lose their life”. They maybe had left it at home? Or they had a hole in a pocket, and life was simply fallen outside? Dad answered that it was just a way for saying they were dead, and nothing else. What he said shocked me a lot: for my whole youth I was convinced that was normal “lose our life” in an accident, almost in a game, with the same simplicity with which my father answered me. Growing up, this consideration did not leave me, and I became –so they defined me- a nihilist, because I didn’t believe in a value of human life, convinced that this could be broken in a moment, and, for this reason, people had only to “spent” their time casually. Practically, there was inside me a sort of resigned patience towards human troubles. That, if by one side allowed me not be afraid of that, by the other side it made me feel empty and lacking of motivations. Then, a day, a miracle happened: I fell in love with a woman. It was incredible, because I was not be able to keep relationships with no one before, and now I even loved a girl so different from me! I didn’t love her for her beauty or her body, no, I loved her eyes so full of life spirit, I loved her voice for the joy of which it resounded. Stay with her refused me with new and never experienced sensations: everything seems me more coloured, joyful; in a word, life worthy for the first time in my life. I could not try to stop this “rush of love” that I had refrained for so long; I finally had found a reason to live, and then I could finally understand the pain of those who had lost their life, and the pain of those who had been deprived of the grace of their dear relatives. One day I finally confessed her my story, and at last I asked her how she had this strength for appreciating life in all its negative sides. She answered me: I understood. I understood the life is really precious and rare, if you have a small time to live. She was ill, an incurable ill, but she never told me before because she was afraid of losing me. I remained with her until the day God came and took her with Him. I dedicated myself to look for her, but with my love I only managed to relieve her sufferings. Her departure left me an hole, but previously she had field another one bigger: actually she cured me. She implanted life in me when herself had to be supported. Her last gift was the true aim of life: the answer is love, the feeling that makes you consider everybody important, that allows to appreciate yourself through gratefulness of other people, that makes you wake you up with awareness that all you will do in the day will have an higher reason. I never read a newspaper or watch news on TV: I could not suffer anymore to know other people were dead for chance or for man’s misery. I spent remaining my life travelling the world; trying to convince people to satisfy heart’s needs and not waste life pursuiting useless purposes. In a word, I wanted to take with me the most friends as possible, so that I was not the only true survived in this world.

10. A life to be lived Johnny did an estranging life. He lived in a poor area of the city, he didn’t know the sun but only the grey of the buildings that surrounded him. He slept in a room with only one window, he woke up every day at the same hour and went to work; the wage allowed him to pay the rent and buy the necessary to live. But he was a thrifty man and decided to save a small amount of money every month. So when he was about fifty five years old had enough money to leave his work and buy a house in the countryside in which he grew up when he was a child. Since that moment he began a second life. Above all he felt free like never before, he could observe the colours of nature in every season and at last he saw the sun, so dreamed by him. He recovered to read poems, poetry and fantastic novels. He asked himself if the life lived before could be considered a life truly lived but he understands that since that moment he only existed because when a man is deprived of thoughts and fantasy is like an empty container. At night that thoughts take possession of him and the pen on the sheet left these words: If I contemplate the sun that shines in the sky Or the eternal stretch of a field Can I say that I really try To live truly my life? When I scan with a careful eye The nest that bird builds And his sons that are trying to fly In my heart allowed to quickly beat? Sometimes I saw the lovers that lie, Holding hands on the seaside and lived Such as tomorrow they’ll die That is the reason to live intensely every day, Feel in love in love with something or somebody And together cover the way.

11. A.S.2009/2010 • Theme: We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails • I Premio VCs: Colella Salvatore Poesia“Autumn Leaves” I Premio VAs: Marigliano Francesco Prosa:”Mariner cafè” II Premio VFs: Legarano Pasqualina Poesia: “The ballad of the tree”

12. Flows the time as we’re apart Lonely on the soft buzzing grass Lying and painting smoking dreams in the dark That weakly and slowly get the stars Lonely are we in this cold world As the flying falling Autumn Leaves That by the twilight sun are painted gold And hidden by ‘morrow sunsets as the badest thieves Blow our lives as the wind And nothing are we but the dream of the shadow, Sounds of memories by the rain dimmed, Autumn Leaves traveling o’er the window I can hear thee screaming in silence For I know thy heart’s bleeding Shall future bring other violence And shall moments be so fleeting? Will thou let me drown in the sea Looking at the gulls flying high? Won’t thou come and save me To make me know thou’re by my side Oh bark! The birds are singing And look at the horizon the down is rising This day smells of changing So as eastern flowers when their born dewing While my soul sweetly weeps Happy I am for I understood That as the sailor adjust the sails Of our windy fate we’re not tools Other rain may fall and other sunsets will come Other downs after other nights will rise But like stones we’ll roll To avoid new moss-storms Wind is still so high And we Autumn Leaves still fly down But we can wait for better spring days to come And be new lives carried by a new wind. “Autumn Leaves”

13. “Mariner Cafè” It was a sunny morning, one of the first mornings of the early spring; the ground cold like the air, there were not clouds in the bright blue sky. The city was asleep, sometimes a silent bus stopped near me, little boys went to school; I was sitting out of the “Mariner Café” a little café in which I’ve been passing every morning until that day. I was a clerk at the National Bank and every morning I used to take the underground and arrive early to sit with my smoking white coffee, waiting the half past eight. Every morning for seven years I was there with the same “Wall Street Journal” on that little bar table. There is a moment in which everything seems perfect, there is a beauty order in all the things you see: the sky, the street, the silence. I often lived that moment at the Mariner. I didn’t talk to anyone. That morning I entered the café to pay my ordinary coffee, when an old man cut me the way and hit me. “ PallMall red, please!” he said to Holden, the owner of the Mariner, and then he quickly went out. I paid and went to work. In the evening I had to come back home taking the same underground line of the morning, but when the sun disappears, the dark makes everything silent, quite dead. I was in the train, but not alone like every evening. There was a man at the end of the train he saw me and after walked through the train sit near me, then lighted is cigarette and began to smoke, without any respect, blowing that sick air on my face, he was in silence looking me with strange eyes, that dirty and drunken man was a vagabond; suddenly something happened in my mind, I slowly took my gold paper-knife from my leather bag, and started to stab him, with all my forces, I stabbed him one, two, three and more times until there was a red lake on the train pavement, he was there. He was dead, I dressed my coat and came out of the train, coming back home. Every evening since that day I’ve taken that train and stabbed all drunken vagabonds; Press calls me the “underground monster”, but I’m not a monster! Don’t ask me why, ‘cause I don’t know anything about those moments of madness. There are strange dynamics in human mind. Every morning at the Mariner I think about my life, also now that I’m writing on my red paper book. Life is difficult, full of ways, choices; I was a little genius when I was a child, my parents took me to a prestigious college where I finished studies before all my classmates, after that my father got a job for me at the National Bank and I started working there; this is my life, a railway in which I am the train forced to follow only one direction, this is the real madness! I’m cruel, I know, but when the knife entered the flesh, when those useless lives are broken, I feel alive. It’s my choice! My compromise with life! Am I evil? Oh no, I’ve never been evil, I’m just angry. Looking in this café I see on the wall behind the bar an old ship with Mariner adjusting the sails, a beautiful painting; this is real life, a boat, in which the Mariner is the sense of right, the will, and the wind is your spirit, all your passions. I’ve never been the mariner of my life, I’ve never adjusted my sails, another have done it for me, but now, I have fallen under the wind of my madness, and this is too strong for me to adjust, my life is the boat under the fury of a tempest wind, and my sails have been broken. Its late now, and I have to go working, there is another evening waiting for me, there is another strong wind driving my life. You are mad, I’m the only owner of my life, and I feel free.

14. Ciuff ciuff: the train continued to go. Ciuff ciuff: it didn’t stop Ciuff ciuff: I was supposed to say bye. Ciuff ciuff: I would have preferred to say hi! The new year was coming And leaving me alone; The new year was coming And not waiting anymore. Everyone says: new year, new life, But I hated new life, It wasn’t my life! It was new year eve And I was in the train; Looking outside I saw a tree: It was so cute, it was so thin. It kept to move, Like moving its head; Its head was moving From right to left. Its head was moving Like disapproving “what is it declining?” I asked to myself “I should go back!” Then I realized It was just the wind To push the little tree. It was the same wind That moves the sails on the ship, It was the same wind That brought me on this street. I didn’t want to go there I didn’t want to leave And then forget everything. So I thought, and thought for a while. The wind doesn’t choice The ship’s line; The mariner adjust the sail Until he gets the right way. And so I will do, I’ll decide for myself: Stop the train, stop the train! The ballad of the tree