Merry Christmas... maybe

How to start? I didn't really think I would ever write here again. It is Christmas and Merry Christmas to anyone that will ever read this, even to myself in a couple years' time. Always there is a reason that pushes me to write here: sadness. It is a sadness that doesn't really come together in this Christmas time. Well, actually that's the thing. In this month you see everyone around you smiling and feeling happy and hopeful about his life. I've been one of those people too but today I just can't be like that anymore. Of course, I have plans, of course, there will always be something pushing me to give my best. But I just can't deal with my emotions anymore. It's about love, work, life, friends and all of them together. It is not something you wake up with, it's more of a feeling of insecurity that slowly but steadily shifts in a sense of desperation and inability to go on with your life. One of my few "recent" posts has been about suicide and suicidal thoughts. I'm grown up from those, but probably not in the way I wanted. Days I just wake up thinking that it is not worth it, that at the end of the day whatever you will ever do will be forgotten or misunderstood. I was hanging up cause I found a person that I thought could lead me out of all of this. It has been almost 2 years since my past relationship and I tried to give myself time to heal and wait for the real person that was made for me. We found each other and there was something I can't really explain between us. As you might know, I have been burnt multiple times by love and people, but somewhere inside of me I always kept some hope that the next one was going to be the right one or at least a person that was able to deal with me and could be honest. And once again I got disappointed. She will never read this, luckily, as the previous ones didn't. Cause she would just see even more how miserable and stupid I have been since the beginning. I believed in her, I believed in us. I wanted to give her all I could and to show her that I was exactly who she needed and she was the same for me. I never had the time. She decided that it was not worth trying, it wasn't worth the wait. I wasn't worthy. I cried, I got angry, I even texted her something stupid. Like we all do when we are in pain and have no idea how to deal with it. It saddens me knowing that she will never know how far I was ready to go just cause I believed in everything she does. Last time I talked to her I had the courage to tell her, even knowing that those were wasted words as she took already her decision, that I never met such a person like her. Those, useless, boring words, that every person uses and that she replied with an arctic cold "yeah, right". The same reaction she had when I said those three infamous words. Those three overused terms that most people confuse with a lot of different feelings. I am not any different, giving them to people that deserved them, but never meant that much to me. There is just one person that I can freely say ever loved, as much as this sentence costs me. And she was the second. And it hurts. It hurts that I wasted my forces to be the best for her. And you might say that it never works when you want to change for the other person. I partially agree. When you enter a relationship you necessarily leave parts of you behind, because you want to be the best you can, and cause you want to change first of all for yourself. She is the motivation. But she will never know this, she didn't just want me, it's so easy and yet so damn difficult to accept. Add to that the fact that I was ready to put on pause everything I planned in these years for her. Before meeting her I was sure I was going to leave Italy, and for her, I was ready to stay here, cause I learned from the past, and distance destroys relationships, I don't care what people say. But here I am now, doing a job I don't even enjoy anymore, in a place that I don't feel mine and with memories of her all around me. It is just getting too much. I am not that strong. I have never been and will never be. The only thing I know how to do is run away: from pain, from that sensation that the problem isn't in the others but is just in you. It is just me. Just this weak, physically grown-up little boy. There is something missing in me and I just can't find what it is. For how much I try to figure it out I just get more and more of the worst of who I am. Blaming humanity is never the answer, especially when you should realize how much of a selfish person you are. It's easy to see now. While writing this and re-reading what's above it's obvious: just take a look of how many times I say "I". As if the entire world should follow me and deal with the bullshit that my life is.

It is for all these reasons that the time has come for me as well to let all of this go. To change drastically my life and the way it all works. A real cut is needed. Physical, mental, just letting all of this go and try to restart all over again.

I decided to go after the Silk Road, and follow it from Venice to Shanghai, in a 1,2 or even more years, without catching any plane.

I started talking about it with my friends and family and between support and calls to the psychiatrist (just kidding) the response was a lot like "are you really sure?"

The fact is that no, I'm not sure at all.

But I need to act quickly otherwise I'm not even sure anymore I will even be able to have another Christmas.

But hey, life is good for most people, so I'm happy for all of you. I really am. I wish I could see what you see, I wish I could see all the reasons you see to keep fighting. Maybe I just need to disappear for a while, maybe I need to just disappear forever.

I hope you'll hear from me again :)

In case this won't be the case just please be happy, and never forget to love the people beside you.

Merry Christmas.

Perfection

What is it and why are we so obsessed with finding perfection in every aspect of our own existence. The perfect relationship, perfect job, perfect food, perfect life. Truth is that as human beings we always look forward to what is impossible and unrealistic for us. Perfection is unachievable in this world and the constant hunt for it develops a morbid and unhealthy dependence on results as a measure of our own value. Trivial desires get lost on the way, as they won't help to reach the goal. With them humanity gets lost; we become more like machines and less driven by feelings. Love for what we do doesn't mean as much as 'be the best at what we do'.

Or at least that's what it looks like on the surface.

Since High School, I always loved to think one step further and try to climb the building to have a different perspective. So what is it about the obsession for perfection? On the way to perfection, we learned to enjoy the closest hints of it. But that simply means finding beauty in what, at the end of the day, is imperfection. And it is in this that everything we work for comes down like a cards castle. We do realize that a woman's body cannot be perfect by definition. But we enjoy it. We enjoy the irregular shape of their nose, we enjoy the silky pleasure of messy hair on our face. Those hands that rotate around, finding their way to our cheeks, freezing them at the beginning, but for then leave space to a warmth that persuades us to let our restrictions fly away and just fall into their arms. There, where even the giants want to rest, we find feeling with every sense that we are alive. We touch the smooth and velvety thighs, we smell peaches and vanilla in their perfumes, we hear them singing and like Ulysses we decide to abandon ourselves to the sirens, we see them in all their beauty and in all their shyness to expose their bodies. We love them. We love the imperfections we see and we love those we don't see. 

Imperfections are also in a fine wine, aged for years, where oxygen ruined the freshness of the wine but enhanced other aromatic compounds. That red vivid color developed and twisted in different shades until that intense brick red that we can see nowadays. Is it perfect? Perhaps not, but it is still one of the best voluptuous pleasures drunk with a rare fillet mignon on the side. 

So it is food. Chefs nowadays always look for the perfect combinations of flavors and plating techniques. The perfect quenelle and the ability to replicate the same movement over and over again having always the same exact results. In a professional environment, it comes natural, as we want to always be at the top of our game in serving the guests. But that is not what most of the people love about food. Having in front of me a perfect plate that looks dead it's not filling me with desire. Cooking mustn't become a factory exercise. Cooking and eating can be art, and it is indeed an art of imperfection. It's a craft of knowledge, passion, and feelings. In every dish, a Chef should put his past, present and future. Me as a guest I want to eat and understand what is the story of this meal, I want to have memories from my past passing by and flashing me like thunders in a hot summer. The imperfections are what make it real, what will make it unforgettable. A slightly runny ice cream with strawberries will make for a much more interesting and playful meal. It will create memories that otherwise would just be linked with good food... But who remembers those ones?...

We eat with eyes too, and as a woman, a course mustn't be perfect. 

Perfection is overrated.