The first part of my life had felt like the last scene in La Dolce Vita, where Mastroianni is on a beach, and a little boy is talking to him, and he can’t hear a single word. I had been living in my art, that was certain, but never could enter into the things of the world. My sentiments, deeper thoughts, and dreams, were all the stuff of work, to be tempted to move from their state as raw material into something that I could play with and draw patterns on. I was lost in a maze that the past few decades had created, and no longer cared who was responsible for all the knots. This would be a perfect opportunity to get to Singapore, and see what a new perspective might offer.
Sitting in a restaurant where Italian food sparks up the place, feeding ethereal as well as physical hungers, is something close to paradise. It doesn’t take long to get there, and it’s always a luxurious wait when you are finally smelling garlic roasting and eating small bits of bread to save your appetite. I knew how to eat, however, and didn’t need more opportunities, and actually could have been able to skip a meal like a camel skipping water. No one would notice, and it might be better for the long travel ahead. But I am unable to say no to some things.
It would be similar enough to paradise to count as such, then, to celebrate a landmark birthday, this kind of passage, that means a simple transition is to be made, or perhaps that one had already been crossed. In this case, however, I am resigned philosophically to days of contemplation and the memory of the girls in the summer dresses, but instead I am dancing in the fountain with Ekberg. This shift is not simply related to the garlic, but is, rather, the direct result, and opens the place where we can hear the words of children.