I have a love of books, though something of a destructive one. I mean, literally - I tend to destroy them, bending pages, breaking the binders...and of course leaving the mark of me: round coffee demitasse stains every 100 pages or so for novels, more often on other kinds of pages. The more I like a book, the more its disfiguring ruin is assured.
My friend also loves books, maybe more than I, but differently. She treasures their form and respects them, at most showing a mild disgust when a writer is particulalry hackneyed. I by contrast will even throw a book out the window when its presumption becomes just...insupportable. (Though it's been awhile. the last one I recall was Eggers, a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, chapter 2, after a few pages, from a friend's couch, second floor, flip-wham out the front window.) I suppose that's natural. I listen to music we call jazz and opera and such, stuff that talks with a recognizable flavor, stuff that's dirty and maybe preferably a little kitsch. Anyway. Yesterday her books - that I treat with the utmost care, unlike mine - had a sort of revenge on my violence.
Because they had to be moved. And there are a lot - a lot - of them. I can now assure anyone that art books, particularly, are heavy in all respects. Many of them are stacked behind me now, beneath a painting on the wall, others to my left - all the way up to the desk. To my right instead are more flowers and plants, white and green, that had to be moved as well. Added to the string of dried Turkish deep red pepperoncini that a friend gave, hanging off a fortenbras lamp in front, the whole combines to give off an organic scent and internal cozy feeling like maybe what badgers feel as they sleep together in a clean, warm den. So what seemed like an extracted, sweaty revenge yesterday now seems almost a sort of purposeful long hug, a belonging.
Which brings me by its contrast to my own primary reason of this digression, which has to do with why I had to move the plants, stereo, books, tv, table, chairs and other stuff. A structural problem in this building due to a mistake has emerged. The mistake was taking off weight from one place, so the weight was then transferred to another, which could not hold, and so then transferred to another and so on. The weight doesn't magically go away or magically become redistributed evenly. It's sticky. It cannot be abstracted away just because an architect wants it so. It belongs to the building, so to speak.
Despite being aware of the problem for a week, more actually, nothing has yet been done. Not even supporting poles put in. This is because the two owners directly involved are silently arguing over who will pay for what, each positioning themselves to effectively cover their asses, with one now delaying, maybe even hoping to have a cave in so to have the other pay for a full restructure. He in particular doesn't care if the cave in happens onto us, ending these our mortal coils. Both of the owners are from very wealthy families. They do not belong in snug dens nor are delighted by stacks of books and plants and dried red pepper.
What the later owner doesn't know and the former isn't saying saying though, is that the weight involved most likely doesn't come from just one floor but two, the mistake mentioned not merely a moved wall but something more risky, likely illegal but not reported. Still, word got to me. Words move, we all know, even words describing a hair brained internal architectural decision. The words themselves aren't so sticky but sticky-ish, but what they contain is. Like the moved weight which, if not addressed, might bring down a lot more than what these owners, so very intelligent, thought.
And that their not belonging, that not caring, that self-referring superficiality, has become the dominant culture in downtown Rome. As in other heavily polluted places. Time to leave for a cleaner den. With more green and white. Or, for me, blue...
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