Nutsmuggling

Once upon a time, and a very good time it was, I was sitting at my desk, in front of my laptop, diving into some research. Those were the PhD years, and I was probably meditating on orality or on one of Joyce’s masterpieces.
My desk sits in the corner of my living room; at its left there’s a big window, from which a lot cold penetrates first into my room and then into my bones. Yet, thanks to this window I have witnessed a number of small piecés of the theatre of the everyday, taking place on Vicolo Mustacchi, which I like to refer to as Desolation Row.¹

I could tell you about the woman left by her lover, quarreling over the phone. I could tell you about the drunkard swearing and singing, or about the verbal fight between the patriarch of the Naples tribe and the local car repairer. But I will tell about something more amazing.

Looking out from the aforementioned window you see the last floor a building and, more importantly, its roof. On the roof, a velux.²

On February 16th 2006,³ the velux opened, a head popped out. A body followed. It was a man working on the flat maintenance. The man climbed out the velux and started walking on the roof. He looked around, and choose a corner. He started to pee. As soon as he finished, he want back into the apartment through the velux.

‘Course, I can’t say I seen London, and I ain’t never seen no queen in her damn undies as the fella says.⁴

But I’ll tell you, after seeing this man peeing on the roof I decided I had to put to paper what could end up being just a mere shadow of the event I had just experienced. The limerick seemed a fit medium. I composed four of them, here’s the first.

There was an old man quite aloof
Who liked to go peeing on his roof.
But the prospects were bleak,
For the roof it did leak
On the flat of this man quite aloof.

More to follow…

Notes

1. No, we aren’t selling postcards of the hanging. Yet. [↩]
2. Not sure we use the same name on both sides of the Atlantic. In any case, I am talking about one of those dormer-windows. [↩]
3. My Adium logs are almost a diary, I realised. [↩]
4. If you don’t get this quote I am certainly not going to help you. [↩]