No smoking

Every time I used to leave or come back, the "no smoking" writing would welcome me. It was written in enormous letter over the buildings sorrounding the railway station, and it had become the symbol of every trip, ever since. Now that I was coming back to the place I used to call my home, that writing had disappeared.. of course, since the smoking ban was now law, there was no need for it to be written everywhere. The station though was still the same, so grey, smelling bad and with all those faces that here are called "sooo shady" and instead, there where I consider to be my home now, are just faces and nothing else. I was setting foot in Italy for a short weekend, right on the threshold of my endurance to my mother's care, just for a special occasion: ten years from our graduation, to see how much we've grown old and what's happened to That who's not Her boyfriend anymore. The places that I used to know have changed, but not so much. The streets have still holes in the asphalt, people and houses are still asking themselves if we're a village, outskirts or a little town. The air smells like smog. But the date with our past is "downtown", so at least it's troubling for everybody - and that's fair. Our funny chap mate arranged the whole thing, reserving a front-lagoon pizzeria to have the comfort of the landscape, at least. "Downtown" you can smell saltiness, humidity, sewer.. same as always, but in the evening you smell saltiness more than anything, so you feel better and almost think you're on holiday. So here we are, twenty adults who don't know what to do with this meeting, except for buzzing about it the next day, with the only close friend left frome those years. There's the copycat, the never-studying one to whom everybody should always pass the tests but-it's-really-not-fair-'cause-this-is-my-effort-and-you're-taking-advantage-of-it, there's the self-confindent girl damn-English-teacher-wasted-my-high-school-years-but-I-still-have-a-fucking-degree, there's the poser girl from-my-loft-I-can-see-the-London-Eye.. guess what, it's enough to say that you live in London, and you MUST see the london Eye, that big. «Instead I live in Lausanne, and from my loft I can see the lake». It's a joke –of course you can see the lake, you can see it from every house in Lausanne- but He's the only one to get it. Yeah. Of course. He saw it, “the loft”. He was supposed to live with me, in the loft. It was not a must, but it was a plan. At least my plan. Slightly before he planned to tell me "If you love me, stay here". «How are you?» Where do I start from? I'm just like that. I'm looking for something that may not even exist, I'm blaming other people for that happiness that I can't find in what's already there, and that's so much. «I'm fine, and you?» Let me tell you that you look like one whose eyes are full of melancholy and regret. But it could be just my sensation. «Not bad, you know.. the same, you know.» Yeah, the "same" that we used to share day and night, and seemed so worth to me. The same that turned out to be the same, nothing else. So true, the magic vanishes. He's a little fatter, turned a little whiter, he's a little normalized. He's not the man I wanted to marry anymore, I can't recall what I thought was so special about him. Except for the love he felt for me. «How's your job, how do you feel living in Switzerland?» You mean, except for those two lonely months spent crying? And the remaining time healing the wounds, to finally find out that I'm stronger by myself? And those pathetic attempts to hear each other? As if we could really remain friends, after all? «I was sorry not to hear from you again» «I think it was better like that» «Yeah, maybe you're right» Still don't have the guts, uh, even after all those years? I don't know what I'm looking for, but it's certainly not here, tonight. Not in his eyes, not in twenty faces that play no role in my life. And I even ate a better pizza in Lausanne. We stand up, a quick walk by the lagoon, then we greet each other. «Well, take care. Maybe we could hear each other, someday.» Yes, of course. Guaranteed. I walk away, breathe deep the air of what used to be my home and I used to think was my whole world. There was a time when I thought I could stop. Then I understood that maybe those who wanted to love me should have followed me - or wait for me, like John Donne's compass. To go back I get on a plane, to escape faster. I take my seat, fasten my seatbelt, watch the lagoon farther and farther away, I fly over the clouds and let myself be blinded by the sun. Beep. A warning has been switched on. It shows a cigarette with a red cross over it. No smoking. Welcome back home.