Originally, I published “The formula to live forever” in Spanish the 10/11/2021 on Facebook. Today, 28/06/2023, I share it again on my website. I did some updates to improve readability, added more pictures, and this English version for reaching a wider audience as my daily post 179. With this text, I celebrated 8 years living in Europe. It is the first chapter that I am transcribing to my website, although I have a series of similar texts from previous anniversaries that I would like to bring here as well. I hope to continue this series in the coming years, and to get them all on the same page. In “The formula to live forever” I speak about some experiences with life and death. I hope you’ll enjoy it reading as much as I enjoyed writing it. Lufo The formula to live forever An Alitalia plane landed in Rome exactly 8 years ago. It had taken off from Ezeiza, Buenos Aires on September 11, 2013. In one of the many seats there was me, with many dreams and little luggage. I had brought my watercolours and my water-brush, gifts from Italian friends, with every intention of using them… and I did it, and I still do. I also went through immigration control at Fiumicino Airport in Rome. Then I bought a coffee and savoured it as if I had never had coffee before in my life. Next, I took a domestic flight to Naples, and at Capodichino Salvatore and Simona were waiting for me. These two lovely souls had taken the time to come and pick me up, even though it was Sunday. Before heading towards Fisciano (where I would stay to study), we made a technical stop at Decathlon. There, I bought the same shoes that Salvatore bought. I did it trusting his judgement, as I have done so many times before and I will undoubtedly continue to do. I paid 7 € for them, and they are probably still the same price today… You might probably still find the same model and colour on the same shelf. That didn’t change, but in my life… What hasn’t changed in my life since then? Getting to know death Each year that passed has been more and more intense. The emotional charge of these years taught me to value every moment of LIFE. Something painful and very intense of these last years was having to sit so often to have coffee with death. I had last greeted Nono Héctor back in 2002. I still remember that his stillness and my mind could not agree: I could see him breathing… but no, he was not breathing. In 2008, a little girl in the family left us when she was just a few months old, leaving us with an immense amount of things to rethink and re-signify. In 2010, it was a little different with my nona Ilda… Perhaps… Maybe because she had spoken to us so much and so calmly about death that I took it more naturally. It wasn’t a wound, it was a kind of previously agreed change of state. In 2012 it was Nancy’s turn, and I still listen to her voice, and see her travelling and having fun. Since then, and despite the fact that la parca siempre viene detrás (the reaper always comes behind), the bony woman has not been near me. However, this lady retaliated with a rather intense series: Vito Cardone In 2019, the reaper came for a person who was key during my first years in Italy: Vito Cardone. She took Vito out with no misgivings, without haste or pause, only after Vito got tired of giving lectures on drawing, politics, literature and many, many other things. Luckily, Vito didn’t live through the pandemic, he didn’t have to learn how to use Zoom or to give lectures with surgical masks. He did not have the pathetic 21st century (in)Shakespearian dilemma of “vax or not vax”. Vito… He gave me the opportunity to tell my stories for the first time at a talk in the university of Salerno in 2012. Moreover, he asked me for two drawings as soon as I arrived in Italy in 2013, one of Villa Rufolo and the other of the Niemeyer auditorium. Then he published both drawings in his book Viaggiatori d’architettura in Italia (Architectural travellers in Italy). With that same Vito I shared books, stories, and lots of amazing moments between Naples, Rome and Salerno. Vito. A very hard blow that I did not speak openly to anyone. Nor did anyone ask me, perhaps because very few had any idea of what Vito represented in my life. The only person who knows it in depth had your own share of pain too. Maybe it was a kind of “mutual understanding”. I didn’t want to see Vito at his funeral. I wanted to keep him in my memory alive. And indeed there he still is, writing e-mails until 9 p.m. at the Fisciano campus… Or eating in some tavern in Naples… He is still there, sharing congresses in Spain and Italy, giving lectures on the life and work of Gaspard Monge and the Grand Tour. There he is, alive. Damaris Balland To inaugurate 2021, the grim reaper showed me his most unpredictable side with the most intense episode I have experienced so far. I hope she’s had enough, but no, she is insatiable… This lady of bones and cloth played a special trick on me. She caught me unawares, with my guard down, or with my attention very much on the other side. Dante explains it perfectly: it is in gardens that we are most vulnerable because we relax more and let our guard down. On 01/01/2021, the reaper had the idea of smoking a cigarette with none other than Damaris. Damaris. That skinny Swiss girl that I loved intensely and who gave me everything and more… That person who learned to free the demons of others like a sorceress,…
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