Progress (one afternoon in L'Aquila with Matteo Grimaldi) L'Aquila, after two years, is a walk that forced cuts the center of the net. Everything else, the whole grid of streets around the main vein is closed. The blood no longer flows, even if it is "red zone". The walk forced
at your disposal
, in fact, it forces you to see, but above all it requires you to not see.
All around you, the Medieval and Renaissance
the twentieth century and now are living with wounds that are scars in the stone, wearing a new coat: the structures of wood and iron scaffolding of the new skeleton to take up so illusory a city, emptied of its inhabitants as the main walls of his apartment
. If
L'Aquila standing materially, there . But only in the image, and imagination. Why
L'Aquila there, yes, but a few yards further down: in writing, in photos, poetry, testimonies
hanging on the railings which encase - the latter - as there is still
architecturally accessible, even if only the eyes. And from a distance.
The old town of L'Aquila, now, it's a dismal postcard where the raindrops reverberating more steps, since they are a lot less. And for the most part are those of the military rubbery.
"But because there were few people it rains? "Ask Matt.
" No, there were few people just "you replied Matthew, perhaps saying more with silence the next.
It is in aware that his silence - and forbidden in your silence - that somewhere
prohibited appears every so often a rattle
. What is a hammer, drill a roar, a creaking pulley: any employee is working, but is isolated and - look - it seems more lost than you.
After two years, L'Aquila seems to stop at the day of the earthquake, like the hands of the clock of the golden square, in the rigor mortis of 03:33.
And while every building has its scaffolding so that seem the hallmark of survival of
vertical,
reconsider little terrified after six
idea that they remain there forever.
"There is a plan to rebuild the city," Matt tells you, and your eye falls on a poster:
Bricklayer looking for work, complete with a mobile number. You seem a paradox, where you thought you'd find there, if not the
rebirth of the Phoenix from its ashes, at least the fervor, the noise
constructive of workers at work. In that silence
inappropriate written words, and hung on the barricade, screaming. That 's what he wants to repopulate the blood of these arteries, without dirtying their clubs of those who keep the image upright.
seem equally provisional homes in the suburbs. Neighborhoods photocopy on stilts
seismic, square, with wooden balconies to emanate warmth, and waving the tricolor
faded. Functional as
of apartments in holiday villages
brochures, and yet - if what should be temporary in the center tends to "forever" - you can easily stumble into thinking that they are also backed up these
sides steppe-like plains . The man who walked the dog in the yard to measure the lady hanging clothes on the balcony-between-the-bounding rectangles, the children return from school backpackers are real, but only the trees placed equidistance around there with
have planted roots.
"From January 2011 you start to pay off the mortgage arrears over the houses," says Matthew.
"What holiday?" I ask you with dismay, thinking the casings of the old town.
But then Matthew says something like:
"I was afraid of dying, while my house was shaking and earthquake roared around me like an animal bigger than me too. And now I've learned not to take for granted the time, because
is at your disposal to a certain point. "
And in that moment you shut up,
seeing a crack in this which is a chink in the future.
But not last long, because of cracks real now, I've seen too much. Nor the warmth of the sun-soaked clouds can calm your return.
