Status Updates From Il colore dalla memoria

It was an evening when people wanted to notice the trees and the stars that shone through them, they wanted to smell the blossom in the night air and feel the heat coming off the earth. People were in no hurry to be home but when they got back they'd take a bath and go to bed with the warm night air blowing through the windows and touching the curtains, remembering other times like this.

Hidden among the familiar, laughing faces of friends are the glimpsed shapes of strangers; and in the distant homes of tourists there /you/ are, at the edge of the frame, slightly out of focus, in the midst of other peoples' memories. [...] You will find the hurried glance of your own image: queuing at the bar, hurrying for the bus, drinking beer on a roof, bleeding on the floor of the tube,

Over the years my own impatience had become so extreme that I was in danger of becoming incapable of enjoying anything: every activity was an obstacle to the next. [...] I was even in a hurry when I had nothing to do. On buses I watched traffic lights compulsively, dreading a red, loving a green, happiest of all when the bus hurtled past a stop without stopping.

In cinema or books the climax of the action, however calamitous, simplifies and resolves - brings things to an end. In real life calamity and confrontation always bring chores in their wake. [...] Like a friend of mine who got stabbed and got his dole money stopped because he missed his signing-on day and hadn't filled out a sickness form while he was on a life-support machine.

I can SMELL how British this is. I can feel the cells in my body rearranging into clumps that resemble the British flag