I almost reached Piazzale Michelangelo – aware of a beating heart – only a small slope remaining but I decided to cut through to the Giardino delle Rose, where I sit in the shade impressed by the vigorous shoots of the roses – no flowers yet, of course. Knocked off course by the recent nose bleed event – now nearly three weeks ago – though I remain nervous of possible repetitions.
Palazzo Vecchio crenellated and pushing into the sky, the image of Renaissance power, the oligarchs of the past. Now we are seeing the current rise to power of plutocrats and oligarchs, the pirates of our time, who are having great success in undermining “our” democracy. Is democracy too demanding? The work of democracy too hard? After all we have to think, read, study, debate: the corruption of consumerism is easier. We can surrender to the demands and blandishments, the illusion of a life both comfortable and easy, told to us in simple images by the advertising industry, those agents of the hyper-wealthy while they “hide” their stolen treasure in some tax haven idyll. Just like the pirates of old.
How did this happen?
Pirates and slavery . . . or “as close to slavery as we can manage”
Somewhere there is the point at which life turns into death. Loss of blood, for example, takes one towards that point. And recently I was taken closer to that point on the occasion of a nose bleed. Because I am taking warfarin (to reduce the possibility of a a DVT following surgery last year) the nosebleed was reluctant to stop. So it was necessary to volunteer a trip to the nearby pronto soccorso, the A & E here in Italy, to experience the distinctly uncomfortable intervention of tampons being stuffed into my nasal cavities. Losing blood, on this occasion mostly swallowed, takes one towards the sense of the danger of losing ones life, it flows out (or in) with the blood. In the following days there were a couple of times I nearly fainted. I felt weak, I vomited blood: where was I on the thread between life and death?