The Press no. 2/2011
Absence plus acute presence. A line, a poem by the superb, adored Attilio Bertolucci that condenses a feeling that is more than a pain, more than a suffering that can have no end. More than a thousand words, it compresses but does not reduce. It enlarges and magnifies a condition that will forever remain chronic, a pang that assaults you from behind abruptly and unexpectedly even when expected. The non-place of pure pain is a house with no windows, no doors, no light, no voices. A territory from which, however, you would not know and would not want to get out.
“Absence plus acute presence.” A condition, a lack already unacceptable when the logical illogicality of life forces an intuited tear. But when they take a daughter away from you, little one, all the poetry, all the logic, all the rationales, all the considerations, all the lucidity, all the purposefulness goes out the window. Your heart breaks, but you are compelled to go on living. And that’s when there are those who scramble to describe the hole of not knowing, the peak of hope, the flat constancy of pain with hours and hours, days and weeks of daytime and nighttime “live” where anyone has a say. This is the rude intrusion of “insiders,” of the dutiful of the ratings, of the right to report that with the alibi of “might need” does not have the decency to stop.
Chilling. Meanwhile, a few, perhaps many, perhaps too many work at the mystery with a wide variety of tools. Even the bogus ones at the start are valid. An army of psychics is trying to “sense” elusive dimensions, as dogs have already done with smells, and computer scientists with traceable physical waves. It is all worth it because it is worth it. They are also worth three hundred, three thousand “psychics” to try to calm the despair.
Rather than trusting in the extra-sense, I like to imagine a huge telepathic cloud, generated by the apprehension of all the alert people, pressing down and oppressing those responsible for the ruthless kidnapping. Because that child, like all children who have been stolen, abused or killed, is also our child. Pain annihilates, but one must continue to hope. To hope that everything will return to normal, that the little girl will be returned, that she will go home and slowly forget this horror. This is what I wish for Yara’s parents to whom I allow myself, on tiptoe, to send a silent hug.
