People can spend their honestly earned money the way they like, obviously. I spend a lot of money on books. I have an insane passion for books, besides for their contents, books like concrete objects I mean.

I’m unable to read anything on those e-book readers or tablets or whatever, you know what I’m speaking off, I don’t know their right name in English either.

First of all it proves that I’m a real troglodyte, but at least I’m not a too stubborn and presumptuous one, because I have tried, before  deciding that those immaterial written words deprived me of the  subtle material pleasure of reading.

I know, I know…e-books can be stocked in huge quantity into the generous memory of a small iPad (or iPod? You see I even ignore happily and carelessly the difference between them), you can carry your private library everywhere, you don’t need to dust your books and to have big bookshelves to pile them up: it’s all quite true. Nevertheless I cannot live in a house without books mercilessly and randomly piled up everywhere and, even though I hate to dust, generally speaking, dusting my book allows me to have a kind of privileged physical contact with them and perceive a tactile symbiosis, having the impression to take good care of their well-being as well.

Sometimes I force myself to get rid of certain books which I didn’t like that much and, for sure, I would never read anymore. Even in this case I feel a kind of pain in eliminating them, as if they were innocent little soldiers which had done her duty, even though they had never been able to be brilliant heroes.

I have learnt, at least a little, to develop a certain instinct for books which can be meaningful for me, but I still commit mistakes in the delicate field of choice. Sometimes - fortunately it’s rare – I buy a book which I hate from the first pages. I feel immediately a kind of negative vibration. It’s not like the little soldier books I mentioned at all, the disappointing ones, which didn’t leave any impression, neither good or bad on me and I tend to get rid of, after a while to make some places for the new ones. When I start reading a book, which produces an immediate and often irrational sense of reject in me, I must throw it away instantaneously, as if it was something contagious which could infect my library. The intruder must be taken down in the street  and mercilessly condemned to  the public dusty bin. The last book which had this dramatic fate was one by the infamous Dan Brown http://www.pbase.com/mardoli/image/120719962.

We always learn something worthy from our mistakes. In all cases I nearly never buy a book choosing it from the best-sellers list. I have just come back from Florence and I have been told I should buy Brown’s last “opus”, which is located in Florence and Venice. Oh, never in my life. I have learnt the lesson.

I think that one of the main reasons for which I write here, every now and then, some of my irrelevant thoughts is really due to the limited visibility on this virtual note book.

I have a sincere and warm disliking for all the most popular social networks and for their fundamental mechanism. I’m aware that it’s a kind of snobbish trend to criticize sarcastically Twitter, Facebook and the others, the name of which I sincerely ignore. I feel uncomfortable in the wave of snobbish trends, because I feel uncomfortable in all trends. But it remains a matter of fact that, besides all that, I don’t like social networks.

This half-hidden journal is a more suitable environment for me. It’s like writing something on a sheet of paper, which I leave on the kitchen table at my home, without locking the door: if someone passes-by and feels like giving a look, well, it’s there on the table. I know it might sound  absurd in this social context where so many people consider  absolutely important to attract attention, to be visible and so on, but I write here  mainly for myself, it’s a way to put order in my untidy ideas, to  record some impressions.  Often it’s complicated to sum up a thought in meaningful words. We think to have all clear in our mind, but then, when we try to express the concept, we realize by ourselves that the words we choose are not the most suitable and the concept cannot go through.

Words are important. 

Anonymous letters have always provoked a creeping feeling of uneasiness due not necessarily to their contents, but to the fact that the writer knows who the addressee is, while the addressee ignores the identity of the sender. It provokes an unbalanced situation which is always source of psychological discomfort, because precludes completely the possibility of a dialogue or an explication.

The person who receives an anonymous letter is forced to have a passive role, deprived of any chance to get further in the communication.

Nevertheless I realize that anonymous letters, in this old fashioned style, belong in a certain way to the past, when still people used to send real letter. Nowadays the principle is the same, but the form has changed and has been amplified and enlarged by the caution which, in a motivated way, most of people adopt for their communication on the web.

One of the paradoxes of Internet is that huge quantity of social contacts is kept among people who actually don’t know each other’s identity.

If you are casually here, now reading my erratic thoughts, you might have a more or less precise idea about me. It’s my website and I post openly my name and my personal email address.

But there is nothing which can give you the absolute certitude that I’m what I affirm to be, even though in a superficial and not too personal way. I might be a Dutch butcher who pretends to be a middle aged female Swiss photographer…who knows?

In all cases , if you feel like reacting to some statement which is posted here, it doesn’t matter if by a female Swiss photographer or a Dutch butcher, you have the possibility to do it, since  I give some elements which allow people to contact me personally and usually I answer.

The matter is different if  someone leaves comments or  make any kind of criticism  to what I display in my websites or my photo galleries in a totally anonymous way, hidden behind that  banal common label “guest” which identifies in all forums of website those  people who  express their opinions without accepting to get any reply.

I suppose that it’s very common on social networks, but I have nothing to do with social networks, which I happily avoid in all their possible kinds and forms.

Personally I have not been affected by anonymous remarks very often. I post my photos on a couple of photographic sites and this is all or nearly all as for my presence on Internet, beside this sporadic  display of casual thoughts here in this half-hidden personal journal. The very few times I have received remarks from people who considered better to stay hidden like scared little mice under the shelter of totally anonymity in order to not allow me to answer, in case I had felt like doing that, I have found their statement quite stupid, so honestly I have not had for a single second the intention to answer, event thought they had given me a chance to.

In many cases I found the whole matter half hilarious (for me) and half sad (for them). There are so many more important things in life!

Today an anonymous person left a comment to one of my photographic galleries posted on PBase. This person took the time to log out from his/her PBase account to be sure his/her comment  could not be related with it and then wrote to me a totally stupid question, to which I cannot reply, even though I had decided to, because, obviously I don’t know how to address my reply.

This little fact without any importance made me think over in a more general way. This person was not directly offensive or rude in his/her words. He/she asked me how I could get have my galleries in the popular page of PBase since I received only few votes. It was a very naïve and silly questions and I would have answered kindly, explaining to the mysterious writer, obviously so concerned by the ephemeral “glory” to have a series of amateur photos a little more visible for a week, that it’s impossible to know who really voted for a gallery on PBase and it’s not necessary to receive hundreds of votes of preferences to appear for a few days among the favourites of the week.

Well, after all, I don’t think I’d have answered. What for? An adult person, who remains stuck to such useless little matters and has not the honesty to take the responsibility for his/her thoughts, doesn’t deserve any attention. Generally speaking it’s a bit melancholy.

Oscar Wilde said:

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

It’s melancholy that some people need to hide themselves behind a mask to express their opinion, melancholy and mean.