What Kant and Cartesio, Adorno and Sartre have to do with me and my friend Niki?
A lot, if you are curious to know....
A friendship is shaped by the accumulation of words, the sharing of experiences.......and for us by those long nights spent studying Philosophy in college, during those hot Italian summer nights ....
July is a month we didn’t plan to spend in that way...curved over books, pressed against each other on those crowded buses to attend the lessons of our celebrated professors...famous and important intellectual prominent figures which purpose on life, we were absolutely sure of it, was torturing us.
I didn’t want to study Kant those nights.....
I wanted to have wild sex that summer.
I remember that I was dating 3 guys that summer.....those long hours studying Sartre didn’t let me much time to devote to a lot less philosophical matters..
She wanted to practice her piano and volunteering with her church missionary projects...yet it was Philosophy that tied us up at that desk in her small room, crowded with so many tomes and pictures on the walls of Mozart and Beethoven ...
We used to meet after dinner, around 9....outside her window the air was so lasciviously temping......the smell of the geranium from her mother’s balcony was pungent......the voices of the passerby walking after their own dinners eating a gelato were music......the strong smell of the sea coming from the nearby beach too hard to resist......we had to fight against all of this ...
.
We used to seat with a heavy sigh on our chairs...
A friendship was deepening though.......so in reality we didn’t waste any moment of those beautiful nights..
We studied hard and with profit.....some evenings...
Some other nights.......we merely flipped those pages, we probably would get up three thousand times to have a glass of iced tea.....
But then after 4 hours of existentialism, cosmic pessimism, battle between Ragione and Etica....we just couldn’t take it anymore..
“Let’s go” I was always the first one to say ........i was the rebel one, remember this...lol..
But she was ready in following me...
Sweet words.. let’s go.....lets take the key of the car and lets go...
Bye Kant, bye Bacone, bye Platone....
It would be almost one in the morning though......but nobody was sleeping anyway...it was July.....remember?..
Our favorite route was going down the ocean front boulevard and drive close to the beach....the night was still young ....people was seating outside the cafe, walking, getting in or out the clubs or the beach bars....
But we wouldn’t stop there......
.
Our friendship has always been a neutral territory.....I knew that all her friends would have found me too blunt, too outrageous, too provocative and different....and she knew my friends would have founds her too conservative, too pious, too cautious....but we had that wonderful territory where we could meet each other and be true to ourselves and appreciate our differences without interferences......
Only our mutual friend K was allowed to enter in that kingdom and share it with us.......we were the three Musketeers......
But we had to bury our sweet K together years later.......again supporting each other....
But that July after studying we would cruise along the beach boulevards.....getting further and further from the center of the city.......from the noise....the crowd, the gatherings, the restless, beautiful young people looking for something to fulfill their lives...
We were sure to have found that something in our in our friendship, we were sufficient to each other...
I was the one driving most of the time...I had a Fiat Panda....a car slightly larger than the infamous Fiat Cinquecento...the smallest car on Earth at that time....it was my first brand new car.....because the Cinquecento I had from my brother was a third generation car and died on me after few months.....
I had also a stereo in the Panda......no CD player though.....only tapes....
We would pop in our beloved Mozart and we would go further in the hillside, or the country side or very often toward the beach around the Castle Odescalchi....from which towers the noble family Odescalchi in 1348 witnessed the bloody naval battle that killed all their younger sons....
We would roll the windows down.....we both were smoking at that time...my favorite were Camel or Malboro.....she liked lighter cigarettes....i used to smoke one packet a day....
The red little dots of our cigarette were constantly moving .....the car had a manual stick...naturally.....i have always loved to drive fast...surely too fast.......
She would trust me but once in a while she would let out a ‘Attenta. Vai un po’ piu’ piano”...Careful, Why don’t you slow down?”
And we would talk.....talk.......talk like there was no tomorrow .....
That summer we were both heart broken...all those guys I was dating were only a palliative I was using to get over the drama of my life...a 5 years of passionate love that fell in pieces in the turn of a day....
She was on and off a longtime relationship with the father of her son.....a married man who for the rest of his life wouldn’t ever find the gut to leave his wife ...she knew he was weak and a coward......but she loved him, she had that son with him.......
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So I was cursing my man ...she was cursing hers....we were laughing at each other, supporting decisions or telling to each other how stupid the other was, how naive and gullible...... we were imagining horrible deaths for the two women who were taking our men from us...
Many times we would drive in front of our men homes.......spying windows lights, checking if they were at home, if they were alone or not...
Oh, what a silly girls we were.....so young and heart broken but so close.
An even closer we grew up along all these past years.....
Life threw against her a nasty thing.......her lover died the year after I moved here in Us.....she called me from Italy talking about his accident, his coma, her sneaking in the hospital at night to see him when his wife would leave his room, her trying to avoid his family.....her desperate attempt to attend his funeral....our friend K talked her out of it.....we talked to each other about it and K promised me to not let her go..
She didn’t... ..she knew better...but after few days she went alone in the cemetery to finally visit his grave and leave on it a flower...only one....
Life threw us away from each other...i moved here....12 years ago we said goodbye...again after a drive in her car....the night before my flight........
We hugged so tight that night I thought I was breaking her....she kissed me on the cheeks for the very first time...she too hugged me amazingly strongly......for a long time....it has been so hard leaving her....i felt my heart breaking inside.......again...
She told me she loved me forever and forever she would have been my friend...
She took her promise.
She called me today.
She said the doctor confirmed the first prognosis: she has a rare case of ovarian cancer.
The oncologist told her he saw only 5 cases in his 23 years of medical experience.
He told her she needs to start chemio tomorrow.
“But its Sunday tomorrow”....i let out stupidly....like cancer respects calendars and people...
Cancer doesn’t do this....Sunday is a good day for a chemio.....
She will also have to undergo another surgery to completely remove her uterus ......
She left me telling me:
“I see myself pushing a stroller with my beautiful, future grandkid inside. And you will be the godmother”.
I would have never imagined a friendship like this coming from studying Kant.
We both passed that test with 30 cum laude. The top. But i never studied again like I studied with her......
What you remember the most about your dearest friend? What made you choose your best friends?
