The Parrots by Filippo Bologna

remained on the stage was a Caravaggesque face, a head topped with unkempt white hair and suffused with light in the midst of darkness. Silence fell over the auditorium. The Master dug his glasses out of his pocket again. He cleaned them on his shirt tail, which was sticking out of his trousers, and put them on. He searched in his jacket pocket and took out his notebook.
    He opened it.
    He closed it.
    He opened it again.
    He closed it again.
    The differences that exist between a conventional imitation moleskine notebook and a urination diary would not have escaped a trained eye, from the format—the notebook being smaller and more compact, the diary larger—to the cover—the former stiffwith elastic, the latter pliable. Not to mention the paper—slightly yellowish for the notebook, strictly white for the dairy—and the layout—simple horizontal lines for the notebook, a preprinted grid complete with headings (
volume of urine in the measuring cup, time, voluntary urination, involuntary episode, intensity and urgency of the stimulus, notes, etc.
) for the diary.
    Even though the differences are so marked, it would be unfair to ignore the slight analogies presented by the two objects. Let’s see: both have dark covers and… well, that’s it really. There aren’t actually any others.
    But to weak eyes looking for an object in a dark room, such fragile similarities can become fatal. Eyes deceived rather than supported by the other senses. Like a hasty touch, which trusts the first object within reach, even though positioned, it should be said, deceptively close to the second object.
    That’s why it is hardly surprising if, leaving home in a mad rush, because of the delay, in the absence of electricity (the fuse box had blown again), in the dark and without glasses, with The Director of The Small Publishing Company continuing to sound his horn implacably to hurry him up, The Master had committed a fatal and perhaps even unforgivable error.
    The Master now stood at the lectern in front of the packed auditorium with his urination diary in his hand. Time flowed like liquid, emptying the space of his consciousness and filling the space of the theatre, as he cleared his throat and read in a steady voice:
    Time: 5:30
    Volume: 340 ml.
    Urination: voluntary
    Intensity: moderate
    Urgency: pressing
    Notes: farted
    The Master stared with his little eyes into the auditorium: all he saw was a kind of human vineyard, rows and rows of heads turned towards him.
    The theatre was silent for a moment, holding back from delivering its verdict. The first to break the stalemate was The President, who started clapping, in a somewhat lukewarm manner at first, but eventually triggering a thunderous round of applause from the audience.
    “You’ve really surpassed yourself. In the concision of these lines, worthy of the greatest Hermetic poets, we see a painful attempt to convey the tragic nature of existence, in a classical form invigorated by postmodernism, which recovers and recycles heterogeneous material…”
    The Master was a poet.

 
    Everything looks better from above. Even Rome. The great roads choked with traffic, the sick old snake of the walls, the flying saucer of the Pantheon taking off over the oblivious ruins, the empty streets and the arenas orphaned of champions, the elusive aqueducts and decapitated columns, the arches sinking beneath the weight of their own beauty, the silent temples and dazzling squares and glittering fountains, the steps flooded with light, the motionless obelisks propping up the distracted skies, the palaces of the popes opposite the beehives of their servants, the martial towers and peaceful belfries, the remains reduced to cats’ cradles and the monuments to birds’ nests, the turgescent domes and hidden cloisters, the red tennis courts like chips on the green baize of the meadows on the Via Cassia, the unauthorized swimming pools in the villas on the Via Appia and the luxuriant palms in the gardens