Lives Lived And Re-told

My handsome & chubby cat Carlo was named after the great Italian-born anarchist and antifascist leader Carlo Tresca (1879-1943). All my cats for many years now have had the names of long-dead anarchists who, at some point, lived here in Philadelphia, as Tresca did from 1904-1909. Behind the anarchist moggy is his namesake's biography, re-released in an enlarged paperback edition last year. I know the author, and the book is as fine as it can be. Nunzio Pernicone's father was involved in an anarchist theater group and knew Tresca, so this book has been in the making for most of his life. Tresca deserves the best scholarly work, as his achievements loom very tall in the times he lived in, if one knows when to look up.

I'm in my third reading of Carlo Tresca: Portrait Of A Rebel, and I've been promising a review to a magazine for over a year now. "Writer's block" is not a myth. It's a heart-breaking, hopeless feeling that feels like a physical disability sometimes.

Also current in my readings is a very interesting book, sent to me as an early Christmas gift by that legendary blipper of wind-swept Wales, Ceridwen. Though it has a popular-sounding, sensational title, the book deals with personalities and events of anarchist history that simply aren't stylish and tell of anarchism and its believers in the complex scenes of 19th Century Europe. Three chapters in, it's a very fine volume.

I chatted on line for most of an hour in the evening with a friend who is currently working at a research station in Antarctica. Ever since he took that job I've been dreaming of going there myself. But this time, his descriptions of co-workers were close matches to me in terms of age, temperment, and life-situation.

I can taste the snow, I fan feel the icy wind on my face. Adventures of this sort have defined my life since the 1980s. This would be an epic journey and a renewal for me. Later this winter, I'll apply.