HERE AM I

I was born in Rome some thirty years ago and in the last five I lived in the most amazing island on the planet, Manhattan. The Harlem district, where I ended up casually on my first trip to New York, became a “home,” and I would not change it with any West Village or UES.

The human variety I experience every day, just getting out of the door, electrifies me, oblige me to keep my curiosity towards the world always on. I like to go downstairs and enter a Dominican bodegas where I buy platanos or typical sweets as tres leches and I find myself dancing while I pay to the salesman. Instead, in the corner of 144th Street with Broadway, the Deli is run by Yemen guys. Whenever in the small grocery store, Arabic music transports me to the Middle East. I love this Open Helix Deli, I can even order food at 4am if I’m hungry. In a matter of ten minutes I deliver home a Double Cheeseburger with fries.

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Here is my first blog (bilingual and one day perhaps trilingual, because it’s English, Italian and Spanish that I find myself talking every day depending on contexts, interlocutors, and even mood) is born from the willing to tell New York City undoubtedly, but not only. We are always ON THE ROAD. Even when we’re not on the go. We are inevitably exposed to life, encounters, the unforeseen, the falls, the ending “gasoline” leaving us still on foot, On the Road anyway.

The two versions of the blog are not mere translations of one another, but different language sites where the writing process can take unexpected bends. This is especially true for the “Italian” sector, where language that I understand by birth allows me greater freedom of expression, and the narrative trails will be riskyly wilder.