I got an email informing me of the death of
Italy Daily.
"We are planning an Irish wake for the demise of Italy Daily/Weekly on - appropriately enough - Friday June 13. Emily Backus has kindly offered to host. The address is Via Sebenico 14, sixth floor, left elevator. Buzzer Backus/Padula.
The cena will commence at 8 PM, and is pot-luck. Emily and I are doing pasta and salad things and Lucia has promised dessert. Other comestibles are welcome and Emily can be reached via xxxxx or at 02 xxxxx for important coordinating and RSVP matters.
To those that can't make it, but would like their presence to be known, we welcome pithy comments that will be read out during the wake. Just send them to me.
Hope you can make it.
I can't make it so I sent my one time coworkers the following:
From Matthew Londan, onetime Italy Daily intern and now slavish embedded PR translator/writer double agent working in the bowels of the auto industry AKA Opel 'Frischer denken für besseres autos'.
Rosebud...
Well that's that.
The cookie crumbles
The center cannot hold (let alone govern).
It's a sad day on the fair fields of Mudville.
Casey corked his bat and the home team stole the election.
There are no [weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the stock market needs some more Viagra.
It certainly feels like the end of the world as we know it.
I haven't felt fine in some time. Maybe it's the fact that I don't like [Germans. Maybe it's the allergy season.
Maybe it’s worse than we think and maybe there really is a touch of gray in the silver lining of every thundercloud].
It might have been heaven, those three months playing journalist at Italy Daily. If not it was close enough to pretend. So now nearly three years later as I sit here in Rüsselsheim, Germany – slacking per usual - I think back on that first day I walked into the offices at Rizzoli with my head hanging down from jet lag and my backpack, laptop and negative scanner. I was so ready to hit the beat, ready to hit the streets looking for a place to sleep. I think I captured the record for the shortest time it took to find a place to live in Milan. What a shit hole that was.
So now I’m told that it’s all over now baby blue for the Italy Daily crew.
And I can’t help but feel a little seasick.
Look here I’ll do my mystic duty and throw the I Ching and read the writing on the wall:
Hexagram #33
The Judgment
Retreat. Success. In what is small, perseverance furthers.
The Image
Mountain under heaven: the image of Retreat.
Thus the superior man keeps the inferior man at a distance, not angrily but with reserve.
Well folks I guess that pegs it down. I guess if anything we should not the coincidence that Christ too bid his farewell at the age of33.
Don’t ask me who the inferior man is or the superior… I don’t know. Maybe they’re one and the same. Sometimes the light’s all shining on me and other times I can barely see.
You know what I’d say. “Let’s smoke a joint! Wake the dead!”
Or as these heroes of mine put it:
Elwood Blues:
It's a hundred and six miles to Chicago.
We've got a full tank of gas,
half a pack of cigarettes,
It's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.
Jake Blues:
Hit it.
Be good you guys. Stay true to yourselves. Don’t ever forget: What you do isn’t who you are.
Shit I hope this isn’t too long…
ciao and say goodnight Gracie...
I got this in reply:
Dear Mr Landan,
thank you very much for your very touching eulogy. I am sure that it will be very well received at our farewell soiree, which I am sorry you will miss. I had not thought of looking to the I Ching for guidance, but we will all take comfort from your findings.
Thanking you again for your kind attention,
I remain.
Betta
A presto
Betta"