Even though i spend every day speaking online to my Italian friends in dire straits, even though i sing dance and cry with and for them, even though i anxiously follow the statistics of the corona virus spread which are worse every day than the predictions…i must admit that now i am on a turning point. Either i will understand them and join them or just forget it, let them fight it out as the Brexiters are doing.
Italian premiere just announced that he is afraid that Italians will not be able to endure the severe restrictions psychologically… so in italy only half measures for now even though they have the highest death rate in the world…Chinese scientists and doctors who came to help them just said, this won’t do, if you don’t help yourselves we cannot help you…
The so called Italian lifestyle that was promising the longest life…

Last night people in Belgrade, Serbia applauded again vastly and loudly the medical staff, just as they are doing it regularly in Italy, with singing and banging of hope …yesterday Italy had the biggest death toll ever 475 and the military were engaged in helping with the coffins…Listen to the science, act with conscience… there are bigger things than an individual or politicians…the concert and concept of solidarity is underway finally…

T. from Rome writes:

This morning I saw the army trucks transporting the dead bodies in Bergamo and I had a breakdown… so surreal, too much horrors. And too many people in Lombardia are still required to go to factories and workplaces even if they don’t work in undeferable fields. Why our government is not shutting down everything? why are those people being sacrificed in the name of profits for the fews? after all, we already know that there will…

Right now i am staying in the the house of Rasa Livada (1948-2007), Serbian poet from Zemun, Belgrade on Danube who wrote a book of poems “Karantin” in 1977
He used to prophesize, A Livada kaze…and Livada says…

Purgatory

Everyone keeps on asking that question. You’d be surprised:
For such a long time the most beautiful and biggest building
In town has been the Quarantine Office.

If you scratched its mortar you’d be able—
even at this very moment—to dig out a rib
or the shin-bone of a construction worker.

You can tell there was a dungeon
stretched between the earth and the underworld,
between the earth and sky.

And there were those
who travelled along Rodopi’s cable
to find their fathers who’d escaped the region
and gone to Hellada
as well as those who had come from Jerusalem and Smyrna
only to migrate then to Poland and Germany
(multiplying…

An Imagined Letter from Covid-19 to Humans
Stop. Just stop.
It is no longer a request. It is a mandate.
We will help you.
We will bring the supersonic, high speed merry-go-round to a halt
We will stop
the planes
the trains
the schools
the malls
the meetings
the frenetic, furied rush of illusions and “obligations” that keep you from hearing our
single and shared beating heart,
the way we breathe together, in unison.
Our obligation is to each other,
As it has always been, even if, even though, you have forgotten.
We will interrupt this broadcast, the endless cacophonous broadcast of divisions and distractions,
to bring you this long-breaking news:
We are not well.
None of us; all of us are suffering.
Last year, the firestorms that scorched the lungs of the earth
did not give you pause.
Nor the typhoons in Africa,China, Japan.
Nor the fevered climates in…

EMERGENCY state in Serbia since last night! Our premiere said, we are closing our borders, all coronas came from Italy…Milano… he said it several times. NOTA BENE VERY IMPORTANT: not all viruses came from Italy to Serbia, as they didn’t come only from China to Italy. An elderly couple in northern Italy beat up a young local Chinese woman at the beginning of corona outbreak . I wonder if they are alive today and who is beating them! They are proved to be indigenous too…several different types growing and spreading locally.
USA’s Trump is also neglectfully blaming the Other instead of taking care of all. People paranoid about safety, money, supplies…all real issues in wrong order and context.
Racism, selfishness, ignorance instead of solidarity and tenderness. Activism now is less preaching more doing , cut the bullshit!
People in the markets in Zemun, Belgrade don’t wear masks, but they keep…

Irvine california panel
Misha Glenny, Jasmina Tesanovic