September 24th 2023
Lenin
Such a powerful magician has summoned me back to the world of above. I forgot how it could come out to be so colourful and varied. Each time I speak with someone about my writings, I discover that they could evoke the most different reaction. Only few try to quote me and few others, well brainwashed by the propaganda of my followers, prefer to rely on few satisfied sentences propagated among the usual conferences and public speeches. I cannot understand when the point of not returning begins, when men start to lose their individuality and become a mob. Not generally speaking about the mob, but about the members of a larger structure that looks to behave in a much more different way. That is the mass that can be governed by superior and clever political minds, not necessarily honest, but with a precise goal in mind. Since, when the mobs perceive that there is no clear plan in the intentions of their leader, if not perhaps to satisfy their ego, the men come back to their status of independent individuals. Until a new leader does not come out from the darkness and provides new instructions. I am not a leader anymore, if not the ghost of my past. As in the Dickens’ Carroll, I need to look for the ghost of my current present if I want to find a purpose once again.
The art dealer
Today I have suffered a further defeat because of David Hockney. That is a name that I love, but that has caused me two severe curses within six months. In the middle of march of this year, I had been so scolded, by my boss, due to the failed sale of a copy of the Bigger Book, Art Edition C, that I feared for my job. Now that I secured my position once again, I had the bad idea to suggest to my boss to buy the complete edition of the Bigger Books, all four of them, and to try the chance by Phillips Hockney’s day. I cannot understand whether there is a general interest to cool down the market, but today I saw a drop of more than one hundred percent in the realised prices. That is the first time that I experienced a loss in the art market with the exception of a loss in terms of a missed deal. Such an unknown situation makes me feel unsure about my fortune. Yet, when I look all around me, I am noticing that art galleries are not performing so badly, nor that their owners are starving. I am imagining myself in front of Mr Norner, my boss, who loves to make his statements so loud that he could be heard from the street. He should have been a wonderful left wing agitator during his freshman year. He is now the owner of a medium size enterprise and I do not want him as an enemy of mine. I will find a way to balance the loss.
The consultant
I should have joined a project one week ago, but suddenly I decided to resign and to look for a different life. My boss went crazy when he received the news, as did many other colleagues who were relying on me for the new initiatives. Especially the business managers, who had worked for so long to sustain my profile and they are now feeling betrayed by my irrational decision. That is apparently so, but if they only knew what happened to me during the last weekend, they would judge me from a different point of view. At first, just to be concise, I received an expected huge amount of money, enough to sustain my whole existence in a decent way from the most extraordinary encounter. I indeed decided to spend the weekend walking around Lake Zurich. There are wonderful hiking paths that everybody would enjoy. It is hard to choose, but I eventually decided for Horgen and Hirzel. Horgen is a nice former industrial town on the lake, reachable by boat from Bürkliplatz. Hirzel is a former municipality now aggregated to Horgen and it is already in the mountains. From the piers in Horgen, it is reachable within two hours by foot. Hirzel also hosts a museum dedicated to Johanna Spyri, Heidi’s author, who was born there. I have loved Heidi since my childhood, and I brought with me a copy of the novel, that one I always kept with me wherever I relocated. It was a gift of my granny, who always told me it was precious. I did not expect what she really meant, because an old man, nicknamed the Wizard, paid me five millions to get it.
