As some of you already know, In Easter I've expressed my wish to visit Vienna. In this moment so particular for me, the journey has had also several meanings. I mean, of inner research.

Anyway, there're some references to recent events.. For example I've been there also because I wish to see the Archbishop of Wien, that Christoph Schönborn that's considered one of the future Popes. Very communicative, with a so gentle and smiley face, doctrinally well formed, open to dialogue with the other churches. I would like to see him, in the S.Stephan Cathedral, but in those days unfortunately he was in Jerusalem. But, let's say, he has come to us, since he's in Rome from some day, and just the last Thurdsay I've saw him in the Mass he's doing in the ancient monastery of SS.Quattro Coronati. This is confirming my first impression of a carismatic as simple person!

Not as an oppressive burden, but rather as a melody from bygone days which now pervades the air again, a medley of Viennese valtzer, the Radetzky March and a Bruckner symphony. In Vienna, particularly in the First District, the air really seems to swing. Apart from nostalgic baroque, however, one also discovers contemporary architecture extending its tentacles in the form of glass-and-chromium buildings, right into the heart of the city, to the Stephansplatz, where the cathedral’s spire points skywards like giant stalagmite. Visitors climbing to the top are rewarded with a view of Vienna reaching far into the surrounding countryside in an ascending panorama. On the outskirts of Vienna a new district called Donau-City is being constructed by architects inspired not so much by baroque criteria as by the skyline of places such as Frankfurt and Chicago.

Modern Viennese art, fashion and ‘scene’ are impressive, yet form merely one facet of the spectrum. After the fall of the Iron Curtain which for so long cast a dark shadow over the western world, Vienna is once more located in the middle of Central Europe. The city has become a junction connecting the continent’s eastern and western parts, a role it already fulfilled once when an empire of 53 million citizens was governed from here. At present, however, political power is no longer involved, but rather cultural stimuli and lifestyle. Vienna has become a ‘definer of style’ again. Many of the numerous museums and cultural institutions are truly exemplary and make Austria into one of the most important cultural centres in Europe.

A visit to Vienna is like a stroll through the past, for almost nowhere else is history so close at hand. In the innumerable coffee-houses, often fitted with antique furniture, newspapers are provided free to the customers, a mixture of romantics and managerial types clutching an art-tourist guidebook or holding a mobile phone to their ear, typify the real ‘Viennese hodge-podge’.

First. This is a bit strange post, just to say it before you read. It's sad, given the argument, it's intimistic, and I hope not so dark, a bit unbearable, absolutely personal, of no interest except for those good friends who read me in the net, with whom I have a relationship of continuous astonishment ("You truly you read me? Ah.").

Today it's one year since my father disappeared. Therefore, cold, I write it so I then say the same to me and to you. His memory in my heart is always alive, and always suffers everier time that I rethink to how much I could be better, with him, when he was here.

I do not know which type of purgatory he is doing now, but surely all that problems that I have made to him while he was still alive, will be very useful now. On the other side, I think by now he has finally understood that I wanted so much love to him, although I never succeeded to say it to him. And this, sincerely, is Bad.

In kind, each time it happens something important, there's an anecdote to tell. In effect, I don't have so much wish to tell now, but... the anecdote is much simple.

Yesterday I was in phone with a dear friend of mine, and I was remembering to him 'You know, tomorrow is a year that...'. Then he says 'It's already passed a year.' a bit darkened. So he asked me: 'You have felt this year?'

I obviously answered yes. For me this has been a year lived intensely, much difficult, much dense and... a lot suffered. Before the passing of my father, then a sentimental story that I was living so much. Nevertheless, this question has made me reflecting.

One year is gone. And, apart from the suffering, the pain for the beloved persons, what has happened in me?

In the conversations between Morpheus and Neo, in the interesting "Matrix" movie (the first one), there's this phrase that's one of most hitting me: "It's all the life that you have the feeling that is something not quadrant in the world. You do not know well what it's about, but you perceive it".

How many of us have thought the same things, and continue to having this same feelings, as I have had.
We perceive when we see the suffering on the face of the others, when we see a unjustice on a brother, when we think to the outrages but also when we feel ourselves in guilt, for having more than it's up to us, and we ask ourselves which sense has this disparity.
We perceive when we read the history books, when we assist to the natural catastrophes, when we endure twisting, when, in bottom, we do not succeed to understand the logic that there is behind all this.

Nevertheless we know already the answer: just like in Matrix, the problem is the question. Everyone gives the own answer, the own life key, the way in order to go ahead: who tries to believe in the immutable laws of the universe, like if were one that is there from eternity, who believes in religious kinds...
We have the religions, yes, that they supply the answers. But Jesus, in particular, was much precise one and revealed, something of disturbing on that Jewish one (but he is not about that I wanted to speak now).

When we try to make ourself that question, we always end in the order to deceive to discover some new illusions. In the film Keanu Reeves will ask "What is the Matrix" and the illusion will be that it's a machine, even a bit mystical, but always bad.

In the question there is therefore the paradox of knowing that often the answer is within of us.

Well, if I can say to have made something in this year, this is the inner search. To face ourselves, believe to me, is the more difficult thing. Often we fight against us, and obviously, we are our worst enemy. I'm still searching..

I like to have discovered this phrase just yesterday, reading for case one of Hermann Hesse.
'If you hate a person,
you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.'

We are all sad for the lost of John Paul II, the Holy Father returned to the house of Father in 2 April, 2005.

Here an handy link to the Special on Pontificate that is on the Vatican website, very impressive and hopeful.

I will post soon some of my strong feelings in S.Peter these days. (You can see some photos in flickr, since I was very long time here, it's near my house).