Sweet Dreams by Massimo Gramellini Page B

truth.”
    â€œHow old are you?”
    â€œNearly thirty.”
    â€œIt’s the age when you first take stock. I know what you’re feeling: I’ve been there myself. You feel as if you’ve been living on a downwards slope which has brought you to where you are now. As if you’re the product of choices you’ve had nothing to do with but were made by the peoplearound you. Was your mother difficult to deal with when you were growing up?”
    â€œYes, she was . . . quite difficult,” I lied (but not much).
    â€œMy mother is a complete nuisance too!” said the student with the beaming face who’d solved his parking problems.
    â€œYou must learn to accept your mothers,” Che Guevara continued in a subdued tone that made his words seem less peremptory. “Only by accepting your mothers will you learn to accept yourselves and to approach life without a sense of persecution, but with that vigilant nonchalance which is the secret of a life well spent.”
    â€œBut how do you learn to accept yourself?” I asked.
    â€œEach time you kneel down to recite the mantra you must try to reconcile yourself with your mother. Only then will you be able to see the truth as it really is, without the mists which conceal it from the eyes of the weak in spirit. If you want to change the effects, you must change the causes. Life will respond. It always does.”
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    After that evening, all the questions which had been stored away in the loft came down out of their packingcases. Why did my mother have to die so young? Would I have been a different person, a better person, if I’d grown up as part of a loving family? Given that your mother is the first person who teaches you what love is about, was I destined to go on having to learn for the rest of my life?
    Pray and you’ll find the answers, Che Guevara had said. I prayed in Japanese, but the answers didn’t come. So I started to look for them in books, in songs, in endless wearisome conversations with myself.
    One night, after we’d made love, Agnese curled up inside my arms. I tried to synchronize my body to the rhythm of her gentle breathing. Before I spoke to her I wanted to make sure she was asleep.
    â€œI want to be brave and tell you something—you, at least,” I whispered into her armpit. “My mother died when I was nine years old. She did all she could to stay alive until the end, but she couldn’t. And I still can’t accept she died, you see? It’s unfair, and I’ve still got to understand why. In those Greek tragedies you love so much there’s always someone who takes revenge and restores the equilibrium that has been destroyed. But who can I take revenge on? On God who killed her and took her away from me? How can I, if I don’t know where he lives or what he’s like? Andin any case your Buddha says that revenge doesn’t restore equilibrium, it just creates new imbalances.”
    The morning after I woke up to a smell of coffee and Agnese’s face smiling over me.
    â€œI had a strange dream last night,” she began. “There was a liar in my bed who was telling me the truth.”
    â€œDid you have a soft spot for him, a little?”
    â€œI told him to stop thinking over things all the time and to start feeling.”
    â€œGood advice. And what does the chef recommend for breakfast this morning?”
    â€œSomething to set you on the right path again.”
    She handed me a tray. On it there was a cappuccino, a croissant and the photocopy of a Buddhist prayer.
    We need to learn how to control our own minds rather than letting them control us.
    My friends, let a new faith fill you. Keep polishing your lives like a mirror, day and night, never pausing to rest.
    Learn to dominate your self, learn how to control with skill the reins of that wild horse, the mind. And then you will be free to run with the