476.BOOK REVIEW OF VIAGGIO NELLA MIA VITA by un'Americana a Venezia

Whenever we hear of someone's being paralyzed or severely incapacitated, most of us try to imagine, not without trepidation, what we would do if faced with a similar fate.  The loss of independence due to brain (and spinal) injury is all too real.  Every year in the U.S. alone, about 2.6 million people suffer some type of brain damage due to internal or external causes.  How might you cope if one day your common head cold turned into a life-threatening infection and you ended up in a coma, then awoke to find you could no longer walk?  Or enunciate clearly?  Or return to your job?  What if, to further complicate things, that near-fatal infection had left you unable to swallow normally or to eat and drink, so that your breathing as well as your nourishment required the aid of devices manipulated by another person who now had responsibility for your survival?  Do you think you could ever recover from the shock of this kind of disruption to your normal existence?  Would you attempt to make sense of the situation, not so much for yourself as for your loved ones?  Might you someday find the heart to review the joys of your past without bitterness, and then with perfect honesty and courage, turn to face the shadows of regret?  Last but not least, could you find enough strength to eke out a new philosophy while holding fast to your faith?  The scenario I have just described and the answers to these questions lie at the heart of Italian author Roberto Rapaccini's first autobiographical subject, his third published book:  Viaggio nella mia vita/Appunti disordinati per un "De Profundis" (Cittadella Editrice, 2014), translatable as Journey into My Life/Random Notes for a De Profundis.  Once an active functionary normally engaged in travel abroad on behalf of Italy's Ministero dell'Interno, an athlete, horseman and exhibiting artist as well, Roberto fell deathly ill overnight in 2006.  When he emerged from a coma, he and his wife, Cristina, a medical doctor, and their two school-aged children suddenly found themselves plunged into a radically new context:  Roberto was no longer autonomous.  What's more, the road to full recovery, if ever, would be hard going.  From the depths of that new context has come this intimate and brave volume, nineteen brief chapters that read like poetic postcards mailed along the zigzag route of a long, strange trip.  Roberto's intellectual drive and his artistic sensibility, along with his sometimes painfully candid admissions, keep these "notes for a de profundis" moving from place to place, from early accounts of his life-altering experience to considerations of such topics as free will, time, memory, and art.  One chapter was inspired by the author's all-time favorite film, Wim Wender's "The Sky Over Berlin" (1987), and another by one of Astor Piazzolla's better known tangos, "Romance del Diablo."  In a certain sense, Viaggio is an essay of reflections mixed with recollection.  Often while reading this slender volume, I found myself pausing to contemplate.  The author can pack a lot of meaning into a single thought, while some sentences can be viewed from different angles like many-faceted crystals.  Others drive home the point and inquire head-on:  What did we do, or not do, when we had the chance?  Roberto continues to study.  He notes early on in the book that he started a new language even before he left the hospital.  Today he is a digital artist as well as a writer and webmaster.  His travels today find him touring the infinite plane of ideas.   Reading Viaggio is like crossing the Atlantic with that rarest of seatmates, the well-versed conversationalist who knows how to keep things reasonably light, and who also knows when to keep silent.  Viaggio will surely give everyone pause, reminding us that, as the author himself might say, Non agit, sed agitur.  In other words, in life, as on any journey, unexpected events take place--stuff happens--and we must react.  We have no alternative.  Towards the end of Viaggio, in the chapter entitled "Ulisse" (Ulysses), Roberto writes, "If suffering cannot be avoided, the only choice is to open oneself docilely to the intelligence of the senses and hope that afflictions have a reason for being."  Such is faith, the open secret to handling the violent twists and turns in the road with grace.  I plan to take Viaggio with me on my next round trip and read it a second and maybe a third time.  God willing, of course.           UN’AMERICANA A VENEZIA