The text read is not his. But the wife. And his wife is also a recluse. Think about it. Pierdonato is imprisoned for 15 years, convict, ex-41bis. Mary Buonpastore is secluded from 11 nni, 6 years and 5 months in 41bis (I thought that almost no women had been subjected to the infamous system 41bis). They have three children, Marianne, and Francis Nunzio, who for more than ten years growing up without father and mother. Both in prison. If you think there is in a drama and pain that can hardly be realized. There is the story of a thousand hugs broken dream of meetings, and sometimes stolen, and controlled in the narrow space of an interview, however, that becomes a paradise, so precious is that kiss, the caress and embrace abstinence after all. Pierdonato carry some words that made me get this text:

"I am enclosing a theme written by my wife, attuallmente restricted at the home district of Rebibbia Rome for 11 years, a tough period, including 6 years and 5 months of regime 41bis .. This theme aims to highlight the feelings humans involving two prisoners, deprived of everything. A parallel with the Odyssey by Homer narrated. It 's a subject that is loved, as to be mentioned in the prose section of the National Prize "Emmanuel Casalini," published in volume relative joint eighth edition.

And 'work shine. Where personal history is reflected in the eternal story of the Odyssey, the myth of Ithaca, Odysseus and the Return. Universal archetypes live in these pages, that suddenly implode in a personal and passionate love, the more so obstructed, tortured, crucified anyway. Perhaps it is true that Love is the primal force that helps resist, and how these people can "feel" so deeply after their contacts have become nearly impossible, as both inmates and regimens hard and long, is one of the highest mysteries of the human condition.

In the text the most exciting moment is when Mary tells of meeting with Bonpastore Pierdonato, physical encounter, face face, without a glass partition, with kisses and caresses. A hug waited for nine long years and finally got in 19/07/2007.

Ithaca eternal dream of the exiles, of fugitives, the stragglers, refugees, the desperate, prisoners. Exiles with a dream in their heart. Ithaca dream that steals your mind. Place of Origins. Mother of all the arms broken.

Perhaps because it is true that the horizon of every departure and return ..
And that "Of all my travel far from you, You are the Goal."

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"If what mortals might wish come true, first I would like the return of the father." And 'Telemachus, the son of Ulysses in the Odyssey so to speak. He is one of the first figures in the grand narratives of mankind bears witness to the anguish of his son without a father. After him there came many others. And now many are ...

My existential journey, the man I love and that of our children, is somewhat similar to the trip narrated by Homer in the Odyssey. Ours is a journey that has no sails, yes, no compass, yet is a journey very similar. We are on a raft at the mercy of the storm that we, with our own forces and our effort, we are trying to conduct a safe harbor. The sea is life, waves, storm, however, are our troubles.

My name is Ulysses Pierdonato in prison for 14 years (but if others are added to 6, have lived in these places are 20 years old!). I'm his wife, Penelope, waiting for him weaving his endless canvas. "Telemachus" are Mariana, Nunzio and Francis awaiting the return of the father and mother .... If Ulysses, in his Odyssey, he faced the Cyclops, sirens, witches, bad gods, etc.. But finally, after 20 years, managed to return to Ithaca, the Odyssey does not yet seem to have our end ...

Every human being has his heart in Ithaca. It matters little whether the rocky reef in the Aegean Sea, our Ithaca, which in reality is the Ithaca of all, is not a matter of map. E 'instead of a place of soul, mind, the goal we have in heart and to which, sooner or later we arrive.
Ithaca is a great metaphor, which can be found all over roots, rocks can be found anywhere in the world, the sea (in mind) and feelings (in any soul). Ithaca is the island par excellence, the port desired by humans who tend to it, even unknowingly.

E ', as someone said, the port of the learned and the ignorant; is the poetry of all. Ulysses is the hero that ever has never ceased to interest us.

Ulysses is a model, and brother, is a symbol, always emerges in our behavior, in the film. So Ithaca is a place of soul, a refuge of the imagination.

In our case a reading ambivalent, on the one hand you might think that Montescaglioso that village in the hills in the Province of Matera (our hometown) could be our Ithaca, certainly this is another aspect to keep in mind, but 'Ithaca is something we discussed previously that man carries within himself for millennia. And so we are years that we sail in these seas. The destination is the place to which we direct our point of arrival, and existential, because it is about existence and life, which affects the individual to a level of personal experience. The man who stands a purpose in his life is like a ship without rudder, which probably will never reach its destination.

Defying centuries and millennia Ulysses (Odysseus to the Greeks) is in a sense still with us. It 's a timeless character.

The man is a mystery, if life will solve this mystery ... will not have lived his life in vain!

And 'Odyssey born this veneration at home that has dominated more than 25 centuries the West. We still live in the last reflections of the house of Ulysses, where everything, walls, rooms, the bed, pantry, fireplace, the cattle, goods, have the same value to a person or a feeling it was secure, preserved, protected and defended as sacred. Nothing needs to be defended with the force, even life, so Odysseus is ruthless with the suitors who have violated what the Greeks call the oikos, the love of home and country to which Ulysses test a tenderness and a immense nostalgia. In that place the crop past, present and future. My Pierdonato like Ulysses never forgets. Does not yield to any lure, wins one after the other forces, Circe and Calypso, which might lead to forget defended his memory from the magic spells. Collect memories; writes, my Pierdonato. Penelope weeps for him, fear him dead. His soul is full of one person: Ulysses, husband, accomplice, and no room for no other entity. Ulysses does the same. Not to forget:

S sitting on the shore, dreaming Ithaca-his wife is home, and would love to see at least a thread of smoke rising from his land. Since he can not see the smoke ... would like to die, says Athena. That force is nostalgia in him .. fills his heart.

Penelope defended desperately with all his cunning, deception and delay, fidelity to her husband whose mind and heart which no female figure except Penelope comes so close. Penelope longs to the husband, with all the strength and spirit of eros. Ulysses missing. She remembers him constantly, feels incomplete without him, he suffers and weeps for him until he pays the Athena eyelids sleep.

For her there is no acceptance or resignation, absence before unbridgeable. As Penelope Ulysses has a relationship with time of suffering.

Both Ulysses and Penelope, get to know through suffering: the layers of grief accumulated produce his art supreme: the stubborn patience, the courageous endurance: Ulysses is a hero full of humanity. After nine long years and endless, on 19/12/2007 we were able to hug me and my Ulysses in the interview room the women's prison at Rebibbia conducting the first meeting without glass partition. His kisses, his caresses have left not only healed the gashes on my skin from the claws of the ferocious bad luck, but in my heart.

The longer the wait, the sweeter is the meeting, and this trip who knows legend, sailors and sea, between illusions and obscure dangers, makes us want to sail in a sea of serenity, and with the God's will, to return home at last, like Ulysses, Ulysses because I'm sure really existed ...

The subject is inexhaustible if I decide to truncate. It is hard to say something a human emotion so overwhelming and so "outdated" as this forced the physical distance, moving the edge of a bottomless pit and incommunicable pain I fear break, charmed with these words, inadequate, the enchanting spell of our feeling on our skin. These words should be heard in silence and in the inner secret of the heart and not brought to the fore by the externality and by the evidence, because these words are engraved the seal of a love story, a human story that is repeated in countless other stories .

Rebibbia 2009 Mary Buonpastore