#JeSuisAriadne

my life is so full of events and invitations here in Hungary that is difficul to keep track of everything and manage to do two of the things i really care to do: write my notebook and my blog. 

i've always liked to write. i write on diaries since i was seven. i started with, you know, those cute little pink diaries with daisies on the cover. 

i ended up writing a blog, but i don't feel that i can just turn my back to the white empty pages i write my notes on. i wrote three notebooks in Central America, i love those notebooks. i read them to remember not only the places, but most of all the person i was.  she endured so much to grow and make me the person that i am, and i think i owe her something. i owe her my forgiveness and memory. 

actually, during this little time lapse between International Criminal Law and White Collar Crime courses, i wanted to write about my first Strauss "Ariadne auf Naxos" i attended last week in Budapest Opera house. 

it was a both funny and revealing experience, in fact. 

after dressing up properly, i realized i was late. i was supposed to show up half an hour before the beginning of the performance. 

i rushed out of my flat on my dècolletè heel shoes. i walked hurriedly towards Oktogon Square. 

once there, i didn't wanted to mistake the direction turning in Andrassy Utca, i didn't have time to repare it. i asked a guy standing by his metallic push scooter. 

me: "hi, is Opera House on the left?"

Ivan: " yes. are you going to Ariadne?"

me: "yes, how come that you know it?"

Ivan:" i'm going there too. i was waiting for a friend, but i must go too."

me: "i think we're a little late, then"

Ivan "let's go on my push scooter, you'll see we can still make the grade." 

next thing i know, we were the most elegantly dressed push scooter drivers on Andrassy. the poshy people chatting in front of the Opera stared speechless for a moment staring at a boy and a girl arriving at the Opera door on push scooter and parking it. 

we entered together in this red and golden palace. 

it was a magic place. i was glad to sit on the high dais. i've never been able to understand why they are considered the worst. i love to see everything from high above. maybe it's just a matter of acoustic. 

the lights went down, the performance begun. 

Ariadne is both a comedy of opera buffa and a serious opera. the main character is Ariadne, the sister of mythological Minotaur, who helped her lover Theseus to kill the magic creature and get out of the labyrinth in which the Minotaur lived with the help of a filament she held. 

let's just say that our Theseus wasn't a grateful or either faithful man at all. he eventually got tired of her and he abandoned Ariadne on the Island of Naxos.

she was stubborn, she loved her man deeply and wholly.  she was so heartbroken she got mad. 

Ariadne loved an illusion.

...how many times did it happen to me? wao, countless. 

and i'm not speacking of guys, i'm speacking of every time i wanted desperately something without seeing it for what it really was: loving an illusion, an inconsistent image i created. 

Ariadne was stubborn in her love. even if it was an illusion. 

she was proud too. she couldn't bear this offence to her feelings, not even willing to realise the inexistence of the object of her love since the beginning. 

it stroke me that i am like her. in the past i used to be like her even more. 

i loved deeply, stubbornly. 

the kind of love that human beings are supposed to give just to themselves, i used to give it to the world. 

Ariadne ended up wanting just one thing: to die. death was the only thing that could wash away the treason of her only love. 

and when she really wanted to die with all her heart, the god Bacchus showed up. 

she confused him with Ades the god of the afterlife, but Bacchus fell in love with her and did what she wanted: he brought her in paradise and let her pass away. in that very moment she rebirthed as a goddess, ready to love again, to pass the eternity with Bacchus.

let's replace for a moment physical death with a change in perspective. 

it's the very moment in which a stubborn, an therefore inconsolable, sufferer choose that just a change in the way she/he sees the world can make her/him live again.  maybe it was not a coincidence if i was named after her too. in fact my middle name is Arianna, the Italian version of the greek Ariàdne. 

the comedy character i enjoyed the most was Zerbinetta. she was a woman who lived freely her passions, who loved life. she tried to comfort Ariadne telling her own quite funny life stories. 

in the end, she was the one bringing the moral of the story after Ariadne started her new life with Bacchus:  every new lover looks like a god.