photo by http://9gag.com/gag/14119/

On the Tarot card of The Hanged Man, there’s a man with his right ankle tied to a beam . His hands are crossed behind his back. In spite of the torment, his face is serene, almost ecstatic. Sometimes he’s surrounded by a halo. Italo Calvino in the book "Il Castello dei destini incrociati" {The Castle of Crossed Destinies}, has Orlando, the mad paladin finding himself upside down, saying: “Leave me like this. I’ve done the whole circle and I’ve understood. The world is to be read the other way round. Everything is clear.” The Great Book of the World of Madmen has to be read the other way round to be at peace with oneself. I’m not mad, I’ve finally understood this. I was just seeing the world from the wrong perspective.
When I go home, I have a chestnut beam ready for use. I get myself hung up by a foot and I laugh like a child. Anyone who loses his mind doesn’t know they have lost it, but that isn’t my situation. What do you say? Am I on a nasty slope? Ready for a white padded room in a clinic surrounded by a sea of grass? Like Orlando, I’ve done the whole circle and now I know that anyone who doesn’t adapt is lost. My eyes rove from the carpet to the tiles, towards the ground, like one who has to accept collapsing in order to survive. When they release me from the beam, ever more rarely, I go out of the house and I talk to the people I meet in the street. I have the feeling that I’m an alien. For a bit just recently, I’m getting convinced that it’s the others who are right. If the one who is not afraid of dying, dies only once, the one who is afraid of living never thinks about it and lives for a hundred years.
Who am I to judge my fellow citizens? I commit the sin of pride if I think that they are not well informed, able to discern the difference between good and evil, a delinquent from a Minister, a journalist from a mercenary liar. And when the doubt comes back again, my wooden beam gives me peace. I see Tremonti, the Minister of the Economy, and not Tremorti, the book-keeper of elusion. Napolitano appears to me and not Morpheus who is signing the warning. The TAV in Val di Susa is something that is right and fitting, and not a useless project costing 22 billion at the expense of the taxpayers. The 'ndrangheta does not exist, even Ms Moratti has said that, and Mangano is a true hero because he did not talk. Italy is the best of all possible worlds. Scalfari is a great journalist; De Benedetti is a virtuous man who has developed the national economy. Berlusconi the man of Destiny. A mantra when upside down. I feel better. To follow the crowd is a sign of wisdom, of tranquil strength, but it’s also true that when you follow the stream you always finish up in some sewer, whose stench is something you can cope with, a peg on your nose and Bob's your uncle! Straight away you imagine perfumes of lavender and cyclamen. The slight regurgitation of vomit was just an illusion. The world when you’re upside down is more beautiful, I didn’t believe it, but the Italians have made me change my mind.