I steal the title of this page from a novel by Pier Paolo Pasolini, best known for his 1964 film The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. It tells the story of Tomasso, a street trash kid from Rome who falls inevitably into a life of crime. It's a great book by a great artist (translated into English as A Violent Life). Don't miss it.

Maybe I bonded with this novel so much because its protagonist's name is the same as my father's, and the empathy Pasolini helped me feel for the fictional man allowed me to feel more for the flesh-and-blood one who spawned me. Unlike Tomasso from Una Vita Violenta (and unlike Thomas J. Wingate) I haven't been sucked into the life of crime, or––at least ostensibly––into a life of violence. I'm not a fighter, I'm not street trash. I'm quite domesticated and am unlikely to try intimidating you for money. I don't carry a knife or a gun, and I don't keep assault rifles at the house "just in case."

But for most of my life, if you were to peer inside my thoughts you would have found violence lurking around every corner. Found imaginary human interactions that ended in shouting matches or physical confrontations. Found a growling, snarling madman just waiting for an excuse to go apeshit on somebody. 

A shove against my shoulder (or agains the chip on my shoulder). Or, much later, a threat to the safety and well-being of my wife or kids. Then I'd have an excuse––finally!––to let loose the anger onto another human being who will feel it in his bones the way I feel anger in my own bones. 

Fortunately that section of my psyche is shrinking as I age. Maybe I'm just not as physically strong as I used to be, and there are fewer people I feel I can pummel or intimidate. Maybe the violent chemicals that ruled my psyche have run their course in my bloodstream. Maybe I've been domesticated for so long that I can't even imagine being sufficiently macho to commit an actual act of violence.

Has the violence gone away, though? Or has it changed its primary shape? Click on in this path, dear reader, for news I'd rather not share with you. (But must, in the spirit of this open-air confessional.) 

1. ON EMOTIONAL VIOLENCE
2. ANCESTRAL ANIMOSITIES
3. "MAD" AND "DAD" RHYME, DON'T THEY?
4. A BAD DAY IN BOSTON