About a year ago, a dear friend of mine and I went to explore some places here in our region and ended up in Pozzis.
For most of you, this small village means nothing, but for those of you from that area it means only one thing: the “Coconut”, the only inhabitant of this small village where he took refuge in 1983.
As soon as we arrived, we started walking among the old abandoned houses, until we came across the sign “Free Republic of Pozzis – Coconut Meeting”.
We let ourselves be guided by the sign and soon we saw this man intent on dealing in his things.
He welcomes us with an open humanity and begins to tell us about his life, without filters, because that’s how he is. A perhaps controversial figure, for those who know his story in depth, but who nowadays seem to be well liked by everyone.
Despite being 70 years old, in 2018 he took an old Harley from 1939 to go from Friuli to Samarkand and soon a film about this expedition will be released.
And this is a crucial point: motorcycles. Alfeo, this is his real name, lives recovering and building motorbikes himself, so much so that he transformed his home into his workshop and a real museum to visit.
Before we say goodbye, he pays us homage to a book he wrote telling his own story, with the premise that he is neither a linguist nor a writer, but that he made words and punctuation flow following only his feelings.
I happen to think back to that man and wonder what he reads following the passage of his time, but perhaps it is one of those answers I don’t know if I will ever find.
“If you ask an anarchist where he’s from, he’ll answer from the world. Anarchy is not that everyone does what they want, the real anarchy is that we are all the same”.
Il Cocco
